Colossians 2:2

United Love

Col 2:2

This ought to be a commonplace; the merest truism in Christian speech. The announcement of such a text should awaken no attention, or excite no curiosity or special interest, because the words themselves are trite. To be human is to love; to be men is to be knit together; to be alive is to be in brotherhood. So we should say, if we had no experience to go by: but all experience, alas, contradicts our theory, and instead of having a commonplace to deal with we are face to face with a miracle. That miracle will appear to be the greater and the more suggestive, if we think once more of what ought to be a mere commonplace in human history. When man meets man he must hail his brother; two men cannot pass one another on a journey without recognition; to be sick is to evoke the help of the whole neighbourhood; to be in distress is enough to bring to our aid all who hear of it. So it would seem, for we are men educated, cultured, refined men. The priest will never pass a wounded man, nor will a Levite; they will say, seeing a wounded brother, All church systems must stand still until this man is once more upon his legs; there shall be no bell-ringing, or cup-washing, or ceremonial observance, until this man's wounds are healed, until this dying man can join the holy worship. This would be philanthropy, love of man, beautiful benevolence, most tender and helpful sympathy, and the world will be full of it as it is full of sunshine in summer midday. We cannot deny the testimony of experience upon these matters. When you were sick, and in prison, and naked, and an hungered, and athirst, who cared for you? Is not the world a great, cruel world? Has it time to cast but a brief and furtive glance at suffering men, and then to roll on in its cumbrous chariot to keep the feast-time or to enjoy the harvest of pelf? Why should Paul be in conflict about distressed hearts? Why should he desire that they should be "knit together in love"? The thing will come naturally. Where does it come naturally? The ground will grow wheat here, and fruit trees yonder, and rich meadows in a third locality, and every spot of earth will have its own flower-bed: let things alone. Where do these miracles occur? It would be as difficult to find them in Nature as it is to find them in human society. Behind all true appearances that is, appearances expressive of reality you must find cultured character, sanctified disposition, divinely inspired and controlled instinct and feeling.

This being knit together in love is not only a miracle, it is Christ's miracle. It is not a conjuror's trick; it is the miracle of God. Surprising, indeed, that we should require the interposition of Omnipotence to bring us together in love, in all its union and trustfulness, in all its sympathy and helpfulness. In reality, man hates man; in reality, there is no beast in the jungle so cruel-hearted as man: his cruelty is practised, not to satisfy an instinct that in itself is good, but an instinct that in itself is bad; it is not the necessary cruelty which must sometimes be perpetrated on savage beasts, but a calculated cruelty, set out upon an arithmetical basis, arranged by a calculus adapted to the anticipation of events and the possibility of bearing burdens; a mean analysis of life, and fact, and possibility; quite a triumph of selfish genius. When we hear of man loving man, where are the facts, apart from the Christian religion? Let us go to some sunny land where man loves man, and study the amazing miracle. It will not be enough to show us a flag, red as blood, fringed with silver, and on it written, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"; we are not flag-hunting, we are in quest of the land where man loves man, and in a land where Christ was never heard of. It is the Christian contention that philanthropy is the practical philosophy of Christian doctrine. That is the plain, frank, generous issue. Until we love God we cannot love man in any profound and all-enduring sense: the whole prophecy of revelation, and the whole meaning of God, you will find in the two commandments Love God and love thy neighbour.

There are many kinds of union, many circumstances under which men are knit together, without being knit together in love. Were we to omit the condition under which our hearts are to be knit together, we should omit the whole text. Men may be knit together involuntarily; circumstances may have brought them together for the accomplishment of a given purpose; they may have no liking for one another in any other relation, but they are necessary to each other in the carrying out of a certain conclusion. There is a being knit together in selfishness: we get more by being knit together than we could get in solitude: co-operation is profitable; union is an investment. Then there are unions that are but temporary; they are political, they are mechanical, they are constructed in order that a certain issue may be the more quickly brought about. In this case we have association rather than union. For proximity is not union, of necessity. There is no union in things that are brought together and are held together by some outside force. True union amounts to almost identity, to subtle, sympathetic, complete amalgamation. This union is to be a union of love. What other union is possible in the Church? There is a quasi-union possible, which is founded upon opinion. Upon opinion no lasting, vital, sacrificial union can ever be founded. Opinion ought, in a very large sense, to be independent, the outworking of individual thinking; it should indicate the personal accent of individual character. Who is the man that wishes that his opinion should rule the whole world, and be accepted in the verbal form in which he states it? That truth can be stated in ten thousand ways is a tribute to truth itself, as well as to the fertility of the human mind. To write an opinion and demand subscription to it, what is that but stark popery without the name? We must not believe in authority unless we believe in it altogether. And besides, in whose authority are we to believe? Where is the man with the tiara on his head, which God set there in token of infallibility? Is the human mind intended to run in one mould and to express one set of convictions and opinions and thoughts? May there not be unity in diversity? May not one man see an aspect of the truth peculiar to himself, and other men see aspects of the truth equally vividly? And may not all the aspects be required to make up the sum total of truth? If we found our union upon opinion we shall have continual controversy of an angry kind, not the useful attrition of mind upon mind which expresses its utility in sparks and flashes of light; we shall have hostility, antagonism, opposing creeds and beliefs, and shall consider him the wise man who can talk most eloquently and obstinately in defence of his peculiar shibboleth. There is a kind of union, also, founded upon custom. That union is of no value. It is the union of meeting together under the same roof occasionally, and of passing through the same forms of worship and ceremony, as if unanimously; a union which comes of having been in the habit of going to this place or to that, and obeying certain behests, and passing through a definite ritual. That is not the union for which Paul prayed: there is no vitality in it; it may be association, proximity, a coming together for an occasion and a purpose, but real brotherhood there is none in such mechanical relationship.

