Not Judging, but Doing
99
The golden rule is the principle of true courtesy, and its truest
illustration is seen in the life and character of Jesus. Oh, what rays
of softness and beauty shone forth in the daily life of our Saviour!
What sweetness flowed from His very presence! The same spirit will
be revealed in His children. Those with whom Christ dwells will be
surrounded with a divine atmosphere. Their white robes of purity will
be fragrant with perfume from the garden of the Lord. Their faces will
reflect light from His, brightening the path for stumbling and weary
feet.
No man who has the true ideal of what constitutes a perfect char-
acter will fail to manifest the sympathy and tenderness of Christ. The
influence of grace is to soften the heart, to refine and purify the feelings,
giving a heaven-born delicacy and sense of propriety.
But there is a yet deeper significance to the golden rule. Everyone
who has been made a steward of the manifold grace of God is called
upon to impart to souls in ignorance and darkness, even as, were he in
their place, he would desire them to impart to him. The apostle Paul
said, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians; both to the
wise, and to the unwise.”
Romans 1:14
. By all that you have known of
the love of God, by all that you have received of the rich gifts of His
grace above the most benighted and degraded soul upon the earth are
you in debt to that soul to impart these gifts unto him.
[136]
So also with the gifts and blessings of this life: whatever you may
possess above your fellows places you in debt, to that degree, to all
who are less favored. Have we wealth, or even the comforts of life,
then we are under the most solemn obligation to care for the suffering
sick, the widow, and the fatherless exactly as we would desire them to
care for us were our condition and theirs to be reversed.
The golden rule teaches, by implication, the same truth which is
taught elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount, that “with what measure
ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” That which we do to others,
whether it be good or evil, will surely react upon ourselves, in blessing
or in cursing. Whatever we give, we shall receive again. The earthly
blessings which we impart to others may be, and often are, repaid in
kind. What we give does, in time of need, often come back to us in
fourfold measure in the coin of the realm. But, besides this, all gifts
are repaid, even in this life, in the fuller inflowing of His love, which is
the sum of all heaven’s glory and its treasure. And evil imparted also