11- The Primary Bonds of Human Life
XI. THE PRIMARY BONDS OF HUMAN LIFE.
Eph 6:7. “As to the Lord, and not to men.”
HUMAN Society, as we see it wherever it can be said to exist, is made up of certain primary relations. These relations are represented to us most simply by the correlative terms, husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant. The relations thus denoted may be variously modified in different countries and in different ages, as regards the reciprocal claims and duties implied in them; but the fact of their subsisting as they do so tenaciously under various modifications, only shews more impressively their permanent and universal character. Look at early stages of society, and you see in primitive forms the ties of husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants. Look at society as it is now in civilized countries, after undergoing gradual developments which have made it more complex, and you find these relations still holding their place of importance. The most vital questions for us in these days are still apt to attach themselves to the mutual claims of husband and wife, of parent and child, of master and servant.
Now when we consider these relations with the instinctive desire to explain them, asking their why and wherefore, and trying whether they can be brought together under some common principle, we have a choice of three different methods of interpretation, which I will call the utilitarian, the historical, and the Christian. The two former are comparatively modern, the last is set forth in the New Testament.
I. According to the first, the one true object of action for men is happiness. All men desire pleasure; and the one universal rational rule is that life should be so arranged, and that men should so act^as to secure the greatest amount of general happiness. The reason why man and woman come together is that they may be the happier; the reason why any pair is marked off from other pairs is that all the pairs may be the happier. The justification of a life-long marriage tie is in its tendency to promote happiness. If there were reason to believe that human society would on the whole be made the happier by an easily dissoluble bond, that would make it not only allowable but a duty to introduce divorce at discretion.
Similarly, it is found to conduce to happiness that parents should protect and rear their young children, and that the children whilst young should be under the control of their parents, and after a certain time should become independent. Again, the relation of master and servant is to be explained as promoting under certain circumstances the general happiness. It may be the better, it often has been the better, for the ruled as well as the ruler that subordination should be established. But this relation ought to be sharply looked into and watched; for as soon as ever and in whatever degree it ceases to be for the benefit of the subordinate as well as for that of the ruler, it ought to be brought to an end or modified. This explanation of human life and morality, as I need not tell you, has charmed and satisfied many minds by its simplicity and comprehensiveness and rationality.
2. But the great tendency of recent speculation has been towards the historical method of inquiry, which has been so strikingly fruitful in many departments of knowledge. Men look to see how things have come to pass, and they perceive everywhere the indisputable signs of natural growth. All things were once rudimentary, and through various strivings and pushings they have come to be as developed and complex as they are now. There is an extreme interest in thus discovering the mode of growth, and inquirers are apt to be absorbed by it, and to be impatient of theories for explaining any thing that exists, other than the actual historical causes of which they can trace the working. Human society as it is now, in families and communities, is according to this view nothing more than the result of the struggle for existence. This and that arrangement are found to be necessary, chiefly as protecting against dangers by which life has always been beset.
Each custom which has prevailed in any race and in any age is traced to some want or difficulty or peril which it has helped men to meet. The most familiar examples of this law are in the physical world. It has been shewn very wonderfully, how the forms and clothing of animals have been gradually rendered, through what has been called the principle of the “survival of the fittest,” such as would best enable them to thrive in the particular circumstances in which they are found existing. But the manners and customs and laws of human society may also to a considerable extent be similarly explained. There has been no fixed rule, for example, about marriage in primitive communities. Customs of marriage have been found to be very much those which helped particular bodies of men to survive or to be strong. Many singular customs relating to marriage or other human institutions have been accounted for as being relics, preserved by the force of habit, of arrangements which were needed in a former stage but the reason for which has died out. This historical explanation of social institutions is very interesting, and in great part novel.
It cannot be denied that there is much truth in it. But it is defective in suggesting no principles of morality. So far indeed as it suggests anything at all as to the regulation of action, it seems to sanction the principle of selfishness. If society has been moulded into its present form by the struggle for existence, we may be supposed to fulfil the law of our destiny by continuing to struggle. On the other hand, it might certainly be urged that through self-defence and self-aggrandisement men have been led into the firm establishment of those relations by which peace and mutual help are inevitably fostered.
