A
 
 L I E) RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N 1 VERSITY 
 Of ILLl NOIS

 
 u 
 
 TAUGHT OF GOD TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 ^ Sermon 
 
 Preached at Westminster Abbey, on Sunday Afternoon, 
 May 7th, 1899, by the 
 
 REV. J. ARMITAGE ROBINSON, D.D., 
 
 Canon in Residence. 
 
 " Bujt as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you : for ye 
 yourselves are taught of God to love one another." — 1 T/iess. iv., 9. 
 
 " ri "TAUGHT of God to love one another." It was a new 
 I lesson. The old world had nothing to shew that was 
 
 like it. A little society of men and wpmen in a Greek city 
 
 under the Roman rule, sending a conti'ibution to those who were 
 . poorer than themselves in other Greek cities some thirty or 
 . forty miles away. No natural bond of common civic interests 
 
 or of per.sonal friendship stimulated their liberality. A 3'ear 
 ,;• ago, perhaps, they would have regarded these very persons as 
 
 their rivals, or else as mere strangers with no kind of claim on 
 . them. But now a "brotherly love" had sprung up between 
 . them. They were " taught of God to love one another." 
 
 How had this been brought about ? To answer the question 
 • you need to read the earliest book contained in the Ne\y; Testa- 
 
 ,ment-rrthe first of the letters of St. Paul which has been preserved 
 
 to ,us, written about the year 52 a.d., twenty years only after the 
 
 Resurrection of our Lord. 
 J. ; . , We lose very much in the present day by not reading books 
 
 of the Bible straight through atone sitting. Some of us go to 
 
 the Bible for texts and mottoes. We mark our favourite passages, 
 , and return upon them again and again. Or we read single 
 
 ly
 
 SKRMON. 
 
 chapters, perhaps as a kind of duty, and feel a sort of relief when 
 we come to the last verse. 
 
 We treat no other book like this. If we sit down for twenty 
 minutes with an author, we do not pick a passage here and there : 
 we generally read continuously at least for five or six pages. If 
 it be only a magazine article, we try to catch the drift of the 
 whole. 
 
 Now in twenty minutes you may read St. Paul's First Epistle 
 to the Thessalonians ; and five minutes more will give you St. 
 Luke's account of St. PauFs first visit to Thessalonica in the 
 Seventeenth Chapter of the Acts. If you read this in a straight- 
 forward and intelligent way, you will be able in less than half-an- 
 hour to get some notion of what a mighty new power had come 
 into the world. You will make the acquaintance of a great 
 teacher, vehement, aflectionate, trustful, hopeful, self-sacrificing, 
 and so irresistible. You will learn to know one of the very 
 earliest of European Churches; you will seem to see the A^ery 
 men and women, to share their difieulties, their bereavements, 
 their hopes, their enthusiasms : and you will understand to some 
 extent how St. Paul could say to them, "as touching brotherly 
 love ye need not that I should write to you : for ye yourselves 
 are taught of God to love one another : and indeed ye do it 
 toward all the brethren that are in Macedonia.^' 
 
 I must leave you to trace the story for yourselves, and only 
 comment on these few words which we have read together in our 
 Second Lesson for this afternoon. 
 
 And first I would have you note that this " brotherly love," 
 this love of brother for brother within the little community, this 
 mutual helpfulness, or fellowship, as it was sometimes called, 
 was the first note of the primitive Christian Society. 
 
 This was so, because that Society was formed with the special 
 
 purpose of continuing in the world the life of Christ. Christ's 
 
 life was pre-eminently a life of helpfulness. " The Son of Man,^' 
 
 he said of Himself in most wonderful words, "came not to be 
 
 20 
 
 <^}
 
 TAUGHT OF GOD TO LOVK ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 ministered unto, but to minister " — not to be served, but to 
 serve — or, as the parallel passage in St. Luke's Gospel justifies 
 us in putting it still more plainly, — not to be waited on, but to 
 wait upon others. That was the ideal of true human life which 
 He proclaimed both by word and by deed. 
 
 And this life of His was not lost to the world when He 
 ascended into Heaven. On the contrary it was expanded into 
 the life of a Society, created expressly to represent Him on earth 
 and reproduce His service of others on a larger scale and in an 
 abiding form. It was to grow and grow till it had covered the 
 world and had absorbed into the life of service the whole of our 
 humanity, making it all One Man in Christ. In this way, as St. 
 Paul said, the Church was " the fulfilment of the Christ " (Eph. 
 i.,23). 
 
