Acts 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good… Here, then, it is necessary to consider to whom St. Peter was addressing himself. Before him stood the centurion Cornelius, probably a few comrades, and certainly some Jews, who on an occasion like this would not have had the largest place in the apostle's thought. The persons of whom St. Peter was chiefly thinking were Cornelius and the other soldiers present, above all Cornelius. The band to which Cornelius belonged consisted of Italian levies, and Cornelius, as his name shows, belonged to an old Roman family, and when St. Peter says that our Lord, during His earthly life, went about doing good, he knew perfectly well that such an account of that life would have appeared anything but tame, commonplace, inadequate, to those whom he was especially anxious to influence, because it was so sharply contrasted with anything that they had left behind them at home. For that great world in which Cornelius and his comrades had been reared must indeed have made the men and affairs of Palestine, generally speaking, seem by comparison petty enough — as we would say, provincial. Everything outward at Rome, the world's centre, was on a splendid scale. The public buildings, the temples, the baths, the public shows, everything connected with the army, everything connected with the machinery and the apparatus of government, was calculated to impress, and even to awe the imagination. But there was one overshadowing defect, in that great world which would have come home with especial force to the minds of the class from which the rank and file of the Roman forces were chiefly recruited. It was a world without love. It was a world full of want and suffering, and the whole of the great social and political machine went round and round without taking any account of this. Commenting on this fact nearly three centuries later, , after describing the salient features of heathen life, adds: "Compassion and humanity are peculiar to the Christians." Now, isolated efforts to relieve suffering, gifts to the needy, liberality of the orators and the inscriptions, these largesses to the people, these public works, these costly entertainments, as Cornelius and his friends knew well, were not the outcome of love. They were forms of an expenditure which was essentially selfish. The main object of such expenditure was to secure that sort of popularity which means political power. It was repaid, if not in kind, yet substantially. The Roman people, under the system of imperial largesses and entertainments, increasingly hated work. It cared only for such ease and enjoyment as it could wring out of its rulers. It became utterly indifferent to everything in its rulers except their capacity and willingness to gratify itself. In order to do real good, the eye must rest not on what is prudent in, or on what is expected of the giver, but on what is needed in the recipient. And thus mere liberality, if active, is blindfold, while charity seeks out its objects with discrimination and sympathy; liberality has no eye for the really sore places in the suffering and destitute world. Nothing was done systematically in that world with which Cornelius and his friends were familiar for classes or for individuals who could make no return. There was no sort of care for widows or for orphans. And if here and there there were schools, like those under Severus, their main object, when we come to examine them closely, appears to have been to provide recruits for the Roman army. And all this was in harmony with principles laid down by the great teachers of the ancient world, such as Plato and Aristotle. In Plato's ideal state the poor have no place, beggars are expelled or left to die, as injuring the common prosperity. In Aristotle's account of the virtues, the most promising, from a Christian point of view, is generosity; but on examination, generosity turns out to be a prudential mean between avarice and extravagance. The generous man, we are told, gives because it is a fine thing to give, not from a sense of duty, still less at the dictates of love for his fellow creatures. It is no wonder that, when these were governing principles, there were few efforts in that old world, to which Cornelius had belonged, that deserved the name of doing good. When, then, Cornelius heard from St. Peter of such a life as that of our Lord, and had further, in all probability, asked and received answers to the questions which St. Peter's description suggested, he would have listened to a narrative which had all the charm, all the freshness of a great surprise. Those poor lepers, and paralytics, and fever-stricken peasants, could make no return to their Benefactor, and He did not ask for any. And this, Cornelius would have observed, implied nothing short of a new ideal of life and work. The highest and greatest good which He did was done for the souls of men. To have done everything for man's bodily frame and leave his spiritual being untouched would have been a poor and worthless kind of doing good in the estimation of Jesus Christ. The lessons by which our Lord brought men to know and to love the Father and Himself, the pardon which He won for them on the Cross, the grace which He promised them after His Ascension, were His chiefest benefactions. But besides this He did abundant good in the physical, material, social sense. It has been said that Christ our Lord was the first Social Reformer. If by social reform be meant the doing away with all the inequalities between classes, or even the removal from human life of the permanent cause of a great deal of physical suffering, it cannot be said that this description of Him is accurate. He showed no wish whatever in any sort of way to interfere with the existing structure of