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Unspoken Sermons

G >> George MacDonald >> Unspoken Sermons




Troubled soul, thou art not bound to feel, but thou art bound to arise.
God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou canst not love when
thou wilt, but thou art bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last.
Try not to feel good when thou art not good, but cry to Him who is
good. He changes not because thou changest. Nay, he has an especial
tenderness of love towards thee for that thou art in the dark and hast
no light, and his heart is glad when thou dost arise and say, "I will
go to my Father." For he sees thee through all the gloom through which
thou canst not see him. Will thou his will. Say to him: "My God, I am
very dull and low and hard; but thou art wise and high and tender, and
thou art my God. I am thy child. Forsake me not." Then fold the arms of
thy faith, and wait in quietness until light goes up in thy darkness.
Fold the arms of thy Faith I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee
of something that thou oughtest to do, and go and do it, if it be but
the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a
friend. Heed not thy feelings: Do thy work.

As God lives by his own will, and we live in him, so has he given to us
power to will in ourselves. How much better should we not fare if,
finding that we are standing with our heads bowed away from the good,
finding that we have no feeble inclination to seek the source of our
life, we should yet _will_ upwards toward God, rousing that essence of
life in us, which he has given us from his own heart, to call again
upon him who is our Life, who can fill the emptiest heart, rouse the
deadest conscience, quicken the dullest feeling, and strengthen the
feeblest will!

Then, if ever the time should come, as perhaps it must come to each of
us, when all consciousness of well-being shall have vanished, when the
earth shall be but a sterile promontory, and the heavens a dull and
pestilent congregation of vapours, when man nor woman shall delight us
more, nay, when God himself shall be but a name, and Jesus an old
story, then, even then, when a Death far worse than "that phantom of
grisly bone" is griping at our hearts, and having slain love, hope,
faith, forces existence upon us only in agony, then, even then, we
shall be able to cry out with our Lord, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?" Nor shall we die then, I think, without being able to
take up his last words as well, and say, "_Father, into thy hands I
commend my spirit._"




THE HANDS OF THE FATHER.


"_Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit_."--St Luke xxiii. 46.

Neither St Matthew nor St Mark tells us of any words uttered by our
Lord after the _Eloi_. They both, along with St Luke, tell us of a cry
with a loud voice, and the giving up of the ghost; between which cry
and the giving up, St Luke records the words, "Father, into thy hands I
commend my spirit." St Luke says nothing of the Eloi prayer of
desolation. St John records neither the _Eloi_, nor the _Father into
thy hands_, nor the loud cry. He tells us only that after Jesus had
received the vinegar, he said, "_It is finished_," and bowed his head,
and gave up the ghost.

Will the Lord ever tell us why he cried so? Was it the cry of relief at
the touch of death? Was it the cry of victory? Was it the cry of
gladness that he had endured to the end? Or did the Father look out
upon him in answer to his _My God_, and the blessedness of it make him
cry aloud because he could not smile? Was such his condition now that
the greatest gladness of the universe could express itself only in a
loud cry? Or was it but the last wrench of pain ere the final repose
began? It may have been all in one. But never surely in all books, in
all words of thinking men, can there be so much expressed as lay
unarticulated in that cry of the Son of God. Now had he made his Father
Lord no longer in the might of making and loving alone, but Lord in
right of devotion and deed of love. Now should inward sonship and the
spirit of glad sacrifice be born in the hearts of men; for the divine
obedience was perfected by suffering. He had been amongst his brethren
what he would have his brethren be. He had done for them what he would
have them do for God and for each other. God was henceforth inside and
beneath them, as well as around and above them, suffering with them and
for them, giving them all he had, his very life-being, his essence of
existence, what best he loved, what best he was. He had been among
them, their God-brother. And the mighty story ends with a cry.

Then the cry meant, _It is finished_; the cry meant, _Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit_. Every highest human act is just a giving
back to God of that which he first gave to us. "Thou God hast given me:
here again is thy gift. I send my spirit home." Every act of worship is
a holding up to God of what God hath made us. "Here, Lord, look what I
have got: feel with me in what thou hast made me, in this thy own
bounty, my being. I am thy child, and know not how to thank thee save
by uplifting the heave-offering of the overflowing of thy life, and
calling aloud, 'It is thine: it is mine. I am thine, and therefore I am
mine.'" The vast operations of the spiritual as of the physical world,
are simply a turning again to the source.

