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+Project Gutenberg's Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture
+       Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters
+       I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+Release Date: April 19, 2007 [EBook #21190]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          SECOND CORINTHIANS,
+          GALATIANS,
+          AND PHILIPPIANS
+
+          CHAPTERS I TO END
+
+          COLOSSIANS, THESSALONIANS,
+          AND FIRST TIMOTHY
+
+          NEW YORK
+          GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+          _EXPOSITIONS OF
+          HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+          ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+          SECOND CORINTHIANS
+
+          _Chaps. VII to End_
+
+          GALATIANS AND
+          PHILIPPIANS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+II. CORINTHIANS
+
+HOPE AND HOLINESS (2 Cor. vii. 1)                                 1
+
+SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD (2 Cor. vii. 10)                          8
+
+GIVING AND ASKING (2 Cor. viii. 1-12)                            20
+
+RICH YET POOR (2 Cor. viii. 9)                                   27
+
+WILLING AND NOT DOING (2 Cor. viii. 11)                          36
+
+ALL GRACE ABOUNDING (2 Cor. ix. 8)                               42
+
+GOD'S UNSPEAKABLE GIFT (2 Cor. ix. 15)                           50
+
+A MILITANT MESSAGE (2 Cor. x. 5 and 6, R.V.)                     57
+
+SIMPLICITY TOWARDS CHRIST (2 Cor. xi. 3)                         65
+
+STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS (2 Cor. xii. 8, 9)                          74
+
+NOT YOURS BUT YOU (2 Cor. xii. 14)                               83
+
+
+GALATIANS
+
+FROM CENTRE TO CIRCUMFERENCE (Gal. ii. 20)                       91
+
+THE EVIL EYE AND THE CHARM (Gal. iii. 1)                        100
+
+LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE (Gal. iii. 4)                             109
+
+THE UNIVERSAL PRISON (Gal. iii. 22)                             116
+
+THE SON SENT (Gal. iv. 4, 5, R.V.)                              126
+
+WHAT MAKES A CHRISTIAN: CIRCUMCISION OR FAITH? (Gal. v. 6)      136
+
+'WALK IN THE SPIRIT' (Gal. v. 16)                               153
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT (Gal. v. 22, 23)                        162
+
+BURDEN-BEARING (Gal. vi. 2-5)                                   171
+
+DOING GOOD TO ALL (Gal. vi. 10)                                 180
+
+THE OWNER'S BRAND (Gal. vi. 17)                                 189
+
+
+PHILIPPIANS
+
+LOVING GREETINGS (Phil. i. 1-8, R.V.)                           200
+
+A COMPREHENSIVE PRAYER (Phil. i. 9-11, R.V.)                    206
+
+A PRISONER'S TRIUMPH (Phil. i. 12-20, R.V.)                     211
+
+A STRAIT BETWIXT TWO (Phil. i. 21-25)                           219
+
+CITIZENS OF HEAVEN (Phil. i. 27, 28)                            233
+
+A PLEA FOR UNITY (Phil. ii. 1-4, R.V.)                          244
+
+THE DESCENT OF THE WORD (Phil. ii. 5-8, R.V.)                   253
+
+THE ASCENT OF JESUS (Phil. ii. 9-11, R.V.)                      260
+
+WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION (Phil. ii. 12, 13)                  268
+
+COPIES OF JESUS (Phil. ii. 14-16, R.V.)                         281
+
+A WILLING SACRIFICE (Phil. ii. 16-18, R.V.)                     287
+
+PAUL AND TIMOTHY (Phil. ii. 19-24, R.V.)                        295
+
+PAUL AND EPAPHRODITUS (Phil. ii. 25-30, R.V.)                   305
+
+PREPARING TO END (Phil. iii. 1-3, R.V.)                         311
+
+THE LOSS OF ALL (Phil. iii. 4-8, R.V.)                          321
+
+THE GAIN OF CHRIST (Phil. iii. 8, 9, R.V.)                      328
+
+SAVING KNOWLEDGE (Phil. iii. 10, 11, R.V.)                      336
+
+LAID HOLD OF AND LAYING HOLD (Phil. iii. 12)                    348
+
+THE RACE AND THE GOAL (Phil. iii. 13, 14)                       359
+
+THE SOUL'S PERFECTION (Phil. iii. 15)                           369
+
+THE RULE OF THE ROAD (Phil. iii. 16)                            381
+
+WARNINGS AND HOPES (Phil. iii. 17-21, R.V.)                     391
+
+
+
+
+II. CORINTHIANS
+
+HOPE AND HOLINESS
+
+          Having therefore these promises . . . let us cleanse
+          ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and
+          spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of
+          God.'--2 COR. vii. 1.
+
+
+It is often made a charge against professing Christians that their
+religion has very little to do with common morality. The taunt has
+sharpened multitudes of gibes and been echoed in all sorts of tones: it
+is very often too true and perfectly just, but if ever it is, let it be
+distinctly understood that it is not so because of Christian men's
+religion but in spite of it. Their bitterest enemy does not condemn them
+half so emphatically as their own religion does: the sharpest censure of
+others is not so sharp as the rebukes of the New Testament. If there is
+one thing which it insists upon more than another, it is that religion
+without morality is nothing--that the one test to which, after all,
+every man must submit is, what sort of character has he and how has he
+behaved--is he pure or foul? All high-flown pretension, all fervid
+emotion has at last to face the question which little children ask, 'Was
+he a good man?'
+
+The Apostle has been speaking about very high and mystical truths, about
+all Christians being the temple of God, about God dwelling in men, about
+men and women being His sons and daughters; these are the very truths
+on which so often fervid imaginations have built up a mystical piety
+that had little to do with the common rules of right and wrong. But Paul
+keeps true to the intensely practical purpose of his preaching and
+brings his heroes down to the prosaic earth with the homely common sense
+of this far-reaching exhortation, which he gives as the fitting
+conclusion for such celestial visions.
+
+I. A Christian life should be a life of constant self-purifying.
+
+This epistle is addressed to the church of God which is at Corinth with
+all the _saints_ which are in all Achaia.
+
+Looking out over that wide region, Paul saw scattered over godless
+masses a little dispersed company to each of whom the sacred name of
+Saint applied. They had been deeply stained with the vices of their age
+and place, and after a black list of criminals he had had to say to them
+'such were some of you,' and he lays his finger on the miracle that had
+changed them and hesitates not to say of them all, 'But ye are washed,
+but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord
+Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.'
+
+The first thing, then, that every Christian has is a cleansing which
+accompanies forgiveness, and however his garment may have been 'spotted
+by the flesh,' it is 'washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.'
+Strange cleansing by which black stains melt out of garments plunged in
+red blood! With the cleansing of forgiveness and justification comes,
+wherever they come, the gift of the Holy Spirit--a new life springing up
+within the old life, and untouched by any contact with its evils. These
+gifts belong universally to the initial stage of the Christian life and
+require for their possession only the receptiveness of faith. They
+admit of no co-operation of human effort, and to possess them men have
+only to 'take the things that are freely given to them of God.' But of
+the subsequent stages of the Christian life, the laborious and constant
+effort to develop and apply that free gift is as essential as, in the
+earliest stage, it is worse than useless. The gift received has to be
+wrought into the very substance of the soul, and to be wrought out in
+all the endless varieties of life and conduct. Christians are cleansed
+to begin with, but they have still daily to cleanse themselves: the
+leaven is hid in the three measures of meal, but ''tis a life-long task
+till the lump be leavened,' and no man, even though he has the life that
+was in Jesus within him, will grow up 'into the measure of the stature
+of the fulness of Christ' unless, by patient and persistent effort, he
+is ever pressing on to 'the things that are before' and daily striving
+to draw nearer to the prize of his high calling. We are cleansed, but we
+have still to cleanse ourselves.
+
+Yet another paradox attaches to the Christian life, inasmuch as God
+cleanses us, but we have to cleanse ourselves. The great truth that the
+spirit of God in a man is the fontal source of all his goodness, and
+that Christ's righteousness is given to us, is no pillow on which to
+rest an idle head, but should rather be a trumpet-call to effort which
+is thereby made certain of success. If we were left to the task of
+self-purifying by our own efforts we might well fling it up as
+impossible. It is as easy for a man to lift himself from the ground by
+gripping his own shoulders as it is for us to rise to greater heights of
+moral conduct by our own efforts; but if we can believe that God gives
+the impulse after purity, and the vision of what purity is, and imparts
+the power of attaining it, strengthening at once our dim sight and
+stirring our feeble desires and energising our crippled limbs, then we
+can 'run with patience the race that is set before us.'
+
+We must note the thoroughness of the cleansing which the Apostle here
+enjoins. What is to be got rid of is not this or that defect or vice,
+but '_all_ filthiness of flesh and spirit.' The former, of course,
+refers primarily to sins of impurity which in the eyes of the Greeks of
+Corinth were scarcely sins at all, and the latter to a state of mind
+when fancy, imagination, and memory were enlisted in the service of
+evil. Both are rampant in our day as they were in Corinth. Much modern
+literature and the new gospel of 'Art for Art's sake' minister to both,
+and every man carries in himself inclinations to either. It is no
+partial cleansing with which Paul would have us to be satisfied: '_all_'
+filthiness is to be cast out. Like careful housewives who are never
+content to cease their scrubbing while a speck remains upon furniture,
+Christian men are to regard their work as unfinished as long as the
+least trace of the unclean thing remains in their flesh or in their
+spirit. The ideal may be far from being realised at any moment, but it
+is at the peril of the whole sincerity and peacefulness of their lives
+if they, in the smallest degree, lower the perfection of their ideal in
+deference to the imperfection of their realisation of it.
+
+It must be abundantly clear from our own experience that any such
+cleansing is a very long process. No character is made, whether it be
+good or bad, but by a slow building up: no man becomes most wicked all
+at once, and no man is sanctified by a wish or at a jump. As long as men
+are in a world so abounding with temptation, 'he that is washed' will
+need daily to 'wash his feet' that have been stained in the foul ways of
+life, if he is to be 'clean every whit.'
+
+As long as the spirit is imprisoned in the body and has it for its
+instrument there will be need for much effort at purifying. We must be
+content to overcome one foe at a time, and however strong may be the
+pilgrim's spirit in us, we must be content to take one step at a time,
+and to advance by very slow degrees. Nor is it to be forgotten that as
+we get nearer what we ought to be, we should be more conscious of the
+things in which we are not what we ought to be. The nearer we get to
+Jesus Christ, the more will our consciences be enlightened as to the
+particulars in which we are still distant from Him. A speck on a
+polished shield will show plain that would never have been seen on a
+rusty one. The saint who is nearest God will think more of his sins than
+the man who is furthest from him. So new work of purifying will open
+before us as we grow more pure, and this will last as long as life
+itself.
+
+II. The Christian life is to be not merely a continual getting rid of
+evil, but a continual becoming good.
+
+Paul here draws a distinction between cleansing ourselves from
+filthiness and perfecting holiness, and these two, though closely
+connected and capable of being regarded as being but the positive and
+negative sides of one process, are in reality different, though in
+practice the former is never achieved without the latter, nor the latter
+accomplished without the former. Holiness is more than purity; it is
+consecration. That is holy which is devoted to God, and a saint is one
+whose daily effort is to devote his whole self, in all his faculties and
+nature, thoughts, heart, and will, more and more, to God, and to
+receive into himself more and more of God.
+
+The purifying which Paul has been enjoining will only be successful in
+the measure of our consecration, and the consecration will only be
+genuine in the measure of our purifying. Herein lies the broad and
+blessed distinction between the world's morality and Christian ethics.
+The former fails just because it lacks the attitude towards a Person who
+is the very foundation of Christian morality, and changes a hard and
+impossible law into love. There is no more futile waste of breath than
+that of teachers of morality who have no message but Be good! Be good!
+and no motive by which to urge it but the pleasures of virtue and the
+disadvantages of vice, but when the vagueness of the abstract thought of
+goodness solidifies into a living Person and that Person makes his
+appeal first to our hearts and bids us love him, and then opens before
+us the unstained light of his own character and beseeches us to be like
+him, the repellent becomes attractive: the impossible becomes possible,
+and 'if ye love Me keep My commandments' becomes a constraining power
+and a victorious impulse in our lives.
+
+III. The Christian life of purifying and consecration is to be animated
+by hope and fear.
+
+The Apostle seems to connect hope more immediately with the cleansing,
+and holiness with the fear of God, but probably both hope and fear are
+in his mind as the double foundation on which both purity and
+consecration are to rest, or the double emotion which is to produce them
+both. These promises refer directly to the immediately preceding words,
+'I will be a Father unto you and ye shall be My sons and daughters,' in
+which all the blessings which God can give or men can receive are fused
+together in one lustrous and all-comprehensive whole. So all the great
+truths of the Gospel and all the blessed emotions of sonship which can
+spring up in a human heart are intended to find their practical result
+in holy and pure living. For this end God has spoken to us out of the
+thick darkness; for this end Christ has come into our darkness; for this
+end He has lived; for this end He died; for this end He rose again; for
+this end He sends His Spirit and administers the providence of the
+world. The purpose of all the Divine activity as regards us men is not
+merely to make us happy, but to make us happy in order that we may be
+good. He whom what he calls his religion has only saved from the wrath
+of God and the fear of hell has not learned the alphabet of religion.
+Unless God's promises evoke men's goodness it will be of little avail
+that they seem to quicken their hope. Joyful confidence in our sonship
+is only warranted in the measure in which we are like our Father. Hope
+often deludes and makes men dreamy and unpractical. It generally paints
+pictures far lovelier than the realities, and without any of their
+shadows; it is too often the stimulus and ally of ignoble lives, and
+seldom stirs to heroism or endurance, but its many defects are not due
+to itself but to its false choice of objects on which to fix. The hope
+which is lifted from trailing along the earth and twining round
+creatures and which rises to grasp these promises ought to be, and in
+the measure of its reality is the ally of all patient endurance and
+noble self-sacrifice. Its vision of coming good is all directed to the
+coming Christ, and 'every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth
+himself even as He is pure.'
+
+In Paul's experience there was no contrariety between hope set on Jesus
+and fear directed towards God. It is in the fear of God that holiness is
+to be perfected. There is a fear which has no torment. Yet more, there
+is no love in sons or daughters without fear. The reverential awe with
+which God's children draw near to God has in it nothing slavish and no
+terror. Their love is not only joyful but lowly. The worshipping gaze
+upon His Divine majesty, the reverential and adoring contemplation of
+His ineffable holiness, and the poignant consciousness, after all
+effort, of the distance between us and Him will bow the hearts that love
+Him most in lowliest prostration before Him. These two, hope and fear,
+confidence and awe, are like the poles on which the whole round world
+turns and are united here in one result. They who 'set their hope in
+God' must 'not forget the works of God but keep His commandments'; they
+who 'call Him Father,' 'who without respect of persons judgeth' must
+'pass the time of their sojourning here in fear,' and their hopes and
+their fears must drive the wheels of life, purify them from all
+filthiness and perfect them in all holiness.
+
+
+
+
+SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD
+
+          'Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not
+          to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world
+          worketh death.'--2 COR. vii. 10.
+
+
+Very near the close of his missionary career the Apostle Paul summed up
+his preaching as being all directed to enforcing two points, 'Repentance
+towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' These two, repentance
+and faith, ought never to be separated in thought, as they are
+inseparable in fact. True repentance is impossible without faith, true
+faith cannot exist without repentance.
+
+Yet the two are separated very often, even by earnest Christian
+teachers. The tendency of this day is to say a great deal about faith,
+and not nearly enough in proportion about repentance; and the effect is
+to obscure the very idea of faith, and not seldom to preach 'Peace!
+peace! when there is no peace.' A gospel which is always talking about
+faith, and scarcely ever talking about sin and repentance, is denuded,
+indeed, of some of its most unwelcome characteristics, but is also
+deprived of most of its power, and it may very easily become an ally of
+unrighteousness, and an indulgence to sin. The reproach that the
+Christian doctrine of salvation through faith is immoral in its
+substance derives most of its force from forgetting that 'repentance
+towards God' is as real a condition of salvation as is 'faith in our
+Lord Jesus Christ.' We have here the Apostle's deliverance about one of
+these twin thoughts. We have three stages--the root, the stem, the
+fruit; sorrow, repentance, salvation. But there is a right and a wrong
+kind of sorrow for sin. The right kind breeds repentance, and thence
+reaches salvation; the wrong kind breeds nothing, and so ends in death.
+
+Let us then trace these stages, not forgetting that this is not a
+complete statement of the case, and needs to be supplemented in the
+spirit of the words which I have already quoted, by the other part of
+the inseparable whole, 'faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+I. First, then, consider the true and the false sorrow for sin.
+
+The Apostle takes it for granted that a recognition of our own evil, and
+a consequent penitent regretfulness, lie at the foundation of all true
+Christianity. Now I do not insist upon any uniformity of experience in
+people, any more than I should insist that all their bodies should be of
+one shape or of one proportion. Human lives are infinitely different,
+human dispositions are subtly varied, and because neither the one nor
+the other are ever reproduced exactly in any two people, therefore the
+religious experience of no two souls can ever be precisely alike.
+
+We have no right to ask--and much harm has been done by asking--for an
+impossible uniformity of religious experience, any more than we have a
+right to expect that all voices shall be pitched in one key, or all
+plants flower in the same month, or after the same fashion. You can
+print off as many copies as you like, for instance, of a drawing of a
+flower on a printing-press, and they shall all be alike, petal for
+petal, leaf for leaf, shade for shade; but no two hand-drawn copies will
+be so precisely alike, still less will any two of the real buds that
+blow on the bush. Life produces resemblance with differences; it is
+machinery that makes facsimiles.
+
+So we insist on no pedantic or unreal uniformity; and yet, whilst
+leaving the widest scope for divergencies of individual character and
+experience, and not asking that a man all diseased and blotched with the
+leprosy of sin for half a lifetime, and a little child that has grown up
+at its mother's knee, 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,' and
+so has been kept 'innocent of much transgression,' shall have the same
+experience; yet Scripture, as it seems to me, and the nature of the case
+do unite in asserting that there are certain elements which, in varying
+proportions indeed, will be found in all true Christian experience, and
+of these an indispensable one--and in a very large number, if not in
+the majority of cases, a fundamental one--is this which my text calls
+'godly sorrow.'
+
+Dear brethren, surely a reasonable consideration of the facts of our
+conduct and character point to that as the attitude that becomes us.
+Does it not? I do not charge you with crimes in the eye of the law. I do
+not suppose that many of you are living in flagrant disregard of the
+elementary principles of common every-day morality. Some are, no doubt.
+There are, no doubt, unclean men here; there are some who eat and drink
+more than is good for them, habitually; there are, no doubt, men and
+women who are living in avarice and worldliness, and doing things which
+the ordinary conscience of the populace points to as faults and
+blemishes. But I come to you respectable people that can say: 'I am not
+as other men are, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican'; and
+pray you, dear friends, to look at your character all round, in the
+light of the righteousness and love of God, and to plead to the
+indictment which charges you with neglect of many a duty and with sin
+against Him. How do you plead, 'guilty or not guilty, sinful or not
+sinful?' Be honest with yourselves, and the answer will not be far to
+seek.
+
+Notice how my text draws a broad distinction between the right and the
+wrong kind of sorrow for sin. 'Godly sorrow' is, literally
+rendered,'sorrow according to God,' which may either mean sorrow which
+has reference to God, or sorrow which is in accordance with His will;
+that is to say, which is pleasing to Him. If it is the former, it will
+be the latter. I prefer to suppose that it is the former--that is,
+sorrow which has reference to God. And then, there is another kind of
+sorrow, which the Apostle calls the 'sorrow of the world,' which is
+devoid of that reference to God. Here we have the characteristic
+difference between the Christian way of looking at our own faults and
+shortcomings, and the sorrow of the world, which has got no blessing in
+it, and will never lead to anything like righteousness and peace. It is
+just this--one has reference to God, puts its sin by His side, sees its
+blackness relieved against the 'fierce light' of the Great White Throne,
+and the other has not that reference.
+
+To expand that for a moment,--there are plenty of us who, when our sin
+is behind us, and its bitter fruits are in our hands, are sorry enough
+for our faults. A man that is lying in the hospital a wreck, with the
+sins of his youth gnawing the flesh off his bones, is often enough sorry
+that he did not live more soberly and chastely and temperately in the
+past days. That fraudulent bankrupt who has not got his discharge and
+has lost his reputation, and can get nobody to lend him money enough to
+start him in business again, as he hangs about the streets, slouching in
+his rags, is sorry enough that he did not keep the straight road. The
+'sorrow of the world' has no thought about God in it at all. The
+consequences of sin set many a man's teeth on edge who does not feel any
+compunction for the wrong that he did. My brethren, is that the position
+of any that are listening to me now?
+
+Again, men are often sorry for their conduct without thinking of it as
+sin against God. Crime means the transgression of man's law, wrong means
+the transgression of conscience's law, sin is the transgression of God's
+law. Some of us would perhaps have to say--'I have done crime.' We are
+all of us quite ready to say: 'I have done wrong many a time'; but
+there are some of us who hesitate to take the other step, and say: 'I
+have done sin.' Sin has, for its correlative, God. If there is no God
+there is no sin. There may be faults, there may be failures, there may
+be transgressions, breaches of the moral law, things done inconsistent
+with man's nature and constitution, and so on; but if there be a God,
+then we have personal relations to that Person and His law; and when we
+break His law it is more than crime; it is more than fault; it is more
+than transgression; it is more than wrong; it is sin. It is when you
+lift the shutter off conscience, and let the light of God rush in upon
+your hearts and consciences, that you have the wholesome sorrow that
+worketh repentance and salvation and life.
+
+Oh, dear friends, I do beseech you to lay these simple thoughts to
+heart. Remember, I urge no rigid uniformity of experience or character,
+but I do say that unless a man has learned to see his sin in the light
+of God, and in the light of God to weep over it, he has yet to know 'the
+strait gate that leadeth unto life.'
+
+I believe that a very large amount of the superficiality and
+easy-goingness of the Christianity of to-day comes just from this, that
+so many who call themselves Christians have never once got a glimpse of
+themselves as they really are. I remember once peering over the edge of
+the crater of Vesuvius, and looking down into the pit, all swirling with
+sulphurous fumes. Have you ever looked into your hearts, in that
+fashion, and seen the wreathing smoke and the flashing fire there? If
+you have, you will cleave to that Christ, who is your sole deliverance
+from sin.
+
+But, remember, there is no prescription about depth or amount or length
+of time during which this sorrow shall be felt. If, on the one hand, it
+is essential, on the other hand there are a great many people who ought
+to be walking in the light and the liberty of God's Gospel who bring
+darkness and clouds over themselves by the anxious scrutinising
+question: 'Is my sorrow deep enough?' Deep enough! What for? What is the
+use of sorrow for sin? To lead a man to repentance and to faith. If you
+have as much sorrow as leads you to penitence and trust you have enough.
+It is not your sorrow that is going to wash away your sin, it is
+Christ's blood. So let no man trouble himself about the question, Have I
+sorrow enough? The one question is: 'Has my sorrow led me to cast myself
+on Christ?'
+
+II. Still further, look now for a moment at the next stage here. 'Godly
+sorrow worketh repentance.'
+
+What is repentance? No doubt many of you would answer that it is 'sorrow
+for sin,' but clearly this text of ours draws a distinction between the
+two. There are very few of the great key-words of Christianity that have
+suffered more violent and unkind treatment, and have been more obscured
+by misunderstandings, than this great word. It has been weakened down
+into penitence, which in the ordinary acceptation, means simply the
+emotion that I have already been speaking about, viz., a regretful sense
+of my own evil. And it has been still further docked and degraded, both
+in its syllables and in its substance, into _penance_. But the
+'repentance' of the New Testament and of the Old Testament--one of the
+twin conditions of salvation--is neither sorrow for sin nor works of
+restitution and satisfaction, but it is, as the word distinctly
+expresses, a change of purpose in regard to the sin for which a man
+mourns. I cannot now expand and elaborate this idea as I should like,
+but let me remind you of one or two passages in Scripture which may show
+that the right notion of the word is not sorrow but changed attitude and
+purpose in regard to my sin.
+
+We find passages, some of which ascribe and some deny repentance to the
+Divine nature. But if there be a repentance which is possible for the
+Divine nature, it obviously cannot mean sorrow for sin, but must signify
+a change of purpose. In the Epistle to the Romans we read, 'The gifts
+and calling of God are without repentance,' which clearly means without
+change of purpose on His part. And I read in the story of the mission of
+the Prophet Jonah, that 'the Lord repented of the evil which He had said
+He would do unto them, and He did it not.' Here, again, the idea of
+repentance is clearly and distinctly that of a change of purpose. So fix
+this on your minds, and lay it on your hearts, dear friends, that the
+repentance of the New Testament is not idle tears nor the twitchings of
+a vain regret, but the resolute turning away of the sinful heart from
+its sins. It is 'repentance toward God,' the turning from the sin to the
+Father, and that is what leads to salvation. The sorrow is separated
+from the repentance in idea, however closely they may be intertwined in
+fact. The sorrow is one thing, and the repentance which it works is
+another.
+
+Then notice that this change of purpose and breaking off from sin is
+produced by the sorrow for sin, of which I have been speaking; and that
+the production of this repentance is the main characteristic difference
+between the godly sorrow and the sorrow of the world. A man may have his
+paroxysms of regret, but the question is: Does it make any difference
+in his attitude? Is he standing, after the tempest of sorrow has swept
+over him, with his face in the same direction as before; or has it
+whirled him clean round, and set him in the other direction? The one
+kind of sorrow, which measures my sin by the side of the brightness and
+purity of God, vindicates itself as true, because it makes me hate my
+evil and turn away from it. The other, which is of the world, passes
+over me like the empty wind through an archway, it whistles for a moment
+and is gone, and there is nothing left to show that it was ever there.
+The one comes like one of those brooks in tropical countries, dry and
+white for half the year, and then there is a rush of muddy waters,
+fierce but transient, and leaving no results behind. My brother! when
+your conscience pricks, which of these two things does it do? After the
+prick, is the word of command that your Will issues 'Right about face!'
+or is it 'As you were'? Godly sorrow worketh a change of attitude,
+purpose, mind; the sorrow of the world leaves a man standing where he
+was. Ask yourselves the question: Which of the two are you familiar
+with?
+
+Again, the true means of evoking true repentance is the contemplation of
+the Cross. Law and the fear of hell may startle into sorrow, and even
+lead to some kind of repentance. But it is the great power of Christ's
+love and sacrifice which will really melt the heart into true
+repentance. You may hammer ice to pieces, but it is ice still. You may
+bray a fool in a mortar, and his folly will not depart from him. Dread
+of punishment may pulverise the heart, but not change it; and each
+fragment, like the smallest bits of a magnet, will have the same
+characteristics as the whole mass. But 'the goodness of God leads to
+repentance' as the prodigal is conquered and sees the true hideousness
+of the swine's trough, when he bethinks himself of the father's love. I
+beseech you to put yourselves under the influence of that great love,
+and look on that Cross till your hearts melt.
+
+III. We come to the last stage here. Salvation is the issue of
+repentance. 'Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation not to be
+repented of.'
+
+What is the connection between repentance and salvation? Two sentences
+will answer the question. You cannot get salvation without repentance.
+You do not get salvation by repentance.
+
+You cannot get the salvation of God unless you shake off your sin. It is
+no use preaching to a man, 'Faith, Faith, Faith!' unless you preach
+along with it,'Break off your iniquities.' 'Let the wicked forsake his
+way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him turn unto the
+Lord.' The nature of the case forbids it. It is a clear contradiction in
+terms, and an absolute impossibility in fact, that God should save a man
+with the salvation which consists in the deliverance from sin, whilst
+that man is holding to his sin. Unless, therefore, you have not merely
+sorrow, but repentance, which is turning away from sin with resolute
+purpose, as a man would turn from a serpent, you cannot enter into the
+Kingdom of Heaven.
+
+But you do not get salvation for your repentance. It is no case of
+barter, it is no case of salvation by works, that work being repentance:
+
+          'Could my zeal no respite know,
+           Could my tears for ever flow,
+           All for sin could not atone,
+           Thou must save, and Thou alone.'
+
+Not my penitence, but Christ's death, is the ground of the salvation of
+every one that is saved at all. Yet repentance is an indispensable
+condition of salvation.
+
+What is the connection between repentance and faith? There can be no
+true repentance without trust in Christ. There can be no true trust in
+Christ without the forsaking of my sin. Repentance without faith, in so
+far as it is possible, is one long misery; like the pains of those poor
+Hindoo devotees that will go all the way from Cape Comorin to the shrine
+of Juggernaut, and measure every foot of the road with the length of
+their own bodies in the dust. Men will do anything, and willingly make
+any sacrifice, rather than open their eyes to see this,--that
+repentance, clasped hand in hand with Faith, leads the guiltiest soul
+into the forgiving presence of the crucified Christ, from whom peace
+flows into the darkest heart.
+
+On the other hand, faith without repentance is not possible, in any deep
+sense. But in so far as it is possible, it produces a superficial
+Christianity which vaguely trusts to Christ without knowing exactly what
+it is trusting Him for, or why it needs Him; and which has a great deal
+to say about what I may call the less important parts of the Christian
+system, and nothing to say about its vital centre; which preaches a
+morality which is not a living power to create; which practises a
+religion which is neither a joy nor a security. The old word of the
+Master has a deep truth in it: 'These are they which heard the word, and
+anon with joy received it.' Having no sorrow, no penitence, no deep
+consciousness of sin, 'they have no root in themselves, and in time of
+temptation they fall away.' If there is to be a profound, an
+all-pervading, life-transforming-sin, and devil-conquering faith, it
+must be a faith rooted deep in penitence and sorrow for sin.
+
+Dear brethren, if, by God's grace, my poor words have touched your
+consciences at all, I beseech you, do not trifle with the budding
+conviction! Do not seek to have the wound skinned over. Take care that
+you do not let it all pass in idle sorrow or impotent regret. If you do,
+you will be hardened, and the worse for it, and come nearer to that
+condition which the sorrow of the world worketh, the awful death of the
+soul. Do not wince from the knife before the roots of the cancer are cut
+out. The pain is merciful. Better the wound than the malignant growth.
+Yield yourselves to the Spirit that would convince you of sin, and
+listen to the voice that calls to you to forsake your unrighteous ways
+and thoughts. But do not trust to any tears, do not trust to any
+resolves, do not trust to any reformation. Trust only to the Lord who
+died on the Cross for you, whose death for you, whose life in you, will
+be deliverance from your sin. Then you will have a salvation which, in
+the striking language of my text, 'is not to be repented of,' which will
+leave no regrets in your hearts in the day when all else shall have
+faded, and the sinful sweets of this world shall have turned to ashes
+and bitterness on the lips of the men that feed on them.
+
+'The sorrow of the world works death.' There are men and women listening
+to me now who are half conscious of their sin, and are resisting the
+pleading voice that comes to them, who at the last will open their eyes
+upon the realities of their lives, and in a wild passion of remorse,
+exclaim: 'I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly.' Better to
+make thorough work of the sorrow, and by it to be led to repentance
+toward God and faith in Christ, and so secure for our own that salvation
+for which no man will ever regret having given even the whole world,
+since he gains his own soul.
+
+
+
+
+GIVING AND ASKING
+
+          'Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace
+          of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia; 2.
+          How that in a great trial of affliction the
+          abundance of their joy and their deep poverty
+          abounded unto the riches of their liberality. 3.
+          For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond
+          their power they were willing of themselves; 4.
+          Praying us with much entreaty that we would
+          receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship
+          of the ministering to the saints. 5. And this they
+          did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own
+          selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of
+          God: 6. Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he
+          had begun, so he would also finish in you the same
+          grace also. 7. Therefore, as ye abound in every
+          thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and
+          in all diligence, and in your love to us; see that
+          ye abound in this grace also. 8. I speak not by
+          commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of
+          others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.
+          9. For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+          that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He
+          became poor, that ye through His poverty might be
+          rich. 10. And herein I give my advice: for this is
+          expedient for you, who have begun before, not only
+          to do, but also to be forward a year ago. 11. Now
+          therefore perform the doing of it; that as there
+          was a readiness to will, so there may be a
+          performance also out of that which ye have. 12.
+          For if there be first a willing mind, it is
+          accepted according to that a man hath, and not
+          according to that he hath not.'--2 COR. viii.
+          1-12.
+
+
+A collection from Gentile churches for their poor brethren in Jerusalem
+occupied much of Paul's time and efforts before his last visit to that
+city. Many events, which have filled the world with noise and been
+written at length in histories, were less significant than that first
+outcome of the unifying spirit of common faith. It was a making visible
+of the grand thought, 'Ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' Practical help,
+prompted by a deep-lying sense of unity which overleaped gulfs of
+separation in race, language, and social conditions, was a unique
+novelty. It was the first pulsation of that spirit of Christian
+liberality which has steadily grown in force and sweep ever since.
+Foolish people gibe at some of its manifestations. Wiser ones regard
+its existence as not the least of the marks of the divine origin of
+Christianity.
+
+This passage is a striking example of the inimitable delicacy of the
+Apostle. His words are full of what we should call tact, if it were not
+manifestly the spontaneous utterance of right feeling. They are a
+perfect model of the true way to appeal for money, and set forth also
+the true spirit in which such appeals should be made.
+
+In verses 1 to 5, Paul seeks to stimulate the liberality of the
+Corinthians by recounting that of the Macedonian churches. His sketch
+draws in outline the picture of what all Christian money-giving should
+be. We note first the designation of the Macedonian Christians'
+beneficence as 'a grace' given by God to them. It is twice called so
+(vers. 1, 4), and the same name is applied in regard to the Corinthians'
+giving (vers. 6, 7). That is the right way to look at money
+contributions. The opportunity to give them, and the inclination to do
+so, are God's gifts. How many of us think that calls for service or
+money are troublesome obligations, to be got out of as easily as
+possible! A true Christian will be thankful, as for a love token from
+God, for every occasion of giving to Him. It would be a sharp test for
+many of us to ask ourselves whether we can say, 'To me . . . is this grace
+given,' that I should part with my money for Christ's sake.
+
+Note, further, the lovely picture of these Macedonian givers. They were
+plunged in sorrows and troubles, but these did not dry their fountains
+of sympathy. Nothing is apt to be more selfish than grief; and if we
+have tears to spare for others, when they are flowing bitterly for
+ourselves, we have graduated well in Christ's school. Paul calls the
+Macedonians' troubles 'proof of their affliction,' meaning that it
+constituted a proof of their Christian character; that is, by the manner
+in which it was borne; and in it they had still 'abundance of joy,' for
+the paradox of the Christian life is that it admits of the co-existence
+of grief and gladness.
+
+Again, Christian giving gives from scanty stores. 'Deep poverty' is no
+excuse for not giving, and will be no hindrance to a willing heart. 'I
+cannot afford it' is sometimes a genuine valid reason, but oftener an
+insincere plea. Why are subscriptions for religious purposes the first
+expenditure to be reduced in bad times?
+
+Further, Christian giving gives up to the very edge of ability, and
+sometimes goes beyond the limits of so-called prudence. In all regions
+'power to its last particle is duty,' and unless power is strained it is
+not fully exercised. It is in trying to do what we cannot do that we do
+best what we can do. He who keeps well within the limits of his supposed
+ability will probably not do half as much as he could. While there is a
+limit behind which generosity even for Christ may become dishonesty or
+disregard of other equally sacred claims, there is little danger of
+modern Christians transgressing that limit, and they need the stimulus
+to do a little more than they think they can do, rather than to listen
+to cold-blooded prudence.
+
+Further, Christian giving does not wait to be asked, but takes the
+opportunity to give as itself 'grace' and presses its benefactions. It
+is an unwonted experience for a collector of subscriptions to be
+besought to take them 'with much entreaty,' but it would not be so
+anomalous if Christian people understood their privileges.
+
+Further, Christian giving begins with the surrender of self to Christ,
+from which necessarily follows the glad offering of wealth. These
+Macedonians did more than Paul had hoped, and the explanation of the
+unexpected largeness of their contributions was their yielding of
+themselves to Jesus. That is the deepest source of all true liberality.
+If a man feels that he does not own himself, much less will he feel that
+his goods are his own. A slave's owner possesses the slave's bit of
+garden ground, his hut, and its furniture. If I belong to Christ, to
+whom does my money belong? But the consciousness that my goods are not
+mine, but Christ's, is not to remain a mere sentiment. It can receive
+practical embodiment by my giving them to Christ's representatives. The
+way for the Macedonians to show that they regarded their goods as
+Christ's, was to give them to Paul for Christ's poor saints. Jesus has
+His representatives still, and it is useless for people to talk or sing
+about belonging to Him, unless they verify their words by deeds.
+
+Verse 6 tells the Corinthians that the success of the collection in
+Macedonia had induced Paul to send Titus to Corinth to promote it there.
+He had previously visited it on the same errand (chap. xii. 14), and now
+is coming to complete 'this grace.' The rest of the passage is Paul's
+appeal to the Corinthians for their help in the matter, and certainly
+never was such an appeal made in a more dignified, noble, and lofty
+tone. He has been dilating on the liberality of others, and thereby
+sanctioning the stimulating of Christian liberality, in the same way as
+other graces may legitimately be stimulated, by example. That is
+delicate ground to tread on, and needs caution if it is not to
+degenerate into an appeal to rivalry, as it too often does, but in
+itself is perfectly legitimate and wholesome. But, passing from that
+incitement, Paul rests his plea on deeper grounds.
+
+First, Christian liberality is essential to the completeness of
+Christian character. Paul's praise in verse 7 is not mere flattery, nor
+meant to put the Corinthians into good humour. He will have enough to
+say hereafter about scandals and faults, but now he gives them credit
+for all the good he knew to be in them. Faith comes first, as always. It
+is the root of every Christian excellence. Then follow two graces,
+eminently characteristic of a Greek church, and apt to run to seed in
+it,--utterance and knowledge. Then two more, both of a more emotional
+character,--earnestness and love, especially to Paul as Christ's
+servant. But all these fair attributes lacked completeness without the
+crowning grace of liberality. It is the crowning grace, because it is
+the practical manifestation of the highest excellences. It is the result
+of sympathy, of unselfishness, of contact with Christ, of drinking in of
+His spirit, Love is best. Utterance and knowledge and earnestness are
+poor beside it. This grace is like the diamond which clasps a necklace
+of jewels.
+
+Christian giving does not need to be commanded. 'I speak not by way of
+commandment.' That is poor virtue which only obeys a precept. Gifts
+given because it is duty to give them are not really gifts, but taxes.
+They leave no sweet savour on the hand that bestows, and bring none to
+that which receives. 'I call you not servants, but friends.' The region
+in which Christian liberality moves is high above the realm of law and
+its correlative, obligation.
+
+Further, Christian liberality springs spontaneously from conscious
+possession of Christ's riches. We cannot here enter on the mysteries of
+Christ's emptying Himself of His riches of glory. We can but touch the
+stupendous fact, remembering that the place whereon we stand is holy
+ground. Who can measure the nature and depth of that self-denuding of
+the glory which He had with the Father before the world was? But, thank
+God, we do not need to measure it, in order to feel the solemn, blessed
+force of the appeal which it makes to us. Adoring wonder and gratitude,
+unfaltering trust and absolute self-surrender to a love so
+self-sacrificing, must ever follow the belief of that mystery of Divine
+mercy, the incarnation and sacrifice of the eternal Son.
+
+But Paul would have us remember that the same mighty act of stooping
+love, which is the foundation of all our hope, is to be the pattern for
+all our conduct. Even in His divinest and most mysterious act, Christ is
+our example. A dewdrop is rounded by the same laws which shape the
+planetary spheres or the sun himself; and Christians but half trust
+Christ if they do not imitate Him. What selfishness in enjoyment of our
+'own things' could live in us if we duly brought ourselves under the
+influence of that example? How miserably poor and vulgar the appeals by
+which money is sometimes drawn from grudging owners and tight-buttoned
+pockets, sound beside that heart-searching and heart-moving one, 'Ye
+know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ!'
+
+Further, Christian liberality will not go off in good intentions and
+benevolent sentiments. The Corinthians were ready with their 'willing'
+on Titus's previous visit. Now Paul desires them to put their good
+feelings into concrete shape. There is plenty of benevolence that never
+gets to be beneficence. The advice here has a very wide application: 'As
+there was the readiness to will, so there may be the completion also.'
+We all know where the road leads that is paved with good intentions.
+
+Further, Christian liberality is accepted and rewarded according to
+willingness, if that is carried into act according to ability. While the
+mere wish to help is not enough, it is the vital element in the act
+which flows from it; and there may be more of it in the widow's mite
+than in the rich man's large donation--or there may be less. The
+conditions of acceptable offerings are twofold--first, readiness, glad
+willingness to give, as opposed to closed hearts or grudging bestowals;
+and, second, that willingness embodied in the largest gift possible. The
+absence of either vitiates all. The presence of both gives trifles a
+place in God's storehouse of precious things. A father is glad when his
+child brings him some utterly valueless present, not because he must,
+but because he loves; and many a parent has such laid away in sacred
+repositories. God knows how to take gifts from His children, not less
+well than we who are evil know how to do it.
+
+But the gracious saying of our passage has a solemn side; for if only
+gifts 'according as a man hath' are accepted, what becomes of the many
+which fall far short of our ability, and are really given, not because
+we have the willing mind, but because we could not get out of the
+unwelcome necessity to part with a miserably inadequate percentage of
+our possessions. Is God likely to be satisfied with the small dividends
+which we offer as composition for our great debt?
+
+
+
+
+RICH YET POOR
+
+          'For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+          that, though He was rich yet for your sakes He
+          became poor, that ye through His poverty might be
+          rich.'--2 COR. viii. 9.
+
+
+The Apostle has been speaking about a matter which, to us, seems very
+small, but to him was very great viz., a gathering of pecuniary help
+from the Gentile churches for the poor church in Jerusalem. Large
+issues, in his estimation, attended that exhibition of Christian unity,
+and, be it great or small, he applies the highest of all motives to this
+matter. 'For ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He
+was rich yet for your sakes He became poor.' The trivial things of life
+are to be guided and shaped by reference to the highest of all things,
+the example of Jesus Christ; and that in the whole depth of His
+humiliation, and even in regard to His cross and passion. We have here
+set forth, as the pattern to which the Christian life is to be
+conformed, the deepest conception of what our Lord's career on earth
+was.
+
+The whole Christian Church is about to celebrate the nativity of our
+Lord at this time. This text gives us the true point of view from which
+to regard it. We have here the work of Christ in its deepest motive,
+'The grace of our Lord Jesus.' We have it in its transcendent
+self-impoverishment, 'Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became
+poor.' We have it in its highest issue, 'That ye through His poverty
+might become rich.' Let us look at those points.
+
+I. Here we have the deepest motive which underlies the whole work of
+Christ, unveiled to us.
+
+'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Every word here is
+significant. It is very unusual in the New Testament to find that
+expression 'grace' applied to Jesus Christ. Except in the familiar
+benediction, I think there are only one or two instances of such a
+collocation of words. It is 'the grace of God' which, throughout the New
+Testament, is the prevailing expression. But here 'grace is attributed
+to Jesus'; that is to say, the love of the Divine heart is, without
+qualification or hesitation, ascribed to Him. And what do we mean by
+grace? We mean love in exercise to inferiors. It is infinite
+condescension in Jesus to love. His love stoops when it embraces us.
+Very significant, therefore, is the employment here of the solemn full
+title, 'the Lord Jesus Christ,' which enhances the condescension by
+making prominent the height from which it bent. The 'grace' is all the
+more wonderful because of the majesty and sovereignty, to say the least
+of it, which are expressed in that title, the Lord. The highest stoops
+and stands upon the level of the lowest. 'Grace' is love that expresses
+itself to those who deserve something else. And the deepest motive,
+which is the very key to the whole phenomena of the life of Jesus
+Christ, is that it is all the exhibition, as it is the consequence, of a
+love that, stooping, forgives. 'Grace' is love that, stooping and
+forgiving, communicates its whole self to unworthy and transgressing
+recipients. And the key to the life of Jesus is that we have set forth
+in its operation a love which is not content to speak only the ordinary
+language of human affection, or to do its ordinary deeds, but is
+self-impelled to impart what transcends all other gifts of human
+tenderness, and to give its very self. And so a love that condescends, a
+love that passes by unworthiness, is turned away by no sin, is unmoved
+to any kind of anger, and never allows its cheek to flush or its heart
+to beat faster, because of any provocation and a love that is content
+with nothing short of entire surrender and self-impartation underlies
+all that precious life from Bethlehem to Calvary.
+
+But there is another word in our text that may well be here taken into
+consideration. 'For your sakes,' says the Apostle to that Corinthian
+church, made up of people, not one of whom had ever seen or been seen by
+Jesus. And yet the regard to them was part of the motive that moved the
+Lord to His life, and His death. That is to say, to generalise the
+thought, this grace, thus stooping and forgiving and self-imparting, is
+a love that gathers into its embrace and to its heart all mankind; and
+is universal because it is individualising. Just as each planet in the
+heavens, and each tiny plant upon the earth, are embraced by, and
+separately receive, the benediction of that all-encompassing arch of the
+heaven, so that grace enfolds all, because it takes account of each.
+Whilst it is love for a sinful world, every soul of us may say: 'He
+loved me, and'--therefore--'gave Himself for me.' Unless we see beneath
+the sweet story of the earthly life this deep-lying source of it all, we
+fail to understand that life itself. We may bring criticism to bear upon
+it; we may apprehend it in diverse affecting, elevating, educating
+aspects; but, oh! brethren, we miss the blazing centre of the light, the
+warm heart of the fire, unless we see pulsating through all the
+individual facts of the life this one, all-shaping, all-vitalising
+motive; the grace--the stooping, the pardoning, the self-communicating,
+the individualising, and the universal love of Jesus Christ.
+
+So then, we have here set before us the work of Christ in its--
+
+II. Most mysterious and unique self-impoverishment.
+
+'He was . . . He became,' there is one strange contrast. 'He was _rich_
+. . . He became _poor_,' there is another. 'He was . . . He became.' What
+does that say? Well, it says that if you want to understand Bethlehem,
+you must go back to a time before Bethlehem. The meaning of Christ's
+birth is only understood when we turn to that Evangelist who does not
+narrate it. For the meaning of it is here; 'the Word became flesh, and
+dwelt among us.' The surface of the fact is the smallest part of the
+fact. They say that there is seven times as much of an iceberg under
+water as there is above the surface. And the deepest and most important
+fact about the nativity of our Lord is that it was not only the birth of
+an Infant, but the Incarnation of the Word. 'He was . . . He became.' We
+have to travel back and recognise that that life did not begin in the
+manger. We have to travel back and recognise the mystery of godliness,
+God manifest in the flesh.
+
+And these two words 'He was . . . He became,' imply another thing, and
+that is, that Jesus Christ who died because He chose, was not passive in
+His being born, but as at the end of His earthly life, so at its
+beginning exercised His volition, and was born because He willed, and
+willed because of 'the grace of our Lord Jesus.'
+
+Now in this connection it is very remarkable, and well worth our
+pondering, that throughout the whole of the Gospels, when Jesus speaks
+of His coming into the world, He never uses the word 'born' but once,
+and that was before the Roman governor, who would not have understood or
+cared for anything further, to whom He did say,'To this end was I
+born.' But even when speaking to him His consciousness that that word
+did not express the whole truth was so strong that He could not help
+adding--though He knew that the hard Roman procurator would pay no
+attention to the apparent tautology--the expression which more truly
+corresponded to the fact, 'and for this cause came I into the world.'
+The two phrases are not parallel. They are by no means synonymous. One
+expresses the outward fact; the other expresses that which underlay it.
+'To this end was I born.' Yes! 'And for this cause came I.' He Himself
+put it still more definitely when He said, 'I came forth from the
+Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go unto
+the Father.' So the two extremities of the earthly manifestation are
+neither of them ends; but before the one, and behind the other, there
+stretches an identity or oneness of Being and condition. The one as the
+other, the birth and the death, may be regarded as, in deepest reality,
+not only what He passively endured, but what He actively did. He was
+born, and He died, that in all points He might be 'like unto His
+brethren.' He 'came' into the world, and He 'went' to the Father. The
+end circled round to the beginning, and in both He acted because He
+chose, and chose because He loved.
+
+So much, then, lies in the one of these two antitheses of my text; and
+the other is no less profound and significant. 'He was rich; He became
+poor.' In this connection 'rich' can only mean possessed of the Divine
+fulness and independence; and 'poor' can only mean possessed of human
+infirmity, dependence, and emptiness. And so to Jesus of Nazareth, to be
+born was impoverishment. If there is nothing more in His birth than in
+the birth of each of us, the words are grotesquely inappropriate to the
+facts of the case. For as between nothingness, which is the alternative,
+and the possession of conscious being, there is surely a contrast the
+very reverse of that expressed here. For us, to be born is to be endowed
+with capacities, with the wealth of intelligent, responsible, voluntary
+being; but to Jesus Christ, if we accept the New Testament teaching, to
+be born was a step, an infinite step, downwards, and He, alone of all
+men, might have been 'ashamed to call men brethren.' But this denudation
+of Himself, into the particulars of which I do not care to enter now,
+was the result of that stooping grace which 'counted it not a thing to
+be clutched hold of, to be equal with God; but He made Himself of no
+reputation, and was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient unto
+death, even the death of the Cross.'
+
+And so, dear friends, we know the measure of the stooping love of Jesus
+only when we read the history by the light of this thought, that 'though
+He was rich' with all the fulness of that eternal Word which was 'in the
+beginning with God,' 'He became poor,' with the poverty, the infirmity,
+the liability to temptation, the weakness, that attach to humanity; 'and
+was found in all points like unto His brethren,' that He might be able
+to help and succour them all.
+
+The last thing here is--
+
+III. The work of Christ set forth in its highest issue.
+
+'That we through His poverty might become rich.' Of course, the
+antithetical expressions must be taken to be used in the same sense, and
+with the same width of application, in both of the clauses. And if so,
+just think reverently, wonderingly, thankfully, of the infinite vista
+of glorious possibility that is open to us here. Christ was rich in the
+possession of that Divine glory which Had had with the Father before the
+world was. 'He became poor,' in assuming the weakness of the manhood
+that you and I carry, that we, in the human poverty which is like His
+poverty, may become rich with wealth that is like His riches, and that
+as He stooped to earth veiling the Divine with the human, we may rise to
+heaven, clothing the human with the Divine.
+
+For surely there is nothing more plainly taught in Scriptures, and I am
+bold to say nothing to which any deep and vital Christian experience
+even here gives more surely an anticipatory confirmation, than the fact
+that Christ became like unto us, that each of us may become like unto
+Him. The divine and the human natures are similar, and the fact of the
+Incarnation, on the one hand, and of the man's glorification by
+possession of the divine nature on the other, equally rest upon that
+fundamental resemblance between the divine nature and the human nature
+which God has made in His own image. If that which in each of us is
+unlike God is cleared away, as it can be cleared away, through faith in
+that dear Lord, then the likeness as a matter of course, comes into
+force.
+
+The law of all elevation is that whosoever desires to lift must stoop;
+and the end of all stooping is to lift the lowly to the place from which
+the love hath bent itself. And this is at once the law for the
+Incarnation of the Christ, and for the elevation of the Christian. 'We
+shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.' And the great love,
+the stooping, forgiving, self-communicating love, doth not reach its
+ultimate issue, nor effect fully the purposes to which it ever is
+tending, unless and until all who have received it are 'changed from
+glory to glory even into the image of the Lord.' We do not understand
+Jesus, His cradle, or His Cross, unless on the one hand we see in them
+His emptying Himself that He might fill us, and, on the other hand, see,
+as the only result which warrants them and satisfies Him, our complete
+conformity to His image, and our participation in that glory which He
+has at the right hand of God. That is the prospect for humanity, and it
+is possible for each of us.
+
+I do not dwell upon other aspects of this great self-emptying of our
+Lord's, such as the revelation in it to us of the very heart of God, and
+of the divinest thing in the divine nature, which is love, or such as
+the sympathy which is made possible thereby to Him, and which is not
+only the pity of a God, but the compassion of a Brother. Nor do I touch
+upon many other aspects which are full of strengthening and teaching.
+That grand thought that Jesus has shared our human poverty that we may
+share His divine riches is the very apex of the New Testament teaching,
+and of the Christian hope. We have within us, notwithstanding all our
+transgressions, what the old divines used to call a 'deiform nature,'
+capable of being lifted up into the participation of divinity, capable
+of being cleansed from all the spots and stains which make us so unlike
+Him in whose likeness we were made.
+
+Brethren, let us not forget that this stooping, and pardoning, and
+self-imparting love, has for its main instrument to appeal to our
+hearts, not the cradle but the Cross. We are being told by many people
+to-day that the centre of Christianity lies in the thought of an
+Incarnation. Yes. But our Lord Himself has told us what that was for.
+
+'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
+give His life a ransom for many.' It is only when we look to that Lord
+in His death, and see there the very lowest point to which He stooped,
+and the supreme manifestation of His grace, that we shall be drawn to
+yield our hearts and lives to Him in thankfulness, in trust, and in
+imitation: and shall set Him before us as the pattern for our conduct,
+as well as the Object of our trust.
+
+Brethren, my text was spoken originally as presenting the motive and the
+example for a little piece of pecuniary liability. Do you take the
+cradle and the Cross as the law of your lives? For depend upon it, the
+same necessity which obliged Jesus to come down to our level, if He
+would lift us to His; to live our life and die our death, if He would
+make us partakers of His immortal life, and deliver us from death; makes
+it absolutely necessary that if we are to live for anything nobler than
+our own poor, transitory self-aggrandisement, we too must learn to stoop
+to forgive, to impart ourselves, and must die by self-surrender and
+sacrifice, if we are ever to communicate any life, or good of life, to
+others. He has loved us, and given Himself for us. He has set us therein
+an example which He commends to us by His own word when He tells us that
+'if a corn of wheat' is to bring forth 'much fruit' it must die, else it
+'abideth alone.' Unless we die, we never truly live; unless we die to
+ourselves for others, and like Jesus, we live alone in the solitude of a
+self-enclosed self-regard. So living, we are dead whilst we live.
+
+
+
+
+WILLING AND NOT DOING
+
+          'Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as
+          there was a readiness to will so there may be a
+          performance also.'--2 COR. viii. 11.
+
+
+The Revised Version reads: 'But now complete the doing also; that as
+there was the readiness to will, so there may be the completion also out
+of your ability.' A collection of money for the almost pauper church at
+Jerusalem bulked very largely in the Apostle's mind at the date of the
+writing of the two letters to the Corinthian church. We learn that that
+church had been the first to agree to the project, and then had very
+distinctly hung back from implementing its promises and fulfilling its
+good intentions. So the Apostle, in the chapter from which my text is
+taken, with wonderful delicacy, dignity, and profundity, sets forth the
+true principle, not only of Christian giving, but of Christian asking.
+The text advises that the gushing sentiments of brotherly sympathy and
+liberality which had inspired the Corinthians a year ago should now bear
+some fruit in action. So Paul is going to send Titus, his right-hand man
+at the time, to hurry up and finish off the collection and have done
+with it. The text is in effect the message which Titus was to carry; but
+it has a far wider application than that. It is a needful advice for us
+all about a great many other things: 'As there was a readiness to will,
+so let there be a performance also.'
+
+Resolutions, noble and good and Christlike, have a strange knack of
+cheating the people who make them. So we all need the exhortation not to
+be befooled by fancying that we have done, when we have only willed. Of
+course we shall not do unless we will. But there is a wide gap, as our
+experience witnesses, between the two things. We all know what place it
+is to which, according to the old proverb, the road is paved with good
+intentions; and the only way to pull up that paving is to take Paul's
+advice here and always, and immediately to put into action the resolves
+of our hearts. Now I desire to say two or three very plain and simple
+things about this matter.
+
+I. I would have you consider the necessity of this commandment.
+
+Consider that the fault here warned against is a universal one. What
+different men we should be if our resolutions had fruited in conduct! In
+all regions of life that is true, but most emphatically is it true in
+regard to religion. The damning tragedy of many lives, and I dare say of
+those of some of my hearers, is that men have over and over again
+determined that they would be Christians, and they are not Christians
+yet; just because they have let 'the native hue of resolution be
+sicklied over' by some paleness or other, and so have resolved and
+resolved and resolved till every nerve of action is rotted away, and
+they will die unchristian. I dare say that there are men or women
+listening to me now, perhaps with grey hairs upon them, who can remember
+times, in the springtide of their youth, when they said, 'I will give my
+heart to Jesus Christ, and set my faith upon Him'; and they have not
+done it yet. Now, therefore, 'as there was a readiness to will, let
+there be also the performance.'
+
+But it is not only in regard to that most important of all resolves that
+I wish to say a word. All Christians, I am sure, know what it is, over
+and over again, to have had stirrings in their hearts which they have
+been able to consolidate into determination, but have not been able to
+carry into act. 'The children have come to the birth, and there is not
+strength to bring them forth.' That is true about all of us, more or
+less, and it is very solemnly true of a great many of us professing
+Christians. We have tried to cure--we have determined that we will
+cure--manifest and flagrant defects or faults in our Christian life. We
+have resolved, and some nipping frost has come, and the blossoms have
+dropped on the grass before they have ever set into fruit. I know that
+is so about you, because I know that it is so about myself. And
+therefore, dear brethren, I appeal to you, and ask you whether the
+exhortation of my text has not a sharp point for every one of
+us--whether the universality of this defect does not demand that we all
+should gravely consider the exhortation here before us?
+
+Then, again, let me remind you how this injunction is borne in upon us
+by the consideration of the strength of the opposition with which we
+have always to contend, in every honest attempt to bring to act our best
+resolutions. Did you ever try to cure some little habit, some mere
+trifle, a trick of manner or twist of the finger, or some attitude or
+tone that might be ugly and awkward, and that people told you that it
+would be better to get rid of? You know how hard it is. There is always
+a tremendous gulf between the ideal and its realisation in life. As long
+as we are moving _in vacuo_ we move without any friction or difficulty;
+but as soon as we come out into a world where there are an atmosphere
+and opposing forces, then friction comes in, and speed diminishes; and
+we never become what we aim to be. We begin with grand purposes, and we
+end with very poor results. We all start, in our early days, with the
+notion that our lives are going to be radiant and beautiful, and all
+unlike what the limitations of power and the antagonisms that we have to
+meet make of them at last. The tree of our life's doings has to grow,
+like those contorted pines on the slopes of the Alps, in many storms,
+with heavy weights of snow on its branches, and beaten about by tempests
+from every quarter of the heavens; and so it gets gnarled and knotted
+and very unlike the symmetrical beauty that we dreamed would adorn it.
+We begin with saying: 'Come! Let us build a tower whose top shall reach
+to heaven'; and we are contented at last, if we have put up some little
+tumble-down shed where we can get shelter for our heads from the blast.
+
+And the difficulty in bringing into action our best selves besets us in
+the matter of translating our resolutions into practice. What are
+arrayed against it? A feeble will, enslaved too often by passions and
+flesh and habits, and all about us lie obstacles to our carrying into
+action our conscientious convictions, our deepest resolutions; obstacles
+to our being true to our true selves; to which obstacles, alas, far too
+many of us habitually, and all of us occasionally, succumb. That being
+the case, do not we all need to ponder in our deepest hearts, and to
+pray for grace to make the motto of our lives, 'As there was a readiness
+to will, let there be a performance'?
+
+II. Consider the importance of this counsel.
+
+That is borne in upon mind and conscience by looking at the disastrous
+effects of letting resolutions remain sterile. Consider how apt we are
+to deceive ourselves with unfulfilled purposes. The quick response which
+an easily-moved nature may make to some appeal of noble thought or lofty
+principle is mistaken for action, and we are tempted to think that
+willing is almost as good as if we had done what we half resolved on.
+And there is a kind of glow of satisfaction that comes when such a man
+thinks, 'I have done well in that I have determined.' The Devil will let
+you resolve as much as you like--the more the better; only the more
+easily you resolve, the more certainly he will block the realisation.
+Let us take care of that seducing temptation which is apt to lead us all
+to plume ourselves on good resolutions, and to fancy that they are
+almost equivalent to their own fulfilment. Cheques are all very well if
+there be bullion in the bank cellars to pay them with when they fall
+due, but if that be not so, then the issuing of them is crime and fraud.
+Our resolutions, made and forgotten as so many of our good resolutions
+are, are very little better.
+
+Note, too, how rapidly the habit of substituting lightly-made
+resolutions for seriously-endeavoured acts grows.
+
+And mark, further, how miserable and debilitating it is to carry the
+dead weight of such unaccomplished intentions.
+
+Nothing so certainly weakens a man as a multitude of resolves that he
+knows he has never fulfilled. They weaken his will, burden his
+conscience, stand in the way of his hopes, make him feel as if the
+entail of evil was too firm and strong to be ever broken. 'O wretched
+man that I am!' said one who had made experience of what it was to will
+what was good, and not to find how to perform, 'who shall deliver me
+from the body of this death?' It is an awful thing to have to carry a
+corpse about on your back. And that was what Paul thought the man did
+who loaded his own shoulders with abortive resolutions, that perished
+in the birth, and never grew up to maturity. Weak and miserable is
+always the man who is swift to resolve and slow to carry out his
+resolutions.
+
+III. And now let me say a word before I close about how this universal
+and grave disease is to be coped with.
+
+Well, I should say to begin with, let us take very soberly and
+continually into our consciousness the recognition of the fact that the
+disease is there. And then may I say, let us be rather slower to resolve
+than we often are. 'Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that
+thou shouldest vow and not pay.' The man who has never had the
+determination to give up some criminal indulgence--say, drink--is
+possibly less criminal, and certainly less weak, than the man who, when
+his head aches, and the consequences of his self-indulgence are vividly
+realised by him, makes up his mind to be a teetotaller, and soon
+stumbles into the first dram-shop that is open, and then reels out a
+drunkard. Do not vow until you have made up your minds to pay. Remember
+that it is a solemn act to determine anything, especially anything
+bearing on moral and religious life; and that you had far better keep
+your will in suspense than spring to the resolution with thoughtless
+levity and leave it with the same.
+
+Further, the habit of promptly carrying out our resolves is one that,
+like all other habits, can be cultivated. And we can cultivate it in
+little things, in the smallest trifles of daily life, which by their
+myriads make up life itself, in order that it may be a fixed custom of
+our minds when great resolves have to be made. The man who has trained
+himself day in and day out, in regard to the insignificances of daily
+life, to let act follow resolve as the thunder peal succeeds the
+lightning flash, is the man who, if he is moved to make a great resolve
+about his religion, or about his conduct, will be most likely to carry
+it out. Get the magical influence of habit on your side, and you will
+have done much to conquer the evil of abortive resolutions.
+
+But then there is something a great deal more than that to be said. The
+Apostle did not content himself, in the passage already referred to,
+with bewailing the wretchedness of the condition in which to will was
+present, but how to perform he found not. He asked, and he triumphantly
+answered, the question, 'Who shall deliver me?' with the great words, 'I
+thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' There is the secret; keep near
+Him, trust Him, open your hearts to the influences of that Divine Spirit
+who makes us free from the law of sin and death. And if thus, knowing
+our weakness, recognising our danger, humbly trying to cultivate the
+habit of prompt discharge of all discerned duty, we leave ourselves in
+Jesus Christ's hands, and wait, and ask, and believe that we possess,
+His cleansing Spirit, then we shall not ask and wait in vain. 'Work out
+your own salvation, . . . for it is God that worketh in you, both the
+willing and the doing.'
+
+
+
+
+ALL GRACE ABOUNDING
+
+          'God is able to make all grace abound toward you;
+          that ye, always having all-sufficiency in all
+          things, may abound to every good work.'--2 COR.
+          ix. 8.
