“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation. Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we also may be able to comfort those who are in any distress, by the exhortation wherewith we also are exhorted by God.” 2 Cor. i. 3, 4.
There is no one who has loved the world so well, as He who made it. None has so understood the human heart, and human nature, and human society in its diversified forms, none has so tenderly entered into and measured the greatness and littleness of man, his doings and sufferings, his circumstances and his fortunes, none has felt such profound compassion for his ignorance and guilt, his present rebellion and his prospects hereafter, as the Omniscient. What He has actually done for us is the proof of this. “God so loved the world, as to give His Only-begotten Son.” He loved mankind in their pollution, in spite of the abhorrence with which that pollution filled Him. He loved them with a father’s love, who does not cast off a worthless son once for all, but is affectionate towards his person, while he is indignant at his misconduct. He loved them for what still remained in them of their original excellence, which was in its measure a reflexion of His own. He loved them before He redeemed them, and He redeemed them because He loved them. This is that “philanthropy” or “humanity” of God our Saviour, of which the inspired writers speak.
None, I say, can know the race of man so well, none can so truly love it for its own sake, as He who sent His Co-equal Son, as He who came from the Eternal Father, to save it. But His knowledge of it and His love of it arose, not from any sympathy of nature, but because it was His Divine prerogative to “know what was in man.” And, even when He became man, still He knew only by means of that Divine Omniscience, and not experimentally, the disorder of our minds and the tyranny of Satan. He was partaker indeed of our infirmities, but He could not partake of our waywardness, our passionateness, and our ignorance.
But there is a knowledge and a love of human nature, which Saints possess, which follows on an intimate experience of what human nature actually is, in its irritability and sensitiveness, its despondency and changeableness, its sickliness, its blindness, and its impotence. Saints have this gift, and it is from above; though it be gained, humanly speaking, either from the memory of what they themselves were before their conversion, or from a keen apprehension and appreciation of their own natural feelings and tendencies. And of those who have possessed it, I think the most conspicuous and remarkable instance is the great Apostle of the Gentiles; and this is a time of year when it cannot be out of place to speak of him, considering how diligent the Church is in the weeks which are now closing, to bring him before us. First, on Christmas Eve she lets us hear his voice, like some herald’s trumpet, announcing again and again through the day the coming of Incarnate Grace upon earth. Then she proceeds to read his Epistles till Septuagesima; and further, not content with the feast of his Conversion, she reiterates his festival on Sexagesima, which sometimes falls on that very day, and which is a second commemoration of the Apostle. As then I have already made some remarks on his love of human nature, or philanthropy, generally, so now, on Sexagesima, I will describe it, as far as time will admit, as exercised by him within the Church, towards his brethren,—exercised towards them, not simply as heirs of heaven, but as children of Adam who are heirs of heaven, as possessed still of that nature as fully as before, which had to be redeemed.
He says in the text, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation. Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we also may be able to comfort those who are in any distress, by the exhortation wherewith we also are exhorted by God.” Here he speaks of a ministration of charitable services, and he makes it arise out of sympathy with others; our own memory and experience of trouble urging us, and enabling us, to aid others who are in like trouble. Charity, we know, is a theological virtue, and the love of man is, properly speaking, included in the love of God. “Every one,” says St. John, “that loveth Him that begat, loveth him also who is born of Him.” Again, “This commandment we have from God, that he who loveth God, love also his brother.” But there is another virtue distinct from charity, though closely connected with it. As Almighty God Himself has the compassion of a father on his children, “for He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust”; so, after His pattern, we are called upon to cherish the virtue of humanity, as it may be called, a virtue which comes of His supernatural grace, and is cultivated for His sake, though its object is human nature viewed in itself, in its intellect, its affections, and its history. And it is this virtue which I consider is so characteristic of St. Paul; and he himself often inculcates it in his Epistles, as when he enjoins bowels of mercy, benignity, kindness, gentleness, and the like.