On Loving Our Neighbor — and Ourselves (Rewritten)

We now turn to a topic that naturally follows from the previous post: love for our neighbor, and more broadly, love for all created beings. The central idea is this: if our love for God is pure, unselfish, and rightly placed above everything else, then every other form of love will fall into its proper place beneath it. 

When we love God in the highest and fullest sense, all other loves become secondary and take their direction from that primary love. In that case, we come to share God’s own way of loving. We begin to care about what God cares about. Our love flows along the same path as God's love. Whatever God values — whether great or small, material or spiritual — will matter to us in proportion to how well we perceive it and how capable we are of loving it.

Christian Benevolence

"Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto  him  that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do  thou  likewise."  Luke  x.  36, 37.

Who is my NEIGHBOR? 'Tis not merely he,
Who hung upon the same loved mother's breast;
But every one, whoever he may be,
On whom the image of a man's imprest.
True Christian sympathy was ne'er designed
To be shut up within a narrow bound;
But sweeps abroad, and in its search to find
Objects of mercy, goes the whole world round.
'Tis like the sun, rejoicing east and west,
Or beautiful rainbow, bright from south to north;
It has an angel's pinion, mounting forth
O'er rocks, and hills, and seas, to make men blest.
No matter what their color, name, or place,
It blesses all alike, the universal race.

— American Cottage Life (1850) XVI.

Practical Guidelines for Conversation

We proceed to make a few brief practical remarks.

We should make it a general rule to avoid expressing ourselves in a very emphatic and passionate manner, and with a high tone of voice.  It is well understood, that such a method of outward expression reacts upon the mind, and has a tendency to produce an excited and inordinate state of the feelings within. And besides, it is generally unpleasant and unprofitable to the hearers. It will be noticed, that we are not speaking here of public occasions, in respect to which the rule must be adopted with its appropriate restrictions, but of conversation. And I think we may profitably add here, that the rule is capable of some extension. A truly consecrated person will not only be characterized by quietness of manner, so far as words and voice are concerned; but also in other outward respects.  His  countenance, his action, his general movement will be pervaded, in a great measure, by the same beautiful and Christ-like trait.

Injurious Conversation

It is almost impossible to speak much, without saying that which is positively injurious, as well as unprofitable.  It would be unreasonable to expect to indulge freely in conversation with others, in the manner in which men commonly do, without conforming, in part at least, to their own views and terms of social intercourse. In other words, we seem to be under the necessity of sympathizing, to some extent, with their trains of thought and experience; and are not at liberty wholly to reject subjects, which are pleasing to them. And who does not know, that, acting on this view, we are often introduced to various topics, which, both in their nature and tendency, are exceedingly remote from a religious and edifying character. How large a portion, for instance, of the conversation of the great mass of mankind is taken up with censorious and unfavorable comments on the conduct of their neighbors. How much there is of expressed or hinted suspicion! How much of back-biting and slander! Now, if we would not be accessory to sins of this kind, we must learn the difficult art of controlling the tongue, and of forming habits of conscientious silence.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 2, Chapter 8.

Frivolous and Useless Conversation

A great freedom in the use of the tongue, an incontinence of speech, if we may so express it, necessarily involves a loss of time.

When people meet together, as they generally do, without recollection in God, how many things are said, which are obviously unprofitable; but which, nevertheless, do not occupy less time, on account of their inutility. It was one of the rules of conduct, laid down by that devoted servant of God, Herman Franke, "not to make the things of this world a subject of conversation, except when God may be honored, or good done to our neighbor thereby." The application of some rule of this kind to the conversation of the great mass of Christians, would undoubtedly show, that much of it neither honors God nor benefits their neighbor; and that, consequently, the precious time, which it requires, is lost. But he, who is fully resolved to walk in holiness before the Lord, cannot deliberately waste his time. It is a precious deposit, which his heavenly Father has committed to his trust; and for which he is responsible. We repeat, therefore, that a holy person cannot deliberately waste it; and consequently he will feel constrained by the most serious reasons, to refrain from frivolous and useless conversation.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 2, Chapter 8.

End the War with Providence

Man is at war with Providence (there are exceptions, it is true, but not enough to reverse, or to modify essentially the assertion). "All seek their own," says the apostle, "not the things which are Jesus Christ.”

In this state of things it is obviously impossible that there should be peace or happiness. The divine harmony is broken. Man, in being by his selfishness antagonistical to God and God's arrangements, is necessarily antagonistical to his neighbor. Place is at war with place, and feeling with feeling. Judgment is arrayed against judgment, because false and conflicting judgments necessarily grow out of the soil of perverted affections. On every side are the outcries of passion, the competitions of interest, and the crush of broken hearts.

