SERMON XIV.
FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.
" Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies." — Matt. v. 43.
It is commonly believed that a degree of indulgence and caution had been used by the legislator of the Jews, in publishing the law on forgiveness of injuries, that obliged to accommodate it, in some respect to the weakness of a carnal people, and otherwise persuaded that of all virtues, that of loving an enemy was the most difficult to the heart of man, he was satisfied with regulating and prescribing bounds for revenge. It was only in order to prevent great excesses, says St. Augustine, that he meant to give authority to smaller ones. That law, like all the others, had its sanctity, its goodness, its justice; but it was rather an establishment of polity than a rule of piety. It was calculated to maintain the internal tranquillity of the state; but it neither touched the heart nor struck at the root of hatreds and revenge. The only effect proposed, was either to restrain the aggressor, by threatening him with the same punishment with which he had grieved his brother, or to put a check upon the irritation of the offended, by letting him see, that, if he exceeded in the satisfaction required, he exposed himself to undergo all the surplus of his revenge.
Philosophers, in their morality, had also placed the forgiveness of injuries among the number of virtues; but that was a pretext of vanity rather than a rule of discipline. It is because revenge seemed to them to carry along with it something, I know not what, of mean and passionate, which would have disfigured the portrait and the tranquillity of their ideal sage, that it appeared disgraceful to them to be unable to rise superior to an injury. The forgiveness of their enemies was solely founded, therefore, upon the contempt in which they held them. They avenged themselves by disdaining revenge; and pride readily gave up the pleasure of hurting those who have injured us, for the pleasure which was found in despising them.
But the law of the gospel, upon loving our enemies, neither flatters pride, nor spares self-love. In the forgiveness of injuries, nothing ought to indemnify the Christian but the consolation of imitating Jesus Christ, and of obeying him; but the claims which, in an enemy, prove to him a brother; but the hope of meeting, before the eternal Judge, with the same indulgence which he shall have used toward men. Nothing ought to limit him in his charity, but charity itself, which hath no bounds, which excepts neither places, times, nor persons, which ought never to be extinguished. And, should the religion of Christians have no other proof against unbelief than the sublime elevation of this maxim, it would always have this pre-eminence in sanctity, and consequently in apparent truth, over all the sects which have ever appeared upon the earth.
Let us unfold, therefore, the motives and the rules of this essential point of the law: the motives, by establishing the equity of the precept through the very pretexts which seem to oppose it; the rules, by laying open the illusions under which every one justifies to himself their infractions; that is to say, the injustice of our hatreds, and the falsity of our reconciliations.
Part I. — The three principles which usually bind men to each other, and by which are formed all human unions and friendships, are fancy, cupidity, and vanity. Fancy — We follow a certain propensity of nature, which, being the cause of our finding, in some persons, a greater similarity to our own inclinations, perhaps also greater allowances for our faults, binds us to them, and occasions us to find, in their society, a comfort which becomes weariness in that of the rest of men. Cupidity — We seek out useful friends; from the moment that they are necessary to our pleasure or to our fortune, they become worthy of our friendship. Interest is a grand charm to the majority of hearts; the titles which render us powerful, are quickly transmuted into qualities which render us apparently amiable, and friends are never wanting when we can pay the friendship of those who love us. Lastly, Vanity — Friends who do us honour are always dear to us. It would seem that, in loving them, we enter, as it were, into partnership with them in that distinction which they enjoy in the world; we seek to deck ourselves, as I may say, with their reputation; and, being unable to reach their merit, we pride ourselves in their society, in order to have it supposed that, at least, there is not much between us, and that like loves like.
These are the three great ties of human society. Religion and charity unite almost nobody; and from thence it is, that, from the moment men offend our fancy, that they are unfavourable to our interests, or that they wound our reputation and our vanity, the human and brittle ties which united us to them are broken asunder; our heart withdraws from them, and no longer finds in itself, with respect to them, but animosity and bitterness. And behold the three most general sources of those hatreds which men nourish against each other; which change all the sweets of society into endless inveteracies; which impoison all the delight of conversations, and all the innocency of mutual intercourse; and which, attacking religion in the heart, nevertheless present themselves to us under appearances of equity which justify them in our eyes and strengthen us in them.
I say, from the moment that men offend our fancy; and this is the first pretext, and the first source of our withdrawing from, and of our hatreds against, our brethren. You say, that you cannot accord with such a person; that every thing in him offends and displeases you; that it is an antipathy which you cannot conquer; that all his manners seem fashioned to irritate you; that to see him would answer the sole purpose of augmenting the natural aversion which you have to him; and that nature hath placed within us hatreds and likings, conformities and aversions, for which she alone is to be answerable.