society. He insisted on Caesar's claims to tribute, He prescribed obedience to the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses' seat. His real work was to point to truths and to a life which made the endurance of poverty and distress for a short time here so easy, as to be in the estimate of real disciples comparatively unimportant, but at the same time He relieved so much of it as would enable human beings to make a real step forward towards the true end of their existence. If our Lord was not, in the restricted modern sense, the first social reformer, He was undoubtedly, in the true and ample sense of the word, the first philanthropist. He loved man as man, He loved not one part but the whole of man, He loved man as none had ever loved him before or since, He died for the being whom He loved so well. And when our Lord had left the earth the spirit of His work became that of a Christian Church. It, too, after its measure, went about the world doing good. The New Testament guides us through the first stage of the subject. The wealthier Churches of Greece were directed to lay by small offerings every Sunday, so that when the apostle came by to fetch the collection the money might be ready for the poor Churches in Palestine. The poorer members of the Church were regularly supplied with food at the Agape or love feast. — Widows were especially provided for. It would be impossible here and now to notice the various activities of Christian work in the primitive times which followed the Apostolic age. Early in the third century, if not in the second, there were houses for the reception of poor widows; orphans were brought up at the expense of the Church by the bishop, or by some private person. Thus, for instance, after the martyrdom of at , his boy, who became the celebrated , was brought up by a pious woman who lived in the city, and an excellent man, Severus, is named as having devoted himself in Palestine to the education of all children — they were a considerable number — whose parents were martyrs. In the middle of the third century the Roman empire was afflicted by a pestilence which, according to the historian Gibbon, destroyed not less than half the population. It broke out at Carthage while St. was still alive. There was a general panic, all the heathen that could do so fled; they avoided contact with infected persons, they left their own relations to die alone. Corpses were lying unburied about the streets, and there were rogues who seized the opportunity of making horrible profits. Cyprian summoned the Christians to aid him in doing all that could be done. He was everywhere encouraging, advising, organising, helping the sick and dying with his own hands, and each man under him had, and knew that he had, his appointed task. Some of the Christians were anxious to confine their aid to their fellow believers, their feelings against the heathen had been irritated by a recent persecution, and they knew that another persecution was impending, but they received no countenance from their bishop. "If," exclaimed St. Cyprian, in a sermon preached at this crisis, "if we only do good to those who do good to us, what do we more than the heathen and the publicans? If we are the children of God, who makes His sun to shine upon the good and the bad, and sends His rain on the just and on the unjust, let us now prove it by our own acts, let us bless those who curse us." One class of persons who were especial objects of primitive Christian charity were those who were sent to work in the mines. They were almost naked; they had the scantiest supply of food; they were often treated with great cruelty by the inspectors of public works. We find from the letters of St. Cyprian these poor people were special objects of his attention; he regularly sent them supplies by the hands of a trusted sub-deacon; and he wrote to them continually, assuring them of his sympathy and his prayers. And another work of mercy in which the primitive Church especially interested itself was the improvement of the condition of the prisoners. The prisons in old Rome were crowded with persons of all descriptions — prisoners of war, especially after the barbarian inroads; prisoners for the non-payment of taxes and for debt — subjects on which the Roman law was very severe; prisoners for the various kinds of felony; and, when a persecution was going on, prisoners for the crime of being Christians. These unhappy people were huddled together, it is little to say, with no attention to the laws of health or to the decencies of life, and one of the earliest forms of Christian charity was to raise funds for the redemption of prisoners by payment as a specially Christian form of mercy. Cyprian raised large sums from his flock to purchase freedom for prisoners of war. It would be impossible within our limits to do any sort of justice to this vast subject — the manner in which the ancient Church of Christ carried on, both in the higher and the lower senses of the term, her Master's work of doing good. The most unshowing and unromantic methods of doing good may be the most acceptable. To work at a night school, to keep the accounts of a charity, to get up Sunday breakfasts for poor people, may mean more in the eyes of the Infinite Mercy than to dispose of immense charitable resources, or even to be a great teacher or ruler in the Church. The vital condition of doing good, whether it be spiritual or physical good, is that simple unity of purpose which springs from disinterestedness, and this can best be learned at His blessed feet, who remains the first and the greatest of philanthropists, since in life and in death He gave Himself for us, that whether we wake or sleep we might live together with Him. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. |
    |