Windows of Love

provide a basis for a highly significant curriculum for teaching, as wesaw earlier, but also a basis for true human community andcommunication. Our self-centeredness, however, gives us a natural pullaway from attentiveness. But the Spirit of Christ Who, in drawing us toHim, draws us to one another, will make mutual attentiveness possible sothat two-way communication will become a reality for us.

One current objection to this kind of mutual attentiveness travels undertwo guises: one is the possibility of being offensively nosy andintrusive; the other is the fear of really violating the privacy ofother people. Certainly, privacy should be respected, and we should notforce ourselves upon others, but attentiveness is not intrusiveness.Every human being wants to be known and to know as a person, and in waysthat are both conscious and unconscious. We seek others that we may beknown and may know. Attentiveness is really alertness to the lonely cryof man, and respects rather than violates the individual’s separatenessand sanctity.

_Mutual Respect_

Mutual respect is also a necessary quality in human relations. Respectfor oneself and for others is not as common as one might expect. We findself-concern and some concern for others, but not respect. Respect forothers is hard to maintain if one does not respect oneself, and it isappalling to realize what low estimates many people have of themselves.Although they may disguise from themselves and others their despairabout themselves in many ingenious ways, lack of self-respectnevertheless is characteristic of many people’s self-image. Their viewof themselves results largely from their experiences in relationship,many of which we have already discussed. We may try to prevent thedevelopment of negative attitudes and feelings toward ourselves and ourchildren, but no matter how loving we try to be, we shall inevitablycause some injury, distortion, and deprivation to the maturing person.

What, then, is the answer to this human problem? If the effect ofgrowing up is to produce in us misgivings about ourselves and others,how can we acquire the self-respect and respect for others which isnecessary for those who would truly serve God and man? Since mutualrespect is a necessary condition for creative human relations, it isnecessary that the vicious circle of non-respect be broken by someone.It is at this point that our participation in the re-creating life ofGod in Christ, which is made possible by the presence and work of HisSpirit in us, makes a decisive difference in our self-estimate.

The Incarnation is the affirmation of God’s faith in His creation.Christ is an expression of God’s faith in man and what He is able to dothrough man. The principle of mutuality, which we have been affirming inour present discussion, is true not only for the relation between manand man, but between man and God as well. For the love of God in Christ

Besides, the allegation as it stands is not even a true one. Genius, aswe actually know it, is by no means hereditary. The great man is notnecessarily the son of a great man or the father of a great man: oftenenough, he stands quite isolated, a solitary golden link in a chain ofbaser metal on either side of him. Mr. John Shakespeare woolstapler, ofStratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, was no doubt an eminently respectableperson in his own trade, and he had sufficient intelligence to be mayorof his native town once upon a time: but, so far as is known, none ofhis literary remains are at all equal to _Macbeth_ or _Othello_. ParsonNewton, of the Parish of Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, may have preacheda great many very excellent and convincing discourses, but there is noevidence of any sort that he ever attempted to write the _Principia_._Per contra_ the Miss Miltons, good young ladies that they were (thoughof conflicting memory), do not appear to have differed conspicuously inability from the other Priscillas and Patiences and Mercies amongst whomtheir lot was cast; while the Marlboroughs and the Wellingtons do notseem to bud out spontaneously into great commanders in the secondgeneration. True, there are numerous cases such as that of theHerschels, father and son, or the two Scaligers, or the Caracci, or thePitts, or the Scipios, and a dozen more, where the genius, oncedeveloped, has persisted for two or three, or even four lives: but theseinstances really cast no light at all upon our central problem, which isjust this–How does the genius come in the first place to be developedat all from parents in whom individually no particular genius isultimately to be seen?