To this I might at once answer, by establishing the foundations of the Christian doctrine upon loving our brethren. Is that man, in consequence of displeasing, and being disagreeable to your fancy, less your brother, child of God, citizen of heaven, member of Jesus Christ, and inheritor of the eternal promises? Doth his humour, his character, whatever it may be, efface any one of those august traits which he hath received upon the sacred font, which unite him to you by divine and immortal ties, and which ought to render him dear and respectable to you? When Jesus Christ commands us to love our brethren as ourselves, doth he mean to make a precept which costs nothing to the heart, and in the fulfilment of which we found neither difficulty nor hardship? Ah! what occasion hath he to command us to love our brethren, if, in virtue of that commandment, we were obliged to love only those for whom we feel a natural fancy and inclination. The heart hath no occasion, on this point, for precept; it is its own law. The precept then supposes a difficulty on our part: Jesus Christ hath, therefore, foreseen that it would be hard upon us to love our brethren; that we should find within us antipathies and dislikes which would withdraw us from them; and behold why he hath attached so much merit to the observance of this single point, and hath so often declared to us, that, to observe it, was to observe the whole law. Aversion to our brethren, far, then, from justifying our estrangement from them, renders to us, on the contrary, the obligation of loving them more precise, and places us personally in the case of the precept.
But besides, ought a Christian to be regulated by fancy and humour, or by the principles of reason, of faith, of religion, and of grace? And since when is the natural fancy, which we are commanded by the gospel to oppose, become a privilege which dispenses us from its rules? If the repugnance felt for duties were a title of exemption, where is the believer who would not be quit of the whole law, and who would not find his justification and his innocency, in proportion as he felt a greater degree of corruption in his heart? Are our fancies our law? Is religion only the support, and not the remedy of nature? Is it not a weakness, even in the eyes of the world, to regulate our steps and our sentiments, our hatreds and our love toward men, merely upon the caprices of a fancy for which we can give no reason ourselves? Do men of this description do great credit, I do not say to religion, but to humanity? And are they not, even to the world itself, a spectacle of contempt, of derision, and of censure? What a chaos would society be, if fancy alone were to decide upon our duties, and upon reciprocal attentions, and if men were to be united by no other law! Now, if the rules, even of society, exact, that fancy alone be not the sole principle of our conduct toward the rest of men, should the gospel be more indulgent on that point? — the gospel, which preaches only self-denial; which every where commands us to do violence upon ourselves, and to strive against our fancies and our affections; which commands that we act through views superior to flesh and blood, and that we hesitate not to sacrifice to the sanctity of faith, and to the sublimity of its rules, not only our caprices, but our most legal inclinations?
It is therefore absurd to allege to us an aversion to your brother, which is itself your guilt. I might farther say; you complain that your brother is displeasing to you, and that it is not possible for you to bear, or to be in agreement with him: but, do you suppose that you yourself are displeasing to none? Can you guarantee to us, that you are universally liked, and that every one applauds and approves you? Now, if you exact, that every thing offensive in your manners be excused, upon the goodness of your heart, and on account of those essential qualities upon which you pride yourself: if to you it appear unreasonable to be offended at nothings, and by certain sallies which we cannot always command; if you insist upon being judged by the consequence, by the groundwork, by the rectitude of your sentiments and conduct, and not in consequence of those humours which sometimes involuntarily escape you, and upon which it is very difficult to be always guarded against one's self; having the same equity for your brother; apply the same rule to yourself? bear with him as you have occasion to be borne with yourself; and do not justify, by your estrangement from him, the unjust aversions which may be had to yourself. And this rule is so much the more equitable as that you have only to cast your eyes upon what is continually passing in the world, to be convinced that those who are loudest in trumpeting forth the faults of their brethren, are the very persons with whom nobody can agree, who are the pest of societies, and a grievance to the rest of men.
And I might here demand of you, my dear hearer, if this principle of contrariety, which renders your brother so insupportable to you, be not more in yourself: that is to say, in your pride, in the capriciousness of your temper, in the contrariety of your character, than in his; — demand of you, if all the world see in him what you believe to see yourself; if his friends, his relations, his intimates, look upon him with the same eyes that you do? What do I know, I might demand of you, if that which displeases you in him be not perhaps his good qualities: if his talents, his reputation, his credit, and his fortune, have not perhaps a greater share in your aversion than his faults; and, if it be not his merit or his rank which have hitherto in your sight constituted his whole crime? We are so easily deceived in this point! Envy is a passion so masked, and so artful in disguising itself! As there is something mean and odious in it, and as it is a secret confession made to ourselves of our own mediocrity, it always shows itself to us under foreign outsides, which completely conceal itself from us; but fathom your heart, and you will see that all those, who either surpass, or who shine with too much lustre near you, have the misfortune to displease you: that you find amiable only those who have nothing to contest with you; that all who rise above, or are even equal to you, constrain and hurt you; and that, to have a claim to your friendship, it is necessary to have none either to your pretensions or expectancies.
But I go still farther, and I entreat you to listen to me. I admit your brother to have more faults than even you accuse him of having. Alas! you are so gentle and so friendly toward those from whom you expect your fortune and your establishment, and whose temper, haughtiness, and manners shock you. You bear with all their pride, their repulses, their scorns; you swallow all their inequalities and caprices; you are never disheartened; your patience is always greater than your antipathy and your repugnance, and you neglect nothing to please. Ah! if you regarded your brother, as he upon whom depends your eternal salvation, as he to whom you are to be indebted, not for a fortune of dross, and an uncertain establishment, but for the fortune even of your eternity, would you follow, with regard to him, the caprice of your fancy? Would you not conquer the unjust antipathy which estranges you from him? Would you suffer so much in putting your inclinations in unison with your eternal interests, and in doing upon yourself so useful and so necessary a violence? You bear with every thing for the world and for vanity; and you cry out, how hard! from the moment that a single painful proceeding is exacted of you for eternity.