+
+
+In addition to all his other qualities the Apostle was an extremely good
+man of business; and he had a field for the exercise of that quality in
+the collection for the poor saints of Judea, which takes up so much of
+this letter, and occupied for so long a period so much of his thoughts
+and efforts. It was for the sake of showing by actual demonstration that
+would 'touch the hearts' of the Jewish brethren, the absolute unity of
+the two halves of the Church, the Gentile and the Jewish, that the
+Apostle took so much trouble in this matter. The words which I have read
+for my text come in the midst of a very earnest appeal to the Corinthian
+Christians for their pecuniary help. He is dwelling upon the same
+thought which is expressed in the well-known words: 'What I gave I kept;
+what I kept I lost.'
+
+But whilst the words of my text primarily applied to money matters, you
+see that they are studiously general, universal. The Apostle, after his
+fashion, is lifting up a little 'secular' affair into a high spiritual
+region; and he lays down in my text a broad general law, which goes to
+the very depths of the Christian life.
+
+Now, notice, we have here in three clauses three stages which we may
+venture to distinguish as the fountain, the basin, the stream. 'God is
+able to make all grace abound toward you';--there is the fountain. 'That
+ye always, having all-sufficiency in all things';--there is the basin
+that receives the gush from the fountain. 'May abound in every good
+work';--there is the steam that comes from the basin. The fountain pours
+into the basin, that the flow from the basin may feed the stream.
+
+Now this thought of Paul's goes to the heart of things. So let us look
+at it.
+
+I. The Fountain.
+
+The Christian life in all its aspects and experiences is an outflow from
+the 'the Fountain of Life,' the giving God. Observe how emphatically the
+Apostle, in the context, accumulates words that express universality:
+'_all_ grace . . . _all_-sufficiency for _all_ things . . . _every_ good
+work.' But even these expressions do not satisfy Paul, and he has to
+repeat the word 'abound,' in order to give some faint idea of his
+conception of the full tide which gushes from the fountain. It is 'all
+grace,' and it is abounding grace.
+
+Now what does he mean by 'grace'? That word is a kind of shorthand for
+the whole sum of the unmerited blessings which come to men through Jesus
+Christ. Primarily, it describes what we, for want of a better
+expression, have to call a 'disposition' in the divine nature; and it
+means, then, if so looked at, the unconditioned, undeserved,
+spontaneous, eternal, stooping, pardoning love of God. That is grace, in
+the primary New Testament use of the phrase.
+
+But there are no idle 'dispositions' in God. They are always energising,
+and so the word glides from meaning the disposition, to meaning the
+manifestation and activities of it, and the 'grace' of our Lord is that
+love in exercise. And then, since the divine energies are never
+fruitless, the word passes over, further, to mean all the blessed and
+beautiful things in a soul which are the consequences of the Promethean
+truth of God's loving hand, the outcome in life of the inward bestowment
+which has its cause, its sole cause, in God's ceaseless, unexhausted
+love, unmerited and free.
+
+That, very superficially and inadequately set forth, is at least a
+glimpse into the fulness and greatness of meaning that lies in that
+profound New Testament word, 'grace.' But the Apostle here puts
+emphasis on the variety of forms which the one divine gift assumes.
+It is '_all_ grace' which God is able to make abound toward you. So
+then, you see this one transcendent gift from the divine heart, when
+it comes into our human experience, is like a meteor when it passes
+into the atmosphere of earth, and catches fire and blazes, showering
+out a multitude of radiant points of light. The grace is
+many-sided--many-sided to us, but one in its source and in its
+character. For at bottom, that which God in His grace gives to us as His
+grace is what? Himself; or if you like to put it in another form, which
+comes to the same thing--new life through Jesus Christ. That is the
+encyclopædiacal gift, which contains within itself all grace. And just
+as the physical life in each of us, one in all its manifestations,
+produces many results, and shines in the eye, and blushes in the cheek,
+and gives strength to the arm, and flexibility and deftness to the
+fingers and swiftness to the foot: so also is that one grace which,
+being manifold in its manifestations, is one in its essence. There are
+many graces, there is one Grace.
+
+But this grace is not only many-sided, but abounding. It is not
+congruous with God's wealth, nor with His love, that He should give
+scantily, or, as it were, should open but a finger of the hand that is
+full of His gifts, and let out a little at a time. There are no sluices
+on that great stream so as to regulate its flow, and to give sometimes a
+painful trickle and sometimes a full gush, but this fountain is always
+pouring itself out, and it 'abounds.'
+
+But then we are pulled up short by another word in this first clause:
+'God is _able_ to make.' Paul does not say, 'God will make.' He puts the
+whole weight of responsibility for that ability becoming operative upon
+us. There are conditions; and although we may have access to that full
+fountain, it will not pour on us 'all grace' and 'abundant grace,'
+unless we observe these, and so turn God's ability to give into actual
+giving. And how do we do that? By desire, by expectance, by petition,
+by faithful stewardship. If we have these things, if we have tutored
+ourselves, and experience has helped in the tuition, to make large our
+expectancy, God will smile down upon us and 'do exceeding abundantly
+above all' that we 'think' as well as above all that we 'ask.' Brethren,
+if our supplies are scant, when the full fountain is gushing at our
+sides, we are 'not straitened in God, we are straitened in ourselves.'
+Christian possibilities are Christian obligations, and what we might
+have and do not have, is our condemnation.
+
+I turn, in the next place, to what I have, perhaps too fancifully,
+called
+
+II. The Basin.
+
+'God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having always
+all-sufficiency in all things, may,' . . . etc.
+
+The result of all this many-sided and exuberant outpouring of grace from
+the fountain is that the basin may be full. Considering the infinite
+source and the small receptacle, we might have expected something more
+than 'sufficiency' to have resulted.
+
+Divine grace is sufficient. Is it not more than sufficient? Yes, no
+doubt. But what Paul wishes us to feel is this--to put it into very
+plain English--that the good gifts of the divine grace will always be
+proportioned to our work, and to our sufferings too. We shall feel that
+we have enough, if we are as we ought to be. Sufficiency is more than a
+man gets anywhere else. 'Enough is as good as a feast.' And if we have
+strength, which we may have, to do the day's tasks, and strength to
+carry the day's crosses, and strength to accept the day's sorrows, and
+strength to master the day's temptations, that is as much as we need
+wish to have, even out of the fulness of God. And we shall get it, dear
+brethren, if we will only fulfil the conditions. If we exercise
+expectance, and desire and petition and faithful stewardship, we shall
+get what we need. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' if the road is a
+steep and rocky one that would wear out leather. 'As thy days so shall
+thy strength be.' God does not hurl His soldiers in a blundering attack
+on some impregnable mountain, where they are slain in heaps at the base;
+but when He lays a commandment on my shoulders, He infuses strength into
+me, and according to the good homely old saying that has brought comfort
+to many a sad and weighted heart, makes the back to bear the burden. The
+heavy task or the crushing sorrow is often the key that opens the door
+of God's treasure-house. You have had very little experience either of
+life or of Christian life, if you have not learnt by this time that the
+harder your work, and the darker your sorrows, the mightier have been
+God's supports, and the more starry the lights that have shone upon your
+path. 'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things.'
+
+One more word: this sufficiency _should be_ more uniform, _is_ uniform
+in the divine intention, and in so far as the flow of the fountain is
+concerned. Always having had I may be sure that I always shall have. Of
+course I know that, in so far as our physical nature conditions our
+spiritual experience, there will be ups and downs, moments of
+emancipation and moments of slavery. There will be times when the flower
+opens, and times when it shuts itself up. But I am sure that the great
+mass of Christian people might have a far more level temperature in
+their Christian experience than they have; that we could, if we would,
+have far more experimental knowledge of this 'always' of my text. God
+means that the basin should be always full right up to the top of the
+marble edge, and that the more is drawn off from it, the more should
+flow into it. But it is very often like the reservoirs in the hills for
+some great city in a drought, where great stretches of the bottom are
+exposed, and again, when the drought breaks, are full to the top of the
+retaining wall. That should not be. Our Christian life should run on the
+high levels. Why does it not? Possibilities are duties.
+
+And now, lastly, we have here what, adhering to my metaphor, I call
+
+III. The stream.
+
+'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things, may abound to
+every good work.'
+
+That is what God gives us His grace for; and that is a very important
+consideration. The end of God's dealings with us, poor, weak, sinful
+creatures, is character and conduct. Of course you can state the end in
+a great many other ways; but there have been terrible evils arising from
+the way in which Evangelical preachers have too often talked, as if the
+end of God's dealings with us was the vague thing which they call
+'salvation,' and by which many of their hearers take them to mean
+neither more nor less than dodging Hell. But the New Testament, with all
+its mysticism, even when it soars highest, and speaks most about the
+perfection of humanity, and the end of God's dealings being that we may
+be 'filled with the fulness of God,' never loses its wholesome, sane
+hold of the common moralities of daily life, and proclaims that we
+receive all, in order that we may be able to 'maintain good works for
+necessary uses.' And if we lay that to heart, and remember that a
+correct creed, and a living faith, and precious, select, inward emotions
+and experiences are all intended to evolve into lives, filled and
+radiant with common moralities and 'good works'--not meaning thereby the
+things which go by that name in popular phraseology, but 'whatsoever
+things are lovely . . . and of good report'--then we shall understand a
+little better what we are here for and what Jesus Christ died for, and
+what His Spirit is given and lives in us for. So 'good works' is the
+end, in one very important aspect, of all that avalanche of grace which
+has been from eternity rushing down upon us from the heights of God.
+
+There is one more thing to note, and that is that, in our character and
+conduct, we should copy the 'giving grace.' Look how eloquently and
+significantly, in the first and last clauses of my text, the same words
+recur. 'God is able to make _all_ grace abound, that ye may _abound_ in
+_all_ good work.' Copy God in the many-sidedness and in the copiousness
+of the good that flows out from your life and conduct, because of your
+possession of that divine grace. And remember, 'to him that hath shall
+be given.' We pray for more grace; we need to pray for that, no doubt.
+Do we use the grace that God has given us? If we do not, the remainder
+of that great word which I have just quoted will be fulfilled in you.
+God forbid that any of us should receive the grace of God in vain, and
+therefore come under the stern and inevitable sentence, 'From him that
+hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath!'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S UNSPEAKABLE GIFT
+
+          'Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.'--2
+          COR. ix. 15.
+
+
+It seems strange that there should ever have been any doubt as to what
+gift it is which evokes this burst of thanksgiving. There is but one of
+God's many mercies which is worthy of being thus singled out. There is
+one blazing central sun which shines out amidst all the galaxy of lights
+which fill the heavens. There is one gift of God which, beyond all
+others, merits the designation of 'unspeakable.' The gift of Christ
+draws all other divine gifts after it. 'How should He not with Him also
+freely give us all things.'
+
+The connection in which this abrupt jet of praise stands is very
+remarkable. The Apostle has been dwelling on the Christian obligation of
+giving bountifully and cheerfully, and on the great law that a glad
+giver is 'enriched' and not impoverished thereby, whilst the recipients,
+for their part, are blessed by having thankfulness evoked towards the
+givers. And that contemplation of the happy interchange of benefit and
+thanks between men leads the fervid Apostle to the thoughts which were
+always ready to spring to his lips--of God as the great pattern of
+giving and of the gratitude to Him which should fill all our souls. The
+expression here 'unspeakable' is what I wish chiefly to fix upon now. It
+means literally that which cannot be fully declared. Language fails
+because thought fails.
+
+I. The gift comes from unspeakable love.
+
+God _so_ loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The love is
+the cause of the gift: the gift is the expression of the love. John's
+Gospel says that the Son which is in the bosom of the Father has
+_declared_ Him. Paul here uses a related word for _unspeakable_ which
+might be rendered 'that which cannot be fully declared.' The declaration
+of the Father partly consists in this, that He is declared to be
+undeclarable, the proclamation of His name consists partly in this that
+it is proclaimed to be a name that cannot be proclaimed. Language fails
+when it is applied to the expression of human emotion; no tongue can
+ever fully serve the heart. Whether there be any thoughts too great for
+words or no, there are emotions too great. Language is ever 'weaker than
+our grief' and not seldom weaker than our love. It is but the surface
+water that can be run off through the narrow channel of speech: the
+central deep remains. If it be so with human affection, how much more
+must it be so with God's love? With lowly condescension He uses all
+sweet images drawn from earthly relationships, to help us in
+understanding His. Every dear name is pressed into the service--father,
+mother, husband, wife, brother, friend, and after all are exhausted, the
+love which clothed itself in them all in turn, and used them all to give
+some faint hint of its own perfection, remains unspoken. We know human
+love, its limitations, its changes, its extravagances, its shortcomings,
+and cannot but feel how unworthy it is to mirror for us that perfection
+in God which we venture to name by a name so soiled. The analogies
+between what we call love in man and love in God must be supplemented by
+the differences between them, if we are ever to approach a worthy
+conception of the unspeakable love that underlies the unspeakable gift.
+
+II. The gift involves unspeakable sacrifice.
+
+Human love desires to give its most precious treasures to its object
+and is then most blessed: divine love cannot come short of human in this
+most characteristic of its manifestations. Surely the copy is not to
+surpass the original, nor the mirror to flash more brightly than the sun
+which, at the brightest, it but reflects. In such a matter we can but
+stammer when we try to find words. As our text warns us, we are trying
+to utter the unutterable when we seek to speak of God's giving up for
+us; but however such a thought may seem to be forbidden by other aspects
+of the divine nature, it seems to be involved in the great truth that
+'God is love.' Since He is, His blessedness too, must be in imparting,
+and in parting with what He gives. A humble worshipper in Jewish times
+loved enough to say that he would not offer unto God an offering that
+cost him nothing, and that loving height of self-surrender was at the
+highest, but a lowly imitation of the love to which it looked up. When
+Paul in the Epistle to the Romans says, 'He that spared not His own Son
+but delivered Him up for us all,' he is obviously alluding to, and all
+but quoting, the divine words to Abraham, 'Seeing thou hast not withheld
+thy son, thine only son, from Me,' and the allusion permits us to
+parallel what God did when He sent His Son with what Abraham did when,
+with wrung heart, but with submission, he bound and laid Isaac on the
+altar and stretched forth his hand with the knife in it to slay him.
+Such a representation contradicts the vulgar conceptions of a
+passionless, self-sufficing, icy deity, but reflection on the facts of
+our own experience and on the blessed secrets of our own love, leads us
+to believe that some shadow of loss passed across the infinite and
+eternal completeness of the divine nature when 'God sent forth His Son
+made of a woman.' And may we not go further and say that when Jesus on
+the Cross cried from out of the darkness of eclipse, 'My God! My God!
+Why hast Thou forsaken me?' there was something in the heavens
+corresponding to the darkness that covered the earth and something in
+the Father's heart that answered the Son's. But our text warns us that
+such matters are not for our handling in speech, and are best dealt
+with, not as matters of possibly erring speculation, but as materials
+for lowly thanks unto God for His unspeakable gift.
+
+But whatever may be true about the love of the Father who sent, there
+can be no doubt about the love of the Son who came. No man helps his
+fellows in suffering but at the cost of his own suffering. Sympathy
+means _fellow-feeling_, and the one indispensable condition of all
+rescue work of any sort is that the rescuer must bear on his own
+shoulders the sins or sorrows that he is able to bear away. Heartless
+help is no help. It does not matter whether he who 'stands and says, "Be
+ye clothed and fed,"' gives or does not give 'the things necessary,' he
+will be but a 'miserable comforter' if he has not in heart and feeling
+entered into the sorrows and pains which he seeks to alleviate. We need
+not dwell on the familiar truths concerning Him who was a 'man of
+sorrows and acquainted with grief.' All through His life He was in
+contact with evil, and for Him the contact was like that of a naked hand
+pressed upon hot iron. The sins and woes of the world made His path
+through it like that of bare feet on sharp flints. If He had never died
+it would still have been true that 'He was wounded for our
+transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.' On the Cross He
+completed the libation which had continued throughout His life and
+'poured out His soul unto death' as He had been pouring it out all
+through His life. We have no measure by which we can estimate the
+inevitable sufferings in such a world as ours of such a spirit as
+Christ's. We may know something of the solitude of uncongenial society;
+of the pain of seeing miseries that we cannot comfort, of the horrors of
+dwelling amidst impurities that we cannot cleanse, and of longings to
+escape from them all to some nest in the wilderness, but all these are
+but the feeblest shadows of the incarnate sorrows whose name among men
+was Jesus. Nothing is more pathetic than the way in which our Lord kept
+all these sorrows close locked within His own heart, so that scarcely
+ever did they come to light. Once He did permit a glimpse into that
+hidden chamber when He said, 'O faithless generation, how long shall I
+be with you, how long shall I suffer you?' But for the most part His
+sorrow was unspoken because it was 'unspeakable.' Once beneath the
+quivering olives in the moonlight of Gethsemane, He made a pitiful
+appeal for the little help which three drowsy men could give Him, when
+He cried, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye
+here and watch with Me,' but for the most part the silence at which His
+judges 'marvelled greatly,' and raged as much as they marvelled, was
+unbroken, and as 'a sheep before her shearers is dumb,' so 'He opened
+not His mouth.' The sacrifice of His death was, for the most part,
+silent like the sacrifice of His life. Should it not call forth from us
+floods of praise and thanks to God for His unspeakable gift?
+
+III. The gift brings with it unspeakable results.
+
+In Christ are hid 'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' When God
+gave us Him, He gave us a storehouse in which are contained treasures of
+truth which can never be fully comprehended, and which, even if
+comprehended, can never be exhausted. The mystery of the Divine Name
+revealed in Jesus, the mystery of His person, are themes on which the
+Christian world has been nourished ever since, and which are as full of
+food, not for the understanding only, but far more for the heart and the
+will, to-day as ever they were. The world may think that it has left the
+teaching of Jesus behind, but in reality the teaching is far ahead, and
+the world's practise is but slowly creeping towards its imperfect
+attainment. The Gospel is the guide of the race, and each generation
+gathers something more from it, and progresses in the measure in which
+it follows Christ; and as for the race, so for the individual. Each of
+Christ's scholars finds his own gift, and in the measure of his
+faithfulness to what he has found makes ever new discoveries in the
+unsearchable riches of Christ. After all have fed full there still
+remain abundant baskets full to be taken up.
+
+He who has sounded the depths of Jesus most completely is ever the first
+to acknowledge that he has been but as a child 'gathering pebbles on the
+beach while the great ocean lies unsounded before him.' No single soul,
+and no multitude of souls, can exhaust Jesus; neither our individual
+experiences, nor the experiences of a believing world can fully realise
+the endless wealth laid up in Him. He is the Alpha and the Omega of all
+our speech, the first letter and the last of our alphabet, between which
+lie all the rest.
+
+The gift is completed in consequences yet unspeakable. Even the first
+blessings which the humblest faith receives from the pierced hands have
+more in them than words can tell. Who has ever spoken adequately and in
+full correspondence with reality what it is to have God's pardoning
+love flowing in upon the soul? Many singers have sung sweet psalms and
+hymns and spiritual songs on which generations of devout souls have fed,
+but none of them has spoken the deepest blessedness of a Christian life,
+or the calm raptures of communion with God. It is easy to utter the
+words 'forgiveness, reconciliation, acceptance, fellowship, eternal
+life'; the syllables can be spoken, but who knows or can utter the
+depths of the meanings? After all human words the half has not been told
+us, and as every soul carries within itself unrevealable emotions, and
+is a mystery after all revelation, so the things which God's gift brings
+to a soul are after all speech unspeakable, and the words 'cannot be
+uttered' which they who are caught up into the third heavens hear.
+
+Then we may extend our thoughts to the future form of Christian
+experience. 'It doth not yet appear what we should be.' All our
+conceptions of a future existence must necessarily be inadequate.
+Nothing but experience can reveal them to us, and our experience there
+will be capable of indefinite expansion, and through eternity there will
+be endless growth in the appropriation of the unspeakable gift.
+
+For us the only recompense that we can make for the unspeakable gift is
+to receive it with 'thanks unto God' and the yielding up of our hearts
+to Him. God pours this love upon us freely, without stint. It is
+unspeakable in the depths of its source, in the manner of its
+manifestation, in the glory of its issues. It is like some great stream,
+rising in the trackless mountains, broad and deep, and leading on to a
+sunlit ocean. We stand on the bank; let us trust ourselves to its broad
+bosom. It will bear us safe. And let us take heed that we receive not
+the gift of God _in vain_.
+
+
+
+
+A MILITANT MESSAGE
+
+          'Casting down imaginations, and every high thing
+          that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and
+          bringing every thought into captivity to the
+          obedience of Christ; and being in readiness to
+          avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall
+          be fulfilled.'--2 COR. x. 5 and 6 (R.V.).
+
+
+None of Paul's letters are so full of personal feeling as this one is.
+It is written, for the most part, at a white heat; he had heard from his
+trusted Titus tidings which on one hand filled him with a thankfulness
+of which the first half of the letter is the expression; but there had
+also been tidings of a very different kind, and from this point onwards
+the letter is seething with the feelings which these had produced. There
+was in the Corinthian Church a party, probably Judaisers, which denied
+his authority and said bitter things about his character. They
+apparently had contrasted the force of his letters and the feebleness of
+his 'bodily presence' and speech. They insinuated that his 'bark was
+worse than his bite.' Their language put into plain English would be
+something like this, 'Ah! He is very bold at a distance, let him come
+and face us and we shall see a difference. Vapouring in his letters, he
+will be meek enough when he is here.'
+
+These slanderers seem to have thought of Paul as if he 'warred according
+to flesh,' and it is this charge, that he was actuated in his opposition
+to the evils in Corinth by selfish considerations and worldly interests,
+which seems to have set the Apostle on fire. In answer he pours out
+quick, indignant questionings, sharp irony, vehement self-vindication,
+passionate remonstrances, flashes of wrath, sudden jets of tenderness.
+What a position for him to have to say, 'I am not a low schemer; I am
+not working for myself.' Yet it is the common lot of all such men to be
+misread by little, crawling creatures who cannot believe in heroic
+self-forgetfulness. He answers the taunt that he 'walked according to
+the flesh' in the context by saying, 'Yes, I live in the flesh, my
+outward life is like that of other men, but I do not go a-soldiering
+_according_ to the flesh. It is not for my own sinful self that I get
+the rules of my life's battle, neither do I get my weapons from the
+flesh. They could not do what they do if that were their origin: they
+are of God and therefore mighty.' Then the metaphor as it were catches
+fire, and in our text he expands the figure of a warfare and sets before
+us the destruction of fortresses, the capture of their garrisons, and
+the leading of them away into another land, the stern punishment of the
+rebels who still hold out, and the merciful delay in administering it.
+It has been suggested that there is an allusion in our text to the
+extermination of the pirates in Paul's native Cilicia which happened
+some fifty or sixty years before his birth and ended in destroying their
+robber-holds and taking some thousands of prisoners. Whether that be so
+or no, the Apostle's kindled imagination sets forth here great truths as
+to the effects which his message is meant to produce and, thank God, has
+produced.
+
+I. The opposing fortresses.
+
+The Apostle conceives of himself and of his brother preachers of Christ
+as going forth on a merciful warfare. He thinks of strong rock
+fortresses, with lofty walls set on high, and frowning down on any
+assailants. No doubt he is thinking first of the opposition which he had
+to front in Corinth from the Judaisers to whom we have referred, but the
+application of the metaphor goes far beyond the petty strife in Corinth
+and carries for us the wholesome lesson that one main cause which keeps
+men back from Christ is a too high estimate of themselves. Some of us
+are enclosed in the fortress of self-sufficiency: we will not humbly
+acknowledge our dependence on God, and have turned self-reliance into
+the law of our lives. There are many voices, some of them sweet and
+powerful, which to-day are preaching that gospel. It finds eager
+response in many hearts, and there is something in us all to which it
+appeals. We are often tempted to say defiantly, 'Who is Lord over us?'
+And the teaching that bids us rely on ourselves is so wholly in accord
+with the highest wisdom and the noblest life that what is good and what
+is evil in each of us contribute to reinforce it. Self-dependence is a
+great virtue, and the mother of much energy and nobleness, but it is
+also a great error and a great sin. To be so self-sufficing as not to
+need externals is good; to be so self-sufficing as not to need or to see
+God is ruin and death. The title which, as one of our great thinkers
+tells us, a humourist put on the back of a volume of heterodox tracts,
+'Every man his own redeemer,' makes a claim for self-sufficiency which
+more or less unconsciously shuts out many men from the salvation of
+Christ.
+
+There is the fortress of culture and the pride of it in which many of us
+are to-day entrenched against the Gospel. The attitude of mind into
+which persons of culture tend to fall is distinctly adverse to their
+reception of the Gospel, and that is not because the Gospel is adverse
+to culture, but because cultured people do not care to be put on the
+same level with publicans and harlots. They would be less disinclined to
+go into the feast if there were in it reserved seats for superior people
+and a private entrance to them. If the wise and prudent were more of
+both, they would be liker the babes to whom these things are revealed,
+and they would be revealed to them too. Not knowledge but the
+superciliousness which is the result of the conceit of knowledge hinders
+from God, and is one of the strongest fortresses against which the
+weapons of our warfare have to be employed.
+
+There is the fortress of ignorance. Most men who are kept from Christ
+are so because they know neither themselves nor God. The most widely
+prevailing characteristic of the superficial life of most men is their
+absolute unconsciousness of the fact of sin; they neither know it as
+universal nor as personal. They have never gone deeply enough down into
+the depths of their own hearts to have come up scared at the ugly things
+that lie sleeping there, nor have they ever reflected on their own
+conduct with sufficient gravity to discern its aberrations from the law
+of right, hence the average man is quite unconscious of sin, and is a
+complete stranger to himself. The cup has been drunk by and intoxicated
+the world, and the masses of men are quite unaware that it has
+intoxicated them.
+
+They are ignorant of God as they are of themselves, and if at any time,
+by some flash of light, they see themselves as they are, they think of
+God as if He were altogether such an one as themselves, and fall back on
+a vague trust in the vaguer mercy of their half-believed-in God as their
+hope for a vague salvation. Men who thus walk in a vain show will never
+feel their need of Jesus, and the lazy ignorance of themselves and the
+as lazy trust in what they call their God, are a fortress against which
+it will task the power of God to make any weapons of warfare mighty to
+its pulling down.
+
+II. The casting down of fortresses.
+
+The first effect of any real contact with Christ and His Gospel is to
+reveal a man to himself, to shatter his delusive estimates of what he
+is, and to pull down about his ears the lofty fortress in which he has
+ensconced himself. It seems strange work for what calls itself a Gospel
+to begin by forcing a man to cry out with sobs and tears, Oh, wretched
+man that I am! But no man will ever reach the heights to which Christ
+can lift him, who does not begin his upward course by descending to the
+depths into which Christ's Gospel begins its work by plunging him.
+Unconsciousness of sin is sure to lead to indifference to a Saviour, and
+unless we know ourselves to be miserable and poor and blind and naked,
+the offer of gold refined by fire and white garments that we may clothe
+ourselves will make no appeal to us. The fact of sin makes the need for
+a Saviour; our individual sense of sin makes us sensible of our need of
+a Saviour.
+
+Paul believed that the weapons of his warfare were mighty enough to cast
+down the strongest of all strongholds in which men shut themselves up
+against the humbling Gospel of salvation by the mercy of God. The
+weapons to which he thus trusted were the same to which Jesus pointed
+His disciples when, about to leave them, He said, 'When the Comforter is
+come He will convict the world of sin because they believe not in Me.'
+Jesus brought to the world the perfect revelation of the holiness of
+God, and set before us all a divine pattern of manhood to rebuke and
+condemn our stained and rebellious lives, and He turned us away from the
+superficial estimate of actions to the careful scrutiny of motives. By
+all these and many other ways He presented Himself to the world a
+perfect man, the incarnation of a holy God and the revelation and
+condemnation of sinful humanity. Yet, all that miracle of loveliness,
+gentleness, and dignity is beheld by men without a thrill, and they see
+in Him no 'beauty that they should desire Him,' and no healing to which
+they will trust. Paul's way of kindling penitence in impenitent spirits
+was not to brandish over them the whips of law or to seek to shake souls
+with terror of any hell, still less was it to discourse with philosophic
+calm on the obligations of duty and the wisdom of virtuous living; his
+appeal to conscience was primarily the pressing on the heart of the love
+of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. When the heart is melted, the
+conscience will not long continue indurated. We cannot look lovingly and
+believingly at Jesus and then turn to look complacently on ourselves.
+Not to believe on Him is the sin of sins, and to be taught that it is so
+is the first step in the work of Him who never merits the name of the
+Comforter more truly than when He convicts the world of sin.
+
+For a Christianity that does not begin with the deep consciousness of
+sin has neither depth nor warmth and has scarcely vitality. The Gospel
+is no Gospel, and we had almost said, 'The Christ is no Christ' to one
+who does not feel himself, if parted from Christ, 'dead in trespasses
+and sins.' Our religion depends for all its force, our gratitude and
+love for all their devotion, upon our sense that 'the chastisement of
+our peace was laid upon Him, and that by His stripes we are healed.'
+Since He gave Himself for us, it is meet that we give ourselves to Him,
+but there will be little fervour of devotion or self-surrender, unless
+there has been first the consciousness of the death of sin and then the
+joyous consciousness of newness of life in Christ Jesus.
+
+III. The captives led away to another land.
+
+The Apostle carries on his metaphor one step further when he goes on to
+describe what followed the casting down of the fortresses. The enemy,
+driven from their strongholds, have nothing for it but to surrender and
+are led away in captivity to another land. The long strings of prisoners
+on Assyrian and Egyptian monuments show how familiar an experience this
+was. It may be noted that perhaps our text regards the obedience of
+Christ as being the far country into which 'every thought was to be
+brought.' At all events Paul's idea here is that the end of the whole
+struggle between 'the flesh' and the weapons of God is to make men
+willing captives of Jesus Christ. We are Christians in the measure in
+which we surrender our wills to Christ. That surrender rests upon, and
+is our only adequate answer to, His surrender for us. The 'obedience of
+Christ' is perfect freedom; His captives wear no chains and know nothing
+of forced service; His yoke is easy, not because it does not press hard
+upon the neck but because it is lined with love, and 'His burden is
+light' not because of its own weight but because it is laid on us by
+love and is carried by kindred love. He only commands himself who gladly
+lets Christ command him. Many a hard task becomes easy; crooked things
+are straightened out and rough places often made surprisingly plain for
+the captives of Christ, whom He leads into the liberty of obedience to
+Him.
+
+IV. Fate of the disobedient.
+
+Paul thinks that in Corinth there will be found some stiff-necked
+opponents of whom he cannot hope that their 'obedience shall be
+fulfilled,' and he sees in the double issue of the small struggle that
+was being waged in Corinth a parable of the wider results of the warfare
+in the world. 'Some believed and some believed not'; that has been the
+brief summary of the experience of all God's messengers everywhere, and
+it is their experience to-day. No doubt when Paul speaks of 'being in
+readiness to avenge all disobedience,' he is alluding to the exercise of
+his apostolic authority against the obdurate antagonists whom he
+contemplates as still remaining obdurate, and it is beautiful to note
+the long-suffering patience with which he will hold his hand until all
+that can be won has been won. But we must not forget that Paul's
+demeanour is but a faint shadow of his Lord's, and that the weapons
+which were ready to avenge all disobedience were the weapons of God. If
+a man steels himself against the efforts of divine love, builds up round
+himself a fortress of self-righteousness and locks its gates against the
+merciful entrance of convictions of sin and the knowledge of a Saviour,
+and if he therefore lives, year in, year out, in disobedience, the
+weapons which he thinks himself to have resisted will one day make him
+feel their edge. We cannot set ourselves against the salvation of Jesus
+without bringing upon ourselves consequences which are wholly evil and
+harmful. Torpid consciences, hungry hearts, stormy wills, tyrannous
+desires, vain hopes and not vain fears come to be, by slow degrees, the
+tortures of the man who drops the portcullis and lifts the bridge
+against the entrance of Jesus. There are hells enough on earth if men's
+hearts were displayed.
+
+But the love which is obliged to smite gives warning that it is ready to
+avenge, long before it lets the blow fall, and does so in order that it
+may never need to fall. As long as it is possible that the disobedient
+shall become obedient to Christ, He holds back the vengeance that is
+ready to fall and will one day fall 'on all disobedience.' Not till all
+other means have been patiently tried will He let that terrible ending
+crash down. It hangs over the heads of many of us who are all unaware
+that we walk beneath the shadow of a rock that at any moment may be set
+in motion and bury us beneath its weight. It is 'in readiness,' but it
+is still at rest. Let us be wise in time and yield to the merciful
+weapons with which Jesus would make His way into our hearts. Or if the
+metaphor of our text presents Him in too warlike a guise, let us listen
+to His own gentle pleading, 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if
+any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him.'
+
+
+
+
+SIMPLICITY TOWARDS CHRIST
+
+          'But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent
+          beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds
+          should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in
+          Christ.'--2 COR. xi. 3.
+
+
+The Revised Version, amongst other alterations, reads, 'the simplicity
+that is _towards_ Christ.'
+
+The inaccurate rendering of the Authorised Version is responsible for a
+mistake in the meaning of these words, which has done much harm. They
+have been supposed to describe a quality or characteristic belonging to
+Christ or the Gospel; and, so construed, they have sometimes been made
+the watchword of narrowness and of intellectual indolence. 'Give us the
+simple Gospel' has been the cry of people who have thought themselves to
+be evangelical when they were only lazy, and the consequence has been
+that preachers have been expected to reiterate commonplaces, which have
+made both them and their hearers listless, and to sink the educational
+for the evangelistic aspect of the Christian teacher's function.
+
+It is quite true that the Gospel is simple, but it is also true that it
+is deep, and they will best appreciate its simplicity who have most
+honestly endeavoured to fathom its depth. When we let our little
+sounding lines out, and find that they do not reach the bottom, we begin
+to wonder even more at the transparency of the clear abyss. It is not
+simplicity _in_ Christ, but _towards_ Christ of which the Apostle is
+speaking; not a quality in Him, but a quality in _us_ towards Him. I
+wish, then, to turn to the two thoughts that these words suggest. First
+and chiefly, the attitude towards Christ which befits our relation to
+Him; and, secondly and briefly, the solicitude for its maintenance.
+
+I. First, then, look at the attitude towards Christ which befits the
+Christian relation to Him.
+
+The word 'simplicity' has had a touch of contempt associated with it. It
+is a somewhat doubtful compliment to say of a man that he is
+'simple-minded.' All noble words which describe great qualities get
+oxidised by exposure to the atmosphere, and rust comes over them, as
+indeed all good things tend to become deteriorated in time and by use.
+But the notion of the word is really a very noble and lofty one. To be
+'without a fold,' which is the meaning of the Greek word and of its
+equivalent 'simplicity,' is, in one aspect, to be transparently honest
+and true, and in another to be out and out of a piece. There is no
+underside of the cloth, doubled up beneath the upper which shows, and
+running in the opposite direction; but all tends in one way. A man with
+no under-currents, no by-ends, who is down to the very roots what he
+looks, and all whose being is knit together and hurled in one direction,
+without reservation or back-drawing, that is the 'simple' man whom the
+Apostle means. Such simplicity is the truest wisdom; such simplicity of
+devotion to Jesus Christ is the only attitude of heart and mind which
+corresponds to the facts of our relation to Him. That relation is set
+forth in the context by a very sweet and tender image, in the true line
+of scriptural teaching, which in many a place speaks of the Bride and
+Bridegroom, and which on its last page shows us the Lamb's wife
+descending from Heaven to meet her husband. The state of devout souls
+and of the community of such here on earth is that of betrothal. Their
+state in heaven is that of marriage. Very beautiful it is to see how
+this fiery Paul, like the ascetic John, who never knew the sacred joys
+of that state, lays hold of the thought of the Bridegroom and the Bride,
+and of his individual relation to both as indicating the duties of the
+Church and the solicitude of the Apostle. He says that he has been the
+intermediary who, according to Oriental custom, arranged the
+preliminaries of the marriage, and brought the bride to the bridegroom,
+and, as the friend of the latter, standing by rejoices greatly to hear
+the bridegroom's voice, and is solicitous mainly that in the tremulous
+heart of the betrothed there should be no admixture of other loves, but
+a whole-hearted devotion, an exclusive affection, and an absolute
+obedience. 'I have espoused you,' says he, 'to one husband that I may
+present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest . . . your mind
+should be corrupted from the simplicity that is towards Him.'
+
+Now that metaphor carries in its implication all that anybody can say
+about the exclusiveness, the depth, the purity, the all-pervasiveness of
+the dependent love which should knit us to Jesus Christ. The same
+thought of whole-hearted, single, absolute devotion is conveyed by
+other Scripture metaphors, the _slave_ and the _soldier_ of Christ. But
+all that is repellent or harsh in these is softened and glorified when
+we contemplate it in the light of the metaphor of my text.
+
+So I might leave it to do its own work, but I may perhaps be allowed to
+follow out the thought in one or two directions.
+
+The attitude, then, which corresponds to our relation to Jesus Christ is
+that, first, of a faith which looks to Him exclusively as the source of
+salvation and of light. The specific danger which was alarming Paul, in
+reference to that little community of Christians in Corinth, was one
+which, in its particular form, is long since dead and buried. But the
+principles which underlay it, the tendencies to which it appealed, and
+the perils which alarmed Paul for the Corinthian Church, are perennial.
+He feared that these Judaising teachers, who dogged his heels all his
+life long, and whose one aim seemed to be to build upon his foundation
+and to overthrow his building, should find their way into this church
+and wreck it. The keenness of the polemic, in this and in the contextual
+chapters, shows how real and imminent the danger was. Now what they did
+was to tell people that Jesus Christ had a partner in His saving work.
+They said that obedience to the Jewish law, ceremonial and other, was a
+condition of salvation, along with trust in Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
+And because they thus shared out the work of salvation between Jesus
+Christ and something else, Paul thundered and lightened at them all his
+life, and, as he tells us in this context, regarded them as preaching
+another Jesus, another spirit, and another gospel. That particular error
+is long dead and buried.
+
+But is there nothing else that has come into its place? Has this old
+foe not got a new face, and does not it live amongst us as really as it
+lived then? I think it does; whether in the form of the grosser kind of
+sacramentarianism and ecclesiasticism which sticks sacraments and a
+church in front of the Cross, or in the form of the definite denial that
+Jesus Christ's death on the Cross is the one means of salvation, or
+simply in the form of the coarse, common wish to have a finger in the
+pie and a share in the work of saving oneself, as a drowning man will
+sometimes half drown his rescuer by trying to use his own limbs. These
+tendencies that Paul fought, and which he feared would corrupt the
+Corinthians from their simple and exclusive reliance on Christ, and
+Christ alone, as the ground and author of their salvation, are perennial
+in human nature, and we have to be on our guard for ever and for ever
+against them. Whether they come in organised, systematic, doctrinal
+form, or whether they are simply the rising in our own hearts of the old
+Adam of pride and self-trust, they equally destroy the whole work of
+Christ, because they infringe upon its solitariness and uniqueness. It
+is not Christ and anything else. Men are not saved by a syndicate. It is
+Jesus Christ alone, and 'beside Him there is no Saviour.' You go into a
+Turkish mosque and see the roof held up by a forest of slim pillars. You
+go into a cathedral chapter-house and see one strong support in the
+centre that bears the whole roof. The one is an emblem of the Christless
+multiplicity of vain supports, the other of the solitary strength and
+eternal sufficiency of the one Pillar on which the whole weight of a
+world's salvation rests, and which lightly bears it triumphantly aloft.
+'I fear lest your minds be corrupted from the simplicity' of a
+reasonable faith directed towards Christ.
+
+And in like manner He is the sole light and teacher of men as to God,
+themselves, their duty, their destinies and prospects. He, and He alone,
+brings these things to light. His word, whether it comes from His lips
+or from the deeds which are part of His revelation, or from the voice of
+the Spirit which takes of His and speaks to the ages through His
+apostles, should be 'the end of all strife.' What He says, and all that
+He says, and nothing else than what He says, is the creed of the
+Christian. He, and He only, is 'the light which lighteth every man that
+cometh into the world.' In this day of babblements and confusions, let
+us listen for the voice of Christ and accept all which comes from Him,
+and let the language of our deepest hearts be, 'Lord, to whom shall we
+go? Thou only hast the words of eternal life.'
+
+Again, our relation to Jesus Christ demands exclusive love to Him.
+'Demands' is an ugly word to bracket with love. We might say, and
+perhaps more truly, permits or privileges. It is the joy of the
+betrothed that her duty is to love, and to keep her heart clear from all
+competing affections. But it is none the less her duty because it is her
+joy. What Christ is to you, if you are a Christian, and what He longs to
+be to us all, whether we are Christians or not, is of such a character
+as that the only fitting attitude of our hearts to Him in response is
+that of exclusive affection. I do not mean that we are to love nothing
+but Him, but I mean that we are to love all things else in Him, and
+that, if any creature so delays or deflects our love as that either it
+does not pass, by means of the creature, into the presence of the
+Christ, or is turned away from the Christ by the creature, then we have
+fallen beneath the sweet level of our lofty privilege, and have won for
+ourselves the misery due to distracted and idolatrous hearts. Love to
+one who has done what He has done for us is in its very nature
+exclusive, and its exclusiveness is all-pervasive exclusiveness. The
+centre diamond makes the little stones set round it all the more
+lustrous. We must love Jesus Christ all in all or not at all. Divided
+love incurs the condemnation that falls heavily upon the head of the
+faithless bride.
+
+Dear friends, the conception of the essence of religion as being love is
+no relaxation, but an increase, of its stringent requirements. The more
+we think of that sweet bond as being the true union of the soul with
+God, who is its only rest and home, the more reasonable and imperative
+will appear the old commandment, 'Thou shalt love Him with all thy
+heart, and soul, and strength, and mind.'
+
+But, further, our relation to Jesus Christ is such as that nothing short
+of absolute obedience to His commandment corresponds to it. There must
+be the simplicity, the single-mindedness that thus obeys, obeys swiftly,
+cheerfully, constantly. In all matters His command is my law, and, as
+surely as I make His command my law, will He make my desire His motive.
+For He Himself has said, in words that bring together our obedience to
+His will and His compliance with our wishes, in a fashion that we should
+not have ventured upon unless He had set us an example, 'If ye love Me,
+keep My commandments. If ye ask anything in My name I will do it.' The
+exclusive love that binds us, by reason of our faith in Him alone, to
+that Lord ought to express itself in unhesitating, unfaltering,
+unreserved, and unreluctant obedience to every word that comes from His
+mouth.
+
+These brief outlines are but the poorest attempt to draw out what the
+words of my text imply. But such as they are, let us remember that they
+do set forth the only proper response of the saved man to the saving
+Christ. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' Anything short of a faith that
+rests on Him alone, of a love that knits itself to His single,
+all-sufficient heart, and of an obedience that bows the whole being to
+the sweet yoke of His commandment is an unworthy answer to the Love that
+died, and that lives for us all.
+
+II. And now I have only time to glance at the solicitude for the
+maintenance of this exclusive single-mindedness towards Christ.
+
+Think of what threatens it. I say nothing about the ferment of opinion
+in this day, for one man that is swept away from a thorough
+whole-hearted faith by intellectual considerations, there are a dozen
+from whom it is filched without their knowing it, by their own
+weaknesses and the world's noises. And so it is more profitable that we
+should think of the whole crowd of external duties, enjoyments,
+sweetnesses, bitternesses, that solicit us, and would seek to draw us
+away. Who can hear the low voice that speaks peace and wisdom when
+Niagara is roaring past his ears? 'The world is too much with us, late
+and soon. Buying and selling we lay waste our powers,' and break
+ourselves away from our simple devotion to that dear Lord. But it is
+possible that we may so carry into all the whirl the central peace, as
+that we shall not be disturbed by it; and possible that 'whether we eat
+or drink, or whatsoever we do, we may do all to His glory,' so that we
+can, even in the midst of our daily pressing avocations and cares be
+keeping our hearts in the heavens, and our souls in touch with our Lord.
+
+But it is not only things without that draw us away. Our own weaknesses
+and waywardnesses, our strong senses, our passions, our desires, our
+necessities, all these have a counteracting force, which needs continual
+watchfulness in order to be neutralised. No man can grasp a stay, which
+alone keeps him from being immersed in the waves, with uniform tenacity,
+unless every now and then he tightens his muscles. And no man can keep
+himself firmly grasping Jesus Christ without conscious effort directed
+to bettering his hold.
+
+If there be dangers around us, and dangers within us, the discipline
+which we have to pursue in order to secure this uniform, single-hearted
+devotion is plain enough. Let us be vividly conscious of the
+peril--which is what some of us are not. Let us take stock of ourselves
+lest creeping evil may be encroaching upon us, while we are all
+unaware--which is what some of us never do. Let us clearly contemplate
+the possibility of an indefinite increase in the closeness and
+thoroughness of our surrender to Him--a conviction which has faded away
+from the minds of many professing Christians. Above all, let us find
+time or make time for the patient, habitual contemplation of the great
+facts which kindle our devotion. For if you never think of Jesus Christ
+and His love to you, how can you love Him back again? And if you are so
+busy carrying out your own secular affairs, or pursuing your own
+ambitions, or attending to your own duties, as they may seem to be, that
+you have no time to think of Christ, His death, His life, His Spirit,
+His yearning heart over His bride, how can it be expected that you will
+have any depth of love to Him? Let us, too, wait with prayerful patience
+for that Divine Spirit who will knit us more closely to our Lord.
+
+Unless we do so, we shall get no happiness out of our religion, and it
+will bring no praise to Christ or profit to ourselves. I do not know a
+more miserable man than a half-and-half Christian, after the pattern of,
+I was going to say, the ordinary average of professing Christians of
+this generation. He has religion enough to prick and sting him, and not
+enough to impel him to forsake the evil which yet he cannot comfortably
+do. He has religion enough to 'inflame his conscience,' not enough to
+subdue his will and heart. How many of my hearers are in that condition
+it is for them to settle. If we are to be Christian men at all, let us
+be it out and out. Half-and-half religion is no religion.
+
+          'One foot in sea, and one on shore;
+           To one thing constant never!'
+
+That is the type of thousands of professing Christians. 'I fear lest by
+any means your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is towards
+Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS
+
+          'For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that
+          it might depart from me. And He said unto me, My
+          grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is
+          made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore
+          will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the
+          power of Christ may rest upon me.'--2 COR. xii. 8,
+          9.
+
+
+This very remarkable page in the autobiography of the Apostle shows us
+that he, too, belonged to the great army of martyrs who, with hearts
+bleeding and pierced through and through with a dart, yet did their work
+for God. It is of little consequence what his thorn in the flesh may
+have been. The original word suggests very much heavier sorrow than the
+metaphor of 'a thorn' might imply. It really seems to mean not a tiny
+bit of thorn that might lie half concealed in the finger tip, but one
+of those hideous stakes on which the cruel punishment of impalement used
+to be inflicted. And Paul's thought is, not that he has a little,
+trivial trouble to bear, but that he is, as it were, forced quivering
+upon that tremendous torture.
+
+Unquestionably, what he means is some bodily ailment or other. The
+hypothesis that the 'thorn in the flesh' was the sting of the animal
+nature inciting him to evil is altogether untenable, because such a
+thorn could never have been left when the prayer for its removal was
+earnestly presented; nor could it ever have been, when left, an occasion
+for glorifying. Manifestly it was no weakness removable by his own
+effort, no incapacity for service which in any manner approximated to
+being a fault, but purely and simply some infliction from God's hand
+(though likewise capable of being regarded as a 'messenger of Satan')
+which hindered him in his work, and took down any proud flesh and danger
+of spiritual exaltation in consequence of the largeness of his religious
+privileges.
+
+Our text sets before us three most instructive windings, as it were, of
+the stream of thoughts that passed through the Apostle's mind, in
+reference to this burden that he had to carry, and may afford wholesome
+contemplation for us to-day. There is, first, the instinctive shrinking
+which took refuge in prayer. Then there is the insight won by prayer
+into the sustaining strength for, and the purposes of, the thorn that
+was not to be plucked out. And then, finally, there is the peace of
+acquiescence, and a will that accepts--not the inevitable, but the
+loving.
+
+I. First of all we see the instinctive shrinking from that which
+tortured the flesh, which takes refuge in prayer.
+
+There is a wonderful, a beautiful, and, I suppose, an intentional
+parallel between the prayers of the servant and of the Master. Paul's
+petitions are the echo of Gethsemane. There, under the quivering olives,
+in the broken light of the Paschal moon, Jesus 'thrice' prayed that the
+cup might pass from Him. And here the servant, emboldened and instructed
+by the example of the Master, 'thrice' reiterates his human and natural
+desire for the removal of the pain, whatever it was, which seemed to him
+so to hinder the efficiency and the fulness, as it certainly did the
+joy, of his service.
+
+But He who prayed in Gethsemane was He to whom Paul addressed his
+prayer. For, as is almost always the case in the New Testament, 'the
+Lord' here evidently means Christ, as is obvious from the connection of
+the answer to the petition with the Apostle's final confidence and
+acquiescence. For the answer was, 'My strength is made perfect in
+weakness'; and the Apostle's conclusion is, 'Most gladly will I glorify
+in infirmity,' that the strength or 'power _of Christ_ may rest upon
+me.' Therefore the prayer with which we have to deal here is a prayer
+offered to Jesus, who prayed in Gethsemane, and to whom we can bring our
+petitions and our desires.
+
+Notice how this thought of prayer directed to the Master Himself helps
+to lead us deep into the sacredest and most blessed characteristics of
+prayer. It is only telling Christ what is in our hearts. Oh, if we lived
+in the true understanding of what prayer really is--the emptying out of
+our inmost desire and thoughts before our Brother, who is likewise our
+Lord--questions as to what it was permissible to pray for, and what it
+was not permissible to pray for, would be irrelevant, and drop away of
+themselves. If we had a less formal notion of prayer, and realised more
+thoroughly what it was--the speech of a confiding heart to a
+sympathising Lord--then everything that fills our hearts would be seen
+to be a fitting object of prayer. If anything is large enough to
+interest me, it is not too small to be spoken about to Him.
+
+So the question, which is often settled upon very abstract and deep
+grounds that have little to do with the matter--the question as to
+whether prayer for outward blessings is permissible--falls away of
+itself. If I am to talk to Jesus Christ about everything that concerns
+me, am I to keep my thumb upon all that great department and be silent
+about it? One reason why our prayers are often so unreal is, because
+they do not fit our real wants, nor correspond to the thoughts that are
+busy in our minds at the moment of praying. Our hearts are full of some
+small matter of daily interest, and when we kneel down not a word about
+it comes to our lips. Can that be right?
+
+The difference between the different objects of prayer is not to be
+found in the rejection of all temporal and external, but in remembering
+that there are two sets of things to be prayed about, and over one set
+must ever be written 'If it be Thy will,' and over the other it need not
+be written, because we are sure that the granting of our wishes _is_ His
+will. We know about the one that 'if we ask anything according to His
+will, He heareth us.' That may seem to be a very poor and shrunken kind
+of hope to give a man, that if his prayer is in conformity with the
+previous determination of the divine will, it will be answered. But it
+availed for the joyful confidence of that Apostle who saw deepest into
+the conditions and the blessedness of the harmony of the will of God and
+of man. But about the other set we can only say, 'Not my will, but
+Thine be done.' With that sentence, not as a formula upon our lips but
+deep in our hearts, let us take everything into His presence--thorns and
+stakes, pinpricks and wounds out of which the life-blood is ebbing--let
+us take them all to Him, and be sure that we shall take none of them in
+vain.
+
+So then we have the Person to whom the prayer is addressed, the subjects
+with which it is occupied, and the purpose to which it is directed.
+'Take away the burden' was the Apostle's petition; but it was a mistaken
+petition and, therefore, unanswered.
+
+II. That brings me to the second of the windings, as I have ventured to
+call them, of this stream--viz. the insight into the source of strength
+for, and the purpose of, the thorn that could not be taken away. The
+Lord said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee. For My strength'
+(where the word 'My' is a supplement, but a necessary one) 'is made
+perfect in weakness.'
+
+The answer is, in form and in substance, a gentle refusal of the form of
+the petition, but it is a more than granting of its essence. For the
+best answer to such a prayer, and the answer which a true man means when
+he asks, 'Take away the burden,' need not be the external removal of the
+pressure of the sorrow, but the infusing of power to sustain it. There
+are two ways of lightening a burden, one is diminishing its actual
+weight, the other is increasing the strength of the shoulder that bears
+it. And the latter is God's way, is Christ's way, of dealing with us.
+
+Now mark that the answer which this faithful prayer receives is no
+communication of anything fresh, but it is the opening of the man's eyes
+to see that already he has all that he needs. The reply is not, 'I
+_will_ give thee grace sufficient,' but 'My grace' (which thou hast
+now) 'is sufficient for thee.' That grace is given and possessed by the
+sorrowing heart at the moment when it prays. Open your eyes to see what
+you have, and you will not ask for the load to be taken away. Is not
+that always true? Many a heart is carrying some heavy weight; perhaps
+some have an incurable sorrow, some are stricken by disease that they
+know can never be healed, some are aware that the shipwreck has been
+total, and that the sorrow that they carry to-day will lie down with
+them in the dust. Be it so! 'My grace (not shall be, but) _is_
+sufficient for thee.' And what thou hast already in thy possession is
+enough for all that comes storming against thee of disease,
+disappointment, loss, and misery. Set on the one side all possible as
+well as all actual weaknesses, burdens, pains, and set on the other
+these two words--'My grace,' and all these dwindle into nothingness and
+disappear. If troubled Christian men would learn what they have, and
+would use what they already possess, they would less often beseech Him
+with vain petitions to take away their blessings which are in the thorns
+in the flesh. 'My grace is sufficient.'
+
+How modestly the Master speaks about what He gives! 'Sufficient'? Is not
+there a margin? Is there not more than is wanted? The overplus is
+'exceeding abundant,' not only 'above what we ask or think,' but far
+more than our need. 'Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not _sufficient_
+that every one may take a little,' says Sense. Omnipotence says, 'Bring
+the few small loaves and fishes unto Me'; and Faith dispensed them
+amongst the crowd; and Experience 'gathered up of the fragments that
+remained' more than there had been when the multiplication began. So the
+grace utilised increases; the gift grows as it is employed. 'Unto him
+that hath shall be given.' And the 'sufficiency' is not a bare adequacy,
+just covering the extent of the need, with no overlapping margin, but is
+large beyond expectation, desire, or necessity; so leading onwards to
+high hopes and a wider opening of the open mouths of our need that the
+blessing may pour in.
+
+The other part of this great answer, that the Christ from Heaven spoke
+in or to the praying spirit of this not disappointed, though refused,
+Apostle, unveiled the purpose of the sorrow, even as the former part had
+disclosed the strength to bear it. For, says He, laying down therein the
+great law of His kingdom in all departments and in all ways, 'My
+strength is made perfect'--that is, of course, perfect in its
+manifestation or operations, for it is perfect in itself already. 'My
+strength is made perfect in weakness.' It works in and through man's
+weakness.
+
+God works with broken reeds. If a man conceits himself to be an iron
+pillar, God can do nothing with or by him. All the self-conceit and
+confidence have to be taken out of him first. He has to be brought low
+before the Father can use him for His purposes. The lowlands hold the
+water, and, if only the sluice is open, the gravitation of His grace
+does all the rest and carries the flood into the depths of the lowly
+heart.
+
+His strength loves to work in weakness, only the weakness must be
+conscious, and the conscious weakness must have passed into conscious
+dependence. There, then, you get the law for the Church, for the works
+of Christianity on the widest scale, and in individual lives. Strength
+that conceits itself to be such is weakness; weakness that knows itself
+to be such is strength. The only true source of Power, both for
+Christian work and in all other respects, is God Himself; and our
+strength is ours but by derivation from Him. And the only way to secure
+that derivation is through humble dependence, which we call faith in
+Jesus Christ. And the only way by which that faith in Jesus Christ can
+ever be kindled in a man's soul is through the sense of his need and
+emptiness. So when we know ourselves weak, we have taken the first step
+to strength; just as, when we know ourselves sinners, we have taken the
+first step to righteousness; just as in all regions the recognition of
+the doleful fact of our human necessity is the beginning of the joyful
+confidence in the glad, triumphant fact of the divine fulness. All our
+hollownesses, if I may so say, are met with His fulness that fits into
+them. It only needs that a man be aware of that which he is, and then
+turn himself to Him who is all that he is not, and then into his empty
+being will flow rejoicing the whole fulness of God. 'My strength is made
+perfect in weakness.'
+
+III. Lastly, mark the calm final acquiescence in the loving necessity of
+continued sorrow. 'Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my
+infirmity that the power of Christ may rest upon me.' The will is
+entirely harmonised with Christ's. The Apostle begins with instinctive
+shrinking, he passes onwards to a perception of the purpose of his trial
+and of the sustaining grace; and he comes now to acquiescence which is
+not passivity, but glad triumph. He is more than submissive, he gladly
+glories in his infirmity in order that the power of Christ may 'spread a
+tabernacle over' him. 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted,'
+said the old prophet. Paul says, in a yet higher note of concord with
+God's will, 'I am glad that I sorrow. I rejoice in weakness, because it
+makes it easier for me to cling, and, clinging, I am strong, and
+conquer evil.' Far better is it that the sting of our sorrow should be
+taken away, by our having learned what it is for, and having bowed to
+it, than that it should be taken away by the external removal which we
+sometimes long for. A grief, a trial, an incapacity, a limitation, a
+weakness, which we use as a means of deepening our sense of dependence
+upon Him, is a blessing, and not a sorrow. And if we would only go out
+into the world trying to interpret its events in the spirit of this
+great text, we should less frequently wonder and weep over what
+sometimes seem to us the insoluble mysteries of the sorrows of ourselves
+and of other men. They are all intended to make it more easy for us to
+realise our utter hanging upon Him, and so to open our hearts to receive
+more fully the quickening influences of His omnipotent and
+self-sufficing grace.
+
+Here, then, is a lesson for those who have to carry some cross and know
+they must carry it throughout life. It will be wreathed with flowers if
+you accept it. Here is a lesson for all Christian workers. Ministers of
+the Gospel especially should banish all thoughts of their own
+cleverness, intellectual ability, culture, sufficiency for their work,
+and learn that only when they are emptied can they be filled, and only
+when they know themselves to be nothing are they ready for God to work
+through them. And here is a lesson for all who stand apart from the
+grace and power of Jesus Christ as if they needed it not. Whether you
+know it or not, you are a broken reed; and the only way of your ever
+being bound up and made strong is that you shall recognise your
+sinfulness, your necessity, your abject poverty, your utter emptiness,
+and come to Him who is righteousness, riches, fulness, and say,
+'Because I am weak, be Thou my strength.' The secret of all noble,
+heroic, useful, happy life lies in the paradox, 'When I am weak, then am
+I strong,' and the secret of all failures, miseries, hopeless losses,
+lies in its converse, 'When I am strong, then am I weak.'
+
+
+
+
+NOT YOURS BUT YOU
+
+          'I seek not yours, but you.'--2 COR. xii. 14.
+
+
+Men are usually quick to suspect others of the vices to which they
+themselves are prone. It is very hard for one who never does anything
+but with an eye to what he can make out of it, to believe that there are
+other people actuated by higher motives. So Paul had, over and over
+again, to meet the hateful charge of making money out of his
+apostleship. It was one of the favourite stones that his opponents in
+the Corinthian Church, of whom there were very many, very bitter ones,
+flung at him. In this letter he more than once refers to the charge. He
+does so with great dignity, and with a very characteristic and delicate
+mixture of indignation and tenderness, almost playfulness. Thus, in the
+context, he tells these Corinthian grumblers that he must beg their
+pardon for not having taken anything of them, and so honoured them. Then
+he informs them that he is coming again to see them for the third time,
+and that that visit will be marked by the same independence of their
+help as the others had been. And then he just lets a glimpse of his
+pained heart peep out in the words of my text. 'I seek not yours, but
+you.' _There_ speaks a disinterested love which feels obliged, and yet
+reluctant, to stoop to say that it _is_ love, and that it _is_
+disinterested. Where did Paul learn this passionate desire to possess
+these people, and this entire suppression of self in the desire? It was
+a spark from a sacred fire, a drop from an infinite ocean, an echo of a
+divine voice. The words of my text would never have been Paul's if the
+spirit of them had not first been Christ's. I venture to take them in
+that aspect, as setting forth Christ's claims upon us, and bearing very
+directly on the question of Christian service and of Christian
+liberality.
+
+I. So, then, first of all, I remark, Christ desires personal surrender.
+
+'I seek not yours, but _you_,' is the very mother-tongue of love; but
+upon our lips, even when our love is purest, there is a tinge of
+selfishness blending with it, and very often the desire for another's
+love is as purely selfish as the desire for any material good. But in so
+far as human love is pure in its desire to possess another, we have the
+right to believe the deep and wonderful thought that there is something
+corresponding to it in the heart of Christ, which is a revelation for us
+of the heart of God; and that, however little we may be able to construe
+the whole meaning of the fact, He does stretch out an arm of desire
+towards us; and for His own sake, as for ours, would fain draw us near
+to Himself, and is 'satisfied,' as He is not without it, when men's
+hearts yield themselves up to Him, and let Him love them and lavish
+Himself upon them. I do not venture into these depths, but I would lay
+upon our hearts that the very inmost meaning of all that Jesus Christ
+has said, and is saying, to each of us by the records of His life, by
+the pathos of His death, by the miracle of His Resurrection, by the
+glory of His Ascension, by the power of His granted Spirit, is, 'I seek
+you.'
+
+And, brethren, our self-surrender is the essence of our Christianity.
+Our religion lies neither in our heads nor in our acts; the deepest
+notion of it is that it is the entire yielding up of ourselves to Jesus
+Christ our Lord. There is plenty of religion which is a religion of the
+head and of creeds. There is plenty of religion which is the religion of
+the hand and of the tongue, and of forms and ceremonies and sacraments;
+external worship. There is plenty of religion which surrenders to Him
+some of the more superficial parts of our personality, whilst the
+ancient Anarch, Self, sits undisturbed on his dark throne, in the depths
+of our being. But none of these are the religion that either Christ
+requires or that we need. The only true notion of a Christian is a man
+who can truly say, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
+
+And that is the only kind of life that is blessed; our only true
+nobleness and beauty and power and sweetness are measured by, and
+accurately correspond with, the completeness of our surrender of
+ourselves to Jesus Christ. As long as the earth was thought to be the
+centre of the planetary system there was nothing but confusion in the
+heavens. Shift the centre to the sun and all becomes order and beauty.
+The root of sin, and the mother of death, is making myself my own law
+and Lord; the germ of righteousness, and the first pulsations of life,
+lie in yielding ourselves to God in Christ, because He has yielded
+Himself unto us.
+
+I need not remind you, I suppose, that this self-surrender is a great
+deal more than a vivid metaphor: that it implies a very hard fact;
+implies at least two things, that we have yielded ourselves to Jesus
+Christ, by the love of our hearts, and by the unreluctant submission of
+our wills, whether He commands or whether He sends sufferings or joys.
+
+And, oh, brethren, be sure of this, that no such giving of myself away,
+in the sweet reciprocities of a higher than human affection, is
+possible, in the general, and on the large scale, if you evacuate from
+the Gospel the great truth, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.' I
+believe--and therefore I am bound to preach it--that the only power
+which can utterly annihilate and cast out the dominion of self from a
+human soul is the power that is lodged in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
+on the Cross for sinful men.
+
+And whilst I would fully recognise all that is noble, and all that is
+effective, in systems either of religion, or of irreligious morality,
+which have no place within their bounds for that great motive, I am sure
+of this, that the evil self within us is too strong to be exorcised by
+anything short of the old message, 'Jesus Christ has given His life for
+thee, wilt thou not give thyself unto Him?'