Suppose we take, to start with, a race of hunting savages in theearliest, lowest, and most undifferentiated stage, we shall get reallynext to no personal peculiarities or idiosyncrasies of any sort amongstthem. Every one of them will be a good hunter, a good fisherman, a goodscalper and a good manufacturer of bows and arrows. Division of labour,and the other troublesome technicalities of our modern politicaleconomy, are as unknown among such folk as the modern nuisance ofdressing for dinner. Each man performs all the functions of a citizen onhis own account, because there is nobody else to perform them forhim–the medium of exchange known as hard cash has not, so far as he isconcerned, yet been invented; and he performs them well, such as theyare, because he inherits from all his ancestors aptitudes of brain andmuscle in these directions, owing to the simple fact that those amonghis collateral predecessors who didn’t know how to snare a bird, or werehopelessly stupid in the art of chipping flint arrowheads, died out ofstarvation, leaving no representatives. The beneficent institution ofthe poor law does not exist among savages, in order to enable thehelpless and incompetent to bring up families in their own image. There,survival of the fittest still works out its own ultimately benevolentand useful end in its own directly cruel and relentless way, cuttingoff ruthlessly the stupid or the weak, and allowing only the strong andthe cunning to become the parents of future generations.

Hence every young savage, being descended on both sides from ancestors

affirms our value as persons in His desire to work through the peoplewho will respond to His love, and shows His respect for what they cando. God’s love and respect for men was expressed through the person ofJesus and continues to be expressed through persons in each generation.His people, the servants of His Spirit, are the ones who will break thevicious circle of mutual non-respect, and give the gift of mutualrespect.

We can respect ourselves, therefore, because God shows His respect forus by loving and working through us. When we have a great task to dothat calls for the courage and heroism of love, we can take a chance andset ourselves to the task because our faith in God makes it possible tohave faith in ourselves and in those whom we would love. When we let ourmisgivings deter us so that we turn away from the challenges of love, wenot only repudiate ourselves, but also turn our backs on God’s affirmingjudgment of us.

Mutual respect has some identifiable characteristics. First, we mustrespect one another as autonomous, deciding persons. We cannot make ourchildren and others do what we may think they ought to do. We can onlymeet them with whatever resources we have, and out of respect for theirown power of decision and action leave them free to make their response.Then, when they have made it, we must respect it even though they maynot be doing what we want them to do or doing it in the way we thinkbest. Our decisions and way of life will not work for others.

We must also respect one another’s dependence. But respect for others’dependence should not increase it; that is, we should try to meet theirneed, but not exploit it. Some years ago I was invited to lead a clergyconference on the subject of pastoral counseling. During the openingdinner before the beginning of the sessions, I sat next to a ministerwho tried to impress me with how much he knew about pastoral counseling.Among other things, he said, “You know, it’s a wonderful thing to standup before my congregation on Sunday morning and be able to count theincreasing number of people who depend upon me for my pastoral care.”The temptation to exploit human need is insidious, and we have allsuccumbed to it many times and in many ways. That pastor might betterhave rejoiced in those of his congregation who, in spite of theirdependence and need, were able to use his help in their own independentway and thus grow stronger and more resourceful. Likewise, we mayminister to the needs of our children and accept their dependence inways that demonstrate our respect for them and our expectation that theywill become more responsible.

Mutual respect also calls for respect of others who must answer fortheir own lives. While it is true that we are dependent upon God and Hislove for us, our response as individuals is a necessary complement towhat He has done. The source of our life and of our redemption is inGod, but we have to respond, and our responsible action makes completewhat God has done for us. Therefore, we respect ourselves as having

delicate for earth?her loss was hard indeed to bear. The third, a man.That was the worst of all, but even that grief is softened now.

It seems but yesterday?and yet how the gay and laughing faces of thatbright morning have changed and vanished from above ground! Faintlikenesses of some remain about them yet, but they are very faint andscarcely to be traced. The rest are only seen in dreams, and even theyare unlike what they were, in eyes so old and dim.

One or two dresses from the bridal wardrobe are yet preserved. They areof a quaint and antique fashion, and seldom seen except in pictures.White has turned yellow, and brighter hues have faded. Do you wonder,child? The wrinkled face was once as smooth as yours, the eyes asbright, the shrivelled skin as fair and delicate. It is the work ofhands that have been dust these many years.