And say not that there are caprices of nature, of which no account can be given, and that we are not the masters of our fancies and likings. I grant this to a certain point; but there is a love of reason and of religion, which ought always to gain ascendancy over that of nature. The gospel exacts not that you have a fancy for your brother, it exacts that you love him; that is to say, that you bear with him, that you excuse him, that you conceal his faults, that you serve him; in a word, that you do for him whatever you would wish to have done for yourself. Charity is not a blind and capricious fancy, a natural liking, a sympathy of temper and disposition; it is a just, enlightened, and reasonable duty; a love which takes its rise in the impulses of grace, and in the views of faith. It is not rightly loving our brethren, to love them only through fancy; it is loving one^s self. Charity alone enables us to love them as we ought, and it alone can form real and steadfast friends. For fancy is continually changing, and charity never dieth; fancy seeks only itself, and charity seeketh not its own interest, but the interest of whom it loves; fancy is not a proof against every thing, a loss, a proceeding, a disgrace, — and charity riseth superior to death: fancy loves only its own conveniency; and charity findeth nothing amiss, and suffereth every thing for whom it loveth: fancy is blind, and often renders even the vices of our brethren amiable to us; and charity never giveth praise to iniquity, and in others loveth only the truth. The friends of grace are therefore much more to be relied on than those of nature. The same fancy which unites the manners, is often, a moment after, the cause of separating them; but the ties formed by charity eternally endure.
Such is the first source of our likings and of our hatreds, the injustices and the capriciousness of our fancy. Interest is the second; for nothing is more common than to hear you justifying your animosities, by telling us that such a man hath neglected nothing to ruin you; that he has been the mean of blasting your fortune; that he continually excites vexatious matters against you; that you find him an insuperable impediment in your way, and that it is difficult to love an enemy so bent on injuring you.
But, granting that you speak the truth, I answer to you; to all the other ills which your brother hath caused to you, why should you add that of , hating him, which is the greatest of all, since all the others have tended to ravish from you only fleeting and frivolous riches, while this is the cause of ruin to your soul, and deprives you for ever of your claim to an immortal kingdom? In hating him, you injure yourself much more than all his malignity with respect to you could ever do. He hath usurped the patrimony of your fathers: it may be so; and, in order to avenge yourself, you renounce the inheritance of your heavenly Father, and the eternal patrimony of Jesus Christ. You take your revenge then upon yourself; and, in order to console yourself for the ills done to you by your brother, you provide for yourself one without end and without measure.
And, moreover, does your hatred toward your brother restore any of those advantages which he hath snatched from you? Does it ameliorate your condition? What do you reap from your animosity and your rancour? In hating him, you say that you console yourself; and this is the only consolation left to you. What a consolation, great God! is that of hatred; that is to say, of a gloomy and furious passion, which gnaws the heart, sheds anguish and sorrow through ourselves, and begins by punishing and rendering us miserable? What a cruel pleasure is that of hating, that is to say, of bearing on the heart a load of rancour, which impoisons every other moment of life! What a barbarous method of consoling one's self! And are you not worthy of pity, to seek a resource in your evils, which answers no purpose but that of eternising, by hatred, a transitory injury?
But let us cease this human language, and speak that of the gospel, to which our mouths are consecrated. If you were Christian, my dear hearer; if you had not lost faith, far from hating those whom God hath made instrumental in blasting your hopes and your projects of fortune, you would regard them as the instruments of God's mercies upon your soul, as the ministers of your sanctification, and the blessed rocks which have been the means of saving you from shipwreck. You would have been lost in credit and in elevation; you would then have neglected your God; your ambition would have increased with your fortune, and death would have surprised you in the vortex of the world of passions and of human expectancies. But, in order to save your soul, the Lord, in his great mercy, hath raised up obstacles which have stopped your course. He hath employed an envious person, a rival to supplant you, to keep you at a distance from favours, and to place himself between you and the precipice, into which you were running headlong, for ever to perish: he hath seconded, as I may say, his ambition; he hath favoured his designs; and, through an incomprehensible excess of goodness toward you, he hath crossed your worldly schemes: he hath raised up your enemy in time, in order to save you in eternity. You ought, therefore, to adore the eternal designs of his justice and of his mercy upon men; to consider your brother as the blessed cause of your salvation; to entreat of God, that seeing his ambition or his bad intentions have been employed to save you, he may inspire him with sincere repentance, and that the person who hath been the instrument of your salvation be not permitted to perish himself.