The last act of our Lord in thus commending his spirit at the close of
his life, was only a summing up of what he had been doing all his life.
He had been offering this sacrifice, the sacrifice of himself, all the
years, and in thus sacrificing he had lived the divine life. Every
morning when he went out ere it was day, every evening when he lingered
on the night-lapt mountain after his friends were gone, he was offering
himself to his Father in the communion of loving words, of high
thoughts, of speechless feelings; and, between, he turned to do the
same thing in deed, namely, in loving word, in helping thought, in
healing action towards his fellows; for the way to worship God while
the daylight lasts is to work; the service of God, the only "divine
service," is the helping of our fellows.

I do not seek to point out this commending of our spirits to the Father
as a duty: that is to turn the highest privilege we possess into a
burden grievous to be borne. But I want to shew that it is the simplest
blessedest thing in the human world.

For the Human Being may say thus with himself: "Am I going to sleep--to
lose consciousness--to be helpless for a time--thoughtless--dead? Or,
more awful consideration, in the dreams that may come may I not be weak
of will and scant of conscience?--Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit. I give myself back to thee. Take me, soothe me, refresh me,
'make me over again.' Am I going out into the business and turmoil of
the day, where so many temptations may come to do less honourably, less
faithfully, less kindly, less diligently than the Ideal Man would have
me do?--Father, into thy hands. Am I going to do a good deed? Then, of
all times,--Father, into thy hands; lest the enemy should have me now.
Am I going to do a hard duty, from which I would gladly be turned
aside,--to refuse a friend's request, to urge a neighbour's
conscience?--Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Am I in pain?
Is illness coming upon me to shut out the glad visions of a healthy
brain, and bring me such as are troubled and untrue?--Take my spirit,
Lord, and see, as thou art wont, that it has no more to bear than it
can bear. Am I going to die? Thou knowest, if only from the cry of thy
Son, how terrible that is; and if it comes not to me in so terrible a
shape as that in which it came to him, think how poor to bear I am
beside him. I do not know what the struggle means; for, of the
thousands who pass through it every day, not one enlightens his
neighbour left behind; but shall I not long with agony for one breath
of thy air, and not receive it? shall I not be torn asunder with
dying?--I will question no more: Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit. For it is thy business, not mine. Thou wilt know every shade of
my suffering; thou wilt care for me with thy perfect fatherhood; for
that makes my sonship, and inwraps and infolds it. As a child I could
bear great pain when my father was leaning over me, or had his arm
about me: how much nearer my soul cannot thy hands come!--yea, with a
comfort, father of me, that I have never yet even imagined; for how
shall my imagination overtake thy swift heart? I care not for the pain,
so long as my spirit is strong, and into thy hands I commend that
spirit. If thy love, which is better than life, receive it, then surely
thy tenderness will make it great."

Thus may the Human Being say with himself.

Think, brothers, think, sisters, we walk in the air of an eternal
fatherhood. Every uplifting of the heart is a looking up to The Father.
Graciousness and truth are around, above, beneath us, yea, _in_ us.
When we are least worthy, then, most tempted, hardest, unkindest, let
us yet commend our spirits into his hands. Whither else dare we send
them? How the earthly father would love a child who would creep into
his room with angry, troubled face, and sit down at his feet, saying
when asked what he wanted: "I feel so naughty, papa, and I want to get
good"! Would he say to his child: "How dare you! Go away, and be good,
and then come to me?" And shall we dare to think God would send us away
if we came thus, and would not be pleased that we came, even if we were
angry as Jonah? Would we not let all the tenderness of our nature flow
forth upon such a child? And shall we dare to think that if we being
evil know how to give good gifts to our children, God will not give us
his own spirit when we come to ask him? Will not some heavenly dew
descend cool upon the hot anger? some genial rain-drop on the dry
selfishness? some glance of sunlight on the cloudy hopelessness? Bread,
at least, will be given, and not a stone; water, at least, will be
sure, and not vinegar mingled with gall.