+
+II. Christ seeks personal service.
+
+'I seek . . . you'; not only for My love, but for My tools; for My
+instruments in carrying out the purposes for which I died, and
+establishing My dominion in the world. Now I want to say two or three
+very plain things about this matter, which lies very near my heart, as
+to some degree responsible for the amount of Christian activity and
+service in this my congregation. Brethren, the surrender of ourselves to
+Jesus Christ in acts of direct Christian activity and service, will be
+the outcome of a real surrender of ourselves to Him in love and
+obedience.
+
+I cannot imagine a man who, in any deep sense, has realised his
+obligations to that Saviour, and in any real sense has made the great
+act of self-renunciation, and crowned Christ as his Lord, living for the
+rest of his life, as so many professing Christians do, dumb and idle, in
+so far as work for the Master is concerned. It seems to me that, among
+the many wants of this generation of professing Christians, there is
+none that is more needed than that a wave of new consecration should
+pass over the Church. If men who call themselves Christians lived more
+in habitual contact with the facts of their redeeming Saviour's
+sacrifice for them, there would be no need to lament the fewness of the
+labourers, as measured against the overwhelming multitude of the fields
+that are white to harvest. If once that flood of a new sense of Christ's
+gift, and a consequent new completeness of our returned gifts to Him,
+flowed over the churches, then all the little empty ravines would be
+filled with a flashing tide. Not a shuttle moves, not a spindle
+revolves, until the strong impulse born of fire rushes in; and then, all
+is activity. It is no use to flog, flog, flog, at idle Christians, and
+try to make them work. There is only one thing that will set them to
+work, and that is that they shall live nearer their Master, and find out
+more of what they owe to Him; and so render themselves up to be His
+instruments for any purpose for which He may choose to use them.
+
+This surrender of ourselves for direct Christian service is the only
+solution of the problem of how to win the world for Jesus Christ.
+Professionals cannot do it. Men of my class cannot do it. We are clogged
+very largely by the fact that, being necessarily dependent on our
+congregations for a living, we cannot, with as clear an emphasis as you
+can, go to people and say, 'We seek not yours, but you.' I have nothing
+to say about the present ecclesiastical arrangements of modern Christian
+communities. That would take me altogether from my present purposes, but
+I want to lay this upon your consciences, dear brethren, that you who
+have other means of living than proclaiming Christ's name have an
+advantage, which it is at your peril that you fling away. As long as the
+Christian Church thought that an ordained priest was a man who could do
+things that laymen could not do, the limitation of Christian service to
+the priesthood was logical. But when the Christian Church, especially as
+represented by us Nonconformists, came to believe that a minister was
+only a man who preached the Gospel, which every Christian man is bound
+to do, the limitations of Christian service to the official class became
+an illogical survival, utterly incongruous with the fundamental
+principles of our conception of the Christian Church. And yet here it
+is, devastating our churches to-day, and making hundreds of good people
+perfectly comfortable, in an unscriptural and unchristian indolence,
+because, forsooth, it is the minister's business to preach the Gospel. I
+know that there is not nearly as much of that indolence as there used to
+be. Thank God for that. There are far more among our congregations than
+in former times who have realised the fact that it is _every_ Christian
+man's task, somehow or other, to set forth the great name of Jesus
+Christ. But still, alas, in a church with, say, 400 members, you may
+knock off the last cypher, and you will get a probably not too low
+statement of the number of people in it who have realised and fulfilled
+this obligation. What about the other 360 'dumb dogs, that will not
+bark'? And in that 360 there will probably be several men who can make
+speeches on political platforms, and in scientific lecture-halls, and
+about social and economical questions, only they cannot, for the life of
+them, open their mouths and say a word to a soul about Him whom they say
+they serve, and to whom they say they belong.
+
+Brethren, this direct service cannot be escaped from, or commuted by a
+money payment. In the old days a man used to escape serving in the
+militia if he found a substitute, and paid for him. There are a great
+many good Christian people who seem to think that Christ's army is
+recruited on that principle. But it is a mistake. 'I seek you, not
+yours.'
+
+III. Lastly, and only a word. Christ seeks us, _and_ ours.
+
+Not you _without_ yours, still less yours without you. This is no place,
+nor is the fag end of a sermon the time, to talk about so wide a subject
+as the ethics of Christian dealing with money. But two things I will
+say--consecration of self is extremely imperfect which does not include
+the consecration of possessions, and, conversely, consecration of
+possessions which does not flow from, and is not accompanied by, the
+consecration of self, is nought.
+
+If, then, the great law of self-surrender is to run through the whole
+Christian life, that law, as applied to our dealing with what we own,
+prescribes three things. The first is _stewardship_, not ownership; and
+that all round the circumference of our possessions. Depend upon it, the
+angry things that we hear to-day about the unequal distribution of
+wealth will get angrier and angrier, and will be largely justified in
+becoming so by the fact that so many of us, _Christians included_, have
+firmly grasped the notion of possession, and utterly forgotten the
+obligation of stewardship.
+
+Again, the law of self-surrender, in its application to all that we
+have, involves our continual reference to Jesus Christ in our
+disposition of these our possessions. I draw no line of distinction, in
+this respect, between what a man spends upon himself, and what he spends
+upon 'charity,' and what he spends upon religious objects. _One_
+principle is to govern, getting, hoarding, giving, enjoying, and that
+is, that in it all Christ shall be Master.
+
+Again, the law of self-surrender, in its application to our possessions,
+implies that there shall be an element of sacrifice in our use of these;
+whether they be possessions of intellect, of acquirement, of influence,
+of position, or of material wealth. The law of help is sacrifice, and
+the law for a Christian man is that he shall not offer unto the Lord his
+God that which costs him nothing.
+
+So, dear friends, let us all get near to that great central fire till it
+melts our hearts. Let the love which is our hope be our pattern.
+Remember that though only faintly, and from afar, can the issues of
+Christ's great sacrifice be reproduced in any actions of ours, the
+spirit which brought Him to die is the spirit which must instruct and
+inspire us to live. Unless we can say, 'He loved me, and gave Himself
+for me; I yield myself to Him'; and unless our lives confirm the
+utterance, we have little right to call ourselves His disciples.
+
+
+
+
+GALATIANS
+
+
+
+
+FROM CENTRE TO CIRCUMFERENCE
+
+          'The life which I now live in the flesh I live by
+          the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
+          gave Himself for me.'--GAL. ii. 20.
+
+
+We have a bundle of paradoxes in this verse. First, 'I am crucified with
+Christ, nevertheless I live.' The Christian life is a dying life. If we
+are in any real sense joined to Christ, the power of His death makes us
+dead to self and sin and the world. In that region, as in the physical,
+death is the gate of life; and, inasmuch as what we die to in Christ is
+itself only a living death, we live because we die, and in proportion as
+we die.
+
+The next paradox is, 'Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' The Christian
+life is a life in which an indwelling Christ casts out, and therefore
+quickens, self. We gain ourselves when we lose ourselves. His abiding in
+us does not destroy but heightens our individuality. We then most truly
+live when we can say, 'Not I, but Christ liveth in me'; the soul of my
+soul and the self of myself.
+
+And the last paradox is that of my text, 'The life which I live in the
+flesh, I live in' (not 'by') 'the faith of the Son of God.' The true
+Christian life moves in two spheres at once. Externally and
+superficially it is 'in the flesh,' really it is 'in faith.' It belongs
+not to the material nor is dependent upon the physical body in which we
+are housed. We are strangers here, and the true region and atmosphere of
+the Christian life is that invisible sphere of faith.
+
+So, then, we have in these words of my text a Christian man's frank
+avowal of the secret of his own life. It is like a geological cutting,
+it goes down from the surface, where the grass and the flowers are,
+through the various strata, but it goes deeper than these, to the fiery
+heart, the flaming nucleus and centre of all things. Therefore it may do
+us all good to make a section of our hearts and see whether the _strata_
+there are conformable to those that are here.
+
+I. Let us begin with the centre, and work to the surface. We have,
+first, the great central fact named last, but round which all the
+Christian life is gathered.
+
+'The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.' These two
+words, the 'loving' and the 'giving,' both point backwards to some one
+definite historical fact, and the only fact which they can have in view
+is the great one of the death of Jesus Christ. That is His giving up of
+Himself. That is the signal and highest manifestation and proof of His
+love.
+
+Notice (though I can but touch in the briefest possible manner upon the
+great thoughts that gather round these words) the three aspects of that
+transcendent fact, the centre and nucleus of the whole Christian life,
+which come into prominence in these words before us. Christ's death is a
+great act of self-surrender, of which the one motive is His own pure and
+perfect love. No doubt in other places of Scripture we have set forth
+the death of Christ as being the result of the Father's purpose, and we
+read that in that wondrous surrender there were two givings up The
+Father 'freely gave Him up to the death for us all.' That divine
+surrender, the Apostle ventures, in another passage, to find dimly
+suggested from afar, in the silent but submissive and unreluctant
+surrender with which Abraham yielded his only begotten son on the
+mountain top. But besides that ineffable giving up by the Father of the
+Son, Jesus Christ Himself, moved only by His love, willingly yields
+Himself. The whole doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has been
+marred by one-sided insisting on the truth that God sent the Son, to the
+forgetting of the fact that the Son 'came'; and that He was bound to the
+Cross neither by cords of man's weaving nor by the will of the Father,
+but that He Himself bound Himself to that Cross with the 'cords of love
+and the bands of a man,' and died from no natural necessity nor from any
+imposition of the divine will upon Him unwilling, but because He would,
+and that He would because He loved. 'He loved me, and gave Himself for
+me.'
+
+Then note, further, that here, most distinctly, that great act of
+self-surrendering love which culminates on the Cross is regarded as
+being for man in a special and peculiar sense. I know, of course, that
+from the mere wording of my text we cannot argue the atoning and
+substitutionary character of the death of Christ, for the preposition
+here does not necessarily mean 'instead of,' but 'for the behoof of.'
+But admitting that, I have another question. If Christ's death is for
+'the behoof of' men, in what conceivable sense does it benefit them,
+unless it is in the place of men? The death 'for me' is only for me when
+I understand that it is 'instead of' me. And practically you will find
+that wherever the full-orbed faith in Christ Jesus as the death for all
+the sins of the whole world, bearing the penalty and bearing it away,
+has begun to falter and grow pale, men do not know what to do with
+Christ's death at all, and stop talking about it to a very large extent.
+
+Unless He died as a sacrifice, I, for one, fail to see in what other
+than a mere sentimental sense the death of Christ is a death for men.
+
+And lastly, about this matter, observe how here we have brought into
+vivid prominence the great thought that Jesus Christ in His death has
+regard to single souls. We preach that He died for all. If we believe in
+that august title which is laid here as the vindication of our faith on
+the one hand, and as the ground of the possibility of the benefits of
+His death being world-wide on the other--viz. the Son of God--then we
+shall not stumble at the thought that He died for all, because He died
+for each. I know that if you only regard Jesus Christ as human I am
+talking utter nonsense; but I know, too, that if we believe in the
+divinity of our Lord, there need be nothing to stumble us, but the
+contrary, in the thought that it was not an abstraction that He died
+for, that it was not a vague mass of unknown beings, clustered together,
+but so far away that He could not see any of their faces, for whom He
+gave His life on the Cross. That is the way in which, and in which
+alone, _we_ can embrace the whole mass of humanity--by losing sight of
+the individuals. We generalise, precisely because we do not see the
+individual units; but that is not God's way, and that is not Christ's
+way, who is divine. For Him the _all_ is broken up into its parts, and
+when we say that the divine love loves all, we mean that the divine love
+loves each. I believe (and I commend the thought to you) that we do not
+fathom the depth of Christ's sufferings unless we recognise that the
+sins of each man were consciously adding pressure to the load beneath
+which He sank; nor picture the wonders of His love until we believe that
+on the Cross it distinguished and embraced each, and, therefore,
+comprehended all. Every man may say, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for
+me.'
+
+II. So much, then, for the first central fact that is here. Now let me
+say a word, in the second place, about the faith which makes that fact
+the foundation of my own personal life.
+
+'I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself
+for me.' I am not going to plunge into any unnecessary dissertations
+about the nature of faith; but may I say that, like all other familiar
+conceptions, it has got worn so smooth that it glides over our mental
+palate without roughening any of the _papillæ_ or giving any sense or
+savour at all? And I do believe that dozens of people like you, who have
+come to church and chapel all your lives, and fancy yourselves to be
+fully _au fait_ at all the Christian truth that you will ever hear from
+my lips, do not grasp with any clearness of apprehension the meaning of
+that fundamental word 'faith.'
+
+It is a thousand pities that it is confined by the accidents of language
+to our attitude in reference to Jesus Christ. So some of you think that
+it is some kind of theological juggle which has nothing to do with, and
+never can be seen in operation in, common life. Suppose, instead of the
+threadbare, technical 'faith' we took to a new translation for a minute,
+and said '_trust_,' do you think that would freshen up the thought to
+you at all? It is the very same thing which makes the sweetness of your
+relations to wife and husband and friend and parent, which, transferred
+to Jesus Christ and glorified in the process, becomes the seed of
+immortal life and the opener of the gate of Heaven. Trust Jesus Christ.
+That is the living centre of the Christian life; that is the process by
+which we draw the general blessing of the Gospel into our own hearts,
+and make the world-wide truth, our truth.
+
+I need not insist either, I suppose, on the necessity, if our Christian
+life is to be modelled upon the Apostolic lines, of our faith embracing
+the Christ in all these aspects in which I have been speaking about His
+work. God forbid that I should seem to despise rudimentary and
+incomplete feelings after Him in any heart which may be unable to say
+'Amen' to Paul's statement here. I want to insist very earnestly, and
+with special reference to the young, that the true Christian faith is
+not merely the grasp of the person, but it is the grasp of the Person
+who is 'declared to be the Son of God,' and whose death is the voluntary
+self-surrender motived by His love, for the carrying away of the sins of
+every single soul in the whole universe. That is the Christ, the full
+Christ, cleaving to whom our faith finds somewhat to grasp worthy of
+grasping. And I beseech you, be not contented with a partial grasp of a
+partial Saviour; neither shut your eyes to the divinity of His nature,
+nor to the efficacy of His death, but remember that the true Gospel
+preaches Christ and Him crucified; and that for us, saving faith is the
+faith that grasps the Son of God 'Who loved me and gave Himself for me.'
+
+Note, further, that true faith is personal faith, which appropriates,
+and, as it were, fences in as my very own, the purpose and benefit of
+Christ's giving of Himself. It is always difficult for lazy people (and
+most of us are lazy) to transfer into their own personal lives, and to
+bring into actual contact with themselves and their own experience,
+wide, general truths. To assent to them, when we keep them in their
+generality, is very easy and very profitless. It does no man any good to
+say 'All men are mortal'; but how different it is when the blunt end of
+that generalisation is shaped into a point, and I say 'I have to die!'
+It penetrates then, and it sticks. It is easy to say 'All men are
+sinners.' That never yet forced anybody down on his knees. But when we
+shut out on either side the lateral view and look straight on, on the
+narrow line of our own lives, up to the Throne where the Lawgiver sits,
+and feel 'I am a sinful man,' that sends us to our prayers for pardon
+and purity. And in like manner nobody was ever wholesomely terrified by
+the thought of a general judgment. But when you translate it into 'I
+must stand there,' the terror of the Lord persuades men.
+
+In like manner that great truth which we all of us say we believe, that
+Christ has died for the world, is utterly useless and profitless to us
+until we have translated it into Paul's world, 'loved _me_ and gave
+Himself for _me_.' I do not say that the essence of faith is the
+conversion of the general statement into the particular application, but
+I do say that there is no faith which does not realise one's personal
+possession of the benefits of the death of Christ, and that until you
+turn the wide word into a message for yourself alone, you have not yet
+got within sight of the blessedness of the Christian life. The whole
+river may flow past me, but only so much of it as I can bring into my
+own garden by my own sluices, and lift in my own bucket, and put to my
+own lips, is of any use to me. The death of Christ for the world is a
+commonplace of superficial Christianity, which is no Christianity; the
+death of Christ for myself, as if He and I were the only beings in the
+universe, that is the death on which faith fastens and feeds.
+
+And, dear brother, you have the right to exercise it. The Christ loves
+each, and therefore He loves all; that is the process in the divine
+mind. The converse is the process in the revelation of that mind; the
+Bible says to us, Christ loves all, and therefore we have the right to
+draw the inference that He loves each. You have as much right to take
+every 'whosoever' of the New Testament as your very own, as if on the
+page of your Bible that 'whosoever' was struck out, and your name, John,
+Thomas, Mary, Elizabeth, or whatever it is, were put in there. 'He loved
+_me_.' Can _you_ say that? Have you ever passed from the region of
+universality, which is vague and profitless, into the region of personal
+appropriation of the person of Jesus Christ and His death?
+
+III. And now, lastly, notice the life which is built upon this faith.
+
+The true Christian life is dual. It is a life in the flesh, and it is
+also a life in faith. These two, as I have said, are like two spheres,
+in either of which a man's course is passed, or, rather, the one is
+surface and the other is central. Here is a great trailing spray of
+seaweed floating golden on the unquiet water, and rising and falling on
+each wave or ripple. Aye! but its root is away deep, deep, deep below
+the storms, below where there is motion, anchored upon a hidden rock
+that can never move. And so my life, if it be a Christian life at all,
+has its surface amidst the shifting mutabilities of earth, but its root
+in the silent eternities of the centre of all things, which is Christ
+in God. I live in the flesh on the outside, but if I am a Christian at
+all, I live in the faith in regard of my true and proper being.
+
+This faith, which grasps the Divine Christ as the person whose
+love-moved death is my life, and who by my faith becomes Himself the
+Indwelling Guest in my heart; this faith, if it be worth anything, will
+mould and influence my whole being. It will give me motive, pattern,
+power for all noble service and all holy living. The one thing that
+stirs men to true obedience is that their hearts be touched with the
+firm assurance that Christ loved them and died for them.
+
+We sometimes used to see men starting an engine by manual force; and
+what toil it was to get the great cranks to turn, and the pistons to
+rise! So we set ourselves to try and move our lives into holiness and
+beauty and nobleness, and it is dispiriting work. There is a far better,
+surer way than that: let the steam in, and that will do it. That is to
+say--let the Christ in His dying power and the living energy of His
+indwelling Spirit occupy the heart, and activity becomes blessedness,
+and work is rest, and service is freedom and dominion.
+
+The life that I live in the flesh is poor, limited, tortured with
+anxiety, weighed upon by sore distress, becomes dark and gray and dreary
+often as we travel nearer the end, and is always full of miseries and of
+pains. But if within that life in the flesh there be a life in faith,
+which is the life of Christ Himself brought to us through our faith,
+that life will be triumphant, quiet, patient, aspiring, noble, hopeful,
+gentle, strong, Godlike, being the life of Christ Himself within us.
+
+So, dear friends, test your faith by these two tests, what it grasps
+and what it does. If it grasps a whole Christ, in all the glory of His
+nature and the blessedness of His work, it is genuine; and it proves its
+genuineness if, and only if, it works in you by love; animating all your
+action, bringing you ever into the conscious presence of that dear Lord,
+and making Him pattern, law, motive, goal, companion and reward. 'To me
+to live is Christ.'
+
+If so, then we live indeed; but to live in the flesh is to die; and the
+death that we die when we live in Christ is the gate and the beginning
+of the only real life of the soul.
+
+
+
+
+THE EVIL EYE AND THE CHARM
+
+          'Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey
+          the truth, before whose eye Jesus Christ hath been
+          evidently set forth, crucified among you?'--GAL.
+          iii. 1.
+
+
+The Revised Version gives a shorter, and probably correct, form of this
+vehement question. It omits the two clauses 'that ye should not obey the
+truth' and 'among you.' The omission increases the sharpness of the
+thrust of the interrogation, whilst it loses nothing of the meaning.
+
+Now, a very striking metaphor runs through the whole of this question,
+which may easily be lost sight of by ordinary readers. You know the old
+superstition as to the Evil Eye, almost universal at the date of this
+letter and even now in the East, and lingering still amongst ourselves.
+Certain persons were supposed to have the power, by a look, to work
+mischief, and by fixing the gaze of their victims, to suck the very life
+out of them. So Paul asks who the malign sorcerer is who has thus
+fascinated the fickle Galatians, and is draining their Christian life
+out of their eyes.
+
+Very appropriately, therefore, if there is this reference, which the
+word translated 'bewitched' carries with it, he goes on to speak about
+Jesus Christ as having been displayed before their eyes. They had seen
+Him. How did they come to be able to turn away to look at anything else?
+
+But there is another observation to be made by way of introduction, and
+that is as to the full force of the expression 'evidently set forth.'
+The word employed, as commentators tell us, is that which is used for
+the display of official proclamations, or public notices, in some
+conspicuous place, as the Forum or the market, that the citizens might
+read. So, keeping up the metaphor, the word might be rendered, as has
+been suggested by some eminent scholars, 'placarded'--'Before whose eyes
+Jesus Christ has been placarded.' The expression has acquired somewhat
+ignoble associations from modern advertising, but that is no reason why
+we should lose sight of its force. So, then, Paul says, 'In my
+preaching, Christ was conspicuously set forth. It is like some
+inexplicable enchantment that, having seen Him, you should turn away to
+gaze on others.' It is insanity which evokes wonder, as well as sin
+which deserves rebuke; and the fiery question of my text conveys both.
+
+I. Keeping to the metaphor, I note first the placard which Paul had
+displayed.
+
+'Jesus Christ crucified has been conspicuously set forth before you,' he
+says to these Galatians. Now, he is referring, of course, to his own
+work of preaching the Gospel to them at the beginning. And the vivid
+metaphor suggests very strikingly two things. We see in it the Apostle's
+notion of what He had to do. His had been a very humble office, simply
+to hang up a proclamation. The one virtue of a proclamation is that it
+should be brief and plain. It must be authoritative, it must be urgent,
+it must be 'writ large,' it must be easily intelligible. And he that
+makes it public has nothing to do except to fasten it up, and make sure
+that it is legible. If I might venture into modern phraseology, what
+Paul means is that he was neither more nor less than a bill-sticker,
+that he went out with the placards and fastened them up.
+
+Ah! if we ministers universally acted up to the implications of this
+metaphor, do you not think the pulpit would be more frequently a centre
+of power than it is to-day? And if, instead of presenting our own
+ingenuities and speculations, we were to realise the fact that we have
+to hide ourselves behind the broad sheet that we fasten up, there would
+be a new breath over many a moribund church, and we should hear less of
+the often warrantable sarcasms about the inefficiency of the modern
+pulpit.
+
+But I turn from Paul's conception of the office to his statement of his
+theme. '_Jesus_ was displayed amongst you.' If I might vary the metaphor
+a little, the placard that Paul fastened up was like those that modern
+advertising ingenuity displays upon all our walls. It was a
+picture-placard, and on it was portrayed one sole figure--Jesus, the
+Person. Christianity is Christ, and Christ is Christianity; and wherever
+there is a pulpit or a book which deals rather with doctrines than with
+Him who is the Fountain and Quarry of all doctrine, there is divergence
+from the primitive form of the Gospel.
+
+I know, of course, that doctrines--which are only formal and orderly
+statements of principles involved in the facts--must flow from the
+proclamation of the person, Christ. I am not such a fool as to run
+amuck against theology, as some people in this day do. But what I wish
+to insist upon is that the first form of Christianity is not a theory,
+but a history, and that the revelation of God is the biography of a man.
+We must begin with the person, Christ, and preach Him. Would that all
+our preachers and all professing Christians, in their own personal
+religious life, had grasped this--that, since Christianity is not first
+a philosophy but a history, and its centre not an ordered sequence of
+doctrines but a living person, the act that makes a man possessor of
+Christianity is not the intellectual process of assimilating certain
+truths, and accepting them, but the moral process of clinging, with
+trust and love, to the person, Jesus.
+
+But, further, if any of you consult the original, you will see that the
+order of the sentence is such as to throw a great weight of emphasis on
+that last word 'crucified.' It is not merely a person that is portrayed
+on the placard, but it is that person _upon the Cross_. Ah! brethren,
+Paul himself puts his finger, in the words of my text, on what, in his
+conception, was the throbbing heart of all his message, the vital point
+from which all its power, and all the gleam of its benediction, poured
+out upon humanity--'Christ crucified.' If the placard is a picture of
+Christ in other attitudes and in other aspects, without the picture of
+Him crucified, it is an imperfect representation of the Gospel that Paul
+preached and that Christ was.
+
+II. Now, think, secondly, of the fascinators that draw away the eyes.
+
+Paul's question is not one of ignorance, but it is a rhetorical way of
+rebuking, and of expressing wonder. He knew, and the Galatians knew,
+well enough who it was that had bewitched them. The whole letter is a
+polemic worked in fire, and not in frost, as some argumentation is,
+against a very well-marked class of teachers--viz. those emissaries of
+Judaism who had crept into the Church, and took it as their special
+function to dog Paul's steps amongst the heathen communities that he had
+gathered together through faith in Christ, and used every means to upset
+his work.
+
+I cannot but pause for a moment upon this original reference of my text,
+because it is very relevant to the present condition of things amongst
+us. These men whom Paul is fighting as if he were in a sawpit with them,
+in this letter, what was their teaching? This: they did not deny that
+Jesus was the Christ; they did not deny that faith knit a man to Him,
+but what they said was that the observance of the external rites of
+Judaism was necessary in order to entrance into the Church and to
+salvation. They did not in their own estimation detract from Christ, but
+they added to Him. And Paul says that to add is to detract, to say that
+anything is necessary except faith in Jesus Christ's finished work is to
+deny that that finished work, and faith in it, are the means of
+salvation; and the whole evangelical system crumbles into nothingness if
+once you admit that.
+
+Now, is there anybody to-day who is saying the same things, with
+variations consequent upon change of external conditions? Are there no
+people within the limits of the Christian Church who are reiterating the
+old Jewish notion that external ceremonies--baptism and the Lord's
+Supper--are necessary to salvation and to connection with the Christian
+Church? And is it not true now, as it was then, that though they do not
+avowedly detract, they so represent these external rites as to detract,
+from the sole necessity of faith in the perfected work of Jesus Christ?
+The centre is shifted from personal union with a personal Saviour by a
+personal faith to participation in external ordinances. And I venture to
+think that the lava stream which, in this Epistle to the Galatians, Paul
+pours on the Judaisers of his day needs but a little deflection to pour
+its hot current over, and to consume, the sacramentarian theories of
+this day. 'O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?' Is it not like
+some malignant sorcery, that after the Evangelical revival of the last
+century and the earlier part of this, there should spring up again this
+old, old error, and darken the simplicity of the Gospel teaching, that
+Christ's work, apprehended by faith, without anything else, is the
+means, and the only means, of salvation?
+
+But I need not spend time upon that original application. Let us rather
+come more closely to our own individual lives and their weaknesses. It
+is a strange thing, so strange that if one did not know it by one's own
+self, one would be scarcely disposed to believe it possible, that a man
+who has 'tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to
+come,' and has known Jesus Christ as Saviour and Friend, should decline
+from Him, and turn to anything besides. And yet, strange and sad, and
+like some enchantment as it is, it is the experience at times and in a
+measure, of us all; and, alas! it is the experience, in a very tragical
+degree, of many who have walked for a little while behind the Master,
+and then have turned away and walked no more with Him. We may well
+wonder; but the root of the mischief is in no baleful glitter of a
+sorcerer's eye without us, but it is in the weakness of our own wills
+and the waywardness of our own hearts, and the wandering of our own
+affections. We often court the coming of the evil influence, and are
+willing to be fascinated and to turn our backs upon Jesus. Mysterious it
+is, for why should men cast away diamonds for paste? Mysterious it is,
+for we do not usually drop the substance to get the shadow. Mysterious
+it is, for a man does not ordinarily empty his pockets of gold in order
+to fill them with gravel. Mysterious it is, for a thirsty man will not
+usually turn away from the full, bubbling, living fountain, to see if he
+can find any drops still remaining, green with scum, stagnant and
+odorous, at the bottom of some broken cistern. But all these follies are
+sanity as compared with the folly of which we are guilty, times without
+number, when, having known the sweetness of Jesus Christ, we turn away
+to the fascinations of the world. Custom, the familiarity that we have
+with Him, the attrition of daily cares--like the minute grains of sand
+that are cemented on to paper, and make a piece of sandpaper that is
+strong enough to file an inscription off iron--the seductions of worldly
+delights, the pressure of our daily cares--all these are as a ring of
+sorcerers that stand round about us, before whom we are as powerless as
+a bird in the presence of a serpent, and they bewitch us and draw us
+away.
+
+The sad fact has been verified over and over again on a large scale in
+the history of the Church. After every outburst of renewed life and
+elevated spirituality there is sure to come a period of reaction when
+torpor and formality again assert themselves. What followed the
+Reformation in Germany? A century of death. What followed Puritanism in
+England? An outburst of lust and godlessness.
+
+So it has always been, and so it is with us individually, as we too
+well know. Ah, brethren! the seductions are omnipresent, and our poor
+eyes are very weak, and we turn away from the Lord to look on these
+misshapen monsters that are seeking by their gaze to draw us into
+destruction. I wonder how many professing Christians are in this
+audience who once saw Jesus Christ a great deal more clearly, and
+contemplated Him a great deal more fixedly, and turned their hearts to
+Him far more lovingly, than they do to-day? Some of the great mountain
+peaks of Africa are only seen for an hour or two in the morning, and
+then the clouds gather around them, and hide them for the rest of the
+day. It is like the experience of many professing Christians, who see
+Him in the morning of their Christian life far more vividly than they
+ever do after. 'Who hath bewitched you?' The world; but the
+arch-sorcerer sits safe in our own hearts.
+
+III. Lastly, keeping to the metaphor, let me suggest, although my text
+does not touch upon it, the Amulet.
+
+One has seen fond mothers in Egypt and Palestine who hang on their
+babies' necks charms, to shield them from the influence of the Evil Eye;
+and there is a charm that we may wear if we will, which will keep us
+safe. There is no fascination in the Evil Eye if you do not look at it.
+
+The one object that the sorcerer has is to withdraw our gaze from
+Christ; it is not illogical to say that the way to defeat the object is
+to keep our gaze fixed on Christ. If you do not look at the baleful
+glitter of the Evil Eye it will exercise no power over you; and if you
+will steadfastly look at Him, then, and only then, you will not look at
+it. Like Ulysses in the legend, bandage the eyes and put wax in the
+ears, if you would neither be tempted by hearing the songs, nor by
+seeing the fair forms, of the sirens on their island. To look fixedly at
+Jesus Christ, and with the resolve never to turn away from Him, is the
+only safety against these tempting delights around us.
+
+But, brethren, it is the crucified Christ, looking to whom, we are safe
+amidst all seductions and snares. I doubt whether a Christ who did not
+die for men has power enough over men's hearts and minds to draw them to
+Himself. The cords which bind us to Him are the assurance of His dying
+love which has conquered us. If only we will, day by day, and moment by
+moment, as we pass through the duties and distractions, the temptations
+and the trials, of this present life, by an act of will and thought turn
+ourselves to Him, then all the glamour of false attractiveness will
+disappear from the temptations around us, and we shall see that the
+sirens, for all their fair forms, end in loathly fishes' tails and sit
+amidst dead men's bones.
+
+Brethren, 'looking _off_ unto Jesus' is the secret of triumph over the
+fascinations of the world. And if we will habitually so look, then the
+sweetness that we shall experience will destroy all the seducing power
+of lesser and earthly sweetness, and the blessed light of the sun will
+dim and all but extinguish the deceitful gleams that tempt us into the
+swamps where we shall be drowned. Turn away, then, from these things;
+cleave to Jesus Christ; and though in ourselves we may be as weak as a
+humming-bird before a snake, or a rabbit before a tiger, He will give us
+strength, and the light of His face shining down upon us will fix our
+eyes and make us insensible to the fascinations of the sorcerers. So we
+shall not need to dread the question, 'Who hath bewitched you?' but
+ourselves challenge the utmost might of the fascination with the
+triumphant question, 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?'
+
+Help us, O Lord! we beseech Thee, to live near Thee. Turn away our eyes
+from beholding vanity, and enable us to set the Lord always before us
+that we be not moved.
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE
+
+          'Have ye suffered so many things in vain?'--GAL.
+          iii 4.
+
+          Preached on the last Sunday of the year.
+
+
+This vehement question is usually taken to be a reminder to the fickle
+Galatians that their Christian faith had brought upon them much
+suffering from the hands of their unbelieving brethren, and to imply an
+exhortation to faithfulness to the Gospel lest they should stultify
+their past brave endurance. Yielding to the Judaising teachers, and
+thereby escaping the 'offence of the Cross,' they would make their past
+sufferings vain. But it may be suggested that the word 'suffered' here
+is rather used in what is its known sense elsewhere, namely, with the
+general idea of _feeling_, the nature of the feeling being undefined. It
+is a touching proof of the preponderance of pain and sorrow that by
+degrees the significance of the word has become inextricably intertwined
+with the thought of sadness; still, it is possible to take it in the
+text as meaning _experienced_ or _felt_, and to regard the Apostle as
+referring to the whole of the Galatians' past experience, and as
+founding his appeal for their steadfastness on all the joys as well as
+the sorrows, which their faith had brought them.
+
+Taking the words in this more general sense they become a question which
+it is well for us to ask ourselves at such a time as this, when the
+calendar naturally invites us to look backwards and ask ourselves what
+we have made of all our experiences in the past, or rather what, by the
+help of them all, we have made of ourselves.
+
+I. The duty of retrospect.
+
+For almost any reason it is good for us to be delivered from our
+prevailing absorption in the present. Whatever counterpoises the
+overwhelming weight of the present is, so far, a blessing and a good,
+and whatever softens the heart and keeps up even the lingering
+remembrance of early, dewy freshness and of the high aspirations which,
+even for a brief space, elevated our past selves is gain amidst the
+dusty commonplaces of to-day. We see things better and more clearly when
+we get a little away from them, as a face is more distinctly visible at
+armslength than when held close.
+
+But our retrospects are too often almost as trivial and degrading as is
+our absorption in the present, and to prevent memory from becoming a
+minister of frivolity if not of sin, it is needful that such a question
+as that of our text be urgently asked by each of us. Memory must be in
+closest union with conscience, as all our faculties must be, or she is
+of little use. There is a mere sentimental luxury of memory which finds
+a pensive pleasure in the mere passing out from the hard present into
+the soft light, not without illusion in its beams, of the 'days that are
+no more.' Merely to live over again our sorrows and joys without any
+clear discernment of what their effects on our moral character have
+been, is not the retrospect that becomes a man, however it might suit
+an animal. We have to look back as a man might do escaping from the
+ocean on to some frail sand-bank which ever breaks off and crumbles away
+at his very heels. To remember the past mainly as it affected our joy or
+our sorrow is as unworthy as to regard the present from the same point
+of view, and robs both of their highest worth. To remember is only then
+blessed and productive of its highest possible good in us, when the
+question of our text insists on being faced, and the object of
+retrospect is not to try to rekindle the cold coals of past emotions,
+but to ascertain what effect on our present characters our past
+experiences have had. We have not to turn back and try to gather some
+lingering flowers, but to look for the fruit which has followed the
+fallen blossoms.
+
+II. The true test for the past.
+
+The question of our text implies, as we have already suggested, that our
+whole lives, with all their various and often opposite experiences, are
+yet an ordered whole, having a definite end. There is some purpose
+beyond the moment to be served. Our joys and our sorrows, our gains and
+our losses, the bright hours and the dark hours, and the hours that are
+neither eminently bright nor supremely dark, our failures and our
+successes, our hopes disappointed or fulfilled, and all the infinite
+variety of condition and environment through which our varying days and
+years have led us, co-operate for one end. It is life that makes men;
+the infant is a bundle of possibilities, and as the years go on, one
+possible avenue of development after another is blocked. The child might
+have been almost anything; the man has become hardened and fixed into
+one shape.
+
+But all this variety of impulses and complicated experiences need the
+co-operation of the man himself if they are to reach their highest
+results in him. If he is simply recipient of these external forces
+acting upon him, they will shape him indeed, but he will be a poor
+creature. Life does not make men unless men take the command of life,
+and he who lets circumstances and externals guide him, as the long water
+weeds in a river are directed by its current, will, from the highest
+point of view, have experienced the variations of a lifetime in vain.
+
+No doubt each of our experiences has its own immediate and lower purpose
+to serve, and these purposes are generally accomplished, but beyond
+these each has a further aim which is not reached without diligent
+carefulness and persistent effort on our parts. If we would be sure of
+what it is to suffer life's experiences in vain, we have but to ask
+ourselves what life is given us for, and we all know that well enough to
+be able to judge how far we have used life to attain the highest ends of
+living. We may put these ends in various ways in our investigation of
+the results of our manifold experiences. Let us begin with the
+lowest--we received life that we might learn truth, then if our
+experience has not taught us wisdom it has been in vain. It is
+deplorable to have to look round and see how little the multitude of men
+are capable of forming anything like an independent and intelligent
+opinion, and how they are swayed by gusts of passion, by blind
+prejudice, by pretenders and quacks of all sorts. It is no less sad for
+us to turn our eyes within and discover, perhaps not without surprise
+and shame, how few of what we are self-complacent enough to call our
+opinions are due to our own convictions.
+
+If we ever are honest enough with ourselves to catch a glimpse of our
+own unwisdom, the question of our text will press heavily upon us, and
+may help to make us wiser by teaching us how foolish we are. An infinite
+source of wisdom is open to us, and all the rich variety of our lives'
+experiences has been lavished on us to help us, and what have we made of
+it all?
+
+But we may rise a step higher and remember that we are made moral
+creatures. Therefore, whatever has not developed infant potentialities
+in us, and made them moral qualities, has been experienced in vain. 'Not
+enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end and way.' Life is meant to
+make us love and do the good, and unless it has produced that effect on
+us, it has failed. If this be true, the world is full of failures, like
+the marred statues in a bad sculptor's studio, and we ourselves have
+earnestly to confess that the discipline of life has too often been
+wasted upon us, and that of us the divine complaint from of old has been
+true: 'In vain have I smitten thy children, they have received no
+correction.'
+
+There is no sadder waste than the waste of sorrow, and alas! we all know
+how impotent our afflictions have been to make us better. But not
+afflictions only have failed in their appeal to us, our joys have as
+often been in vain as our sorrows, and memory, when it turns its lamp on
+the long past, sees so few points at which life has taught us to love
+goodness, and be good, that she may well quench her light and let the
+dead past bury its dead.
+
+But we must rise still higher, and think of men as being made for God,
+and as being the only creatures known to us who are capable of religion.
+'Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' And this
+chief end is in fullest harmony with the lower ends to which we have
+just referred, and they will never be realised in their fullest
+completeness unless that completeness is sought in this the chief end.
+From of old meditative souls have known that the beginning of wisdom is
+the fear of the Lord, and that that fear is as certainly the beginning
+of goodness. It was not an irrelevant rebuke to the question, 'What good
+thing shall I do?' when Jesus set the eager young soul who asked it, to
+justify to himself his courteous and superficial application to Him of
+the abused and vulgarised title of 'Good,' and pointed him to God as the
+only Being to whom that title, in its perfectness, could be given. If
+'there is none good but one, that is God,' man's goodness must be drawn
+from Him, and morality without religion will in theory be incomplete,
+and in practice a delusion. If, then, men are made to need God, and
+capable of possessing Him, and of being possessed by Him, then the great
+question for all of us is, has life, with all its rapid whirl of
+changing circumstance and varying fortunes, drawn us closer to God, and
+made us more fit to receive more of Him? So supreme is this chief end
+that a life which has not attained it can only be regarded as 'in vain'
+whatever other successes it may have attained. So unspeakably more
+important and necessary is it, that compared with it all else sinks into
+nothingness; hence many lives which are dazzling successes in the eyes
+of men are ghastly failures in reality.
+
+Now, if we take these plain principles with us in our retrospect of the
+past year we shall be launched on a very serious inquiry, and brought
+face to face with a very penitent answer. Some of us may have had great
+sorrows, and the tears may be scarcely dry upon our cheeks: some of us
+may have had great gladnesses, and our hearts may still be throbbing
+with the thrill: some of us may have had great successes, and some of us
+heavy losses, but the question for us to ask is not of the quality of
+our past experiences, but as to their effects upon us. Has life been so
+used by us as to help us to become wiser, better, more devout? And the
+answer to that question, if we are honest in our scrutiny of ourselves,
+and if memory has not been a mere sentimental luxury, must be that we
+have too often been but unfaithful recipients alike of God's mercies and
+God's chastisements, and have received much of the discipline of life,
+and remained undisciplined. The question of our text, if asked by me,
+would be impertinent, but it is asked of each of us by the stern voice
+of conscience, and for some of us by the lips of dear ones whose loss
+has been among our chiefest sufferings. God asks us this question, and
+it is hard to make-believe to Him.
+
+III. The best issue of the retrospect.
+
+The world says, 'What I have written I have written,' and there is a
+very solemn and terrible reality in the thought of the irrevocable past.
+Whether life has achieved the ends for which it was given or no, it has
+achieved some ends. It may have made us into characters the very
+opposite of God's intention for us, but it has made us into certain
+characters which, so far as the world sees, can never be unmade or
+re-made. The world harshly preaches the indelibility of character, and
+proclaims that the Ethiopian may as soon be expected to change his skin
+or the leopard his spots as the man accustomed to do evil may learn to
+do well. That dreary fatalism which binds the effects of a dead past on
+a man's shoulders, and forbids him to hope that anything will
+obliterate the marks of 'what once hath been,' is in violent
+contradiction to the large hope brought into the world by Jesus Christ.
+What we have written we _have_ written, and we have no power to erase
+the lines and make the sheet clean again, but Jesus Christ has taken
+away the handwriting 'that was against us,' nailing it to His cross.
+Instead of our old sin-worn and sin-marked selves, He proffers to each
+of us a new self, not the outcome of what we have been, but the image of
+what He is and the prophecy of what we shall be. By the great gift of
+holiness for the future by the impartation of His own life and spirit,
+Jesus makes all things new. The Gospel recognises to the full how bad
+some who have received it were, but it can willingly admit their past
+foulness, because it contrasts with all that former filth their present
+cleanness, and to the most inveterately depraved who have trusted in
+Christ rejoices to say, 'Ye were washed, ye were sanctified, ye were
+justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+THE UNIVERSAL PRISON
+
+          'But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin,
+          that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be
+          given to them that believe.'--GAL. iii. 22.
+
+
+The Apostle uses here a striking and solemn figure, which is much veiled
+for the English reader by the ambiguity attaching to the word
+'concluded.' It literally means 'shut up,' and is to be taken in its
+literal sense of confining, and not in its secondary sense of inferring.
+So, then, we are to conceive of a vast prison-house in which mankind is
+confined. And then, very characteristically, the Apostle passes at once
+to another metaphor when he goes on to say 'under sin.' What a moment
+before had presented itself to his vivid imagination as a great dungeon
+is now represented as a heavy weight, pressing down upon those beneath;
+if, indeed, we are not, perhaps, rather to think of the low roof of the
+dark dungeon as weighing on the captives.
+
+Further, he says that Scripture has driven men into this captivity.
+That, of course, cannot mean that revelation makes us sinners, but it
+does mean that it makes us more guilty, and that it declares the fact of
+human sinfulness as no other voice has ever done. And then the grimness
+of the picture is all relieved and explained, and the office ascribed to
+God's revelation harmonised with God's love, by the strong, steady beam
+of light that falls from the last words, which tell us that the
+prisoners have not been bound in chains for despair or death, but in
+order that, gathered together in a common doleful destiny, they may
+become recipients of a common blessed salvation, and emerge into liberty
+and light through faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+So here are three things--the prison-house, its guardian, and its
+breaker. 'The Scripture hath shut up all under sin, in order that the
+promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given unto all them that
+believe.'
+
+I. First, then, note the universal prison-house.
+
+Now the Apostle says two things--and we may put away the figure and look
+at the facts that underlie it. The one is that all sin is imprisonment,
+the other is that all men are in that dungeon, unless they have come out
+of it through faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+All sin is imprisonment. That is the direct contrary of the notion that
+many people have. They say to themselves, 'Why should I be fettered and
+confined by these antiquated restrictions of a conventional morality?
+Why should I not break the bonds, and do as I like?' And they laugh at
+Christian people who recognise the limitations under which God's law has
+put them; and tell us that we are 'cold-blooded folks who live by rule,'
+and contrast their own broad 'emancipation from narrow prejudice.' But
+the reality is the other way. The man who does wrong is a slave in the
+measure in which he does it. If you want to find out--and mark this, you
+young people, who may be deceived by the false contrasts between the
+restraints of duty and the freedom of living a dissolute life--if you
+want to find out how utterly 'he that committeth sin is the slave of
+sin,' try to break it off, and you will find it out fast enough. We all
+know, alas! the impotence of the will when it comes to hand grips with
+some evil to which we have become habituated; and how we determine and
+determine, and try, and fail, and determine again, with no better
+result. We are the slaves of our own passions; and no man is free who is
+hindered by his lower self from doing that which his better self tells
+him he ought to do. The tempter comes to you, and says, 'Come and do
+this thing, just for once. You can leave off when you like, you know.
+There is no need to do it a second time.' And when you have done it, he
+changes his note, and says, 'Ah! you are in, and you cannot get out. You
+have done it once; and in my vocabulary once means twice, and once and
+twice mean _always_.'
+
+Insane people are sometimes tempted into a house of detention by being
+made to believe that it is a grand mansion, where they are just going to
+pay a flying visit, and can come away when they like. But once inside
+the walls, they never get past the lodge gates any more. The foolish
+birds do not know that there is lime on the twigs, and their little feet
+get fastened to the branch, and their wings flutter in vain. 'He that
+committeth sin is the slave of sin--shut up,' dungeoned, 'under sin.'
+
+But do not forget, either, the other metaphor in our text, in which the
+Apostle, with characteristic rapidity, and to the horror of rhetorical
+propriety, passes at once from the thought of a dungeon to the thought
+of an impending weight, and says, 'Shut up _under_ sin.'
+
+What does that mean? It means that we are guilty when we have done
+wrong; and it means that we are under penalties which are sure to
+follow. No deed that we do, howsoever it may fade from the tablets of
+our memory, but writes in visible characters, in proportion to its
+magnitude, upon our characters and lives. All human acts have perpetual
+consequences. The kick of the rifle against the shoulder of the man that
+fires it is as certain as the flight of the bullet from its muzzle. The
+chalk cliffs that rise above the Channel entomb and perpetuate the
+relics of myriads of evanescent lives; and our fleeting deeds are
+similarly preserved in our present selves. Everything that a man wills,
+whether it passes into external act or not, leaves, in its measure,
+ineffaceable impressions on himself. And so we are not only dungeoned
+in, but weighed upon by, and lie under, the evil that we do.
+
+Nor, dear friends, dare I pass in silence what is too often passed in
+silence in the modern pulpit, the plain fact that there is a future
+waiting for each of us beyond the grave, of which the most certain
+characteristic, certified by our own forebodings, required by the
+reasonableness of creation, and made plain by the revelation of
+Scripture, is that it is a future of retribution, where we shall have to
+carry our works; and as we have brewed so shall we drink; and the beds
+that we have made we shall have to lie upon. 'God shut up all under
+sin.'
+
+Note, again, the universality of the imprisonment.
+
+Now I am not going to exaggerate, I hope. I want to keep well within the
+limits of fact, and to say nothing that is not endorsed by your own
+consciences, if you will be honest with yourselves. And I say that the
+Bible does not charge men universally with gross transgressions. It does
+not talk about the virtues that grow in the open as if they were
+splendid vices; but it does say, and I ask you if our own hearts do not
+tell us that it says truly, that no man is, or has been, does, or has
+done, that which his own conscience tells him he should have been and
+done. We are all ready to admit faults, in a general way, and to confess
+that we have come short of what our own consciousness tells us we ought
+to be. But I want you to take the other step, and to remember that since
+we each stand in a personal relation to God, therefore all
+imperfections, faults, negligences, shortcomings, and, still more,
+transgressions of morality, or of the higher aspirations of our lives,
+are sins. Because sin--to use fine words--is the correlative of God. Or,
+to put it into plainer language, the deeds which in regard to law may be
+crimes, or those which in regard to morality may be vices, or in regard
+to our own convictions of duty may be shortcomings, seeing they all have
+some reference to Him, assume a very much graver character, and they are
+all sins.
+
+Oh, brethren, if we realise how intimately and inseparably we are knit
+to God, and how everything that we do, and do not do, but should have
+done, has an aspect in reference to Him, I think we should be less
+unwilling to admit, and less tinged with levity and carelessness in
+admitting, that all our faults are transgressions of His law, and we
+should find ourselves more frequently on our knees before Him, with the
+penitent words on our lips and in our hearts, 'Against Thee, Thee only
+have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.'
+
+That was the prayer of a man who had done a foul evil in other people's
+sight; who had managed to accumulate about as many offences to as many
+people in one deed as was possible. For, as a king he had sinned against
+his nation, as a friend he had sinned against his companion, as a
+captain he had sinned against his brave subordinate, as a husband he had
+sinned against his wife, and he had sinned against Bathsheba. And yet,
+with all that tangle of offences against all these people, he says,
+'Against Thee, Thee only.' Yes! Because, accurately speaking, the _sin_
+had reference to God, and to God alone. And I wish for myself and for
+you to cultivate the habit of connecting, thus, all our actions, and
+especially our imperfections and our faults, with the thought of God,
+that we may learn how universal is the enclosure of man in this dreadful
+prison-house.
+
+II. And so, I come, in the second place, to look at the guardian of the
+prison.
+
+That is a strange phrase of my text attributing the shutting of men up
+in this prison-house to the merciful revelation of God in the Scripture.
+And it is made still more striking and strange by another edition of
+the same expression in the Epistle to the Romans, where Paul directly
+traces the 'concluding all in disobedience' to God Himself.
+
+There may be other subtle thoughts connected with that expression which
+I do not need to enter upon now. But one that I would dwell upon, for a
+moment, is this, that one great purpose of Scripture is to convince us
+that we are sinful in God's sight. I do not need to remind you, I
+suppose, how that was, one might almost say, the dominant intention of
+the whole of the ceremonial and moral law of Israel, and explains its
+many else inexplicable and apparently petty commandments and
+prohibitions. They were all meant to emphasise the difference between
+right and wrong, obedience and disobedience, and so to drive home to
+men's hearts the consciousness that they had broken the commandments of
+the living God. And although the Gospel comes with a very different
+guise from that ancient order, and is primarily gift and not law, a
+Gospel of forgiveness, and not the promulgation of duty or the
+threatening of condemnation, yet it, too, has for one of its main
+purposes, which must be accomplished in us before it can reach its
+highest aim in us, the kindling in men's hearts of the same
+consciousness that they are sinful men in God's sight.
+
+Ah, brethren, we all need it. There is nothing that we need more than to
+have driven deep into us the penetrating point of that conviction. There
+must be some external standard by which men may be convinced of their
+sinfulness, for they carry no such standard within them. Your conscience
+is only _you_ judging on moral questions, and, of course, as you change,
+it will change too. A man's whole state determines the voice with which
+conscience shall speak to him, and so the worse he is, and the more he
+needs it, the less he has it. The rebels cut the telegraph wires. The
+waves break the bell that hangs on the reef, and so the black rocks get
+many a wreck to gnaw with their sharp teeth. A man makes his conscience
+dumb by the very sins that require a conscience trumpet-tongued to
+reprehend them. And therefore it needs that God should speak from
+Heaven, and say to us, '_Thou_ art the man,' or else we pass by all
+these grave things that I am trying to urge upon you now, and fall back
+upon our complacency and our levity and our unwillingness to take stock
+of ourselves, and front the facts of our condition. And so we build up a
+barrier between ourselves and God, and God's grace, which nothing short
+of that grace and an omnipotent love and an all-powerful Redeemer can
+ever pull down.
+
+I wish to urge in a few words, yet with much earnestness, this thought,
+that until we have laid to heart God's message about our own personal
+sinfulness we have not got to the place where we can in the least
+understand the true meaning of His Gospel, or the true work of His Son.
+May I say that I, for one, am old-fashioned enough to look with great
+apprehension on certain tendencies of present-day presentations of
+Christianity which, whilst they dwell much upon the social blessings
+which it brings, do seem to me to be in great peril of obscuring the
+central characteristic of the Gospel, that it is addressed to sinful
+men, and that the only way by which individuals can come to the
+possession of any of its blessings is by coming as penitent sinners, and
+casting themselves on the mercy of God in Jesus Christ? The beginning of
+all lies here, where Paul puts it, 'the Scripture hath herded all men,'
+in droves, into the prison, that it might have mercy upon all.
+
+Dear friend, as the old proverb has it, deceit lurks in generalities. I
+have no doubt you are perfectly willing to admit that all are sinful.
+Come a little closer to the truth, I beseech you, and say each is
+sinful, and I am one of the captives.
+
+III. And so, lastly, the breaker of the prison-house.
+
+I need not spend your time in commenting on the final words of this
+text. Suffice it to gather their general purport and scope. The
+apparently stern treatment which God by revelation applies to the whole
+mass of mankind is really the tenderest beneficence. He has shut them up
+in the prison-house in order that, thus shut up, they may the more
+eagerly apprehend and welcome the advent of the Deliverer. He tells us
+each our state, in order that we may the more long for, and the more
+closely grasp, the great mercy which reverses the state. And so how
+shallow and how unfair it is to talk about evangelical Christianity as
+being gloomy, stern, or misanthropical! You do not call a doctor unkind
+because he tells an unsuspecting patient that his disease is far
+advanced, and that if it is not cured it will be fatal. No more should a
+man turn away from Christianity, or think it harsh and sour, because it
+speaks plain truths. The question is, are they true? not, are they
+unpleasant?
+
+If you and I, and all our fellows, are shut up in this prison-house of
+sin, then it is quite clear that none of us can do anything to get
+ourselves out. And so the way is prepared for that great message with
+which Jesus opened His ministry, and which, whilst it has a far wider
+application, and reference to social as well as to individual evils,
+begins with the proclamation of liberty to the captives, and the opening
+of the prison to them that are bound.
+
+There was once a Roman emperor who wished that all his enemies had one
+neck, that he might slay them all at one blow. The wish is a fact in
+regard to Christ and His work, for by it all our tyrants have been
+smitten to death by one stroke; and the death of Jesus Christ has been
+the death of sin and death and hell--of sin in its power, in its guilt,
+and in its penalty. He has come into the prison-house, and torn the bars
+away, and opened the fetters, and every man may, if he will, come out
+into the blessed sunshine and expatiate there.
+
+And if, brethren, it is true that the universal prison-house is opened
+by the death of Jesus Christ, who is the Propitiation for the sins of
+the whole world, and the power by which the most polluted may become
+clean, then there follows, as plainly, that the only thing which we have
+to do is, recognising and feeling our bound impotence, to stretch out
+chained hands and take the gift that He brings. Since all is done for
+each of us, and since none of us can do sufficient for himself to break
+the bond, then what we should do is to trust to Him who has broken every
+chain and let the oppressed go free.
+
+Oh, dear friend, if you want to get to the heart of the sweetness and
+the blessedness and power of the Gospel, you must begin here, with the
+clear and penitent consciousness that you are a sinful man in God's
+sight, and can do nothing to cleanse, help, or liberate yourself. Is
+Jesus Christ the breaker of the bond for you? Do you learn from Him what
+your need is? Do you trust yourself to Him for Pardon, for cleansing,
+for emancipation? Unless you do, you will never know His most precious
+preciousness, and you have little right to call yourself a Christian. If
+you do, oh, than a great light will shine in the prison-house, and your
+chains will drop from your wrists, and the iron door will open of its
+own accord, and you will come out into the morning sunshine of a new
+day, because you have confessed and abhorred the bondage into which you
+have cast yourselves, and accepted the liberty wherewith Christ hath
+made you free.
+
+
+
+
+THE SON SENT
+
+          'When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth
+          His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that
+          He might redeem them which were under the law,
+          that we might receive the adoption of sons.'--GAL.
+          iv. 4, 5 (R.V.).
+
+
+It is generally supposed that by the 'fulness of time' Paul means to
+indicate that Christ came at the moment when the world was especially
+prepared to receive Him, and no doubt that is a true thought. The Jews
+had been trained by law to the conviction of sin; heathenism had tried
+its utmost, had reached the full height of its possible development, and
+was decaying. Rome had politically prepared the way for the spread of
+the Gospel. Vague expectations of coming change found utterance even
+from the lips of Roman courtier poets, and a feeling of unrest and
+anticipation pervaded society; but while no doubt all this is true and
+becomes more certain the more we know of the state of things into which
+Christ came, it is to be noted that Paul is not thinking of the fulness
+of time primarily in reference to the world which received Him, but to
+the Father who sent Him. Our text immediately follows words in which the
+air is described as being 'under guardians and stewards' until the time
+appointed of His Father, and the fulness of time is therefore the moment
+which God had ordained from the beginning for His coming. He, from of
+old, had willed that at that moment this Son should be born, and it is
+to the punctual accomplishment of His eternal purpose that Paul here
+directs our thoughts. No doubt the world's preparedness is part of the
+reason for the divine determination of the time, but it is that divine
+determination rather than the world's preparedness to which the first
+words of our text must be taken to refer.
+
+The remaining portion of our text is so full of meaning that one shrinks
+from attempting to deal with it in our narrow space, but though it opens
+up depths beyond our fathoming, and gathers into one concentrated
+brightness lights on which our dim eyes can hardly look, we may venture
+to attempt some imperfect consideration even of these great words.
+Following their course of thought we may deal with
+
+I. The mystery of love that sent.
+
+The most frequent form under which the great fact of the incarnation is
+represented in Scripture is that of our text--'God sent His Son.' It is
+familiar on the lips of Jesus, but He also says that 'God gave His Son.'
+One can feel a shade of difference in the two modes of expression. The
+former bringing rather to our thoughts the representative character of
+the Son as Messenger, and the latter going still deeper into the mystery
+of Godhead and bringing into view the love of the Father who spared not
+His Son but freely bestowed Him on men. Yet another word is used by
+Jesus Himself when He says, 'I came forth from God,' and that expression
+brings into view the perfect willingness with which the Son accepted the
+mission and gave Himself, as well as was given by God. All three phases
+express harmonious, though slightly differing aspects of the same fact,
+as the facets of a diamond might flash into different colours, and all
+must be held fast if we would understand the unspeakable gift of God.
+Jesus was sent; Jesus was given; Jesus came. The mission from the
+Father, the love of the Father, the glad obedience of the Son, must ever
+be recognised as interpenetrating, and all present in that supreme act.
+
+There have been many men specially sent forth from God, whose personal
+existence began with their birth, and so far as the words are concerned,
+Jesus might have been one of these. There was a man sent from God whose
+name was John, and all through the ages he has had many companions in
+his mission, but there has been only one who 'came' as well as 'was
+sent,' and He is the true light which lighteth every man. To speak in
+theological language of the pre-existence of the Son is cold, and may
+obscure the truth which it formulates in so abstract a fashion, and may
+rob it of power to awe and impress. But there can be no question that in
+our text, as is shown by the juxtaposition of 'sent' and 'born,' and in
+all the New Testament references to the subject, the birth of Jesus is
+not regarded as the beginning of the being of the Son. The one lies far
+back in the depths of eternity and the mystery of the divine nature, the
+other is a historical fact occurring in a definite place and at a dated
+moment. Before time was the Son was, delighting in the Father, and 'in
+the beginning was the word and the word was with God,' and He who in
+respect of His expression of the Father's mind and will was the Word,
+was the Son in respect of the love that bound the Father and Him in one.
+Into the mysteries of that love and union no eyes can penetrate, but
+unless our faith lays hold of it, we know not the God whom Jesus has
+declared to us. The mysteries of that divine union and communion lie
+beyond our reach, but well within the grasp of our faith and the work of
+the Son in the world, ever since there was a world, is not obscurely
+declared to all who have eyes to see and hearts to understand. For He
+has through all ages been the active energy of the divine power, or as
+the Old Testament words it, 'The Arm of the Lord,' the Agent of
+creation, the Revealer of God, the Light of the world and the Director
+of Providence. 'He was in the world and the world was made by Him, and
+the world knew Him not.'
+
+Now all this teaching that the Son was long before Jesus was born is no
+mere mysterious dogma without bearing on daily needs, but stands in the
+closest connection with Christ's work and our faith in it. It is the
+guarantee of His representative character; on it depends the
+reliableness of His revelation of God. Unless He is the Son in a unique
+sense, how could God have spoken unto us in Him, and how could we rely
+on His words? Unless He was 'the effulgence of His glory and the express
+image of His person': how could we be sure that the light of His
+countenance was light from God and that in His person God was so
+presented as that he who had seen Him had seen the Father? The
+completeness and veracity of His revelation, the authoritative fulness
+of His law, the efficacy of His sacrifice and the prevalence of His
+intercession all depend on the fact of His divine life with God long
+before His human life with men. It is a plain historical fact that a
+Christianity which has no place for a pre-existent Son in the bosom of
+the Father has only a maimed Christ in reference to the needs of sinful
+men. If our Christ were not the eternal Son of God, He will not be the
+universal Saviour of men.
+
+Nor is this truth less needful in its bearing on modern theories which
+will have nothing to say to the supernatural, and in a fatalistic
+fashion regard history as all the result of an orderly evolution in
+which the importance of personal agents is minimised. To it Jesus, like
+all other great men, is a product of His age, and the immediate result
+of the conditions under which He appeared. But when we look far beyond
+the manger of Bethlehem into the depths of Eternity and see God so
+loving the world as to give His Son, we cannot but recognise that He has
+intervened in the course of human history and that the mightiest force
+in the development of man is the eternal Son whom He sent to save the
+world.
+
+II. The miracle of lowliness that came.
+
+The Apostle goes on from describing the great fact which took place in
+heaven to set forth the great fact which completed it on earth. The
+sending of the Son took effect in the birth of Jesus, and the Apostle
+puts it under two forms, both of which are plainly designed to present
+Christ's manhood as His full identification of Himself with us. The Son
+of God became the son of a woman; from His mother He drew a true and
+complete humanity in body and soul. The humanity which He received was
+sufficiently kindred with the divinity which received it to make it
+possible that the one should dwell in the other and be one person. As
+born of a woman the Son of God took upon Himself all human experiences,
+became capable of sharing our pure emotions, wept our tears, partook in
+our joys, hoped and feared as we do, was subject to our changes, grew as
+we grow, and in everything but sin, was a man amongst men.
+
+But the Son of God could not be as the sons of men. Him the Father
+heard always. Even when He came down from Heaven and became the Son of
+Man, He continued to be 'The Son of Man which is in Heaven.' Amid all
+the distractions and limitations of His earthly life, the continuity and
+depth of His communion with the Father were unbroken and the
+completeness of His obedience undiminished. He was a Man, but He was
+also the Man, the one realised ideal of humanity that has ever walked
+the earth, to whom all others, even the most complete, are fragments,
+the fairest foul, the most gracious harsh. In Him and in Him only has
+been 'given the world assurance of a man.'
+
+The other condition which is here introduced is 'born under the law,' by
+which it may be noted that the Apostle does not mean the Jewish law,
+inasmuch as he does not use the definite article with the word. No doubt
+our Lord was born as a Jew and subject to the Jewish law, but the
+thought here and in the subsequent clause is extended to the general
+notion of law. The very heart of our Lord's human identification is that
+He too had duties imperative upon Him, and the language of one of the
+Messianic psalms was the voice of His filial will during all His earthly
+life; 'Lo! I come, in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I
+delight to do Thy will and Thy law is within My heart.' The very secret
+of His human life was discovered by the heathen centurion, at whose
+faith He marvelled, who said, 'I _also_ am a man under authority'; so
+was Jesus. The Son had ever been obedient in the sweet communion of
+Heaven, but the obedience of Jesus was not less perfect, continual and
+unstained. It was the man Jesus who summed up His earthly life in 'I do
+always the things that please Him'; it was the man Jesus who, under the
+olives in Gethsemane, made the great surrender and yielded up His own
+will to the will of the Father who sent Him.
