Whatever be the explanation of the charity, it may efface all usual human barriers.165
Here, for instance, is an example of Christian nonresistance from Richard Weaver’s autobiography. Weaver was a collier, a semiprofessional pugilist in his younger days, who became a much beloved evangelist. Fighting, after drinking, seems to have been the sin to which he originally felt his flesh most perversely inclined. After his first conversion he had a backsliding, which consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl. Feeling that, having once fallen, he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he got drunk and went and broke the jaw of another man who had lately challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusing as a Christian man;—I mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of heart is implied in the later conduct which he describes as follows:—
“I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow-workman was trying to take the wagon from him by force. I said to him:—
“ ‘Tom, you mustn’t take that wagon.’
“He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told him that God did not tell me to let him rob me. He cursed again, and said he would push the wagon over me.
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let us see whether the devil and thee are stronger than the Lord and me.’
“And the Lord and I proving stronger than the devil and he, he had to get out of the way, or the wagon would have gone over him. So I gave the wagon to the boy. Then said Tom:—
“ ‘I’ve a good mind to smack thee on the face.’
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if that will do thee any good, thou canst do it.’ So he struck me on the face.
“I turned the other cheek to him, and said, ‘Strike again.’
“He struck again and again, till he had struck me five times. I turned my cheek for the sixth stroke; but he turned away cursing. I shouted after him: ‘The Lord forgive thee, for I do, and the Lord save thee.’
“This was on a Saturday; and when I went home from the coal-pit my wife saw my face was swollen, and asked what was the matter with it. I said: ‘I’ve been fighting, and I’ve given a man a good thrashing.’
“She burst out weeping, and said, ‘O Richard, what made you fight?’ Then I told her all about it; and she thanked the Lord I had not struck back.
“But the Lord had struck, and his blows have more effect than man’s. Monday came. The devil began to tempt me, saying: ‘The other men will laugh at thee for allowing Tom to treat thee as he did on Saturday.’ I cried, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan;’—and went on my way to the coal-pit.
“Tom was the first man I saw. I said ‘Good morning,’ but got no reply.
“He went down first. When I got down, I was surprised to see him sitting on the wagon-road waiting for me. When I came to him he burst into tears and said: ‘Richard, will you forgive me for striking you?’
“ ‘I have forgiven thee,’ said I; ‘ask God to forgive thee. The Lord bless thee.’ I gave him my hand, and we went each to his work.”166
“Love your enemies!” Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your friends, but your enemies, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused? If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of other men, and there is no saying, in the absence of positive experience of an authentic kind—for there are few active examples in our scriptures, and the Buddhistic examples are legendary,167—what the effects might be: they might conceivably transform the world.
Psychologically and in principle, the precept “Love your enemies” is not self-contradictory. It is merely the extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance of our oppressors, we are fairly familiar. Yet if radically followed, it would involve such a breach with our instinctive springs of action as a whole, and with the present world’s arrangements, that a critical point would practically be passed, and we should be born into another kingdom of being. Religious emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be close at hand, within our reach.
The inhibition of instinctive repugnance is proved not only by the showing of love to enemies, but by the showing of it to anyone who is personally loathsome. In the annals of saintliness we find a curious mixture of motives impelling in this direction. Asceticism plays its part; and along with charity pure and simple, we find humility or the desire to disclaim distinction and to grovel on the common level before God. Certainly all three principles were at work when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars. All three are at work when religious persons consecrate their lives to