Where are the fairy lovers of that happy day whose annual return comesupon the old man and his wife, like the echo of some village bell whichhas long been silent? Let yonder peevish bachelor, racked by rheumaticpains, and quarrelling with the world, let him answer to the question.He recollects something of a favourite playmate; her name was Lucy?sothey tell him. He is not sure whether she was married, or went abroad,or died. It is a long while ago, and he don?t remember.

Is nothing as it used to be; does no one feel, or think, or act, as indays of yore? Yes. There is an aged woman who once lived servant withthe old lady?s father, and is sheltered in an alms-house not far off.She is still attached to the family, and loves them all; she nursed thechildren in her lap, and tended in their sickness those who are nomore. Her old mistress has still something of youth in her eyes; theyoung ladies are like what she was but not quite so handsome, nor arethe gentlemen as stately as Mr. Harvey used to be. She has seen a greatdeal of trouble; her husband and her son died long ago; but she has gotover that, and is happy now?quite happy.

If ever her attachment to her old protectors were disturbed by freshercares and hopes, it has long since resumed its former current. It hasfilled the void in the poor creature?s heart, and replaced the love ofkindred. Death has not left her alone, and this, with a roof above herhead, and a warm hearth to sit by, makes her cheerful and contented.Does she remember the marriage of great-grandmamma? Ay, that she does,as well?as if it was only yesterday. You wouldn?t think it to look ather now, and perhaps she ought not to say so of herself, but she was assmart a young girl then as you?d wish to see. She recollects she took afriend of hers up-stairs to see Miss Emma dressed for church; her namewas?ah! she forgets the name, but she remembers that she was a verypretty girl, and that she married not long afterwards, and lived?it hasquite passed out of her mind where she lived, but she knows she had abad husband who used her ill, and that she died in Lambeth work-house.Dear, dear, in Lambeth workhouse!

who in their own way perfectly fulfilled the ideal of completesavagery–were good hunters, good fishers, good fighters, good craftsmenof bow or boomerang–inherits from these his successful predecessors allthose qualities of eye and hand and brain and nervous system which go tomake up the abstractly Admirable Crichton of a savage. The qualities inquestion are ensured in him by two separate means. In the first place,survival of the fittest takes care that he and all his ancestors shallhave duly possessed them to some extent to start with; in the secondplace, constant practice from boyhood upward increases and develops theoriginal faculty. Thus savages, as a rule, display absolutelyastonishing ability and cleverness in the few lines which they have madetheir own. Their cunning in hunting, their patience in fishing, theirskill in trapping, their infinite dodges for deceiving and cajoling theanimals or enemies that they need to outwit, have moved the wonder andadmiration of innumerable travellers. The savage, in fact, is notstupid: in his own way his cleverness is extraordinary. But the way is avery narrow and restricted one, and all savages of the same race walk init exactly alike. Cunning they have, skill they have, instinct theyhave, to a most marvellous degree; but of spontaneity, originality,initiative, variability, not a single spark. Know one savage of a tribeand you know them all. Their cleverness is not the cleverness of theindividual man: it is the inherited and garnered intelligence orinstinct of the entire race.

How, then, do originality, diversity, individuality, genius, begin tocome in? In this way, as it seems to me, looking at the matter both _apriori_ and by the light of actual experience.

Suppose a country inhabited in its interior by a savage race of huntersand fighters, and on its seaboard by an equally savage race of piratesand fishermen, like the Dyaks of Borneo. Each of these races, if left toitself, will develop in time its own peculiar and special type of savagecleverness. Each (in the scientific slang of the day) will adapt itselfto its particular environment. The people of the interior will acquireand inherit a wonderful facility in spearing monkeys and knocking downparrots; while the people of the sea-coast will become skilful managersof canoes upon the water, and merciless plunderers of one another’svillages, after the universal fashion of all pirates. These originaldifferences of position and function will necessarily entail a thousandminor differences of intelligence and skill in a thousand differentways. For example, the sea-coast people, having of pure need to makethemselves canoes and paddles, will probably learn to decorate theirhandicraft with ornamental patterns; and the aesthetic taste thus arousedwill, no doubt, finally lead them to adorn the facades of their woodenhuts with the grinning skulls of slaughtered enemies, prettily disposedat measured distances. A thoughtless world may laugh, indeed, at thesenaive expressions of the nascent artistic and decorative faculties inthe savage breast, but the aesthetic philosopher knows how to appreciatethem at their true worth, and to see in them the earliest ingenuousprecursors of our own Salisbury, Lichfield, and Westminster.