Yes, my brethren, our hatreds proceed entirely from our want of faith. Alas! if we regarded every thing which passes, as a vapour without substance; if we were thoroughly convinced that all this is nothing, that salvation is the great and important affair, and that our treasure and our true riches are only in eternity, where, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be; if we were convinced of it, alas! we would consider men, who passionately quarrel and dispute with each other for the dignities of the earth, as children who fall out among themselves for the playthings which amuse their eye, whose childish hatreds and animosities turn upon nothings, which infancy alone, and the feeble state of reason, magnify in their eyes. Tranquil on the greatest and most important events, on the loss of the patrimony of their fathers, and the fall of their family, and keen even to excess when deprived of any of the little trifling objects which delight their infancy, — thus, O my God, foolish and puerile men feel not the loss of their heavenly inheritance, of that immortal patrimony bequeathed to them by Jesus Christ, and which their brethren are already enjoying in heaven. They unconcernedly see the kingdom of God, and the only true riches, pass away from them; and, like children, they are inflamed with rage, and mutually arm against each other, from the instant that their frivolous possessions are encroached upon, or that any attempt is made to deprive them of those childish playthings, the only value or importance of which is that of serving to deceive their feeble reason, and to amuse their childhood.
For a Christian, interest is therefore an unworthy and criminal pretext for his hatred toward his brethren; but vanity, which is their last resource, is still less excusable.
For, my brethren, we wish to be approved, and to have our faults as well as our virtues applauded; and, although we feel our own weaknesses, yet we are so unreasonable as to exact that others see them not, and that they even give credit to us for certain qualities which we inwardly reproach to ourselves as vices. We would wish that all mouths were filled solely with our praises; and that the world, which forgives nothing, which spares not even its masters, should admire in us what it censures in others.
In effect, you complain that your enemy hath both privately and publicly decried you; that he hath added calumny to slander; that he hath attacked you in the tenderest and most feeling quarter, and that he hath neglected nothing to blast your honour and your reputation in the opinion of men.
But, before replying to this, I might first say to you, mistrust the reports which have been made to you of your brother: the most innocent speeches reach us so impoisoned, through the malignity of the tongues which have conveyed them; there are so many mean flatterers, who seek to be agreeable at the expense of those who are not so; there are so many dark and wicked minds, whose only pleasure is in finding out evil where none is meant, and in sowing dissension among men; there are so many volatile and imprudent characters, who unseasonably, and with an envenomed air, repeat what at first had been only said with the most innocent intentions; there are so many men, naturally given to the hyperbole, and in whose mouth every thing is magnified, and departs from the natural and simple truth. I here appeal to yourself: has it never happened to you, that your most innocent sayings have been impoisoned, and circumstances added to your recitals, which you had never even thought of? Have you not then exclaimed against the injustice and the malignity of the repeaters? Why might not you, in your turn, have been deceived? And if every thing which passes through a variety of channels, be in general adulterated, and never reach us in its original purity, why should you suppose that discourses which relate to you alone, were exempted from the same lot, and were entitled to more attention and belief?
You will no doubt reply, that these general maxims are not the point in question, and that the actions of which you complain are not doubtful, but positive. I admit it; and I ask, if your brother have not, on his side, the same reproaches to make to you; if you have always been very lenient, and very charitable to his faults; if you have always rendered justice even to his good qualities; if you never permitted him to be reviled in your presence; if you have not aided" the malignity of such discourses by an affected moderation, which hath only tended to blow up the fire of detraction, and to supply new traits against your brother? — I ask you, if you are even circumspect toward the rest of men; if you readily forgive the weakness of others; if your tongue be not, in general, dipt in wormwood and gall; if the best established reputation be not always in danger in your hands; and, if the saddest and most private histories do not speedily become matter of notoriety, through your malignity and imprudence? O man! thou pushest delicacy and sensibility to such lengths upon whatever regards thyself! We have occasion for all the terror of our ministry, and for all the other most weighty inducements of religion, to bring thee to forgive to thy brother a single speech, frequently a word, which imprudence, which chance, which circumstances, which perhaps a just resentment hath forced from him; and the licentiousness of thy discourses toward others knows neither the bounds of politeness nor of that decency which the world itself prescribes.
But, granting that you have nothing to reproach yourself on the part of moderation toward your brother, what do you gain by hating him? Do you thereby efface the fatal impressions which his discourses may have left on the minds of men? On the contrary, you inflict a fresh wound upon your heart; you give yourself a stab which carries death to your soul: you wrench the sword from his hands, if I may speak in this manner, in order to plunge it into yourself. By the innocency of your manners, and the integrity of your conduct, you make the injustice of his discourses evident; destroy by a life free from reproach, the prejudices to which he may have given rise against you; make the meanness and the iniquity of his calumnies revert upon himself, by the practice of those virtues exactly opposite to the faults which he imputes to you: such is the just and legal manner of revenging yourself. Triumph over his malice by your manners and by your silence: you will heap living coals upon his head; you will gain the public on your side, you will leave nothing to your enemy but the infamy of his passion and of his impositions. But hating him is the revenge of the weak, and the sad consolation of the guilty; in a word, it is the only refuge of those who can find none in virtue and in innocence.
But let us now quit all these reasonings, and come to the essential point. You are commanded to love those who despitefully use and calumniate you; to pray for them, to entreat their conversion to God, that he change their rancorous heart, that he inspire them with sentiments of peace and of charity, and that he place them among the number of his holy. You are commanded to consider them as already citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, with whom you shall form only one voice in singing the immortal praises of grace. You are commanded to look upon injuries as blessings, as the punishment of your hidden crimes, for which you have so often merited to be covered with confusion before men; as the price of the kingdom of God, which is promised to those alone who with piety bear with persecution and calumny.
