02-Peace Amongst Men
II. PEACE AMONGST MEN.
Col 3:15. “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body.”
IT is particularly required of Christians, as every one knows, that they should be at peace amongst themselves, and that they should endeavour, so far as lies in them, to live peaceably with all men. The common conscience of Christendom bears witness that this is a Christian duty; and those who do not profess to be Christians themselves, will often reproach professing Christians with their wars and schisms and private quarrels, as proving their reckless inconsistency. “How hollow and false modern Christianity must be,” they say, “when it cannot even constrain Christian men and nations to be at peace!”
There is, we must admit, much that is hollow and false in our Christianity, and we ought to be thankful to any one who will make us aware and ashamed of it. Taunts like these are not, however, aimed in general with any discrimination. What they may most usefully do for us, is to awaken us to the consideration of our own principles. We shall best learn where we as Christians are wrong, by asking ourselves what it is to which we are called. Undoubtedly we ought to be at peace.
Why then ought we? What is the foundation upon which external peace should be built up? To what kind of peace are we called? When peace is mentioned in the New Testament, it is not always easy to determine whether peace with God is meant, or peace amongst men. In any such uncertainty, it can hardly be wrong to meet the difficulty by saying that both are meant. For it was a deeply rooted feeling in the minds of the Apostles, as it was the doctrine of their Master, that God, in reconciling men to himself, at the same time and by the same act reconciled them to one another. St Paul, for example, having in his eye the two divided and hostile sections of the world with which he was concerned, the Jewish and the Gentile, rejoiced to declare that God had reconciled both to himself in Jesus Christ, so making peace. If the Jews were drawn to the Father in Christ, and if the Gentiles were also drawn to the Father in Christ, they were of course drawn together. They were like two separated bars of iron attracted by the same magnet. If, instead of thinking of sections of the world, you think of two individual men, that had been enemies, both at the same time reconciled to God, you will feel that it is impossible they should remain enemies. It is not indeed a matter of course that two persons should become hearty friends by being attracted to the same person. You may remember that even amongst the loyal and affectionate followers of the Lord Jesus there were jealousies occasioned by the desire to receive distinguishing marks of his favour. But that was when Jesus was “known after the flesh,” before he had gone up to his Father’s right hand. Consider, brethren: he who is at peace with God has thankfully received the pardon of his sins, of the sins which alienated him from God, and caused him to be troubled by the thought of God.
He has repented of his sins; but what are they?
All things that offend the just and gracious Father.
Amongst the chief of them are all the dispositions which set man against man. Can he who hates his brother be on happy terms with the just and forgiving Father? It is in the nature of things impossible. Every Cain must feel his countenance fall when he brings an offering to the Lord; he drives himself out from the presence of the Lord, and must be hid from his face. It is only when God is not truly known that the man who harbours ill-will in his heart can come to the Being whom he mistakenly worships as God with prayers and offerings. He who has found in Jesus Christ the way to the Father has been made ashamed of jealousy and resentment. The Spirit of sonship is the Spirit of the family, the Spirit of brotherhood. The true Christian is moved to this kind of appeal to God, “ O our Father in heaven, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.” When we ask ourselves therefore why it is that Christians are bound in some eminent and peculiar degree to be lovers and makers of peace, let us answer that it is because God whose Gospel we have received has called us to peace, to a peace that is first with himself and then of necessity with all whom he names his children. This may not be the only reason, but it is the profoundest reason, and the most expressly Christian. It is the motive that ought to work in us most powerfully and abidingly, and that will guide our desires most surely into the practical way of peace. Taking our stand upon this ground, we shall recognize that our conceptions of peace must always be in the first place and essentially spiritual. We cannot begin from an outward or superficial peace. It is the rooting out of ill-will and its seeds from the heart that must be the Christian’s primary object. And experience tells us that these feelings have private life for their chief sphere.
Common daily efforts, such as all may make, are those which it would be most satisfactory to me to urge upon you; and I believe that in giving our minds chiefly to these, we shall be discharging most loyally our obligations as children of the Divine peace.
