[Footnote: Read in the Unitarian chapel, Essex-street, London, 1879.]
The passage: Let those of us who are mature share this mind; and if you think otherwise about anything, God will reveal that to you as well. Only, let us live by whatever we have already reached (Philippians iii. 15, 16).
This is the reading of the oldest manuscripts; the rest of the verse is pretty clearly a not very wise marginal note that has crept into the text.
In its origin, opinion is the intellectual body given to something necessarily larger than any intellect can supply stuff to embody, so that it may be uttered and presented. To the man in whose mind it arose, therefore, an opinion always recalls the spirit whose form it is, so long as he stays true to his better self. So it may be invaluable to him, the needle of his moral compass, pointing always to the truth it came from. Nor is it worth less because it may change. To be of true value it must carry not just the possibility but the necessity of change: it must change in every man alive with that life which the New Testament alone treats as life. An opinion in no process of change is dead, valueless, hurtful. Opinion is the offspring of something born to grow, which, being imperfect, must grow or die; where opinion grows, its imperfections, however serious, do little hurt, and where it does not, they further the decay already at the man’s heart. Yet history shows that what at some stage was the intellectual embodiment of the highest and deepest an age could reach spiritually has often and quickly become the source of frightful outrages on humanity. Why? Because it passed from the mind where it grew into one where it did not, and so changed its nature. Sprung from what was deepest in one man, it casts seeds that root only in his neighbour’s intellect, and bear flowers that look much the same but fruit that is poison and bitterness: worst of all, the false, arrogant notion that it is a duty to force the opinion on others. Such men hold the truth under their forms with so poor a grasp that they are the more ambitious to propagate the forms, making themselves the worst enemies of the truth they think they champion. As with all genuine teachers, a man’s foes are of his own household: none destroys the truth he preached so effectively as followers who have received only the forms and know nothing of the truth that gave them. They seize the non-essential, the perishing part of the forms, doubly false and misleading in their crumbling disjunction, and force it on men as the truth, which is at best the draggled, useless fringe of its earth-made garment. Opinions so held belong to the theology of hell, not necessarily false in form but utterly false in heart and spirit. The hurtful opinion is not one formed in the depths from the honest necessities of a man’s own nature but one taken up at second hand, which pleases his intellect; perhaps quiets fears and distresses that should have grown until they drove him to the true physician; puffs him up with a false, foolish sense of superiority; and puts in his hand a club to subjugate his neighbour to his spiritual dictation. Even the true man who aims at perpetuating his opinion obstructs rather than aids the truth he loves it for; for truth is a living thing, opinion a dead thing, and transmitted opinion a deadening thing.
Let us look at St. Paul’s feeling in this regard. To lose none of its force, let us first note the nature of the truth he had just been presenting to his disciples, before he follows it with the words of my text:—
Whatever was gain to me I counted loss for Christ.
Indeed I count everything loss next to the excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord; for his sake I have lost everything and count it dung, so that I may win Christ
and be found in him, with no righteousness of my own from the law, but the righteousness from God through faith in Christ;
that I may know him, the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
if somehow I may attain the resurrection of the dead.
Not that I have already attained or am perfect; I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.
Brothers, I do not count myself to have taken hold of it. One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching for what is ahead, I press toward the goal, the prize of God’s high calling in Christ Jesus.