+
+He was under law in that the will of God dominated His life, but He was
+not so under it as we are on whom its precepts often press as an
+unwelcome obligation, and who know the weight of guilt and condemnation.
+If there is any one characteristic of Jesus more conspicuous than
+another it is the absence in Him of any consciousness of deficiency in
+His obedience to law, and yet that absence does not in the smallest
+degree infringe on His claim to be 'meek and lowly in heart.' 'Which of
+you convinceth Me of sin?' would have been from any other man a defiance
+that would have provoked a crushing answer if it had not been taken as a
+proof of hopeless ignorance of self, but when Christ asks the question,
+the world is silent. The silence has been all but unbroken for nineteen
+hundred years, and of all the busy and often unfriendly eyes that have
+been occupied with Him and the hostile pens that have been eager to say
+something new about Him, none have discovered a flaw, or dared to 'hint
+a fault.' That character has stamped its own impression of perfectness
+on all eyes even the most unfriendly or indifferent. In Him there is
+seen the perfect union and balance of opposite characteristics; the rest
+of us, at the best, are but broken arcs; Jesus is the completed round.
+He is under law as fully, continuously and joyfully obedient; but for
+Him it had no accusing voice, and it laid on Him no burden of broken
+commandments. He was born of a woman, born under law, but he lived
+separate from sinners though identified with them.
+
+III. The marvel of exaltation that results.
+
+Our Lord's lowliness is described in the two clauses which we have just
+been considering. They express His identification with us from a double
+point of view, and that double point of view is continued in the final
+clauses of our text which state the double purpose of God in sending His
+Son. He became one with us that we might become one with Him. The two
+elements of this double purpose are stated in the reverse order to the
+two elements of Christ's lowliness. The redemption of them that were
+under law is presented as the reason for His being born under law, and
+our reception of the 'adoption of sons' is the purpose of the Son's
+being sent and born of a woman. The order in which Paul here deals with
+the two parts of the divine purpose is not to be put down to mere
+rhetorical ornament, but corresponds to the order in which these two
+elements are realised by men. For there must be redemption from law
+before there is the adoption of sons.
+
+We have already had occasion to point out that 'law' here must be taken
+in the wide sense and not restricted to the Jewish law. It is a
+world-wide redemption which the Father's love had in view in sending His
+Son, but that all-comprehending, fatherly love could not reach its aim
+by the mere forth-putting of its own energy. A process was needed if the
+divine heart was to accomplish its desire, and the majestic stages in
+that process are set forth here by Paul. The world was under law in a
+very sad fashion, and though Jesus has come to redeem them that are
+under law, the crushing weight of commandments flouted, of duties
+neglected, of sins done, presses heavily upon many of us. And yet how
+many of us there are who do not know the burden that we carry and have
+had no personal experience like that of Bunyan's Christian with the pack
+on his back all but weighing him down? Jesus Christ has become one of
+us, and in His sinless life has 'magnified the law and made it
+honourable,' and in His sinless death He endures the consequences of
+sin, not as due to Himself, but because they are man's. But we must
+carefully keep in view, that as we have already pointed out, we are to
+think of Christ's mission as His coming as well as the Father's sending,
+and that therefore we do not grasp the full idea of our Lord's enduring
+the consequences of sin unless we take it as meaning His voluntary
+identification of Himself in love with us sinful men. His obedience was
+perfect all His life long, and His last and highest act of obedience was
+when He became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
+
+This is the only means by which the burden of law in any of its forms
+can be taken away from us. For a law which is not loved will be heavy
+and hard however holy and just and good it may be, and a law which we
+have broken will become sooner or later its own avenger. Faithful in
+_Pilgrim's Progress_ tells how 'So soon as a man overtook me he was but
+a word and a blow, for down he knocked me and laid me for dead. . . . He
+struck me another deadly blow on the breast and beat me down backward,
+so I lay at his foot as dead as before, so when I came to myself again I
+cried him "Mercy," but he said, "I know not how to show mercy," and with
+that knocked me down again; he had doubtless made an end of me but that
+one came by and bid him forbear. . . . I did not know him at first, but as
+he went by I perceived the holes in his hands and in his sides.' He was
+born under law that He might redeem them that were under law.
+
+The slaves bought into freedom are received into the great family. The
+Son has become flesh that they who dwell in the flesh may rise to be
+sons, but the Son stands alone even in the midst of His identification
+with us, and of the great results which follow for us from it. He is the
+Son by nature; we are sons by adoption. He became man that we might
+share in the possession of God. When the burden of law is lifted off it
+is possible to bestow the further blessing of sonship, but that blessing
+is only possible through Him in whom, and from whom, we derive a life
+which is divine life. There is a profound truth in the prophetic
+sentence, 'Behold I and the children which God hath given me!' for, in
+one aspect, believers are the children of Christ, and in another, they
+are sons of God.
+
+We have been speaking of the Son's identification with us in His
+mission, and our identification with Him, but that identification
+depends on ourselves and is only an accomplished fact through our faith.
+When we trust in Him it is true that all His--His righteousness, His
+Sonship, His union with the Father--is ours, and that all ours--our
+sins, our guilt, our alienation from God and our dwelling in the far-off
+land of rags and vice--is His. In His voluntary identification with us,
+He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. It is for us to
+determine whether we will lay on Him our iniquities, as the Father has
+already laid the iniquities of us all. Are we by faith in Him who was
+born of a woman, born under law, making our very own the redemption from
+the law which He has wrought and the adoption of sons which He bestows?
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MAKES A CHRISTIAN: CIRCUMCISION OR FAITH?
+
+          'In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any
+          thing, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh
+          by love.'--GAL. v. 6.
+
+
+It is a very singular instance of imaginative misreading of plain facts
+that the primitive Church should be held up as a pattern Church. The
+early communities had apostolic teaching; but beyond that, they seem to
+have been in no respect above, and in many respects below, the level of
+subsequent ages. If we may judge of their morality by the exhortations
+and dehortations which they received from the Apostle, Corinth and
+Thessalonica were but beginners in holiness. If we may judge of their
+intelligence by the errors into which they were in danger of falling,
+these first congregations had indeed need that one should teach them
+which were the first principles of the oracles of God. It could not be
+otherwise. They were but just rescued from heathenism, and we need not
+wonder if their spirits long bore the scars of their former bondage. If
+we wish to know what the apostolic churches were like, we have but to
+look at the communities gathered by modern missionaries. The same
+infantile simplicity, the same partial apprehensions of the truth, the
+same danger of being led astray by the low morality of their heathen
+kindred, the same openness to strange heresy, the same danger of
+blending the old with the new, in opinion and in practice, beset both.
+
+The history of the first theological difference in the early churches is
+a striking confutation of the dream that they were perfect, and a
+striking illustration of the dangers to which they were exposed from
+the attempt, so natural to us all, to put new wine into old bottles. The
+Jewish and the Gentile elements did not coalesce. The point round which
+the strife was waged was not whether Gentiles might come into the
+Church. That was conceded by the fiercest Judaisers. But it was whether
+they could come in as Gentiles, without first being incorporated into
+the Jewish nation by circumcision, and whether they could remain in as
+Gentiles, without conforming to Jewish ceremonial and law.
+
+Those who said 'No' _were_ members of the Christian communities, and,
+being so, they still insisted that Judaism was to be eternal. They
+demanded that the patched and stiff leathern bottle, which had no
+elasticity or pliability, should still contain the quick fermenting new
+wine of the kingdom. And certainly, if ever man had excuse for clinging
+to what was old and formal, these Judaising Christians held it. They
+held by a law written with God's own finger, by ordinances awful by
+reason of divine appointment, venerable by reason of the generations to
+which they had been of absolute authority, commended by the very example
+of Christ Himself. Every motive which can bind heart and conscience to
+the reverence and the practice of the traditions of the Fathers, bound
+them to the Law and the ordinances which had been Israel's treasure from
+Abraham to Jesus.
+
+Those who said 'Yes' were mostly Gentiles, headed and inspired by a
+Hebrew of the Hebrews. They believed that Judaism was preparatory, and
+that its work was done. For those among themselves who were Jews, they
+were willing that its laws should still be obligatory; but they fought
+against the attempt to compel all Gentile converts to enter Christ's
+kingdom through the gate of circumcision.
+
+The fight was stubborn and bitter. I suppose it is harder to abolish
+forms than to change opinions. Ceremonies stand long after the thought
+which they express has fled, as a dead king may sit on his throne stiff
+and stark in his golden mantle, and no one come near enough to see that
+the light is gone out of his eyes, and the will departed from the hand
+that still clutches the sceptre. All through Paul's life he was dogged
+and tormented by this controversy. There was a deep gulf between the
+churches he planted and this reactionary section of the Christian
+community. Its emissaries were continually following in his footsteps.
+As he bitterly reproaches them, they entered upon another man's line of
+things made ready to their hand, not caring to plant churches of
+circumcised Gentiles themselves, but starting up behind him as soon as
+his back was turned, and spoiling his work.
+
+This Epistle is the memorial of that foot-to-foot feud. It is of
+perennial use, as the tendencies against which it is directed are
+constant in human nature. Men are ever apt to confound form and
+substance, to crave material embodiments of spiritual realities, to
+elevate outward means into the place of the inward and real, to which
+all the outward is but subsidiary. In every period of strife between the
+two great opponents, this letter has been the stronghold of those who
+fight for the spiritual conception of religion. With it Luther waged his
+warfare, and in this day, too, its words are precious.
+
+My text contains Paul's condensed statement of his whole position in the
+controversy. It tells us what he fought for, and why he fought, against
+the attempt to suspend union to Christ on an outward rite.
+
+I. The first grand principle contained in these words is that faith
+working by love makes a Christian.
+
+The antithesis of our text appears in somewhat varied forms in two other
+places in the Apostle's writings. To the Corinthians he says,
+'Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping
+of the commandments of God.' His last word to the Galatians--the
+gathering up into one strong sentence of his whole letter--is, 'In
+Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor
+uncircumcision, but a new creature.'
+
+Now, all these assertions embody substantially the same opposition
+between the conception of Christianity as depending upon a ceremonial
+rite, and as being a spiritual change. And the variations in the second
+member of the contrast throw light on each other. In one, the essential
+thing is regarded from the divine side as being not a rite performed on
+the body, but a new nature, the result of a supernatural regeneration.
+In another, the essential thing is set forth as being not an outward
+act, but an inward principle, which produces appropriate effects on the
+whole being. In yet another the essential thing is conceived as being
+not a mere ceremonial, but practical obedience, the consequence of the
+active principle of faith, and the sign of the new life. There is an
+evident sequence in the three sayings. They begin with the deepest, the
+divine act of a new creation--and end with the outermost, the last
+result and object of both the others--deeds of conformity to God's law.
+
+This one process in its triple aspects, says Paul, constitutes a man a
+Christian. What correspondence is there between it, in any of its
+parts, and a carnal ordinance? They belong to wholly different
+categories, and it is the most preposterous confusion to try to mix them
+up together. Are we to tack on to the solemn powers and qualities, which
+unite the soul to Christ, this beggarly addition that the Judaisers
+desire, and to say, the essentials of Christianity are a new creature,
+faith, obedience--and circumcision? That is, indeed, sewing old cloth on
+a new garment, and huddling together in grotesque chaos things which are
+utterly diverse. It is as absurd bathos as to say the essentials of a
+judge are integrity, learning, patience--and an ermine robe!
+
+There would be less danger of being entangled in false notions of the
+sort which devastated Galatia and have afflicted the Church ever since,
+if people would put a little more distinctly before their own minds what
+they mean by 'religion'; what sort of man they intend when they talk
+about 'a Christian.' A clear notion of the thing to be produced would
+thin away a wonderful deal of mist as to the way of producing it. So
+then, beginning at the surface, in order to work inward, my first remark
+is that religion is the harmony of the soul with God, and the conformity
+of the life to His law.
+
+The loftiest purpose of God, in all His dealings, is to make us like
+Himself; and the end of all religion is the complete accomplishment of
+that purpose. There is no religion without these elements--consciousness
+of kindred with God, recognition of Him as the sum of all excellence and
+beauty, and of His will as unconditionally binding upon us, aspiration
+and effort after a full accord of heart and soul with Him and with His
+law, and humble confidence that that sovereign beauty will be ours. 'Be
+ye imitators of God as dear children' is the pure and comprehensive
+dictate which expresses the aim of all devout men. 'To keep His
+commandments' goes deeper than the mere external deeds. Were it not so,
+Paul's grand words would shrink to a very poor conception of religion,
+which would then have its shrine and sphere removed from the sacred
+recesses of the inmost spirit to the dusty Babel of the market-place and
+the streets. But with that due and necessary extension of the words
+which results from the very nature of the case, that obedience must be
+the obedience of a man, and not of his deeds only, and must include the
+submission of the will and the prostration of the whole nature before
+Him; they teach a truth which, fully received and carried out, clears
+away whole mountains of theoretical confusion and practical error.
+Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of
+actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right
+emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the
+semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or
+apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the
+Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its
+worship. But to be godly is to be godlike. The full accord of all the
+soul with His character, in whom, as their native home, dwell
+'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,' and the full
+glad conformity of the will to His sovereign will, who is the life of
+our lives--this, and nothing shallower, nothing narrower, is religion in
+its perfection; and the measure in which we have attained to this
+harmony with God, is the measure in which we are Christians. As two
+stringed instruments may be so tuned to one keynote that, if you strike
+the one, a faint ethereal echo is heard from the other, which blends
+undistinguishably with its parent sound; so, drawing near to God, and
+brought into unison with His mind and will, our responsive spirits
+vibrate in accord with His, and give forth tones, low and thin indeed,
+but still repeating the mighty music of heaven. 'Circumcision is
+nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the
+commandments of God.'
+
+But our text tells us, further, that if we look backwards from character
+and deed to motive, this harmony with God results from love becoming the
+ruling power of our lives. The imitation of the object of worship has
+always been felt to be the highest form of worship. Many an ancient
+teacher, besides the Stoic philosopher, has said, 'He who copies the
+gods worships them adequately.' One of the prophets lays it down as a
+standing rule, 'The people will walk every one in the name of his God.'
+But it is only in the Christian attitude towards God that the motive
+power is found which makes such imitation more than an impossible duty,
+even as it is only in the revealed character of God that a pattern is
+found, to imitate which is to be perfect. Everywhere besides, harmony
+with the gods meant discord with conscience and flagrant outrages of the
+commonest moralities. Everywhere else, the task of copying them was one
+lightened by no clear confidence in their love, and by no happy
+consciousness of our own. But for us, the love revealed is the perfect
+law, and the love evoked is the fulfilling of the law.
+
+And this is the might and nobleness of the Christian love to God; that
+it is no idle emotion or lazy rapture, no vague sentiment, but the root
+of all practical goodness, of all strenuous effort, of all virtue, and
+of all praise. That strong tide is meant to drive the busy wheels of
+life and to bear precious freightage on its bosom; not to flow away in
+profitless foam. Love is the fruitful mother of bright children, as our
+great moralist-poet learned when he painted her in the House of
+Holiness:
+
+          'A multitude of babes about her hung,
+           Playing their sport that joyed her to behold.'
+
+Her sons are Strength and Justice, and Self-control and Firmness, and
+Courage and Patience, and many more besides; and her daughters are Pity
+with her sad eyes, and Gentleness with her silvery voice, and Mercy
+whose sweet face makes sunshine in the shade of death, and Humility all
+unconscious of her loveliness; and linked hand in hand with these, all
+the radiant band of sisters that men call Virtues and Graces. These will
+dwell in our hearts, if Love their mighty mother be there. If we are
+without her, we shall be without them.
+
+There is discord between man and God which can only be removed by the
+sweet commerce of love, established between earth and heaven. God's love
+has come to us. When ours springs responsive to Him, then the schism is
+ended, and the wandering child forgets his rebellion, as he lays his
+aching head on the father's bosom, and feels the beating of the father's
+heart. Our souls by reason of sin are 'like sweet bells jangled, out of
+tune and harsh.' Love's master hand laid upon them restores to them
+their part in 'the fair music that all creatures make to their great
+Lord,' and brings us into such accord with God that
+
+          'We on earth with undiscording voice
+           May rightly answer'
+
+even the awful harmonies of His lips. The essential of religion is
+concord with God, and the power which makes that concord is love to God.
+
+But this text leads to a still further consideration, namely, the
+dominion of love to God in our hearts arises from faith.
+
+We thus reach the last link, or rather the staple, of the chain from
+which all hangs. Religion is harmony with God; that harmony is produced
+by love; and that love is produced by faith. Therefore the fundamental
+of all Christianity in the soul is faith. Would this sound any fresher
+and more obvious if we varied the language, and said that to be
+religious we must be like God, that to be like Him we must love Him, and
+that to love Him we must be sure that He loves us? Surely that is too
+plain to need enlarging on.
+
+And is it not true that faith must precede our love to God, and affords
+the only possible basis on which that can be built? How can we love Him
+so long as we are in doubt of His heart, or misconceive His character,
+as if it were only power and wisdom, or awful severity? Men cannot love
+an unseen person at all, without some very special token of his personal
+affection for them. The history of all religions shows that where the
+gods have been thought of as unloving, the worshippers have been
+heartless too. It is only when we know and believe the love that God
+hath to us, that we come to cherish any corresponding emotion to Him.
+Our love is secondary, His is primary; ours is reflection, His the
+original beam; ours is echo, His the mother-tone. Heaven must bend to
+earth before earth can rise to heaven. The skies must open and drop down
+love, ere love can spring in the fruitful fields. And it is only when we
+look with true trust to that great unveiling of the heart of God which
+is in Jesus Christ, only when we can say, 'Herein is love--that He gave
+His Son to be the propitiation for our sins,' that our hearts are
+melted, and all their snows are dissolved into sweet waters, which,
+freed from their icy chains, can flow with music in their ripple and
+fruitfulness along their course, through our otherwise silent and barren
+lives. Faith in Christ is the only possible basis for active love to
+God.
+
+And this thought presents the point of contact between the teaching of
+Paul and John. The one dwells on faith, the other on love, but he who
+insists most on the former declares that it produces its effects on
+character by the latter; and he who insists most on the latter is
+forward to proclaim that it owes its very existence to the former.
+
+It presents also the point of contact between Paul and James. The one
+speaks of the essential of Christianity as faith, the other as works.
+They are only striking the stream at different points, one at the
+fountain-head, one far down its course among the haunts of men. They
+both preach that faith must be 'faith that worketh,' not a barren assent
+to a dogma, but a living trust that brings forth fruits in the life.
+Paul believes as much as James that faith without works is dead, and
+demands the keeping of the commandments as indispensable to all true
+Christianity. James believes as much as Paul that works without faith
+are of none effect. So all three of these great teachers of the Church
+are represented in this text, to which each of them might seem to have
+contributed a word embodying his characteristic type of doctrine. The
+threefold rays into which the prism parts the white light blend again
+here, where faith, love, and work are all united in the comprehensive
+saying, 'In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor
+uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.'
+
+The sum of the whole matter is this--He who is one in will and heart
+with God is a Christian. He who loves God is one in will and heart with
+Him. He who trusts Christ loves God. That is Christianity in its
+ultimate purpose and result. That is Christianity in its means and
+working forces. That is Christianity in its starting-point and
+foundation.
+
+II. But we have to consider also the negative side of the Apostle's
+words. They affirm that in comparison with the essential--faith, all
+externals are infinitely unimportant.
+
+Paul's habit was always to settle questions by the widest principles he
+could bring to bear upon them--which one may notice in passing is the
+very opposite to the method that has been in favour with many Church
+teachers and guides since, who have preferred to live from hand to
+mouth, and to dispose of difficulties by the narrowest considerations
+that would avail to quiet them. In our text the question in hand is
+settled on a ground which covers a great deal more than the existing
+dispute. Circumcision is regarded as one of a whole class--namely, the
+class of outward rites and observances; and the contrast drawn between
+it and faith extends to all the class to which it belongs. It is not
+said to be powerless because it is an Old Testament rite, but because it
+is a rite. Its impotence lies in the very nature which it has in common
+with all external institutions, whether they be of the Old Testament or
+of the New, whether they be enjoined of God or invented by men. To them
+all the same characteristic cleaves. Compared with faith they are of no
+avail. Not that they are absolutely useless. They have their place, but
+'_in Christ Jesus_' they are nothing. Union to Him depends on quite
+another order of facts, which may or may not exist along with
+circumcision, or with baptism, or with the Lord's Supper. However
+important these may be, they have no place among the things which bind a
+soul to its Saviour. They may be helps to these things, but nothing
+more. The rite does not ensure the faith, else the antithesis of our
+text were unmeaning. The rite does not stand in the place of faith, or
+the contrast implied were absurd. But the two belong to totally
+different orders of things, which may co-exist indeed, but may also be
+found separately; the one is the indispensable spiritual experience
+which makes us Christians, the other belongs to a class of material
+institutions which are much as helps to, but nothing as substitutes or
+equivalents for, faith.
+
+Keep firm hold of the positive principle with which we have been dealing
+in the former part of this sermon, and all forms and externals fall as a
+matter of course into their proper place. If religion be the loving
+devotion of the soul to God, resting upon reasonable faith, then all
+besides is, at the most, a means which may further it. If loving trust
+which apprehends the truth, and cleaves to the Person, revealed to us in
+the Gospel, be the link which binds men to God, then the only way by
+which these externals can be 'means of grace' is by their aiding us to
+understand better and to feel more the truth as it is in Jesus, and to
+cleave closer to Him who is the truth. Do they enlighten the
+understanding? Do they engrave deeper the loved face carven on the
+tablets of memory, which the attrition of worldly cares is ever
+obliterating, and the lichens of worldly thoughts ever filling up? Do
+they clear out the rubbish from the channels of the heart, that the
+cleansing stream may flow through them? Do they, through the senses,
+minister to the soul its own proper food of clear thought, vivid
+impressions, loving affections, trustful obedience? Do they bring Christ
+to us, and us to Him, in the only way in which approach is
+possible--through the occupation of mind and heart and will with His
+great perfectness? Then they are means of grace, precious and helpful,
+the gifts of His love, the tokens of His wise knowledge of our weakness,
+the signs of His condescension, in that He stoops to trust some portion
+of our remembrance of Him to the ministry of sense. But in comparison
+with that faith which they cannot plant, though they may strengthen it,
+they are nothing; and in the matter of uniting the soul to God and
+making men 'religious,' they are of no avail at all.
+
+And such thoughts as these have a very wide sweep, as well as a very
+deep influence. Religion is the devotion of the soul to God. Then
+_everything_ besides is not religion, but at most a means to it. That is
+true about all Christian ordinances. Baptism is spoken about by Paul in
+terms which plainly show that he regarded it as 'nothing' in the same
+sense, and under the same limitations, as he thought that circumcision
+was nothing. 'I baptized some of you,' says he to the Corinthians; 'I
+scarcely remember whom, or how many. I have far more important work to
+do--to preach the Gospel.' It is true about all acts and forms of
+Christian worship. These are not religion, but means to it. Their only
+value and their only test is--Do they help men to know and feel Christ
+and His truth? It is true about laws of life, and many points of
+conventional morality. Remember the grand freedom with which the same
+Apostle dealt with questions about meats offered to idols, and the
+observance of days and seasons. The same principle guided him there too,
+and he relegated the whole question back to its proper place with, 'Meat
+commendeth us not to God; for neither if we eat are we the better,
+neither if we eat not are we the worse.' 'He that regardeth the day,
+regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the
+Lord he doth not regard it.' It is true, though less obviously and
+simply, about subordinate doctrines. It is true about the mere
+intellectual grasp of the fundamental truths of God's revelation. These,
+and the belief of these, are not Christianity, they are helps towards
+it.
+
+The separation is broad and deep. On one side are all externals, rites,
+ceremonies, politics, Church arrangements, forms of worship, modes of
+life, practices of morality, doctrines, and creeds--all which are
+externals to the soul: on the other is faith working through love, the
+inmost attitude and deepest emotion of the soul. The great heap is fuel.
+The flame is loving faith. The only worth of the fuel is to feed the
+flame. Otherwise it is of no avail, but lies dead and cold, a mass of
+blackness. We are joined to God by faith. Whatever strengthens that
+faith is precious as a help, but is worthless as a substitute.
+
+III. There is a constant tendency to exalt these unimportant externals
+into the place of faith.
+
+The whole purpose of the Gospel may be described to be our deliverance
+from the dominion of sense, and the transference of the centre of our
+life to the unseen world. This end is no doubt partly accomplished by
+the help of sense. So long as men have bodily organisations, there will
+be need for outward helps. Men's indolence, and men's sense-ridden
+natures, will take symbols for royalties, bank-notes for wealth. The
+eye will be tempted to stay on the rich colours of the glowing glass,
+instead of passing through them to heaven's light beyond. To make the
+senses a ladder for the soul to climb to heaven by, will be perilously
+likely to end in the soul going down the ladder instead of up. Forms are
+sure to encroach, to overlay the truth that lies at their root, to
+become dimly intelligible, or quite unmeaning, and to constitute at last
+the end instead of the means. Is it not then wise to minimise these
+potent and dangerous allies? Is it not needful to use them with the
+remembrance that a minute quantity may strengthen, but an overdose will
+kill--ay, and that the minute quantity may kill too? Christ instituted
+two outward rites. There could not have been fewer if there was to be an
+outward community at all, and they could not have been simpler; but look
+at the portentous outgrowth of superstition, and the unnumbered evils,
+religious, moral, social, and even political, which have come from the
+invincible tendency of human nature to corrupt forms, even when the
+forms are the sweet and simple ones of Christ's own appointment. What a
+lesson the history of the Lord's Supper, and its gradual change from the
+domestic memorial of the dying love of our Lord to the 'tremendous
+sacrifice,' reads us as to the dangerous ally which spiritual
+religion--and there is no other religion than spiritual--enlists when it
+seeks the help of external rites!
+
+But remember that this danger of converting religion into outward
+actions has its root in us all, and is not annihilated by our rejection
+of an elaborate ceremonial. There is much significance in the double
+negation of my text, 'Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.' If the
+Judaisers were tempted to insist on the former, as indispensable, their
+antagonists were as much tempted to insist on the latter. The one were
+saying, 'A man cannot be a Christian unless he be circumcised.' The
+other would be in danger of replying, 'He cannot be a Christian if he
+is.' There may be as much formalism in protesting against forms as in
+using them. Extremes meet; and an unspiritual Quaker, for instance, is
+at bottom of the same way of thinking as an unspiritual Roman Catholic.
+They agree in their belief that certain outward acts are essential to
+worship, and even to religion. They only differ as to what these acts
+are. The Judaiser who says, 'You must be circumcised,' and his
+antagonist who says, 'You must be uncircumcised,' are really in the same
+boat.
+
+And this is especially needful to be kept in mind by those who, like the
+most of us, hold fast by the free and spiritual conception of
+Christianity. That freedom we may turn into a bondage, and that
+spirituality into a form, if we confound it with the essentials of
+Christianity, and deny the possibility of the life being developed
+except in conjunction with it. My text has a double edge. Let us use it
+against all this Judaising which is going on round about us, and against
+all the tendency to it in our own hearts. The one edge smites the
+former, the other edge the latter. Circumcision is nothing, as most of
+us are forward to proclaim. But, also, remember, when we are tempted to
+trust in our freedom, and to fancy that in itself it is good,
+_uncircumcision is nothing_. You are no more a Christian for your
+rejection of forms than another man is for his holding them. Your
+negation no more unites you to Christ than does his affirmation. One
+thing alone does that,--faith which worketh by love, against which sense
+ever wars, both by tempting some of us to place religion in outward
+acts and ceremonies, and by tempting others of us to place it in
+rejecting the forms which our brethren abuse.
+
+IV. When an indifferent thing is made into an essential, it ceases to be
+indifferent, and must be fought against.
+
+Paul proclaimed that circumcision and uncircumcision were alike
+unavailing. A man might be a good Christian either way. They were not
+unimportant in all respects, but in regard to being united to Christ, it
+did not matter which side one took. And, in accordance with this noble
+freedom, he for himself practised Jewish rites; and, when he thought it
+might conciliate prejudice without betraying principle, had Timothy
+circumcised. But when it came to be maintained as a principle that
+Gentiles _must_ be circumcised, the time for conciliation was past. The
+other side had made further concession impossible. The Apostle had no
+objection to circumcision. What he objected to was its being forced upon
+all as a necessary preliminary to entering the Church. And as soon as
+the opposite party took that ground, then there was nothing for it but
+to fight against them to the last. They had turned an indifferent thing
+into an essential, and he could no longer treat it as indifferent.
+
+So whenever parties or Churches insist on external rites as essential,
+or elevate any of the subordinate means of grace into the place of the
+one bond which fastens our souls to Jesus, and is the channel of grace
+as well as the bond of union, then it is time to arm for the defence of
+the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, and to resist the attempt to bind
+on free shoulders the iron yoke. Let men and parties do as they like, so
+long as they do not turn their forms into essentials. In broad freedom
+of speech and spirit, which holds by the one central principle too
+firmly to be much troubled about subordinate matters--in tolerance of
+diversities, which does not spring from indifference, but from the very
+clearness of our perception of, and from the very fervour of our
+adherence to, the one essential of the Christian life--let us take for
+our guide the large, calm, lofty thoughts which this text sets forth
+before us. Let us thankfully believe that men may love Jesus, and be fed
+from His fulness, whether they be on one side of this undying
+controversy or on the other. Let us watch jealously the tendencies in
+our own hearts to trust in our forms or in our freedom. And whensoever
+or wheresoever these subordinates are made into things essential, and
+the ordinances of Christ's Church are elevated into the place which
+belongs to loving trust in Christ's love, then let _our_ voices at least
+be heard on the side of that mighty truth that 'in Jesus Christ neither
+circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which
+worketh by love.'
+
+
+
+
+'WALK IN THE SPIRIT'
+
+          'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+          lust of the flesh.'--GAL. v. 16.
+
+
+We are not to suppose that the Apostle here uses the familiar contrast
+of spirit and flesh to express simply different elements of human
+nature. Without entering here on questions for which a sermon is
+scarcely a suitable vehicle of discussion, it may be sufficient for our
+present purpose to say that, as usually, when employing this antithesis
+the Apostle means by Spirit the divine, the Spirit of God, which he
+triumphed in proclaiming to be the gift of every believing soul. The
+other member of the contrast, 'flesh,' is similarly not to be taken as
+equivalent to body, but rather as meaning the whole human nature
+considered as apart from God and kindred with earth and earthly things.
+The flesh, in its narrower sense, is no doubt a predominant part of this
+whole, but there is much in it besides the material organisation. The
+ethics of Christianity suffered much harm and were degraded into a false
+and slavish asceticism for long centuries, by monastic misunderstandings
+of what Paul meant by the flesh, but he himself was too clear-sighted
+and too high-toned to give his adhesion to the superficial notion that
+the body is the seat and source of sin. We need look no further than the
+catalogue of the 'works of the flesh' which immediately follows our
+text, for, although it begins with gross sins of a purely fleshly kind,
+it passes on to such as hatred, emulations, wrath, envyings and
+suchlike. Many of these works of the flesh are such as an angel with an
+evil heart could do, whether he had a body or not. It seems therefore
+right to say that the one member of the contrast is the divine Spirit of
+holiness, and the other is man as he is, without the life-giving
+influence of the Spirit of God. In Paul's thought the idea of the flesh
+always included the idea of sin, and the desires of the flesh were to
+him not merely rebellious, sensuous passion, but the sinful desires of
+godless human nature, however refined, and as some would say,
+'spiritual' these might be. We do not need to inquire more minutely as
+to the meaning of the Apostle's terms, but may safely take them as, on
+the one hand, referring to the divine Spirit which imparts life and
+holiness, and on the other hand, to human nature severed from God, and
+distracted by evil desires because wrenched away from Him.
+
+The text is Paul's battle-cry, which he opposed to the Judaising
+disturbers in Galatia. They said 'Do this and that; labour at a round of
+observances; live by rule.' Paul said, 'No! That is of no use; you will
+make nothing of such an attempt nor will ever conquer evil so. Live by
+the spirit and you will not need a hard outward law, nor will you be in
+bondage to the works of the flesh.' That feud in the Galatian churches
+was the earliest battle which Christianity had to fight between two
+eternal tendencies of thought--the conception of religion as consisting
+in outward obedience to a law, and consequently as made up of a series
+of painful efforts to keep it, and the conception of religion as being
+first the implanting of a new, divine life, and needing only to be
+nourished and cared for in order to drive forth evils from the heart,
+and so to show itself living. The difference goes very far and very
+deep, and these two views of what religion is have each their adherents
+to-day. The Apostle throws the whole weight of his authority into the
+one scale, and emphatically declares this as the one secret of victory,
+'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.'
+
+I. What it is to walk in the Spirit.
+
+The thought which is but touched upon here is set forth more largely,
+and if we may so say, profoundly, in the Epistle to the Romans (chap.
+viii.). There, to walk after the flesh, is substantially the same as to
+be carnally minded, and that 'mind of the flesh' is regarded as being by
+fatal necessity not 'subject to the law of God,' and consequently as in
+itself, with regard to future consequences, to be death. The fleshly
+mind which is thus in rebellion against the law of God is sure to issue
+in 'desires of the flesh,' just as when the pressure is taken off, some
+ebullient liquid will bubble. They that are after the flesh of course
+will 'mind the things of the flesh.' The vehement desires which we
+cherish when we are separated from God and which we call sins, are
+graver as a symptom than even they are in themselves, for they show
+which way the wind blows, and are tell-tales that betray the true
+direction of our nature. If we were not after the flesh we should not
+mind the things of the flesh. The one expression points to the
+deep-seated nature, the other to the superficial actions to which it
+gives rise.
+
+And the same duality belongs to the life of those who are 'after the
+Spirit.' 'To walk,' of course, means to carry on the practical life, and
+the Spirit is here thought of not so much perhaps as the path on which
+we are to travel, but rather as the norm and direction by which we are
+to travel on life's common way. Just as the desires of the flesh were
+certain to be done by those who in their deepest selves belonged to the
+flesh, so every soul which has received the unspeakable gift of newness
+of life through the Spirit of God will have the impulses to mind and do
+the things of the Spirit. If we live in the Spirit we shall also--and
+let us also--walk in the Spirit.
+
+But let us make no mistakes, or think that our text in its great
+commandment and radiant hope has any word of cheer to those who have not
+received into their hearts, in however feeble a manner and minute a
+measure, the Spirit of the Son. The first question for us all is, have
+we received the Holy Ghost?--and the answer to that question is the
+answer to the other, have we accepted Christ? It is through Him and
+through faith in Him that that supreme gift of a living spirit is
+bestowed. And only when our spirits bear witness with that Spirit that
+we are the children of God, have we a right to look upon the text as
+pointing our duty and stimulating our hope. If our practical life is to
+be directed by the Spirit of God, He must enter into our spirits, and we
+shall not be in Him but in the measure that He is in us. Nor will our
+spirits be life because of righteousness unless He dwells in us and
+casts forth the works of the flesh. There will be no practical direction
+of our lives by the Spirit of God unless we make conscience of
+cultivating the reception of His life-giving and cleansing influences,
+and unless we have inward communion with our inward guide, intimate and
+frank, prolonged and submissive. If we are for ever allowing the light
+of our inward godliness to be blown about by gusts, or to show in our
+inmost hearts but a faint and flickering spark, how can we expect that
+it will shine safe direction on our outward path?
+
+II. Such walking in the Spirit conquers the flesh.
+
+We all know it as a familiar experience that the surest way to conquer
+any strong desire or emotion is to bring some other into operation. To
+concentrate attention on any overmastering thought or purpose, even if
+our object is to destroy it, is but too apt to strengthen it. And so to
+fix our minds on our own desires of the flesh, even though we may be
+honestly wishing to suppress them, is a sure way to invest them with new
+force; therefore the wise counsels of sages and moralists are, for the
+most part, destined to lead those who listen to them astray. Many a man
+has, in good faith, set himself to conquer his own evil lusts and has
+found that the nett result of his struggles has been to make the lusts
+more conspicuous and correspondingly more powerful. The Apostle knows a
+better way, which he has proved to his own experience, and now, with
+full confidence and triumph, presses upon his hearers. He would have
+them give up the monotonous and hopeless fight against the flesh and
+bring another ally into the field. His chief exhortation is a positive,
+not a negative one. It is vain to try to tie up men with restrictions
+and prohibitions, which when their desires are stirred will be burst
+like Samson's bonds. But if once the positive exhortation here is
+obeyed, then it will surely make short work of the desires and passions
+which otherwise men, for the most part, do not wish to get rid of, and
+never do throw off by any other method.
+
+We have pointed out that in our text to walk in the Spirit means to
+regulate the practical life by the Spirit of God, and that the 'desires
+of the flesh' mean the desires of the whole human nature apart from God.
+But even if we take the contrasted terms in their lower and commonly
+adopted sense, the text is true and useful. A cultivated mind habituated
+to lofty ideas, and quick to feel the nobility of 'spiritual' pursuits
+and possessions, will have no taste for the gross delights of sense, and
+will recoil with disgust from the indulgences in which more animal
+natures wallow. But while this is true, it by no means exhausts the
+great principle laid down here. We must take the contrasted terms in
+their fullest meaning if we would arrive at it. The spiritual life
+derived from Jesus Christ and lodged in the human spirit has to be
+guarded, cherished and made dominant, and then it will drive out the
+old. If the Spirit which is life because of righteousness is allowed
+free course in a human spirit, it will send forth its powers into the
+body which is 'dead because of sin,' will regulate its desires, and if
+needful will suppress them. And it is wiser and more blessed to rely on
+this overflowing influence than to attempt the hopeless task of coercing
+these desires by our own efforts.
+
+If we walk in the Spirit, we shall thereby acquire new tastes and
+desires of a higher kind which will destroy the lower. They to whom
+manna is sweet as angel's food find that they have lost their relish for
+the strong-smelling and rank-flavoured Egyptian leeks and garlic. A
+guest at a king's table will not care to enter a smoky hovel and will
+not be hungry for the food to be found there. If we are still dependent
+on the desires of the flesh we are still but children, and if we are
+walking in the Spirit we have outgrown our childish toys. The enjoyment
+of the gifts which the Spirit gives deadens temptation and robs many
+things that were very precious of their lustre.
+
+We may also illustrate the great principle of our text by considering
+that when we have found our supreme object there is no inducement to
+wander further in the search after delights. Desires are confessions of
+discontent, and though the absolute satisfaction of all our nature is
+not granted to us here, there is so much of blessedness given and so
+many of our most clamant desires fully met in the gift of life in
+Christ, that we may well be free from the prickings of desires which
+sting men into earnest seeking after often unreal good. 'The fruit of
+the Spirit is love, joy, peace,' and surely if we have these we may well
+leave the world its troubled delights and felicities. Christ's joy
+remains in us and our joy is full. The world desires because it does not
+possess. When a deeper well is sunk, a shallower one is pretty sure to
+give out. If we walk in the Spirit we go down to the deepest
+water-holding stratum, and all the surface wells will run dry.
+
+Further, we may note, that this walking in the Spirit brings into our
+lives the mightiest motives of holy living and so puts a bridle on the
+necks and a bit in the mouths of our untamed desires. Holding fellowship
+with the divine Indweller and giving the reins into His strong hand, we
+receive from Him the spirit of adoption and learn that if we are
+children then are we heirs. Is there any motive that will so surely
+still the desires of the flesh and of the mind as the blessed thought
+that God is ours and we His? Surely their feet should never stumble or
+stray, who are aware of the Spirit of the Son bearing witness with their
+spirit that they are the children of God. Surely the measure in which we
+realise this will be the measure in which the desires of the flesh will
+be whipped back to their kennels, and cease to disturb us with their
+barks.
+
+The whole question here as between Paul and his opponents just comes to
+this; if a field is covered with filth, whether is it better to set to
+work on it with wheel-barrows and shovels, or to turn a river on it
+which will bear away all the foulness? The true way to change the fauna
+and flora of a country is to change the level, and as the height
+increases they change themselves. If we desire to have the noxious
+creatures expelled from ourselves, we must not so much labour at their
+expulsion as see to the elevation of our own personal being and then we
+shall succeed. That is what Paul says, 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall
+not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.'
+
+III. Such a life is not freed from the necessity of struggle.
+
+The highest condition, of course, would be that we had only to grow, not
+to fight. It will come some day that all evil shall drop away, and that
+to walk in the Spirit will need no effort, but that time has not come
+yet. So in addition to all that we have been saying in this sermon, we
+must further say that Paul's exhortation has always to be coupled with
+the other to fight the good fight. The highest word for our earthly
+lives is not 'victory' but 'contest.' We shall not walk in the Spirit
+without many a struggle to keep ourselves within that charmed
+atmosphere. The promise of our text is not that we shall not feel, but
+that we shall not fulfil, the desires of the flesh.
+
+Now this is very commonplace and threadbare teaching, but it is none the
+less important, and is especially needful to be strongly emphasised when
+we have been speaking as we have just been doing. It is a historical
+fact, illustrated over and over again since Paul wrote, and not without
+illustration to-day, that there is constant danger of lax morality
+infecting Christian life under pretence of lofty spirituality. So it
+must ever be insisted upon that the test of a true walking in the Spirit
+is that we are thereby fitted to fight against the desires of the flesh.
+When we have the life of the Spirit within us, it will show itself as
+Paul has said in another place by the righteousness of the law being
+fulfilled in us, and by our 'mortifying the deeds of the body.' The gift
+of the Spirit does not take us out of the ranks of the combatants, but
+teaches us to fight, and arms us with its own sword for the conflict.
+There will be abundant opportunities of courage in attacking the sin
+that doth so easily beset us, and in resisting temptations which come to
+us by reason of our own imperfect sanctification. But there is all the
+difference between fighting at our own hand and fighting with the help
+of God's Spirit, and there is all the difference between fighting with
+the help of an unseen ally in heaven and fighting with a Spirit within
+us who helpeth our infirmities and Himself makes us able to contend, and
+sure, if we keep true to Him, to be more than conquerers through Him
+that loveth us.
+
+Such a conflict is a gift and a joy. It is hard but it is blessed,
+because it is an expression of our truest love; it comes from our
+deepest will; it is full of hope and of assured victory. How different
+is the painful, often defeated and monotonous attempt to suppress our
+nature by main force, and to tread a mill-horse round! The joyous
+freedom and buoyant hope taught us in the gospel way of salvation have
+been cramped and confined and all their glories veiled as by a mass of
+cobwebs spun beneath a golden roof, but our text sweeps away the foul
+obstruction. Let us learn the one condition of victorious conflict, the
+one means of subduing our natural humanity and its distracting desires,
+and let nothing rob us of the conviction that this is God's way of
+making men like angels. 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+lusts of the flesh.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
+
+          'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
+          long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23.
+          Meekness, temperance'--GAL. v. 22, 23.
+
+
+'The fruit of the Spirit,' says Paul, not the fruits, as we might more
+naturally have expected, and as the phrase is most often quoted; all
+this rich variety of graces, of conduct and character, is thought of as
+one. The individual members are not isolated graces, but all connected,
+springing from one root and constituting an organic whole. There is
+further to be noted that the Apostle designates the results of the
+Spirit as fruit, in strong and intentional contrast with the results of
+the flesh, the grim catalogue of which precedes the radiant list in our
+text. The works of the flesh have no such unity, and are not worthy of
+being called fruit. They are not what a man ought to bring forth, and
+when the great Husbandman comes, He finds no fruit there, however full
+of activity the life has been. We have then here an ideal of the noblest
+Christian character, and a distinct and profound teaching as to how to
+attain it. I venture to take the whole of this list for my text, because
+the very beauty of each element in it depends on its being but part of a
+whole, and because there are important lessons to be gathered from the
+grouping.
+
+I. The threefold elements of character here.
+
+It is perhaps not too artificial to point out that we have here three
+triads of which the first describes the life of the Spirit in its
+deepest secret; the second, the same life in its manifestations to men;
+and the third, that life in relation to the difficulties of the world,
+and of ourselves.
+
+The first of these three triads includes love, joy, and peace, and it is
+not putting too great a strain on the words to point out that the source
+of all three lies in the Christian relation to God. They regard nothing
+but God and our relation to Him; they would be all the same if there
+were no other men in the world, or if there were no world. We cannot
+call them duties or virtues; they are simply the results of communion
+with God--the certain manifestations of the better life of the Spirit.
+Love, of course, heads the list, as the foundation and moving principle
+of all the rest. It is the instinctive act of the higher life and is
+shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is the life sap which
+rises through the tree and given form to all the clusters. The remaining
+two members of this triad are plainly consequences of the first. Joy is
+not so much an act or a grace of character as an emotion poured into
+men's lives, because in their hearts abides love to God. Jesus Christ
+pledged Himself to impart His joy to remain in us, with the issue that
+our joy should be full. There is only one source of permanent joy which
+takes possession of and fills all the corners and crannies of the heart,
+and that is a love towards God equally abiding and all-pervasive. We
+have all known joys so perturbed, fragmentary and fleeting, that it is
+hard to distinguish them from sorrows, but there is no need that joys
+should be like green fruits hard and savourless and ready to drop from
+the tree. If God is 'the gladness of our joy,' and all our delights come
+from communion with Him, our joy will never pass and will fill the whole
+round of our spirits as the sea laves every shore.
+
+Peace will be built upon love and joy, if our hearts are ever turning to
+God and ever blessed with the inter-communion of love between Him and
+us. What can be strong enough to disturb the tranquillity that fills the
+soul independent of all externals? However long and close may be the
+siege, the well in the castle courtyard will be full. True peace comes
+not from the absence of trouble but from the presence of God, and will
+be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we
+live in, and partake of, the love of God.
+
+The second triad is long-suffering, kindness, goodness. All these three
+obviously refer to the spiritual life in its manifestations to men. The
+first of them--long-suffering--describes the attitude of patient
+endurance towards inflictors of injury or enemies, if we come forth from
+the blessed fellowship with God, where love, joy, and peace reign
+unbroken, and are met with a cold gust of indifference or with an icy
+wind of hate. The reality of our happy communion and the depth of our
+love will be tested by the patience of our long-suffering. Love
+suffereth long, is not easily provoked, is not soon angry. He has little
+reason to suppose that the love of God is shed abroad in his heart, or
+that the Spirit of God is bringing forth fruit in him, who has not got
+beyond the stage of repaying hate with hate, and scorn with scorn. Any
+fool can answer a fool according to his folly, but it takes a wise and a
+good man to overcome evil with good, and to love them that hate; and yet
+how certainly the fires of mutual antagonism would go out if there were
+only one to pile on the fuel! It takes two to make a quarrel, and no man
+living under the influence of the Spirit of God can be one of such a
+pair.
+
+The second and third members of this triad--kindness, goodness, slide
+very naturally into one another. They do not only require the negative
+virtue of not retaliating, but express the Christian attitude towards
+all of meeting them, whatever their attitude, with good. It is possible
+that kindness here expresses the inward disposition and goodness, the
+habitual actions in which that disposition shows itself. If that be the
+distinction between them, the former would answer to benevolence and the
+latter to beneficence. These three graces include all that Paul presents
+as Christian duty to our fellows. The results of the life of the Spirit
+are to pass beyond ourselves and to influence our whole conduct. We are
+not to live only as mainly for the spiritual enjoyments of fellowship
+with God. The true field of religion is in moving amongst men, and the
+true basis of all service of men is love and fellowship with God.
+
+The third triad--faithfulness, meekness, temperance--seems to point to
+the world in which the Christian life is to be lived as a scene of
+difficulties and oppositions. The rendering of the Revised Version is to
+be preferred to that of the Authorised in the first of the three, for it
+is not faith in its theological sense to which the Apostle is here
+referring. Possibly, however, the meaning may be trustfulness just as in
+1 Corinthians xiii. it is given as a characteristic of love that it
+'believeth all things.' More probably, however, the meaning is
+faithfulness, and Paul's thought is that the Christian life is to
+manifest itself in the faithful discharge of all duties and the honest
+handling of all things committed to it. Meekness even more distinctly
+contemplates a condition of things which is contrary to the Christian
+life, and points to a submissiveness of spirit which does not lift
+itself up against oppositions, but bends like a reed before the storm.
+Paul preached meekness and practised it, but Paul could flash into
+strong opposition and with a resonant ring in his voice could say 'To
+whom we gave place by subjection, No! not for an hour.' The last member
+of the triad--temperance--points to the difficulties which the spiritual
+life is apt to meet with in the natural passions and desires, and
+insists upon the fact that conflict and rigid and habitual self-control
+are sure to be marks of that life.
+
+II. The unity of the fruit.
+
+We have already pointed out the Apostles remarkable use of the word
+'fruit' here, by which he indicates that all the results of the life of
+the Spirit in the human spirit are to be regarded as a whole that has a
+natural growth. The foundation of all is of course that love which is
+the fulfilling of the law. It scarcely needs to be pointed out how love
+brings forth both the other elements of the first triad, but it is no
+less important to note that it and its two companions naturally lead on
+to the relations to men which make up the second triad. It is, however,
+worth while to dwell on that fact because there are many temptations for
+Christian people to separate between them. The two tables of the law are
+not seldom written so far apart that their unity ceases to be noted.
+There are many good people whose notions of religious duties are shut up
+in churches or chapels and limited to singing and praying, reading the
+Bible and listening to sermons, and who, even while they are doing good
+service in common life, do not feel that it is as much a religious duty
+to suppress the wish to retaliate as it is to sit in the sunshine of
+God's love and to feel Christ's joy and peace filling the heart. On the
+other hand many loud voices, some of them with great force of words and
+influence on the popular mind, are never wearied of preaching that
+Christianity is worn out as a social impulse, and that the service of
+man has nothing to do with the love of God. As plainly Paul's first
+triad naturally leads to his third. When the spiritual life has realised
+its deepest secret it will be strong to manifest itself as vigorous in
+reference to the difficulties of life. When that heart is blessed in its
+own settled love, abounding joy and untroubled peace, faithfulness and
+submission will both be possible and self-control will not be hard.
+
+III. The culture of the tree which secures the fruit.
+
+Can we suppose that the Apostle here is going back in thought to our
+Lord's profound teaching that every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,
+but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit? The obvious felicity of
+that metaphor often conceals for us the drastic force of its teaching,
+it regards all a man's conduct as but the outcome of his character, and
+brushes aside as trifling all attempts at altering products, whilst the
+producer remains unaltered. Whether Paul was here alluding to a known
+saying of Jesus or no, he was insisting upon the very centre of
+Christian ethics, that a man must first be good in order to do good. Our
+Lord's words seemed to make an impossible demand--'Make the tree
+good'--as the only way of securing good fruit, and it was in accordance
+with the whole cast of the Sermon on the Mount that the means of
+realising that demand was left unexpressed. But Paul stood on this side
+of Pentecost, and what was necessarily veiled in Christ's earlier
+utterances stood forth a revealed and blessed certainty to him. He had
+not to say 'Make the tree good' and be silent as to how that process was
+to be effected; to him the message had been committed, 'The Spirit also
+helpeth our infirmity.' There is but one way by which a corrupt tree can
+be made good, and that is by grafting into the wild briar stock a
+'layer' from the rose. The Apostle had a double message to proclaim, and
+the one part was built upon the other. He had first to preach--and this
+day has first to believe that God has sent His own Son in the likeness
+of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin--and then he had to proclaim
+that, through that mission, it became possible that the ordinance of the
+law might be fulfilled in us who 'walk not after the flesh but after the
+spirit.' The beginning, then, of all true goodness is to be sought in
+receiving into our corrupt natures the uncorrupted germs of the higher
+life, and it is only in the measure in which that Spirit of God moves in
+our spirits and, like the sap in the vine, permeates every branch and
+tendril, that fruit to eternal life will grow. Christian graces are the
+products of the indwelling divine life, and nothing else will succeed in
+producing them. All the preachings of moralists and all the struggles
+after self-improvement are reduced to impotence and vanity by the stern,
+curt sentence--'a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit.' Surely it
+should come to us all as a true gospel when we feel ourselves foiled by
+our own evil nature in our attempts to be better, that the first thing
+we have to do is not to labour at either of the two impossible tasks of
+the making our bad selves good, or of the getting good fruits from bad
+selves, but to open our spirits through faith in Jesus for the entrance
+into us of His Spirit which will change our corruption into
+incorruption, and cleanse us from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
+Shall we not seek to become recipient of that new life, and having
+received it, should we not give diligence that it may in us produce all
+its natural effects?
+
+These fruits, though they are the direct results of the indwelling
+Spirit and will never be produced without its presence, are none the
+less truly dependent upon our manner of receiving that Spirit and on our
+faithfulness and diligence in the use of its gifts. It is, alas! sadly
+too true, and matter of tragically common experience that instead of
+'trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord' heavy with ruddy
+clusters, there are but dwarfed and scrubby bushes which have scarcely
+life enough to keep up a little show of green leaves and 'bring no fruit
+to perfection'. Would that so-called Christian people would more
+earnestly and searchingly ask themselves why it is that, with such
+possibilities offered to them, their actual attainments should be so
+small. They have a power which is able to do for them exceeding
+abundantly above all that they can ask or think, and its actual effects
+on them are well on this side of both their petitions and their
+conceptions. There need be no difficulty in answering the question why
+our Christian lives do not correspond more closely to the Spirit that
+inspires them. The plain answer is that we have not cultivated, used,
+and obeyed Him. The Lord of the vineyard would less often have to ask
+'Wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it
+forth wild grapes?' if we listened more obediently to the pathetic
+command which surely should touch a grateful heart--'Grieve not the holy
+Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.'
+
+IV. How this is the only worthy fruit.
+
+We have already pointed out that the Apostle in the preceding context
+varies his terms, and catalogues the actions that come from the godless
+self as works, whilst those which are the outcome of the Spirit are
+fruit. The distinction thus drawn is twofold. Multiplicity is contrasted
+with unity and fruit with works. The deeds of the flesh have no
+consistency except that of evil; they are at variance with themselves--a
+huddled mob without regularity or order; and they are works indeed, but
+so disproportionate to the nature of the doer and his obligations that
+they do not deserve to be called fruit. It is not to attach too much
+importance to an accidental form of speech to insist upon this
+distinction as intended to be drawn, and as suggesting to us very solemn
+thoughts about many apparently very active lives. The man who lives to
+God truly lives; the busiest life which is not rooted in Him and
+directed towards Him has so far missed its aim as to have brought forth
+no good fruit, and therefore to have incurred the sentence that it is
+cut down and cast into the fire. There is a very remarkable expression
+in Scripture, 'The unfruitful works of darkness,' which admits the busy
+occupation and energy of the doers and denies that all that struggling
+and striving comes to anything. Done in the dark, they seemed to have
+some significance, when the light comes in they vanish. It is for us to
+determine whether our lives shall be works of the flesh, full, perhaps,
+of a time of 'sound and fury,' but 'signifying nothing,' or whether they
+shall be fruits of the Spirit, which we 'who have gathered shall eat in
+the courts of His holiness.' They will be so if, living in the Spirit,
+we walk in the Spirit, but if we 'sow to the flesh' we shall have a
+harder husbandry and a bitterer harvest when 'of the flesh we reap
+corruption,' and hear the awful and unanswerable question, 'What fruit
+had ye then of those things whereof ye are now ashamed?'
+
+
+
+
+BURDEN-BEARING
+
+          'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the
+          law of Christ. . . . 5. For every man shall bear his
+          own burden.'--GAL. vi. 25.
+
+
+The injunction in the former of these verses appears, at first sight, to
+be inconsistent with the statement in the latter. But Paul has a way of
+setting side by side two superficially contradictory clauses, in order
+that attention may be awakened, and that we may make an effort to
+apprehend the point of reconciliation between them. So, for instance,
+you remember he puts in one sentence, and couples together by a 'for,'
+these two sayings: 'Work out your own salvation'; 'It is God that
+worketh in you.' So here he has been exhorting the Galatian Christians
+to restore a fallen brother. That is one case to which the general
+commandment, 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' is applicable.
+
+I cannot here enter on the intervening verses by which he glides from
+the one to the other of these two thoughts which I have coupled
+together, but I may just point out in a word the outline of his course
+of thought. 'Bear ye one another's burden,' says he; and then he thinks,
+'What is it that keeps men from bearing each other's burdens?' Being
+swallowed up with themselves, and especially being conceited about their
+own strength and goodness. And so he goes on: 'If a man think himself to
+be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.' And what is the
+best cure for all these fancies inside us of how strong and good we are?
+To look at our work with an impartial and rigid judgment. It is easy for
+a man to plume himself on being good, and strong, and great; but let him
+look at what he has done, and try that by a high standard, and that will
+knock the conceit out of him. Or, if his work stands the test, then 'he
+shall have rejoicing in himself, and not' by comparing himself with
+other people. Two blacks do not make a white, and we are not to heighten
+the lustre of our own whiteness by comparing it with our neighbour's
+blackness. Take your act for what _it_ is worth, apart altogether from
+what other people are. Do not say, 'God! I thank thee that I am not as
+other men are . . . or even as this publican'; but look to yourself. There
+is an occupation with self which is good, and is a help to brotherly
+sympathy.
+
+And so the Apostle has worked round, you see, to almost an opposite
+thought from the one with which he started. 'Bear ye one another's
+burdens.' Yes, but a man's work is his own and nobody else's, and a
+man's character is his own and nobody else's, so 'every man shall bear
+his own burden.' The statements are not contradictory. They complete
+each other. They are the north and the south poles, and between them is
+the rounded orb of the whole truth. So then, let me point out that:
+
+I. There are burdens which can be shared, and there are burdens which
+_cannot_.
+
+Let us take the case from which the whole context has arisen. Paul was
+exhorting the Galatians, as I explained, in reference to their duty to a
+fallen brother; and he speaks of him--according to our version--as
+'overtaken in a fault.' Now, that is scarcely his idea, I think. The
+phrase, as it stands in our Bibles, suggests that Paul is trying to
+minimise the gravity of the man's offence; but just in proportion as he
+minimised its gravity would he weaken his exhortation to restore him.
+But what he is really doing is not to make as little as possible of the
+sin, but to make as much of it as is consistent with the truth. The word
+'overtaken' suggests that some sin, like a tiger in a jungle, springs
+upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness of the assault. The word
+so rendered may perhaps be represented by some such phrase as
+'discovered'; or, if I may use a 'colloquialism,' if a man be caught
+'red-handed.' That is the idea. And Paul does not use the weak word
+'fault,' but a very much stronger one, which means stark staring sin. He
+is supposing a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it at
+all. Here is a brother who has had an unblemished reputation; and all
+at once the curtain is thrown aside behind which he is working some
+wicked thing; and there the culprit stands, with the bull's-eye light
+flashed upon him, ashamed and trembling. Paul says, 'If you are a
+spiritual man'--there is irony there of the graver sort--'show your
+spirituality by going and lifting him up, and trying to help him.' When
+he says, 'Restore such an one,' he uses an expression which is employed
+in other connections in the New Testament, such as for mending the
+broken meshes of a net, for repairing any kind of damage, for setting
+the fractured bones of a limb. And that is what the 'spiritual' man has
+to do. He is to show the validity of his claim to live on high by
+stooping down to the man bemired and broken-legged in the dirt. We have
+come across people who chiefly show their own purity by their harsh
+condemnation of others' sins. One has heard of women so very virtuous
+that they would rather hound a fallen sister to death than try to
+restore her; and there are saints so extremely saintly that they will
+not touch the leper to heal him, for fear of their own hands being
+ceremonially defiled. Paul says, 'Bear ye one another's burdens'; and
+especially take a lift of each other's sin.
+
+I need not remind you how the same command applies in relation to
+pecuniary distress, narrow circumstances, heavy duties, sorrows, and all
+the 'ills that flesh is heir to.' These can be borne by sympathy, by
+true loving outgoing of the heart, and by the rendering of such
+practical help as the circumstances require.
+
+But there are burdens that cannot be borne by any but the man himself.
+
+There is the awful burden of personal existence. It is a solemn thing
+to be able to say 'I.' And that carries with it this, that after all
+sympathy, after all nestling closeness of affection, after the tenderest
+exhibition of identity of feeling, and of swift godlike readiness to
+help, each of us lives alone. Like the inhabitants of the islands of the
+Greek Archipelago, we are able to wave signals to the next island, and
+sometimes to send a boat with provisions and succour, but we are parted,
+'with echoing straits between us thrown.' Every man, after all, lives
+alone, and society is like the material things round about us, which are
+all compressible, because the atoms that compose them are not in actual
+contact, but separated by slenderer or more substantial films of
+isolating air. Thus there is even in the sorrows which we can share with
+our brethren, and in all the burdens which we can help to bear, an
+element which cannot be imparted. 'The heart knoweth its own
+bitterness', and neither 'stranger' nor other 'intermeddleth' with the
+deepest fountains of 'its joy.'
+
+Then again, there is the burden of responsibility which can be shared by
+none. A dozen soldiers may be turned out to make a firing party to shoot
+the mutineer, and no man knows who fired the shot, but one man did fire
+it. And however there may have been companions, it was his rifle that
+carried the bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say, 'The
+woman that Thou gavest me tempted me, and I did eat.' Or we say, 'My
+natural appetites, for which I am not responsible, but Thou who madest
+me art, drew me aside, and I fell', or we may say, 'It was not I; it was
+the other boy.' And then there rises up in our hearts a veiled form, and
+from its majestic lips comes 'Thou art the man'; and our whole being
+echoes assent--_Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa_--'My fault, my exceeding
+great fault.' No man can bear that burden.
+
+And then, closely connected with responsibility there is another--the
+burden of the inevitable consequences of transgression, not only away
+yonder in the future, when all human bonds of companionship shall be
+broken, and each man shall 'give account of himself to God,' but here
+and now; as in the immediate context the Apostle tells us, 'Whatsoever a
+man soweth, that shall he also reap.' The effects of our evil deeds come
+back to roost; and they never make a mistake as to where they should
+alight. If I have sown, I, and no one else, will gather. No sympathy
+will prevent to-morrow's headache after to-night's debauch, and nothing
+that anybody can do will turn the sleuth-hounds off the scent. Though
+they may be slow-footed, they have sure noses and deep-mouthed fangs.
+'If thou be wise thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest
+thou alone shalt bear it.' So there are burdens which can, and burdens
+which cannot, be borne.
+
+II. Jesus Christ is the Burden-bearer for both sorts of burdens.
+
+'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ,' not
+only as spoken by His lips, but as set forth in the pattern of His life.
+We have, then, to turn to Him, and think of Him as Burden-bearer in even
+a deeper sense than the psalmist had discerned, who magnified God as 'He
+who daily beareth our burdens.'
+
+Christ is the Burden-bearer of our sin. 'The Lord hath laid'--or made to
+meet--'upon Him the iniquity of us all.' The Baptist pointed his lean,
+ascetic finger at the young Jesus, and said, 'Behold the Lamb of God
+which beareth'--and beareth away--'the sin of the world.' How heavy the
+load, how real its pressure, let Gethsemane witness, when He clung to
+human companionship with the unutterably solemn and plaintive words, 'My
+soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch
+with Me.' He bore the burden of the world's sin.
+
+Jesus Christ is the bearer of the burden of the consequences of sin, not
+only inasmuch as, in His sinless humanity, He knew by sympathy the
+weight of the world's sin, but because in that same humanity, by
+identification of Himself with us, deeper and more wonderful than our
+plummets have any line long enough to sound the abysses of, He took the
+cup of bitterness which our sins have mixed, and drank it all when He
+said, 'My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Consequences still
+remain: thank God that they do! 'Thou wast a God that forgavest them,
+and Thou didst inflict retribution on their inventions.' So the outward,
+the present, the temporal consequences of transgression are left
+standing in all their power, in order that transgressors may thereby be
+scourged from their evil, and led to forsake the thing that has wrought
+them such havoc. But the ultimate consequence, the deepest of all,
+separation from God, has been borne by Christ, and need never be borne
+by us.