3. We do not find the utilitarian theory, or the historical method of accounting for things, in the Bible. The doctrine of the Bible is that human society is ordered by statutes of God. It is the Divine Lawgiver who joins pairs together, who sets men in families and in communities, who authorizes some to rule, and bids others to obey. This doctrine is certainly not identical with the principle that society arranges itself with a view to happiness, or with the principle that the forms of society are due to the struggle for existence. And when the ordinances of God are so described that they can only be regarded as artificial, and cannot be understood as working through the order of Nature, the Bible doctrine of the regulation of all things by the will of God may be made to contradict and exclude the two other theories. But this is not necessary. It is quite open to us to believe that the commandments of God are to be discerned in what looks purely natural. But unquestionably the Bible teaches us to connect these permanent institutions of human society most closely with the mind and the working of God. The devout worshipper of God cannot think of the world as going on without him. To the Christian, the laws of the universe are always and necessarily, in whatever way they may manifest themselves, with whatever matter they may deal, the laws of God.
It is our God “who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth, and maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains, and herb for the use of men.” “Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it; and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?” Yes, the laws of nature are firm and unchanging, because they are the laws of the Eternal God. Does the earth nevertheless change and advance? That is because the “Father is working hitherto;” because “the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding.” It is our privilege to see the mind of God in all fixed law, the working of God in all advance towards perfection. But man’s nature is nearer to God’s than that of the hills and the clouds, than that of the beasts and the feathered fowls. Our spiritual endowments join us in closer affinity to the Divine Spirit. The qualities and the relations which belong to the perfection of our race, so we have been taught to believe, grow out of the Divine nature, and rest upon the Divine power and will. This therefore is our faith about those primary and enduring institutions of human society, the relations of husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant, that the everlasting God ordained them, that the Divine life is in them. We need not be expected to deny that these ordinances promote human happiness: how could it fail to be so, when they are the ordinances of our Father? Nor need we deny whatever the researches of inquirers may appear to tell us, as to the gradual growth, under natural influences, of the more perfected forms of these relations. We shall conclude that God intended human society to grow as we may learn that it has grown. The two facts, that the essential forms of social life promote happiness, and that they have passed through stages of natural growth, will be in harmony with, but secondary to, the greater fact that they are the expression of the Divine will.
It is to St Paul that we owe the most striking tJteological interpretations of marriage, family bonds, and subordination.
He has taught us to see in the union of the wedded pair an image of the union between Christ and the Church. This idea did not however originate with St Paul. It was an old Jewish idea. In the prophets the Lord is spoken of as a husband to whom the daughter of Zion, the Jewish people, is married. And amongst the Jewish imagery of the Apocalypse we read of the marriage supper of the Lamb, and of his bride arrayed in fine linen, white and clean, which is the righteousness of the Saints. But St Paul, dwelling with his devout insight upon this poetical language, and putting together the two facts, of the common union between man and wife and the union between God and humanity, which have been seen by th3 prophet’s eye to resemble each other, perceives that the analogy cannot be a mere fanciful one. The God who takes humanity to be his bride is the creator of the union between man and wife. When we look upon a married pair, we see a piece of the handwriting of God. We may learn by means of this to know something of the union between Christ and the Church; and then, having ascended to this idea, we may bring it down again to consecrate and explain and define the bond which unites the woman to the man.
You know that polygamy has not only been extensively practised amongst many races, but that it prevailed amongst the Jews of the Old Testament time, and has so far the Old Testament sanction. But when St Paul had built up the law and duty of married life upon the mysterious union between Christ and the Church, it was thereby sufficiently enacted that in the Christian society the one husband should have the one wife. The marriage which was the most accurate type of the Divine mystery would be held in most honour by Christians. And the form of marriage thus commended to us is that which the experience of ages has found to be altogether best. The union of the one husband with the one wife, not to be broken so long as they both shall live, is that which ministers to the noblest kind of family life, which fosters the most spiritual affections, and which we therefore believe to be ordained by the Divine will for all to whom it has been revealed. As the coming of Christ was a kind of celebration of a new marriage between God and humanity, so it was by the revealing of the Son of God that fatherhood and sonship amongst men were made newly and powerfully illustrative of fatherhood and sonship in God. It is St Paul again who tells us that the Fatherhood of God is the origin and ground of all fatherhood whatsoever. The common relation of parents and children has become the living type of the most wonderful mystery in the nature of God. By observing what parents and children are to one another, we are helped towards some conception of what the Father is to Christ, and Christ to the Father; and when we have learnt in some poor degree what the love is between the Father and the Son, we bring back the idea of that love to exalt and to explain the common earthly relation. For the Christian, the bond between parents and children is one chief revelation by which God instructs men about himself.