St. Paul had been declaring to the Philippians the idea his life was built on, to which all the conscious effort of his being was directed: to be in his very nature one with Christ, to become righteous as he is righteous, to die into his death, holding no personal relation to evil and alive in every fibre to all that is pure, lovely, loving, beautiful, perfect. He spent himself in continuous effort to lay hold of that for which Christ had laid hold of him, and declares it the sole thing worth living for: the hope of becoming one with the living God keeps a glorious consciousness awake in him amid the unrest of a being not yet at harmony with itself and a laborious, persecuted life. So no indifference to the truth he has witnessed to makes him add, “If in anything ye be otherwise minded.” To him it is the very test of perfection whether they are thus minded; for though a moment before he declared himself short of perfection, he now says, “Let as many of us as are perfect be thus minded.” There is no room here for bare logic: we must look through the rainbow of his words to the light that is its soul. Paul is not yet what he would be, what he must be; but he and all who believe with him that Christ’s perfection is the sole worthy effort of a man’s life are in the region, though not at the centre, of perfection: not grasping it, but in its grasp. If anyone is otherwise minded, that is, of a different opinion, what then? That it matters little? No, but that it matters so endlessly that God himself will unveil the truth to them. This is Paul’s faith, not his opinion. Faith is that by which a man lives inwardly and orders his way outwardly; faith is the root, belief the tree, opinion the foliage that falls and is renewed with the seasons. Opinion is at best, even in a true man, the cloak of his belief, which he may cast to his neighbour, but not with the truth inside it: that stays in his own bosom, the oneness between him and his God. Paul knows well that no argument, the best logic can afford, can set a man right with the truth; only the spiritual perception that comes of hungering contact with the living truth, itself a being born again, can mediate between a man and the truth. Even if he could pass his opinion bodily into his neighbour’s understanding, little would be gained, since the man’s spiritual condition would be unchanged. God must reveal, or nothing is known; and through the thousands of difficulties the man himself causes, God is always doing his mighty best to do so.
See the grandeur of the Apostle’s redeeming liberality. In his heart of hearts he knows salvation is nothing but being one with Christ, and that every man’s only life is hid with Christ in God, found nowhere else. He believes he was born to give himself wholly to the one who came to bear witness to the truth; that for this alone, since nothing more is possible, the world with all its glories was created; and that for this the Lord, in whose cross, type and triumph of self-abnegation, Paul glories, came, lived, and died. Yet he says plainly that a man who thinks differently, or is unprepared for this whole-hearted profession, is his brother in Christ, in whom the knowledge of Christ he has will go on working, the new leaven casting out the old, until in the Father’s revelation he too reaches the perfect stature of the fulness of Christ. Meanwhile Paul must reverence the halting, dull disciple and make no demand on him on the ground of what Paul believes. He is where he is, and God is his teacher; he stands to his own Master, who is Paul’s Master too. Does Paul leave him to his Master’s company? No; he will never leave him, any more than God will, but will always hold and help him. How, if he is not to press on him his own larger, deeper, wiser insights? He will press not his opinion, not even the man’s opinion, but the man’s own faith: “O brother, beloved of the Father, walk in the light that is yours, not mine; you cannot walk by my light nor I by yours. What you see, do; and what you do not see, you shall see: God himself, the Father of Lights, will show it to you.” This is the condition of all growth, that whereto we have attained, we mind that same; such, following the oldest manuscripts, seems to me the Apostle’s meaning. Obedience is the one condition of progress, and he entreats them to obey. If a man will work what is in him and make God’s power his own, it is well with him forever. Like his Master, Paul urges to action, the highest operation and therefore the highest condition of humanity: as Christ was the Father’s Son by doing the Father’s will, so would Paul have them sons by doing it. Whereto ye have attained, walk by that.
But more is involved in this utterance than the words expressly carry. Next to his love for the Father and the Elder Brother, the passion of Paul’s life (I cannot call it less) is love for all his brothers and sisters. Everything human is dear to him. Division, the breaking of the body of Christ, he cannot endure: Christ’s body of flesh was once broken that a grander body might be prepared, and was that body to tear itself asunder? Paul clung to unity with all the energy of his great heart, clasping the body his Master loved because it was a spiritual body with his Father’s life in it. And he knew that only by walking in the truth they had attained could they draw near to each other. Whereto we have attained, let us walk by that.