Shall it always be so? The remedy, and the only remedy, is an adherence to the law of Providence. Renounce man's wisdom, and seek that of God. Subject the human to the divine. Harmonize the imperfect thoughts and purposes of the creature with the wisdom of the Eternal Will. Let the clamors of nature cease, that the still small voice of the Godhead may speak in the soul. Go where God may lead thee.

When this shall be the general disposition, when all shall cease to seek their own, and shall begin to seek the things which are Christ's, when man's life shall be again engrafted on the Universal Life, then will the Law of Providence universally take effect, and God will reign among men.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 9.

Providence and Peace

If the law of Providence were strictly fulfilled, it is obvious that order would at once exist throughout the world. The reign of harmony, which poets have dreamed and prophets have predicted, would from that moment commence. Every man would not only be in his place, but, what is more, he would be contented with his place. It would not be the order of tyranny, but the order of benevolent wisdom. It would not be the harmony of force, but the harmony resulting from a common faith in a common Father.

The first development, under the strict fulfillment of the law of Providence, would be order and harmony of position. And this would be attended with harmony of feeling. As each one would be in his place, so each would be satisfied with his place, without being more satisfied with his own place than with that of his neighbor. In looking at the great frame-work of society, all would recognize the necessity of the parts to the completion and symmetry of the whole. As each would have his place, with no rebellion of the foot against the hand, nor of the hand against the head; so there would be no feelings of distrust and envy. How could there be rivalries, how could there be distrust or envy, when each, in being contented with the divine arrangements, would of course be satisfied with that position which those arrangements had assigned him? The fact of the divine choice, especially when taken in connection with the imperfections of human wisdom, would far more than counterbalance all incidental evils; so much so, that want and sneering, attended with God's choice and favor, would be regarded as infinitely preferable to riches and pleasure without them.

The cessation of personal and social rivalries would involve that of nations; or, at least, the same divine law, which operated to secure the one, would not fail to bring about the other. Persons and neighborhoods would be at peace. Nations would be at peace also. There is a locality, a rank, a duty of nations, as well as of individuals. If each would take the position, and fully the duty, which the law of Providence indicates to them, national rivalries would cease, because the occasions of such rivalries would no longer exist; and the God of the individual man, and of the domestic hearth, and of social institutions and unions, would be the God of empires. The law of Providence, harmonizing the relations of states, as it does those of individuals and small communities, would constitute a family of nations, and war would be known no longer.

— from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851), Part 6, Chapter 9.

Love to our Neighbor and to All Beings

We proceed now to the consideration ... of love to our neighbor, and of created and inferior beings in general. And the first proposition, which we lay down is this. If our love to God be disinterested and pure, and at the same time exist in a degree suitable to the object, viz. in the highest degree, then all other love, and the love of all other creatures will be entirely subordinate to this, and will exist only in relation to it. If we possess pure and perfect love to God, we shall perfectly sympathize with Him in his love towards whatever He has made; and shall, according to our capacity, love just as He does. Our love will naturally, and perhaps we may say of necessity, flow in the same channel. And whatever things He takes an interest in, whether material or immaterial, whether of greater or less consequence, will possess precisely the same interest for us, so far as we possess an equal knowledge of their nature and an equal capacity of love. The devout recollection of the great Architect will impart a degree of sacredness and value to whatever is the work of his hands. In his woods, his rivers, his mountains, his burnished sky and his boundless ocean, we shall see the indistinct reflection of himself, and join to our perception of beauty in the object a still higher admiration of the wisdom and goodness of its Maker. We shall recognize in the birds of the air, in the cattle of the verdant hills, and even in the heedless insect that hums around our path, the agency of Him, who doeth all things well. And we shall feel here, as in other things, that we can never be indifferent to any thing, which our Heavenly Father has made and takes an interest in.

As we rise in the scale of beings to those, which have a rational and moral nature, to those, who are kindred in race and are perhaps kindred by the nearer relationship of family ties, we shall experience the exercise of love on the same principle. We do not deny, that we shall be susceptible of a natural love. We know that we shall be. But what we mean to say is, that our love, whether purely natural and founded on the relations we sustain to the object, or whether an acquired love and resting wholly upon the deliberate perception of its amiable qualities, will be perfectly subordinate to the love of God and will be regulated by it. It  would perhaps be a concise expression of the fact to say, whatever specific modifications our love may assume under the operation of natural causes, that we shall love all things IN AND FOR GOD. And if we are required in the first instance to love God with ALL our heart, it does not clearly appear when we fulfill the divine requisition, how we can love our neighbor or anything else in any other way than this.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 13.