Once more: we are taught to look upon the relation of master and servant as a Divine ordinance. “ The powers that be,” says St Paul, “ are ordained of God.” The vulgar notion of rule and service, that those are lucky who can command the services of others, and that subjection is a misfortune to be got rid of or made the best of, is not that of Christian morality. We have been taught to see all the creation obeying the Maker in a wonderful order. The ordinance of rule and service amongst men is both a part and an illustration of that subordination. The ruler, in the eye of the Christian, rules not for his own pleasure but for the good of those whom he rules and for the glory of God. His authority is a burden, his government a ministry. It is the glory of those placed in higher positions, not to refuse to rule, but to serve by ruling. The best ruler is he who is most conscious of being a servant; who knows that he, as well as those whom he directs, has a master in heaven.
Now let me ask you to think, dear brethren, how the common life which we live is affected by this Christian interpretation of it. You see that it is made genuinely sacramental. The universal ordinances of social life exist in part for the shewing forth of mysteries. When we see the visible things, we may look through them to the invisible. The married pair may speak to us of Christ and the Church. The family may make us think of the gracious Fatherhood of God, of the submissive sonship of Christ. The voice of command and the act of obedience may remind us of the orderly subjection of all created things and persons to the one Lord. How wonderfully is our common life thus exalted, dignified, consecrated! God is in it all!
We are moving in a world, nay we are parts of a world, through which God is always manifesting himself, in which God is always putting forth his energy! Our own life, instead of being a limited vulgar thing made by ourselves, is in the closest contact with Divine mysteries, with the Divine infinity! Our feeling therefore ought to be one of reverence for our mutual obligations and affections, for ourselves and our doings! And this mystical mode of regarding life, instead of being dreamy and unwholesome, has an immediate and most salutary bearing on practical morality. In order that we may do our duty faithfully, we greatly need, not only a persuasion that certain rules are for the best, but a constraining sense of obligation, a deep feeling of reverence. And it was with this that St Paul reinforced the accepted teaching of morality. Others could say, Let the husband treat his wife with the love of the stronger, and let the wife pay back to her husband the love of the weaker. Or they could say, Let parents bring up their children kindly and wisely, and let children obey and honour their parents. Or, Let masters be just and considerate, and let servants be loyal and honest. But then we know what terrible difficulties hinder us in the discharge of our duties, how much irritation is apt to be engendered between those who are thrown most closely together, how men are plagued by arrogance, obstinacy, jealousy, indolence, perverse or passionate desire. Against such influences, with the ready sophistry of excuses which they command, maxims based upon calculations about the general happiness are apt to prove weak. The Christian teacher says, Remember the Lord your God. You have to do with the Father, with Christ, with the Holy Spirit. The secrets of the heart are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Remember that God has brought you, man and wife, together. You were indeed mutually attracted, but this was a part of God’s instrumentality for making you man and wife. And this relation into which you have been brought is, depend upon it, a very solemn one. It is not one of pleasure only; it is one of blessed heavenly discipline. Don’t imagine you are free to do as you please. Your faithfulness is due not only to each other but to the Lord. You who are parents, be sure that it is God who has given you your children. You are to bring them up for him.
They are not to be your playthings, or objects for your pride to feed on; they are God’s children as well as yours. It will be no trifling matter for you, if you by neglect or selfishness manage to alienate them from God. Children, respect the parents whom God has set over you. He is your heavenly Father, they are parents through whom he teaches you what his fatherhood is. See in them not only such earthly creatures as they may happen to be, but representatives and ministers of God. Masters, bear in mind that you are God’s commissioners, appointed to see that some of his work is done. Beware of selfish arrogance. Expel it by the remembrance of your Master in Heaven.
Servants, the just commands which come to you are not the wilfulness of one whose better fortune you may envy and resent, but the commands of the heavenly Master who makes the universal order. Obey, not only for the sake of the earthly superior under whom you are placed, or in proportion to his worthiness, but with the devout and loyal submission of the heart to God.
Brethren, when you hear this Christian enforcement of your common duties, let not fear alone enter into your hearts, though you may well revere with trembling. Surely in these views of life there is light and hope also. We have the privilege of looking up to the Source of health and strength. Our affections may be refined, purified, made heavenly. Our prospects are not buried in the grave. If we let Christ unite us according to his law to those around us, we may know Christ the better through them, we may know and love them the better through Christ.