We have not much to do, we who are assembled here, and at this moment of nearly universal peace, with the question of wars between nations. But you are aware that it has been not uncommon to speak of open war between nations as the one great violation of God’s peace, and the scandal by which Christendom is most deeply disgraced. To some it has seemed the natural and consistent inference from this view, that a nation ought not to go to war under any provocation. Others are ready enough to assume that this would indeed be the Christian mode of acting, but that it is incompatible with the honour and safety of a nation. Now I admit war to be shocking, and a cause of wide-spreading misery, but I do not allow that it is a necessarily unchristian act to go to war. Nor does it seem to me at all clear that war in general is accompanied by the ill-will, which is the real violation of God’s peace, in anything like the degree in which it causes fighting and bloodshed. Fighting and bloodshed and devastation are miserable works for men to be engaged in; but war, we may gladly acknowledge, can be carried on in a generous temper of mind and with none of the malignity or baseness of hatred. When we look at the matter from the specially Christian point of view, we must not begin from the measurement of outside evils. Our duty is to see that we remember the bonds by which God in heaven has knit together the nations of the earth; that we do not give way to national vanity, cruelty, or vindictiveness, in time of war; and that in time of peace we cultivate the behaviour, of justice, courtesy, and good feeling, towards other nations, which may tend to prevent war. It is certain that when war is declared, some one has been in the wrong. A preacher of the Gospel should urge his countrymen to be just, generous, and self-restraining, not only as individuals, but as a nation. But I know of nothing in the Gospel which forbids nations to strike blows against injustice or greed, or which would stamp the prudence that prepares for war, the regard of the citizen for national honour, and the gallantry of the soldier, as unchristian.
There is another class of conflicts with which we are somewhat more closely concerned. Peace, in its outward aspect, is greatly marred by religious divisions and controversies, and by civil struggles between parties and interests. We cannot but see in the multiplied schisms of Christendom memorials of obstinate self-will, and hindrances to the ideal unity of the kingdom of God, which may well cause us to grieve. In the struggles between classes of society, especially between the richer and the poorer, when the privileged classes and those which have capital try to hold fast all their comparative advantages, whilst the industrial multitudes try to win for themselves a less meagre share of what is desirable in life, there is much that Christians must lament. But here again, let me suggest, we should not begin from the outside. The essential violation of God’s peace is not in controversy itself, but in the elements which embitter it, in rancour, in hardness, in unwillingness to recognize good on the opposite side, in making the support of a public cause minister to personal pride and interest. Every Christian ha,s need to pray earnestly that zeal for the cause to which he is attached, be it that of the Church, or of Liberalism, or any other, may not betray him into intolerance and spite, and into that sin against the Holy Ghost which attributes gracious and beneficent action to an evil origin. Wilful misconstruction of motives, to which controversy so often gives occasion, is a terrible sin against God’s peace. We cannot tell how far, or how quickly, external divisions would disappear, if every one in contending for his communion or his party were enabled to feel kindly and justly towards those from whom he differed; such results we may be content to leave in the hands of God; but all Christians are assuredly pledged by their calling to cherish the just and kindly feeling, and we cannot doubt that its effect would be great and glorious. Meantime let us be thankful for the softening influences which have passed over both civil and ecclesiastical contests in our land, and which make it much easier than it was formerly for the private Christian to be moderate and charitable. But it is in social and domestic life that the most important triumphs of God’s peace are to be won.