+
+I suppose I need not dwell on the other aspects of this burden-bearing
+of our Lord, how that He, in a very deep and real sense, takes upon
+Himself the sorrows which we bear in union with, and faith on, Him. For
+then the griefs that still come to us, when so borne, are transmitted
+into 'light affliction which is but for a moment.' 'In all their
+afflictions He was afflicted.' Oh, brethren! you with sad hearts, you
+with lonely lives, you with carking cares, you with pressing, heavy
+duties, cast your burden on the Christ, and He 'will sustain you,' and
+sorrows borne in union with Him will change their character, and the
+very cross shall be wreathed in flowers.
+
+Jesus bears the burden of that solemn solitude which our personal being
+lays upon us all. The rest of us stand round, and, as I said, hoist
+signals of sympathy, and sometimes can stretch a brotherly hand out and
+grasp the sufferer's hand. But their help comes from without; Christ
+comes in, and dwells in our hearts, and makes us no longer alone in the
+depths of our being, which He fills with the effulgence and peace of His
+companionship. And so for sin, for guilt, for responsibility, for
+sorrow, for holiness, Christ bears our burdens.
+
+Yes! And when He takes ours on His shoulders, He puts His on ours. 'My
+yoke is easy, and My burden is light.' As the old mystics used to say,
+Christ's burden carries him that carries it. It may add a little weight,
+but it gives power to soar, and it gives power to progress. It is like
+the wings of a bird, it is like the sails of a ship.
+
+III. Lastly, Christ's carrying our burdens binds us to carry our
+brother's!
+
+'So fulfil the law of Christ.' There is a very biting sarcasm, and, as I
+said about another matter, a grave irony in Paul's use of that word
+'law' here. For the whole of this Epistle has been directed against the
+Judaising teachers who were desirous of cramming Jewish law down
+Galatian throats, and is addressed to their victims in the Galatian
+churches who had fallen into the trap. Paul turns round on them here,
+and says, 'You want law, do you? Well, if you _will_ have it, here it
+is--the law of Christ.' Christ's life is our law. Practical Christianity
+is doing what Christ did. The Cross is not only the ground of our hope,
+but the pattern of our conduct.
+
+And, says Paul in effect, the example of Jesus Christ, in all its sweep,
+and in all the depth of it, is the only motive by which this injunction
+that I am giving you will ever be fulfilled. 'Bear ye one another's
+burdens.' You will never do that unless you have Christ as the ground of
+your hope, and His great sacrifice as the example for your conduct. For
+the hindrance that prevents sympathy is self-absorption; and that
+natural selfishness which is in us all will never be exorcised and
+banished from us thoroughly, so as that we shall be awake to all the
+obligations to bear our brother's burdens, unless Christ has dethroned
+self, and is the Lord of our inmost spirits.
+
+I rejoice as much as any man in the largely increased sense of mutual
+responsibility and obligation of mutual aid, which is sweetening society
+by degrees amongst us to-day, but I believe that no Socialistic or other
+schemes for the regeneration of society which are not based on the
+Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will live and grow. There is
+but one power that will cast out natural selfishness, and that is love
+to Christ, apprehending His Cross as the great example to which our
+lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing sense of
+brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not consciously connected with
+any faith in Christianity, is, to a very large extent, the result of the
+diffusion through society of the spirit of Christianity, even where its
+body is rejected. Thank God, the river of the water of life can
+percolate through many a mile of soil, and reach the roots of trees far
+away, in the pastures of the wilderness, that know not whence the
+refreshing moisture has come. But on the wide scale be sure of this: it
+is the law of Christ that will fight and conquer the natural selfishness
+which makes bearing our brother's burdens an impossibility for men.
+Only, Christian people! let us take care that we are not robbed of our
+prerogative of being foremost in all such things, by men whose zeal has
+a less heavenly source than ours ought to have. Depend upon it, heresy
+has less power to arrest the progress of the Church than the selfish
+lives of Christian professors.
+
+So, dear friends, let us see to it that we first of all cast our own
+burdens on the Christ who is able to bear them all, whatever they are.
+And then let us, with lightened hearts and shoulders, make our own the
+heavy burdens of sin, of sorrow, of care, of guilt, of consequences, of
+responsibility, which are crushing down many that are weary and heavy
+laden. For be sure of this, if we do not bear our brother's burdens, the
+load that we thought we had cast on Christ will roll back upon
+ourselves. He is able to bear both us and our burdens, if we will let
+Him, and if we will fulfil that law of Christ which was illustrated in
+all His life, 'Who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor,'
+and was written large in letters of blood upon that Cross where there
+was 'laid on Him the iniquity of us all.'
+
+
+
+
+DOING GOOD TO ALL
+
+          'As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good
+          unto all. . . .'--GAL. vi. 10.
+
+
+'As we have therefore'--that points a finger backwards to what has gone
+before. The Apostle has been exhorting to unwearied well-doing, on the
+ground of the certain coming of the harvest season. Now, there is a
+double link of connection between the preceding words and our text; for
+'do good' looks back to 'well-doing,' and the word rendered
+'opportunity' is the same as that rendered 'season.' So, then, two
+thoughts arise--'well-doing' includes doing good to others, and is not
+complete unless it does. The future, on the whole, is the season of
+reaping; the present life on the whole is the season of sowing; and
+while life as a whole is the seed-time, in detail it is full of
+opportunities, openings which make certain good deeds possible, and
+which therefore impose upon us the obligation to do them. If we were in
+the habit of looking on life mainly as a series of opportunities for
+well-doing, how different it would be; and how different we should be!
+
+Now, this injunction is seen to be reasonable by every man, whether he
+obeys it or not. It is a commonplace of morality, which finds assent in
+all consciences, however little it may mould lives. But I wish to give
+it a particular application, and to try to enforce its bearing upon
+Christian missionary work. And the thought that I would suggest is just
+this, that no Christian man discharges that elementary obligation of
+plain morality, if he is indifferent to this great enterprise. 'As we
+have an opportunity, let us do good to all.' That is the broad
+principle, and one application is the duty of Christian men to diffuse
+the Gospel throughout the world.
+
+I. Let me ask you to look at the obligation that is thus suggested.
+
+As I have said, well-doing is the wider, and doing good to others the
+narrower, expression. The one covers the whole ground of virtue, the
+other declares that virtue which is self-regarding, the culture which
+is mainly occupied with self, is lame and imperfect, and there is a
+great gap in it, as if some cantle had been cut out of the silver disc
+of the moon. It is only full-orbed when in well-doing, and as a very
+large constituent element of it, there is included the doing good to
+others. That is too plain to need to be stated. We hear a great deal
+to-day about altruism. Well, Christianity preaches that more
+emphatically than any other system of thought, morals, or religion does.
+And Christianity brings the mightiest motives for it, and imparts the
+power by which obedience to that great law that every man's conscience
+responds to is made possible.
+
+But whilst thus we recognise as a dictate of elementary morality that
+well-doing must necessarily include doing good to others, and feel, as I
+suppose we all do feel, when we are true to our deepest convictions,
+that possessions of all sorts, material, mental, and all others, are
+given to us in stewardship, and not in absolute ownership, in order that
+God's grace in its various forms may fructify through us to all, my
+present point is that, if that is recognised as being what it is, an
+elementary dictate of morality enforced by men's relationships to one
+another, and sealed by their own consciences, there is no getting away
+from the obligation upon all Christian men which it draws after it, of
+each taking his share in the great work of imparting the gospel to the
+whole world.
+
+For that gospel is our highest good, the best thing that we can carry to
+anybody. We many of us recognise the obligation that is devolved upon us
+by the possession of wealth, to use it for others as well as for
+ourselves. We recognise, many of us, the obligation that is devolved
+upon us by the possession of knowledge, to impart it to others as well
+as ourselves. We are willing to give of our substance, of our time, of
+our effort, to impart much that we have. But some of us seem to draw a
+line at the highest good that we have, and whilst responding to all
+sorts of charitable and beneficent appeals made to us, and using our
+faculties often for the good of other people, we take no share and no
+interest in communicating the highest of all goods, the good which comes
+to the man in whose heart Christ rests. It is our highest good, because
+it deals with our deepest needs, and lifts us to the loftiest position.
+The gospel brings our highest good, because it brings eternal good,
+whilst all other benefits fade and pass, and are left behind with life
+and the dead flesh. It is our highest good, because if that great
+message of salvation is received into a heart, or moulds the life of a
+nation, it will bring after it, as its ministers and results, all manner
+of material and lesser benefit. And so, giving Christ we give _our_
+best, and giving Christ we give the highest gift that a weary world can
+receive.
+
+Remember, too, that the impartation of this highest good is one of the
+main reasons why we ourselves possess it. Jesus Christ can redeem the
+world alone, but it cannot become a redeemed world without the help of
+His servants. He needs us in order to carry into all humanity the
+energies that He brought into the midst of mankind by His Incarnation
+and Sacrifice; and the cradle of Bethlehem and the Cross of Cavalry are
+not sufficient for the accomplishment of the purpose for which they
+respectively came to pass, without the intervention and ministry of
+Christian people. It was for this end amongst others, that each of us
+who have received that great gift into our hearts have been enriched by
+it. The river is fed from the fountains of the hills, in order that it
+may carry verdure and life whithersoever it goes. And you and I have
+been brought to the Cross of Christ, and made His disciples, not only in
+order that we ourselves might be blessed and quickened by the gift
+unspeakable, but in order that through us it may be communicated, just
+as each particle when leavened in the mass of the dough communicates its
+energy to its adjacent particle until the whole is leavened.
+
+I am afraid that indifference to the communication of the highest good,
+which marks sadly too many Christian professors in all ages, and in this
+age, is a suspicious indication of a very slight realisation of the good
+for themselves. Luther said that justification was the article of a
+standing or a falling church. That may be true in the region of
+theology, but in the region of practical life I do not know that you
+will find a test more reliable and more easy of application than this,
+Does a man care for spreading amongst his fellows the gospel that he
+himself has received? If he does not, let him ask himself whether, in
+any real sense, he has it. 'Well-doing' includes doing good to others,
+and the possession of Christ will make it certain that we shall impart
+Him.
+
+II. Notice the bearing of this elementary injunction upon the scope of
+the obligation.
+
+'Let us do good to all men.' It was Christianity that invented the word
+'humanity'; either in its meaning of the aggregate of men or its meaning
+of a gracious attitude towards them. And it invented the word because it
+revealed the thing on which it rests. 'Brotherhood' is the sequel of
+'Fatherhood,' and the conception of mankind, beneath all diversities of
+race and culture and the like, as being an organic whole, knit together
+by a thousand mystical bands, and each atom of which has connection
+with, and obligations to, every other--that is a product of
+Christianity, however it may have been in subsequent ages divorced from
+a recognition of its source. So, then, the gospel rises above all the
+narrow distinctions which call themselves patriotism and are parochial,
+and it says that there is 'neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, Jew
+nor Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,' but all are one. Get
+high enough up upon the hill, and the hedges between the fields are
+barely perceptible. Live on the elevation to which the Gospel of Jesus
+Christ lifts men, and you look down upon a great prairie, without a
+fence or a ditch or a division. So my text comes with profound
+significance, 'Let us do good to all,' because all are included in the
+sweep of that great purpose of love, and in the redeeming possibilities
+of that great death on the Cross. Christ has swept the compass, if I may
+say so, of His love and work all round humanity; and are we to extend
+our sympathies or our efforts less widely? The circle includes the
+world; our sympathies should be as wide as the circle that Christ has
+drawn.
+
+Let me remind you, too, that only such a world-wide communication of the
+highest good that has blessed ourselves will correspond to the proved
+power of that Gospel which treats as of no moment diversities that are
+superficial, and can grapple with and overcome, and bind to itself as a
+crown of glory, every variety of character, of culture, of circumstance,
+claiming for its own all races, and proving itself able to lift them
+all. 'The Bread of God which came down from heaven' is an exotic
+everywhere, because it came down from heaven, but it can grow in all
+soils, and it can bring forth fruit unto eternal life everywhere amongst
+mankind. So 'let us do good to all.'
+
+And then we are met by the old objection, 'The eyes of a fool are in the
+ends of the earth. Keep your work for home, that wants it.' Well! I am
+perfectly ready to admit that in Christian work, as in all others there
+must be division of labour, and that one man's tastes and inclinations
+will lead him to one sphere and one form of it; and another man's to
+another; and I am quite ready, not to admit, but strongly to insist,
+that, whatever happens, home is not to be neglected. 'All men' includes
+the slums in England as well as the savages in Africa, and it is no
+excuse for neglecting either of these departments that we are trying to
+do something in the other. But it is not uncharitable to say that the
+objection to which I am referring is most often made by one or other of
+two classes, either by people who do not care about the Gospel, nor
+recognise the 'good' of it at all, or by people who are ingenious in
+finding excuses for not doing the duty to which they are at the moment
+summoned. The people that do the one are the people that do the other.
+Where do you get your money from for home work? Mainly from the
+Christian Churches. Who is it that keeps up missionary work abroad?
+Mainly the Christian Churches. There is a vast deal of unreality in that
+objection. Just think of the disproportion between the embarrassment of
+riches in our Christian appliances here in England and the destitution
+in these distant lands. Here the ships are crammed into a dock, close up
+against one another, rubbing their yards upon each other; and away out
+yonder on the waters there are leagues of loneliness, where never a
+sail is seen. Here, at home, we are drenched with Christian teaching,
+and the Churches are competing with each other, often like rival
+tradespeople for their customers; and away out yonder a man to half a
+million is considered a fair allowance. 'Let us do good to all.'
+
+III. Lastly, note the bearing of this elementary precept on the
+occasions that rise for the discharge of the duty.
+
+'As we have opportunity.' As I have already said, the Christian way to
+look at our circumstances is to regard them as openings for the exercise
+of Christian virtue, and therefore summonses to its discharge. And if we
+regarded our own position individually, so we should find that there
+were many, many doors that had long been opened, into which we had been
+too blind or too lazy, or too selfishly absorbed in our own concerns, to
+enter. The neglected opportunities, the beckoning doors whose thresholds
+we have never crossed, the good that we might have done and have not
+done--these are as weighty to sink us as the positive sins, the
+opportunities for which have appealed to our worse selves.
+
+But I desire to say a word, not only about the opportunities offered to
+us individually, but about those offered to England for this great
+enterprise. The prophet of old represented the proud Assyrian conqueror
+as boasting, 'My hand hath gathered as a nest the riches of the peoples
+. . . and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or
+peeped.' It might be the motto of England to-day. It is not for nothing
+that we and our brethren across the Atlantic, the inheritors of the same
+faith and morals and literature, and speaking the same tongue, have had
+given to us the wide dominion that we possess, I know that England has
+not climbed to her place without many a crime, and that in her 'skirts
+is found the blood of poor innocents,' but yet we have that connection,
+for good or for evil, with subject races all over the earth. And I ask
+whether or not that is an opportunity that the Christian Church is bound
+to make use of. What have we been intrusted with it for? Commerce,
+dominion, the impartation of Western knowledge, literature, laws? Yes!
+Is that all? Are you to send shirting and not the Gospel? Are you to
+send muskets that will burst, and gin that is poison, and not
+Christianity? Are you to send Shakespeare, and Milton, and modern
+science, and Herbert Spencer, and not Evangelists and the Gospels? Are
+you to send the code of English law and not Christ's law of love? Are
+you to send godless Englishmen, 'through whom the name of God is
+blasphemed amongst the Gentiles,' and are you not to send missionaries
+of the Cross? A Brahmin once said to a missionary, 'Look here! Your Book
+is a good Book. If you were as good as your Book you would make India
+Christian in ten years.'
+
+Brethren! the European world to-day is fighting and scrambling over what
+it calls the unclaimed corners of the world; looking upon all lands that
+are uncivilised by Western civilisation either as markets, or as parts
+of their empire. Is there no other way of looking at the heathen world
+than that? How did Christ look at it? He was moved when He saw the
+multitudes as 'sheep having no shepherd.' Oh! if Christian men, as
+members of this nation, would rise to the height of Christ's place of
+vision, and would look at the world with His eyes, what a difference it
+would make! I appeal to you, Christian men and women, as members of
+this nation, and therefore responsible, though it may be
+infinitesimally, for what this nation is doing in the distant corners of
+the world, and urge on you that you are bound, so far as your influence
+goes, to protest against the way of looking at these heathen lands as
+existing to be exploited for the material benefit of these Western
+Powers. You are bound to lend your voice, however weak it may be, to the
+protests against the savage treatment of native races--against the
+drenching of China with narcotics, and Africa with rum; to try to look
+at the world as Christ looked at it, to rise to the height of that great
+vision which regards all men as having been in His heart when He died on
+the Cross, and refuses to recognise in this great work 'Barbarian,
+Scythian, bond or free.' We have awful responsibilities; the world is
+open to us. We have the highest good. How shall we obey this elementary
+principle of our text, unless we help as we can in spreading Christ's
+reign? Blessed shall we be if, and only if, we fill the seed-time with
+delightful work, and remember that well-doing is imperfect unless it
+includes doing good to others, and that the best good we can do is to
+impart the Unspeakable Gift to the men that need it.
+
+
+
+
+THE OWNER'S BRAND
+
+          'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
+          Jesus.'--GAL. vi. 17.
+
+
+The reference in these words is probably to the cruel custom of branding
+slaves as we do cattle, with initials or signs, to show their ownership.
+It is true that in old times criminals, and certain classes of Temple
+servants, and sometimes soldiers, were also so marked, but it is most in
+accordance with the Apostle's way of thinking that he here has reference
+to the first class, and would represent himself as the _slave_ of Jesus
+Christ, designated as His by the scars and weaknesses which were the
+consequences of his apostolic zeal. Imprisonment, beating by the Jewish
+rod, shipwrecks, fastings, weariness, perils, persecutions, all these he
+sums up in another place as being the tokens by which he was approved as
+an apostle of Jesus Christ. And here he, no doubt, has the same thought
+in his mind, that his bodily weakness, which was the direct issue of his
+apostolic work, showed that he was Christ's. The painful infirmity under
+which, as we learn, he was more especially suffering, about the time of
+writing this letter, may also have been in his mind.
+
+All through this Epistle he has been thundering and lightning against
+the disputers of this apostolic authority. And now at last he softens,
+and as it were, bares his thin arm, his scarred bosom, and bids these
+contumacious Galatians look upon them, and learn that he has a right to
+speak as the representative and messenger of the Lord Jesus.
+
+So we have here two or three points, I think, worth considering. First,
+think for a moment of the slave of Christ; then of the brands which mark
+the ownership; then of the glory in the servitude and the sign; and then
+of the immunity from human disturbances which that service gives. 'From
+henceforth let no man trouble me. I bear in my body the marks of the
+Lord Jesus.'
+
+I. First, then, a word or two about that conception of the slave of
+Christ.
+
+It is a pity that our Bible has not rendered the title which Paul ever
+gives himself at the beginning of his letters, by that simple word
+'slave,' instead of the feebler one, 'servant.' For what he means when
+he calls himself the 'servant of Jesus Christ' is not that he bore to
+Christ the kind of relation which servants among us bear to those who
+have hired and paid them, and to whom they have come under obligations
+of their own will which they can terminate at any moment by their own
+caprice; but that he was in the roughest and simplest sense of the word,
+Christ's slave.
+
+What lies in that metaphor? Well, it is the most uncompromising
+assertion of the most absolute authority on the one hand, and claim of
+unconditional submission and subjection on the other.
+
+The slave belonged to his master; the master could do exactly as he
+liked with him. If he killed him nobody had anything to say. He could
+set him to any task; he could do what he liked with any little
+possession or property that the slave seemed to have. He could break all
+his relationships, and separate him from wife and kindred.
+
+All that is atrocious and blasphemous when it is applied to the
+relations between man and man, but it is a blessed and magnificent truth
+when it is applied to the relations between a man and Christ. For this
+Lord has absolute authority over us, and He can do what He likes with
+everything that belongs to us; and we, and our duties, and our
+circumstances, and our relationships, are all in His hands, and the one
+thing that we have to render to Him is utter, absolute, unquestioning,
+unhesitating, unintermittent and unreserved obedience and submission.
+That which is abject degradation when it is rendered to a man, that
+which is blasphemous presumption when it is required by a man, that
+which is impossible, in its deepest reality, as between man and man, is
+possible, is blessed, is joyful and strong when it is required by, and
+rendered to, Jesus Christ. We are His slaves if we have any living
+relationship to Him at all. Where, then, in the Christian life, is there
+a place for self-will; where a place for self-indulgence; where for
+murmuring or reluctance; where for the assertion of any rights of my own
+as against that Master? We owe absolute obedience and submission to
+Jesus Christ.
+
+And what does the metaphor carry as to the basis on which this authority
+rests? How did men acquire slaves? Chiefly by purchase. The abominations
+of the slave market are a blessed metaphor for the deep realities of the
+Christian life. Christ has bought you for His own. The only thing that
+gives a human soul the right to have any true authority over another
+human soul is that it shall have yielded itself to the soul whom it
+would control. We must first of all give ourselves away before we have
+the right to possess, and the measure in which we give ourselves to
+another is the measure in which we possess another. And so Christ our
+Lord, according to the deep words of one of Paul's letters, 'gives
+Himself for us, that He might purchase unto Himself a people for His
+possession.' 'Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price.'
+
+Therefore the absolute authority, and unconditional surrender and
+submission which are the very essence of the Christian life, at bottom
+are but the corresponding and twofold effects of one thing, and that is
+love. For there is no possession of man by man except that which is
+based on love. And there is no submission of man to man worth calling
+so except that which is also based therein.
+
+          'Thou hearts alone wouldst move;
+           Thou only hearts dost love.'
+
+The relation in both its parts, on the side of the Master and on the
+side of the captive bondsman, is the direct result and manifestation of
+that love which knits them together.
+
+Therefore the Christian slavery, with its abject submission, with its
+utter surrender and suppression of mine own will, with its complete
+yielding up of self to the control of Jesus, who died for me; because it
+is based upon His surrender of Himself to me, and in its inmost essence
+it is the operation of love, is therefore co-existent with the noblest
+freedom.
+
+This great Epistle to the Galatians is the trumpet call and clarion
+proclamation of Christian liberty. The breath of freedom blows
+inspiringly through it all. The very spirit of the letter is gathered up
+in one of its verses, 'I have been called unto liberty,' and in its
+great exhortation, 'Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ
+hath made you free.' It is then sufficiently remarkable and profoundly
+significant that in this very letter, which thus is the protest of the
+free Christian consciousness against all limitations and outward
+restrictions, there should be this most emphatic declaration that the
+liberty of the Christian is slavery and the slavery of the Christian is
+freedom. He is free whose will coincides with his outward law. He is
+free who delights to do what he must do. He is free whose rule is love,
+and whose Master is Incarnate Love. 'If the Son make you free, ye shall
+be free indeed.' 'O Lord, truly I am Thy servant, Thou hast loosed my
+bands.' 'I bear in my body' the charter of my liberty, for I bear in my
+body the 'brand of the Lord Jesus.'
+
+II. And so now a word in the next place about these marks of ownership.
+
+As I have said, the Apostle evidently means thereby distinctly the
+bodily weaknesses, and possibly diseases, which were the direct
+consequences of his own apostolic faithfulness and zeal. He considered
+that he proved himself to be a minister of God by his stripes,
+imprisonments, fastings, by all the pains and sufferings and their
+permanent consequences in an enfeebled constitution, which he bore
+because he had preached the Cross of Christ. He knew that these things
+were the result of his faithful ministry. He believed that they had been
+sent by no blundering, blind fate; by no mere secondary causes; but by
+his Master Himself, whose hand had held the iron that branded into the
+hissing flesh the marks of His ownership. He felt that by means of these
+he had been drawn nearer to his Master, and the ownership had been made
+more perfect. And so in a rapture of contempt of pain, this heroic soul
+looks upon even bodily weakness and suffering as being the signs that he
+belonged to Christ, and the means of that possession being made more
+perfect.
+
+Now, what is all that to us Christian people who have no persecutions to
+endure, and none of whom I am afraid have ever worked hard enough for
+Christ to have damaged our health by it? Is there anything in this text
+that may be of general application to us all? Yes! I think so. Every
+Christian man or woman ought to bear, in his or her body, in a plain,
+literal sense, the tokens that he or she belongs to Jesus Christ. You
+ask me how? 'If thy foot or thine hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast
+it from thee.'
+
+There are things in your physical nature that you have to suppress; that
+you have always to regulate and coerce; that you have sometimes entirely
+to cast away and to do without, if you mean to be Jesus Christ's at all.
+The old law of self-denial, of subduing the animal nature, its passions,
+appetites, desires, is as true and as needful to-day as it ever was; and
+for us all it is essential to the loftiness and purity of our Christian
+life that our animal nature and our fleshly constitution should be well
+kept down under heel and subdued. As Paul himself said in another place,
+'I bring under my body, and I keep it in subjection, lest by any means I
+should myself, having proclaimed to others the laws of the contest, be
+rejected from the prize.' Oh, you Christian men and women! if you are
+not living a life of self-denial, if you are not crucifying the flesh,
+with its affections and lusts, if you are not bearing 'about in the body
+the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Christ may be
+manifested in your mortal body,' what tokens are there that you are
+Christ's slaves at all?
+
+Then, besides this, we may expand the thought even further, and say
+that, in a very real sense, all the pains and sorrows and
+disappointments and afflictions that mainly touch our mortal part should
+be taken by us as, and made by us to be, the tokens that we belong to
+the Master.
+
+But it is not only in limitations and restrictions and self-denials and
+pains that Christ's ownership of us ought to be manifested in our daily
+lives, and so by means of our mortal bodies, but if there be in our
+hearts a deep indwelling possession of the grace and sweetness of
+Christ, it will make itself visible, ay! even in our faces, and 'beauty
+born of' our communion with Him 'shall pass into' and glorify even
+rugged and care-lined countenances. There may be, and there ought to be,
+in all Christian people, manifestly visible the tokens of the indwelling
+serenity of the indwelling Christ. And it should not be left to some
+moment of rapture at the end of life, for men to look upon us, to behold
+our faces, 'as it had been the face of an angel,' but by our daily walk,
+by our countenances full of a removed tranquillity, and a joy that rises
+from within, men ought to take knowledge of us that we have been with
+Jesus, and it should be the truth--I bear in my body the tokens of His
+possession.
+
+III. Now, once more notice the glorying in the slavery and its signs.
+
+'I bear,' says Paul; and he uses, as many of you may know, a somewhat
+remarkable word, which does not express mere bearing in the sense of
+toleration and patient endurance, although that is much; nor mere
+bearing in the sense of carrying, but implies bearing with a certain
+triumph as men would do who, coming back victorious from conflict, and
+being received into the city, were proud to show their scars, the
+honourable signs of their courage and constancy. So, with a triumph that
+is legitimate, the Apostle solemnly and proudly bears before men the
+marks of the Lord Jesus. Just as he says in another place:--'Thanks be
+unto God, which always leadeth us about in triumph in Jesus Christ,' He
+was proud of being dragged at the conqueror's chariot wheels, chained to
+them by the cords of love; and so he was proud of being the slave of
+Christ.
+
+It is a degradation to a man to yield abject submission, unconditional
+service to another man. It is the highest honour of our natures so to
+bow before that dear Lord. To prostrate ourselves to Him is to lift
+ourselves high in the scale of being. The King's servant is every other
+person's master. And he that feels that he is Christ's, may well be, not
+proud but conscious, of the dignity of belonging to such a Lord. The
+monarch's livery is a sign of honour. In our old Saxon kingdom the
+king's menials were the first nobles. So it is with us. The aristocracy
+of humanity are the slaves of Jesus Christ.
+
+And let us be proud of the marks of the branding iron, whether they come
+in the shape of sorrows and pains, or otherwise. It is well that we
+should have to carry these. It is blessed, and a special mark of the
+Master's favour that He should think it worth His while to mark us as
+His own, by any sorrow or by any pain. Howsoever hot may be the iron,
+and howsoever deeply it may be pressed by His firm, steady, gentle hand
+upon the quivering flesh and the shrinking heart, let us be thankful if
+He, even by it, impresses on us the manifest tokens of ownership. Oh,
+brethren! if we could come to look upon sorrows and losses with this
+clear recognition of their source, meaning and purpose, they change
+their nature, the paradox is fulfilled that we do 'gather grapes of
+thorns and figs of thistles.' 'I bear in my body,' with a solemn triumph
+and patient hope, 'the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
+
+IV. And now, lastly, the immunity from any disturbance which men can
+bring, which these marks, and the servitude they express, secure.
+
+'From henceforth let no man trouble me.' Paul claims that his apostolic
+authority, having been established by the fact of his sufferings for
+Christ, should give him a sacredness in their eyes; that henceforth
+there should be no rebellion against his teaching and his word. We may
+expand the thought to apply more to ourselves, and say that, in the
+measure in which we belong to Christ, and hear the marks of His
+possession of us, in that measure are we free from the disturbance of
+earthly influences and of human voices; and from all the other sources
+of care and trouble, of perturbation and annoyance, which harass and vex
+other men's spirits. 'Ye are bought with a price,' says Paul elsewhere.
+'Be not the servants of men.' Christ is your Master; do not let men
+trouble you. Take your orders from Him; let men rave as they like. Be
+content to be approved by Him; let men think of you as they please. The
+Master's smile is life, the Master's frown is death to the slave; what
+matters it what other people may say? 'He that judgeth me is the Lord.'
+So keep yourselves above the cackle of 'public opinion'; do not let your
+creed be crammed down your throats even by a consensus of however
+venerable and grave human teachers. Take your directions from your
+Master, and pay no heed to other voices if they would command. Live to
+please Him, and do not care what other people think. You are Christ's
+servant; 'let no man trouble' you.
+
+And so it should be about all the distractions and petty annoyances that
+disturb human life and harass our hearts. A very little breath of wind
+will ruffle all the surface of a shallow pond, though it would sweep
+across the deep sea and produce no effect. Deepen your natures by close
+union with Christ, and absolute submission to Him, and there will be a
+great calm in them, and cares and sorrows, and all the external sources
+of anxiety, far away, down there beneath your feet, will 'show scarce
+so gross as beetles,' whilst you stand upon the high cliff and look down
+upon them all. 'From henceforth no man shall trouble me.' 'I bear in my
+body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
+
+My brother! Whose marks do you bear? There are only two masters. If an
+eye that could see things as they are, were to go through this
+congregation, whose initials would it discern in your faces? There are
+some of us, I have no doubt, who in a very horrid sense bear in our
+bodies the marks of the idol that we worship. Men who have ruined their
+health by dissipation and animal sensualism--are there any of them here
+this morning? Are there none of us whose faces, whose trembling hands,
+whose diseased frames, are the tokens that they belong to the flesh and
+the world and the devil? Whose do _you_ bear?
+
+Oh! when one looks at all the faces that pass one upon the street--this
+all drawn with avarice and earthly-mindedness; that all bloated with
+self-indulgence and loose living--when one sees the mean faces, the
+passionate faces, the cruel faces, the vindictive faces, the lustful
+faces, the worldly faces, one sees how many of us bear in our bodies the
+marks of _another_ lord. They have no rest day nor night who worship the
+beast; and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.
+
+I pray you, yield yourselves to your true Lord, so on earth you may bear
+the beginnings of the likeness that stamps you His, and hereafter, as
+one of His happy slaves, shall do priestly service at His throne and see
+His face, and His name shall be in your foreheads.
+
+
+
+
+PHILIPPIANS
+
+
+
+
+LOVING GREETINGS
+
+          'Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to
+          all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at
+          Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: 2. Grace
+          to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
+          Jesus Christ. 3. I thank my God upon all my
+          remembrance of you, 4. Always in every
+          supplication of mine on behalf of you all making
+          my supplication with joy, 5. For your fellowship
+          in furtherance of the gospel from the first day
+          until now; 6. Being confident of this very thing
+          that He which began a good work in you will
+          perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ: 7. Even
+          as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf
+          of you all, because I have you in my heart,
+          inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence
+          and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are
+          partakers with me of grace. 8. For God is my
+          witness, how I long after you all in the tender
+          mercies of Christ Jesus.'--PHIL. i. 1-8 (R.V.).
+
+
+The bond between Paul and the church at Philippi was peculiarly close.
+It had been founded by himself, as is narrated at unusual length in the
+book of Acts. It was the first church established in Europe. Ten years
+had elapsed since then, possibly more. Paul is now a prisoner in Rome,
+not suffering the extremest rigour of imprisonment, but still a prisoner
+in his own hired house, accessible to his friends and able to do work
+for God, but still in the custody of soldiers, chained and waiting till
+the tardy steps of Roman law should come up to him, or perhaps till the
+caprice of Nero should deign to hear his cause. In that imprisonment we
+have his letters to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and
+Philemon, which latter three are closely connected in time, the two
+former in subject, and the two latter in destination. This letter stands
+apart from those to the great Asiatic churches.
+
+Its tone and general cast are unlike those of most of his letters. It
+contains no doctrinal discussions and no rebukes of evil, but is an
+outpouring of happy love and confidence. Like all Paul's epistles it
+begins with salutations, and like most of them with prayer, but from the
+very beginning is a long gush of love. These early verses seem to me
+very beautiful if we regard them either as a revelation of the personal
+character of the Apostle, or as a picture of the relation between
+teacher and taught in its most blessed and undisturbed form, or as a
+lovely ideal of friendship and love in any relation, hallowed and
+solemnised by Christian feeling.
+
+Verses one and two contain the apostolic greeting. In it we note the
+senders. Timothy is associated with Paul, according to his custom in all
+his letters even when he goes on immediately to speak in the singular.
+He ever sought to hide his own supremacy and to bring his friends into
+prominence. He was a great, lowly soul, who had no pride in the dignity
+of his position but felt the weight of its responsibility and would fain
+have had it shared. He calls Timothy and himself the slaves of Christ.
+He regarded it as his highest honour to be Christ's born servant, bound
+to absolute submission to the all-worthy Lord who had died to win him.
+It is to be noted that there is no reference here to apostolic
+authority, and the contrast is very remarkable in this respect with the
+Epistle to the Galatians, where with scornful emphasis he asserts it as
+bestowed 'not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ
+and God the Father.' In this designation of himself, we have already the
+first trace of the intimate and loving relationship in which Paul stood
+to the Philippians. There was no need for him to assert what was not
+denied, and he did not wish to deal with them officially, but rather
+personally. There is a similar omission in Philemon and a pathetic
+substitution there of the 'prisoner of Jesus Christ' for the 'slave of
+Christ Jesus.'
+
+The persons addressed are 'all the saints in Christ Jesus.' As he had
+not called himself an apostle, so he does not call them a church. He
+will not lose in an abstraction the personal bond which unites them.
+They are saints, which is not primarily a designation of moral purity,
+but of consecration to God, from whom indeed purity flows. The primitive
+meaning of the word is _separation_; the secondary meaning is
+_holiness_, and the connection between these two meanings contains a
+whole ethical philosophy. They are saints in Christ Jesus; union with
+Him is the condition both of consecration and of purity.
+
+The Philippian community had an organisation primitive but sufficient.
+We do not enter on the discussion of its two offices further than to
+note that the bishops are evidently identical with the elders, in the
+account in Acts xx. of Paul's parting with the Ephesian Christians,
+where the same persons are designated by both titles, as is also the
+case in Titus i. 5 and 7; the one name (elder) coming from the Hebrew
+and designating the office on the side of dignity, the other (bishop)
+being of Greek origin and representing it in terms of function. We note
+that there were several elders then in the Philippian church, and that
+their place in the salutation negatives the idea of hierarchical
+supremacy.
+
+The benediction or prayer for grace and peace is couched in the form
+which it assumes in all Paul's letters. It blends Eastern and Western
+forms of greeting. 'Grace' being the Greek and 'Peace' the Hebrew form
+of salutation. So Christ fuses and fulfils the world's desires. The
+grace which He gives is the self-imparting love of God, the peace which
+He gives is its consequence, and the salutation is an unmistakable
+evidence of Paul's belief in Christ's divinity.
+
+This salutation is followed by a great burst of thankful love, for the
+full apprehension of which we must look briefly at the details of these
+verses. We have first Paul's thankfulness in all his remembrance of the
+Philippians, then he further defines the times of his thankfulness as
+'always in every supplication of mind on behalf of you all making my
+supplication with joy.' His gratitude for them is expressed in all his
+prayers which are all thank-offerings. He never thinks of them nor prays
+for them without thanking God for them. Then comes the reason for his
+gratitude--their fellowship in furtherance of the gospel, from the first
+day when Lydia constrained him to come into her house, until this moment
+when now at the last their care of him had flourished again. The Revised
+Version's rendering 'fellowship in furtherance of' instead of
+'fellowship in' conveys the great lesson which the other rendering
+obscures--that the true fellowship is not in enjoyment but in service,
+and refers not so much to a common participation in the blessedness as
+in the toils and trials of Christian work. This is apparent in an
+immediately following verse where the Philippians' fellowship with
+Christ is again spoken of as consisting in sharing both in His bonds and
+in the double work of defending the gospel from gainsayers and in
+positively proclaiming it. Very beautifully in this connection does he
+designate that work and toil as 'my grace.'
+
+The fellowship which thus is the basis of his thanksgiving leads on to a
+confidence which he cherishes for them and which helps to make his
+prayers joyful thanksgivings. And such confidence becomes him because
+he has them in his heart, and 'love hopeth all things' and delights to
+believe in and anticipate all good concerning its object. He has them in
+his heart because they faithfully share with him his honourable, blessed
+burdens. But that is not all, it is 'in the tender mercies' of Christ
+that he loved them. His love is the love of Christ in him; his being is
+so united to Jesus that his heart beats with the same emotion as throbs
+in Christ's, and all that is merely natural and of self in his love is
+changed into a solemn participation in the great love which Christ has
+to them. This, then, being the general exposition of the words, let us
+now dwell for a little while on the broad principles suggested by them.
+
+I. Participation in the work of Christ is the noblest basis for love and
+friendship.
+
+Paul had tremendous courage and yet hungered for sympathy. He had no
+outlets for his love but his fellow Christians. There had, no doubt,
+been a wrenching of the ties of kindred when he became a Christian, and
+his love, dammed back and restrained, had to pour itself on his
+brethren.
+
+The Church is a workshop, not a dormitory, and every Christian man and
+woman is bound to help in the common cause. These Philippians help Paul
+by sympathy and gifts, indeed, but by their own direct work as well, and
+things are not right with us unless leaders can say, 'Ye all are
+partakers of my grace.' There are other real and sweet bonds of love and
+friendship, but the most real and sweetest is to be found in our common
+relation to Jesus Christ and in our co-operation in the work which is
+ours because it is His and we are His.
+
+II. Thankful, glad prayer flows from such co-operation.
+
+The prisoner in his bonds in the alien city had the remembrance of his
+friends coming into his chamber like fresh, cool air, or fragrance from
+far-off gardens. A thrill of gladness was in his soul as often as he
+thought on them. It is blessed if in our experience teacher and taught
+are knit together thus; without some such bond of union no good will be
+done. The relation of pastor and people is so delicate and spiritual,
+the purpose of it so different from that of mere teaching, the laws of
+it so informal and elastic, the whole power of it, therefore, so
+dependent on sympathy and mutual kindliness that, unless there be
+something like the bond which united Paul and the Philippians, there
+will be no prosperity or blessing. The thinnest film of cloud prevents
+deposition of dew. If all men in pulpits could say what Paul said of the
+Philippians, and all men in pews could deserve to have it said of them,
+the world would feel the power of a quickened Church.
+
+III. Confidence is born of love and common service.
+
+Paul delights to think that God will go on because God has already begun
+a good work in them, and Paul delights to think of their perfection
+because he loves them. 'God is not a man that He should lie, or the son
+of man that He should repent.' His past is the guarantee for His future;
+what He begins He finishes.
+
+IV. Our love is hallowed and greatened in the love of Christ.
+
+Paul lived, yet not he, but Christ lived in him. It is but one
+illustration of the principle of his being that Christ who was the life
+of his life, is the heart of his love. He longed after his Philippian
+friends in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus. This and this only is
+the true consecration of love when we live and love in the Lord; when we
+will as Christ does, think as He does, love as He does, when the mind
+that was in Christ Jesus was in us. It is needful to guard against the
+intrusion of mere human affection and regard into our sacred relations
+in the Church; it is needful to guard against it in our own personal
+love and friendship. Let us see that we ourselves know and believe the
+love wherewith Christ hath loved us, and then let us see that that love
+dwells in us informing and hallowing our hearts, making them tender with
+His great tenderness, and turning all the water of our earthly
+affections into the new wine of His kingdom. Let the law for our hearts,
+as well as for our minds and wills, be 'I live, yet not I but Christ
+liveth in me.'
+
+
+
+
+A COMPREHENSIVE PRAYER
+
+          'And this I pray, that your love may abound yet
+          more and more in knowledge and all discernment;
+          10. So that ye may approve the things that are
+          excellent; that ye may be sincere and void of
+          offence unto the day of Christ; 11. Being filled
+          with the fruits of righteousness, which are
+          through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of
+          God.'--PHIL. i. 9-11 (R.V.).
+
+
+What a blessed friendship is that of which the natural language is
+prayer! We have many ways, thank God, of showing our love and of helping
+one another, but the best way is by praying for one another. All that is
+selfish and low is purged out of our hearts in the act, suspicions and
+doubts fade away when we pray for those whom we love. Many an alienation
+would have melted like morning mists if it had been prayed about, added
+tenderness and delicacy come to our friendships so like the bloom on
+ripening grapes. We may test our loves by this simple criterion--Can we
+pray about them? If not, should we have them? Are they blessings to us
+or to others?
+
+This prayer, like all those in Paul's epistles, is wonderfully full. His
+deep affection for, and joy in, the Philippian church breathes in every
+word of it. Even his jealous watchfulness saw nothing in them to desire
+but progress in what they possessed. Such a desire is the highest that
+love can frame. We can wish nothing better for one another than growth
+in the love of God. Paul's estimate of the highest good of those who
+were dearest to him was that they should be more and more completely
+filled with the love of God and with its fruits of holiness and purity,
+and what was his supreme desire for the Philippians is the highest
+purpose of the gospel for us all, and should be the aim of our effort
+and longing, dominating all others as some sovereign mountain peak
+towers above the valleys. Looking then at this prayer as containing an
+outline of true progress in the Christian life, we may note:
+
+I. The growth in keenness of conscience founded on growth in love.
+
+Paul does not merely desire that their love may abound, but that it may
+become more and more 'rich in knowledge and all discernment.' The former
+is perhaps accurate knowledge, and the latter the application of it.
+'Discernment' literally means 'sense,' and here, of course, when
+employed about spiritual and moral things it means the power of
+apprehending good and bad as such. It is, I suppose, substantially
+equivalent to conscience, the moral tact or touch of the soul by which,
+in a manner analogous to bodily sense, it ascertains the moral character
+of things. This growth of love in the power of spiritual and moral
+discernment is desired in order to its exercise in 'proving things that
+differ.' It is a process of discrimination and testing that is meant,
+which is, I think, fairly represented by the more modern expression
+which I have used--keenness of conscience.
+
+I need spend little time in remarking on the absolute need of such a
+process of discrimination. We are surrounded by temptations to evil, and
+live in a world where maxims and principles not in accordance with the
+gospel abound. Our own natures are but partially sanctified. The shows
+of things must be tested. Apparent good must be proved. The Christian
+life is not merely to unfold itself in peace and order, but through
+conflict. We are not merely to follow impulses, or to live as angels do,
+who are above sin, or as animals do who are beneath it. When false coin
+is current it is folly to accept any without a test. All around us there
+is glamour, and so within us there is need for careful watchfulness and
+quick discrimination.
+
+This keenness of conscience follows on the growth of love. Nothing makes
+a man more sensitive to evil than a hearty love to God. Such a heart is
+keener to discern what is contrary to its love than any ethical maxims
+can make it. A man who lives in love will be delivered from the blinding
+influence of his own evil tastes, and a heart steadfast in love will not
+be swayed by lower temptations. Communion with God will, from its very
+familiarity with Him, instinctively discern the evil of evil, as a man
+coming out of pure air is conscious of vitiated atmosphere which those
+who dwell in it do not perceive. It used to be said that Venice glass
+would shiver into fragments if poison were poured into the cup. As evil
+spirits were supposed to be cast out by the presence of an innocent
+child or a pure virgin, so the ugly shapes that sometimes tempt us by
+assuming fair disguises will be shown in their native hideousness when
+confronted with a heart filled with the love of God.
+
+Such keenness of judgment is capable of indefinite increase. Our
+consciences should become more and more sensitive: we should always be
+advancing in our discovery of our own evils, and be more conscious of
+our sins, the fewer we have of them. Twilight in a chamber may reveal
+some foul things, and the growing light will disclose more. 'Secret
+faults' will cease to be secret when our love abounds more and more in
+knowledge, and in all discernment.
+
+II. The purity and completeness of character flowing from this keenness
+of conscience.
+
+The Apostle desires that the knowledge which he asks for his Philippian
+friends may pass over into character, and he describes the sort of men
+which he desires them to be in two clauses, 'sincere and void of
+offence' being the one, 'filled with the fruits of righteousness' being
+the other. The former is perhaps predominantly negative, the latter
+positive. That which is sincere is so because when held up to the light
+it shows no flaws, and that which is without offence is so because the
+stones in the path have been cleared away by the power of
+discrimination, so that there is no stumbling. The life which discerns
+keenly will bring forth the fruit which consists of righteousness, and
+that fruit is to fill the whole nature so that no part shall be without
+it.
+
+Nothing lower than this is the lofty standard towards which each
+Christian life is to aim, and to which it can indefinitely approximate.
+It is not enough to aim at the negative virtue of sincerity so that the
+most searching scrutiny of the web of our lives shall detect no flaws
+in the weaving, and no threads dropped or broken. There must also be the
+actual presence of positive righteousness filling life in all its parts.
+That lofty standard is pressed upon us by a solemn motive, 'unto the day
+of Christ.' We are ever to keep before us the thought that in that
+coming day all our works will be made manifest, and that all of them
+should be done, so that when we have to give account of them we shall
+not be ashamed.
+
+The Apostle takes it for granted here that if the Philippian Christians
+know what is right and what is wrong, they will immediately choose and
+do the right. Is he forgetting the great gulf between knowledge and
+practice? Not so, but he is strong in the faith that love needs only to
+know in order to do. The love which abounds more and more in knowledge
+and in all discernment will be the soul of obedience, and will delight
+in fulfilling the law which it has delighted in beholding. Other
+knowledge has no tendency to lead to practice, but this knowledge which
+is the fruit of love has for its fruit righteousness.
+
+III. The great Name in which this completeness is secured.
+
+The Apostle's prayer dwells not only on the way by which a Christian
+life may increase itself, but in its close reaches the yet deeper
+thought that all that growth comes 'through Jesus Christ.' He is the
+Giver of it all, so that we are not so much called to a painful toil as
+to a glad reception. Our love fills us with the fruits of righteousness,
+because it takes all these from His hands. It is from His gift that
+conscience derives its sensitiveness. It is by His inspiration that
+conscience becomes strong enough to determine action, and that even our
+dull hearts are quickened into a glow of desiring to have in our lives,
+the law of the spirit of life, that was in Christ Jesus, and to make our
+own all that we see in Him of 'things that are lovely and of good
+report.'
+
+The prayer closes with a reference to the highest end of all our
+perfecting--the glory and praise of God; the former referring rather to
+the transcendent majesty of God in itself, and the latter to the
+exaltation of it by men. The highest glory of God comes from the gradual
+increase in redeemed men's likeness to Him. They are 'the secretaries of
+His praise,' and some portion of that great honour and responsibility
+lies on each of us. If all Christian men were what they all might be and
+should be, swift and sure in their condemnation of evil and loyal
+fidelity to conscience, and if their lives were richly hung with ripened
+clusters of the fruits of righteousness, the glory of God would be more
+resplendent in the world, and new tongues would break into praise of Him
+who had made men so like Himself.
+
+
+
+
+A PRISONER'S TRIUMPH
+
+          'Now I would have you know, brethren, that the
+          things which happened unto me have fallen out
+          rather unto the progress of the gospel; 13. So
+          that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout
+          the whole prætorian guard, and to all the rest;
+          14. And that most of the brethren in the Lord,
+          being confident through my bonds, are more
+          abundantly bold to speak the word of God without
+          fear. 15. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy
+          and strife; and some also of good will: 16. The
+          one do it of love, knowing that I am set for the
+          defence of the gospel: 17. But the other proclaim
+          Christ of faction, not sincerely, thinking to
+          raise up affliction for me in my bonds. 18. What
+          then? only that in every way, whether in pretence
+          or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and therein I
+          rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. 19. For I know
+          that this shall turn to my salvation, through your
+          supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus
+          Christ. 20. According to my earnest expectation
+          and hope, that in nothing shall I be put to shame,
+          but that with all boldness, as always, so now also
+          Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by
+          life or by death.'--PHIL. i. 12-20 (R.V.)
+
+
+Paul's writings are full of autobiography, that is partly owing to
+temperament, partly to the profound interpenetration of his whole
+nature with his religion. His theology was but the generalisation of his
+experience. He has felt and verified all that he has to say. But the
+personal experiences of this sunny letter to his favourite church have a
+character all their own. In that atmosphere of untroubled love and
+sympathy a shyer heart than Paul's would have opened: his does so in
+tenderness, gladness, and trust. We have here the unveiling of his
+inmost self in response to what he knew would be an eager desire for
+news of his welfare. This whole section appears to me to be a wonderful
+revelation of his prison thoughts, an example of what we may call the
+ennobling power of a passionate enthusiasm for Christ. Remember that he
+is a prisoner, shut out from his life's work, waiting to be tried before
+Nero, whose reign had probably, by this time, passed from its delusive
+morning of dewy promise to its lurid noon. The present and the future
+were dark for him, and yet in spite of them all comes forth this burst
+of undaunted courage and noble gladness. We simply follow the course of
+the words as they lie, and we find in them,
+
+I. An absorbing purpose which bends all circumstances to its service and
+values them only as instruments.
+
+The things which happened unto me; that is Paul's minimising euphemism
+for the grim realities of imprisonment, or perhaps for some recent
+ominous turns in his circumstances. To him they are not worth dwelling
+on further, nor is their personal incidence worth taking into account;
+the only thing which is important is to say how these things have
+affected his life's work. It is enough for him, and he believes that it
+will be enough even for his loving friends at Philippi to know that,
+instead of their being as they might have feared, and as he sometimes
+when he was faithless expected, hindrances to his work, they have turned
+out rather to 'the furtherance of the gospel.' Whether he has been
+comfortable or not is a matter of very small importance, the main thing
+is that Christ's work has been helped, and then he goes on to tell two
+ways in which his imprisonment had conduced to this end.
+
+'My bonds became manifest in Christ.' It has been clearly shown why I
+was a prisoner; all the Prætorian guard had learned what Paul was there
+for. We know from Acts that he was 'suffered to abide by himself with
+the soldier that kept him.' He has no word to say of the torture of
+compulsory association, night and day, with the rude legionaries, or of
+the horrors of such a presence in his sweetest, sacredest moments of
+communion with his Lord. These are all swallowed up in the thought as
+they were in the fact, that each new guard as he came to sit there
+beside Paul was a new hearer, and that by this time he must have told
+the story of Christ and His love to nearly the whole corps. That is a
+grand and wonderful picture of passionate earnestness and absorbed
+concentration in one pursuit. Something of the same sort is in all
+pursuits, the condition of success and the sure result of real interest.
+We have all to be specialists if we would succeed in any calling. The
+river that spreads wide flows slow, and if it is to have a scour in its
+current it must be kept between high banks. We have to bring ourselves
+to a point and to see that the point is red-hot if we mean to bore with
+it. If our limitations are simply enforced by circumstances, they may be
+maiming, but if they come of clear insight and free choice of worthy
+ends, they are noble. The artist, the scholar, the craftsman, all need
+to take for their motto 'This one thing I do.' I suppose that a man
+would not be able to make a good button unless he confined himself to
+button-making. We see round us abundant examples of men who, for
+material aims and almost instinctively, use all circumstances for one
+end and appraise them according to their relations to that, and they are
+quoted as successful, and held up to young souls as patterns to be
+imitated. Yes! But what about the man who does the same in regard to
+Christ and His work? Is he thought of as an example to be imitated or as
+a warning to be avoided? Is not the very same concentration when applied
+to Christian work and living thought to be fanatical, which is welcomed
+with universal applause when it is directed to lower pursuits? The
+contrast of our eager absorption in worldly things and of the ease with
+which any fluttering butterfly can draw us away from the path which
+leads us to God, ought to bring a blush to all cheeks and penitence to
+all hearts. There was no more obligation on Paul to look at the
+circumstances of his life thus than there is on every Christian to do
+so. We do not desire that all should be apostles, but the Apostle's
+temper and way of looking at 'the things which happened unto' him should
+be our way of looking at the things which happen unto us. We shall
+estimate them rightly, and as God estimates them, only when we estimate
+them according to their power to serve our souls and to further Christ's
+kingdom.
+
+II. The magnetism or contagion of enthusiasm.
+
+The second way by which Paul's circumstances furthered the gospel was
+'that most of the brethren, being confident through my bonds, are more
+abundantly bold to speak the word of God.' His constancy and courage
+stirred them up. Moved by good-will and love, they were heartened to
+preach because they saw in him one 'appointed by God for the defence of
+the gospel.' A soul all on flame has power to kindle others. There is an
+old story of a Scottish martyr whose constancy at the stake touched so
+many hearts that 'a merry gentleman' said to Cardinal Beaton, 'If ye
+burn any more you should burn them in low cellars, for the reek (smoke)
+of Mr. Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon.'
+
+It is not only in the case of martyrs that enthusiasm is contagious.
+However highly we may estimate the impersonal forces that operate for
+'the furtherance of the gospel' we cannot but see that in all ages, from
+the time of Paul down to to-day, the main agents for the spread of the
+gospel have been individual souls all aflame with the love of God in
+Christ Jesus and filled with the life of His Spirit. The history of the
+Church has largely consisted in the biographies of its saints, and every
+great revival of religion has been the flame kindled round a flaming
+heart. Paul was impelled by his own love; the brethren in Rome were in a
+lower state as only reflecting his, and it ought to be the prerogative
+of every Christian to be a centre and source of kindling influence
+rather than a mere recipient of it. It is a question which may well be
+asked by each of us about ourselves--would anybody find quickening
+impulses to divine life and Christian service coming from us, or do we
+simply serve to keep others' coldness in countenance? It was said of old
+of Jesus Christ, 'He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire,'
+and that promise remains effective to-day, however little one looking on
+the characters of the mass of so-called Christians would believe it.
+They seem rather to have been plunged into ice-cold water than into
+fire, and their coldness is as contagious as Paul's radiant enthusiasm
+was. Let us try, for our parts, to radiate out the warmth of the love of
+God, that it may kindle in others the flame which it has lighted in
+ourselves, and not be like icebergs floating southwards and bringing
+down the temperature of even the very temperate seas in which we find
+ourselves.
+
+III. The wide tolerance of such enthusiasm.
+
+It is stigmatised as 'narrow,' which to-day is the sin of sins, but it
+is broad with the true breadth. Such enthusiasm lifts a man high enough
+to see over many hedges and to be tolerant even of intolerance, and of
+the indifference which tolerates everything but earnestness. Paul here
+deals with a class amongst the Roman Christians who were 'preaching of
+envy and strife,' with the malicious calculation that so they would
+annoy him and 'add affliction' to his bonds. It is generally supposed
+that these were Judaising Christians against whom Paul fulminates in all
+his letters, but I confess that, notwithstanding the arguments of
+authoritative commentators, I cannot believe that they are the same set
+of men preaching the same doctrines which in other places he treats as
+destructive of the whole gospel. The change of tone is so great as to
+require the supposition of a change of subjects, and the Judaisers with
+whom the Apostle waged a neverending warfare, never did evangelistic
+work amongst the heathen as these men seem to have done, but confined
+themselves to trying to pervert converts already made. It was not their
+message but their spirit that was faulty. With whatever purpose of
+annoyance they were animated, they did 'preach Christ,' and Paul
+superbly brushes aside all that was antagonistic to him personally, in
+his triumphant recognition that the one thing needful _was_ spoken, even
+from unworthy motives and with a malicious purpose. The situation here
+revealed, strange though it appears with our ignorance of the facts, is
+but too like much of what meets us still. Do we not know denominational
+rivalries which infuse a bitter taint of envy and strife into much
+evangelistic earnestness, and is the spectacle of a man preaching Christ
+with a taint of sidelong personal motives quite unknown to this day? We
+may press the question still more closely home and ask ourselves if we
+are entirely free from the influence of such a spirit. No man who knows
+himself and has learned how subtly lower motives blend themselves with
+the highest will be in haste to answer these questions with an
+unconditional 'No,' and no man who looks on the sad spectacle of
+competing Christian communities and knows anything of the methods of
+competition that are in force, will venture to deny that there are still
+those who preach Christ of envy and strife.
+
+It comes, then, to be a testing question for each of us, have we learned
+from Paul this lesson of tolerance, which is not the result of cold
+indifference, but the outcome of fiery enthusiasm and of a clear
+recognition of the one thing needful? Granted that there is preaching
+from unworthy motives and modes of work which offend our tastes and
+prejudices, and that there are types of evangelistic earnestness which
+have errors mixed up with them, are we inclined to say 'Nevertheless
+Christ is proclaimed, and therein I rejoice, Yea, and will rejoice'?
+Much chaff may be blended with the seeds sown; the chaff will lie inert
+and the seed will grow. Such tolerance is the very opposite of the
+carelessness which comes from languid indifference. The one does not
+mind what a man preaches because it has no belief in any of the things
+preached, and to it one thing is as good as another, and none are of any
+real consequence. The other proceeds from a passionate belief that the
+one thing which sinful men need to hear is the great message that Christ
+has lived and died for them, and therefore, it puts all else on one side
+and cares nothing for jangling notes that may come in, if only above
+them the music of His name sounds out clear and full.
+
+IV. The calm fronting of life and death as equally magnifying Christ.
+
+The Apostle is sure that all the experiences of his prison will turn to
+his ultimate salvation, because he is sure that his dear friends in
+Philippi will pray for him, and that through their prayers he will
+receive a 'supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,' which shall be enough
+to secure his steadfastness. His expectation is not that he will escape
+from prison or from martyrdom, both of which stand only too clearly
+before him, but that whatever may be waiting for him in the future, 'all
+boldness' will be granted him, so that whether he lives he will live to
+the Lord, or whether he dies, he will die to the Lord. He had so
+completely accepted it as his life's purpose to magnify Jesus, that the
+extremest possible changes of condition came to be insignificant to him.
+He had what we may have, the true anæsthetic which will give us a
+'solemn scorn of ills' and make even the last and greatest change from
+life to death of little account. If we magnify Christ in our lives with
+the same passionate earnestness and concentrated absorption as Paul had,
+our lives like some train on well-laid rails will enter upon the bridge
+across the valley with scarce a jolt. With whatever differences--and the
+differences are to us tremendous--the same purpose will be pursued in
+life and in death, and they who, living, live to the praise of Christ,
+dying will magnify Him as their last act in the body which they leave.
+What was it that made possible such a passion of enthusiasm for a man
+whom Paul had never seen in the flesh? What changed the gloomy
+fuliginous fanaticism of the Pharisee, at whose feet were laid the
+clothes of the men who stoned Stephen, into this radiant light, all
+aflame with a divine splendour? The only answer is in Paul's own words,
+'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' That answer is as true for each
+of us as it was for him. Does it produce in us anything like the effects
+which it produced in him?
+
+
+
+
+A STRAIT BETWIXT TWO
+
+          'To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22.
+          But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of
+          my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23.
+          For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire
+          to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far
+          better: 24. Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is
+          more needful for you. 25. And having this
+          confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue
+          with you all for your furtherance and joy of
+          faith.'--PHIL. i. 21-25.
+
+
+A preacher may well shrink from such a text. Its elevation of feeling
+and music of expression make all sermons on it sound feeble and harsh,
+like some poor shepherd's pipe after an organ. But, though this be true,
+it may not be useless to attempt, at least, to point out the course of
+thought in these grand words. They flow like a great river, which
+springs at first with a strong jet from some deep cave, then is torn and
+chafed among dividing rocks, and after a troubled middle course, moves
+at last with stately and equable current to the sea. The Apostle's
+thoughts and feelings have here, as it were, a threefold bent in their
+flow. First, we have the clear, unhesitating statement of the
+comparative advantages of life and death to a Christian man, when
+thought of as affecting himself alone. The one is Christ, the other
+gain. But we neither live nor die to ourselves; and no man has a right
+to think of life or death only from the point of view of his own
+advantage. So the problem is not so simple as it looked. Life here is
+the condition of fruitful labour here. There are his brethren and his
+work to think of. These bring him to a stand, and check the rising wish.
+He knows not which state to prefer. The stream is dammed back between
+rocks, and it chafes and foams and seems to lose its way among them.
+Then comes a third bend in the flow of thought and feeling, and he
+gladly apprehends it as his present duty to remain at his work. If his
+own joy is thereby less, his brethren's will be more. If he is not to
+depart and be with Christ, he will remain and be with Christ's friends,
+which is, in some sort, being with Him too. If he may not have the gain
+of death, he will have the fruit of work in life.
+
+Let us try to fill up, somewhat, this meagre outline of the warm stream
+that pours through these great words.
+
+I. The simplicity of the comparison between life and death to a
+Christian thinking of himself alone.
+
+'To me' is plainly emphatic. It means more than 'in my judgment' or even
+'in my case.' It is equal to 'To me personally, if I stood alone, and
+had no one to consider but myself.' 'To live' refers mainly here to
+outward practical life of service, and 'to die' should, perhaps, rather
+be 'to be dead,' referring, not to the act of dissolution, but to the
+state after; not to the entrance chamber, but to the palace to which it
+admits.
+
+So we have here grandly set forth the simplicity and unity of the
+Christian life. While the words probably refer mainly to outward life,
+they presuppose an inward, of which that outward is the expression. In
+every possible phase of the word 'life,' Christ is the life of the
+Christian. To live is Christ, for He is the mystical source from whom
+all ours flows. 'With Thee is the fountain of life,' and all life, both
+of body and spirit, is from Him, by Him, and in Him. 'To live is
+Christ,' for He is the aim and object, as well as the Lord, of it all,
+and no other is worth calling life, but that which is _for_ Him by
+willing consecration, as well as _from_ Him by constant derivation. 'To
+live is Christ,' for He is the model of all our life, and the one
+all-sufficient law for us is to follow Him.
+
+Life is to be _as_ Christ, _for_ Christ, _by_, _in_, and _from_ Christ.
+So shall there be strength, peace, and freedom in our days. The unity
+brought into life thereby will issue in calm blessedness, contrasted
+wondrously with the divided hearts and aims which fritter our days into
+fragments, and make our lives heaps of broken links instead of chains.
+
+Surely this is the charm which brings rest into the most troubled
+history, and nobleness into the lowliest duties. There is nothing so
+grand as the unity breathed into our else distracted days by the
+all-pervading reference to and presence of Christ. Without that, we are
+like the mariners of the old world, who crept timidly from headland to
+headland, making each their aim for a while, and leaving each inevitably
+behind, never losing sight of shore, nor ever knowing the wonders of the
+deep and all the majesty of mid-ocean, nor ever touching the happy
+shores beyond, which they reach who carry in their hearts a compass that
+ever points to the unseen pole.