Nor is there anything we can ask for ourselves that we may not ask for
another. We may commend any brother, any sister, to the common
fatherhood. And there will be moments when, filled with that spirit
which is the Lord, nothing will ease our hearts of their love but the
commending of all men, all our brothers, all our sisters, to the one
Father. Nor shall we ever know that repose in the Father's hands, that
rest of the Holy Sepulchre, which the Lord knew when the agony of death
was over, when the storm of the world died away behind his retiring
spirit, and he entered the regions where there is only life, and
therefore all that is not music is silence, (for all noise comes of the
conflict of Life and Death)--we shall never be able, I say, to rest in
the bosom of the Father, till the fatherhood is fully revealed to us in
the love of the brothers. For he cannot be our father save as he is
their father; and if we do not see him and feel him as their father, we
cannot know him as ours. Never shall we know him aright until we
rejoice and exult for our race that he is _the_ Father. He that loveth
not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
seen? To rest, I say, at last, even in those hands into which the Lord
commended his spirit, we must have learned already to love our
neighbour as ourselves.




LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR


_Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself._--ST MATTHEW xxii. 39.

The original here quoted by our Lord is to be found in the words of God
to Moses, (_Leviticus_ xix. 18:) _"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any
grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord"_ Our Lord never thought of being
original. The older the saying the better, if it utters the truth he
wants to utter. In him it becomes fact: The _Word_ was made _flesh_.
And so, in the wondrous meeting of extremes, the words he spoke were no
more words, but spirit and life.

The same words are twice quoted by St Paul, and once by St James,
always in a similar mode: Love they represent as the fulfilling of the
law.

Is the converse true then? Is the fulfilling of the law love? The
apostle Paul says: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore
love is the fulfilling of the law." Does it follow that _working no
ill_ is love? Love will fulfil the law: will the law fulfil love? No,
verily. If a man keeps the law, I know he is a lover of his neighbour.
But he is not a lover because he keeps the law: he keeps the law
because he is a lover. No heart will be content with the law for love.
The law cannot fulfil love.

"But, at least, the law will be able to fulfil itself, though it
reaches not to love."

I do not believe it. I am certain that it is impossible to keep the law
towards one's neighbour except one loves him. The law itself is
infinite, reaching to such delicacies of action, that the man who tries
most will be the man most aware of defeat. We are not made for law, but
for love. Love is law, because it is infinitely more than law. It is of
an altogether higher region than law--is, in fact, the creator of law.
Had it not been for love, not one of the _shall-nots_ of the law would
have been uttered. True, once uttered, they shew themselves in the form
of justice, yea, even in the inferior and worldly forms of prudence and
self-preservation; but it was love that spoke them first. Were there no
love in us, what sense of justice could we have? Would not each be
filled with the sense of his own wants, and be for ever tearing to
himself? I do not say it is _conscious_ love that breeds justice, but I
do say that without love in our nature justice would never be born. For
I do not call that justice which consists only in a sense of _our own_
rights. True, there are poor and withered forms of love which are
immeasurably below justice now; but even now they are of speechless
worth, for they will grow into that which will supersede, because it
will necessitate, justice.

Of what use then is the law? To lead us to Christ, the Truth,--to waken
in our minds a sense of what our deepest nature, the presence, namely,
of God _in_ us, requires of us,--to let us know, in part by failure,
that the purest effort of will of which we are capable cannot lift us
up even to the abstaining from wrong to our neighbour. What man, for
instance, who loves not his neighbour and yet wishes to keep the law,
will dare be confident that never by word, look, tone, gesture,
silence, will he bear false witness against that neighbour? What man
can judge his neighbour aright save him whose love makes him refuse to
judge him? Therefore are we told to love, and not judge. It is the sole
justice of which we are capable, and that perfected will comprise all
justice. Nay more, to refuse our neighbour love, is to do him the
greatest wrong. But of this afterwards. In order to fulfil the
commonest law, I repeat, we must rise into a loftier region altogether,
a region that is above law, because it is spirit and life and makes the
law: in order to keep the law towards our neighbour, we must love our
neighbour. We are not made for law, but for grace--or for faith, to use
another word so much misused. We are made on too large a scale
altogether to have any pure relation to mere justice, if indeed we can
say there is such a thing. It is but an abstract idea which, in
reality, will not be abstracted. The law comes to make us long for the
needful grace,--that is, for the divine condition, in which love is
all, for God is Love.

