Page images
PDF
EPUB

to the love of God. Suppose, for example, we find our pleasure, or imagine our advantage, to consist in practices which are sinful and forbidden by the Divine Word: the love of our neighbour as ourselves would unquestionably incite us to abet and encourage him in the commission of sin, and thus our conformity to the second commandment would aggravate our departure from the first. It is a self-love, then, that allies itself with a spirit of obedience towards God which is to regulate our sympathy in behalf of a fellow-creature: a self-love which consequently prompts us to the practice and promotion of all goodness; coveting supremely the approval of the Deity, and expecting his unclouded and eternal presence. We are admonished, then, and be it our care to remember, that all that affection, if so it may be called, which is entertained towards a fellow-creature in a disregard of our duty towards God, is of small account in his judgment; and, so far as it operates in a manner repugnant to his laws and institutions, it must needs be regarded as fomenting and diffusing a spirit of disaffection to his government as tending to an universal alienation from the God and Father of us all. And thus it is that the love of our neighbour may

G G

become no better in its nature, while, in this aspect, it threatens infinitely worse consequences, than that sympathy of feeling and community of purpose, which combine and inspirit men in insurrections against lawful governments; in their resistance to equal laws, and a monarch to whom they owe a most affectionate allegiance. To proceed :

If the commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves be a compendious expression for that branch of the divine law which relates to our conduct towards our fellow-creatures, we are relieved from the necessity of vindicating the precept to the letter. Considerable objections, it must be acknowledged, would lie against its literal, unqualified interpretation; for it must seem irreconcilable to the constitution of our minds, that we should love our neighbour-every individual, as the term is justly understood to signify, who may come within the reach of our influence, or whose interests may be affected by our conduct-in the same degree that we love ourselves. It must appear impossible that the circumstances of another should affect us with as lively emotions of pain and pleasure, joy and grief, hope and fear, as our own. The feelings of sympathy appear, in their very nature, to be

inferior in intensity and duration to those of self-love; and to be so for manifest and the wisest purposes. Moreover, we are especially dependent, as individuals, for the supply of our wants, and the materials of enjoyment, on the continued exertion of our own faculties; on our own knowledge and prudence and activity:- a condition of existence which seems to exempt us from an obligation to consult the interests of another equally with our own; with equal ardour, penetration, and sensibility. And, farther, the precept, if interpreted to the letter, would imply a prohibition of degrees, or allow no scale of proportion, in the benevolent affection; whereas the instinct of nature and the constitution of society have marked out, as the objects of a peculiar sympathy, the individuals connected to us by the ties of kindred. These and similar considerations would present undeniable obstacles to a rigidly verbal exposition of the commandment. But all such objections are obviated by the simple and repeated explanation which the sacred writers have given us of its drift and import:-namely, that the love of our neighbour as ourselves is exemplified in the practical fulfilment of the law.

The law which says," Thou shalt not covet," assumes the principle of appropriation, or confirms the right of property, and therefore distinctly recognises that law of nature and society which commits to each individual the pursuit and custody of his own happiness, or renders him the founder and the guardian of his own wellbeing and prosperity. The fifth commandment approves and consecrates the love of kindred as a principle of action; and as the claim to filial piety is founded on the affectionate solicitude and unwearied kindness of parents to their children, that commandment commends, by implication, the affection of gratitude, as a motive of conduct. The Christian religion, then, would stand acquitted of the imputation of inculcating a benevolence which might justly be regarded as a forced or exotic, were it a possible, production of the human mind. It lends no countenance to any system of philosophy which, in order to improve the happiness of the world, and to refine and sublimate the human character, would supersede the principle of personal appropriation, or equalize the conditions of mankind; and which, under the show of a purer philanthropy, holds in disdain or indifference the relations of kindred as reasons of prece

dency in our affections, as well as the principle which prompts a return of generous offices, or reciprocates the feelings of kindness and beneficence. It were needless, and beside our purpose, to examine such a system on other or general grounds: we affirm only that the religion of Christ affords no support to a theory so imaginative in its character; so incongruous to our natural and apparently insuppressible feelings; and so incapable, as may securely be asserted, of permanent practical illustration. Undoubtedly, the commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves contemplates the welfare of the whole community and hence we may observe, in passing, that it supplies a firm, immovable basis for the right of self-defence, and the institution of penal laws. It also imposes, we may add, a control on the emotions of pity, or, rather, it makes it our duty, in the exercise of our benevolence, to study the most effective methods of alleviating the sufferings of mankind in general; to strengthen the hands of that fervid and aspiring philanthropy which kindles the intellect in its service; which traces so many streams of misery to their hidden fountains in the waste uncultured mind of man; and seeks that the wretched

« PreviousContinue »