Christian Love,
or the Influence of Religion upon Temper
By John Angell James, 1828
THE SELF-DENIAL OF
LOVE
"Love endures all things."
Christian love is not fickle, unsteady, or easily
discouraged. Love is not soon disheartened, or induced to relinquish its
object. Love is persevering, patient, and self-denying in the pursuance of
its design to relieve the needs, assuage the sorrows, reform the vices, and
allay the animosities—of those whose good it seeks. Love is as patient in
bearing—as it is active in doing. Christian love unites the
uncomplaining submission of the lamb, the plodding perseverance of
the ox, with the courage of the lion!
Christian love is no frivolous and capricious affection,
relinquishing its object from a mere love of change. Nor is love a feeble
virtue, which weakly lets go its purpose in the prospect of difficulty. Nor
is love a cowardly grace, which drops its scheme, and flees from the face of
danger. No, Christian love is the union of benevolence with strength,
patience, courage, and perseverance. It has feminine beauty—gentleness, and
sweetness—united with masculine energy, and power, and heroism. To do good,
it will meekly bear with the infirmities of the lowest, or will brave the
scorn and fury of the mightiest. But let us survey
the opposition, the difficulties,
the discouragements, the provocations—which Christian love has to bear—and
which, with enduring patience, it can resist.
Sacrifices of ease, of time, of feeling, and of property ,
must all be endured—for it is impossible to exercise Christian love without
making these. He who would do good to others without practicing self-denial,
does but dream. The way of philanthropy is ever up hill, and not
infrequently over rugged rocks, and through thorny paths. If we would
promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, it must be by parting with
something or other that is dear to us. If we would lay aside revenge when
they have injured us, and exercise forgiveness, we must often mortify our
own feelings. If we would reconcile the differences of those who are at
variance, we must give up our time, and sometimes our comfort. If we would
assuage their griefs, we must expend our property. If we would reform their
wickedness, we must part with our ease. If we would, in short, do good of
any kind, we must be willing to deny ourselves, and bear labor of body and
pain of mind. And love is willing to do this—it braces itself for labor,
arms itself for conflict, prepares itself for suffering—it looks
difficulties in the face, counts the cost, and heroically exclaims, "None of
these things move me, so that I may diminish the evils, and promote the
happiness of others." It will rise before the break of day, linger on the
field of labor until midnight, toil amid the sultry heat of summer, brave
the northern blasts of winter, submit to derision, give the energies of body
and the comfort of mind—all to do good.
Misconstruction
is another thing that love endures. Some men's
minds are ignorant, and cannot understand love's schemes; others are
contracted, and cannot comprehend them; others are selfish, and cannot
approve them; others are envious, and cannot applaud them; and all these
will unite, either to suspect or to condemn—but this virtue of love, "like
the eagle, pursues its noble, lofty, heaven-bound course, regardless of the
flock of little pecking, caviling birds, which, unable to follow, amuse
themselves by twittering their objections and ill-will in the hedges below."
Or to borrow a Scriptural allusion, love, like its great Pattern when he was
upon the earth, goes about doing good, notwithstanding the malignant
perversion of its motives and actions on the part of its enemies. "I must
do good," she exclaims—"if you cannot understand my plans, I pity your
ignorance; if you misconstrue my motives, I forgive your malignity; but the
clouds that are exhaled from the earth may as well attempt to arrest the
career of the sun, as for your dulness or malevolence to stop my attempts to
do good. I must go on, without your approbation, and against your
opposition."
Envy
often tries the endurance of love, and is another of
the ills which it bears, without being turned aside by it. There are men who
would enjoy the praise of benevolence, without enduring its labors; that is,
they would wear the laurel of victory without exposing themselves to the
peril of war—they are sure to envy the braver, nobler spirits, whose
generous conquests having been preceded by labor, are followed by praise.
To be good and to do good, are alike the objects of envy with
many people. "A man of great merit," says a French author, "is a kind of
public enemy. By engrossing a multitude of applauses, which would serve to
gratify a great many others, he cannot but be envied—men naturally hate what
they highly esteem, yet cannot love." The feeling of the countryman at
Athens, who upon being asked why he gave his vote for the banishment of
Aristides, replied, "Because he is everywhere called the just"—is by no
means uncommon. The Ephesians expelled the best of their citizens, with the
public announcement of this reason, "If any are determined to excel their
neighbors, let them find another place to do it." Envy is that which love
hates and prohibits; and in revenge, envy hates and persecutes love in
return. But the terror of envy does not intimidate love, nor its malignity
disgust it; it can bear even the perversions, misrepresentations, and
opposition of this fiend-like passion—and pursues its course, simply saying,
"Get behind me, Satan."
Ingratitude
is often the hard usage which love has to sustain, and
which it patiently endures. Into such a state of turpitude is man fallen,
that he would bear any weight rather than that of obligation. Men will
acknowledge small obligations—but often return malice for such as are
extraordinary; and some will sooner forgive great injuries than great
services. Many people do not know their benefactors, many more will not
acknowledge them, and others will not reward them, even with the cheap
offering of thanks. These things are enough to make us sick of the world.
