2. It should be noticed that the personal pronoun is emphatic (the Revised Version, by inserting himself, has given the correct rendering of the original Greek): "How he himself said" implies that the fact was beyond all doubt. We may note one distinctive feature in Christian philanthropy, that it is based upon allegiance to a divine Person, and upon a reference to a divine Person, and upon a reference to His commands. The emphatic personal pronoun seems to forbid the view that the Apostle is simply giving the sense of some of our Lord's sayings.
1 A. "W. Potts, School Sermons, 228.
174 THE BEATITUDE OF THE GIVER
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am ? If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb, If I were a wise man
I would do my part — Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.1
III.
The Words of the Lord Jesus.
"It is more blessed to give than to receive."
From what source St. Paul obtained this, the only saying of our Lord, definitely so described, outside the four Gospels, we cannot tell, but the command to " remember " shows that the words must have been familiar words, like those from St. Clement and St. Polycarp, which are very similar to the utterance of the Sermon on the Mount. From whatever source they are derived, references in the Apostolic Fathers show how deep an impression they made upon the mind of the Church.
i. It is blessed to receive. " It is more blessed to give than to receive." Our Lord said " more blessed." Then it is blessed to receive. Until we know the blessedness of " receiving," we cannot appreciate the higher blessedness of " giving." There is no antithesis here between the blessedness of giving and the wow-blessedness of receiving. The comparison which our Lord made was between the greater and the less, between the higher and lower forms of blessedness. Oriental mysticism, Buddhist legends, have urged the hyperbole of self-sacrifice for its own sake, and have stumbled into this veritable pit of pessimism. The Lord Christ illumined the profoundest problems of ethics and the true secret of the religious life, when He said : " It is more blessed to give than to receive " ; " freely ye have received, freely give."
1. It is blessed simply to receive Nature's gifts, even before we
1 Christina G. Rossetti.
ACTS xx. 35 175
can apprehend their full complexity, their lavish abundance, their anticipation of our desires, their hidden secrets, and their bound- less possibilities. All the progress of man is measured by the degree to which he has appreciated and received, discovered and utilized, the free gifts of God in nature. When man first under- stood what Nature had done for him in offering him the flower and fruit and seed of corn, then began the harvest of the world. When human intelligence understood what was involved in the chalk-beds and coal-fields and mineral wealth at man's feet ; when he grasped the meaning of fire and lightning, and the contents of water and air ; when he thus received these treasured forces and boundless provisions of nature ; when he began to " receive " and utilize the energies which had been moulding the world for untold centuries — then science took its birth. If we stubbornly refuse to receive the light of heaven, we stumble blindfold into the pitfalls at our side. Should we refuse to receive our daily bread, or put it from us with suicidal hand, we perish. Further- more, Nature lavishes upon us, together with these elementary gifts, appeals to our higher and more subtle desires, awakens them by her magic touch, and gives us the sense of beauty, truth, and goodness. The surpassing loveliness of much of Nature's work must be received by those who have the eyes and the ears of the spirit opened to perceive it.
"[f All that Art has ever done to soften and beautify the career of man upon earth, has been to record the high joy, or subtle pain akin to bliss, which the perception and reception of the glory of Nature has given to a comparatively few elect souls. The great artists and poets, musicians and sculptors, have so embodied their strong emotions in abiding form and material, that others may learn from them the blessed secret of receiving the mystery of beauty, and accepting some of the truth and goodness of its eternal Source.1
Oh, give thyself to the kind grey day
That doth not bargain nor betray! The tranquil stream
Shall hallow thy dream;
The grasses dry
Divine thy sigh;
And the withered weed
Thy need;
1 H. R. Reynolds.
176 THE BEATITUDE OF THE GIVER
The silent trees
Shall give heart's ease,
Shall dower thee with soft distances,
Vistas of soul tranquillities;
Ah, the silent trees
Appease !
Thy heart shall render due reply
To the quiet of earth and the peace of sky;
Yea, the grey, mysterious depths of the day
Shall fashion thy soul, in a secret way,
To meet Infinity;
If thou wilt yield thee to the day
That doth not bargain nor betray.
2. All human love is a ministration of Divine love. Human tenderness is but the channel cut by Providence through which the rivers of God's pleasure flow. God lavishes His own love upon us through the hearts and by the hands of those who love. Now, it is blessed to receive human love, and the gifts of love. Self- sacrifice would be a form of selfishness, if it monopolized all the blessedness of the process. See the child with its hands full of birthday gifts, intense joy lighting its eye, almost bursting the tiny heart. If the little one had no blessedness in receiving father's, mother's, and sister's tokens of love, and found no joy in its new riches, if such were thrown idly away and conveyed no thrill of bliss, the grace of giving would be doubtful. Sometimes pride of spirit refuses to be beholden to another, resenting the sense of obligation. But all beneficence would be dried at its source, all philanthropy and evangelism at home and abroad would sicken and die, if there were no blessedness in receiving the streams of living water which are always pouring forth from human hearts.