For, after all, it must come to this. Self-love alone would make us love those who love us, who praise us, who publish our virtues, false or true; such was the whole virtue of the Pagans; for, said Jesus Christ, if ye love those that love you, what reward have ye; do not even the publicans so? But religion goes farther: it requires us to love those who hate and persecute us: it fixes at that price the mercies of God upon us, and declares to us that no forgiveness is to be expected for ourselves, if we grant it not to our brethren.
And, candidly, would you have God to forget the crimes and the horrors of your whole life, to be insensible to his own glory, which you have so often insulted, while you cannot prevail upon yourself to forget a word; while you are so warm, so delicate, and so passionate upon the interests of your glory; you who perhaps enjoy a reputation which you have never merited; you, who, were you to be known such as you are, would be covered with eternal shame and confusion; you, in a word, of whom the most injurious discourses only imperfectly represent the secret wretchedness, and of which God alone knoweth the extent? Great God! how little shall sinners have to say for themselves when thou wilt pronounce against them the sentence of their eternal condemnation!
You will probably tell us that you perfectly agree to the duties which religion hereupon imposes, but that the laws of honour have prevailed over those of religion; that if discourses and proceedings of a certain description be tranquilly submitted to, lasting dishonour and infamy in the sight of men must necessarily follow; that to forgive through motives of religion, is nevertheless a stain of cowardice, which the world never pardons, and that on this point, honour acknowledges neither exception nor privilege.
What is this honour, my brethren, which is to be bought only at the price of our souls and of our eternal salvation? And how worthy of pity, if guilt alone can save from ignominy! I know that it is here that the false laws of the world seem to prevail over those of religion; and that the wisest themselves, who execrate this abuse, are, however, of opinion that it must be submitted to. But I speak before a prince, who, wiser than the world, and filled with a just indignation against a madness so contrary to the maxims of the gospel, as well as to the interests of the state, hath shown to his subjects what is the true honour, and who, in forcing criminal arms out of their hands, hath marked with lasting infamy those barbarous modes of revenge to which the public error had attached a deplorable glory.
What, my brethren, an abominable maxim, which the barbarity of the first manners of our ancestors alone hath consecrated, and handed down to us, should prevail over all the rules of Christianity and all the most inviolable rules of the state! It should be no dishonour to bathe your hands in your brother's blood, while it would be one to obey God, and the prince who holds his place in the world! Glory would no longer then be but a madness, and cowardice but a noble respect for religion, and for our master. You dread passing for a coward! Show your valour, then, by shedding your blood in the defence of your country; go and brave dangers at the head of our armies, and there seek glory in the discharge of your duty; establish your reputation by actions worthy of being ranked among the memorable events of a reign so glorious; such is that valour which the state requires, and which religion authorizes. Then despise these brutal and personal vengeances; look upon them as a childish ostentation of valour, which is often used as a cover to actual cowardice; as the vile and vulgar refuge of those who have nothing signal to establish their character; as a forced and an equivocal proof of courage, which the world wrests from us, and against which the heart often revolts. Far from imputing shame to you, the world itself will make it a fresh title of honour to you; you will be still more exalted in its opinion; and you will teach your equals that misplaced valour is nothing but a brutal fear; that wisdom and moderation ever attend true glory; that whatever dishonours humanity can never do honour to men; and that the gospel, which inculcates and commands forgiveness, hath made more heroes than the world itself, which preaches up revenge.
You will perhaps say that these maxims do not regard you; that you have forgotten all the subjects of complaint which you had against your brother; and that a reconciliation hath put an end to the eclat of your misunderstandings, and of your quarrel. Now, I say, that it is more especially on this point that you are grossly deceived; and, after having shown to you the injustice of our hatreds, it is my duty now to prove to you the falsity of our reconciliations.
Part II. — There is not a precept in the law which leaves less room for doubt or for mistake, than that which obliges us to love our brethren; and, nevertheless, there is none upon which more illusions and false maxims are founded. In effect, there is not almost a person who doth not say, that he hath heartily forgiven his brother, and that his conscience is perfectly tranquil on that head; and, nevertheless, nothing is more rare than sincere forgiveness, and there are few instances of a reconcilement which changes the heart, and which is not merely a false appearance of renewed amity, whether it be considered in its principle, or whether the proceedings and consequences of it be examined.
I say, in its principle; for, my brethren, in order that a reconciliation be sincere and real, it is necessary that it take its source in charity, and in a Christian love of our brother. Now, human motives engross, in general, a work which can be the work of grace alone. A reconciliation takes place, in order not to persist against the pressing entreaties of friends; in order to avoid a certain disagreeable eclat, which would necessarily follow an open hostility, and which might revert upon ourselves; in order not to exclude ourselves from certain societies, from which we would be under the necessity of banishing ourselves were we obstinately to persist in being irreconcilable to our brother. A reconciliation takes place through deference to the great, who exact of us that compliance, in order to acquire a reputation for moderation and greatness of soul, in order to avoid giving transactions to the public which would not correspond with that idea which we would wish it to have of us; in order, at once, to cut short the continual complaints and the insulting discourses of an enemy, who knows us perhaps only too well, and who has once been too deep in our confidence, not to merit some caution and deference on our part, and that, by a reconciliation, we should endeavour to silence him. What more shall I say? We are reconciled perhaps like Saul, in order more securely to ruin our enemy, and to lull his vigilance and precautions.