My honoured friends, if we are not practical, we are nothing. The one main fault in the Christian Church is separation, recoil between the particles of the Lord’s body. I do not care who is more to blame; I insist only that every individual man is bound to be innocent of it. One main cause, perhaps the one cause, is that whereto we had attained, we did not, and whereto we have attained, we do not walk by that. Ah, friend! do not think now of your neighbour, or applaud my opinion from what you see around you, but answer it from your own being and behaviour. Do you feel, “Yes, of course every man is my brother; but how can I be a brother to him while he thinks me wrong in what I believe, and I think he wrongs the dignity of the truth in his opinions?” What, I return: has the man no hand to grasp, no eyes into which yours may gaze deeper than your vaunted intellect can follow, nothing in him to love? Who asks you to be of one opinion? The Lord asks you to be of one heart. Does the Lord love the man? Can he love where there is nothing to love, and are you wiser than he, seeing impossibility where he has not? Or will you say, “Let the Lord love where he pleases: I will love where I please”? or, imagining you yield, “Well, I suppose I must, with certain reservations, politely quiet in my own heart”? Or say none of these, but do them all, one after another, in the secret chambers of your proud spirit? If you delight to condemn, you are a wounder, a divider of the oneness of Christ. If you pride yourself on your loftier vision and are haughty to your neighbour, you are yourself a division, and may well ask, “Am I a particle of the body at all?” The Master will deal with you on that score. Let it humble you that your dearest opinion, which you worship as if it, not God, were your Saviour, you are doomed to change, for it cannot be right if it works in you for death and not life.
Friends, you have honoured me by asking me to speak, so I will speak plainly. I come neither hiding anything of my belief nor foolishly imagining I can transfer my opinions into your bosoms; if there is one role I hate, it is the proselytizer’s. But shall I not, as a brother to brethren, use your invitation and obey the heavenly vision by urging you with all my persuasion to set yourselves afresh to walk according to what you have attained? So doing, you shall learn whatever remains to learn. Thus, and only thus, you draw nigh to the centre truth, and we to each other, as brothers and sisters in Christ caring for each other’s honour, righteousness, and true well-being. It is to those who keep his commandments that he and his Father will come to dwell, and, whether you or I hold more of the truth, to them it will be given to eat of the Tree of Life. I believe that Jesus is the eternal Son of the eternal Father; that in him the ideal humanity sat enthroned from eternity; that as he is the divine man, so he is the human God; that he did not take our nature upon himself but showed himself as he really was and ever is. These things I believe, though I would never be so irreverent as to dispute over them, nor would I try by argument to convince another of my opinion: if it is true, it is God’s work to show it, for logic cannot. But I believe all the more that he, who is no respecter of persons, will least respect the person of one who thinks to please him by respecting his person, calling him “Lord, Lord,” and not doing what he says. Even if I am right, friend, and you wrong, the more abundant entrance will be given to you if you keep his commandments more faithfully than I. God grant that when you are admitted first I may not be cast out, but admitted to learn from you that he requires truth in the inward parts, and that those who have it, and they alone, shall know wisdom. I seek only to stir up your hearts, as I would daily stir my own, to be true to what is deepest in us: the voice and will of the Father of our spirits.
Friends, I have not said we are not to utter our opinions, only that we are not to make them the point of a fresh start, the foundation of a new building, or the groundwork of anything in our dealings with our brethren. Opinion is often the very death of love. Love aright and you will think aright, and those who think aright must think the same. Meanwhile it matters nothing; what matters is that we walk by what we have attained. But while we are not to insist on our opinions, which is only a way of insisting on ourselves, however we hide that in the vain imagination of spreading the truth, we are bound by the loftiest duty to spread the truth, for that saves men. How, if we are not to talk about it? I never said not to, though there is a better and indispensable way: let your light shine. Do not talk about the lantern that holds the lamp, but make haste, uncover the light, and let it shine. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works (I incline to the Vatican reading, good things), and glorify your Father in heaven. It is not, Let your good works shine, but Let your light shine: let it be the genuine love of your hearts taking form in true deeds, not good deeds done to prove your opinions right. If you are thus true, even your talk about the truth will be a good work, a shining of the light in you. A true smile is a good work and may do much to reveal the Father; a smile put on to look right, or even to be right, will hardly reveal him, not being like him. Men say you are cold: if you fear it may be so, do not try to warm yourselves with the cloak of this or that fresh opinion, but draw nearer the central heat, the living humanity of the Son of Man, that you may have life, heat, and light in yourselves; understand him, obey him, and your light will shine and your warmth warm. There is an infection in good as in evil: the better we are, the more men will glorify God. If we trim our lamps to have light in our house, it will shine through our windows to those outside. But only love of the light can trim the lamp. Had Love trimmed Psyche’s lamp, it would never have dropped the scalding oil that scared him from her.