 See how it began. The little brotherhood in Jerusalem, we 
 read, " continued in the fellowship," or " community.^' " They 
 had all things common : and sold their possessions and goods, 
 and parted them to all, as every man had need." And again, 
 ** the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of 
 one soul ; neither said any of them that ought of the things that 
 he possessed was his own." Each gave what he gave, or held 
 what he held, for the common good. 
 
 They were " of one heart and of one soul " : that is, they all 
 formed One Man with only *' one heart " and " one soul " between 
 them. And this One Man reproduced the life of Christ in Jeru- 
 salem — the life of service, of helpfulness, of love. They were (as 
 St. Paul here says) '^taught of God to love one another." 
 
 A little later on we discover that this Society was in great 
 trouble. They had been persecuted, and perhaps that partly 
 explains why they were not joined by more rich people. 
 Besides this, a famine had come on. Their funds were exhausted. 
 They were in great poverty. 
 
 But meanwhile a good deal had occurred. Other little 
 Societies on the same model had sprung up in distant lauds. 
 21
 
 PVl*)-*' 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 They were not Jewish, like the first Society. Most of their mem- ' 
 bers had come from Heathenism direct to Christianity without 
 passing through Judaism on the way. And the original Jewish 
 Society doubted their orthodoxy, and was inclined to tell them 
 that they still must be circumcised, or they could have no part 
 in Christ, who was a Jew aiid the long-expected Messiah of the 
 Jews. 
 
 St. Paul who had founded these new Societies believed that 
 they were absolutely on the same level with the original Society 
 in Jerusalem : that they were simply part of the One Society, 
 ,only divided by distance. The only division St. Paul knew of 
 in the Church was the division of geography. All of them, to- 
 gether with Christ, made up One Man : for they were the Body 
 of Christ which fulfilled Him and carried on His life in the 
 world. 
 
 The same note of fellowship or brotherliness prevailed in 
 there far-off Gentile societies. They too had been " taught of 
 God to love one another " ; and indeed they did it. Just as one 
 individual had been giving help to another individual in Jerusalem 
 at the outset, so one little society had been giving help to another 
 society in Greece. It was just the same Christ-life which was 
 being lived. 
 
 And so St. Paul saw in the poverty at Jerusalem a great 
 opportunity of proving that, in spite of grave difierences of opinion, 
 the Church was but One Man. He started a large scheme of 
 relief for the Jerusalem poor among his Greek Churches. If the 
 Greek Churches would contribute, and the Jewish Christians 
 receive the contributions, a link of true fellowship would have 
 been forged — the bond of love uniting those who held difierent 
 views, but all belonged to one Church — the " one spirit " of help- 
 fulness prevailing to weld the whole together in unity and peace. 
 
 And they did it. The Gentile Christians made collections 
 Sunday after Sunday for some months, and the Jewish Christians 
 were induced by St. Paul to' accept the token of their love: the 
 22
 
 TAUGHT OF GOD TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 threatened division was averted ; and the Christian Church was 
 shewn to be One in all parts of the world. Love prevailed. 
 They had been " taught of God to love one another.'^ 
 
 It was not a mere sentiment^ like the " spirit of unity " of 
 which men talk so glibly to-day, and which, oddly enough, is 
 supposed to be compatible with a number of rival Churches com- 
 peting with one another. 
 
 Oh, heart of St. Paul ! Oh, heart of Christ ! how must ye 
 bleed to look upon our broken Christianity, which calls it " love " 
 and " unity'' to be content to be so shattered into fragments ! 
 
 No : it was not a sentiment of love : it was actual helpfulness, 
 literal sharing, true fellowship. They had been " taught of God 
 to love one another " ; and indeed they did it. 
 
 The world saw what it had never seen before. " See how 
 these Christians love one another," they exclaimed. 
 
 The world saw and shuddered. A society like this, witTi 
 ramifications all over the Empire, bound by these ties of mutual 
 support, its members ready to do or suffer anything for each other, 
 what could it not accomplish ? Its power was omnipotent : nothing 
 could stand against it, unless it could be crushed in its youth. 
 
 The world tried to crush it : by fire and sword. But " the 
 blood of the Martyrs was the seed of the Church." The more 
 they trod on it, the stronger it grew ; till it claimed under Con- 
 stantino to be recognized as the only true religion of the Empire 
 itself. 
 
 A little later, Julian, who had been trained as a Christian, 
 but afterwards endeavoured to resuscitate the old Roman relieion, 
 and therefore was called the Apostate, knowing the secret of the 
 strength of Christianity endeavoured to defeat it by copying it. 
 
