OUR LORD'S PHILOSOPHY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

OUR LORD'S PHILOSOPHY.

CHALLENGE TO ARROGANCE.

This extract is taken from a sermon on the criticism of our Lord, recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel: ""This Man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." The preacher ■was Dr. Archibald Fleming, of St. Columba's (Church of Scotland), London.

We all know of estimable people who would not think of meeting on friendly terms with a Labour leader. \\ e also know of democratic zealots who have nothing but unpleasant names for capitalists, or the Dourgeois stratum of society, and who see no sense in anything but hatred to the marrow, battle to the knife, and everywhere and always the class war. There are examples of tho like prejudice as between nations and nationals. One knows men and women who do not like Americans and can hardly speak civilly of or to them; and there are plenty in Chicago capable of returning the compliment. The Gentile loathing of the Jew has ended in bloody pograins; and the attitude of Shylock as Shakespeare defines it shows how the curse comes home to roost.

All the miserable arrogances, and contempts of caste—of tho labourer toward the blackcoat, or of the civil servant to the domestic servant; the cruel haughtiness and aloofness of a vice-regal or official or military set to the lowly and lonely members of a secretariat they are all instances of the contemptuous or spiteful spirit in which the words of our text were spoken two thousand years ago. This woman h<ut a lonelv typist to dinner; a President's lady had the wife of a negro delegate to tea; this collier or workman touched his cap to parson, laird or squire—it is the same jibe differently expressed, in different circumstances down the ages; the snobbery which, in society, is odious and fertile of strife; and which, internationally, leads to horrible estrangements and bloody wars.

Breaking Down Prejudice. Now, our Lord made it no small part of His Business in the world to break down this abominable spirit. He deliberately made His own conduct eccentric and anomalous, in order to challenge the spirit of arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority of which He saw so much both in the secular and the religious world. He said in effect —Tim is a brother, this is a sister. You may be right or wrong in considering either to be an erring brother or an erring sister. That is as it may be; but brother or sister each of them is, all the same.

You may liko foreigners or you may not; and they may or may not like you. But God put you both in the same world; God has no respect of persons as between you; you have got to get on with one another in His world as best you can; and to feed bad blood, or cherish mutual contempt, is a crime that family spirit which is the root idea of our Lord's philosophy of life. One important test of the extent to which Christianity is making headway in the world is just that of finding out whether classes and nations are getting together, instead of bickering, suspecting and hating and drifting apart. Suspicions Melt Away.

You will find that attempts to understand one another have often met with an astonishingly rapid and rich reward. Unfounded suspicions melt away. Charity takes the place of intolerance. Angles are rubbed off,, not by violent collision, but by an infinity of gentle contacts. What good qualities we each may have tend to shame the bad qualities of the other out of existence. We begin by thinking, each of the other, that we are receiving a sinner and eating with him. We end by discovering that the sinner in each is hiding his head, and the better man or woman is what remains.