The man who holds his opinion most honestly ought to see most plainly that it must change. No man can hold anything aright. How shall the created embrace the self-existent Creator, who alone is the truth? But to him who lives it, who walks by what he has attained, the truth will reach down a thousand true hands to grasp his. We would not enclose what we can do more than enclose: live in as our home, inherit, exult in, the presence of the infinitely higher and better, the heart of the living One. If God himself is our inheritance, why should we tremble, even with hatred, at the suggestion that we must change our opinions? If we held them aright, we would know that nothing good in them can ever be lost; that is the true, whatever in them is false. Our opinions are worth a straw only as they help us toward God, and every necessary change in them must be to more truth and greater uplifting power. Lord, change me as thou wilt, only do not send me away. What in my opinions I really hold them for will never pass away, if I am a true man; what my evils and imperfections have associated with the truth must, thank God, perish. My opinions, like my life and love, I leave in the hands of him who is my being; I commend my spirit to him of whom it came. Why, then, this dislike of such change, this dread of accepting what those we count opponents offer, which is such a stumbling-block in our way and obstruction to our inevitable growth? It may be objected that no one will hold his opinions with needful earnestness who can entertain changing them. But that tells powerfully against overvaluing opinion: it says that to be wise a man must consent to be a fool. Whatever must be, a man must be able to look in the face. It is because we cleave to our opinions rather than the living God, and self and pride concern themselves for their own vile sakes with what belongs only to the truth, that we become such fools of logic and temper, lying in the prison-houses of our own fancies, ideas, and experiences, shutting doors and windows against the free spirit, and refusing to inherit the love of the Father.
Yet, for the help and comfort of even such a refuser, I would say: nothing you reject can be what it seems to you. A thing is either true or untrue. If untrue, it looks enough like itself that you reject it, and we have no more to do with it. If true, then your rejecting it shows it has not appeared true to you, has not appeared itself; for the truth can never be beheld except by the man who accepts it. So what you reject is not what it seems to you, but something good and altogether beautiful, fit for your gladsome embrace, which you would rush to, as Dante says, like the wild beast to his den, so eager for the refuge of home, if you saw it as it is. No honest man holds a truth for the sake of that because of which another honest man rejects it; how it may be with the dishonest I have no confidence in my judgment, and hope I am not bound to understand.
Let us then, my friends, beware lest our opinions come between us and our God, our neighbour, and our better selves. Let us be jealous that the human shall not obscure the divine. For we are not mere human; we too are divine, and nothing obliterates the divine like the human acting undivinely. The one security against our opinions is to walk according to the truth they contain.
And if men seem to us unreasonable, opposers of what to us is plainly true, let us remember we are here not to convince men but to let our light shine. Knowledge is not necessarily light, and it is light, not knowledge, we have to diffuse. The best thing we can do, indeed the only thing, that men may receive the truth is to be ourselves true. Beyond all doing good is being good, for he who is good not only does good things but all he does is good. Above all, let us be humble before the God of truth, faithfully desiring of him that truth in the inward parts which alone can enable us to walk by what we have attained. May the God of peace give you his peace; may the love of Christ constrain you; may the gift of the Holy Spirit be yours. Amen.