| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 12 |
Page 6 |
Some men claim they have a right to drink moderately, and that is does not hurt them. St. Paul would say to these men, “Very well; I grant all you say, at least for the sake of argument. You are strong, and are never going to come under the power of appetite. You have liberty to have your wine on your table every day. Yes, but what about the weak brother who is influenced by your example, yet who has not your strength and cannot withstand the temptation of appetite, as you think you can do? What about him? “Through thy strength, he that is weak perisheth, the brother for whose sake Christ died.”
Some men say, “I cannot care for my weak brother. I cannot like him. I cannot have any patience with him. He is narrow and bigoted, and has so many scruples that there is no getting along with him. Or he is not bright, and I cannot enjoy being with him or doing anything for him. Or he is rude and low in his tastes. I cannot be the weak brother’s friend.”
“For whose sake Christ died,” seems to answer all these difficulties. Since Christ loved the weak brother enough to die for him, I ought to love him enough to be kind to him, to be his friend, to do him good, at least not to cause him to perish. This is a tremendous motive. The fact that Jesus died for the weak brother suggests his worth in the sight of God. There is a story of a woman who made her house a home for crippled and diseased children.
Among those gathered under her care was a boy of three who was a pitiable object. He was covered with blotches. The good woman could no love him; he was so repulsive, although she was always kind to him. One day she was sitting on the veranda with this boy in her arms. The sun was warm, and in the perfume of the honeysuckles she slept. She dreamt of herself as having changed places with the child and as lying there, only more repulsive in her sinfulness than he was in his physical condition. And over her the Lord Jesus was bending and looking into her eyes with longing, saying to her, “If I can bear with you, who are so full of sin, and love you in spite of it all, can you not for my sake love this innocent child who is suffering not for his own sin, but for the sin of his parents?”
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