Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 045.djvu/224

208 natural effect is produced by its cause, it is generated and entailed upon us by the love which our friends bear towards us. It comes upon us unsought. It costs us nothing. No thanks to us for entertaining it. It is, in every sense of the word, a passion; that is to say, nothing of an active character mingles with the modification into which we have been moulded. And hence, in harbouring such love, we make no approach towards rising into the dignity of free and moral beings.

But the character and groundwork of the other species of love—of our love, namely, of our enemies, is widely different from this. Let us ask what is the exact meaning of the precept: "Love your enemies?" Does it mean, love them with a natural love—love them as you love your friends? Does it mean, make your love spring up towards those that hate you, just in the same way, and by the same natural process as it springs up towards those that love you? If it means this, then, we are bold enough to say, that it plainly and palpably inculcates an impracticability; for we are sure that no man can love his enemies with the same direct natural love as he loves his friends withal; if he ever does love them, it can only be after he has passed himself through some intermediate act which is not to be found in the natural emotion of love. Besides, in reducing this kind of love to the level of a natural feeling, it would be left as completely stripped of its character of morality as the other species is. But Christianity does not degrade this kind of love to the level of a passion, neither does it in this, or in any other case, inculcate an impracticable act or condition of humanity. What, then, is the meaning of the precept—Love your enemies? What sort of practice or discipline does this text, in the first instance at least, enforce? What but this? act against your natural hatred of them—resist the anger you naturally entertain towards them—quell and subjugate the boiling indignation of your heart. Whatever subsequent progress a man may make, under the assistance of divine grace, towards entertaining a positive love of his enemies, this negative step must unquestionably take the precedence: and most assuredly such assistance will not be vouchsafed to him, unless he first of all take the initiative by putting forth this act of resistance against that derivative modification of his heart, which, in the shape of hatred, springs up within him under the breath of injury and injustice, just as naturally as noxious reptiles are generated amid the foul air of a charnel-house.

The groundwork, then, of our love of our enemies, the feature which principally characterises it, and the condition which renders it practicable, is an act of resistance exerted against our natural hatred of them; and this it is which gives to that kind of love its moral complexion. Thus, we see that this kind of love, so far from arising out of the cherishing or entertaining of a natural passion, does, on the contrary, owe its being to the sacrifice of one of the strongest passive modifications of our nature: and we will venture to affirm, that, without this sacrificial act, the love of our enemies is neither practicable nor conceivable: and if this act does not embody the whole of such love, it at any rate forms a very important element in its composition. In virtue of the tone and active character given to it by this element, the love of our enemies may be called moral love, in contradistinction to the love of our friends, which, on account of its purely passive character, we have called natural love.

And let it not be thought that this act is one of inconsiderable moment. It is, indeed, a mighty act, in the putting forth of which man is in nowise passive. In this act, he directly thwarts, mortifies, and sacrifices, one of the strongest susceptibilities of his nature. He transacts it in the freedom of an original activity, and, most assuredly, nature lends him no helping hand towards its performance. On the contrary, she endeavours to obstruct it by every means in her power. The voice of human nature cries—"By all means, trample your enemies beneath your feet.' "No," says the Gospel of Christ, "rather tread down into the dust that hatred which impels you to crush them."

But now comes another question: What is it that, in this instance, gives a supreme and irreversible sanction to the voice of the Gospel, rendering this resistance of our natural hatred of our enemies right, and our non-resistance of that hatred wrong?

We have but to admit that freedom, or, in other words, emancipation