The description of His own work which Jesus returned for the instruction and encouragement of the Baptist presents these three features: (1) it is a ministry of abundant charity to the temporal needs of needy men; (2) it is a ministry of Divine promise and help "the poor receive glad tidings;" (3) these two are blended naturally and simply together.
I. On part of this ground we are at one; it is that of desire to minister to the good and increase the happiness of our fellowmen. To ask in what good and happiness consist might seem pedantic and abrupt. But on the way in which these things may be increased men feel that they have learned something. We have two results of present teaching: (1) that happiness is a harmony between man and his surroundings; (2) the rule or method of charity, making charity to consist in giving our personal help and service, and in bringing to the needy those things which, for ourselves, have given brightness and interest and worth to life. Can we bring the two into relation with one another, and then with Christ's type of ministry as suggested in the text?
II. Turn back your thoughts upon the history of human happiness, and think of its earlier stages. Under simple and primitive conditions, nature seems to provide man with a stock of happiness, or of material for happiness; he gains happiness from his harmony with his surroundings, as proved in the pleasures of the bodily instincts or functions, in the glad response of vital energy, in muscle and limb, to moderate demands for exertion, in the earliest forms of human intercourse in family or clan, and by degrees in the exercise of skill or resource, and in the power to appreciate beauty or grandeur in nature around him. In proportion as consciousness becomes articulate, and reflection awakes, man must, by the very nature of his mind, grasp all that is outside himself into a whole. He must look before and after and above. What then if there comes a time when the world's face is darkened? Civilisation has developed, but man seems to be no gainer. The effect of increased wealth and knowledge seemed to have only sapped old-fashioned simplicities and virtues, and substituted the power of money for the power of loyalty and right. What can we do to minister to men's needs. The answer has been forming in men's minds, even when they have not realised all its meaning. Make it possible for men to believe in happiness; make it possible for them to believe in love. Give them the things which will brighten their life, glimpses of the beauty of nature or art or intellect; recover for them the simple pleasures of the poorest and humblest thing that can be called a home. Make impossible regions of human life visited by no light of human sympathy, or lightened by no hope of human succour. Open to them possibilities of aspiration. Restore in this way gently a sense of harmony with the order of things into which they have been born. Soothe the dumb exasperation which comes of having to live in a world that means nothing but darkness and want and fear. And then give yourself, your personal help; use your freedom of time, your money if you have it, your acquirements of understanding, knowledge, still to convince them that there is such a thing as unselfish and compassionate love. And leave the inference to them. The very poverty and misery which have once blossomed for them with the miraculous fruit of a true charity will never seem the same again. You have gone among them to carry as far as in you lies whatever of bright and beautiful, of good and pure, of loving and tender, could bear witness that life carries hope with it. And thereby you have given them an alphabet by which to read the witness of the beauty, the greatness, the tenderness of Christ. You can speak to them of Christ, not only as a witness of what may be or what shall be, but as a present Giver of all precious gifts. Or, more truly, of one gift which implies the rest the gift of God's love certainly known, and with a joyful confidence of faith actually received and welcomed into their souls.
E. S. Talbot, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,Jan. 31st, 1884.
References: Luke 7:22. Parker, Hidden Springs,p. 316. Luke 7:23. Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 135.Luke 7:24. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 39.