is love in society, love in relation to etiquette. “Love does not behave itself unseemly.” Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society and if they have a reservoir of love in their hearts they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Carlyle said of Robert Bums that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the plowman-poet. It was because he loved everything — the mouse and the daisy and all the things, great and small, that God had made. S©with this simple passport he could mingle with any society and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word “ gentleman.” It means a gentle man — a man who does things gently, with love. That is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The un gentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything else. “Love doth not behave itself unseemly.” Unselfishness. “ Love seeketh no t he r own.” Observe: seeketh not even that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does not summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would have us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal element altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give up our rights. They are often eternal. The difficult thing is to give up ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then to give them up. But not to seek them, to look every man not on his own things but on the things of others — that is the difficulty. “ Seekest thou great things for thyself?” said the prophet; “ seek them not.” Why? Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mis take. Only a great purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all than having sought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to love and nothing is hard. I believe that Christ’s “ yoke” is easy. Christ’s yoke is just His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any other. I believe it is a happier wav than any other. The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is no happiness in having or in getting anything, but only in giving. Half the world is on the wrong scent in pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting and in being served by others. It corisists in giving and in serving others. “ He that
would be great among you,” said Christ, “ let him serve.” He that would be happy, let him remember that there is but one way -—•“ It is more blessed, it is more happy, to give than to receive.” Good, temper. The next ingredient is a very re markable one: “ love is not provoked.” Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account in esti mating a man’s character. Yet, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature. The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but perfect and women who would be entirely perfect but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered or “ touchy” disposition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is, there are two great classes of sins — sins of the body and sins of the disposition. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its brand falls without a challenge upon the Prodigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another’s sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be less venal than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is love a sin against love may seem a hundred times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to unchristianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devas tating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom of childhood, in short, for sheer g r a t u i t ou s misery-producing power this influence stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother — moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful — let him get all credit for his virtues —look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his own father’s door. “He was angry,” we read, “ and would not go in.” Look at the effect upon the father, upon the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect upon the Prodigal — and how many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom of God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside. Analyze, as a study in temper, the thundercloud itself as it gathers upon the Elder Brother’s brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness - thqse are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul. In varying proportions also these are the ingre dients of all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the dis position are not worse to live in and for others to live with than the sins of the body. Did Christ indeed not answer the question Himself when He said, “ I say unto you that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you” ? There is really* no place in heaven for a disposition like this. A man
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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