within ourselves the power of answer for our own lives. Mutual respectfor one another as responsible beings increases our self-respect, and,conversely, our growing self-respect increases the respect we have forothers.

_Mutual Trust_

Mutual trust is a third necessary quality in human life. As we sawearlier, nothing can happen in any relationship where there is nottrust, and yet, lack of trust is everywhere prevalent. The greatquestion is: How can we trust when we have such strong feelings ofmistrust not only of persons, but also of the process of life? I haveoften had these misgivings as a teacher when, beginning with newstudents, I wondered how we could go through the crises of learningagain. Where would I find the strength and courage for the challenges?Would they respond to their opportunities and resources? Parents havethe same questions when they think of their children and wonder if,after all the years of care, they will turn out all right. Sometimes webecome overwhelmed at the sheer weight and endlessness of ourresponsibilities, and in those moments we become profoundlydiscouraged. The need of love is desperate, and we feel wholly unequalto meeting that need. How wonderful it would be if we could have moreconfidence in ourselves and in others, and likewise in the processes oflife to which we must commit ourselves. The answer to this longing is inthe old, but ever new, affirmation that those who have faith in God canhave faith in man and in the relationships of life.

As we read Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians, we may notice that heseems to have been more confident of them than they were of themselves.Yet, his confidence in them was not so much in them as it was in theHoly Spirit. Because of the Spirit, he had reason to have confidence inwhat the Spirit would do among, in, and through them. Along this sameline, a teacher made the following comment about his experience in oneof his classes: “On one occasion I was suffering from some agendaanxieties, afraid that the members of the class, in the course of theirdiscussion, would not arrive at some important and necessary insights. Iwas tempted to make sure that they saw certain things in the subjectthat I felt they ought to see, but fortunately I was restrained frominterfering. Instead, I had an exciting morning hearing all the thingsthat I wanted to say said by them. It was a great experience! Thisillustrates how important it is for us to keep ourselves from meddling,and to have confidence in the Spirit. Then the truth appears in themidst of us much more powerfully than if we handed it out, because whenit appears out of the midst, it comes with authority, it comes withdepth, it is memorable. The truth that comes to us in this way makes usfree. The moral is obvious: Let us trust what God is trying toaccomplish in us, and therefore trust one another.”

To trust in the Spirit’s working through dialogue does not mean that we

Now, so long as these two imaginary races of ours continue to remaindistinct and separate, it is not likely that idiosyncrasies or varietiesto any great extent will arise among them. But, as soon as you permitintermarriage to take place, the inherited and developed qualities ofthe one race will be liable to crop up in the next generation, diverselyintermixed in every variety of degree with the inherited and developedqualities of the other. The children may take after either parent in anycombination of qualities whatsoever. You have admitted an apparentlycapricious element of individuality: a power on the part of thehalf-breeds of differing from one another to an extent quite impossiblein the two original homogeneous societies. In one word, you have madepossible the future existence of diversity in character.

If, now, we turn from these perfectly simple savage communities to ourown very complex and heterogeneous world, what do we find? An endlessvariety of soldiers, sailors, tinkers, tailors, butchers, bakers,candlestick makers, and jolly undertakers, most of whom fall into acertain rough number of classes, each with its own developed andinherited traits and peculiarities. Our world is made up, like the worldof ancient Egypt and of modern India, of an immense variety of separatecastes–not, indeed, rigidly demarcated and strictly limited as in thoseextremely hierarchical societies, but still very fairly hereditary incharacter, and given on the average to a tolerably close system ofintermarriage within the caste.