Yes—but they ought not to make us weary of trying to mend it; for the more
ungrateful it is, the more it needs our benevolence. Here is the noble, the
lofty, the godlike temper of love; it pursues its course like the providence
of Jehovah, which continues to cause its sun to rise, and its rain to
descend, not only upon the irrational creatures, who have no capacity to
know their benefactor—but upon the rational ones, many of whom have no
disposition to acknowledge him.
Derision
is often employed to oppose the efforts of love, by all
the artillery of scorn. Spiritual religion, and especially that view of it
which this subject exhibits, has ever been an object of contempt to ungodly
men. Banter and ridicule are brought to stop its progress—the greatest
profaneness and buffoonery are sometimes employed to laugh it out of
acceptance—but it has learned to treat with indifference even the cruel
mockings of irony, and to receive upon its shield-arm, all the arrows of the
most envenomed wit.
Opposition
does not disgust, nor persevering obstinacy
weary true Christian love. It can endure to have its schemes examined and
sifted by those who cannot understand them, caviled at by those who cannot
mend them, and resisted by those who have nothing to offer in their place.
It does not throw all up in a fit of passion, nor allow the tongue of
petulance, nor the clamor of envy, to stop its efforts.
Lack of success ,
that most discouraging consideration to activity—is not sufficient to drive
it from the field; but in the expectation of the future harvest, it
continues to plough and to sow in hope. Its object is too important to be
relinquished for a few failures; and nothing but the demonstration of
absolute impossibility can induce it to give up its benevolent purpose.
If instances of this view of Christian love be necessary
to illustrate and enforce it by the power of example, many and striking ones
are at hand. Let the history of Paul be studied, and his suffering career be
traced, and his declarations heard concerning his varied and heavy
tribulations. "Our dedication to Christ makes us look like fools, but you
are so wise! We are weak, but you are so powerful! You are well thought of,
but we are laughed at. To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, without
enough clothes to keep us warm. We have endured many beatings, and we have
no homes of our own. We have worked wearily with our own hands to earn our
living. We bless those who curse us. We are patient with those who abuse us.
We respond gently when evil things are said about us. Yet we are treated
like the world's garbage, like everybody's trash—right up to the present
moment." 1 Cor. 4:10-13. "They say they serve Christ? I know I sound like a
madman, but I have served him far more! I have worked harder, been put in
jail more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again
and again. Five different times the Jews gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three
times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was
shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have
traveled many weary miles. I have faced danger from flooded rivers and from
robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from
the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the
stormy seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be Christians but
are not. I have lived with weariness and pain and sleepless nights. Often I
have been hungry and thirsty and have gone without food. Often I have
shivered with cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm. Then, besides
all this, I have the daily burden of how the churches are getting along." 2
Cor. 11:23-28.
Nor did these sufferings come upon him without his being
previously apprized of them, for the Holy Spirit had witnessed to him that
bonds and afflictions awaited him. Yet neither the prospect of his varied
tribulations, nor the full weight of them, made him for a moment think of
relinquishing his benevolent exertions for the welfare of mankind. His was
the love that "endures all things."
And a greater, far greater, than even the great apostle
of the Gentiles, might be also introduced, as affording by his conduct a
most striking illustration of this property of Christian love. Who can
conceive of what the Son of God endured while he sojourned in this
world? Who can imagine the magnitude of his sufferings, and the extent of
that opposition, ingratitude, and hard usage, amid which those sufferings
were sustained, and by which they were so greatly increased? Never was so
much mercy treated with so much cruelty—the constant labor he sustained, and
the many privations to which he submitted, were little, compared with the
malignant contradiction, resistance, and persecution, he received from those
who were the objects of his mercy. The work of man's redemption was not
accomplished, as was the work of creation, by a mere fiat delivered froth
the throne, on which Omnipotence reigned in the calm repose of infinite
majesty. No! The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, as a man of sorrow
and acquainted with grief. The wrath of God, the fury of devils, the rage of
man, the malignity of enemies, the wayward follies and fickleness of
friends, the baseness of treachery, the scorn of official rank, and the many
stings of ingratitude, calumny, and fickleness—all poured their venom into
that heart which glowed with affection to mankind. Nothing turned him from
his purpose—nothing abated his ardor in the work of our salvation. His,
above all others, was indeed a love which "endures all things."
Such is the model we are to copy. In doing good we must
prepare ourselves for opposition, and all its attendant train of evils.
Whether our object be the conversion of souls, or the well-being of man's
bodily nature—whether we are seeking to build up the temporal, or to
establish the eternal interests of mankind, we must remember that we have
undertaken a task which will call for patient, self-denying, and persevering
effort. In the midst of difficulties, we must not utter the vain and
cowardly wish that we had not set our hand to the plough; but press onward
in humble dependence upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, and animated by the
hope of either being rewarded by success, or by the consciousness that we
did everything to obtain it. And we shall do this, if we possess much of the
power of love; for its ardor is such, that many waters cannot quench it. Its
energies increase with the difficulty that requires them; and like a well
constructed arch, it becomes more firm and consolidated by the weight it has
to sustain. In short, it is "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the
work of the Lord, forasmuch as it knows that its labor shall not be in vain
in the Lord."
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