Social Responsibility.
There are three great principles which ought to govern a Christian's thought in his estimate of a great criminal case.
I. Of these the first is, that every criminal is, to a certain extent, the product of his age, of the spirit of the society in which he has passed his life. Just as certain marshy districts and damp atmospheres are favourable to the growth of troublesome or malignant insects or diseases, so particular moods of popular feeling and opinion are as certainly favourable to the growth of crime. This is, of course, a doctrine which may be pushed too far. No criminal is simply and altogether the helpless, unconscious product of his circumstances. To suppose that would be a libel on the justice of God. But still we have contributed by remote and subtle channels to make the criminal what he is; and if we knew the true area of our responsibilities, we ought to feel that his error, his suffering, is in some sense our own. If the one member suffer, all should suffer with him.
II. And a second principle which should govern our thoughts about great crime is, that in the sight of God, the Eternal Justice, all guilt is relative to a man's opportunities.
III. Akin to this consideration is a third, which a Christian will keep steadily in mind when he hears of a great criminal case. It is the deep sincere conviction of his own real condition as a sinner beneath the eye of God. That which was so offensive to our Lord in the Pharisees, which He rebuked so severely and so often, was the substitution of a conventional and outward test of religious excellence for an internal and true one. They did their works that they might be seen of men. Now, this corresponds to much of the religious responsibility of our day, which never really gets below the surface of life, or asks itself seriously what God is thinking moment by moment, and all that He sees not merely in the outward life, but within the precincts of the soul. When a Christian has learnt something real and accurate about himself he has no heart to be hard on others. The man who knows anything about his own heart will not suppose that the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices were sinners above all the Galileans; or that the eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were exceptionally wicked. He knows that he has too much in common with these men to feel that. He knows that he deserves what they have experienced, though it may be for other reasons, and therefore, if they suffer, he, in his heart and mind, suffers with them, if only from the sensitive activity of his sense of justice.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 727.
St. Paul would have the Corinthians struggle incessantly, not to create a new order for themselves, but that they might not in every act of their lives be contradicting that order to which they eventually belonged.
I. And what is that order? St. Paul takes the simplest method one can conceive for making us understand what it is. He leads us to notice obvious facts, which every one admits, and not only admits, but is compelled by the keenest experience to recognise every moment. He asks us to consider the structure of our bodies not any secrets about them which anatomists and physiologists may know but what every mechanic must know. He says that each of our members or limbs has a power or work of its own; that no other limb can put forth the same power or do the same work. Here surely are laws of the universe laws concerning our own selves, which no one can reverse. The practitioner in medicines or surgery does not aspire to alter these facts. He conforms himself to them, he regulates his treatment in accordance with them.
II. Then the Apostle goes on to do what? He goes on to speak of other facts as nearly concerning each one of us individually, as nearly concerning the whole race, about which he can appeal to the same conscience and experience, which he can submit to the same test and trial. He does not ask any special field for the proof and examination of them. He asks for no choice spot which the winds of heaven do not visit too roughly. He takes the world as he finds it. A Greek city with all its corruptions, the Roman empire with its tyranny, answer his purpose better than an Atlantis. There are members of the body politic, as certainly as there are members or limbs of the body natural. Each man is such a member or limb. Each man has a function or office assigned to him in the body politic, as the hand or foot has in the natural body. One man may as little do the work of another, as the hand can do the work of the foot. And here, too, the many members can never make us forget the one body.
III. This description of St. Paul does not presuppose perfection, but rather presupposes imperfection. The Jews had discovered the existence of a law of fellowship between human beings. They had proved that that law was liable to constant violation. They had proved that its violation brought misery upon him who was guilty of it, as well as upon those whose claim upon him he had refused to acknowledge. They had notshown how that witness of prophets respecting a Divine Word and Ruler over their nation could be actually fulfilled for the benefit of all nations; they had notshown who was the centre and head of the body with its many members; they had notshown whence could come a power strong enough to make their cohesion to each other real and practical, strong enough to overcome the tendency in each member to rend itself from the rest. It is this hiatus in the lore of past ages which St. Paul fills up when he says, "Now are ye the body of Christ, and members in particular." He had said before in this chapter, "As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." All artificial significations which have been given to the Church shall perish. Thissignification which connects it with the natural body, which identifies it with the universal body politic, of which Christ is the Head, because He is the Head of every man, shall remain.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. v., p. 263.
References: 1 Corinthians 12:26. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 133; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. x., p. 5.