CHAPTER V

THE REVISION OF THE OLD LAW (continued)

AFTER dealing thus with three of the Ten Commandments our Lord proceeds to deal with two other prescriptions or ideas of the old covenant. As He had done to the commandments, He deepens and intensifies them till they reach that standard which commends itself to His holy and perfect mind. In both cases our Lord's treatment of the older moral standard is both profoundly interesting and at the same time the cause of no little difficulty and scruple to Christian consciences.

The law of revenge.

'Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to

go one mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.'

Our Lord is here dealing with one interesting prescription of the old law. It had definitely allowed revenge up to a certain point, but no further. It might go to the point of exact reciprocity. So the law in Exodus xxi. 24, 25 lays it down: 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.'

1. Here we must remark, first, that the law of the old covenant was in itself a limitation of human instinct. The savage instinct of revenge is to rush blindly in, and do as much harm to an enemy as can be done. The savage satisfies himself to the full; he kills the man that has done him wrong and his wife and family. Now nothing is more striking in the old covenant than that it checks barbarous habits and puts them under restraint. It is so with the habit of animal sacrifice; it is so in the law of revenge. The Mosaic law stands by, as it were, as a policeman, and says, An eye? is that the wrong done? Then an eye may be put out in return; but no more. You must stop there. The point which needs emphasizing is that the

old law worked by way of gradual limitation, not of sudden abolition. God dealt with men gradually. Their savage passions are restrained under the Old Testament as a preparation for the time when they were to be brought under the perfect discipline of the Son of Man. So now, when the fullness of the time is. come, our Lord lays on this passion of revenge a harder and deeper prescription, and says in fact to each of His disciples: A wrong aimed at thee as an individual is, so far as thy feeling goes, simply to be an occasion for showing complete liberty of spirit and superiority to all outrage. The Lord requires not moderation in revenge, but complete self-effacement.

2. Secondly, we may notice that this require ment of self-effacement is of the nature of an ascetic prescription, as when our Lord said 'If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out; if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.' The necessity for this self-mutilation- cutting off a hand, plucking out an eye-lay in the fact that these limbs, or faculties, or functions of our nature had been so utterly misused that before they could be again used legitimately they must be put under this stern discipline of effacement.

So with this instinct of revenge. The instinct

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has in it something that is right: something of the passion of justice. It is a true instinct which makes us feel that for wrong done man should suffer wrong. It is derived from the divine principle of justice. But in our own cases, where our own interests are concerned, this passion of justice has come to be so mixed up with selfishness, and with those excessive demands which spring of selfishness-in a word, it has become so defiled with sin-that our Lord imposes on it an absolute ban; He says 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' He takes away from us, as it were, the right to administer justice in our own case. 'The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God". He requires us as individuals to acknowledge the law of self-effacement.

3. The requirement which our Lord lays on His disciples is not only made in words. It was enforced, where the enforcement is most striking, in our Lord's example. You watch our Lord in His passion; and when you look delicately and accurately at the details of the treatment He received, you observe how almost intolerably hard to bear were many of His trials. We can hardly conceive what to Him 1 St. James i. 20.

it must have been to bear the hideous insults and injustices of men. Think for example, to take a subtle but impressive instance1, of those false accusations brought against Him which had in them the sound of truth. 'And there stood up certain, and bare false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands 2.' He had said in fact not that, but something like it. He had said 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up3.' That is, Suppose you destroy, then I will rebuild. There was a great difference between what He had said and what He was accused of saying. But you know in what atmosphere it is that such accusations are brought. The crowd does not consider details; it listens to the vague sound of the words; it is easily convinced: 'He said something of that sort. If he defends himself, he has to quibble.' And thus they rush off and put down to the accused man not what he said, but what he was supposed to have said. Now our Lord had that

I owe this thought, I believe, to an address given by the Dean of Chichester. St. John ii. 19.

2 St. Mark xiv. 57-8.