But there is a far more difficult case for the application of the Golden Rule than this. Suppose that you have fallen into some gross sin, and incurred a very severe punishment, what may we assume you would wish that men should do to you ? In ninety- nine cases out of a hundred the answer would be, " Let me off the penalty." Are we, then, to go on to assume that it is your duty to remit all punishment, however deserved, because of your sense that you would wish it to be remitted if you were in the wrong- doer's place? The social conscience has said No; the Christian conscience says No. It is not a question of what you might happen to wish if you were simply an irresponsible and religiously uneducated being, but of what you would wish if you were subject to the spirit and discipline of Christianity. In this latter case you would wish that your sin should be punished, your offences corrected; and consequently you would not do to others an 1 C. S. Home, The Model Citizen, 140.
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injustice and call it mercy, because you were weak enough to desire it for yourself.
III.
Its Standard of Duty.
1. The Golden Rule surpasses all formulas of justice by bring- ing the case before our loving, trembling, sensitive self, and begging that it be tried in the light and justice of all this light of self-love, self-joy, and self-agony. We know how near and dear a thing one's own self is. The moment we step away from our consciousness we lose our mental grasp upon the phenomenon of right br wrong. We can look upon a suffering man, sick or wounded, with comparative peace, because our knowledge will not travel away from our own consciousness. We may say, " Poor man, poor child, we pity you," but we are so cut off from his pain that an infinite gulf lies between our feelings and the sufferer's agony. But let that pain, that sickness, that dying, come to self, and how quickly the heart measures all the depths of the new sorrow.
Tf It was reported that one of the victims of the Cuban massacre offered a million dollars if the savages would spare his life. The death of others, the common calamities of life had not filled with tremor that heart naturally brave; the grief of death at large had been, as it were, spoken in a foreign language not to be understood by him, but now the grim monster was coming up against self, it was his heart that was to be pierced with balls, not yours, nor mine, but his own, bound to earth, to friends, to country, to home and its loved ones ; his was to pour out its blood and sink into the awful mystery of the grave. This was the vivid measurement of things that made the hero try to buy sun- shine and home and sweet life with gold. When it comes to any adequate measurement of life's ills or joys, the only line which man can lay down upon the unknown is the consciousness within, the verdict of this inner self.1
2. It has consequently been alleged that this precept falls short, as a rule of morality, of what the inspiring principle of a
1 D. Swiug, Truths/or To-Day, i. 39.
ST. MATTHEW vn. 12 187
good man's life ought to be, and what the best men, in their better moments, have really aimed at. It puts, to a man's heart and conscience, his fellow-men only on the same level as himself. It seems to start from a regard for self, to recognize the claims of self. It is a nobler morality — this is what has been alleged — that calls upon men to love their neighbours not merely as well as, but better than, themselves. To live for others, quite sup- pressing and subordinating self, may be the high ideal, the inspir- ing principle, of a good man's efforts. Such a man should think, not " How should I wish my neighbour to behave towards me ? " but " How can I serve my neighbour ? How can I do most good, regardless of my own pleasure or interest, to those around me ? "
Of course the general feeling is that the laws of conduct laid down in the Gospels are only too high, too exacting ; that they require to be toned down and qualified before they can be applied to the practice of ordinary life. The morality of the Sermon on the Mount has been regarded as something exceptional, something ethereal, that might have suited the first disciples or the saints in later ages who have retired from the world, but " too good for human nature's daily food." And Christian expositors have generally felt called upon to show that the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven, as laid down by the Lord Jesus in these discourses, were essentially such as men might act upon and ought to act upon, though they may seem to enjoin an almost romantic or chimerical suppression of self and superiority to the world. Still, it is possible to argue that to love my neighbour as myself and to do to him as I should wish him to do to me, is a rule which assumes that I am caring for myself, and which does not aim at doing more than placing my neighbour on a level with myself in my estimate of his claims upon me.