human
represents a vital truth. Every human being is one of our brethren, and, whether we like the responsibility or not, we are still our
gpt
In our keeping, to a very real extent, lie the supreme issues of his spiritual life, and we have to look to it that we discharge our trust faithfully. We read with horror, and it may be with compassion, of the monstrous outrages committed by savage chiefs upon their subjects, their wives, or their enemies. We forget that the guilt of these things may lie partly at our door, because we have not done our part in helping forward civilizing influences which would have prevented such horrors, above all because we have not prayed as we ought for those who commit them. There are few of us who have not some opportunities of giving assistance in various ways to missionary enterprise and humanizing efforts. But all of us can at least pray for God's blessing upon such things, and for His mercy upon those who are in need of it. Of those who, having nothing else to give, give their struggles after holiness and their prayers for their fellow-men, the blessed commendation stands written,
human
They have done what they could.
gpt
For kings and all that are in high place. It is quite a mistake to suppose that
human
here means the Roman Emperors. This has been asserted, and from this misinterpretation has been deduced the erroneous conclusion that the letter must have been written at a time when it was customary for the Emperor to associate another prince with him in the empire, with a view to securing the succession. As Hadrian was the first to do this, and that near to the close of his reign, this letter (it is urged) cannot be earlier than A.D. 138. But this interpretation is impossible, for
gpt
in the Greek has no article. Had the writer meant the two reigning Emperors, whether Hadrian and Antoninus, or M. Aurelius and Verus, he would inevitably have written
human
The expression
gpt
obviously means
human
including the Roman Emperor, but including many other potentates also. Such persons, as having the heaviest responsibilities and the greatest power of doing good and evil, have an especial claim upon the prayers of Christians. It gives us a striking illustration of the transforming powers of Christianity when we think of St. Paul giving urgent directions that among the persons to be remembered first in the intercessions of the Church are Nero and the men whom he put
gpt
such as Otho and Vitellius, who afterwards became Emperor: and this, too, after Nero's peculiarly cruel and wanton persecution of the Christians A.D. 64. How firmly this beautiful practice became established among Christians, is shown from their writings in the second and third centuries. Tertullian, who lived through the reigns of such monsters as Commodus and Elagabalus, who remembered the persecution under M. Aurelius, and witnessed that under Septimius Severus, can nevertheless write thus of the Emperor of Rome:
human
A Christian is the enemy of no one, least of all of the Emperor, whom he knows to have been appointed by his God, and whom he therefore of necessity loves, and reverences, and honours, and desires his well-being, with that of the whole Roman Empire, so long as the world shall stand; for it shall last as long. To the Emperor, therefore, we render such homage as is lawful for us and good for him, as the human being who comes next to God, and is what he is by God's decree, and to God alone is inferior.... And so we sacrifice also for the well-being of the Emperor; but to our God and his; but in the way that God has ordained, with a prayer that is pure. For God, the Creator of the universe, has no need of odours or of blood. [35] In another passage Tertullian anticipates the objection that Christians pray for the Emperor, in order to curry favour with the Roman government and thus escape persecution. He says that the heathen have only to look into the Scriptures, which to Christians are the voice of God, and see that to pray for their enemies and to pray for those in authority is a fundamental rule with Christians. And he quotes the passage before us.[36] But he appears to misunderstand the concluding words of the Apostle's injunction,--
gpt
Tertullian understands this as a reason for praying for kings and rulers; because they are the preservers of the public peace, and any disturbance in the empire will necessarily affect the Christians as well as other subjects,--which is giving a rather narrow and selfish motive for this great duty.
human
That we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity,