Whom Will You Neighbour?

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. HEBREWS 13:3

It is possible to read Meyer’s devotional books and never guess that their author spent much of his working life among prisoners, drunkards and the destitute. The books are full of the secret place, the still hour and the inner life. But Meyer did not see any tension between the two. The same surrender that gave Christ the last key gave Him the use of the hands and the feet. The God who led the soul into the secret of His presence led the body to the gaol gate.

Holiness in the ordinary haunts of men

He said so plainly in The Way Into the Holiest, in the chapter where he set out his rules for the holiness movement. True saintliness, he wrote, must be natural. The saint who cannot play with children, who looks askance on the great movements of the world and shuts himself up in cloistered seclusion, has missed the pattern of Christ, who watched the children at play in the market-place and sat at the dinner tables of rich and poor alike. “The saintliness of the true saint must find its home in the ordinary homes and haunts of men.”

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. JAMES 1:27

In The Secret of Guidance he makes care for others the last of his five cautions for the devout life, and he puts it as a law of the kingdom. “No life can be blessed which is self-centred.” The Dead Sea is walled in and dead. “The secret of having is giving; of learning is teaching; of climbing to the throne is by stooping to wash the feet of the disciples.” And in his address on the secret of God’s presence he warns that the place of prayer itself will lose its light if we linger there after the bell of duty has rung below.

The next person who needs help

The clearest statement of his social teaching comes in a reading from Our Daily Walk on the law of Leviticus 19, and it begins with a definition that clears away a great deal of evasion. “Our neighbour is the next person who needs our help, man, woman, or child.” It is enough, he says, that your help is needed and that you are near.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. LUKE 10:36–37

The lawyer who asked Jesus that question, Meyer observes, was looking for someone to neighbour him. Jesus turned it round and asked, in effect, whom will you neighbour? Those who go through life waiting to be neighboured, he says, will find it full of disappointment; those who set out to neighbour others will not lack friends in their own hour of need.

What he draws from the old law is strikingly concrete. Leave a margin of your income and produce for those in need. Do not keep back what you owe; he wished all Christians would pay small shopkeepers promptly, and thought it would work a quiet revolution. Be gentle and considerate with those who suffer any infirmity; become eyes to the blind and ears to the deaf. Do not flinch from rebuking sin, but first take the beam from your own eye. And do not bear a grudge.

Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. LEVITICUS 19:13

Weld yourself to a life

Meyer did not want his readers to be vaguely benevolent. In the reading on surrender in Our Daily Walk he gives a counsel that sums up his own practice: “Weld yourself to some life or lives that sorely need help. Give not words only, but deeds and blood.” It is not enough to support good causes from a distance. Consecration becomes real when it attaches itself to particular people.

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. MATTHEW 25:35–36

That is what Melbourne Hall in Leicester became under him. He is remembered for going to the prison gate on the mornings when men were released, offering them breakfast and a fresh start, and setting up small enterprises to give them honest wages and a character to show an employer. The work was humble and unglamorous, and work of that kind is never without its disappointments. But he learned there what he taught for the rest of his life: that the gospel of the indwelling Christ is meant to reach the man who has nothing but the clothes he walked out in.

In London the same conviction took him into public life. In Lambeth, among some of the poorest streets in the capital, he campaigned against the brothels and public houses that preyed on the people of his parish,. He was ridiculed for it as a busybody. He kept on, because he believed that loving your neighbour sometimes means standing between him and those who would ruin him.

Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy. PROVERBS 31:8–9

The oppressed and the Lord

Meyer never let social concern drift loose from prayer. In a reading on Hezekiah’s cry, O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me, he lists the many forms oppression takes — poverty, debt, the fear of unemployment, persecution at home, sickness without hope — and says that all of them may be handed to a faithful Creator who is as willing as He is able. The Christian who works among the poor must bring them to the Lord as well as bring the Lord to them.

Reading him with care

Meyer was a man of his time, and some of his social work carries the marks of it. Victorian philanthropy could be paternal, and its campaigns against vice could shade into policing the lives of the poor while leaving the comfortable untouched. Meyer was better than many on this, and far better than those who did nothing. But the reader who takes up his example should also take up the questions a later generation learned to ask: whether the people we help are treated as neighbours or as projects, and whether we are as eager to change our own habits as theirs.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Who is the next person near you who needs your help? Name them, and do one concrete thing for them this week.

2. Set aside a definite proportion of your income for those in need, if you do not already.

3. Pay what you owe promptly, especially to small traders and those who work for you.

4. Weld yourself to one life: choose one person in real need and commit to walk with them over months, not days.

5. Find out what help exists for prisoners leaving prison near you, and ask how you might support it.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You watched children playing in the market-place and ate with the rich and the poor. Keep my holiness from shutting me away.

Show me my neighbour: the next person who needs my help. Give me grace to go to them.

Weld me to some life that sorely needs help, and let me give not words only but deeds.

And as I work, let me bring the oppressed to You, who are as willing as You are able. Amen.