+
+Then comes the other great thought, that where life is simply Christ,
+death will be simply gain.
+
+Paul, no doubt, shrank from the act of death, as we all do. It was not
+the narrow passage which attracted him, but the broad land beyond. Every
+other aspect of that was swallowed up in one great thought, which will
+occupy us more at length presently. But that word 'gain' suggests that
+to Paul's confident faith death was but an increase and progression in
+all that was good here. To him it was no loss to lose flesh and sense
+and all the fleeting joys with which they link us. To him death was no
+destruction of his being, and not even an interruption of its
+continuity. Everything that was of any real advantage to him was to be
+his after as before. The change was clear gain. Everything good was to
+be just as it had been, only better. Nothing was to be dropped but what
+it was progress to lose, and whatever was kept was to be heightened.
+
+How strongly does that view express the two thoughts of the _continuity_
+and _intensifying_ of the Christian life beyond the grave! And what a
+contrast does that simple, sublime confidence present to many another
+thought of death! To how many men its blackness seems to be the sudden
+swallowing up of the light of their very being! To how many more does it
+seem to put an end to all their occupations, and to shear their lives in
+twain, as remorselessly as the fall of the guillotine severs the head
+from the body. How are the light butterfly wings of the trivialities in
+which many men and women spend their days to carry them across the awful
+gulf? What are the people to do on the other side whose lives have all
+been given to purposes and tasks that stop on this side? Are there shops
+and mills, or warehouses and drawing-rooms, or studies and
+lecture-halls, over there? Will the lives which have not struck their
+roots down through all the surface soil to the rock, bear transplanting?
+Alas! for the thousands landed in that new country, as unfit for it by
+the tenor of their past occupations, as some pale artisan, with delicate
+fingers and feeble muscles, set down as a colonist to clear the forest!
+
+This Paul had a work here which he could carry on hereafter. There would
+be no reversal of view, no change in the fundamental character of his
+occupations. True, the special forms of work which he had pursued here
+would be left behind, but the principle underlying them would continue.
+It matters very little to the servant whether he is out in the cold and
+wet 'ploughing and tending cattle,' or whether he is waiting on his
+master at table. It is service all the same, only it is warmer and
+lighter in the house than in the field, and it is promotion to be made
+an indoor servant.
+
+So the direction of the life, and the source of the life, and the
+fundamentals of the life continue unchanged. Everything is as it was,
+only in the superlative degree. To other men the narrow plain on which
+their low-lying lives are placed is rimmed by the jagged, forbidding
+white peaks. It is cold and dreary on these icy summits where no
+creature can live. Perhaps there is land on the other side; who knows?
+The pale barrier separates all here from all there; we know not what may
+be on the other side. Only we feel that the journey is long and chill,
+that the ice and the barren stone appal, and that we never can carry our
+household goods, our tools, or our wealth with us up to the black jaws
+of the pass.
+
+But for this man the Alps were tunnelled. There was no interruption in
+his progress. He would go, he believed, without 'break of gauge,' and
+would pass through the darkness, scarcely knowing when it came, and
+certainly unchecked for even a moment, right on to the other side where
+he would come out, as travellers to Italy do, to fairer plains and bluer
+skies, to richer harvests and a warmer sun. No jolt, no pause, no
+momentary suspension of consciousness, no reversal, nor even
+interruption in his activity, did Paul expect death to bring him, but
+only continuance and increase of all that was essential to his life.
+
+He has calmness in his confidence. There is nothing hysterical or
+overwrought or morbid in these brief words, so peaceful in their trust,
+so moderate and restrained in their rapture. Are our anticipations of
+the future moulded on such a pattern? Do we think of it as quietly as
+this man did? Are we as tranquilly sure about it? Is there as little
+mist of uncertainty about the clearly defined image to our eye as there
+was to his? Is our confidence so profound that these brief monosyllables
+are enough to state it? Above all, do we know that to die will be gain,
+because we can honestly say that to live is Christ? If so, our hope is
+valid, and will not yield when we lean heavily upon it for support in
+the ford over the black stream. If our hope is built on anything
+besides, it will snap then like a rotten pole, and leave us to stumble
+helpless among the slippery stones and the icy torrent.
+
+II. The second movement of thought here, which troubles and complicates
+this simple decision, as to what is the best for Paul himself, is the
+hesitation springing from the wish to help his brethren.
+
+As we said, no man has a right to forget others in settling the question
+whether he would live or die. We see the Apostle here brought to a stand
+by two conflicting currents of feelings. For himself he would gladly
+go, for his friends' sake he is drawn to the opposite choice. He has
+'fallen into a place where two seas meet,' and for a minute or two his
+will is buffeted from side to side by the 'violence of the waves.' The
+obscurity of his language, arising from its broken construction,
+corresponds to the struggle of his feelings. As the Revised Version has
+it, 'If to live in the flesh--if this is the fruit of my work, then what
+I shall choose, I wot not.' By which fragmentary sentence, rightly
+representing as it does the roughness of the Greek, we understand him to
+mean that if living on in this life is the condition of his gaining
+fruit from his toil, then he has to check the rising wish, and is
+hindered from decisive preference either way. Both motives act upon him,
+one drawing him deathward, the other holding him firmly here. He is in a
+dilemma, pinned in, as it were, between the two opposing pressures. On
+the one hand he has the desire (not 'a desire,' as the English Bible has
+it, as if it were but one among many) turned towards departing to be
+with Christ; but on the other, he knows that his remaining here is for
+the present all but indispensable for the immature faith of the churches
+which he has founded. So he stands in doubt for a moment, and the
+picture of his hesitation may well be studied by us.
+
+Such a reason for wishing to die in conflict with such a reason for
+wishing to live, is as noble as it is rare, and, thank God, as imitable
+as it is noble.
+
+Notice the aspect which death wore to his faith. He speaks of it as
+'departing,' a metaphor which does not, like many of the flattering
+appellations which men give that last enemy, reveal a quaking dread
+which cannot bear to look him in his ashen, pale face. Paul calls him
+gentle names, because he fears him not at all. To him all the
+dreadfulness, the mystery, the pain and the solitude have melted away,
+and death has become a mere change of place. The word literally means
+_to unloose_, and is employed to express pulling up the tent-pegs of a
+shifting encampment, or drawing up the anchor of a ship. In either case
+the image is simply that of removal. It is but striking the earthly
+house of this tent; it is but one more day's march, of which we have had
+many already, though this is over Jordan. It is but the last day's
+journey, and to-morrow there will be no packing up in the morning and
+resuming our weary tramp, but we shall be at home, and go no more out.
+So has the awful thing at the end dwindled, and the brighter and greater
+the land behind it shines, the smaller does it appear.
+
+The Apostle thinks little of dying because he thinks so much of what
+comes after. Who is afraid of a brief journey if a meeting with dear
+friends long lost is at the end of it? The narrow avenue seems short,
+and its roughness and darkness are nothing, because Jesus Christ stands
+with outstretched arms at the other end, beckoning us to Himself, as
+mothers teach their children to walk. Whosoever is sure that he will be
+with Christ can afford to smile at death, and call it but a shifting of
+place. And whosoever feels the desire to be with Christ will not shrink
+from the means by which that desire is fulfilled, with the agony of
+revulsion that it excites in many an imagination. It will always be
+solemn, and its physical accompaniments of pain and struggle will always
+be more or less of a terror, and the parting, even for a time, from our
+dear ones, will always be loss, but nevertheless if we see Christ across
+the gulf, and know that one struggle more and we shall clasp Him with
+'inseparable hands with joy and bliss in over measure for ever,' we
+shall not dread the leap.
+
+One thought about the future should fill our minds, as it did Paul's,
+that it is to be with Christ. How different that nobly simple
+expectation, resolving all bliss into the one element, is from the
+morbid curiosity as to details, which vulgarises and weakens so much of
+even devout anticipation of the future. To us as to him Heaven should be
+Christ, and Christ should be Heaven. All the rest is but accident.
+Golden harps and crowns, and hidden manna and white robes and thrones,
+and all the other representations, are but symbols of the blessedness of
+union with Him, or consequences of it. Immortal life and growth in
+perfection, both of mind and heart, and the cessation of all that
+disturbs, and our investiture with glory and honour, flung around our
+poor natures like a royal robe over a naked body, are all but the
+many-sided brightnesses that pour out from Him, and bathe in their
+rainbowed light those who are with Him.
+
+To be with Christ is all we need. For the loving heart to be near Him is
+enough.
+
+          'I shall clasp thee again, O soul of my soul,
+           And with God be the rest.'
+
+Let us not fritter away our imaginations and our hopes on the
+subordinate and non-essential accompaniments, but concentrate all their
+energy on the one central thought. Let us not lose this gracious image
+in a maze of symbols, that, though precious, are secondary. Let us not
+inquire, with curiosity that will find no answer, about the unrevealed
+wonders and staggering mysteries of that transcendent thought, life
+everlasting. Let us not acquire the habit of thinking of the future as
+the perfecting of our humanity, without connecting all our speculations
+with Him, whose presence will be all of heaven to us all. But let us
+keep His serene figure ever clear before our imaginations in all the
+blaze of the light, and try to feed our hopes and stay our hearts on
+this aspect of heavenly blessedness as the all-embracing one, that all,
+each for himself, shall be for ever conscious of Christ's loving
+presence, and of the closest union with Him, a union in comparison with
+which the dearest and sacredest blendings of heart with heart and life
+with life are cold and distant. For the clearness of our hope the fewer
+the details the better: for the willingness with which we turn from life
+and face the inevitable end, it is very important that we should have
+that one thought disengaged from all others. The one full moon, which
+dims all the stars, draws the tides after it. These lesser lights may
+gem the darkness, and dart down white shafts of brilliance in quivering
+reflections on the waves, but they have no power to move their mass. It
+is Christ and Christ only who draws us across the gulf to be with Him,
+and reduces death to a mere shifting of our encampment.
+
+This is a noble and worthy reason for wishing to die; not because Paul
+is disappointed and sick of life, not because he is weighed down with
+sorrow, or pain, or loss, or toil, but because he would like to be with
+his Master. He is no morbid sentimentalist, he is cherishing no
+unwholesome longing, he is not weary of work, he indulges in no
+hysterical raptures of desire. What an eloquent simplicity is in that
+quiet 'very far better!' It goes straight to one's heart, and says more
+than paragraphs of falsetto yearnings. There is nothing in such a wish
+to die, based on such a reason, that the most manly and wholesome piety
+need be ashamed of. It is a pattern for us all.
+
+The attraction of life contends with the attraction of heaven in these
+verses. That is a conflict which many good men know something of, but
+which does not take the shape with many of us which it assumed with
+Paul. Drawn, as he is, by the supreme desire of close union with his
+Master, for the sake of which he is ready to depart, he is tugged back
+even more strongly by the thought that, if he stays here, he can go on
+working and gaining results from his labour. It does not follow that he
+did not expect service if he were with Christ. We may be very sure that
+Paul's heaven was no idle heaven, but one of happy activity and larger
+service. But he will not be able to help these dear friends at Philippi
+and elsewhere who need him, as he knows. So love to them drags at his
+skirts, and ties him here.
+
+One can scarcely miss the remarkable contrast between Paul's 'To abide
+in the flesh is more needful for you,' and the saying of Paul's Master
+to people who assuredly needed His presence more than Philippi needed
+Paul's, 'It is expedient for you that I go away.' This is not the place
+to work out the profound significance of the contrast, and the questions
+which it raises as to whether Christ expected His work to be finished
+and His helpfulness ended by His death, as Paul did by his. It must
+suffice to have suggested the comparison.
+
+Returning to our text, such a reason for wishing to die, held in check
+and overcome by such a reason for wishing to live, is great and noble.
+There are few of us who would not own to the mightier attraction of
+life; but how few of us who feel that, for ourselves personally, if we
+were free to think only of ourselves, we should be glad to go, because
+we should be closer to Christ, but that we hesitate for the sake of
+others whom we think we can help! Many of us cling to life with a
+desperate clutch, like some poor wretch pushed over a precipice and
+trying to dig his nails into the rock as he falls. Some of us cling to
+it because we dread what is beyond, and our longing to live is the
+measure of our dread to die. But Paul did not look forward to a thick
+darkness of judgment, or to nothingness. He saw in the darkness a great
+light, the light in the windows of his Father's house, and yet he turned
+willingly away to his toil in the field, and was more than content to
+drudge on as long as he could do anything by his work. Blessed are they
+who share his desire to depart, and his victorious willingness to stay
+here and labour! They shall find that such a life in the flesh, too, is
+being with Christ.
+
+III. Thus the stream of thought passes the rapids and flows on smoothly
+to its final phase of peaceful acquiescence.
+
+That is expressed very beautifully in the closing verse, 'Having this
+confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all, for
+your furtherance and joy in faith.' Self is so entirely overcome that he
+puts away his own desire to enter into their joy, and rejoices with
+them. He cannot yet have for himself the blessedness which his spirit
+seeks. Well, be it so; he will stop here and find a blessedness in
+seeing them growing in confidence and knowledge of Christ and in the
+gladness that comes from it. He gives up the hope of that higher
+companionship with Jesus which drew him so mightily. Well, be it so; he
+will have companionship with his brethren, and 'abiding with you all'
+may haply find, even before the day of final account, that to 'visit'
+Christ's little ones is to visit Christ. Therefore he fuses his opposing
+wishes into one. He is no more in a strait betwixt two, or unwitting
+what he shall choose. He chooses nothing, but accepts the appointment of
+a higher wisdom. There is rest for him, as for us, in ceasing from our
+own wishes, and laying our wills silent and passive at His feet.
+
+The true attitude for us in which to face the unknown future, with its
+dim possibilities, and especially the supreme alternative of life or
+death, is neither desire nor reluctance, nor a hesitation compounded of
+both, but trustful acquiescence. Such a temper is far from indifference,
+and as far from agitation. In all things, and most of all in regard to
+these matters, it is best to hold desire in equilibrium till God shall
+speak. Torture not yourself with hopes or fears. They make us their
+slaves. Put your hand in God's hand, and let Him guide you as He will.
+Wishes are bad steersmen. We are only at peace when desires and dreads
+are, if not extinct, at all events held tightly in. Rest, and wisdom,
+and strength come with acquiescence. Let us say with Richard Baxter, in
+his simple, noble words:
+
+          'Lord, it belongs not to my care
+             Whether I die or live;
+           To love and serve Thee is my share,
+             And that Thy grace must give.'
+
+We may learn, too, that we may be quite sure that we shall be left here
+as long as we are needed. Paul knew that his stay was needful, so he
+could say, 'I know that I shall abide with you.' We do not, but we may
+be sure that if our stay is needful we shall abide. We are always
+tempted to think ourselves indispensable, but, thank God, nobody is
+necessary. There are no irreparable losses, hard as it is to believe it.
+We look at our work, at our families, our business, our congregations,
+our subjects of study, and we say to ourselves, 'What will become of
+them when I am gone? Everything would fall to pieces if I were
+withdrawn.' Do not be afraid. Depend on it, you will be left here as
+long as you are wanted. There are no incomplete lives and no premature
+removals. To the eye of faith the broken column in our cemeteries is a
+sentimental falsehood. No Christian life is broken short off so, but
+rises in a symmetrical shaft, and its capital is garlanded with
+amaranthine flowers in heaven. In one sense all our lives are
+incomplete, for they and their issues are above, out of our sight here.
+In another none are, for we are 'immortal till our work is done.'
+
+The true attitude, then, for us is patient service till He withdraws us
+from the field. We do not count him a diligent servant who is always
+wearying for the hour of leaving off to strike. Be it ours to labour
+where He puts us, patiently waiting till 'death's mild curfew' sets us
+free from the long day's work, and sends us home.
+
+Brethren! there are but two theories of life; two corresponding aspects
+of death. The one says, 'To me to live is Christ, and to die gain'; the
+other, 'To me to live is self, and to die is loss and despair.' One or
+other must be your choice. Which?
+
+
+
+
+CITIZENS OF HEAVEN
+
+          'Only let your conversation be as it becometh the
+          gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you,
+          or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs,
+          that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind
+          striving together for the faith of the gospel; 28.
+          And in nothing terrified by your
+          adversaries.'--PHIL. i. 27, 28.
+
+
+We read in the Acts of the Apostles that Philippi was the chief city of
+that part of Macedonia, and a 'colony.' Now, the connection between a
+Roman colony and Rome was a great deal closer than that between an
+English colony and England. It was, in fact, a bit of Rome on foreign
+soil.
+
+The colonists and their children were Roman citizens. Their names were
+enrolled on the lists of Roman tribes. They were governed not by the
+provincial authorities, but by their own magistrates, and the law to
+which they owed obedience was not that of the locality, but the law of
+Rome.
+
+No doubt some of the Philippian Christians possessed these privileges.
+They knew what it was to live in a community to which they were less
+closely bound than to the great city beyond the sea. They were members
+of a mighty polity, though they had never seen its temples nor trod its
+streets. They lived in Philippi, but they belonged to Rome. Hence there
+is a peculiar significance in the first words of our text. The
+rendering, 'conversation,' was inadequate even when it was made. It has
+become more so now. The word then meant 'conduct.' It now means little
+more than words. But though the phrase may express loosely the Apostle's
+general idea, it loses entirely the striking metaphor under which it is
+couched. The Revised Version gives the literal rendering in its
+margin--'Behave as citizens'--though it adopts in its text a rendering
+which disregards the figure in the word, and contents itself with the
+less picturesque and vivid phrase--'let your manner of life be worthy.'
+But there seems no reason for leaving out the metaphor; it entirely fits
+in with the purpose of the Apostle and with the context.
+
+The meaning is, Play the citizen in a manner worthy of the Gospel. Paul
+does not, of course, mean, Discharge your civic duties as Christian men,
+though some Christian Englishmen need that reminder; but the city of
+which these Philippians were citizens was the heavenly Jerusalem, the
+metropolis, the mother city of us all. He would kindle in them the
+consciousness of belonging to another order of things than that around
+them. He would stimulate their loyalty to obedience to the city's laws.
+As the outlying colonies of Rome had sometimes entrusted to them the
+task of keeping the frontiers and extending the power of the imperial
+city, so he stirs them up to aggressive warfare; and as in all their
+conflicts the little colony felt that the Empire was at its back, and
+therefore looked undaunted on shoals of barbarian foes, so he would have
+his friends at Philippi animated by lofty courage, and ever confident of
+final victory.
+
+Such seems to be a general outline of these eager exhortations to the
+citizens of heaven in this outlying colony of earth. Let us think of
+them briefly in order now.
+
+I. Keep fresh the sense of belonging to the mother city.
+
+Paul was not only writing _to_ Philippi, but _from_ Rome, where he might
+see how, even in degenerate days, the consciousness of being a Roman
+gave dignity to a man, and how the idea became almost a religion. He
+would kindle a similar feeling in Christians.
+
+We do belong to another polity or order of things than that with which
+we are connected by the bonds of flesh and sense. Our true affinities
+are with the mother city. True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the
+blue waters is another community, of which we are really members, and
+sometimes in calm weather we can see, if we climb to a height above the
+smoke of the valley where we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains
+of that other land, lying bathed in sunlight and dreamlike on the opal
+waves.
+
+Therefore it is a great part of Christian discipline to keep a vivid
+consciousness that there is such an unseen order of things at present in
+existence. We speak popularly of 'the future life,' and are apt to
+forget that it is also the _present_ life to an innumerable company. In
+fact, this film of an earthly life floats in that greater sphere which
+is all around it, above, beneath, touching it at every point.
+
+It is, as Peter says, 'ready to be unveiled.' Yes, behind the thin
+curtain, through which stray beams of the brightness sometimes shoot,
+that other order stands, close to us, parted from us by a most slender
+division, only a woven veil, no great gulf or iron barrier. And before
+long His hand will draw it back, rattling with its rings as it is put
+aside, and _there_ will blaze out what has always been, though we saw it
+not. It is so close, so real, so bright, so solemn, that it is worth
+while to try to feel its nearness; and we are so purblind, and such
+foolish slaves of mere sense, shaping our lives on the legal maxim that
+things which are non-apparent must be treated as non-existent, that it
+needs a constant effort not to lose the feeling altogether.
+
+There is a present connection between all Christian men and that
+heavenly City. It not merely exists, but we belong to it in the measure
+in which we are Christians. All these figurative expressions about our
+citizenship being in heaven and the like, rest on the simple fact that
+the life of Christian men on earth and in heaven is fundamentally the
+same. The principles which guide, the motives which sway, the tastes and
+desires, affections and impulses, the objects and aims, are
+substantially one. A Christian man's true affinities are with the things
+not seen, and with the persons there, however his surface relationship
+knit him to the earth. In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a
+stranger here and a native of the heavens. That great City is, like some
+of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad river, with the mass of the
+metropolis on the one bank, but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As
+the Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to London, so is earth to
+heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the bridge. As Philippi
+was to Rome, so is earth to heaven, the colony on the outskirts of the
+empire, ringed round by barbarians, and separated by sounding seas, but
+keeping open its communications, and one in citizenship.
+
+Be it our care, then, to keep the sense of that city beyond the
+river vivid and constant. Amid the shows and shams of earth look
+ever onward to the realities 'the things which _are_,' while all
+else only seems to be. The things which are seen are but smoke
+wreaths, floating for a moment across space, and melting into
+nothingness while we look. We do not belong to them or to the
+order of things to which they belong. There is no kindred between
+us and them. Our true relationships are elsewhere. In this present
+visible world all other creatures find their sufficient and homelike
+abode. 'Foxes have holes, and birds their roosting-places'; but man
+alone has not where to lay his head, nor can he find in all the width
+of the created universe a place in which and with which he can be
+satisfied. Our true _habitat_ is elsewhere. So let us set our thoughts
+and affections on things above. The descendants of the original settlers
+in our colonies talk still of coming to England as going 'home,' though
+they were born in Australia, and have lived there all their lives. In
+like manner we Christian people should keep vigorous in our minds the
+thought that our true home is there where we have never been, and that
+here we are foreigners and wanderers.
+
+Nor need that feeling of detachment from the present sadden our spirits,
+or weaken our interest in the things around us. To recognise our
+separation from the order of things in which we 'move,' because we
+belong to that majestic unseen order in which we really 'have our
+being,' makes life great and not small. It clothes the present with
+dignity beyond what is possible to it if it be not looked at in the
+light of its connection with 'the regions beyond.' From that connection
+life derives all its meaning. Surely nothing can be conceived more
+unmeaning, more wearisome in its monotony, more tragic in its joy, more
+purposeless in its efforts, than man's life, if the life of sense and
+time be all. Truly it is 'like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
+and fury, signifying nothing.' 'The white radiance of eternity,'
+streaming through it from above, gives all its beauty to the 'dome of
+many-coloured glass' which men call life. They who feel most their
+connection with the city which hath foundations should be best able to
+wring the last drop of pure sweetness out of all earthly joys, to
+understand the meaning of all events, and to be interested most keenly,
+because most intelligently and most nobly, in the homeliest and
+smallest of the tasks and concerns of the present.
+
+So, in all things, act as citizens of the great Mother of heroes and
+saints beyond the sea. Ever feel that you belong to another order, and
+let the thought, 'Here we have no continuing city,' be to you not merely
+the bitter lesson taught by the transiency of earthly joys and treasures
+and loves, but the happy result of 'seeking for the city which hath the
+foundations.'
+
+II. Another exhortation which our text gives is, Live by the laws of the
+city.
+
+The Philippian colonists were governed by the code of Rome. Whatever
+might be the law of the province of Macedonia, they owed no obedience to
+it. So Christian men are not to be governed by the maxims and rules of
+conduct which prevail in the province, but to be governed from the
+capital. We ought to get from on-lookers the same character that was
+given to the Jews, that we are 'a people whose laws are different from
+all people that be on earth,' and we ought to reckon such a character
+our highest praise. Paul would have these Philippian Christians act
+'worthy of _the gospel_.' That is our law.
+
+The great good news of God manifest in the flesh, and of our salvation
+through Christ Jesus, is not merely to be believed, but to be obeyed.
+The gospel is not merely a message of deliverance, it is also a rule of
+conduct. It is not merely theology, it is also ethics. Like some of the
+ancient municipal charters, the grant of privileges and proclamation of
+freedom is also the sovereign code which imposes duties and shapes life.
+A gospel of laziness and mere exemption from hell was not Paul's gospel.
+A gospel of doctrines, to be investigated, spun into a system of
+theology, and accepted by the understanding, and there an end, was not
+Paul's gospel. He believed that the great facts which he proclaimed
+concerning the self-revelation of God in Christ would unfold into a
+sovereign law of life for every true believer, and so his one
+all-sufficient precept and standard of conduct are in these simple
+words, 'worthy of the gospel.'
+
+That law is all-sufficient. In the truths which constituted Paul's
+gospel, that is to say, in the truths of the life, death, and
+resurrection of Jesus Christ, lies all that men need for conduct and
+character. In Him we have the 'realised ideal,' the flawless example,
+and instead of a thousand precepts, for us all duty is resolved into
+one--be like Christ. In Him we have the mighty motive, powerful enough
+to overcome all forces that would draw us away, and like some strong
+spring to keep us in closest contact with right and goodness. Instead of
+a confusing variety of appeals to manifold motives of interest and
+conscience, and one knows not what beside, we have the one all-powerful
+appeal, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments,' and that draws all the
+agitations and fluctuations of the soul after it, as the rounded fulness
+of the moon does the heaped waters in the tidal wave that girdles the
+world. In Him we have all the helps that weakness needs, for He Himself
+will come and dwell with us and in us, and be our righteousness and our
+strength.
+
+Live 'worthy of the gospel,' then. How grand the unity and simplicity
+thus breathed into our duties and through our lives! All duties are
+capable of reduction to this one, and though we shall still need
+detailed instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free from
+the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry, which fetters men's limbs
+with microscopic bands, and shall joyfully learn how much mightier and
+happier is the life which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than that
+which is hampered by a thousand regulations.
+
+Nor is such an all-comprehensive precept a mere toothless generality.
+Let a man try honestly to shape his life by it; and he will find soon
+enough how close it grips him, and how wide it stretches, and how deep
+it goes. The greatest principles of the gospel are to be fitted to the
+smallest duties. Indeed that combination--great principles and small
+duties--is the secret of all noble and calm life, and nowhere should it
+be so beautifully exemplified as in the life of a Christian man. The
+tiny round of the dew-drop is shaped by the same laws that mould the
+giant sphere of the largest planet. You cannot make a map of the poorest
+grass-field without celestial observations. The star is not too high nor
+too brilliant to move before us and guide simple men's feet along their
+pilgrimage. 'Worthy of the gospel' is a most practical and stringent
+law.
+
+And it is an exclusive commandment too, shutting out obedience to other
+codes, however common and fashionable they may be. We are governed from
+home, and we give no submission to provincial authorities. Never mind
+what people say about you, nor what may be the maxims and ways of men
+around you. These are no guides for you. Public opinion (which only
+means for most of us the hasty judgments of the half-dozen people who
+happen to be nearest us), use and wont, the customs of our set, the
+notions of the world about duty, with all these we have nothing to do.
+The censures or the praise of men need not move us. We report to
+headquarters, and subordinates' estimate need be nothing to us. Let us
+then say, 'With me it is a very small matter that I should be judged of
+men's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.' When we may be
+misunderstood or harshly dealt with, let us lift our eyes to the lofty
+seat where the Emperor sits, and remove ourselves from men's sentences
+by our 'appeal unto Cæsar'; and, in all varieties of circumstances and
+duty, let us take the Gospel which is the record of Christ's life,
+death, and character, for our only law, and labour that, whatever others
+may think of us, we 'may be well pleasing to Him.'
+
+III. Further, our text bids the colonists fight for the advance of the
+dominions of the City.
+
+Like the armed colonists whom Russia and other empires had on their
+frontier, who received their bits of land on condition of holding the
+border against the enemy, and pushing it forward a league or two when
+possible, Christian men are set down in their places to be 'wardens of
+the marches,' citizen soldiers who hold their homesteads on a military
+tenure, and are to 'strive together for the faith of the gospel.'
+
+There is no space here and now to go into details of the exposition of
+this part of our text. Enough to say in brief that we are here exhorted
+to 'stand fast'; that is, as it were, the defensive side of our warfare,
+maintaining our ground and repelling all assaults; that this successful
+resistance is to be 'in one spirit,' inasmuch as all resistance depends
+on our poor feeble spirits being ingrafted and rooted in God's Spirit,
+in vital union with whom we may be knit together into a unity which
+shall oppose a granite breakwater to the onrushing tide of opposition;
+that in addition to the unmoved resistance which will not yield an inch
+of the sacred soil to the enemy, we are to carry the war onwards, and,
+not content with holding our own, are with one mind to strive together
+for the faith of the gospel. There is to be discipline, then, and
+compact organisation, like that of the legions whom Paul, from his
+prison among the Prætorian guards, had often seen shining in steel,
+moving like a machine, grim, irresistible. The cause for which we are to
+fight is the faith of the gospel, an expression which almost seems to
+justify the opinion that 'the faith' here means, as it does in later
+usage, the sum and substance of that which is believed. But even here
+the word may have its usual meaning of the subjective act of trust in
+the gospel, and the thought may be that we are unitedly to fight for its
+growing power in our own hearts and in the hearts of others. In any
+case, the idea is plainly here that Christian men are set down in the
+world, like the frontier guard, to push the conquests of the empire, and
+to win more ground for their King.
+
+Such work is ever needed, never more needed than now. In this day when a
+wave of unbelief seems passing over society, when material comfort and
+worldly prosperity are so dazzlingly attractive to so many, the solemn
+duty is laid upon us with even more than usual emphasis, and we are
+called upon to feel more than ever the oneness of all true Christians,
+and to close up our ranks for the fight. All this can only be done after
+we have obeyed the other injunctions of this text. The degree in which
+we feel that we belong to another order of things than this around us,
+and the degree in which we live by the Imperial laws, will determine the
+degree in which we can fight with vigour for the growth of the dominion
+of the City. Be it ours to cherish the vivid consciousness that we are
+here dwelling not in the cities of the Canaanites, but, like the father
+of the faithful, in tents pitched at their gates, nomads in the midst
+of a civic life to which we do not belong, in order that we may breathe
+a hallowing influence through it, and win hearts to the love of Him whom
+to imitate is perfection, whom to serve is freedom.
+
+IV. The last exhortation to the colonists is, Be sure of victory.
+
+'In nothing terrified by your adversaries,' says Paul. He uses a very
+vivid, and some people might think, a very vulgar metaphor here. The
+word rendered _terrified_ properly refers to a horse shying or plunging
+at some object. It is generally things half seen and mistaken for
+something more dreadful than themselves that make horses shy; and it is
+usually a half-look at adversaries, and a mistaken estimate of their
+strength, that make Christians afraid. Go up to your fears and speak to
+them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally fade away. So we
+may go into the battle, as the rash French minister said he did into the
+Franco-German war, 'with a light heart,' and that for good reasons. We
+have no reason to fear for ourselves. We have no reason to fear for the
+ark of God. We have no reason to fear for the growth of Christianity in
+the world. Many good men in this time seem to be getting half-ashamed of
+the gospel, and some preachers are preaching it in words which sound
+like an apology rather than a creed. Do not let us allow the enemy to
+overpower our imaginations in that fashion. Do not let us fight as if we
+expected to be beaten, always casting our eyes over our shoulders, even
+while we are advancing, to make sure of our retreat, but let us trust
+our gospel, and trust our King, and let us take to heart the old
+admonition, 'Lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not
+afraid.'
+
+Such courage is a prophecy of victory. Such courage is based upon a sure
+hope. 'Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the
+Lord Jesus as Saviour.' The little outlying colony in this far-off edge
+of the empire is ringed about by wide-stretching hosts of dusky
+barbarians. Far as the eye can reach their myriads cover the land, and
+the watchers from the ramparts might well be dismayed if they had only
+their own resources to depend on. But they know that the Emperor in his
+progress will come to this sorely beset outpost, and their eyes are
+fixed on the pass in the hills where they expect to see the waving
+banners and the gleaming spears. Soon, like our countrymen in Lucknow,
+they will hear the music and the shouts that tell that He is at hand.
+Then when He comes, He will raise the siege and scatter all the enemies
+as the chaff of the threshing-floor, and the colonists who held the post
+will go with Him to the land which they have never seen, but which is
+their home, and will, with the Victor, sweep in triumph 'through the
+gates into the city.'
+
+
+
+
+A PLEA FOR UNITY
+
+          'If there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if
+          any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the
+          Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, 2.
+          Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be of the same mind,
+          having the same love, being of one accord, of one
+          mind; 3. Doing nothing through faction or through
+          vainglory, but in lowliness of mind each counting
+          other better than himself; 4. Not looking each of
+          you to his own things, but each of you also to the
+          things of others.'--PHIL. ii. 1-4 (R.V.).
+
+
+There was much in the state of the Philippian church which filled Paul's
+heart with thankfulness, and nothing which drew forth his censures, but
+these verses, with their extraordinary energy of pleading, seem to hint
+that there was some defect in the unity of heart and mind of members of
+the community. It did not amount to discord, but the concord was not as
+full as it might have been. There is another hint pointing in the same
+direction in the appeal to Paul's true yoke-fellow, in chapter iv., to
+help two good women who, though they had laboured much in the gospel,
+had not managed to keep 'of the same mind in the Lord,' and there is
+perhaps a still further indication that Paul's sensitive heart was
+conscious of the beginnings of strife in the air, in the remarkable
+emphasis with which, at the very outset of the letter, he over and over
+again pours out his confidence and affection on them 'all,' as if aware
+of some incipient rifts in their brotherhood. There are always forces at
+work which tend to part the most closely knit unities even when these
+are consecrated by Christian faith. Where there are no dogmatical
+grounds of discord, nor any open alienation, there may still be the
+beginnings of separation, and a chill breeze may be felt even when the
+sun is shining with summer warmth. Wasps are attracted by the ripest
+fruit.
+
+The words of our text present no special difficulty, and bring before us
+a well-worn subject, but it has at least this element of interest, that
+it grips very tightly the deepest things in Christian life, and that
+none of us can truly say that we do not need to listen to Paul's
+pleading voice. We may notice the general division of his thoughts in
+these words, in that he puts first the heart-touching motives for
+listening to his appeal, next describes with the exuberance of
+earnestness the fair ideal of unity to which he exhorts, and finally
+touches on the hindrances to its realisation, and the victorious powers
+which will overcome these.
+
+I. The motives and bonds of Christian unity.
+
+It is not a pedantic dissection (and vivisection) of the Apostle's
+earnest words, if we point out that they fall into four clauses, of
+which the first and third ('any comfort in Christ, any fellowship of the
+Spirit') urge the objective facts of Christian revelation, and the
+second and fourth ('any consolation of love, any tender mercies and
+compassions') put emphasis on the subjective emotions of Christian
+experience. We may lay the warmth of all of these on our own hearts, and
+shall find that these hearts will be drawn into the blessedness of
+Christian unity in the precise measure in which they are affected by
+them.
+
+As to the first of them, it may be suggested that here, as elsewhere in
+the New Testament, the true idea of the word rendered 'comfort' is
+rather 'exhortation.' The Apostle is probably not so much pointing to
+the consolations for trouble which come from Jesus, as to the stimulus
+to unity which flows from Him. It would rather weaken the force of
+Paul's appeal, if the two former grounds of it were so nearly identical
+as they are, if the one is based upon 'comfort' and the other on
+'consolation.' The Apostle is true to his dominant belief, that in Jesus
+Christ there lies, and from Him flows, the sovereign exhortation that
+rouses men to 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.' In Him
+we shall find in the measure in which we are in Him, the most persuasive
+of all exhortations to unity, and the most omnipotent of all powers to
+enforce it. Shall we not be glad to be in the flock of the Good
+Shepherd, and to preserve the oneness which He gave His life to
+establish? Can we live in Him, and not share His love for His sheep?
+Surely those who have felt the benediction of His breath on their
+foreheads when He prayed 'that they may all be one; even as Thou,
+Father, art in Me and I in Thee,' cannot but do what is in them to
+fulfil that prayer, and to bring a little nearer the realisation of
+their Lord's purpose in it, 'that the world may believe that Thou didst
+send Me.' Surely if we lay to heart, and enter into sympathy with, the
+whole life and death of Jesus Christ, we shall not fail to feel the
+dynamic power fusing us together, nor fail to catch the exhortation to
+unity which comes from the lips that said, 'I am the vine, ye are the
+branches.'
+
+The Apostle next bases his appeal for unity on the experiences of the
+Philippian Christians, and on their memories of the comfort which they
+have tasted in the exercise of mutual love. Our hearts find it hard to
+answer the question whether they are more blessed when their love passes
+out from them in a warm stream to others, or when the love of others
+pours into them. To love and to be loved equally elevate courage, and
+brace the weakest for calm endurance and high deeds. The man who loves
+and knows that he is loved will be a hero. It must always seem strange
+and inexplicable that a heart which has known the enlargement and joy of
+love given and received, should ever fall so far beneath itself as to be
+narrowed and troubled by nourishing feelings of separation and
+alienation from those whom it might have gathered into its embrace, and
+thereby communicated, and in communicating acquired, courage and
+strength. We have all known the comfort of love; should it not impel us
+to live in 'the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace'? Men around
+us are meant to be our helpers, and to be helped by us, and the one way
+to secure both is to walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us.
+
+But Paul has still further heart-melting motives to urge. He turns the
+Philippians' thoughts to their fellowship in the Spirit. All believers
+have been made to drink into one spirit, and in that common
+participation in the same supernatural life they partake of a oneness,
+which renders any clefts or divisions unnatural, and contradictory of
+the deepest truths of their experience. The branch can no more shiver
+itself off from the tree, or keep the life sap enclosed within itself,
+than one possessor of the common gift of the Spirit can separate himself
+from the others who share it. We are one in Him; let us be one in heart
+and mind. The final appeal is connected with the preceding, inasmuch as
+it lays emphasis on the emotions which flow from the one life common to
+all believers. That participation in the Spirit naturally leads in each
+participant to 'tender mercies and compassions' directed to all sharers
+in it. The very mark of truly possessing the Spirit's life is a nature
+full of tenderness and swift to pity, and they who have experienced the
+heaven on earth of such emotions should need no other motive than the
+memory of its blessedness, to send them out among their brethren, and
+even into a hostile world, as the apostles of love, the bearers of
+tender mercies, and the messengers of pity.
+
+II. The fair ideal which would complete the Apostle's joy.
+
+We may gather from the rich abundance of motives which the Apostle
+suggests before he comes to present his exhortation, that he suspected
+the existence of some tendencies in the opposite direction in Philippi,
+and possibly the same conclusion may be drawn from the exuberance of
+the exhortation itself, and from its preceding the dehortation which
+follows. He does not scold, he scarcely even rebukes, but he begins by
+trying to melt away any light frost that had crept over the warmth of
+the Philippians' love; and having made that preparation, he sets before
+them with a fulness which would be tautological but for the earnestness
+that throbs in it, the ideal of unity, and presses it upon them still
+more meltingly, by telling them that their realisation of it will be the
+completion of his joy. The main injunction is 'that ye be of the same
+mind,' and that is followed by three clauses which are all but exactly
+synonymous with it, 'having the same love, being of one accord, of one
+mind.' The resemblance of the latter clause to the main exhortation is
+still more complete, if we read with Revised Version (margin) 'of the
+same mind,' but in any case the exhortations are all practically the
+same. The unity which Paul would fain see, is far deeper and more vital
+than mere unanimity of opinion, or identity of polity, or co-operation
+in practice. The clauses which expand it guard us against the mistake of
+thinking that intellectual or practical oneness is all that is meant by
+Christian unity. They are 'of the same mind,' who have the same wishes,
+aims, outlooks, the same hopes and fears, and who are one in the depths
+of their being. They have 'the same love,' all similarly loving and
+being loved, the same emotion filling each heart. They are united in
+soul, or 'with accordant souls' having, and knowing that they have them,
+akin, allied to one another, moving to a common end, and aware of their
+oneness. The unity which Christian people have hitherto reached is at
+its best but a small are of the great circle which the Apostle drew,
+and none of us can read these fervid words without shame. His joy is not
+yet fulfilled.
+
+That exhortation to be 'of the same mind,' not only points to a deep and
+vital unity, but suggests that the ground of the unity is to be found
+without us, in the common direction of our 'minds,' which means far more
+than popular phraseology means by it, to an external object. It is
+having our hearts directed to Christ that makes us one. He is the bond
+and centre of unity. We have just said that the object is external, but
+that has to be taken with a modification, for the true basis of unity is
+the common possession of 'Christ in us.' It is when we have this mind in
+us 'which was also in Christ Jesus,' that we have 'the same mind' one
+with another.
+
+The very keynote of the letter is joy, as may be seen by a glance over
+it. He joys and rejoices with them all, but his cup is not quite full.
+One more precious drop is needed to make it run over. Probably the
+coldness which he had heard of between Euodias and Syntyche had troubled
+him, and if he could be sure of the Philippians' mutual love he would
+rejoice in his prison. We cannot tell whether that loving and careful
+heart is still aware of the fortunes of the Church, but we know of a
+more loving and careful heart which is, and we cannot but believe that
+the alienations and discords of His professed followers bring some
+shadow over the joy of Christ. Do we not hear His voice again asking,
+'what was it that you disputed among yourselves by the way?' and must we
+not, like the disciples, 'hold our peace' when that question is asked?
+May we not hear a voice sweeter in its cadence, and more melting in its
+tenderness than Paul's, saying to us 'Fulfil ye My joy that ye be of
+the same mind.'
+
+III. The hindrances and helps to being of the same mind.
+
+The original has no verb in front of 'nothing' in verse 3, and it seems
+better to supply the one which has been so frequently used in the
+preceding exhortation than 'doing,' which carries us too abruptly into
+the outer region of action. Paul indicates two main hindrances to being
+of the same mind, namely, faction and vainglory on the one hand, and
+self-absorption on the other, and opposed to each the tone of mind which
+is its best conqueror. Faction and vainglory are best defeated by
+humility and unselfishness. As to the former, the love of making or
+heading little cliques in religion or politics or society, has oftenest
+its roots in nothing loftier than vanity or pride. Many a man who poses
+as guided by staunch adherence to conviction is really impelled only by
+a wish to make himself notorious as a leader, and loves to talk of
+'those with whom I act.' There is a strong admixture of a too lofty
+estimate of self in most of the disagreements of Christian people. They
+expect more deference than they get, or their judgment is not taken as
+law, or their place is not so high as they think is their due, or in a
+hundred different ways self-love is wounded, and self-esteem is
+inflamed. All this is true in reference to the smaller communities of
+congregations, and with the necessary modifications it is quite as true
+in reference to the larger aggregations which we call churches or
+denominations. If all in their work that is directly due to faction and
+vainglory were struck out there would be great gaps in their activities,
+and many a flourishing scheme would fall dead.
+
+The cure for all these evils is lowliness of mind. That is a Christian
+word. Used by Greek thinkers, it meant abjectness; and it is one
+conspicuous instance of the change effected in morals by Christian
+teaching that it has become the name of a virtue. We are to dwell not on
+our gifts but on our imperfections, and if we judge ourselves with
+constant reference to the standard in Christ's life, we shall need
+little more to bring us to our knees in true lowliness of mind. The man
+who has been forgiven so many talents will not be in a hurry to take his
+brother by the throat and leave the marks of his fingers for tenpence.
+
+Christian unity is further broken by selfishness. To be absorbed in self
+is of course to have the heart shut to others. Our own interests,
+inclinations, possessions, when they assert themselves in our lives,
+build up impassable barriers between us and our fellows. To live to self
+is the real root of every sin as it is of all loveless life. The Apostle
+uses careful language: he admits the necessity for attention to our 'own
+things,' and only requires that we should look 'also' on the things of
+others. His cure for the hindrances to Christian unity is very complete,
+very practical, and very simple. Each counting other better than
+himself, and each 'looking also to the things of others' seem very
+homely and pedestrian virtues, but homely as they are we shall find that
+they grip us tight, if we honestly try to practise them in our daily
+lives, and we shall find also that the ladder which has its foot on
+earth has its top in the heavens, and that the practice of humility and
+unselfishness leads straight to having 'the mind which was also in
+Christ Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+THE DESCENT OF THE WORD
+
+          'Have this mind in you which was also in Christ
+          Jesus: 6. Who, being in the form of God, counted
+          it not a prize to be on an equality with God, 7.
+          But emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,
+          being made in the likeness of men; 8. And being
+          found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself,
+          becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death
+          of the cross.'--PHIL. ii. 5-8 (R.V.).
+
+
+The purpose of the Apostle in this great passage must ever be kept
+clearly in view. Our Lord's example is set forth as the pattern of that
+unselfish disregard of one's own things, and devotion to the things of
+others, which has just been urged on the Philippians, and the mind which
+was in Him is presented as the model on which they are to fashion their
+minds. This purpose in some measure explains some of the peculiarities
+of the language here, and may help to guide us through some of the
+intricacies and doubtful points in the interpretation of the words. It
+explains why Christ's death is looked at in them only in its bearing
+upon Himself, as an act of obedience and of condescension, and why even
+that death in which Jesus stands most inimitable and unique is presented
+as capable of being imitated by us. The general drift of these verses is
+clear, but there are few Scripture passages which have evoked more
+difference of opinion as to the precise meaning of nearly every phrase.
+To enter on the subtle discussions involved in the adequate exposition
+of the words would far exceed our limits, and we must perforce content
+ourselves with a slight treatment of them, and aim chiefly at bringing
+out their practical side.
+
+The broad truth which stands sun-clear amid all diverse interpretations
+is--that the Incarnation, Life, and Death are the great examples of
+living humility and self-sacrifice. To be born was His supreme act of
+condescension. It was love which made Him assume the vesture of human
+flesh. To die was the climax of His voluntary obedience, and of His
+devotion to us.
+
+I. The height from which Jesus descended.
+
+The whole strange conception of birth as being the voluntary act of the
+Person born, and as being the most stupendous instance of condescension
+in the world's history, necessarily reposes on the clear conviction that
+He had a prior existence so lofty that it was an all but infinite
+descent to become man. Hence Paul begins with the most emphatic
+assertion that he who bore the name of Jesus lived a divine life before
+He was born. He uses a very strong word which is given in the margin of
+the Revised Version, and might well have been in its text. 'Being
+originally' as the word accurately means, carries our thoughts back not
+only to a state which preceded Bethlehem and the cradle, but to that
+same timeless eternity from which the prologue of the Gospel of John
+partially draws the veil when it says, 'In the beginning was the Word,'
+and to which Jesus Himself more obscurely pointed when He said, 'Before
+Abraham was I am.'
+
+Equally emphatic in another direction is Paul's next expression, 'In the
+form of God,' for 'form' means much more than 'shape.' I would point out
+the careful selection in this passage of three words to express three
+ideas which are often by hasty thought regarded as identical. We read of
+'the _form_ of God' (verse 6), 'the _likeness_ of men' (verse 7), and
+'in _fashion_ as a man.' Careful investigation of these two words 'form'
+and 'fashion' has established a broad distinction between them, the
+former being more fixed, the latter referring to that which is
+accidental and outward, which may be fleeting and unsubstantial. The
+possession of the form involves participation in the essence also. Here
+it implies no corporeal idea as if God had a material form, but it
+implies also much more than a mere apparent resemblance. He who is in
+the form of God possesses the essential divine attributes. Only God can
+be 'in the form of God': man is made in the likeness of God, but man is
+not 'in the form of God.' Light is thrown on this lofty phrase by its
+antithesis with the succeeding expression in the next verse, 'the form
+of a servant,' and as that is immediately explained to refer to Christ's
+assumption of human nature, there is no room for candid doubt that
+'being originally in the form of God' is a deliberately asserted claim
+of the divinity of Christ in His pre-existent state.
+
+As we have already pointed out, Paul soars here to the same lofty height
+to which the prologue of John's Gospel rises, and he echoes our Lord's
+own words about 'the glory which I had with Thee before the foundation
+of the world.' Our thoughts are carried back before creatures were, and
+we become dimly aware of an eternal distinction in the divine nature
+which only perfects its eternal oneness. Such an eternal participation
+in the divine nature before all creation and before time is the
+necessary pre-supposition of the worth of Christ's life as the pattern
+of humility and self-sacrifice. That pre-supposition gives all its
+meaning, its pathos, and its power, to His gentleness, and love, and
+death. The facts are different in their significance, and different in
+their power to bless and gladden, to purge and sway the soul, according
+as we contemplate them with or without the background of His
+pre-existent divinity. The view which regards Him as simply a man, like
+all the rest of us, beginning to be when He was born, takes away from
+His example its mightiest constraining force. Only when we with all our
+hearts believe 'that the Word became flesh,' do we discern the
+overwhelming depths of condescension manifested in the Birth. If it was
+not the incarnation of God, it has no claim on the hearts of men.
+
+II. The wondrous act of descent.
+
+The stages in that long descent are marked out with a precision and
+definiteness which would be intolerable presumption, if Paul were
+speaking only his own thoughts, or telling what he had seen with his own
+eyes. They begin with what was in the mind of the eternal Word before He
+began His descent, and whilst yet He is 'in the form of God.' He stands
+on the lofty level before the descent begins, and in spirit makes the
+surrender, which, stage by stage, is afterwards to be wrought out in
+act. Before any of these acts there must have been the disposition of
+mind and will which Paul describes as 'counting it not a thing to be
+grasped to be on an equality with God.' He did not regard the being
+equal to God as a prey or treasure to be clutched and retained at all
+hazards. That sweeps our thoughts into the dim regions far beyond
+Calvary or Bethlehem, and is a more overwhelming manifestation of love
+than are the acts of lowly gentleness and patient endurance which
+followed in time. It included and transcended them all.
+
+It was the supreme example of not 'looking on one's own things.' And
+what made Him so count? What but infinite love. To rescue men, and win
+them to Himself and goodness, and finally to lift them to the place from
+which He came down for them, seemed to Him to be worth the temporary
+surrender of that glory and majesty. We can but bow and adore the
+perfect love. We look more deeply into the depths of Deity than unaided
+eyes could ever penetrate, and what we see is the movement in that abyss
+of Godhead of purest surrender which, by beholding, we are to
+assimilate.
+
+Then comes the wonder of wonders, 'He emptied Himself.' We cannot enter
+here on the questions which gather round that phrase, and which give it
+a factitious importance in regard to present controversies. All that we
+would point out now is that while the Apostle distinctly treats the
+Incarnation as being a laying aside of what made the Word to be equal
+with God, he says nothing, on which an exact determination can be based,
+of the degree or particulars in which the divine nature of our Lord was
+limited by His humanity. The fact he asserts, and that is all. The scene
+in the Upper Chamber was but a feeble picture of what had already been
+done behind the veil. Unless He had laid aside His garments of divine
+glory and majesty, He would have had no human flesh from which to strip
+the robes. Unless He had willed to take the 'form of a servant,' He
+would not have had a body to gird with the slave's towel. The
+Incarnation, which made all His acts of lowly love possible, was a
+greater act of lowly love than those which flowed from it. Looking at it
+from earth, men say, 'Jesus was born.' Looking at it from heaven, Angels
+say, 'He emptied Himself.'
+
+But how did He empty Himself? By taking the form of a slave, that is to
+God. And how did He take the form of a slave? By 'becoming in the
+likeness of men.' Here we are specially to note the remarkable language
+implying that what is true of none other in all the generations of men
+is true of Him. That just as 'emptying Himself' was His own act, also
+the taking the form of a slave by His being born was His own act, and
+was more truly described as a 'becoming.' We note, too, the strong
+contrast between that most remarkable word and the 'being originally'
+which is used to express the mystery of divine pre-existence.
+
+Whilst His becoming in the likeness of men stands in strong contrast
+with 'being originally' and energetically expresses the voluntariness of
+our Lord's birth, the 'likeness of men' does not cast any doubt on the
+reality of His manhood, but points to the fact that 'though certainly
+perfect man, He was by reason of the divine nature present in Him not
+simply and merely man.'
+
+Here then the beginning of Christ's manhood is spoken of in terms which
+are only explicable, if it was a second form of being, preceded by a
+pre-existent form, and was assumed by His own act. The language, too,
+demands that that humanity should have been true essential manhood. It
+was in 'the form' of man and possessed of all essential attributes. It
+was in 'the likeness' of man possessed of all external characteristics,
+and yet was something more. It summed up human nature, and was its
+representative.
+
+III. The obedience which attended the descent.
+
+It was not merely an act of humiliation and condescension to become man,
+but all His life was one long act of lowliness. Just as He 'emptied
+Himself' in the act of becoming in the 'likeness of men,' so He 'humbled
+Himself,' and all along the course of His earthly life He chose constant
+lowliness and to be 'despised and rejected of men.' It was the result
+moment by moment of His own will that to the eyes of men He presented
+'no form nor comeliness,' and that will was moment by moment steadied
+in its unmoved humility, because He perpetually looked 'not on His own
+things, but on the things of others.' The guise He presented to the eyes
+of men was 'the _fashion_ of a man.' That word corresponds exactly to
+Paul's carefully selected term, and makes emphatic both its superficial
+and its transitory character.
+
+The lifelong humbling of Himself was further manifested in His becoming
+'obedient.' That obedience was, of course, to God. And here we cannot
+but pause to ask the question, How comes it that to the man Jesus
+obedience to God was an act of humiliation? Surely there is but one
+explanation of such a statement. For all men but this one to be God's
+slaves is their highest honour, and to speak of obedience as humiliation
+is a sheer absurdity.
+
+Not only was the life of Jesus so perfect an example of unbroken
+obedience that He could safely front His adversaries with the question,
+'Which of you convinceth Me of sin?' and with the claim to 'do always
+the things that pleased Him,' but the obedience to the Father was
+perfected in His death. Consider the extraordinary fact that a man's
+death is the crowning instance of his humility, and ask yourselves the
+question, Who then is this who chose to be born, and stooped in the act
+of dying? His death was obedience to God, because by it He carried out
+the Father's will for the salvation of the world, His death is the
+greatest instance of unselfish self-sacrifice, and the loftiest example
+of looking on the 'things of others' that the world has ever seen. It
+dwindles in significance, in pathos, and in power to move us to
+imitation unless we clearly see the divine glory of the eternal Lord as
+the background of the gentle lowliness of the Man of Sorrows, and the
+Cross. No theory of Christ's life and death but that He was born for us,
+and died for us, either explains the facts and the apostolic language
+concerning them, or leaves them invested with their full power to melt
+our hearts and mould our lives. There is a possibility of imitating Him
+in the most transcendent of His acts. The mind may be in us which was in
+Christ Jesus. That it may, His death must first be the ground of our
+hope, and then we must make it the pattern of our lives, and draw from
+it the power to shape them after His blessed Example.
+
+
+
+
+THE ASCENT OF JESUS
+
+          'Wherefore also God highly exalted Him and gave
+          unto Him the name which is above every name; 10.
+          That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
+          of things in heaven, and things on earth, and
+          things under the earth; 11. And that every tongue
+          should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
+          glory of God the Father.'--PHIL. ii. 9-11 (R.V.).
+
+
+'He that humbleth himself shall be exalted,' said Jesus. He is Himself
+the great example of that law. The Apostle here goes on to complete his
+picture of the Lord Jesus as our pattern. In previous verses we had the
+solemn steps of His descent, and the lifelong humility and obedience of
+the incarnate Son, the man Christ Jesus. Here we have the wondrous
+ascent which reverses all the former process. Our text describes the
+reflex motion by which Jesus is borne back to the same level as that
+from which the descent began.
+
+We have
+
+I. The act of exaltation which forms the contrast and the parallel to
+the descent.
+
+'God highly exalted Him.' The Apostle coins an emphatic word which
+doubly expresses elevation, and in its grammatical form shows that it
+indicates a historical fact. That elevation was a thing once
+accomplished on this green earth; that is to say it came to pass in the
+fact of our Lord's ascension when from some fold of the Mount of Olives
+He was borne upwards and, with blessing hands, was received into the
+Shechinah cloud, the glory of which hid Him from the upward-gazing eyes.
+
+It is plain that the 'Him' of whom this tremendous assertion is made,
+must be the same as the 'He' of whom the previous verses spoke, that is,
+the Incarnate Jesus. It is the manhood which is exalted. His humiliation
+consisted in His becoming man, but His exaltation does not consist in
+His laying aside His humanity. It is not a transient but an eternal
+union into which in the Incarnation it entered with divinity.
+Henceforward we have to think of Him in all the glory of His heavenly
+state as man, and as truly and completely in the 'likeness of men' as
+when He walked with bleeding feet on the flinty road of earthly life. He
+now bears for ever the 'form of God' and 'the fashion of a man.'
+
+Here I would pause for a moment to point out that the calm tone of this
+reference to the ascension indicates that it was part of the recognised
+Christian beliefs, and implies that it had been familiar long before the
+date of this Epistle, which itself dates from not more than at the most
+thirty years from the death of Christ. Surely that lapse of time is far
+too narrow to allow of such a belief having sprung up, and been
+universally accepted about a dead man, who all the while was lying in a
+nameless grave.
+
+The descent is presented as _His_ act, but decorum and truth required
+that the exaltation should be God's act. 'He humbled Himself,' but 'God
+exalted Him.' True, He sometimes represented Himself as the Agent of His
+own Resurrection and Ascension, and established a complete parallel
+between His descent and His ascent, as when He said, 'I came out from
+the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go
+unto the Father.' He was no less obedient to the Father's will when He
+ascended up on high, than He was when He came down to earth, and whilst,
+from one point of view, His Resurrection and Ascension were as truly His
+own acts as were His birth and His death, from another, He had to pray,
+'And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory
+which I had with Thee before the world was.' The Titans presumptuously
+scaled the heavens, according to the old legend, but the Incarnate Lord
+returned to 'His own calm home, His habitation from eternity,' was
+exalted thither by God, in token to the universe that the Father
+approved the Son's descent, and that the work which the Son had done was
+indeed, as He declared it to be, 'finished.' By exalting Him, the Father
+not merely reinstated the divine Word in its eternal union with God, but
+received into the cloud of glory the manhood which the Word had assumed.
+
+II. The glory of the name of Jesus.
+
+What is the name 'which is above every name'? It is the name Jesus. It
+is to be noted that Paul scarcely ever uses that simple appellative.
+There are, roughly speaking, about two hundred instances in which he
+names our Lord in his Epistles, and there are only four places, besides
+this, in which he uses this as his own, and two in which he, as it were,
+puts it into the mouth of an enemy. Probably then, some special reason
+led to its occurrence here, and it is not difficult, I think, to see
+what that reason is. The simple personal name was given indeed with
+reference to His work, but had been borne by many a Jewish child before
+Mary called her child Jesus, and the fact that it is this common name
+which is exalted above every name, brings out still more strongly the
+thought already dwelt upon, that what is thus exalted is the manhood of
+our Lord. The name which expressed His true humanity, which showed His
+full identification with us, which was written over His Cross, which
+perhaps shaped the taunt 'He _saved_ others, Himself He cannot
+save,'--that name God has lifted high above all names of council and
+valour, of wisdom and might, of authority and rule. It is shrined in the
+hearts of millions who render to it perfect trust, unconditional
+obedience, absolute loyalty. Its growing power, and the warmth of
+personal love which it evokes, in centuries and lands so far removed
+from the theatre of His life, is a unique thing in the world's history.
+It reigns in heaven.
+
+But Paul is not content with simply asserting the sovereign glory of the
+name of Jesus. He goes on to set it forth as being what no other name
+borne by man can be, the ground and object of worship, when he declares,
+that 'in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.' The words are quoted
+from the second Isaiah, and occur in one of the most solemn and majestic
+utterances of the monotheism of the Old Testament. And Paul takes these
+words, undeterred by the declaration which precede them, 'I Am am God
+and there is none else,' applies them to Jesus, to the manhood of our
+Lord. Bowing the knee is of course prayer, and in these great words the
+issue of the work of Jesus is unmistakably set forth, as not only being
+that He has declared God to men, who through Him are drawn to worship
+the Father, but that their emotions of love, reverence, worship, are
+turned to _Him_, though as the Apostle is careful immediately to note,
+they are not thereby intercepted from, but directed to, the glory of God
+the Father. In the eternities before His descent, there was equality
+with God, and when He returns, it is to the Father, who in Him has
+become the object of adoration, and round whose throne gather with
+bended knees all those who in Jesus see the Father.
+
+The Apostle still further dwells on the glory of the name as that of the
+acknowledged Lord. And here we have with significant variation in strong
+contrast to the previous name of Jesus, the full title 'Jesus Christ
+Lord.' That is almost as unusual in its completeness as the other in its
+simplicity, and it comes in here with tremendous energy, reminding us of
+the great act to which we owe our redemption, and of all the prophecies
+and hopes which, from of old, had gathered round the persistent hope of
+the coming Messiah, while the name of Lord proclaims His absolute
+dominion. The knee is bowed in reverence, the tongue is vocal in
+confession. That confession is incomplete if either of these three names
+is falteringly uttered, and still more so, if either of them is wanting.
+The Jesus whom Christians confess is not merely the man who was born in
+Bethlehem and known among men as 'Jesus the carpenter.' In these modern
+days, His manhood has been so emphasised as to obscure His Messiahship
+and to obliterate His dominion, and alas! there are many who exalt Him
+by the name that Mary gave Him, who turn away from the name of Jesus as
+'Hebrew old clothes,' and from the name of Lord as antiquated
+superstition. But in all the lowliness and gentleness of Jesus there
+were not wanting lofty claims to be the Christ of whom prophets and
+righteous men of old spake, and whose coming many a generation desired
+to see and died without the sight, and still loftier and more absolute
+claims to be invested with 'all power in heaven and earth,' and to sit
+down with the Father on His throne. It is dangerous work to venture to
+toss aside two of these three names, and to hope that if we pronounce
+the third of them, Jesus, with appreciation, it will not matter if we do
+not name Him either Christ or Lord.
+
+If it is true that the manhood of Jesus is thus exalted, how wondrous
+must be the kindred between the human and the divine, that it should be
+capable of this, that it should dwell in the everlasting burnings of the
+Divine Glory and not be consumed! How blessed for us the belief that our
+Brother wields all the forces of the universe, that the human love which
+Jesus had when He bent over the sick and comforted the sorrowful, is at
+the centre. Jesus is Lord, the Lord is Jesus!
+
+The Psalmist was moved to a rapture of thanksgiving when he thought of
+man as 'made a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and
+honour,' but when we think of the Man Jesus 'sitting at the right hand
+of God,' the Psalmist's words seem pale and poor, and we can repeat them
+with a deeper meaning and a fuller emphasis, 'Thou madest Him to have
+dominion over the works of Thy hands, Thou hast put all things under His
+feet.'
+
+III. The universal glory of the name.
+
+By the three classes into which the Apostle divides creation, 'things in
+heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth,' he simply
+intends to declare, that Jesus is the object of all worship, and the
+words are not to be pressed as containing dogmatic assertions as to the
+different classes mentioned. But guided by other words of Scripture, we
+may permissibly think that the 'things in heaven' tell us that the
+angels who do not need His mediation learn more of God by His work and
+bow before His throne. We cannot be wrong in believing that the glory of
+His work stretches far beyond the limits of humanity, and that His
+kingdom numbers other subjects than those who draw human breath. Other
+lips than ours say with a great voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb that hath
+been slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honour
+and glory and blessing.'
+
+The things on earth are of course men, and the words encourage us to dim
+hopes about which we cannot dogmatise of a time when all the wayward
+self-seeking and self-tormenting children of men shall have learned to
+know and love their best friend, and 'there shall be one flock and one
+shepherd.'