Though the fulfilling of the law is the practical form love will take,
and the neglect of it is the conviction of lovelessness; though it is
the mode in which a man's _will_ must begin at once to be love to his
neighbour, yet, that our Lord meant by the love of our neighbour; not
the fulfilling of the law towards him, but that condition of being
which results in the fulfilling of the law and more, is sufficiently
clear from his story of the good Samaritan. "Who is my neighbour?" said
the lawyer. And the Lord taught him that every one to whom he could be
or for whom he could do anything was his neighbour, therefore, that
each of the race, as he comes within the touch of one tentacle of our
nature, is our neighbour. Which of the inhibitions of the law is
illustrated in the tale? Not one. The love that is more than law, and
renders its breach impossible, lives in the endless story, coming out
in active kindness, that is, the recognition of kin, of _kind_, of
nighness, of _neighbourhood_; yea, in tenderness and loving-kindness--
the Samaritan-heart akin to the Jew-heart, the Samaritan hands
neighbours to the Jewish wounds.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

So direct and complete is this parable of our Lord, that one becomes
almost ashamed of further talk about it. Suppose a man of the company
had put the same question to our Lord that we have been considering,
had said, "But I may keep the law and yet not love my neighbour," would
he not have returned: "Keep thou the law thus, not in the letter, but
in the spirit, that is, in the truth of action, and thou wilt soon
find, O Jew, that thou lovest thy Samaritan"? And yet, when thoughts
and questions arise in our minds, he desires that we should follow
them. He will not check us with a word of heavenly wisdom scornfully
uttered. He knows that not even his words will apply to every question
of the willing soul; and we know that his spirit will reply. When we
want to know more, that more will be there for us. Not every man, for
instance, finds his neighbour in need of help, and he would gladly
hasten the slow results of opportunity by true thinking. Thus would we
be ready for further teaching from that Spirit who is the Lord.

"But how," says a man, who is willing to recognize the universal
neighbourhead, but finds himself unable to fulfil the bare law towards
the woman even whom he loves best,--"How am I then to rise into that
higher region, that empyrean of love?" And, beginning straightway to
try to love his neighbour, he finds that the empyrean of which he spoke
is no more to be reached in itself than the law was to be reached in
itself. As he cannot keep the law without first rising into the love of
his neighbour, so he cannot love his neighbour without first rising
higher still. The whole system of the universe works upon this law--the
driving of things upward towards the centre. The man who will love his
neighbour can do so by no immediately operative exercise of the will.
It is the man fulfilled of God from whom he came and by whom he is, who
alone can as himself love his neighbour who came from God too and is by
God too. The mystery of individuality and consequent relation is deep
as the beginnings of humanity, and the questions thence arising can be
solved only by him who has, practically, at least, solved the holy
necessities resulting from his origin. In God alone can man meet man.
In him alone the converging lines of existence touch and cross not.
When the mind of Christ, the life of the Head, courses through that
atom which the man is of the slowly revivifying body, when he is alive
too, then the love of the brothers is there as conscious life. From
Christ through the neighbours comes the life that makes him a part of
the body.

It _is_ possible to love our neighbour as ourselves. Our Lord _never_
spoke hyperbolically, although, indeed, that is the supposition on
which many unconsciously interpret his words, in order to be able to
persuade themselves that they believe them. We may see that it is
possible before we attain to it; for our perceptions of truth are
always in advance of our condition. True, no man can see it perfectly
until he is it; but we must see it, that we may be it. A man who knows
that he does not yet love his neighbour as himself may believe in such
a condition, may even see that there is no other goal of human
perfection, nothing else to which the universe is speeding, propelled
by the Father's will. Let him labour on, and not faint at the thought
that God's day is a thousand years: his millennium is likewise one
day--yea, this day, for we have him, The Love, in us, working even now
the far end.