 " It is a shame/' he says in one of his letters, " that hospitals 
 and helps to the poor should only be found among the Galileans 
 (as he called them) ." He made subsidies for these things, and 
 ordered them to be established in the name of Heathenism, as a 
 counterpoise to the Christian Church. But the spirit of follow- 
 23
 
 SERMON. 
 
 sliip could not be created by Imperial edicts, any more than it 
 can be to-day by Act of Parliament. The world could only be 
 One Man in Christ : and Julian miserably failed. " Galilean, 
 Thou hast conquered I " he was reported to have said with his 
 last breath. The fact was true, whether the story be historical 
 or not. The love of Christ reproduced in the Church, His Body 
 and His folfilment, was divinely strong. They had been "taught 
 of God to love one another. '' Brethren, if the purpose of God 
 for the world through the Church had not been hampered and 
 thwarted, and thrown back by human fraility and the wiles of 
 the devil, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, in which 
 we still say that we believe, must have proved irresistible. Two 
 thousand years would have been more than enough to win the 
 world for Christ. 
 
 But yon know the sad story. The devil— the great Divider — 
 foiled in his attack from outside, succeeded in producing internal 
 division. 
 
 He split the Church into Arian and Orthodox ; he split it 
 again into Eastern and Western : he has split it again, and again, 
 and again : till 
 
 ' ' A thousand sects contend 
 
 Which can prove itself most blind, 
 And the least of God's light blend, 
 
 With the dusk of the human mind : 
 And Jew and Gentile remain, 
 
 And the Mantle of Christ is rent, 
 And faith can scarce bear the strain 
 Of its life-long punishment." 
 And the worst of all is that we do not see the sin of it : but, as 
 it is written, "My people love to have it so.^' 
 
 No wonder that so many honest, earnest men treat Christ as 
 dead, when Christians have forgotten what the Gospel is, and 
 the Church as a whole has lost sight of the very meaning of her 
 existence. No wonder that their social schemes leave out His 
 name. 
 
 24
 
 TAUOHT OF GOD TO LOVE ONE ANOTHEK. 
 
 You are some of you reading a book called " No. 5^ John 
 Street." It is a contrast between life in a West-End slum and 
 the life of West-End luxury. We need not tfouble ourselves to 
 identify John Street : we can find its counterpart only a few 
 steps outside this Abbey. 
 
 The writer somewhat wilfully leaves out of sight all but the 
 two extremes of society on which he concentrates his interest. 
 He writes as if the solid mass of middle-class England, with its 
 somewhat hum-drum virtues, which are the basis on v/hich the 
 fabric of the nation is built up, had no existence at all : as though 
 there were only very rich and very poor, living side by side : as 
 though the poor were all interesting, and the rich all frivolous. 
 But yet he sees what he sees with unusually clear vision : and his 
 contrasts emphasize his message. He has seen the natural 
 courtesy of the unkempt denizen of the slums : the tender heart 
 under the fierce exterior of those whose whole life is a fight for 
 bread. He has seen the brutality of the money-maker who is 
 trampling human lives on the road to his peerage : the hollow 
 sentimentality that feels the brotherhood of man, " especially 
 after the park gates are closed " : the sham solemnities of the 
 new London religions, with their pleasing disciplines for the 
 cultivated few. 
 
 He leaves much out of sight : but he sees what he sees : and 
 he is amazed and horrified : and he cries /or a Redemption. His 
 epilogue is Christianity without the name. It could not have 
 been written if Christianity had never been ; though he writes as 
 if he were wholly unconscious of what Christianity is. 
 
 He cries for a Prophet to proclaim the truth of Brotherhood. 
 He cries for a Church to realize Brotherhood in a visible and 
 tangible form. Has he never read the Gospel ? Has he never 
 read the Acts of the Apostles ? Has he never read St. Paul ? Has 
 he never seen that the Prophet and the Church, and the philosophy 
 of both, fill the pages of the New Testament ? 
 
 25
 
 SERMON. 
 
 ,;;,, Do uot mistake rae. I have not one word of censure, except 
 '..,,, for ourselves. 
 
 Where is that which should bave rendered such failure of 
 ... ,.,yi8ion impossible ? The One Body, animated by the One Spirit. 
 God's One Man, the continued Incarnation of the Christ ? The 
 unity of that Brotherhood for which Christ prayed, " that they 
 all may be one, that the world may know ? " What has become 
 of th^t Society of which Sc. Paul could say "As touching brotherly 
 love ye have no need that I should write unto you ; for ye your- 
 selves have been taught of God to love one another ? " O prayer 
 ., of Christ ! confidence of Paul ! Is this the nineteenth century 
 .^j^pf Christianity ? 
 