I do not mean to underrate great causes and public affairs, the progress of mankind, the dignity and the duty of our country. Still less would I imply that the Gospel has nothing to do with these larger interests. Our Christianity, if it is that of the New Testament, ought to raise us out of the narrow egotism of our individual hopes and fears, and to nourish our humanity and public spirit. But it seems to me that it is in the more private sphere, of the home and of the neighbourhood, that it is most difficult to fulfil the duty of living peaceably with all men; and also that if the peace of God could govern our hearts in these our relations with those who are nearest to us, we should be sure to be made in all other respects followers and servants of peace. And each of us, my brethren, has his neighbours, in contact with whom he must live. No one is so insignificant, no one is so solitary, that he has not some with whom he may either quarrel or be at peace. Nor is any one, I venture to affirm, so happy in his lot or in his temper as to be without his own trials in this matter. Where the tie is closest, and human lives are most inseparably entwined together, there it is most blessed to be at peace, there the misery of discord is most intolerable, and there patience and sweetness of temper may be most severely tried. A preacher, when he speaks of the irritations of the home and of the houshold, may make sure that he is touching a responsive nerve, a responsive chord of the heart, in every one of his hearers. The peace which we have in view now is something more, you understand, than a decent veil of behaviour and good manners. You may vex and alienate, without openly breaking the peace. We know that explosion’s not unfrequently take place; but we cannot say in how many cases self-respect restrains the inward resentment from exploding. You can scarcely become intimately acquainted with any family circle without learning that there are members of it who find it hard to get on with other members. In local society, how inevitable is jealousy between those who aim at the same distinction, scorn exhibited by one who thinks himself or herself superior, angry defiance thrown back by those who regard themselves as insulted by the scorn, the unreasonable misunderstanding which sees an unintended slight, the long smouldering feud which a little good sense and placability might quickly extinguish! My Christian brethren, amongst us, partakers of the heavenly calling, these things ought not so to be. “ No, certainly they ought not,” I think I hear some one answer, “but it is not / that am in fault! I do not wish to quarrel, I am a very reasonable person, but I am specially unfortunate in my circumstances. It may be that I have been born with a somewhat irritable temper, but I could control it, if I had not to deal with a companion or a neighbour with whom it is impossible to be on pleasant and easy terms.” My brother, be assured of this, that there are scores of persons round you saying precisely the same thing. The instinct of us all is to excuse ourselves and throw the blame on others. Very likely others deserve the blame. But let us not wait to get the due share of responsibility accurately apportioned to each. That the Eternal Judge alone can determine. Let us think rather with more earnestness of the solemn fact, that God is calling us to peace. How are we ever to reach it, if we are severally bent on justifying ourselves? Look upon peace as a blessing which God holds out to us, a blessing to all and to each, a common good, a common glory, which is to be won, not by self-justification, but by self-suppression. If we must justify ourselves, let us try to do it, not before men, but before God. Let us not imagine ourselves, as we are so often apt to do, pleading our case in a human court, ingeniously putting forward everything that tends to excuse or to commend ourselves; but let us come at once into the presence of our God. See whether the steady recollection of God’s grace and purpose does not brush away our pleas like cobwebs.
What is it that we believe that God has done for us? Has he been extreme to mark what is done amiss? Has he exacted of us all that is due to him? Nay, because we had nothing to pay, he has frankly forgiven us all. When we were sinners, Christ died for us. The Father has reconciled offenders to himself in the Son of his love. His desire and end is Peace. He entreats us to receive his forgiveness. He says to us daily, “ Be at peace.”
If you go into the presence of this gracious Father, and allege, “My neighbour commits this or that trespass against me,” the unmistakeable voice of God enjoins you, “Forgive him!” You ask, perhaps, “What, if he does not confess his fault in a proper manner and beg my forgiveness? ““Yes!” God replies to you, “Let there be no barter of your grace. Think only of extinguishing the unfriendly feeling, of healing the wounds and making the scars invisible, of bringing about peace, so long as it be genuine, in any way you can.” The sense of our unworthiness in God’s sight is the best ally of humility and forbearance and graciousness in our dealings with our fellow-creatures. But it is good also to realize that God’s end in redemption was to establish amongst his children the living unity of one body in his Son. All discord is a rebellious violation of that unity; and every one who fails to do what in him lies to keep that unity, is setting himself against God’s redemptive purpose.
It is a world in which the most true-hearted Christian could not hope to go through life without giving offence. We are not to let truth and justice suffer, in a vain attempt to preserve peace. Even the Prince of Peace was compelled to say, in anguish of heart, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth! I am not come to send peace, but a sword!” There was something of the same sadness in the heart of his Apostle, when he said, “If it be possible, as much as lies in you, live peaceably with all men.” That is all that each Christian can make the aim of his endeavour. But how much might thus be accomplished! Let us have faith in him who calls us. The Peace which is to be the crowning glory of him whom we follow is to be conquered gradually from the powers of strife. We have to be fighters for peace, soldiers in the army of the Divine peacemaker. It is only by long struggles with himself that an inheritor of human passions can hope to subdue those tendencies which would make him a promoter of strife rather than a peace-maker. But what reward can be more blessed than that which is granted to all such efforts? To possess a deep inward joy, to spread happiness around, to be an instrument in working out the great Divine purpose, is it not worth while to make earnest and ever-renewed efforts for the sake of such privileges? And these are not distant, imagined, rewards. You have seen them, I trust, actually given by the God of peace to some of his favoured servants. He lets us all see in some measure with our own eyes how good and joyful a thing it is to dwell together in unity.