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neighbours who are silly, selfish, bad-tempered, void of fine scruples, vicious. It is like telling us to scale a citadel on whose smooth, steep walls there is not a crumb of foothold. But if we first love God with all our hearts, we shall find the earlier com- mandment become a scaling ladder by which we may attempt the dizzy heights of the second. Through the strength received by loving the infinitely perfect, we shall do what for the moment seems quite impossible. There is nothing to chill or turn back the love we give to Him who is an infinitely worthy object of it. He is ever true, upright, merciful, perfect. If I can attain the habit of loving God, I find a starting-point for all other loves which are binding upon me ; and I shall love and help the least attractive, because He loves them and seeks their salva- tion.i
^ A lad of eight, who had been half beaten to death by a brutal father, was waiting at the prison gates to welcome back the father when he had finished his term of hard labour.^
^ Every man takes care that his neighbour shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he do not cheat his neighbour. Then all goes well. He has changed hie market-cart into a chariot of the sun. What a day dawns when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith ! to prefer, as a better investment, being to doing ; being to seeming ; logic to rhythm and to display ; the year to the day ; the life to the year ; char- acter to performance.*
2. How do we love ourselves ? Not for the goodness that is in us, with the delight of a moved and grateful heart ; nor for the holiness that is in us, in the reverential contemplation of our own spiritual rectitude, with the affections of the soul ; nor for our insight into God's thoughts, for the reach of our know- ledge, for our empire over Truth, for the harmonies between our reason and the universe around us, with the love and worship of the mind ; nor yet for the glow of life that pervades our being, and sets all our energies to turn our aspirations into spiritual fact and substance, for the sake of the joy that comes out of a strong and devoted will, making sacrifices of the lower things for what it holds most dear ; — not in this way, nor for these things, do we love ourselves ; and so, therefore, we may not withhold our love from our neighbour because he cannot be loved in this way, nor for these things. We love ourselves by desiring our own blessedness, by wishing and seeking our own
^ T. G. Selby. ■ Ibid. » Emerson.
326 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
good, by shunning and deprecating needless pain, pain to which we are not called by submission or conformity to God, or by love for man ; and this is the lowest love we must feel for our neighbour, to have benevolent affections ; and as the test of such affections, where opportunity is, to render beneficent service towards all mankind. I say the lowest love, because there are many men who are worthy of a higher love, even of some measure of that kind of love with which we love our God.
^ A man's estimate of himself will determine his estimate of others, and you may securely argue back from his treatment of others to his theory of himself. Self-respect is the very antithesis and prohibition of selfishness. This explains the personal goodness of benevolent men, and the personal badness of churlish men. At first sight it is very puzzling that this should be the case. Why, for example, are sensual men almost invariably also cruel ? This is one of the best authenticated ethical concords : self-indulgence and forfeiture of sympathy go together. You may see it in societies ; you may see it in individuals ; you may in some degree see it in yourself. The explanation lies in a nut- shell. A sensual man has a very low view of himself ; he treats himself as an animal; he sees in his own nature nothing noble and inherently worthy of respect, and he carries that view of manhood into his intercourse with others.^
^ It is fit that we should be obliged to love our neighbour equally with ourselves, because all charity beneath self-love is defective, and all self-love above charity is excessive.^
\ An old weaver in England used to make this prayer each morning, " Lord teach me to respect myself." This was a right prayer. I am a man made in God's likeness and after His image ; it is my duty to make the most of myself, not for self's sake alone, but for the sake of others and the glory of God. It is my duty to realise the vast possibilities of my life and the destiny which is divinely intended for me.'
3. But who is our neighbour ? Christ has answered that question. The Good Samaritan finds a neighbour where he finds a suffering man. " Go thou," says the Saviour, to whoever would waste the time of action in cavil or speculation, in vain talk about goodness when the work remains imdone — "Go thou and do likewise." No doubt he whom we find in the most urgent need is the nearest neighbour to our love ; but, as a rule, those who