 . . : Read the book, brethren, to learn what some life — perhaps 
 
 ;,-, very much of life — in our London, in our own Westminster, is 
 
 .. .like. Read it to learn why men and women drink, why men and 
 
 .women fall, why indifference is criminal, why luxuriousness is sin. 
 
 .., But read it with the assurance that the Church is not lost : 
 
 ^ that self-sacrificing men and women are moving in and out of all the 
 
 . iinisery, living the Christ-life, feeding the hungry, comforting the 
 
 sorrowful, lifting the fallen. Read it in the conviction that the 
 
 Purpose of God never falters nor fails — His Purpose, which is 
 
 to sum up all persons and all things in Christ. Yea " though 
 
 the vision tarry, wait for it ; for it will surely come, it will not 
 
 ;.;|l}arry." Righteousness is stronger than sin — yes, in our England 
 
 to-day — self-sacrifice is stronger than money-getting, love is 
 
 stronger than selfishness, life is stronger than all the forms of 
 
 death. 
 
 .!:-.,..,4f' Though the vision tarry, wait for it" — wait for it: but also 
 
 ■ ..work for it. 
 
 Go yourselves and learn what overcrowded life is like : you 
 have not far to go. 
 
 Go and learn what Christian agencies are doing to save lost 
 bodies and souls : for this too you have not very far 
 
 to go. 
 
 26
 
 TAUGHT OP GOD TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 rollow up tlae work that is being- clone by the Bisliop of Lon- 
 don's Fund, fox* which we plead to-day. Only know about it, 
 and you will unfailingly support it : you will yearn to bear your 
 share of the burden : for you will be inspired with a new hope 
 for man. 
 
 I said that St. Paul found in practical acts of love the bond 
 that could bind and hold in one those who differed widely on 
 important points of faith and conduct. We are now told that the 
 troubles which vex the Church to-day will seriously diminish the 
 offerings to the Bishop of London^s Fund for providing spiritual 
 aids for necessitous districts. No ! not if we are " taught of God 
 to love one another " through all our divergencies of opinion. 
 
 Brethren, the traditions of this Abbey embolden me to call 
 on you to give the lie to this mischievous and hateful prophecy 
 Here at least partizanship cools, and the broader sympathies pre- 
 vail. This is no atmosphere for strife to live in. 
 
 Nay rather, with St. Paul, let us find here our reconciliation 
 in acts of love. Let us rise above our necessary differences to 
 devote our alms to God and His Church. 
 
 In spite of all appearances I believe that unity is a growing 
 factor in the English Church to-day. I am certain we are nearer 
 to it than we were. "Prophet eyes may catch a glory slowly 
 gaiuiug on the shade." Let us strain our 'eyes in the direction of 
 God's Purpose. " Though the vision tarry, wait for it." 
 
 Oh, my Mother Church, disobeyed and mistrusted by some of 
 thy sons, slandered and howled at by thy enemies, what aileth 
 thee, my Mother ? 
 
 Is it that thou liast forgotten the Gospel of the Crucified, the 
 Gospel of self-sacrifice and the service of others ? That thou hast 
 not taught thy children love 'i Turbulence hath entered in 
 among them, and violent men drag thee both this way and that. 
 And thou must needs cry out and say " The Lord hath delivered 
 me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand. The 
 Lord hath set at naught all my mighty men in the midst of me. 
 27
 
 SERMON. 
 
 He hath called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young' 
 men. For these things I weep : mine eye, mine eye runneth 
 down with water." 
 
 Yea, " all that pass by clap their hands at thee : they hiss and 
 wag their head at the daughter of Judah, saying, Is this the city 
 that men called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole 
 earth ? '' 
 
 Yet, oh my Mother, the spouse of Christ, fear not. '' Thy 
 Maker is thy Husband, the Lord of Hosts is His name.'' Thus 
 saith the Lord : " For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but 
 with great mercies will I gather Thee. thou afflicted, tossed 
 with tempest, and not comforted, behold I will set thy stones with 
 fair colours and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And all thy 
 childi'en shall be taught of God : and great shall be the peace of 
 thy children." 
 
 "All thy children shall be taught of Ciod" — " taught of God 
 to love one another." 
 
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