2 Corinthians 12:12-15 Truly the signs of an apostle were worked among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.… It is our common way, as well as delusion, to be desiring what men have, and not the men themselves, to get a property, if possible, out of their property, and not to create the same by our own industry. The manner of our great apostle is exactly contrary. The value one man has to another; or, what is the same, the real interest of property which a true disciple has, or may have, in the souls of other men. I propose to show the real value of one soul, or man, to another. I suppose there maybe some who had never such a thought occur to them in their lives. We have so many public wars and private quarrels, so many rivalries, that it becomes a great part of our life to keep off or, if possible, to keep under, one another. Furthermore, we get accustomed to the idea that there is no property but legal property — no property right, therefore, in a man to be thought of, save the ownership that makes him a slave. Whereas the dearest, broadest properties we have are not legal. The wife does not legally own her husband, though she says, with how much meaning, "He is mine." No man legally owns his friend, or the landscapes, or the ranges of the sea. Putting aside, then, all such false impressions, I now undertake to show that one man has to another a value more real than gold, or lands, or any legal property of the world can have. And I open the argument here by calling your attention to the fact that God so evidently means to make every community valuable to every other and — so far, at least — every man to every other. We see this on a magnificent scale in the article of commerce. Here we find the nations all at work for each other, Your breakfast is gotten up for you, as it were, by the whole world, and so far you possess the world. The same, again, is true of all the arts, professions, trades and grades of employment in a given community. They are at work for each other in ways of concurrent service. All injustice, wrong, and fraud excluded, they so far own each other. Their industries and gifts are all so many complementary contributions. And again, what we discover in these mere economic relations is the type of a mutual interest and ownership in qualities that are personal. The very idea of society and the social nature is that we shall be a want and a gift of enjoyment one to another. We possess, in short, society, and society is universal ownership. To see what reality there is in this, you have only to imagine how desolate and how truly insupportable your life would be in a state of complete solitude or absolutely sole existence. Not that you want merely to receive outward conveniences; you want society of soul, to speak and be spoken to, to play out feeling and have it played back by some answering nature. You wade the rivers, and creep through the forests, and climb the hills, looking for you know not what, resting nowhere, sighing and groaning everywhere. What we call society, in this manner, is the usufruct we have of each other, and has a property value as truly as the food that supplies our bodies. Again, what interest every soul may have, or what property get, in other souls will be seen still more affectingly in the fact that, bittered as we are by selfishness, almost everything we do looks, in some way, to the approbation, or favouring opinion, or inspiration of others. We dress, we build, we cultivate our bestow-ments generally with a view to the impressions or opinions of others. I have lingered thus in the domain of the natural life because the illustrations here furnished are so impressive. Let us enter now the field of Christian love and duty, and carry our argument up into the higher relations here existing. If selfishness even finds so great value in the sentiments, opinions, homages of other men, how shall it be with goodness and benefaction? Here it is that we come out into the great apostle's field, where he says, "Not yours, but you." "It is not," he would say, "what you can give me or withhold from me, but it is what I can do to you, and be in you, and make you to be — to raise you up out of sin into purity and liberty and truth, to fill you with the light of God and His peace, to make you like God. This is my reward, which, if I may get, I want no other. For this I journey, and preach, and write." He makes them in this manner a property to himself. Let us look a little into this matter of property. How does a man, for example, come to be acknowledged as the owner of a piece of land and to say to himself, "It is mine"? The general answer given to this question is that we get a property in things by putting our industry into them, in ways of use, culture, and improvement. This makes our title. Just so when a Christian benefactor enters good into a soul; when he takes it away from the wildness and disorder of nature by the prayers and faithful labours he expends upon it, the necessary result is that he gets a property in it, feels it to be his, values it as being his. Neither is it anything to say that he gets, in this manner, no exclusive title to it, therefore no property at all. No kind of property is exclusive. God is still concurrent owner of all the lands we hold in fee. The State is so far owner. So a man may get ownership in his neighbour and his poor brother, and the State may have ownership in both, and God a higher ownership in all. And the ownership in all cases is only the more real because it is not exclusive. And how great and blessed a property it is to him we can only see by a careful computation of the values by which he measures it. First, as he has come to look himself on the eternal in everything, he has a clear perception of souls as being the most real of all existences — more real than lands and gold, and a vastly higher property. Next, finding this or that human spirit or soul in a condition of darkness and disease and fatal damage, he begins forthwith to find an object in it, and an inspiring hope to be realised in its necessity. He takes it thus upon himself, hovers round it in love, and prayer, and gracious words, and more gracious example, to regain it to truth and to God. For if it be a matter so inspiring to a Newton that he may put into other minds the right scientific conception of light or of the stars, how much greater and higher the interest a good soul has in imparting to another goodness, the element of its own Divine peace and well-being. Then again, as we get a property in other men by the power we exert in them, how much greater the property obtained by that kind of power which is supernaturally, transformingly beneficent, that which subdues enmity, illuminates darkness, fructifies sterility, changes discord to harmony, and raises a spirit in ruin up to be a temple of God's indwelling life. What a thought, indeed, is this for a Christian disciple to entertain, that he may exalt the consciousness of a human soul or spirit for ever, and live in it for ever as a causality of joy and beauty. Furthermore, when one has gained another to a holy life, there is a most dear, everlasting relationship established between them. Hence, also, it is that the Scriptures of God's truth are so much in the commendation of this heavenly property. If we go after fame, they tell us that the name of the wicked shall rot. If we go after riches and cover ourselves with the outward splendours of fortune, they tell us that we must go out of life as poor as any, for that, having brought nothing material into the world, we can carry nothing material out. And then they add, do the works of love and truth, and these shall go with you. He that winneth souls is wise. If thy brother sin against thee, gain, if possible, thy brother. Just here, in fact, will be opened to your now purified love the discovery of this great truth, viz., that there is indeed no real property at all but spirit-property, or property in spirit — a possession, that is, by each soul of what he has added to the moral universe of the good. All values here become social, values of truth, and feeling, and worship, and conscious affinity with God. And this is heaven, the state of mutual ownership and everlasting usufruct, prepared in all God's righteous populations by what they have righteously done. Accepting now the solid and sublimely practical truth thus carefully expounded, the salvation of men is seen to be a work that ought to engage every Christian, and a work that to be fitly done must be heartily and energetically done. To this end consider well that you are set to gain a property in every man you save. In some dearest, truest sense he is to be yours for ever, to own you as his benefactor, and to be your crown of rejoicing, having your life entered into and working through his for ever. Consider, also, how this double-acting property relation holds good, even between Christ and His people. "Not yours, but you" is the principle that brings Him into the world. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds. |
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