Such are, in general, the motives of those reconciliations which every day take place in the world, and what I say here is so true, that sinners who show no sign of piety on any other occasion, are, however, reconciled to their brethren in daily instances; and they who cannot prevail over themselves in the easiest duties of a Christian life, appear as heroes in the accomplishment of this one, which, of all others, is the most difficult. Ah! it is because they are heroes of vanity and not of charity: it is that they leave that part of the reconciliation which alone is heroical and arduous in the sight of God, namely, an oblivion upon the past injury, and a total revolution of our heart toward our brother; and they retain of it only that part which is glorious in the sight of men, namely, an appearance of moderation, and a promptitude toward amity, which the world itself praises and admires.
But, if the greatest part of reconciliations turn out to be false when these motives are examined, they are not less so if we consider them in their proceedings. Yes, my brethren, what measures and negotiations! what formalities and solicitudes in concluding them! what attentions to bestow, and cautions to observe! what interests to conciliate, obstacles to remove, and steps to accomplish! Thus your reconciliation is not the work of charity, but of the wisdom and skill of your friends: it is a worldly affair; it is not a religious step: it is a treaty happily concluded; it is not a duty of faith fulfilled: it is the work of man, but it is not the deed of God: in a word, it is a peace which comes from the earth, it is not the peace of heaven.
For, candidly, have men been able, through their arrangements and the ingenuity of their measures, in reconciling you with your brother, to revive that charity which was extinguished in your heart? Have they been able to restore that treasure to you which you had lost? They have succeeded, indeed, in terminating the scandal of declared enmity, and establishing between you and your brother the outward duties of society; but they have not changed your heart, which God alone can do; they have not extinguished that hatred, which grace alone can extinguish. You are therefore reconciled, but you still love not your brother; and, in effect, if you sincerely loved him, would so many mediators have been required to reconcile you? Love is its own mediator and interpreter. Charity is that brief word which would have saved to your friends all those endless toils, which they have been obliged to employ in order to reclaim you; it is not so measured; it frankly confesses what it sincerely feels. Now, before giving way, you have insisted upon a thousand conditions; you have disputed every step; you have been resolute in not going beyond a certain point; you have exacted that your brother should make the first advances toward meeting you. Charity knows nothing of all these rules; it hath only one, and that is, oblivion upon the injury, and to love our brother as ourself.
I grant that certain prudential measures are to be observed, and that too hasty or ill-timed advances might often be not only unsuccessful, but even the means of hardening your brother still more against you. But I say that charity ought to regulate these measures, and not vanity; I say, and I repeat it, that all these reconciliations which are with such difficulty concluded, where both parties are resolute in yielding only to a certain point, and even that with precautions so strict and so precise; where so many expedients and so much mystery are necessary, — are the fruits of fleshly prudence: they correct the manners, but they affect not the heart; they bring the persons, but not the affections, nearer; they re-establish civilities, but leave the same sentiments; in a word, they terminate the scandal of hatred, but not the sin. Thus Jesus Christ plainly commands us to go our way and be reconciled to our brother. He says not to us, do not go too far, lest your brother take advantage by it; be first convinced that he will meet you half-way; seek not after him, lest he consider your proceeding as an apology for his complaints, as a tacit acknowledgment of your blame, and a sentence pronounced against yourself. Jesus Christ plainly tells us, — go thy way and be reconciled to thy brother. He desires that the reconciliation take place through- charity alone; he supposes, that, in order to love our brother, we have no occasion for mediators, and that our heart should be fully capable of every thing required without any foreign interference.
Such are the steps of reconciliations; thence, the motives being almost always human, the proceedings faulty, their consequences can be only vain and of no effect. I say, the consequences; for, my brethren, in what do the far greater part of those reconciliations, which every day take place in the world, terminate? What is the fruit of them? What is it which is commonly called a reconciliation with our enemy? I shall explain it to you.
You say, in the first place, that you are reconciled to your brother, and that you have heartily forgiven him; but that you have taken your resolution to see him no more, and from henceforth to have no farther intercourse with him. And upon this footing, you live tranquil; you believe that nothing more is prescribed by the gospel, and that a confessor hath no title to demand more. Now I declare that you have not forgiven your brother, and that you are still, with respect to him, in hatred, in death, and in sin.
For I demand of you, — do we dread the sight of those we love? And if your enemy be now your brother, what can there be so hateful and so disagreeable to you in his presence? You say, that you have forgiven, and that you love him; but, in order to avoid all accidents, and that his presence may not arouse vexatious ideas, you find it more proper to exclude yourself from it. But what is that kind of love which the sole presence of the beloved object irritates against it, and inflames with hatred and wrath? You love him! that is to say, that perhaps you would not wish to injure, or to destroy him. But that is not enough; religion commands you likewise to love him: for honour, indolence, moderation, fear, and want of opportunity, are sufficient inducements to prevent you from injuring him; but you must be Christian to love him; and that is precisely what you are not willing to be.