Where, then, is unity possible? Only in love. What can love do? It can bear the greatest strain. Love never gives way. Men can be very hot about their opinions, extremely pedantic, and can claim very much in the name of infallibility without a distinct avowal of Papacy; but only love can stand all weathers, go through all the seasons blithely and hopefully, find flowers in the deserts, and pools among the rocks. Take away love from the Church, and you destroy the Church. Paul says love "beareth all things... endureth all things" beareth all things in the sense of a roof bearing the storm, that those who are under it may not be drenched with its waters; not bearing in the sense of enduring, for that comes in afterwards, but bearing in the sense of outputting; an outkeeping, precisely as the roof bears the tempest: so love bears all the brunt and storm and rattle and shock of things, and those who dwell under it dwell under the roof of a sanctuary, and enjoy an inviolable security and brotherhood. Love is not indiscriminate; love is critical, dainty, electric. Every heart has its own affinities. They are wise who follow those affinities without disparaging or discrediting other fellowships. Around some teachers we can gather as we could not gather around others. That is no reason for being angry or hostile towards those whose teaching we cannot receive. Some teachers seem to know us, to search us with a kind hand, to hold the light just where we dread it most, and yet we bless them for their fearlessness, for we say, The man could not be so critical if he did not mean in his degree to be equally redemptive; he searches and tries that afterwards he may make up, and heal, and bless, and crown. Love cannot make friends of every one in an equal degree. There is a law of affinity, both spiritual, and, in a more modified sense, social and physical. We know those whom we love at once. We do not require to know them long years, and bethink ourselves whether we shall at the end of a probationary period feel inclined to unite with them; we know the grip of the hand, the look of the eye, the tone of the voice, the whole character at once, and we say with the discernment of spirit which belongs to the genius of love, Accept our fellowship, and give us yours.

What is it, then, that we love in one another? As Christians, it is the Christ within one another that we love. We see him in various lights and aspects as we study one another. Christ does not reveal himself in the same way through every one of his children; he accepts the instrument and makes the most and best of it. Some seem to give but a very imperfect revelation of the Son of God; but they would give an imperfect revelation of anything else or any one else, for they give a very imperfect revelation of human nature itself. We cannot account for them; how they came to be born we do not know; as a matter of fact, there they are, and they have to be dealt with as entities and factors in human life. When we look upon them and wonder why they represent Christianity, we do injustice to Christianity itself if we do not go farther; we should say, If these men are so ungainly and uninviting with Christianity, what would they have been without it? If we could compare the two personalities, the non-Christian and the Christian, we should see that a miracle has been wrought in bringing up these very men, even to the point of attainment at which we find them, and which we regard with so positive a discontentment. So with the nations of the world. Christ will reveal himself according to national characteristic, temperament, culture, and opportunity. When the African is converted, his Christianity will not be like the Christianity of the long-cultured Hindoo, the man who represents ages of civilisation: in one case you may have frankness, mere surface, the kind of Christianity that can express itself in words of one syllable, and in sentences of the shortest and curtest kind; in the other, there may be mystery, subtle eloquence, faraway thinking, great intellectual compass, and that kind of hesitancy which comes not from doubt, but from seeing so much that it is impossible to condense it into brief and epigrammatic periods. Thus we must learn that Christianity accepts the mould of the individual through whose character it expresses itself; for the value is not in the mere method, or in the figure which that mould impresses, but in the fact that it is Christianity that is represented, how imperfectly soever.