+
+'Things under the earth' seems to point to the old thought of 'Sheol' or
+'Hades' or a separate state of the dead. The words certainly suggest
+that those who have gone from us are not unconscious nor cut off from
+the true life, but are capable of adoration and confession. We cannot
+but remember the old belief that Jesus in His death 'descended into
+Hell,' and some of us will not forget Fra Angelico's picture of the open
+doorway with a demon crushed beneath the fallen portal, and the crowd of
+eager faces and outstretched hands swarming up the dark passage, to
+welcome the entering Christ. Whatever we may think of that ancient
+representation, we may at least be sure that, wherever they are, the
+dead in Christ praise and reverence and love.
+
+IV. The glory of the Father in the glory of the name of Jesus.
+
+Knees bent and tongues confessing the absolute dominion of Jesus Christ
+could only be offence and sin if He were not one with the Father. But
+the experience of all the thousands since Paul wrote, whose hearts have
+been drawn in reverent and worshipping trust to the Son, has verified
+the assertion, that to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord diverts no
+worship from God, but swells and deepens the ocean of praise that breaks
+round the throne. If it is true, and only if it is true, that in the
+life and death of Jesus all previous revelations of the Father's heart
+are surpassed, if it is true and only if it is true, as He Himself said,
+that 'I and the Father are one,' can Paul's words here be anything but
+an incredible paradox. But unless these great words close and crown the
+Apostle's glowing vision, it is maimed and imperfect, and Jesus
+interposes between loving hearts and God. One could almost venture to
+believe that at the back of Paul's mind, when he wrote these words, was
+some remembrance of the great prayer, 'I glorified Thee on the earth,
+having accomplished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.' When the Son
+is glorified we glorify the Father, and the words of our text may well
+be remembered and laid to heart by any who will not recognise the deity
+of the Son, because it seems to them to dishonour the Father. Their
+honour is inseparable and their glory one.
+
+There is a sense in which Jesus is our example even in His ascent and
+exaltation, just as He was in His descent and humiliation. The mind
+which was in Him is for us the pattern for earthly life, though the
+deeds in which that mind was expressed, and especially His 'obedience to
+the death of the Cross,' are so far beyond any self-sacrifice of ours,
+and are inimitable, unique, and needing no repetition while the world
+lasts. And as we can imitate His unexampled sacrifice, so we may share
+His divine glory, and, resting on His own faithful word, may follow the
+calm motion of His Ascension, assured that where He is there we shall be
+also, and that the manhood which is exalted in Him is the prophecy that
+all who love Him will share His glory. The question for us all is, have
+we in us 'the mind that was in Christ'? and the other question is, what
+is that name to us? Can we say, 'Thy mighty name salvation is'? If in
+our deepest hearts we grasp that name, and with unfaltering lips can say
+that 'there is none other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we
+must be saved but the name of Jesus,' then we shall know that
+
+          'To us with Thy dear name are given,
+           Pardon, and holiness, and heaven.'
+
+
+
+
+WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION
+
+          'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
+          13. For it is God which worketh in you both to
+          will and to do of His good pleasure.'--PHIL. ii.
+          12, 13.
+
+
+'What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!' Here are,
+joined together, in the compass of one practical exhortation, the truths
+which, put asunder, have been the war-cries and shibboleths of
+contending sects ever since. _Faith_ in a finished salvation, and yet
+_work_; God working all _in_ me, and yet I able and bound to work
+likewise; God upholding and sustaining His child to the very end;
+'perfecting that which concerns him,' making his salvation certain and
+sure, and yet the Christian working 'with fear and trembling,' lest he
+should be a castaway and come short of the grace of God;--who does not
+recognise in these phrases the mottoes that have been written on the
+opposing banners in many a fierce theological battle, waged with much
+harm to both sides, and ending in no clear victory for either? Yet here
+they are blended in the words of one who was no less profound a thinker
+than any that have come after, and who had the gift of a divine
+inspiration to boot.
+
+Not less remarkable than the fusion here of apparent antagonisms, the
+harmonising of apparent opposites, is the intensely practical character
+of the purpose for which they are adduced at all. Paul has no idea of
+giving his disciples a lesson in abstract theology, or laying for them a
+foundation of a philosophy of free will and divine sovereignty; he is
+not merely communicating to these Philippians truths for their creed,
+but precepts for their deeds. The Bible knows nothing of an unpractical
+theology, but, on the other hand, the Bible knows still less of an
+untheological morality. It digs deep, bottoming the simplest right
+action upon right thinking, and going down to the mountain bases on
+which the very pillars of the universe rest, in order to lay there, firm
+and immovable, the courses of the temple of a holy life. Just as little
+as Scripture gives countenance to the error that makes religion theology
+rather than life, just so little does it give countenance to the far
+more contemptible and shallower error common in our day, which _says_,
+Religion is not theology, but life; and _means_, 'Therefore, it does
+not matter what theology you have, you can work a good life out with any
+creed!' The Bible never teaches unpractical speculations, and the Bible
+never gives precepts which do not rest on the profoundest truths. Would
+God, brethren, that we all had souls as wide as would take in the whole
+of the many-sided scriptural representation of the truths of the Gospel,
+and so avoid the narrowness of petty, partial views of God's infinite
+counsel; and that we had as close, direct, and as free communication
+between head, and heart, and hand, as the Scripture has between precept
+and practice!
+
+But in reference more especially to my text. Keeping in view these two
+points I have already suggested, namely,--that it is the reconciling of
+apparent opposites, and that it is intensely practical, I find in it
+these three thoughts;--First, a Christian has his whole salvation
+accomplished for him, and yet he is to work it out. Secondly, a
+Christian has everything done in him by God, and yet he is to work.
+Lastly, a Christian has his salvation certainly secured, and yet he is
+to fear and tremble.
+
+I. In the first place, A Christian man has his whole salvation already
+accomplished for him in Christ, and yet he is to work it out.
+
+There are two points absolutely necessary to be kept in view in order to
+a right understanding of the words before us, for the want of noticing
+which it has become the occasion of terrible mistakes. These are--the
+persons to whom it is addressed, and the force of the scriptural
+expression 'salvation.' As to the first, this exhortation has been
+misapplied by being addressed to those who have no claim to be
+Christians, and by having such teaching deduced from it as, You do your
+part, and God will do His; You work, and God will certainly help you;
+You co-operate in the great work of your salvation, and you will get
+grace and pardon through Jesus Christ. Now let us remember the very
+simple thing, but very important to the right understanding of these
+words, that none but Christian people have anything to do with them. To
+all others, to all who are not already resting on the finished salvation
+of Jesus Christ, this injunction is utterly inapplicable. It is
+addressed to the 'beloved, who have always obeyed'; to the 'saints in
+Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi.' The whole Epistle is addressed,
+and this injunction with the rest, to Christian men. That is the first
+thing to be remembered. If there be any of you, who have thought that
+these words of Paul's to those who had believed on Christ contained a
+rule of action for you, though you have not rested your souls on Him,
+and exhorted you to try to win salvation by your own doings, let me
+remind you of what Christ said when the Jews came to Him in a similar
+spirit and asked Him, 'What shall we do that we may work the works of
+God?' His answer to them was, and His answer to you, my brother, is,
+'_This_ is the work of God, that ye should _believe_ in Him whom He hath
+sent.' That is the first lesson: Not _work_, but _faith_; unless there
+be faith, no work. Unless you are a Christian, the passage has nothing
+to do with you.
+
+But now, if this injunction be addressed to those who are looking for
+their salvation only to the perfect work of Christ, how can they be
+exhorted to work it out themselves? Is not the oft-recurring burden of
+Paul's teaching 'not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but
+by His mercy He saved us'? How does this text harmonise with these
+constantly repeated assertions that Christ has done all for us, and
+that we have nothing to do, and can do nothing? To answer this question,
+we have to remember that that scriptural expression, 'salvation,' is
+used with considerable width and complexity of signification. It
+sometimes means the whole of the process, from the beginning to the end,
+by which we are delivered from sin in all its aspects, and are set safe
+and stable at the right hand of God. It sometimes means one or other of
+three different parts of that process--either deliverance from the
+guilt, punishment, condemnation of sin; or secondly, the gradual process
+of deliverance from its power in our own hearts; or thirdly, the
+completion of that process by the final and perfect deliverance from sin
+and sorrow, from death and the body, from earth and all its weariness
+and troubles, which is achieved when we are landed on the other side of
+the river. Salvation, in one aspect, is a thing _past_ to the Christian;
+in another, it is a thing _present_; in a third, it is a thing _future_.
+But all these three are one; all are elements of the one
+deliverance--the one mighty and perfect act which includes them all.
+
+These three all come equally from Christ Himself. These three all depend
+equally on His work and His power. These three are all given to a
+Christian man in the first act of faith. But the attitude in which he
+stands in reference to that _accomplished_ salvation which means
+deliverance from sin as a penalty and a curse, and that in which he
+stands to the continuing and progressive salvation which means
+deliverance from the power of evil in his own heart, are somewhat
+different. In regard to the one, he has only to take the finished
+blessing. He has to exercise faith and faith alone. He has nothing to
+do, nothing to add, in order to fit himself for it, but simply to
+receive the gift of God, and to believe on Him whom He hath sent. But
+then, though that reception involves what shall come after it, and
+though every one who has and holds the first thing, the pardon of his
+transgression, has and holds thereby and therein his growing sanctifying
+and his final glory, yet the salvation which means our being delivered
+from the evil that is in our hearts, and having our souls made like unto
+Christ, is one which--free gift though it be--is not ours on the sole
+condition of an initial act of faith, but is ours on the condition of
+continuous faithful reception and daily effort, not in our own strength,
+but in God's strength, to become like Him, and to make our own that
+which God has given us, and which Christ is continually bestowing upon
+us.
+
+The two things, then, are not inconsistent--an accomplished salvation, a
+full, free, perfect redemption, with which a man has nothing to do at
+all, but to take it;--and, on the other hand, the injunction to them who
+have received this divine gift: 'Work out your own salvation.' Work, as
+well as believe, and in the daily practice of faithful obedience, in the
+daily subjugation of your own spirits to His divine power, in the daily
+crucifixion of your flesh with its affections and lusts, in the daily
+straining after loftier heights of godliness and purer atmospheres of
+devotion and love--make more thoroughly your own that which you possess.
+Work into the substance of your souls that which you _have_. Apprehend
+that for which you are apprehended of Christ. 'Give all diligence to
+make your calling and election sure'; and remember that not a past act
+of faith, but a present and continuous life of loving, faithful work in
+Christ, which is His and yet yours, is the 'holding fast the beginning
+of your confidence firm unto the end.'
+
+II. In the second place, God works all in us, and yet we have to work.
+
+There can be no mistake about the good faith and firm emphasis--as of a
+man who knows his own mind, and _knows_ that his word is true--with
+which the Apostle holds up here the two sides of what I venture to call
+the one truth; 'Work out your own salvation--for God works in you.'
+Command implies power. Command and power involve duty. The freedom of
+the Christian's action, the responsibility of the believer for his
+Christian growth in grace, the committal to the Christian man's own
+hands of the means of sanctifying, lie in that injunction, 'Work out
+your own salvation.' Is there any faltering, any paring down or cautious
+guarding of the words, in order that they may not seem to clash with the
+other side of the truth? No: Paul does not say, 'Work it out; _yet_ it
+is God that worketh in you'; not 'Work it out _although_ it is God that
+worketh in you'; not 'Work it out, but then it must always be remembered
+and taken as a caution that it is God that worketh in you!' He blends
+the two things together in an altogether different connection, and
+sees--strangely to some people, no contradiction, nor limitation, nor
+puzzle, but a ground of encouragement to cheerful obedience. Do you
+work, '_for_ it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His
+good pleasure.' And does the Apostle limit the divine operation? Notice
+how his words seem picked out on purpose to express most emphatically
+its all-pervading energy. Look how his words seem picked out on purpose
+to express with the utmost possible emphasis that all which a good man
+is, and does, is its fruit. It is God that _worketh in_ you. That
+expresses more than bringing outward means to bear upon heart and will.
+It speaks of an inward, real, and efficacious operation of the
+Indwelling Spirit of all energy on the spirit in which He dwells.
+'Worketh in you _to will_'; this expresses more than the presentation of
+motives from without, it points to a direct action on the will, by which
+impulses are originated within. God puts in you the first faint motions
+of a better will. 'Worketh in you, doing as well as willing'; this
+points to all practical obedience, to all external acts as flowing from
+His grace in us, no less than all inward good thoughts and holy desires.
+
+It is not that God gives men the power, and then leaves them to make the
+use of it. It is not that the desire and purpose come forth from Him,
+and that then we are left to ourselves to be faithful or unfaithful
+stewards in carrying it out. The whole process, from the first sowing of
+the seed until its last blossoming and fruiting, in the shape of an
+accomplished act, of which God shall bless the springing--it is all
+God's together! There is a thorough-going, absolute attribution of every
+power, every action, all the thoughts words, and deeds of a Christian
+soul, to God. No words could be selected which would more thoroughly cut
+away the ground from every half-and-half system which attempts to deal
+them out in two portions, part God's and part mine. With all emphasis
+Paul attributes all to God.
+
+And none the less strongly does he teach, by the implication contained
+in his earnest injunction, that human responsibility, that human control
+over the human will, and that reality of human agency which are often
+thought to be annihilated by these broad views of God as originating all
+good in the soul and life. The Apostle thought that this doctrine did
+not absorb all our individuality in one great divine Cause which made
+men mere tools and puppets. He did not believe that the inference from
+it was, 'Therefore do you sit still, and feel yourselves the cyphers
+that you are.' His practical conclusion is the very opposite. It is--God
+does all, therefore do you work. His belief in the power of God's grace
+was the foundation of the most intense conviction of the reality and
+indispensableness of his own power, and was the motive which stimulated
+him to vigorous action. Work, for God works in you.
+
+Each of these truths rests firmly on its own appropriate evidence. My
+own consciousness tells me that I am free, that I have power, that I am
+therefore responsible and exposed to punishment for neglect of duty. I
+know what I mean when I speak of the will of God, because I myself am
+conscious of a will. The power of God is an object of intelligent
+thought to me, because I myself am conscious of power. And on the other
+hand, that belief in a God which is one of the deep and universal
+beliefs of men contains in it, when it comes to be thought about, the
+belief in Him as the source of all power, as the great cause of all. If
+I believe in a God at all, I must believe that He whom I so call,
+worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. These two
+convictions are both given to us in the primitive beliefs which belong
+to us all. The one rests on consciousness, and underlies all our moral
+judgments. The other rests on an original belief, which belongs to man
+as such. These two mighty pillars on which all morality and all
+religion repose have their foundations down deep in our nature, and
+tower up beyond our sight. They seem to stand opposite to each other,
+but it is only as the strong piers of some tall arch are opposed.
+Beneath they repose on one foundation, above they join together in the
+completing keystone and bear the whole steady structure.
+
+Wise and good men have toiled to harmonise them, in vain. The task
+transcends the limits of human faculties, as exercised here, at all
+events. Perhaps the time may come when we shall be lifted high enough to
+see the binding arch, but here on earth we can only behold the shafts on
+either side. The history of controversy on the matter surely proves
+abundantly what a hopeless task they undertake who attempt to reconcile
+these truths. The attempt has usually consisted in speaking the one
+loudly and the other in a whisper, and then the opposite side has
+thundered what had been whispered, and has whispered very softly what
+had been shouted very loudly. One party lays hold of the one pole of the
+ark, and the other lays hold of that on the other side. The fancied
+reconciliation consists in paring down one half of the full-orbed truth
+to nothing, or in admitting it in words while every principle of the
+reconciler's system demands its denial. Each antagonist is strong in his
+assertions, and weak in his denials, victorious when he establishes his
+half of the whole, easily defeated when he tries to overthrow his
+opponent's.
+
+This apparent incompatibility is no reason for rejecting truths each
+commended to our acceptance on its own proper grounds. It may be a
+reason for not attempting to dogmatise about them. It may be a warning
+to us that we are on ground where our limited understandings have no
+firm footing, but it is no ground for suspecting the evidence which
+certifies the truths. The Bible admits and enforces them both. It never
+tones down the emphasis of its statement of the one for fear of clashing
+against the other, but points to us the true path for thought, in a firm
+grasp of both, in the abandonment of all attempts to reconcile them, and
+for practical conduct, in the peaceful trust in God who hath wrought all
+our works in us, and in strenuous working out of our own salvation. Let
+us, as we look back on that battlefield where much wiser men than we
+have fought in vain, doing little but raising up 'a little dust that is
+lightly laid again,' and building trophies that are soon struck down,
+learn the lesson it teaches, and be contented to say, The short cord of
+my plummet does not quite go down to the bottom of the bottomless, and I
+do not profess either to understand God or to understand man, both of
+which I should want to do before I understood the mystery of their
+conjoint action. Enough for me to believe that,
+
+          'If any force we have, it is to ill,
+           And all the power is God's, to do and eke to will.'
+
+Enough for me to know that I have solemn duties laid upon me, a life's
+task to be done, my deliverance from mine own evil to work out, and that
+I shall only accomplish that work when I can say with the Apostle, 'I
+live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
+
+God is all, but _thou_ canst work! My brother, take this belief, that
+God worketh all in you, for the ground of your confidence, and feel that
+unless He do all, you can do nothing. Take this conviction, that thou
+canst work, for the spur and stimulus of thy life, and think, These
+desires in my soul come from a far deeper source than the little cistern
+of my own individual life. They are God's gift. Let me cherish them with
+the awful carefulness which their origin requires, lest I should seem to
+have received the grace of God in vain. These two streams of truth are
+like the rain-shower that falls upon the watershed of a country. The one
+half flows down the one side of the everlasting hills, and the other
+down the other. Falling into rivers that water different continents,
+they at length find the sea, separated by the distance of half the
+globe. But the sea into which they fall is one, in every creek and
+channel. And so, the truth into which these two apparent opposites
+converge, is 'the depth of the wisdom and the knowledge of God,' whose
+ways are past finding out--the Author of all goodness, who, if we have
+any holy thought, has given it us; if we have any true desire, has
+implanted it; has given us the strength to do the right and to live in
+His fear; and who yet, doing all the willing and the doing, says to us,
+'Because I do everything, therefore let not _thy_ will be paralysed, or
+_thy_ hand palsied; but because I do everything, therefore will _thou_
+according to My will, and do _thou_ according to My commandments!'
+
+III. Lastly: The Christian has his salvation secured, and yet he is to
+fear and tremble.
+
+'Fear and trembling.' 'But,' you may say, 'perfect love casts out fear.'
+So it does. The fear which has torment it casts out. But there is
+another fear in which there is no torment, brethren; a fear and
+trembling which is but another shape of confidence and calm hope!
+Scripture does tell us that the believing man's salvation is certain.
+Scripture tells us it is certain since he believes. And your faith can
+be worth nothing unless it have, bedded deep in it, that trembling
+distrust of your own power which is the pre-requisite and the companion
+of all thankful and faithful reception of God's infinite mercy. Your
+horizon ought to be full of fear, if your gaze be limited to yourself;
+but oh! above our earthly horizon with its fogs, God's infinite blue
+stretches untroubled by the mist and cloud which are earth-born. I, as
+working, have need to tremble and to fear, but I, as wrought upon, have
+a right to confidence and hope, a hope that is full of immortality, and
+an assurance which is the pledge of its own fulfilment. The worker is
+nothing, the Worker in him is all. Fear and trembling, when the thoughts
+turn to mine own sins and weaknesses, hope and confidence when they turn
+to the happier vision of God! 'Not I'--there is the tremulous
+self-distrust; 'the grace of God in me'--there is the calm assurance of
+victory. Forasmuch, then, as God worketh all things, be _you_ diligent,
+faithful, prayerful, confident. Forasmuch as Christ has perfected the
+work for you, do _you_ 'go on unto perfection.' Let all fear and
+trembling be yours, as a man; let all confidence and calm trust be yours
+as a child of God. Turn your confidence and your fears alike into
+prayer. 'Perfect, O Lord, that which concerneth me; forsake not the work
+of Thine own hands!'--and the prayer will evoke the merciful answer, 'I
+will never leave thee, nor forsake thee God is faithful, who hath called
+you unto the Gospel of His Son; and _will_ keep you unto His everlasting
+kingdom of glory.'
+
+
+
+
+COPIES OF JESUS
+
+          'Do all things without murmurings and disputings;
+          15. That ye may be blameless and harmless,
+          children of God without blemish in the midst of a
+          crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye are
+          seen as lights in the world, 16. Holding forth the
+          word of life.'--PHIL. ii. 14-16 (R.V.).
+
+
+We are told by some superfine modern moralists, that to regard one's own
+salvation as the great work of our lives is a kind of selfishness, and
+no doubt there may be a colour of truth in the charge. At least the
+meaning of the injunction to work out our own salvation may have been
+sometimes so misunderstood, and there have been types of Christian
+character, such as the ascetic and monastic, which have made the
+representation plausible. I do not think that there is much danger of
+anybody so misunderstanding the precept now. But it is worthy of notice
+that there stand here side by side two paragraphs, in the former of
+which the effort to work out one's own salvation is urged in the
+strongest terms, and in the other of which the regard for others is
+predominant. We shall see that the connection between these two is not
+accidental, but that one great reason for working out our salvation is
+here set forth as being the good we may thereby do to others.
+
+I. We note the one great duty of cheerful yielding to God's will.
+
+It is clear, I think, that the precept to do 'all things without
+murmurings and disputings' stands in the closest connection with what
+goes before. It is, in fact, the explanation of how salvation is to be
+wrought out. It presents the human side which corresponds to the divine
+activity, which has just been so earnestly insisted on. God works in us
+'willing and doing,' let us on our parts do with ready submission all
+the things which He so inspires to will and to do.
+
+The 'murmurings' are not against men but against God. The 'disputings'
+are not wrangling with others but the division of mind in one's
+self-questionings, hesitations, and the like. So the one are more moral,
+the other more intellectual, and together they represent the ways in
+which Christian men may resist the action on their spirits of God's
+Spirit, 'willing,' or the action of God's providence on their
+circumstances, 'doing.' Have we never known what it was to have some
+course manifestly prescribed to us as right, from which we have shrunk
+with reluctance of will? If some course has all at once struck us as
+wrong which we had been long accustomed to do without hesitation, has
+there been no 'murmuring' before we yielded? A voice has said to us,
+'Give up such and such a habit,' or 'such and such a pursuit is becoming
+too engrossing': do we not all know what it is not only to feel
+obedience an effort, but even to cherish reluctance, and to let it
+stifle the voice?
+
+There are often 'disputings' which do not get the length of
+'murmurings.' The old word which tried to weaken the plain imperative of
+the first command by the subtle suggestion, 'Yea, hath God said?' still
+is whispered into our ears. We know what it is to answer God's commands
+with a 'But, Lord.' A reluctant will is clever to drape itself with more
+or less honest excuses, and the only safety is in cheerful obedience and
+glad submission. The will of God ought not only to receive obedience,
+but prompt obedience, and such instantaneous and whole-souled submission
+is indispensable if we are to 'work out our own salvation,' and to
+present an attitude of true, receptive correspondence to that of God,
+who 'works in us both to will and to do of His own good pleasure.' Our
+surrender of ourselves into the hands of God, in respect both to inward
+and outward things, should be complete. As has been profoundly said,
+that surrender consists 'in a continual forsaking and losing all self in
+the will of God, willing only what God from eternity has willed,
+forgetting what is past, giving up the time present to God, and leaving
+to His providence that which is to come, making ourselves content in the
+actual moment seeing it brings along with it the eternal order of God
+concerning us' (Madame Guyon).
+
+II. The conscious aim in all our activity.
+
+What God works in us for is that for which we too are to yield ourselves
+to His working, 'without murmurings and disputings,' and to co-operate
+with glad submission and cheerful obedience. We are to have as our
+distinct aim the building up of a character 'blameless and harmless,
+children of God without rebuke.' The blamelessness is probably in
+reference to men's judgment rather than to God's, and the difficulty of
+coming untarnished from contact with the actions and criticisms of a
+crooked and perverse generation is emphasised by the very fact that such
+blamelessness is the first requirement for Christian conduct. It was a
+feather in Daniel's cap that the president and princes were foiled in
+their attempt to pick holes in his conduct, and had to confess that they
+would not 'find any occasion against him, except we find it concerning
+the laws of his God.' God is working in us in order that our lives
+should be such that malice is dumb in their presence. Are we
+co-operating with Him? We are bound to satisfy the world's requirements
+of Christian character. They are sharp critics and sometimes
+unreasonable, but on the whole it would not be a bad rule for Christian
+people, 'Do what irreligious men expect you to do.' The worst man knows
+more than the best man practises, and his conscience is quick to decide
+the course for other people. Our weaknesses and compromises, and love of
+the world, might receive a salutary rebuke if we would try to meet the
+expectations which 'the man in the street' forms of us.
+
+'Harmless' is more correctly pure, all of a piece, homogeneous and
+entire. It expresses what the Christian life should be in itself, whilst
+the former designation describes it more as it appears. The piece of
+cloth is to be so evenly and carefully woven that if held up against the
+light it will show no flaws nor knots. Many a professing Christian life
+has a veneer of godliness nailed thinly over a solid bulk of
+selfishness. There are many goods in the market finely dressed so as to
+hide that the warp is cotton and only the weft silk. No Christian man
+who has memory and self-knowledge can for a moment claim to have reached
+the height of his ideal; the best of us, at the best, are like
+Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were iron and clay, but we ought to
+strain after it and to remember that a stain shows most on the whitest
+robe. What made David's sin glaring and memorable was its contradiction
+of his habitual nobler self. One spot more matters little on a robe
+already covered with many. The world is fully warranted in pointing
+gleefully or contemptuously at Christians' inconsistencies, and we have
+no right to find fault with their most pointed sarcasms, or their
+severest judgments. It is those 'that bear the vessels of the Lord'
+whose burden imposes on them the duty 'be ye clean,' and makes any
+uncleanness more foul in them than in any other.
+
+The Apostle sets forth the place and function of Christians in the
+world, by bringing together in the sharpest contrast the 'children of
+God' and a 'crooked and perverse generation.' He is thinking of the old
+description in Deuteronomy, where the ancient Israel is charged with
+forgetting 'Thy Father that hath bought thee,' and as showing by their
+corruption that they are a 'perverse and crooked generation.' The
+ancient Israel had been the Son of God, and yet had corrupted itself;
+the Christian Israel are 'sons of God' set among a world all deformed,
+twisted, perverted. 'Perverse' is a stronger word than 'crooked,' which
+latter may be a metaphor for moral obliquity, like our own right and
+wrong, or perhaps points to personal deformity. Be that as it may, the
+position which the Apostle takes is plain enough. He regards the two
+classes as broadly separated in antagonism in the very roots of their
+being. Because the 'sons of God' are set in the midst of that 'crooked
+and perverse generation' constant watchfulness is needed lest they
+should conform, constant resort to their Father lest they should lose
+the sense of sonship, and constant effort that they may witness of Him.
+
+III. The solemn reason for this aim.
+
+That is drawn from a consideration of the office and function of
+Christian men. Their position in the midst of a 'crooked and perverse
+generation' devolves on them a duty in relation to that generation. They
+are to 'appear as lights in the world.' The relation between them and it
+is not merely one of contrast, but on their parts one of witness and
+example. The metaphor of light needs no explanation. We need only note
+that the word, 'are seen' or 'appear,' is indicative, a statement of
+fact, not imperative, a command. As the stars lighten the darkness with
+their myriad lucid points, so in the divine ideal Christian men are to
+be as twinkling lights in the abyss of darkness. Their light rays forth
+without effort, being an involuntary efflux. Possibly the old paradox of
+the Psalmist was in the Apostle's mind, which speaks of the eloquent
+silence, in which 'there is no speech nor language, and their voice is
+not heard,' but yet 'their line has gone out through all the earth, and
+their words unto the end of the world.'
+
+Christian men appear as lights by 'holding forth the word of life.' In
+themselves they have no brightness but that which comes from raying out
+the light that is in them. The word of life must live, giving life in
+us, if we are ever to be seen as 'lights in the world.' As surely as the
+electric light dies out of a lamp when the current is switched off, so
+surely shall we be light only when we are 'in the Lord.' There are many
+so-called Christians in this day who stand tragically unaware that their
+'lamps are gone out.' When the sun rises and smites the mountain tops
+they burn, when its light falls on Memnon's stony lips they breathe out
+music, 'Arise, shine, for thy light has come.'
+
+Undoubtedly one way of 'holding forth the word of life' must be to speak
+the word, but silent living 'blameless and harmless' and leaving the
+secret of the life very much to tell itself is perhaps the best way for
+most Christian people to bear witness. Such a witness is constant,
+diffused wherever the witness-bearer is seen, and free from the
+difficulties that beset speech, and especially from the assumption of
+superiority which often gives offence. It was the sight of 'your good
+deeds' to which Jesus pointed as the strongest reason for men's
+'glorifying your Father.' If we lived such lives there would be less
+need for preachers. 'If any will not hear the word they may without the
+word be won.' And reasonably so, for Christianity is a life and cannot
+be all told in words, and the Gospel is the proclamation of freedom from
+sin, and is best preached and proved by showing that we are free. The
+Gospel was lived as well as spoken. Christ's life was Christ's mightiest
+preaching.
+
+          'The word was flesh and wrought
+           With human hands the creed of creeds.'
+
+If we keep near to Him we too shall witness, and if our faces shine like
+Moses' as he came down from the mountain, or like Stephen's in the
+council chamber, men will 'take knowledge of us that we have been with
+Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+A WILLING SACRIFICE
+
+          'That I may have whereof to glory in the day of
+          Christ, that I did not run in vain neither labour
+          in vain. 17. Yea, and if I am offered upon the
+          sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and
+          rejoice with you all. 18. And in the same manner
+          do ye also joy, and rejoice with me.'--PHIL. ii.
+          16-18 (R.V.).
+
+
+We come here to another of the passages in which the Apostle pours out
+all his heart to his beloved Church. Perhaps there never was a Christian
+teacher (always excepting Christ) who spoke more about himself than
+Paul. His own experience was always at hand for illustration. His
+preaching was but the generalisation of his life. He had felt it all
+first, before he threw it into the form of doctrine. It is very hard to
+keep such a style from becoming egotism.
+
+This paragraph is remarkable, especially if we consider that this is
+introduced as a motive to their faithfulness, that thereby they will
+contribute to his joy at the last great testing. There must have been a
+very deep love between Paul and the Philippians to make such words as
+these true and appropriate. They open the very depths of his heart in a
+way from which a less noble and fervid nature would have shrunk, and
+express his absolute consecration in his work, and his eager desire for
+their spiritual good, with such force as would have been exaggeration in
+most men.
+
+We have here a wonderful picture of the relation between him and the
+church at Philippi which may well stand as a pattern for us all. I do
+not mean to parallel our relations with that between him and them, but
+it is sufficiently analogous to make these words very weighty and solemn
+for us.
+
+I. The Philippians' faithfulness Paul's glory in the day of Christ.
+
+The Apostle strikes a solemn note, which was always sounding through his
+life, when he points to that great Day of Christ as the time when his
+work was to be tested. The thought of that gave earnestness to all his
+service, and in conjunction with the joyful thought that, however his
+work might be marred by failures and flaws, he himself was 'accepted in
+the beloved,' was the impulse which carried him on through a life than
+which none of Christ's servants have dared, and done, and suffered more
+for Him. Paul believed that, according to the results of that test, his
+position would in some sort be determined. Of course he does not here
+contradict the foundation principle of his whole Gospel, that salvation
+is not the result of our own works, or virtues, but is the free
+unmerited gift of Christ's grace. But while that is true, it is none the
+less true, that the degree in which believers receive that gift depends
+on their Christian character, both in their life on earth and in the day
+of Christ. One element in that character is faithful work for Jesus.
+Faithful work indeed is not necessarily successful work, and many who
+are welcomed by Jesus, the judge, will have the memory of many
+disappointments and few harvested grains. It was not a reaper, 'bringing
+his sheaves with him,' who stayed himself against the experience of
+failure, by the assurance, 'Though Israel be not gathered yet shall I be
+glorious in the eyes of the Lord.' If our want of success, and others'
+lapse, and apostasy or coldness has not been occasioned by any fault of
+ours, there will be no diminution of our reward. But we can so seldom be
+sure of that, and even then there will be an absence of what might have
+added to gladness.
+
+We need not do more than note that the text plainly implies, that at
+that testing time men's knowledge of all that they did, and the results
+of it, will be complete. Marvellous as it seems to us, with our
+fragmentary memories, and the great tracts of our lives through which we
+have passed mechanically, and which seem to have left no trace on the
+mirror of our consciousness, we still, all of us, have experiences which
+make that all-recovering memory credible. Some passing association, a
+look, a touch, an odour, a sun-set sky, a chord of music will bring
+before us some trivial long-forgotten incident or emotion, as the chance
+thrust of a boat-hook will draw to the surface by its hair, a
+long-drowned corpse. If we are, as assuredly we are, writing with
+invisible ink our whole life's history on the pages of our own minds,
+and if we shall have to read them all over again one day, is it not
+tragic that most of us scribble the pages so hastily and carelessly, and
+forget that, 'what I have written I have written,' and what I have
+written I must read.
+
+But there is another way of looking at Paul's words as being an
+indication of his warm love for the Philippians. Even among the glories,
+he would feel his heart filled with new gladness when he found them
+there. The hunger for the good of others which cannot bear to think even
+of heaven without their presence has been a master note of all true
+Christian teachers, and without it there will be little of the toil, of
+which Paul speaks in the context, 'running and labouring.' He that would
+win men's hearts for any great cause must give his heart to them.
+
+That Paul should have felt warranted in using such a motive with the
+Philippians tells how surely he reckoned on their true and deep love. He
+believes that they care enough for him to feel the power as a motive
+with them, that their faithfulness will make Paul more blessed amidst
+the blessings of heaven. Oh! if such love knit together all Christian
+teachers and their hearers in this time, and if the 'Day of Christ'
+burned before them, as it did before him, and if the vision stirred to
+such running and labouring as his, teachers and taught would oftener
+have to say, 'We are your rejoicing, even as ye are also ours in the Day
+of our Lord Jesus.' The voice of the man who is in the true 'Apostolic
+Succession' will dare to make the appeal, knowing that it will call
+forth an abundant answer, 'Look to yourselves that we lose not the
+things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.'
+
+II. Paul's death an aid to the Philippians' faith.
+
+The general meaning of the Apostle's words is, 'If I have not only to
+run and labour, but to die in the discharge of my Apostolic Mission, I
+joy and rejoice, and I bid you rejoice with me.' We need only note that
+the Apostle here casts his language into the forms consecrated for
+sacrifice. He will not speak of death by its own ugly and threadbare
+name, but thinks of himself as a devoted victim, and of his death as
+making the sacrifice complete. In the figure there is a solemn scorn of
+death, and at the same time a joyful recognition that it is the means of
+bringing him more nearly to God, with whom he would fain be. It is
+interesting, as showing the persistence of these thoughts in the
+Apostle's mind, that the word rendered in our text 'offered,' which
+fully means 'poured out as a drink offering,' occurs again in the same
+connection in the great words of the swan song in II. Timothy, 'I am
+already being offered, and the time of my departure is come.' Death
+looked to him, when he looked it in the eyes, and the block was close by
+him, as it had done when he spoke of it to his Philippian friends.
+
+It is to be noted, in order to bring out more vividly the force of the
+figure, that Paul here speaks of the libation being poured '_on_' the
+sacrifice, as was the practice in heathen ritual. The sacrifice is the
+victim, 'service' is the technical word for priestly ministration, and
+the general meaning is, 'If my blood is poured out as a drink offering
+on the sacrifice ministered by you, which is your faith, I joy with you
+all.' This man had no fear of death, and no shrinking from 'leaving the
+warm precincts of the cheerful day.' He was equally ready to live or to
+die as might best serve the name of Jesus, for to him 'to live was
+Christ,' and therefore to him it could be nothing but 'gain' to die.
+Here he seems to be treating his death as a possibility, but as a
+possibility only, for almost immediately afterwards he says, that he
+'trusts in the Lord that I myself will come shortly.' It is interesting
+to notice the contrast between his mood of mind here and that in the
+previous chapter (i. 25) where the 'desire to depart and to be with
+Christ' is deliberately suppressed, because his continuous life is
+regarded as essential for the Philippians' 'progress and joy in faith.'
+Here he discerns that perhaps his death would do more for their faith
+than would his life, and being ready for either alternative he welcomes
+the possibility. May we not see in the calm heart, which is at leisure
+to think of death in such a fashion, a pattern for us all? Remember how
+near and real his danger was. Nero was not in the habit of letting a
+man, whose head had been in the mouth of the lion, take it out unhurt.
+Paul is no eloquent writer or poet playing with the idea of death, and
+trying to say pretty things about it, but a man who did not know when
+the blow would come, but _did_ know that it would come before long.
+
+We may point here to the two great thoughts in Paul's words, and notice
+the priesthood and sacrifice of life, and the sacrifice and libation of
+death. The Philippians offered as their sacrifice their faith, and all
+the works which flow therefrom. Is that our idea of life? Is it our idea
+of faith? We have no gifts to bring, we come empty-handed unless we
+carry in our hands the offering of our faith, which includes the
+surrender of our will, and the giving away of our hearts, and is
+essentially laying hold of Christ's sacrifice. When we come empty,
+needy, sinful, but cleaving wholly to that perfect sacrifice of the
+Great Priest, we too become priests and our poor gift is accepted.
+
+But another possibility than that of a life of running and labour
+presented itself to Paul, and it is a revelation of the tranquillity of
+his heart in the midst of impending danger, all the more pathetic
+because it is entirely unconscious, that he should be free to cast his
+anticipations into that calm metaphor of being, 'offered upon the
+sacrifice and service of your faith.' His heart beats no faster, nor
+does the faintest shadow of reluctance cross his will, when he thinks of
+his death. All the repulsive accompaniments of a Roman execution fade
+away from his imagination. These are but negligible accidents; the
+substantial reality which obscures them all is that his blood will be
+poured out as a libation, and that by it his brethren's faith will be
+strengthened. To this man death had finally and completely ceased to be
+a terror, and had become what it should be to all Christians, a
+voluntary surrender to God, an offering to Him, an act of worship, of
+trust, and of thankful praise. Seneca, in his death, poured out a
+libation to Jupiter the Liberator, and if we could only know beforehand
+what death delivers us from, and admits us to, we should not be so prone
+to call it 'the last enemy.' What Paul's death was for himself in the
+process of his perfecting called forth, and warranted, the 'joy' with
+which he anticipated it. It did no more for him than it will do for each
+of us, and if our vision were as clear, and our faith as firm as his, we
+should be more ready than, alas! we too often are, to catch up the
+exulting note with which he hails the possibility of its coming.
+
+But it is not the personal bearing only of his death that gives him joy.
+He thinks of it mainly as contributing to the furtherance of the faith
+of others. For that end he was spending the effort and toil of an
+effortful and toilsome life, and was equally ready to meet a violent and
+shameful death. He knew that 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of
+the Church,' and rejoiced, and called upon his brethren also to 'joy
+and rejoice' with him in his shedding of his martyr's blood.
+
+The Philippians might well have thought, as we all are tempted to think,
+that the withdrawal of those round whom our hearts desperately cling,
+and who seem to us to bring love and trust nearer to us, can only be
+loss, but surely the example in our text may well speak to our hearts of
+the way in which we should look at death for ourselves, and for our
+dearest. Their very withdrawal may send us nearer to Christ. The holy
+memories which linger in the sky, like the radiance of a sunken sun, may
+clothe familiar truths with unfamiliar power and loveliness. The thought
+of where the departed have gone may lift our thoughts wistfully thither
+with a new feeling of home. The path that they have trodden may become
+less strange to us, and the victory that they have won may prophesy that
+we too shall be 'more than conquerors through Him that loveth us.' So
+the mirror broken may turn us to the sun, and the passing of the dearest
+that can die may draw us to the Dearer who lives.
+
+Paul, living, rejoiced in the prospect of death. We may be sure that he
+rejoiced in it no less dead than living. And we may permissibly think of
+this text as suggesting how
+
+          'The saints on earth and all the dead
+           But one communion make,'
+
+and are to be united in one joy. They rejoice for their own sakes, but
+their joy is not self-absorbed, and so putting them farther away from
+us. They look back upon earth, the runnings and labourings of the
+unforgotten life here; and are glad to bear in their hearts the
+indubitable token that they have 'not run in vain neither laboured in
+vain.' But surely the depth of their own repose will not make them
+indifferent to those who are still in the midst of struggle and toil,
+nor the fulness of their own felicity make them forget those whom they
+loved of old, and love now with the perfect love of Heaven. It is hard
+for us to rise to complete sympathy with these serenely blessed spirits,
+but yet we too should rejoice. Not indeed to the exclusion of sorrow,
+nor to the neglect of the great purpose to be effected in us by the
+withdrawal, as by the presence of dear ones, the furtherance of our
+faith, but having made sure that that purpose has been effected in us,
+we should then give solemn thanksgivings if it has. It is sad and
+strange to think of how opposite are the feelings about their departure,
+of those who have gone and of those who are left. Would it not be better
+that we should try to share theirs and so bring about a true union? We
+may be sure that their deepest desire is that we should. If some lips
+that we shall never hear any more, till we come where they are, could
+speak, would not they bring to us as their message from Heaven, Do 'ye
+also joy and rejoice with me'?
+
+
+
+
+PAUL AND TIMOTHY
+
+          'But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy
+          shortly unto you, that I also may be of good
+          comfort, when I know your state. 20. For I have no
+          man like-minded, who will care truly for your
+          state. 21. For they all seek their own, not the
+          things of Jesus Christ. 22. But ye know the proof
+          of him, that, as a child serveth a father, so he
+          served with me in furtherance of the gospel. 23.
+          Him therefore I hope to send forthwith, so soon as
+          I shall see how it will go with me: 24. But I
+          trust in the Lord that I myself also shall come
+          shortly.'--PHIL. ii. 19-24 (R.V.).
+
+
+Like all great men Paul had a wonderful power of attaching followers to
+himself. The mass of the planet draws in small aerolites which catch
+fire as they pass through its atmosphere. There is no more beautiful
+page in the history of the early Church than the story of Paul and his
+companions. They gathered round him with such devotion, and followed him
+with such love. They were not small men. Luke and Aquila were among
+them, and they would have been prominent in most companies, but gladly
+took a place second to Paul. He impressed his own personality and his
+type of teaching on his followers as Luther did on his, and as many
+another great teacher has done.
+
+Among all these Timothy seems to have held a special place. Paul first
+found him on his second journey either at Derbe or Lystra. His mother,
+Eunice, was already a believer, his father a Greek. Timothy seems to
+have been converted on Paul's first visit, for on his second he was
+already a disciple well reported of, and Paul more than once calls him
+his 'son in the faith.' He seems to have come in to take John Mark's
+place as the Apostle's 'minister,' and from that time to have been
+usually Paul's trusted attendant. We hear of him as with the Apostle on
+his first visit to Philippi, and to have gone with him to Thessalonica
+and Beroea, but then to have been parted until Corinth. Thence Paul
+went quickly up to Jerusalem and back to Antioch, from which he set out
+again to visit the churches, and made a special stay in Ephesus. While
+there he planned a visit to Macedonia and Achaia, in preparation for one
+to Jerusalem, and finally to Rome. So he sent Timothy and Erastus on
+ahead to Macedonia, which would of course include Philippi. After that
+visit to Macedonia and Greece Paul returned to Philippi, from which he
+sailed with Timothy in his company. He was probably with him all the way
+to Rome, and we find him mentioned as sharer in the imprisonment both
+here and in Colossians.
+
+The references made to him point to a very sweet, good, pure and
+gracious character without much strength, needing to be stayed and
+stiffened by the stronger character, but full of sympathy, unselfish
+disregard of self, and consecrated love to Christ. He had been
+surrounded with a hallowed atmosphere from his youth, and 'from a child
+had known the holy Scriptures,' and 'prophecies' like fluttering doves
+had gone before on him. He had 'often infirmities' and 'tears.' He
+needed to be roused to 'stir up the gift that was in him,' and braced up
+'not to be ashamed,' but to fight against the disabling 'spirit of
+fear,' and to be 'strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.'
+
+The bond between these two was evidently very close, and the Apostle
+felt something of a paternal interest in the very weakness of character
+which was in such contrast to his own strength, and which obviously
+dreaded the discouragement which was likely to be produced by his own
+martyrdom. This favourite companion he will now send to his favourite
+church. The verses of our text express that intention, and give us a
+glimpse into the Apostle's thoughts and feelings in his imprisonment.
+
+I. The prisoner's longing and hope.
+
+The first point which strikes us in this self-revelation of Paul's is
+his conscious uncertainty as to his future. In the previous chapter
+(ver. 25) he is confident that he will live. In the verses immediately
+preceding our text he faces the possibility of death. Here he recognises
+the uncertainty but still 'trusts' that he will be liberated, but yet he
+does not know 'how it may go with' him. We think of him in his lodging
+sometimes hoping and sometimes doubting. He had a tyrant's caprice to
+depend on, and knew how a moment's whim might end all. Surely his way of
+bearing that suspense was very noteworthy and noble. It is difficult to
+keep a calm heart, and still more difficult to keep on steadily at work,
+when any moment might bring the victor's axe. Suspense almost enforces
+idleness, but Paul crowded these moments of his prison time with
+letters, and Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are the
+fruits for which we are indebted to a period which would have been to
+many men a reason for throwing aside all work.
+
+How calmly too he speaks of the uncertain issue! Surely never was the
+possibility of death more quietly spoken of than in 'so soon as I shall
+see how it will go with me.' That means--'as soon as my fate is decided,
+be it what it may, I will send Timothy to tell you.' What a calm pulse
+he must have had! There is no attitudinising here, all is perfectly
+simple and natural. Can we look, do we habitually look, into the
+uncertain future with such a temper--accepting all that may be in its
+grey mists, and feeling that our task is to fill the present with
+strenuous loving service, leaving tomorrow with all its alternatives,
+even that tremendous one of life and death, to Him who will shape it to
+a perfect end?
+
+We note, further, the purpose of Paul's love. It is beautiful to see how
+he yearns over these Philippians and feels that his joy will be
+increased when he hears from them. He is sure, as he believes, to hear
+good, and news which will be a comfort. Among the souls whom he bore on
+his heart were many in the Macedonian city, and a word from them would
+be like 'cold water to a thirsty soul.'
+
+What a noble suppression of self; how deep and strong the tie that bound
+him to them must have been! Is there not a lesson here for all Christian
+workers, for all teachers, preachers, parents, that no good is to be
+done without loving sympathy? Unless our hearts go out to people we
+shall never reach their hearts. We may talk to them for ever, but unless
+we have this loving sympathy we might as well be silent. It is possible
+to pelt people with the Gospel, and to produce the effect of flinging
+stones at them. Much Christian work comes to nothing mainly for that
+reason.
+
+And how deep a love does he show in his depriving himself of Timothy for
+their sakes, and in his reason for sending him! Those reasons would have
+been for most of us the strongest reason for keeping him. It is not
+everybody who will denude himself of the help of one who serves him 'as
+a child serveth a father,' and will part with the only like-minded
+friend he has, because his loving eye will clearly see the state of
+others.
+
+Paul's expression of his purpose to send Timothy is very much more than
+a piece of emotional piety. He 'hopes in the Lord' to accomplish his
+design, and that hope so rooted and conditioned is but one instance of
+the all-comprehending law of his life, that, to him, to 'live is
+Christ.' His whole being was so interpenetrated with Christ's that all
+his thoughts and feelings were 'in the Lord Jesus.' So should our
+purposes be. Our hopes should be derived from union with Him. They
+should not be the play of our own fancy or imagination. They should be
+held in submission to him, and ever with the limitation, 'Not as I will,
+but as Thou wilt.' We should be trusting to Him to fulfil them. If thus
+we hope, our hopes may lead us nearer to Jesus instead of tempting us
+away from Him by delusive brightnesses. There is a religious use of hope
+not only when it is directed to heavenly certainties, and 'enters within
+the veil,' but even when occupied about earthly things. Spenser twice
+paints for us the figure of Hope, one has always something of dread in
+her blue eyes, the other, and the other only, leans on the anchor, and
+'maketh not ashamed'; and her name is 'Hope in the Lord.'
+
+II. The prisoner solitary among self-seeking men.
+
+With wonderful self-surrender the Apostle thinks of his lack of
+like-minded companions as being a reason for depriving himself of the
+only like-minded one who was left with him. He felt that Timothy's
+sympathetic soul would truly care for the Philippians' condition, and
+would minister to it lovingly. He could rely that Timothy would have no
+selfish by-ends to serve, but would seek the things of Jesus Christ. We
+know too little of the circumstances of Paul's imprisonment to know how
+he came to be thus lonely. In the other Epistles of the Captivity we
+have mention of a considerable group of friends, many of whom would
+certainly have been included in a list of the 'like-minded.' We hear,
+for example, of Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, John Mark, Epaphras,
+and Luke. What had become of them all we do not know. They were
+evidently away on Christian service, somewhere or other, or some of them
+perhaps had not yet arrived. At all events for some reason Paul was for
+the time left alone but for Timothy. Not that there were no Christian
+men in Rome, but of those who could have been sent on such an errand
+there were none in whom love to Christ and care for His cause and flock
+were strong enough to mark them as fit for it.
+
+So then we have to take account of Paul's loneliness in addition to his
+other sorrows, and we may well mark how calmly and uncomplainingly he
+bears it. We are perpetually hearing complaints of isolation and the
+difficulty of finding sympathy, or 'people who understand me.' That is
+often the complaint of a morbid nature, or of one which has never given
+itself the trouble of trying to 'understand' others, or of showing the
+sympathy for which it says that it thirsts. And many of these
+complaining spirits might take a lesson from the lonely Apostle. There
+never was a man, except Paul's Master and ours, who cared more for human
+sympathy, had his own heart fuller of it, and received less of it from
+others than Paul. But he had discovered what it would be blessedness for
+us all to lay to heart, that a man who has Christ for his companion can
+do without others, and that a heart in which there whispers, 'Lo, I am
+with you always,' can never be utterly solitary.
+
+May we not take the further lesson that the sympathy which we should
+chiefly desire is sympathy and fellow-service in Christian work? Paul
+did not want like-minded people in order that he might have the luxury
+of enjoying their sympathy, but what he wanted was allies in his work
+for Christ. It was sympathy in his care for the Philippians that he
+sought for in his messenger. And that is the noblest form of
+like-mindedness that we can desire--some one to hold the ropes for us.
+
+Note, too, that Paul does not weakly complain because he had no helpers.
+Good and earnest men are very apt to say much about the half-hearted way
+in which their brethren take up some cause in which they are eagerly
+interested, and sometimes to abandon it altogether for that reason. May
+not such faint hearts learn a lesson from him who had 'no man
+like-minded,' and yet never dreamt of whimpering because of it, or of
+flinging down his tools because of the indolence of his fellow-workers?
+
+There is another point to be observed in the Apostle's words here. He
+felt that their attitude to Christ determined his affinities with men.
+He could have no deep and true fellowship with others, whatever their
+name to live, who were daily 'seeking their own,' and at the same time
+leaving unsought 'the things of Jesus Christ.' They who are not alike in
+their deepest aims can have no real kindred. Must we not say that hosts
+of so-called Christian people do not seem to feel, if one can judge by
+the company they affect, that the deepest bond uniting men is that which
+binds them to Jesus Christ? I would press the question, Do we feel that
+nothing draws us so close to men as common love to Jesus, and that if we
+are not alike on that cardinal point there is a deep gulf of separation
+beneath a deceptive surface of union, an unfathomable gorge marked by a
+quaking film of earth?
+
+It is a solemn estimate of some professing Christians which the Apostle
+gives here, if he is including the members of the Roman Church in his
+judgment that they are not 'like-minded' with him, and are 'seeking
+their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.' We may rather hope that he
+is speaking of others around him, and that for some reason unknown to us
+he was at the time secluded from the Roman Christians. He brings out
+with unflinching precision the choice which determines a life. There is
+always that terrible 'either--or.' To live for Christ is the antagonist,
+and only antagonist of life for self. To live for self is death. To live
+for Jesus is the only life. There are two centres, heliocentric and
+geocentric as the scientists say. We can choose round which we shall
+draw our orbit, and everything depends on the choice which we make. To
+seek 'the things of Jesus Christ' is sure to lead to, and is the only
+basis of, care for men. Religion is the parent of compassion, and if we
+are looking for a man who will care truly for the state of others, we
+must do as Paul did, look for him among those who 'seek the things of
+Jesus Christ.'
+
+III. The prisoner's joy in loving co-operation.
+
+The Apostle's eulogium on Timothy points to his long and intimate
+association with Paul and to the Philippians' knowledge of him as well
+as to the Apostle's clinging to him. There is a piece of delicate beauty
+in the words which we may pause for a moment to point out. Paul writes
+as 'a child serveth a father,' and the natural sequence would have been
+'so he served me,' but he remembers that the service was not to him,
+Paul, but to another, and so he changes the words and says he 'served
+_with_ me in furtherance of the Gospel.' We are both servants
+alike--Christ's servants for the Gospel.
+
+Paul's joy in Timothy's loving co-operation was so deep because Paul's
+whole heart was set on 'the furtherance of the Gospel.' Help towards
+that end was help indeed. We may measure the ardour and intensity of
+Paul's devotion to his apostolic work by the warmth of gratitude which
+he shows to his helper. They who contribute to our reaching our chief
+desire win our warmest love, and the catalogue of our helpers follows
+the order of the list of our aims. Timothy brought to Paul no assistance
+to procure any of the common objects of human desires. Wealth,
+reputation, success in any of the pursuits which attract most men might
+have been held out to the Apostle and not been thought worth stooping to
+take, nor would the offerer have been thanked, but any proffered service
+that had the smallest bearing on that great work to which Paul's life
+was given, and which his conscience told him there would be a curse on
+himself if he did not fulfil, was welcomed as a priceless gift. Do we
+arrange the lists of our helpers on the same fashion, and count that
+they serve us best who help us to serve Christ? It should be as much the
+purpose of every Christian life as it was that of Paul to spread the
+salvation and glory of the 'name that is above every name.' If we lived
+as continually under the influence of that truth as he did, we should
+construe the circumstances of our lives, whether helpful or hindering,
+very differently, and we could shake the world.
+
+Christian unity is very good and infinitely to be desired, but the true
+field on which it should display itself is that of united work for the
+common Lord. The men who have marched side by side through a campaign
+are knit together as nothing else would bind them. Even two horses
+drawing one carriage will have ways and feelings and a common
+understanding, which they would never have attained in any other way.
+There is nothing like common work for clearing away mists. Much
+so-called Christian sympathy and like-mindedness are something like the
+penal cranks that used to be in jails, which generated immense power on
+this side of the wall but ground out nothing on the other.
+
+Let us not forget that in the field of Christian service there is room
+for all manner of workers, and that they are associated, however
+different their work. Paul often calls Timothy his 'fellow-labourer,'
+and once gives him the eulogium, 'he worketh the work of the Lord as I
+also do.' Think of the difference between the two men in age, endowment,
+and sphere! Apparently Timothy at first had very subordinate work taking
+John Mark's place, and is described as being one of those who
+'ministered' to Paul. It is the cup of cold water over again. All work
+done for the same Lord, and with the same motive is the same; 'he that
+receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's
+reward.' When Paul associates Timothy with himself he is copying from
+afar off his Lord, who lets us think of even our poor deeds as done by
+those whom He does not disdain to call His fellow-workers. It would be
+worth living for if, at the last, He should acknowledge us, and say even
+of us, 'he hath served with Me in the Gospel.'
+
+
+
+
+PAUL AND EPAPHRODITUS
+
+          'But I counted it necessary to send to you
+          Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow-worker and
+          fellow-soldier, and your messenger and minister to
+          my need. 26. Since he longed after you all, and
+          was sore troubled, because ye had heard that he
+          was sick. 27. For indeed he was sick nigh unto
+          death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him
+          only, but on me also, that I might not have sorrow
+          upon sorrow. 28. I have sent him therefore the
+          more diligently, that, when ye see him again, ye
+          may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful.
+          29. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all
+          joy; and hold such in honour: 30. Because for the
+          work of Christ he came nigh unto death, hazarding
+          his life to supply that which was lacking in your
+          service toward me.'--PHIL. ii. 25-30 (R.V.).
+
+
+Epaphroditus is one of the less known of Paul's friends. All our
+information about him is contained in this context, and in a brief
+reference in Chapter iv. His was a singular fate--to cross Paul's path,
+and for one short period of his life to be known to all the world, and
+for all the rest before and after to be utterly unknown. The ship sails
+across the track of the moonlight, and then vanishes ghost-like into
+darkness. Of all the inhabitants of Philippi at that time we know the
+names of but three, Euodias, Syntiche, and Epaphroditus, and we owe them
+all to Paul. The context gives us an interesting miniature of the last,
+and pathetic glimpses into the private life of the Apostle in his
+imprisonment, and it is worth our while to try to bring our historic
+imagination to bear on Epaphroditus, and to make him a living man.
+
+The first fact about him is, that he was one of the Philippian
+Christians, and sent by them to Rome, with some pecuniary or material
+help, such as comforts for Paul's prison-house, food, clothing, or
+money. There was no reliable way of getting these to Paul but to take
+them, and so Epaphroditus faced the long journey across Greece to
+Brindisi and Rome, and when arrived there threw himself with ardour into
+serving Paul. The Apostle's heartfelt eulogium upon him shows two phases
+of his work. He was in the first place Paul's helper in the Gospel, and
+his faithfulness there is set forth in a glowing climax, 'My brother and
+fellow-worker and fellow-soldier.' He was in the second place the
+minister to Paul's needs. There would be many ways of serving the
+captive, looking after his comfort, doing his errands, procuring daily
+necessaries, managing affairs, perhaps writing his letters, easing his
+chain, chafing his aching wrists, and ministering in a thousand ways
+which we cannot and need not specify. At all events he gladly undertook
+even servile work for love of Paul.
+
+He had an illness which was probably the consequence of his toil.
+Perhaps over-exertion in travel, or perhaps his Macedonian constitution
+could not bear the enervating air of Rome, or perhaps Paul's prison was
+unhealthy. At any rate he worked till he made himself ill. The news
+reached Philippi in some round-about way, and, as it appears, the news
+of his illness only, not of his recovery. The difficulty of
+communication would sufficiently account for the partial intelligence.
+Then the report found its way back to Rome, and Epaphroditus got
+home-sick and was restless, uneasy, 'sore troubled,' as the Apostle
+says, because they had heard he had been sick. In his low, nervous
+state, barely convalescent, the thought of home and of his brethren's
+anxiety about him was too much for him. It is a pathetic little picture
+of the Macedonian stranger in the great city--pallid looks, recent
+illness, and pining for home and a breath of pure mountain air, and for
+the friends he had left. So Paul with rare abnegation sent him away at
+once, though Timothy was to follow shortly, and accompanied him with
+this outpouring of love and praise in his long homeward journey. Let us
+hope he got safe back to his friends, and as Paul bade them, they
+received him in the Lord with all joy, the echoes of which we almost
+hear as he passes out of our knowledge.
+
+In the remainder of this sermon we shall simply deal with the two
+figures which the text sets before us, and we may look first at the
+glimpses of Paul's character which we get here.
+
+We may note the generous heartiness of his praise in his associating
+Epaphroditus with himself as on full terms of equality, as worker and
+soldier, and the warm generosity of the recognition of all that he had
+done for the Apostle's comfort. Paul's first burst of gratitude and
+praise does not exhaust all that he has to say about Epaphroditus. He
+comes back to the theme in the last words of the context, where he says
+that the Philippian messenger had 'hazarded' his life, or, as we might
+put it with equal accuracy and more force, had 'gambled' his life, or
+'staked it on the die' for Paul's sake. No wonder that men were eager to
+risk their lives for a leader who lavished such praise and such love
+upon them. A man who never opens his lips but to censure or criticise,
+who fastens on faults as wasps do on blemished fruit, will never be
+surrounded by loyal love. Faithful service is most surely bought by
+hearty praise. A caressing hand on a horse's neck is better than a whip.
+
+We may further note the intensity of Paul's sympathy. He speaks of
+Epaphroditus' recovery as a mercy to himself 'lest he should have the
+sorrow of imprisonment increased by the sorrow of his friend's death.'
+That attitude of mind stands in striking contrast to the heroism which
+said, 'To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain,' but the two are
+perfectly consistent, and it was a great soul which had room for them
+both.
+
+We must not leave unnoticed the beautiful self-abnegation which sends
+off Epaphroditus as soon as he was well enough to travel, as a gift of
+the Apostle's love, in order to repay them for what they had done for
+him. He says nothing of his own loss or of how much more lonely he would
+be when the brother whom he had praised so warmly had left him alone.
+But he suns himself in the thought of the Philippians' joy, and in the
+hope that some reflection of it will travel across the seas to him, and
+make him, if not wholly glad, at any rate 'the less sorrowful.'
+
+We have also to notice Paul's delicate recognition of all friendly help.
+He says that Epaphroditus risked his life to 'supply that which was
+lacking in your service toward me.' That implies that all which the
+Philippians' ministration lacked was their personal presence, and that
+Epaphroditus, in supplying that, made his work in a real sense theirs.
+All the loving thoughts, and all the material expressions of them which
+Epaphroditus brought to Paul were fragrant with the perfume of the
+Philippians' love, 'an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable' to Paul as to
+Paul's Lord.
+
+We briefly note some general lessons which may be suggested by the
+picture of Epaphroditus as he stands by the side of Paul.
+
+The first one suggested is the very familiar one of the great uniting
+principle which a common faith in Christ brought into action. Think of
+the profound clefts of separation between the Macedonian and the Jew,
+the antipathies of race, the differences of language, the
+dissimilarities of manner, and then think of what an unheard-of new
+thing it must have been that a Macedonian should 'serve' a Jew! We but
+feebly echo Paul's rapture when he thought that there was 'neither
+Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, but all were one in Christ Jesus,'
+and for all our talk about the unity of humanity and the like, we permit
+the old gulfs of separation to gape as deeply as ever. Dreadnoughts are
+a peculiar expression of the brotherhood of men after nineteen centuries
+of so-called Christianity.
+
+The terms in which the work of Epaphroditus is spoken of by Paul are
+very significant. He has no hesitation in describing the work done for
+himself as 'the work of Christ,' nor in using, as the name for it, the
+word ('service'), which properly refers to the service rendered by
+priestly hands. Work done for Paul was done for Jesus, and that, not
+because of any special apostolic closeness of relation of Paul to Jesus,
+but because, like all other Christians, he was one with his Lord. 'The
+cup of cold water' given 'in the name of a disciple' is grateful to the
+lips of the Master. We have no reason to suppose that Epaphroditus took
+part with Paul in his more properly apostolic work, and the fact that
+the purely material help, and pecuniary service which most probably
+comprised all his 'ministering,' is honoured by Paul with these lofty
+designations, carries with it large lessons as to the sanctity of common
+life. All deeds done from the same motive are the same, however
+different they may be in regard to the material on which they are
+wrought. If our hearts are set to 'hallow all we find,' the most secular
+duties will be acts of worship. It is possible for us in the ordering of
+our own lives to fulfil the great prophecy with which Zechariah crowned
+his vision of the Future, 'In that day shall there be on the bells of
+the horses Holiness unto the Lord'; and the 'pots in the Lord's house
+shall be like the bowls before the altar.'
+
+May we not further draw from Paul's words here a lesson as to the honour
+due to Christian workers? It was his brethren who were exhorted to
+receive their own messenger back again 'in the Lord with all joy, and to
+hold him in honour.' Possibly there were in Philippi some sharp tongues
+and envious spirits, who needed the exhortation. Whether there were so
+or no, the exhortation itself traces lightly but surely the lines on
+which Christians should render, and their fellow-Christians can rightly
+receive, even praise from men. If Epaphroditus were 'received in the
+Lord,' there would be no foolish and hurtful adulation of him, nor
+prostration before him, but he would be recognised as but the instrument
+through which the true Helper worked, and not he, but the Grace of
+Christ in him would finally receive the praise. There are very many
+Christian workers who never get their due of recognition and welcome
+from their brethren, and there are many who get far more of both than
+belongs to them, and both they and the crowds who bring them adulation
+would be freed from dangers, which can scarcely be over-stated, if the
+spirit of Paul's warm-hearted praise of Epaphroditus were kept in view.