And, candidly, would you that God loved you, upon the condition that he should never see you? Would you be satisfied with his goodness, and with his mercy, were he, for ever to banish you from his presence? For you well know that he will treat you, as you shall have treated your brother. Would you think yourself much in favour with the prince, were he to forbid you ever to present yourself before him? You constantly say, that a man is in disgrace, when he is no longer permitted to appear before the master; and you pretend to persuade us that you love your brother, and that no rancour remains in your heart against him, while his sole presence displeases and irritates you.
And what less equivocal mark can be given of animosity against your brother, than that of being unable to endure his presence? It is the very extreme of hatred and of rancour. For many settled hatreds exist, which yet are kept under a kind of check; are, as far as possible, concealed, and even borrow the outward semblance of friendship and of decency; and, though unable to reconcile the heart to duty, yet have sufficient command over themselves, to preserve appearances to the world. But your hatred is beyond all restraint; it knows neither prudence, caution, nor decency; and you pretend to persuade us that it is now no more! you still show the most violent proofs of animosity, and even these you would have us to consider as the indubitable signs of a Christian and sincere love!
But, besides, are Christians made to live estranged, and unconnected with each other? Christians! the members of one body, the children of the same Father, the disciples of the same Master, the inheritors of the same kingdom, the stones of the same building, the particles of the same mass! Christians! the participation of one same spirit, of one same redemption, of one same righteousness! Christians! sprung from one bosom, regenerated in the same water, incorporated in the same church, redeemed by one ransom, — are they made to fly each other, to make a punishment of seeing each other, and to be unable to endure each other? All religion binds, unites us together; the sacraments in which we join, the public prayers and thanksgivings which we sing, the ceremonies of that worship in which we pride ourselves, the assembly of believers at which we assist; all these externals are only symbols of that union which ties us together. All religion itself is but one holy society, a divine communication of prayers, of sacrifices, of works, and of well-doings. Every thing connects and unites us, every thing tends to make, of our brethren and of us, only one family, one body, one heart, and one soul; and you believe that you love your brother, and that you preserve, with respect to him, all the most sacred ties of religion, while you break through even those of society, and that you cannot endure even his presence?
I say much more: how shall you indulge the same hope with him? For, by that common hope, you are eternally to live with him, to make his happiness your own, to be happy with him, to be reunited with him in the bosom of God, and with him to sing the eternal praises of grace. Ah! how could the hope of being for ever united with him be the sweetest consolation of your life, if it appear so desirable to live in separation from him, and if you find even his presence a punishment? Renounce, then, the promises and all the hopes of faith; separate yourself as an accursed from the communion of believers; interdict to yourself the altar and the awful mysteries; banish yourself from the assembly of the holy; no longer come there to offer up your gifts and your prayers, since all these religious duties, supposing you in union with your brother, become derisions if you be not so; depose against you in the face of the altars; and command you to quit the holy assembly as a publican and a sinner.
Perhaps, alarmed at these holy truths, you will finally tell us, that you will so far conquer yourself as to see your brother and to live on good terms with him; that you will not be wanting in civilities; but that, for the rest, you know where to stop, and that he need not reckon much upon your friendship.
You will not be wanting in civilities! And that, my dear hearer, you believe, is to pardon and to be reconciled with your brother, and to love him as yourself? But that charity which the gospel commands is in the heart; it is not a simple decorum, a vain outside, a useless ceremony; it is real feeling, and an active love; it is a sincere tenderness, ever ready to manifest itself in actions. You love as a Jew and as a Pharisee, but you love not as a Christian and as a disciple of Jesus Christ. The law of charity is the law of the heart; it regulates the feelings, changes the inclinations, and pours the oil of peace and of lenity over the wounds of an angry and wounded will; and you turn it into a law wholly external, a Pharisaical and superficial law, which regulates only the outside, which settles only the manners, and is fulfilled by vain appearances.
But you are not commanded that you shall merely refrain from wounding the rules of courtesy, and that you shall pay to your brother all those duties which society naturally imposes; it is the world which prescribes this law; these are its rules and customs: but Jesus Christ commands you to love him; and, while your heart is estranged from him, it is of little importance that you keep up the vain externals of courtesy. You refuse to religion the essential part; and the only difference between you and those sinners who persist in not seeing their brethren, is, that you know how to constrain yourself for the world, and you know not how to thwart yourself for salvation.