"Knit together in love." Then they will never believe evil of one another; they will never take any outside report about one another: they will dwell with themselves, they will live the life of brotherhood; the world will have no right to pronounce any opinion upon any one of them. The merely worldly man, whose vision is bounded by the horizon and whose objects are served by the earth under his feet, will never be allowed to express an opinion about any Christian man: his criticism would be worthless; he would begin at the wrong point, look at the wrong things, attach a false estimate to everything which he attempted to appraise, and all his judgment would be smiled at as would be the judgment of a blind man who wrote a report about a picture-gallery: the man is not in the masonry, or music, or fraternity, or fellowship; he does not understand its passwords, tokens, signs, pledges, badges; he pronounces upon that which he understands not. "Knit together in love." Who can estimate the strength of the binding force? What has love not done? If we loved one another we should see the virtues rather than the vices, the excellences rather than the defects and infirmities. Take a mother's estimate of her worst child. She will allow that society has some right to criticise him, but if they knew him as she knows him they would be less severe in their judgment than they are. She may not be critically right, but she is redeemingly and sympathetically and divinely right; and she has a right to take that ground, because she can see farther into the case than any outsider can possibly do. Receive the interpretations of love gratefully. There is plenty of criticism in the world, pedantic, selfish, hostile, bitter, clamorous criticism. There is nothing so easy as to find fault; the veriest fool may take high prizes in that art. Some men, unfortunately, are cursed with a disposition which makes everything as sour as itself. It is most unfortunate; it is, indeed, unspeakably calamitous; still, we must show the strength of our love by even encouraging such to strive against themselves, if haply by the united force of the triune God even they may be saved in the end.

Christianity is nothing without love, and love is not a mere sentiment. We cannot sing it all and be done with it. Love sits up all night; love never accounts that anything has been given so long as anything has been withheld; love is inventive in sacrifice; it can always see another cross on which it may die in order that some poor sinner may live. It is recorded of a Catholic saint, of long life, and multifold and patient endurance, that he was visited by his Lord, the Son of God, whose countenance was marred more than any man's; and the Lord asked him what he would that should be done to him for his honour and comfort. The aged, all-enduring saint, seeing the image of his Lord and observing what suffering could do, replied with ineffable sweetness, "Lord, that I might suffer most!" What can make a face like suffering? What can make a man like sanctified endurance? What can enrich and ennoble a life like sorrow accepted in the right spirit? It takes out every trace of the old Adam, it brings upon the human face the very lustre of God

"Knit together in love." We must remember that love is to be cultured, developed, strengthened. Love does not come once for all as a mere sentiment or passion and say, I have come, and there will be no more of me: I will abide here just as you see me now. That is not the way the flowers come; the flowers say to the botanist and the gardener, You can make anything of us you like; you can bring us together, and we shall produce new colours and new forms; you can so treat us that we shall be miracles of beauty: do not disdain us, or allow us to live solitary lives, but study our characteristics and our botanical features, and we will answer all your tender care. So it is with Christ's sweet love: now it is a missionary asking for the widest sea and the stormiest water, that he may cross the deep to blow his silver trumpet in the hearing of those who have never heard it; and now it is a veiled angel, going stealthily about in the night time, knocking at doors, climbing creaky stairs up to the sick-chamber, where affliction and poverty are beating out their pulses in unknown distress; now it is a heroic enthusiasm of preaching, so that the whole land vibrates under the music of new voices and the resonance of new appeals; now it is domestic, going quietly about the business of the week so silently, unobservedly, unostentatiously, beneficently, doing a thousand little things of which nobody takes heed or puts down to the credit of love; still, they are all done, and the doing of them helps the floral beauty of the world. Wherever we find this love, we cannot be mistaken for a moment about its origin and its quality. Who can mistake fire? Who can be cheated by a painted ceiling to believe it is God's own sky, unrolled by his hand and studded with stars by his finger? Who can mistake the summer for aught but a Divine creation? It is even so with this Christian love: there is a reach about it, a subtlety, a mystery, a majesty, above all things a self-sacrificing passion in it and about it, which establish its identity beyond all dispute. Where there is a heart possessed by anything but love, let that heart pray mightily all the day, all the night, that the demon may be killed: and not killed only, but twice killed; and not twice killed only, but buried, not in earth, but in its native hell.

Dreadful is the life that is unblessed with love a cold, mean, poor life; its bread is unsanctified, its very prosperity is but the higher aspect of failure, and all its ambition is an irreligious prayer addressed to an irreligious god. Rich is the life that is full of love: it shall never want; its sufferings shall be a new form of joy; it will bless the little and the great; it will be welcomed as light is welcomed after a long night of darkness; it will never be discontented, critical, in any foolish or invidious sense; it will see the very beginning of the day, and no sooner will the opal appear in the east than it will begin to declare that the day has come; and even when it looks upon the grey, sullen, murky fog, it will say, This is but an underclothing of the earth; the sun is just as bright as ever he was, and the heaven as blue as at midsummer, and as for all these under-phenomena they are but for a moment, they will pass away, and we shall forget them and never wish to recall them. Herein is the strength of the Church. Love will sustain every burden, see a way through every difficulty, have a happy answer to every enigma, and will hold out a helpful hand to every case of necessity. Say we are knit together in opinion, and growing minds will arise amongst us and alter the whole relation in which we stand; say we are united in custom, and some great revival may occur which will throw the mechanical customs of the Church into desuetude; but say we are knit together in love, and we say in other words that we are knit together for time, and for eternity; for earth, for heaven: for love is the universal language, and love, like its Author, can never die.