For example, there is the agricultural labourer caste–the HodgeChawbacon of urban humour, who in his military avatar also reappears asTommy Atkins, a little transfigured, but at bottom identical–thealternative aspect of a single undivided central reality. Hodge for themost part lives and dies in his ancestral village: marries Mary, thedaughter of Hodge Secundus of that parish, and begets assorted Hodgesand Marys in vast quantities, all of the same pattern, to replenish theearth in the next generation. There you have a very well-markedhereditary caste, little given to intermixture with others, and fromwhose members, however recruited by fresh blood, the object of ourquest, the Divine Genius, is very unlikely to find his point of origin.Then there is the town artisan caste, sprung originally, indeed, fromthe ranks of the Hodges, but naturally selected out of its most active,enterprising, and intelligent individuals, and often of many generationsstanding in various forms of handicraft. This is a far higher and morepromising type of humanity, from the judicious intermixture of whosebest elements we are apt to get our Stephensons, our Arkwrights, ourTelfords, and our Edisons. In a rank of life just above the last, wefind the fixed and immobile farmer caste, which only rarely blossomsout, under favourable circumstances on both sides, into a stray Cobbettor an almost miraculous miller Constable. The shopkeepers are a tribe ofmore varied interests and more diversified lives. An immense variety ofbrain elements are called into play by their diverse functions indiverse lines; and when we take them in conjunction with the upper

shall be successful in all our endeavors. People’s response to beingtrusted is not dependable or consistent. Man’s response to God’s trust,expressed in the life of Christ, produced the crucifixion. We all havehad the experience of having our trust in others betrayed. This temptsus to become bitter, to lose faith in man, and to lose faith in God. Butthese responses are not a contradiction of trust; they are a part of thecurriculum of trust. Trust, if it is to do its full work, must includemistrust, and faith must include doubt. I am helped to accept thisinsight because of the awareness of the doubt that is so much a part ofmy own faith which God accepts as a part of me and which gives my faithsomething to do. After all, faith is for doubt, courage is for anxiety,love is for hate. Instead of resenting hate, anxiety, doubt, andmistrust, we should accept them as a part of life.

We are called by the divine love to be lovers, called by God to be Hisservants, called by the Saving Person to be His person in the realm andthe relationship of the personal. We are precious and important to oneanother and to God. We have a responsibility for others that must be metby our first being responsible for what we are in ourselves, theinstrument for the revelation, in personal terms, of the power of love.It is imperative, therefore, that if we are to love others as we loveGod, we must love ourselves as being infinitely precious to God andourselves, and indispensable because we have responded to a means ofsalvation for one another.

VI

LOVE IN ACTION

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”–_1 John 3:16_

We come now to the climax of our study. Love must lay down its life;that is, it must give itself. The question then is: What is the mode andplace of its self-giving? Under this heading I want to consider thenature of communication, evaluate the church as an agent ofcommunication, and dwell on the implications of our study for churchunity.

_The Importance of Communication_

Communication is essential to the expression of love and indeed to lifeitself. Where there is love, there must be communication, because lovecan never be passive and inactive. Love inevitably expresses itself andmoves out toward others. When communication breaks down, love is blocked

mercantile grades, which are chiefly composed of their ablest and mostsuccessful members, we get considerable chances of those happy blendingsof individual excellences in their casual marriages which go to make uptalent, and, in their final outcome, genius. Last of all, in theprofessional and upper classes there is a freedom and play of facultyeverywhere going on, which in the chances of intermarriage betweenlawyer-folk and doctor-folk, scientific people and artistic people,county families and bishops or law lords, and so forth _ad infinitum_,offers by far the best opportunities of any for the occasionaldevelopment of that rare product of the highest humanity, the genuinegenius.