And surely, my brethren, if men were united together by the sole ties of society, they no doubt would discharge their duty, by keeping up all the externals of politeness, and by maintaining that mutual commerce of cares, attentions, and courtesies, which constitute, as it were, the whole harmony of the body politic. But we are united together by the sacred and close ties of faith, of hope, of charity, and of religion. In the midst of the world we form a society wholly internal and holy, of which charity is the invisible bond, and altogether distinct from that civil society which legislators have established. Consequently, by fulfilling, with regard to your brethren, the external courtesies, you satisfy the claims which civil society hath upon you, but you do not satisfy those of religion; you disturb not the political order, but you overturn the order of charity; you are a peaceable citizen, but you are not a citizen of heaven; you are a man of the age, but you are not a man of the age to come; the world may acquit you, and demand no more, but what you do is a blank in the sight of God, because you are not in charity; and your condemnation is certain. Come and tell us, after this, that you will not be wanting in decorum, and that religion exacts no more of us. f It exacts, then, only dissimulation, outsides, and vain appearances! It exacts, then, nothing true, nothing real, nothing which changes the heart! And the great precept of charity, which alone gives reality to all our works, would no longer then be but a false pretence and a vain hypocrisy!
And trust not solely to us on this point; consult the public itself. See if, in spite of all the appearances which you still keep up with your brother, it be not an established opinion in the world, that you love him not; and if the world do not act in consequence of that persuasion. See if your creatures, if all who approach and who are attached to you, do not affect to keep at a distance from your brother. See if all those who hate him, or who are in interests opposite to his, do not court your friendship and form closer ties with you, and if all those who are inimical to your brother do not profess themselves your friends. See if those who have favours to expect from you do not begin by forsaking him, and that if they do not think that in so doing they are paying court to you. You see that the wrorld knows you better than you know yourself; that it is not mistaken in your real sentiments; and that in spite of all these vain shows toward your brother, you are actually in hatred and in death, and that in this respect the world itself is of our opinion; that world which, on every other occasion, we have constantly to combat.
Behold in what terminate the greatest part of the reconciliations which are every day made in the world. They once more see each other, but they are not reunited; they promise a mutual friendship, but it is never given; their persons meet, but their hearts are always estranged; and I had reason to say, that the hatreds are unchangeable, and that almost all the reconciliations are mere pretences; that the injury may be forgiven, but that the offender is never loved; that they may cease to treat their brother as an enemy, but that they never regard him as a brother.
And, behold what takes place every day before our eyes. In the world are to be seen public characters, families of illustrious names, who still preserve with each other certain measures of decency, which, indeed, they cannot break through without scandal; yet, nevertheless, live in different interests, in public and avowed sentiments of envy, of jealousy, and of mutual animosity; thwart and do every thing in their power to ruin each other, view each other with the most jealous eyes, and make all their creatures partisans in their resentments and aversions; divide the world, the court, and the city; interest the public in their quarrel, and establish in the world the opinion and the scandal that they hate each other; that they would mutually destroy each other; that they still, it is true, keep up appearances; but that, at bottom, their interests and affections are for ever estranged. Yet, notwithstanding all this, each party lives in a reputation of piety, and of the practice of good works; they have distinguished and highly esteemed confessors; in mutually discharging to each other certain duties, yet living otherwise in a public and avowed hostility, they frequent the sacraments, they are continually in the intercourse of holy things, they coolly approach the altar, they frequently and without scruple present themselves at the penitential tribunal, where, far from confessing their hatred before the Lord, and weeping over the scandal with which it afflicts the people, they make fresh complaints against the enemy; they accuse him, in place of accusing themselves; they make a boast of the vain external duties which they pay to him, and allege them as marks of the heart not being rancorous. What shall I say? And the very ministers of penitence, who should have been the judges of our hatred, frequently become its apologists, adopt a party with the public, enter into all the animosity and prejudices of their penitents, proclaim the justice of their quarrel, and are the cause that the only remedy destined to strike at the root of the evil, answers no other purpose than that of decorating it with the appearance of godliness, and of rendering it more incurable.
Great God! thou alone canst close the wounds which a proud sensibility hath made in my heart, by nourishing unreasonable and iniquitous hatreds which have corrupted it in thy sight. Enable me to forget fleeting and momentary injuries, in order that thou mayest forget the crimes of my whole life. Is it for me, O my God! to be so feeling and so inexorable to the slightest insults, I who have such necessity for thy mercy and indulgence? Are the injuries of which I complain to be compared with those with which I have a thousand times dishonoured thy supreme grandeur? Must the worm of the earth be irritated and inflamed at the smallest marks of disdain, while thy Sovereign Majesty hath so long, and with so much goodness, endured his rebellions and his offences?
Who am I, to be so keen upon the interests of my glory; I who dare not in thy presence cast mine eyes upon my secret ignominy; I who deserve to be the reproach of men, and the outcast of my people; I who have nothing praiseworthy, according even to the world, but the good fortune of having concealed from it my infamies and my weaknesses; I to whom the most biting reproaches would still be too gentle, and would treat me with too much indulgence; I, in a word, who have no salvation now to hope, if thou forget not thine own glory, which I have so often insulted?
But no, great God! thy glory is in pardoning the sinner, and mine shall be in forgiving my brother. Accept, O Lord, this sacrifice which I make to thee of my resentments. Estimate not its value by the puerility and the slightness of the injuries which I forget, but by that pride which had magnified them, and had rendered me so feeling to them. And seeing thou hast promised to forgive us our trespasses whenever we shall have forgiven the trespasses of our brethren, fulfil, O Lord, thy promises. It is in this hope that I presume to reckon upon thine eternal mercies.