But while it is true that only when a man loves God with all his heart,
will he love his neighbour as himself, yet there are mingled processes
in the attainment of this final result. Let us try to aid such
operation of truth by looking farther. Let us suppose that the man who
believes our Lord both meant what he said, and knew the truth of the
matter, proceeds to endeavour obedience in this of loving his neighbour
as himself. He begins to think about his neighbours generally, and he
tries to feel love towards them. He finds at once that they begin to
classify themselves. With some he feels no difficulty, for he loves
them already, not indeed because they _are_, but because they have, by
friendly qualities, by showing themselves lovable, that is loving,
already, moved his feelings as the wind moves the waters, that is
without any self-generated action on his part. And he feels that this
is nothing much to the point; though, of course, he would be farther
from the desired end if he had none such to love, and farther still if
he loved none such. He recalls the words of our Lord, "If ye love them
which love you, what reward have ye?" and his mind fixes upon--let us
say--one of a second class, and he tries to love him. The man is no
enemy--we have not come to that class of neighbours yet--but he is
dull, uninteresting--in a negative way, he thinks, unlovable. What is
he to do with him? With all his effort, he finds the goal as far off as
ever.

Naturally, in his failure, the question arises, "Is it my duty to love
him who is unlovable?"

Certainly not, if he is unlovable. But that is a begging of the
question.

Thereupon the man falls back on the primary foundation of things, and
asks--

"How, then, is the man to be loved by me? Why should I love my
neighbour as myself?"

We must not answer "Because the Lord says so." It is because the Lord
says so that the man is inquiring after some help to obey. No man can
love his neighbour merely because the Lord says so. The Lord says so
because it is right and necessary and natural, and the man wants to
feel it thus right and necessary and natural. Although the Lord would
be pleased with any man for doing a thing because he said it, he would
show his pleasure by making the man more and more dissatisfied until he
knew why the Lord had said it. He would make him see that he could not
in the deepest sense--in the way the Lord loves--obey any command until
he saw the reasonableness of it. Observe I do not say the man ought to
put off obeying the command until he see its reasonableness: that is
another thing quite, and does not lie in the scope of my present
supposition. It is a beautiful thing to obey the rightful source of a
command: it is a more beautiful thing to worship the radiant source of
our light, and it is for the sake of obedient vision that our Lord
commands us. For then our heart meets his: we see God.

Let me represent in the form of a conversation what might pass in the
man's mind on the opposing sides of the question.--"Why should I love
my neighbour?"

"He is the same as I, and therefore I ought to love him."

"Why? I am I. He is he."

"He has the same thoughts, feelings, hopes, sorrows, joys, as I."

"Yes; but why should I love him for that? He must mind his, I can only
do with mine."

"He has the same consciousness as I have. As things look to me, so
things look to him."

"Yes; but I cannot get into his consciousness, nor he into mine. I feel
myself, I do not feel him. My life flows through my veins, not through
his. The world shines into my consciousness, and I am not conscious of
his consciousness. I wish I could love him, but I do not see why. I am
an individual; he is an individual. My self must be closer to me than
he can be. Two bodies keep me apart from his self. I am isolated with
myself."

Now, here lies the mistake at last. While the thinker supposes a
duality in himself which does not exist, he falsely judges the
individuality a separation. On the contrary, it is the sole possibility
and very bond of love. _Otherness_ is the essential ground of
affection. But in spiritual things, such a unity is pre-supposed in the
very contemplation of them by the spirit of man, that wherever anything
does not exist that ought to be there, the space it ought to occupy,
even if but a blank, assumes the appearance of a separating gulf. The
negative looks a positive. Where a man does not love, the not-loving
must seem rational. For no one loves because he sees why, but because
he loves. No human reason can he given for the highest necessity of
divinely created existence. For reasons are always from above
downwards. A man must just feel this necessity, and then questioning is
over. It justifies itself. But he who has not felt has it not to argue
about. He has but its phantom, which he created himself in a vain
effort to understand, and which he supposes to be it. Love cannot be
argued about in its absence, for there is no reflex, no symbol of it
near enough to the fact of it, to admit of just treatment by the
algebra of the reason or imagination. Indeed, the very talking about it
raises a mist between the mind and the vision of it. But let a man once
love, and all those difficulties which appeared opposed to love, will
just be so many arguments for loving.

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