But in every case it is, I believe, essentially intermixture ofvariously acquired hereditary characteristics that makes the best andtruest geniuses. Left to itself, each separate line of caste ancestrywould tend to produce a certain fixed Chinese or Japanese perfection ofhandicraft in a certain definite, restricted direction, but not probablyanything worth calling real genius. For example, a family of artists,starting with some sort of manual dexterity in imitating natural formsand colours with paint and pencil, and strictly intermarrying alwayswith other families possessing exactly the same inherited endowments,would probably go on getting more and more woodenly accurate in itsdrawing; more and more conventionally correct in its grouping; more andmore technically perfect in its perspective and light-and-shade, and soforth, by pure dint of accumulated hereditary experience from generationto generation. It would pass from the Egyptian to the Chinese style ofart by slow degrees and with infinite gradations. But suppose, insteadof thus rigorously confining itself to its own caste, this family ofhandicraft artists were to intermarry freely with poetical, orseafaring, or candlestick-making stocks. What would be the consequence?Why, such an infiltration of other hereditary characteristics, otherwiseacquired, as might make the young painters of future generations morewide minded, more diversified, more individualistic, more vivid andlifelike. Some divine spark of poetical imagination, some tenderness ofsentiment, some play of fancy, unknown perhaps, to the hard, dry,matter-of-fact limners of the ancestral school, might thus be introducedinto the original line of hereditary artists. In this way one can easilysee how even intermarriage with non-artistic stocks might improve thebreed of a family of painters. For while each caste, left to itself, isliable to harden down into a mere technical excellence after its ownkind, a wooden facility for drawing faces, or casting up columns offigures, or hacking down enemies, or building steam-engines, a healthycross with other castes is liable to bring in all kinds of new andvaluable qualities, each of which, though acquired perhaps in a totally,different line of life, is apt to bear a new application in the newcomplex whereof it now forms a part.

In our very varied modern societies, every man and every woman, in theupper and middle ranks of life at least, has an individuality and anidiosyncrasy so compounded of endless varying stocks and races. Here is

and its energy will turn to resentment and hostility. One of thegreatest of tragedies occurs when the partners of a relationship breakoff their communication with each other. Without communication, thepossibilities for a relationship become hopeless, the resources of thepartners for the relationship are no longer available, the means forhealing the hurts that previous communication may have caused are nolonger present; and each, when he recovers from his need to justifyhimself and hurt the other, will find himself in a bottomless pit ofloneliness from which he cannot be pulled except by the ropes ofcommunication, which may or may not be capable of pulling him out againbecause of their weakened condition. Many of us know what it means to bein a foreign country where we cannot speak the language, but theloneliness of that condition is as nothing compared to the lonelinessthat is the product of an alienation that has been produced by eitherirresponsible use of the means of communication or a willful refusal toemploy them.

If there is any one indispensable insight with which a young marriedcouple should begin their life together, it is that they should try tokeep open, at all cost, the lines of communication between them.Everyone needs and should have premarital counseling, if only to helpthem to this all important insight. Here is a place where the church’sministry needs to be strengthened, since so many people turn to thechurch to have their marriages solemnized. Before each marriage isperformed, the minister should meet with the couple and help themprepare for the relationship, and he should include in that preparationthe guidance that will help them to understand how indispensablyimportant to its preservation, and, therefore, to their life together,are all the means of communication between them. Fortunately, more andmore ministers are assuming this responsibility; and fortunately, also,more and more seminaries are providing instructions that teachministers how to minister helpfully at this strategically importanttime. But much more needs to be done. Many marital breakdowns due tofailure of communication could be alleviated, if not prevented, bygiving young couples assistance when they are beginning their lifetogether.

But communication is indispensable in all relationships, and not only inthe personal ones like marriage. In labor disputes, for instance, thebargaining relationship breaks down when either one or both partiesabandon the attempt to communicate with the other. Therefore, we mayconclude, in paraphrase of the Scriptures: If any man says that he lovesGod and will not try to communicate with his brother, he is a liar!

But what is communication, and why is it so difficult to achieve? Mostpeople seem to think of communication as getting a message across toanother person. “You tell him what you want him to know.” This conceptproduces a one-way verbal flow for which the term “monologue” isdescriptive. Much of the church’s so-called communication ismonological, with preachers and teachers telling their hearers, both