+
+Epaphroditus but passes across the illuminated disc of the lantern for a
+moment, and we have scarcely time to catch a glimpse of his face before
+it is lost to us. He and all his brethren are gone, but his name lives
+for ever, and Paul's praise of him and of his work outshines all else
+remembered of the city, where conquerors once reigned, and outside whose
+walls was fought a battle that decided for a time the fate of the world.
+
+
+
+
+PREPARING TO END
+
+          'Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To
+          write the same things to you, to me indeed is not
+          irksome, but for you it is safe. 2. Beware of the
+          dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the
+          concision: 3. For we are the circumcision, who
+          worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ
+          Jesus, and have no confidence in the
+          flesh.'--PHIL. iii. 1-3 (R.V.).
+
+
+The first words of the text show that Paul was beginning to think of
+winding up his letter, and the preceding context also suggests that. The
+personal references to Timothy and Epaphroditus would be in their
+appropriate place near the close, and the exhortation with which our
+text begins is also most fitting there, for it is really the key-note
+of the letter. How then does he come to desert his purpose? The answer
+is to be found in his next advice, the warning against the Judaising
+teachers who were his great antagonists all his life. A reference to
+them always roused him, and here the vehement exhortation to mark them
+well and avoid them opens the flood-gates. Forgetting all about his
+purpose to come to an end, he pours out his soul in the long and
+precious passage which follows. Not till the next chapter does he get
+back to his theme in the reiterated exhortation (iv. 4), 'Rejoice in the
+Lord alway; again I will say, rejoice.' This outburst is very
+remarkable, for its vehemence is so unlike the tone of the rest of the
+letter. That is calm, joyous, bright, but this is stormy and
+impassioned, full of flashing and scathing words, the sudden
+thunder-storm breaks in on a mellow, autumn day, but it hurtles past and
+the sun shines out again, and the air is clearer.
+
+Another question suggested is the reference of the second half of verse
+1. What are 'the same things' to write which is 'safe' for the
+Philippians? Are they the injunctions preceding to 'rejoice in the
+Lord,' or that following, the warning against the Judaisers? The former
+explanation may be recommended by the fact that 'Rejoice' is in a sense
+the key-note of the Epistle, but on the other hand, the things where
+repetition would be 'safe' would most probably be warnings against some
+evil that threatened the Philippians' Christian standing.
+
+There is no attempt at unity in the words before us, and I shall not try
+to force them into apparent oneness, but follow the Apostle's thoughts
+as they lie. We note--
+
+I. The crowning injunction as to the duty of Christian gladness.
+
+A very slight glance over the Epistle will show how continually the note
+of gladness is struck in it. Whatever in Paul's circumstances was 'at
+enmity with joy' could not darken his sunny outlook. This bird could
+sing in a darkened cage. If we brought together the expressions of his
+joy in this letter, they would yield us some precious lessons as to what
+were the sources of his, and what may be the sources of ours. There runs
+through all the instances in the Epistle the implication which comes out
+most emphatically in his earnest exhortation, 'Rejoice in the Lord
+always, and again I say rejoice.' The true source of true joy lies in
+our union with Jesus. To be in Him is the condition of every good, and,
+just as in the former verses 'trust _in the Lord_' is set forth, so the
+joy which comes from trust is traced to the same source. The joy that is
+worthy, real, permanent, and the ally of lofty endeavour and noble
+thoughts has its root in union with Jesus, is realised in communion with
+Him, has Him for its reason or motive, and Him for its safeguard or
+measure. As the passages in question in this Epistle show, such joy does
+not shut out but hallows other sources of satisfaction. In our weakness
+creatural love and kindness but too often draw us away from our joy in
+Him. But with Paul the sources which we too often find antagonistic were
+harmoniously blended, and flowed side by side in the same channel, so
+that he could express them both in the one utterance, 'I rejoiced in the
+Lord greatly that now at the last your care of me hath flourished
+again.'
+
+We do not sufficiently realise the Christian duty of Christian joy,
+some of us even take mortified countenances and voices in a minor key as
+marks of grace, and there is but little in any of us of 'the joy in the
+Lord' which a saint of the Old Testament had learned was our 'strength.'
+There is plenty of gladness amongst professing Christians, but a good
+many of them would resent the question, is your gladness 'in the Lord'?
+No doubt any deep experience in the Christian life makes us aware of
+much in ourselves that saddens, and may depress, and our joy in Him must
+always be shaded by penitent sorrow for ourselves. But that necessary
+element of sadness in the Christian life is not the cause why so many
+Christian lives have little of the buoyancy and hope and spontaneity
+which should mark them. The reason rather lies in the lack of true union
+with Christ, and habitual keeping of ourselves 'in the love of God.'
+
+II. Paul's apology for reiteration.
+
+He is going to give once more old and well-worn precepts which are often
+very tedious to the hearer, and not much less so to the speaker. He can
+only say that to him the repetition of familiar injunctions is not
+'irksome,' and that to them it is 'safe.' The diseased craving for
+'originality' in the present day tempts us all, hearers and speakers
+alike, and we ever need to be reminded that the staple of Christian
+teaching must be old truths reiterated, and that it is not time to stop
+proclaiming them until all men have begun to practise them. But a
+speaker must try to make the thousandth repetition of a truth fresh to
+himself, and not a wearisome form, or a dead commonplace, by freshening
+it to his own mind and by living on it in his own practice, and the
+hearers must remember that it is only the completeness of their
+obedience that antiquates the commandment. The most threadbare
+commonplace becomes a novelty when occasions for its application arise
+in our own lives, just as a prescription may lie long unnoticed in a
+drawer, but when a fever attacks its possessor it will be quickly drawn
+out and worth its weight in gold.
+
+III. Paul's warning against teachers of a ceremonial religion.
+
+It scarcely seems congruous with the tone of the rest of this letter
+that the preachers whom Paul so scathingly points out here had obtained
+any firm footing in the Philippian Church, but no doubt there, as
+everywhere, they had dogged Paul's footsteps, and had tried as they
+always did to mar his work. They had not missionary fervour or Christian
+energy enough to initiate efforts amongst the Gentiles so as to make
+them proselytes, but when Paul and his companions had made them
+Christians, they did their best, or their worst, to insist that they
+could not be truly Christians, unless they submitted to the outward sign
+of being Jews. Paul points a scathing finger at them when he bids the
+Philippians 'beware,' and he permits himself a bitter retort when he
+lays hold of the Jewish contemptuous word for Gentiles which stigmatised
+them as 'dogs,' that is profane and unclean, and hurls it back at the
+givers. But he is not indulging in mere bitter retorts when he brings
+against these teachers the definite charge that they are 'evil workers.'
+People who believed that an outward observance was the condition of
+salvation would naturally be less careful to insist upon holy living. A
+religion of ceremonies is not a religion of morality. Then the Apostle
+lets himself go in a contemptuous play of words, and refuses to
+recognise that these sticklers for circumcision had themselves been
+circumcised. 'I will not call them the circumcision, they have not been
+circumcised, they have only been gashed and mutilated, it has been a
+mere fleshly maiming.' His reason for denying the name to them is his
+profound belief that it belonged to true Christians. His contemptuous
+reference puts in a word, the principle which he definitely states in
+another place, 'He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is that
+circumcision which is outward in the flesh.'
+
+The Apostle here is not only telling us who are the truly circumcised,
+but at the same time he is telling us what makes a Christian, and he
+states three points in which, as I take it, he begins at the end and
+works backwards to the beginning. 'We are the circumcision who worship
+in the Spirit of God'--that is the final result--'and glory in Christ
+Jesus'--'and have no confidence in the flesh'--that is the
+starting-point. The beginning of all true Christianity is distrust of
+self. What does Paul mean by 'flesh'? Body? Certainly not. Animal
+nature, or the passions rooted in it? Not only these, as may be seen by
+noting the catalogue which follows of the things in the flesh, in which
+he might have trusted. What are these? 'Circumcised the eighth day, of
+the tribe of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the
+Hebrews'--these belong to ritual and race; 'as touching the law a
+Pharisee'--that belongs to ecclesiastical standing; 'concerning zeal
+persecuting the church'--that has nothing to do with the animal nature:
+'touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless'--that
+concerns the moral nature. All these come under the category of the
+'flesh,' which, therefore, plainly includes all that belongs to
+humanity apart from God. Paul's old-fashioned language translated into
+modern English just comes to this--it is vain to trust in external
+connection with the sacred community of the Church, or in participation
+in any of its ordinances and rites. To Paul, Christian rites and Jewish
+rites were equally rites and equally insufficient as bases of
+confidence. Do not let us fancy that dependence on these is peculiar to
+certain forms of Christian belief. It is a very subtle all-pervasive
+tendency, and there is no need to lift up Nonconformist hands in holy
+horror at the corruptions of Romanism and the like. Their origin is not
+solely priestly ambition, but also the desires of the so-called laity.
+Demand creates a supply, and if there were not people to think, 'Now it
+shall be well with me because I have a Levite for my priest,' there
+would be no Levites to meet their wishes.
+
+Notice that Paul includes amongst the things belonging to the flesh this
+'touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless.' Many of us
+can say the same. We do our duties so far as we know them, and are
+respectable law-abiding people, but if we are trusting to that, we are
+of the 'flesh.' Have we estimated what God is, and what the real worth
+of our conduct is? Have we looked not at our actions but at our motives,
+and seen them as they are seen from above or from the inside? How many
+'blameless' lives are like the scenes in a theatre, effective and
+picturesque, when seen with the artificial glory of the footlights? But
+go behind the scenes and what do we find? Dirty canvas and cobwebs. If
+we know ourselves we know that a life may have a fair outside, and yet
+not be a thing to trust to.
+
+The beginning of our Christianity is the consciousness that we are
+'naked and poor, and blind, and in need of all things.' Men come to
+Jesus Christ by many ways, thank God, and I care little by what road
+they come so long as they get there, nor do I insist upon any
+stereotyped order of religious experience. But of this I am very sure:
+that unless we abandon confidence in ourselves, because we have seen
+ourselves in the light of God's law, we have not learned all that we
+need nor laid hold of all that Christ gives. Let us measure ourselves in
+the light of God, and we shall learn that we have to take our places
+beside Job, when the vision of God silenced his protestations of
+innocence. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine
+eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.'
+
+That self-distrust should pass into glorying in Christ Jesus. If a man
+has learned his emptiness he will look about for something to fill it.
+Unless I know myself to be under condemnation because of my sin, and
+fevered, disturbed, and made wretched, by its inward consequences which
+forbid repose, the sweetest words of Gospel invitation will pass by me
+like wind whistling through an archway. But if once I have been driven
+from self-confidence, then like music from heaven will come the word,
+'Trust in Jesus.' The seed dropped into the ground puts out a
+downward-going shoot, which is the root, and an upward-growing one,
+which is the stalk. The downward-going shoot is 'no confidence in the
+flesh,' the upward-going is 'glorying in Christ Jesus.'
+
+But that word suggests the blessed experience of triumph in the
+possession of the Person known and felt to be all, and to give all that
+life needs. A true Christian should ever be triumphant in a felt
+experience, in a Name proved to be sufficient, in a power which infuses
+strength into his weakness, and enables him to do the will of God. It is
+for want of utter self-distrust and absolute faith in Christ that
+'glorying' in Him is so far beyond the ordinary mood of the average
+Christian. You say, 'I hope, sometimes I doubt, sometimes I fear,
+sometimes I tremblingly trust.' Is that the kind of experience that
+these words shadow? Why do we continue amidst the mist when we might
+rise into the clear blue above the obscuring pall? Only because we are
+still in some measure clinging to self, and still in some measure
+distrusting our Lord. If our faith were firm and full our 'glorying'
+would be constant. Do not be contented with the prevailing sombre type
+of Christian life which is always endeavouring, and always foiled, which
+is often doubting and often indifferent, but seek to live in the
+sunshine, and expatiate in the light, and 'rejoice in the Lord always.'
+
+'Glorying' not only describes an attitude of mind, but an activity of
+life. Many things to-day tempt Christian people to speak of their
+religion and of their Lord in an apologetic tone, in the face of strong
+and educated unbelief; but if we have within us, as we all may have, and
+ought to have, the triumphant assurance of His sufficiency, nearness,
+and power, it will not be with bated breath that we shall speak of our
+Master, or apologise for our Christianity, but we shall obey the
+commandment, 'Lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not
+afraid.' Ring out the name and be proud that you can ring it out, as the
+Name of _your_ Lord, and _your_ Saviour, and _your_ all-sufficient
+Friend. Whatever other people say, you have the experience, if you are
+a Christian, which more than answers all that they can say.
+
+We have said that the final result set forth here by Paul is, 'We
+worship by the Spirit of God.' The expression translated worship is the
+technical word for rendering priestly service. Just as Paul has asserted
+that uncircumcised Christians, not circumcised Jews, are the true
+circumcision, so he asserts that they are the true priests, and that
+these officials in the outward temple at Jerusalem have forfeited the
+title, and that it has passed over to the despised followers of the
+despised Nazarene. If we have 'no confidence in the flesh,' and are
+'glorying in Christ Jesus,' we are all priests of the most high God.
+'Worship in the Spirit' is our function and privilege. The externals of
+ceremonial worship dwindle into insignificance. They may be means of
+helping, or they may be means of hindering, the 'worship in the Spirit,'
+which I venture to think all experience shows is the more likely to be
+pure and real, the less it invokes the aid of flesh and sense. To make
+the senses the ladder for the soul by which to climb to God is quite as
+likely to end in the soul's going down the ladder as up it. Aesthetic
+aids to worship are crutches which keep a lame soul lame all its days.
+
+Such worship is the obligation as well as the prerogative of the
+Christian. We have no right to say that we have truly forsaken
+confidence in ourselves, and are truly 'glorying' in Christ Jesus,
+unless our daily life is communion with God, and all your work
+'worshipping by the Spirit of God.' Such communion and worship are
+possible for those, and for those only, who have 'no confidence in the
+flesh' and who 'glory in Christ Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+THE LOSS OF ALL
+
+          'Though I myself might have confidence even in the
+          flesh: if any other man thinketh to have
+          confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised
+          the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the
+          tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as
+          touching the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal,
+          persecuting the church; as touching the
+          righteousness which is in the law, found
+          blameless. Howbeit what things were gain to me,
+          these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily,
+          and I count all things to be loss for the
+          excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
+          Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things,
+          and do count them but dung.'--PHIL. iii. 4-8
+          (R.V.).
+
+
+We have already noted that in the previous verses the Apostle is
+beginning to prepare for closing his letter, but is carried away into
+the long digression of which our text forms the beginning. The last
+words of the former verse open a thought of which his mind is always
+full. It is as when an excavator strikes his pickaxe unwittingly into a
+hidden reservoir and the blow is followed by a rush of water, which
+carries away workmen and tools. Paul has struck into the very deepest
+thoughts which he has of the Gospel and out they pour. That one
+antithesis, 'the loss of all, the gain of Christ,' carried in it to him
+the whole truth of the Christian message. We may well ask ourselves what
+are the subjects which lie so near our hearts, and so fill our thoughts,
+that a chance word sets us off on them, and we cannot help talking of
+them when once we begin.
+
+The text exemplifies another characteristic of Paul's, his constant
+habit of quoting his own experience as illustrating the truth. His
+theology is the generalisation of his own experience, and yet that
+continual autobiographical reference is not egotism, for the light in
+which he delights to present himself is as the recipient of the great
+grace of God in pardoning sinners. It is a result of the complete
+saturation of himself with the Gospel. It was to him no mere body of
+principles or thoughts, it was the very food and life of his life. And
+so this characteristic reveals not only his natural fervour of
+character, but the profound and penetrating hold which the Gospel had on
+his whole being.
+
+In our text he presents his own experience as the type to which ours
+must on the whole be conformed. He had gone through an earthquake which
+had shattered the very foundations of his life. He had come to despise
+all that he had counted most precious, and to clasp as the only true
+treasures all that he had despised. With him the revolution had turned
+his whole life upside down. Though the change cannot be so subversive
+and violent with us, the forsaking of self-confidence must be as real,
+and the clinging to Jesus must be as close, if our Christianity is to be
+fervid and dominant in our lives.
+
+I. The treasures that were discovered to be worthless.
+
+We have already had occasion in the previous sermon to refer to Paul's
+catalogue of 'things that were gain' to him, but we must consider it a
+little more closely here. We may repeat that it is important for
+understanding Paul's point of view to note that by 'flesh' he means the
+whole self considered as independent of God. The antithesis to it is
+'spirit,' that is humanity regenerated and vitalised by Divine
+influence. 'Flesh,' then, is humanity not so vitalised. That is to say,
+it is 'self,' including both body and emotions, affections, thoughts,
+and will.
+
+As to the points enumerated, they are those which made the ideal to a
+Jew, including purity of race, punctilious orthodoxy, flaming zeal,
+pugnacious antagonism, and blameless morality. With reference to race,
+the Jewish pride was in 'circumcision on the eighth day,' which was the
+exclusive privilege of one of pure blood. Proselytes might be
+circumcised in later life, but one of the 'stock of Israel' only on the
+'eighth day.' Saul of Tarsus had in earlier days been proud of his
+tribal genealogy, which had apparently been carefully preserved in the
+Gentile home, and had shared ancestral pride in belonging to the once
+royal tribe, and perhaps in thinking that the blood of the king after
+whom he was named flowed in his veins. He was a 'Hebrew of the Hebrews,'
+which does not mean, as it is usually taken to do, intensely,
+superlatively Hebrew, but simply is equivalent to 'myself a Hebrew, and
+come from pure Hebrew ancestors on both sides.' Possibly also the phrase
+may have reference to purity of language and customs as well as blood.
+These four items make the first group. Paul still remembers the time
+when, in the blindness which he shared with his race, he believed that
+these wholly irrelevant points had to do with a man's acceptance before
+God. He had once agreed with the Judaisers that 'circumcision' admitted
+Gentiles into the Jewish community, and so gave them a right to
+participate in the blessings of the Covenant.
+
+Then follow the items of his more properly religious character, which
+seem in their three clauses to make a climax. 'As touching the law a
+Pharisee,' he was of the 'straitest sect,' the champions and
+representatives of the law. 'As touching zeal persecuting the Church,'
+it was not only in Judaism that the mark of zeal for a cause has been
+harassing its opponents. We can almost hear a tone of sad irony as Paul
+recalls that past, remembering how eagerly he had taken charge of the
+clothes trusted to his care by the witnesses who stoned Stephen, and how
+he had 'breathed threatening and slaughter' against the disciples. 'As
+touching the righteousness which is in the law found blameless,' he is
+evidently speaking of the obedience of outward actions and of
+blamelessness in the judgment of men.
+
+So we get a living picture of Paul and of his confidence before he was a
+Christian. All these grounds for pride and self-satisfaction were like
+triple armour round the heart of the young Pharisee, who rode out of
+Jerusalem on the road to Damascus. How little he thought that they would
+all have been pierced and have dropped from him before he got there! The
+grounds of his confidence are antiquated in form, but in substance are
+modern. At bottom the things in which Paul's 'flesh' trusted are exactly
+the same as those in which many of us trust. Even his pride of race
+continues to influence some of us. We have got the length of separating
+between our nationality and our acceptance with God, but we have still a
+kind of feeling that 'God's Englishmen,' as Milton called them, have a
+place of their own, which is, if not a ground of confidence before God,
+at any rate a ground for carrying ourselves with very considerable
+complacency before men. It is not unheard of that people should rely, if
+not on 'circumcision on the eighth day,' on an outward rite which seems
+to connect them with a visible Church. Strict orthodoxy takes the place
+among us which Pharisaism held in Paul's mind before he was a Christian,
+and it is easier to prove our zeal by pugnacity against heretics, than
+by fervour of devotion. The modern analogue of Paul's, 'touching the
+righteousness which is in the law blameless,' is 'I have done my best, I
+have lived a decent life. My religion is to do good to other people.'
+All such talk, which used to be a vague sentiment or excuse, is now put
+forward in definite theoretical substitution for the Christian Truth,
+and finds numerous teachers and acceptors. But how short a way all such
+grounds of confidence go to satisfy a soul that has once seen the vision
+that blazed in on Paul's mind on the road to Damascus!
+
+II. The discovery of their worthlessness.
+
+'These have I counted loss for Christ.' There is a possibility of
+exaggeration in interpreting Paul's words. The things that were 'gain'
+to him were in themselves better than their opposites. It is better to
+to be 'blameless' than to have a life all stained with foulness and
+reeking with sins. But these 'gains' were 'losses,' disadvantages, in so
+far as they led him to build upon them, and trust in them as solid
+wealth. The earthquake that shattered his life had two shocks: the first
+turned upside down his estimate of the value of his gains, the second
+robbed him of them. He first saw them to be worthless, and then, so far
+as others' judgment went, he was stripped of them. Actively he 'counted
+them loss,' passively he 'suffered the loss of all things.' His estimate
+came, and was followed by the practical outcome of his brethren's
+excommunication.
+
+What changed his estimate? In our text he answers the question in two
+forms: first he gives the simple, all-sufficient monosyllabic reason for
+his whole life--'for Christ,' and then he enlarges that motive into 'the
+excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.' The former carries
+us back straight to the vision which revolutionised Paul's life, and
+made him abjure all which he had trusted, and adore what he had
+abhorred. The latter dwells a little more upon the subjective process
+which followed on the vision, but the two are substantially the same,
+and we need only note the solemn fulness of the name of 'Jesus Christ,'
+and the intense motion of submission and of personal appropriation
+contained in the designation, 'my Lord.' It was not when he found his
+way blinded into Damascus that he had learned that knowledge, or could
+apprehend its 'excellency.' The words are enriched and enlarged by later
+experiences. The sacrifice of his earlier 'gains' had been made before
+the 'excellency of the knowledge' had been discerned. It was no mere
+intellectual perception which could be imparted in words, or by
+eyesight, but here as always Paul by 'knowledge' means experience which
+comes from possession and acquaintance, and which therefore gleams ever
+before us as we move, and is capable of endless increase, in the measure
+in which we are true to the estimate of 'gains' and 'losses' to which
+our initial vision of Him has led us. At first we may not know that that
+knowledge excels all others, but as we grow in acquaintance with Jesus,
+and in experience of Him, we shall be sure that it transcends all
+others, because He does and we possess Him.
+
+The revolutionising motive may be conceived of in two ways. We have to
+abandon the lower 'gains' in order to gain Christ, or to abandon these
+because we have gained Him. Both are true. The discernment of Christ as
+the one ground of confidence is ever followed by the casting away of all
+others. Self-distrust is a part of faith. When we feel our feet upon the
+rock, the crumbling sands on which we stood are left to be broken up by
+the sea. They who have seen the Apollo Belvedere will set little store
+by plaster of Paris casts. In all our lives there come times when the
+glimpse of some loftier ideal shows up our ordinary as hollow and poor
+and low. And when once Christ is seen, as Scripture shows Him, our
+former self appears poor and crumbles away.
+
+We are not to suppose that the act of renunciation must be completed
+before a second act of possession is begun. That is the error of many
+ascetic books. The two go together, and abandonment in order to win
+merges into abandonment because we have won. The strongest power to make
+renunciation possible is 'the expulsive power of a new affection.' When
+the heart is filled with love to Christ there is no sense of 'loss,' but
+only of 'exceeding gain,' in casting away all things for Him.
+
+III. The continuous repetition of the discovery.
+
+Paul compares his present self with his former Christian self, and with
+a vehement 'Yea, verily,' affirms his former judgment, and reiterates it
+in still more emphatic terms. It is often easy to depreciate the
+treasures which we possess. They sometimes grow in value as they slip
+from our hands. It is not usual for a man who has 'suffered the loss of
+all things' to follow their disappearance by counting them 'but dung.'
+The constant repetition through the whole Christian course of the
+depreciatory estimate of grounds of confidence is plainly necessary.
+There are subtle temptations to the opposite course. It is hard to keep
+perfectly clear of all building on our own blamelessness or on our
+connection with the Christian Church, and we have need ever to renew the
+estimate which was once so epoch-making, and which 'cast down all our
+imaginations and high things.' If we do not carefully watch ourselves,
+the whispering tempter that was silenced will recover his breath again,
+and be once more ready to drop into our ears his poisonous suggestions.
+We have to take pains and 'give earnest heed' to the initial,
+revolutionary estimate, and to see that it is worked out habitually in
+our daily lives. It is a good exchange when we count 'all but loss for
+the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+THE GAIN OF CHRIST
+
+          'That I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not
+          having a righteousness of my own, even that which
+          is of the law, but that which is through faith in
+          Christ, the righteousness which is of God by
+          faith.'--PHIL. iii. 8, 9 (R.V.).
+
+
+It is not everybody who _can_ say what is his aim in life. Many of us
+have never thought enough about it to have one beyond keeping alive. We
+lose life in seeking for the means of living. Many of us have such a
+multitude of aims, each in its turn drawing us, that no one of them is
+predominant and rules the crowd. There is no strong hand at the tiller,
+and so the ship washes about in the trough of the waves.
+
+It is not everybody who _dares_ to say what is his aim in life. We are
+ashamed to acknowledge even to ourselves what we are not at all ashamed
+to do. Paul knew his aim, and was not afraid to speak it. It was high
+and noble, and was passionately and persistently pursued. He tells us it
+here, and we can see his soul kindling as he speaks. We may note how
+there is here the same double reference as we found in the previous
+verses, gaining Christ corresponding to the previous loss for Christ,
+and the later words of our text being an expansion of the 'excellency of
+the knowledge of Christ Jesus.' No man will ever succeed in any life's
+purpose, unless like Paul he is enthusiastic about it. If his aim does
+not rouse his fervour when he speaks of it, he will never accomplish it.
+We may just remark that Paul does not suppose his aim to be wholly
+unattained, even although he does not count himself to 'have
+apprehended.' He knows that he has gained Christ, and is 'found in Him,'
+but he knows also that there stretch before him the possibilities of
+infinite increase.
+
+I. His life's aim was to have the closest possession of, and
+incorporation in, Christ.
+
+His two expressions, 'that I may gain Christ and be found in Him,' are
+substantially identical in meaning, though they put the same truth from
+different sides, and with some variety of metaphor. We may deal with
+them separately.
+
+The 'gain' is of course the opposite of the 'loss.' His balance-sheet
+has on one side 'all things lost,' on the other 'Christ gained,' and
+that is profitable trading. But we have to go deeper than such a
+metaphor, and to give full scope to the Scriptural truth, that Christ
+really imparts Himself to the believing soul. There is a real
+communication of His own life to us, and thereby we live, as He Himself
+declared, 'He that hath the Son hath life.' The true deep sense in which
+we possess Christ is not to be weakened down, as it, alas! so often is
+in our shallow Christianity, which is but the echo of a shallow
+experience, and a feeble hold of that possession of the Son to which
+Jesus called us, as the condition of our possession of life. Christ is
+thus Himself possessed by all our faculties, each after its kind; head
+and heart, passions and desires, hopes and longings, may each have Him
+abiding in them, guiding them with His strong and gentle hand, animating
+them into nobler life, restraining and controlling, gradually
+transforming and ultimately conforming them to His own likeness. Till
+that Divine Indweller enters in, the shrine is empty, and unclean things
+lurk in its hidden corners. To be a man full summed in all his powers,
+each of us must 'gain Christ.'
+
+The other expression in the text, 'be found in Him,' presents the same
+truth from the completing point of view. We gain Christ in us when we
+are 'found in Him.' We are to be incorporated as members are in the
+body, or imbedded as a stone in the foundation, or to go back to the
+sweetest words, which are the source of all these representations,
+included as 'a branch in the vine.' We are to be in Him for safety and
+shelter, as fugitives take refuge in a strong tower when an enemy swarms
+over the land.
+
+          'And lo! from sin and grief and shame,
+           I hide me, Jesus, in Thy name.'
+
+We are to be in Him that the life sap may freely flow through us. We are
+to be in Him that the Divine Love may fall on us, and that in Jesus we
+may receive our portion of all which is His heritage.
+
+This mutual possession and indwelling is possible if Jesus be the Son of
+God, but the language is absurd in any other interpretation of His
+person. It is clearly in its very nature capable of indefinite increase,
+and as containing in itself the supply of all which we need for life and
+blessedness, is fitted to be what nothing else can pretend to be,
+without wrecking the lives that are unwise enough to pursue it--the
+sovereign aim of a human life. In following it, and only in following
+it, the highest wisdom says Amen to the aspiration of the lowliest
+faith. 'This one thing I do.'
+
+II. Paul's life's aim was righteousness to be received.
+
+He goes on to present some of the consequences which follow on his
+gaining Christ and being 'found in Him,' and before all others he names
+as his aim the possession of 'righteousness.' We must remember that Paul
+believed that righteousness in the sense of 'justification' had been his
+from the moment when Ananias came to where he was sitting in darkness,
+and bid him be baptized and wash away his sins. The word here must be
+taken in its full sense of moral perfectness; even if we included only
+this in our thoughts of his life's aim, how high above most men would he
+tower! But his statement carries him still higher above, and farther
+away from, the common ideas of moral perfection, and what he means by
+righteousness is widely separated from the world's conception, not only
+in regard to its elements, but still more in regard to its source.
+
+It is possible to lose oneself in a dreamy mysticism which has had much
+to say of 'gaining Christ and being found in Him,' and has had too
+little to say about 'having righteousness,' and so has turned out to be
+an ally of indifference and sometimes of unrighteousness. Buddhism and
+some forms of mystical Christianity have fallen into a pit of immorality
+from which Paul's sane combination here would have saved them. There is
+no danger in the most mystical interpretation of the former statement of
+his aim, when it is as closely connected as it is here with the second
+form in which he states it. I have just said that Paul differed from men
+who were seeking for righteousness, not only because his conceptions of
+what constituted it were not the same as theirs, though he in this very
+letter endorses the Greek ideals of 'virtue and praise,' but also and
+more emphatically because he looked for it as a gift, and not as the
+result of his own efforts. To him the only righteousness which availed
+was one which was not 'my own,' but had its source in, and was imparted
+by, God. The world thought of righteousness as the general designation
+under which were summed up a man's specific acts of conformity to law,
+the sum total reached by the addition of many specific instances of
+conformity to a standard of duty. Paul had learned to think of it as
+preceding and producing the specific acts. The world therefore said, and
+says, Do the deeds and win the character; Paul says, Receive the
+character and do the deeds. The result of the one conception of
+righteousness is in the average man spasmodic efforts after isolated
+achievements, with long periods between in which effort subsides into
+torpor. The result in Paul's case was what we know: a continuous effort
+to keep his mind and heart open for the influx of the power which,
+entering into him, would make him able to do the specific acts which
+constitute righteousness. The one road is a weary path, hard to tread,
+and, as a matter of fact, not often trodden. To pile up a righteousness
+by the accumulation of individual righteous acts is an endeavour less
+hopeful than that of the coral polypes slowly building up their reef out
+of the depths of the Pacific, till it rises above the waves. He who
+assumes to be righteous on the strength of a succession of righteous
+acts, not only needs a profounder idea of what makes his acts righteous,
+but should also make a catalogue of his unrighteous ones and call
+himself wicked. The other course is the final deliverance of a man from
+dependence upon his own struggles, and substitutes for the dreary
+alternations of effort and torpor, and for the imperfect harvest of
+imperfectly righteous acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes
+painful strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness which
+is 'my own,' is to seek what we shall never find, and what, if found,
+would crumble beneath us. To seek the righteousness which is from God,
+is to seek what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed receivers
+blessedly know is more than they dreamed of.
+
+But Paul looked for this great gift as a gift in Christ. It was when he
+was 'found in Him' that it became his, and he was found 'blameless.'
+That gift of an imparted life, which has a bias towards all goodness,
+and the natural operation of which is to incline all our faculties
+towards conformity with the will of God, is bestowed when we 'win
+Christ.' Possessing Him, we possess it. It is not only 'imputed,' as our
+fathers delighted to say, but it is 'imparted.' And because it is the
+gift of God in Christ, it was in Paul's view received by faith. He
+expresses that conviction in a double form in our text. It is 'through
+faith' as the channel by which it passes into our happy hands. It is 'by
+faith,' or, more accurately, 'upon faith,' as the foundation on which it
+rests, or the condition on which it depends. Our trust in Christ does
+bring His life to us to sanctify us, and the plain English of all this
+blessed teaching is--if we wish to be better let us trust Christ and get
+Him into the depths of our lives, and righteousness will be ours. That
+transforming Presence laid up in 'the hidden man of the heart,' will be
+like some pungent scent in a wardrobe which keeps away moths, and gives
+out a fragrance that perfumes all that hangs near it.
+
+But all which we have been saying is not to be understood as if there
+was no effort to be made, in order to receive, and to live manifesting,
+the 'righteousness which is of God.' There must be the constant
+abandonment of self, and the constant utilising of the grace given. The
+righteousness is bestowed whenever faith is exercised. The hand is never
+stretched out and the gift not lodged in it. But it is a life's aim to
+possess the 'righteousness which is of God by faith,' because that gift
+is capable of indefinite increase, and will reward the most strenuous
+efforts of a believing soul as long as life continues.
+
+III. Paul's life's aim stretches beyond this life.
+
+Shall we be chargeable with crowding too much meaning into his words, if
+we fix on his remarkable expression, 'be found in Him,' as containing a
+clear reference to that great day of final judgment? We recall other
+instances of the use of the same expression in connections which
+unmistakably point to that time. Such as 'being clothed we shall not be
+found naked,' or 'the proof of your faith . . . might be found unto praise
+and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ,' or 'found of
+Him in peace without spot, blameless.' In the light of these and similar
+passages, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that this 'being
+found' does include a reference to the Apostle's place after death,
+though it is not confined to that. He thinks of the searching eye of the
+Judge taking keen account, piercing through all disguises, and wistfully
+as well as penetratingly scrutinising characters, till it finds that for
+which it seeks. They who are 'found in Him' in that day, are there and
+thus for ever. There is no further fear of falling out of union with
+Him, or of being, by either gradual and unconscious stages, or by sudden
+and overmastering assaults, carried out of the sacred enclosure of the
+City of Refuge in which they dwell henceforth for ever. A dangerous
+presumptuousness has sometimes led to the over-confident assertion,
+'Once in Christ always in Christ.' But Paul teaches us that that
+security of permanent dwelling in Him is to be for ever in this life the
+aim of our efforts, rather than an accomplished fact. So long as we are
+here, the possibility of falling away cannot be shut out, and there must
+always rise before us the question, Am I in Christ? Hence there is need
+for continual watchfulness, self-control, and self-distrust, and the
+life's aim has to be perpetual, not only because it is capable of
+indefinite expansion, but because our weakness is capable of deserting
+it. It is only when at the last we are found by Him, in Him, that we are
+there for ever, with all dangers of departure from Him at an end. In
+that City of Refuge, and there only, 'the gates shall not be shut at
+all,' not solely because no enemies shall attempt to come in, but also
+because no citizens shall desire to go out.
+
+We should ever have before us that hour, and our life's aim should ever
+definitely include the final scrutiny in which many a hidden thing will
+come to light, many a long-lost thing be found, and each man's ultimate
+place in relation to Jesus Christ will be freed from uncertainties,
+ambiguities, hypocrisies, and disguises, and made plain to all
+beholders. In that great day of 'finding,' some of us will have to ask
+with sinking hearts, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' and others will
+break forth into the glad acclaim, 'I have found Him,' or rather 'been
+found of Him.'
+
+So we have before us the one reasonable aim for a man to have Christ, to
+be found in Him, to have His righteousness. It is reasonable, it is
+great enough to absorb all our energies, and to reward them. It will
+last a lifetime, and run on undisturbed beyond life. Following it, all
+other aims will fall into their places. Is this my aim?
+
+
+
+
+SAVING KNOWLEDGE
+
+          'That I may know Him, and the power of His
+          resurrection, and the fellowship of His
+          sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death; if
+          by any means I may attain unto the resurrection
+          from the dead.'--PHIL. iii. 10-11 (R.V.).
+
+
+We have seen how the Apostle was prepared to close his letter at the
+beginning of this chapter, and how that intention was swept away by the
+rush of new thoughts. His fervid faith caught fire when he turned to
+think of what he had lost, and how infinitely more he had gained in
+Christ. His wealth is so great that it cannot be crowded into the narrow
+space of one brief sentence, and after all the glowing words which
+precede our text, he feels that he has not yet adequately set forth
+either his present possessions or his ultimate aims. So here he
+continues the theme which might have seemed most fully dealt with in the
+great thoughts that occupied us in the former sermon, but which still
+wait to be completed here. They are most closely connected with the
+former, and the unity of the sentence is but a parallel to the oneness
+of the idea. The elements of our present text constitute a part of the
+Apostle's aim in life, and may be dealt with as such.
+
+I. Paul's life's aim was the knowledge of Christ.
+
+That sounds an anti-climax after 'Gain' and 'Be in Him.' These phrases
+seem to express a much more intimate relation than this, but we must
+note that it is no mere theoretical or intellectual knowledge which is
+intended. Such knowledge would need no surrender or suffering 'the loss
+of all things.' We can only buy the knowledge of Christ at such a rate,
+but we can buy knowledge about Him very much cheaper. Such knowledge
+would not be worth the price; it lies on the surface of the soul, and
+does nothing. Many a man amongst us has it, and it is of no use to him.
+If Paul had undergone all that he had undergone and sacrificed all that
+he had given up, and for his reward had only gained accurate knowledge
+about Christ, he had certainly wasted his life and made a bad bargain.
+But as always, so here, to know means knowledge based upon experience.
+Did Christ mean that a correct creed was eternal life when He said,
+'This is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ
+whom Thou has sent?' Did Paul mean the dry light of the understanding
+when he prayed that the Ephesians might know the love of Christ which
+passeth knowledge, in order to be filled with all the fulness of God?
+Clearly we have to go much deeper down than that superficial
+interpretation in order to reach the reality of the New Testament
+conception of knowledge. It is co-extensive with life, and is built upon
+inward experience. In a word, it is one aspect of winning Jesus. It is
+consciousness contemplating its riches, counting its gains. As a man
+knows the bliss of parental or wedded love only by having it, or as he
+knows the taste of wine only by drinking it, or the glory of music only
+by hearing it, and the brightness of the day only by seeing it, so we
+know Christ only by winning Him. There must first be the perception and
+possession by sense or emotion, and then the reflection on the
+possession by understanding. This applies to all religious truth. It
+must be possessed ere it be fully known. Like the new name written upon
+the Apocalyptic stone, 'No one knoweth but he that receiveth it.'
+
+The knowledge which was Paul's life's aim was knowledge of a Person:
+the object determines the nature of the knowledge. The mental act of
+knowing a proposition or a science or even of knowing about a person by
+hearing of him is different from that of knowing people when we have
+lived beside them. We need not be afraid of attaching too familiar a
+meaning to this word of our text, if we say that it implies personal
+acquaintance with the Christ whom we know. Of course we come to know Him
+in the first instance through the medium of statements about Him, and we
+cannot too strongly insist, in these days of destructive criticism, on
+the absolute necessity of accepting the Gospel statements as to the life
+of Jesus as the only possible method of knowing Him. But then, beyond
+that acceptance of the record must come the application and
+appropriation of it, and the transmutation of a historical fact into a
+personal experience. We may take an illustration from any of the
+Scriptural truths about Jesus:--For instance, Scripture declares Him to
+be our Redeemer. One man believes Him to be so, welcomes Him into his
+life as such, and finds Him to be such. Another man believes Him to be
+so, but never puts His redeeming power to the proof. Is the knowledge of
+these two rightly called by the same name? That which comes after
+experience is surely not rightly designated by the same title as that
+which has no vivification nor verification of such a sort to build on,
+and is the mere product of the understanding. There is nothing which the
+great mass of so-called Christians need more than to have forced into
+their thoughts the difference between these two kinds of knowledge of
+Christ. There are thousands of them who, if asked, are ready to profess
+that they know Jesus, but to whom He has never been anything more than
+a partially understood article of an uncared for creed, and has never
+been in living contact with their needs, nor known for their strength in
+weakness, their comforter in sorrow, 'their life in death,' their all in
+all.
+
+To deepen that experimental knowledge of Jesus is a worthy aim for the
+whole life, and is a process that may go on indefinitely through it all.
+To know Him more and more is to have more of heaven in us. To be
+penetrating ever deeper into His fulness, and finding every day new
+depths to penetrate is to have a fountain of freshness in our dusty days
+that will never fail or run dry. There is only one inexhaustible person,
+and that is Jesus Christ. We have all fulness in our Lord: we have
+already received all when we received Him. Are we advancing in the
+experience that is the parent of knowing Him? Do new discoveries meet us
+every day as if we were explorers in a virgin land? To have this for our
+aim is enough for satisfaction, for blessedness, and for growth. To know
+Him is a liberal education.
+
+II. That knowledge involves knowing the power of His Resurrection.
+
+The power of His Resurrection is an expression which covers a wide
+ground. There are several distinct and well-marked powers ascribed to it
+in Paul's writings. It has a demonstrative force in reference to our
+Lord's person and work. For He is by it 'declared to be the Son of God
+with power.' That rising again from the dead, taken in conjunction with
+the fact that He dieth no more, but is ascended up on high, and in
+conjunction with His own words concerning Himself and His Resurrection,
+sets Him forth before the world as the Son of God, and is the solemn
+divine approval and acceptance of His work.
+
+It has a revealing power in regard to the condition of humanity in
+death. It is the one fact which establishes immortality, and which not
+only establishes it, but casts some light on the manner of it. The
+possibility of personal life after, and therefore, in death, the
+unbroken continuity of being, the possibility of a resurrection, and a
+glorifying of this corporeal frame, with all the far-reaching
+consequences of these truths in the triumph they give over death, in the
+support and substance they afford to the else-shadowy idea of
+immortality, in the lofty place which they assign to the bodily frame,
+and the conception which they give of man's perfection as consisting of
+body, soul, and spirit--these thoughts have flashed light into all the
+darkness of the grave, have narrowed to a mere strip of coast-line the
+boundaries of the kingdom of death, have proclaimed love as the victor
+in her contest with that shrouded horror. The basis of them all is
+Christ's Resurrection; its power in this respect is the power to
+illuminate, to console, to certify, to wrench the sceptre from the hands
+of death, and to put it in the pierced hands of the Living One that was
+dead, and is Lord both of the dead and the living.
+
+Further, the Resurrection is treated by Paul as having a power for our
+justification, in so far as the risen Lord bestows upon us by His risen
+life the blessings of His righteousness. Paul also represents the
+Resurrection of Christ as having the power of quickening our Spiritual
+life. I need not spend time in quoting the many passages where His
+rising from the dead, and His life after the Resurrection, are treated
+as the type and pattern of our lives: and are not only regarded as
+pattern, but are also regarded as the power by which that new life of
+ours is brought about. It has the power of raising us from the death of
+sin, and bringing us into a new life of the Spirit. And finally, the
+Resurrection of Christ is regarded as having the power of raising His
+servants from the grave to the full possession of His own glorious life,
+and so it is the power of our final victory over death.
+
+Now I do not know that we are entitled to exclude any of these powers
+from view. The broad words of the text include them all, but perhaps the
+two last are mainly meant, and of these chiefly the former.
+
+The risen life of Christ quickens and raises us, and that not merely as
+a pattern, but as a power. It is only if we are in Him that there is so
+real a unity of life between Him and us that there enters into us some
+breath of His own life.
+
+That risen life of the Saviour which we share if we have Him, enters
+into our nature as leaven into the three measures of meal; transforming
+and quickening it, gives new directions, tastes, motives, impulses, and
+power. It bids and inclines us to seek the things that are above, and
+its great exhortation to the hearts in which it dwells, to fix
+themselves there, and to forsake the things that are on the earth, is
+based upon the fact that they have died, and 'their life is hid with
+Christ in God.' Without that leaven the life that we live is a death,
+because it is lived in the 'lusts of the flesh,' doing the desires of
+the flesh and of the mind. There is no real union with Jesus Christ, of
+which the direct issue is not a living experience of the power of His
+Resurrection in bringing us to the likeness of itself in regard to our
+freedom from the bondage to sin, and to our presenting ourselves unto
+God as alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of
+righteousness unto God. It is a solemn thought which we all need to
+press upon our consciences, that the only infallible sign that we have
+been in any measure quickened together with Christ and raised up with
+Him is that we have ceased to live in the lusts of our flesh, doing the
+desires of the flesh and of the mind. The risen life of Jesus may
+indefinitely increase, and will do so in the measure in which we
+honestly make it our life's aim to know Him and the power of His
+Resurrection.
+
+III. The experience of the power of Christ's Resurrection is inseparable
+from the fellowship of His sufferings.
+
+We must not suppose that Paul's solemn and awful words here trench in
+the smallest degree on the solitary unapproachableness of Christ's
+death. He would have answered, as in fact he does answer, the appeal of
+the prophetic sufferer, 'Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto
+my sorrow' with the strongest negative. No other human lips have ever
+tasted, or can ever taste, a cup of such bitterness as He drained for us
+all, and no other human lips have ever been so exquisitely sensitive to
+the bitterness which they have drunk. The identification of Himself with
+a sinful world, the depth and closeness of His community of feeling with
+all sorrow, the consciousness of the glory which He had left, and the
+perpetual sense of the hostility into which He had come, set Christ's
+sufferings by themselves as surely as the effects that flow from them
+declare that they need no repetition, and cannot be degraded by any
+parallel whilst the world lasts.
+
+But yet His Death, like His Resurrection, is set forth in Scripture as
+being a type and power of ours. We have to die to the world by the power
+of the Cross. If we truly trust in His sacrifice there will operate
+upon us motives which separate and detach us from our old selves and the
+old world. A fundamental, ethical, and spiritual change is effected on
+us through faith. We were dead in sin, we are dead to sin. We have to
+blend the two thoughts of the Christian life as being a daily dying and
+a continual resurrection in order to get the whole truth of the double
+aspect of it.
+
+It may be a question whether the Apostle is here referring to outward or
+inward and ethical sorrows, but perhaps we should not do justice to the
+thought unless we extend it to cover both of these. Certainly if his
+theology was but the generalising of his experience, he had ample
+material in his daily life for knowing the fellowship of Christ's
+sufferings. One of his most frequently recurring and most cherished
+thoughts is, that to suffer for Christ is to suffer with Christ, and in
+it he found and teaches us to find strength to endure, and patience to
+outlast any sorrows that may swoop upon us like birds of prey because we
+are Christians. Happy shall we be if Christ's sufferings are ours,
+because it is our union with Him and our likeness to Him, not to
+ourselves, our sins, or our worldliness, that is their occasion. There
+is an old legend that Peter was crucified head downwards, because he
+felt himself unworthy to be as his Master. We may well feel that nothing
+which we can ever bear for Him is worthy to be compared with what He has
+borne for us, and be the more overwhelmed with the greatness of the
+condescension, and the humility of the love which reckon our light
+affliction, which is but for a moment, along with the heavy weight which
+He bore, and the blessed issue of which outlasts time and enriches
+eternity.
+
+But there is another sense in which it is a worthy aim of our lives that
+our sufferings may be felt to be fellowship with His. That is a blessed
+sorrow which brings us closer to our Lord. That is a wholesome sorrow of
+which the issue is an intenser faith in Him, a fuller experience of His
+sufficiency. The storm blows us well when it blows us to His breast, and
+sorrow enriches us, whatever it may take away, which gives us fuller and
+more assured possession of Jesus.
+
+But when we are living in fellowship with Jesus, that union works in two
+directions, and while on the one hand we may then humbly venture to feel
+that our sufferings for Him are sufferings with Him, we may thankfully
+feel, too, that in all our affliction He is afflicted. If His sufferings
+are ours we may be sure that ours are His. And how different they all
+become when we are certain of His sympathy! It is possible that we may
+have a kind of common consciousness with our Lord, if our whole hearts
+and wills are kept in close touch with Him, so that in our experience
+there may be a repetition in a higher form of that strange experience
+alleged to be familiar in hypnotism, where the bitter in one mouth is
+tasted in another.
+
+So, what we ought to make our aim is that in our lives our growing
+knowledge of Christ should lead to the two results, so inexorably
+intertwined, of daily death and daily resurrection, and that we may be
+kept faithful to Him so that our outward sufferings may be caused by our
+union with Him, and not by our own faithlessness, and may be discerned
+by us to be fellowship with His. Then we shall also feel that He bears
+ours with us, and sorrow itself will be calmed and beautified into a
+silent bliss, as the chill peaks when the morning strikes them glow with
+tender pink, and seem soft and warm, though they are grim rock and
+ice-cold snow. Then some faint echo of His history 'who was acquainted
+with grief' may be audible in our outward lives and we, too, may have
+our Gethsemane and our Calvary. It may not be presumption in us to say
+'We are able' when He asks 'Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of'?
+nor terror to hear Him prophesy 'Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I
+drink of,' for we shall remember 'joint-heirs in Christ, if so be that
+we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.'
+
+IV. The end attained.
+
+The Christian life as here manifested is even in its highest forms
+manifestly incomplete. It is a reflected light, and like the reflected
+light in the heavens, advances by imperceptible degrees to fill the
+whole silver round. It may be 'e'en in its imperfections beautiful,' but
+it assuredly has 'a ragged edge.' The hypothetical form of the last
+words of our text does not so much imply a doubt of the possibility of
+attaining the result as the recognition of the indispensable condition
+of effort on the part of him who attains it. That effort forthcoming,
+the attainment is certain.
+
+The Revised Version makes a slight correction which involves a great
+matter, in reading 'the resurrection _from_ the dead.' It is necessary
+to insist on this change in rendering, not because it implies that only
+saints are raised, but because Paul is thinking of that first
+resurrection of which the New Testament habitually speaks. 'The dead in
+Christ shall rise first' as he himself declared in his earliest epistle,
+and the seer in the Apocalypse shed a benediction on 'him that hath part
+in the first resurrection.' Our knowledge of that solemn future is so
+fragmentary that we cannot venture to draw dogmatic inferences from the
+little that has been declared to us, but we cannot forget the distinct
+words of Jesus in which He not only plainly declares a universal
+resurrection, but as plainly proclaims that it falls into two parts, one
+a 'resurrection of life,' and one a 'resurrection of judgment.' The
+former may well be the final aim of a Christian life: the latter is a
+fate which one would think no sane man would deliberately provoke. Each
+carries in its name its dominant characteristic, the one full of
+attractiveness, the other partially unveiling depths of shame and
+punitive retributions which might appal the stoutest heart.
+
+This resurrection of life is the last result of the power of Christ's
+Resurrection received into and working on the human spirit. It is plain
+enough that if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead
+dwell in us there is no term to its operations until our mortal bodies
+also are quickened by His Spirit that dwelleth in us. The ethical and
+spiritual resurrection in the present life finds its completion in the
+bodily resurrection in the future. It cannot be that the transformation
+wrought in a human life shall be complete until it has flowed outwards
+into and permeated the whole of manhood, body, soul, and spirit. The
+three measures of meal have each to be influenced before 'the whole is
+leavened.' If we duly consider the elements necessary to a perfect
+realisation of the divine ideal of humanity, we shall discern that
+redemption must have a gospel to bring to the body as well as to the
+spirit. Whatever has been devastated by sin must be healed by Jesus. It
+is not necessary to suppose that the body which dies is the body which
+rises again, rather the Apostle's far-reaching series of antitheses
+between that which is sown and that which is raised leads us to think
+that the natural body, which has passed through corruption, and the
+particles of which have been gathered into many different combinations,
+does not become the spiritual body. The person who dies is the person
+who lives through death, and who assumes the body of the resurrection,
+and it is the person, not the elements which make up the personality,
+who is spoken of as risen from the dead. The vesture may be different,
+but the wearer is the same.
+
+So that resurrection from the dead is the end of a supernatural life
+begun here and destined to culminate hereafter. It is the last step in
+the manifestation of our being in Christ, and so is being prepared for
+here by every step in advance in gaining Jesus. It should ever be before
+every Christian soul that participation in Christ hereafter is
+conditioned by its progress in likeness to Him here. The Resurrection
+from the dead is not a gift which can be bestowed apart from a man's
+moral state. If he dies having had no knowledge by experience of the
+power of Christ's Resurrection, there is nothing in the fact of death to
+give him that knowledge, and it is impossible to bring 'any means' to
+bear on him by which he will attain unto the 'resurrection from the
+dead.' If God could give that gift irrespective of a man's relations to
+Jesus, He would give it to all. Let us ask ourselves, then, is it not
+worth making the dominant aim of our lives the same as that of Paul's?
+How stands our account then? Are we not wise traders presenting a good
+balance-sheet when we show entered on the one side the loss of all
+things, and on the other the gaining of Christ, and the attaining the
+resurrection from the dead, the perfect transformation of body, soul,
+and spirit, into the perfect likeness of the perfect Lord? Does the
+other balance-sheet show the man as equally solvent who enters on one
+side the gain of a world, and on the other a Christless life, to be
+followed by a resurrection in which is no joy, no advance, no life, but
+which is a resurrection of judgment? May we all be found in Him, and
+attain to the resurrection from the dead!
+
+
+
+
+LAID HOLD OF AND LAYING HOLD
+
+          'I follow after if that I may apprehend that for
+          which also I was apprehended of Christ
+          Jesus.'--PHIL. iii. 12.
+
+
+'I was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.' That is how Paul thinks of what we
+call his conversion. He would never have 'turned' unless a hand had been
+laid upon him. A strong loving grasp had gripped him in the midst of his
+career of persecution, and all that he had done was to yield to the
+grip, and not to wriggle out of it. The strong expression suggests, as
+it seems to me, the suddenness of the incident. Possibly impressions may
+have been working underground, ever since the martyrdom of Stephen,
+which were undermining his convictions, and the very insanity of his
+zeal may have been due to an uneasy consciousness that the ground was
+yielding beneath his feet. That may have been so, but, whether it were
+so or not, the crisis came like a bolt out of the blue, and he was
+checked in full career, as if a voice had spoken to the sea in its
+wildest storm, and frozen its waves into immobility.
+
+There is suggested in the word, too, distinctly, our Lord's personal
+action in the matter. No doubt, the fact of His supernatural appearance
+gives emphasis to the phrase here. But every Christian man and woman has
+been, as truly as ever Paul was, laid hold of by the personal action of
+Jesus Christ. He is present in His Word, and, by multitudes of inward
+impulses and outward providences, He is putting out a gentle and a firm
+hand, and laying it upon the shoulders of all of us. Have we yielded?
+Have we resisted, when we were laid hold of? Did we try to get away? Did
+we plant our feet and say, 'I will not be drawn,' or did we simply
+neglect the pressure? If we have yielded, my text tells us what we have
+to do next. For that hand is laid upon a man for a purpose, and that
+purpose is not secured by the hand being laid upon him, unless he, in
+his turn, will put out a hand and grasp. Our activity is needed; that
+activity will not be put forth without very distinct effort, and that
+effort has to be life-long, because our grasp at the best is incomplete.
+So then, we have here, first of all, to consider--
+
+I. What Christ has laid His grip on us for.
+
+Now, the immediate result of that grasp, when it is yielded to, is the
+sense of the removal of guilt, forgiveness of sins, acceptance with God.
+But these, the immediate results, are by no means the whole results,
+although a great many of us live as if we thought that the only thing
+that Christianity is meant to do to us is that it bars the gates of some
+future hell, and brings to us the message of forgiveness. We cannot
+think too nobly or too loftily of that gift of forgiveness, the initial
+gift that is laid in every Christian man's hands, but we may think too
+exclusively of it, and a great many of us do think of it as if it were
+all that was to be given. A painter has to clear away the old paint off
+a door, or a wall, before he lays on the new. The initial gift that
+comes from being laid hold of by Jesus Christ is the burning off of the
+old coat of paint. But that is only the preliminary to the laying on of
+the new. A man away in the backwoods will spend a couple of years after
+he has got his bit of land in felling and burning the trees, and rooting
+out and destroying the weeds. But is that what he got the clearing for?
+That is only a preliminary to sowing the seed. My friend! If Jesus
+Christ has laid hold of you, and you have let Him keep hold of you, it
+is not only that you may be forgiven, not only that you may sun yourself
+in the light of God's countenance, and feel that a new blessed relation
+is set up between you and Him, but there are great purposes lying at the
+back of that, of which all that is only the preliminary and the
+preparation.
+
+Conversion. Yes; but what is the good of turning a man round unless he
+goes in the direction in which his face is turned? And so here the
+Apostle having for years lived in the light of that great thought, that
+God was reconciled in Jesus Christ, and that he was God's friend,
+discerns far beyond that, in dim perspective, towering high above the
+land in the front, the snowy sunlit summits of a great range to which he
+has yet to climb, and says, 'I press on to lay hold of that for which I
+was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.'
+
+And what was that? On the road to Damascus Paul was only told one thing,
+that Christ had grasped him and drawn him to Himself in order that He
+might make him a chosen vessel to bear the Word far hence amongst the
+Gentiles. The bearing of His conversion upon Paul himself was never
+mentioned. The bearing of His conversion on the world was the only
+subject that Jesus spoke of at first. But here Paul has nothing to say
+about his world-wide mission. He does not think of himself as being
+called to be an Apostle, but as being summoned to be a Christian. And
+so, forgetting for the time all the glorious and yet burdensome
+obligations which were laid upon him, and the discharge of which was the
+very life of his life, he thinks only of what affects his own character,
+the perfecting of which he regards as being the one thing for which he
+was 'laid hold of by Christ Jesus.' The purpose is twofold. No Christian
+man is made a Christian only in order that he may secure his own
+salvation; there is the world to think of. No Christian man is made a
+Christian only in order that he may be Christ's instrument for carrying
+the Word to other people; there is himself to think of. And these two
+phases of the purpose for which Jesus Christ lays hold upon us are very
+hard to unite in practice, giving to each its due place and prominence,
+and they are often separated, to the detriment of both the one that is
+attended to, and the one that is neglected. The monastic life has not
+produced the noblest Christians; and there are pitfalls lying in the
+path of every man who, like me, has for his profession to preach the
+Gospel, which, if they are fallen into, the inward life is utterly
+wrecked.
+
+The two sides of Christ's purpose have, in our practice, to be held
+together, but for the present I only wish to say a word or two about
+that which, as I have indicated, is but one hemisphere of the completed
+orb, and that is our personal culture and growth in the divine life.
+What did Christ lay hold of me for? Paul answers the question very
+strikingly and beautifully in a previous verse. Here is his conception
+of the purpose, 'that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,
+and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His
+death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the
+dead.' That is what you were forgiven for; that is what you have 'passed
+from death unto life' for; that is what you have come into the sweet
+fellowship of God, and can think of Him as your Friend and Helper for.
+
+Let us take the clauses _seriatim_, and say a word about each of them.
+'That I may know Him.' Ah! there is a great deal more in Jesus Christ
+than a man sees when he first sees Him through his tears and his fears,
+and apprehends Him as the Saviour of his soul, and the sacrifice on whom
+the burden and the guilt of his sins were laid. We must begin there, as
+I believe. But woe to us if we stop there. There is far more in Christ
+than that; although all that is in Him is included in that, yet you have
+to dig deep before you find all that is included in it. You have to live
+with Him day by day, and year by year, and to learn to know Him as we
+learn to know husbands and wives, by continual intercourse, by continual
+experience of a sweet and unfailing love, by many a sacred hour of
+interchange of affection and reception of gifts and counsels. It is only
+thus that we learn to know what Jesus Christ is. When He lays hold of
+us, He comes like the angel that came to Peter in the prison in the dark
+and awoke him out of his sleep and said 'Rise! and follow me.' It is
+only when we get out into the street, and have been with Him for awhile,
+and the daylight begins to stream in, that we see clearly the face of
+our Deliverer, and know Him for all that He is. This knowledge is not
+the sort of knowledge that you can get by thinking, or out of a book.
+It is the knowledge of experience. It is the knowledge of love, it is
+the knowledge of union, and it is in order that we may know Christ that
+He lays his hand upon us.
+
+'The power of His Resurrection.' Now, by that I understand a similar
+knowledge, by experience, of the risen life of Jesus Christ flowing into
+us, and filling our hearts and minds with its own power. The risen life
+of Jesus is the nourishment and strengthening and blessing and life of a
+Christian. Our daily experience ought to be that there comes, wavelet by
+wavelet, that silent, gentle, and yet omnipotent influx into our empty
+hearts, the very life of Christ Himself.
+
+I know that this generation says that that is mysticism. I do not know
+whether it is mysticism or not. I am sure it is truth; and I do not
+understand Christianity at all, unless there is that kind of mysticism,
+perfectly wholesome and good, in it. You will never know Jesus Christ
+until you know Him as pouring into your hearts the power of an endless
+life, His own life. Christ for us by all means,--Christ's death the
+basis of our hope, but Christ in us, and Christ's life as the true gift
+to His Church. Have you got that? Do you know the power of His
+Resurrection?
+
+'The fellowship of His sufferings.' Has Paul made a mistake, and
+deserted the chronological order? Why does he put the 'fellowship of the
+sufferings' after the 'power of the Resurrection'? For this plain
+reason, that if we get Christ's life into our hearts, in the measure in
+which we get it we shall bear a similar relation to the world which He
+bore to it, and in our measure will 'fill up that which is behind in the
+sufferings of Christ,' and will understand how true it is that 'if they
+hate Me they will hate you also.' Brethren, the test of us who have the
+life of Christ in our hearts is that we shall, in some measure, suffer
+with Him, because 'as He is, so are we, in this world,' and because we
+must in that case look upon the world, its sins and its sorrows, with
+something of the sad gaze with which He looked across the valley to the
+Temple sparkling in the morning light, and wept over it. So if we know
+the power of His Resurrection we shall know the fellowship of His
+sufferings.
+
+And then Paul goes on, in his definition of the purpose for which Christ
+lays hold upon men, apparently to say the same thing over again, only in
+the opposite order, 'that I may be conformable to His death, if by any
+means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.' Both of these
+clauses, I think, refer to the future, to the actual dying of the body,
+and the actual future resurrection of the same. And the thought is this,
+that if here, through our earthly lives, we have been recipients of the
+risen life of Jesus Christ, and so have stood to the world in our degree
+as He stood to it, then when the moment of death comes to us, we shall,
+in so far, have our departure shaped after His as that we shall be able
+to say, 'Into Thy hands I commit my spirit,' and die willingly, and at
+last shall be partakers of that blessed Resurrection unto life eternal
+which closes the vista of our earthly history. Stephen's death was
+conformed to Christ's in outward fashion, in so far as it echoed the
+Master's prayer, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,'
+and in so far as it echoed the Master's last words, with the significant
+alteration that, whilst Jesus commended His spirit to the Father, the
+first martyr commended his to Jesus Christ.
+
+These, then, are the purposes for which Christ laid His hand upon us,
+that we might know Him, the power of His Resurrection, the fellowship of
+His sufferings, being made conformable to His death yet by attaining the
+resurrection of the dead.
+
+II. Notice, again, our laying hold because we have been laid hold of.
+
+Christ's laying hold of me, blessed and powerful as it is, does not of
+itself secure that I shall reach the end which He had in view in His
+arresting of me. What more is wanted? My effort. 'I follow after if I
+may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended.' Now, notice, in the
+one case, the Apostle speaks of himself, not as passive, but certainly
+not as active. 'I was laid hold of.' What did he do? As I have said, he
+simply yielded to the grasp. But 'I may lay hold of' conveys the idea of
+personal effort; and so these two expressions, 'I was apprehended,' and
+'I apprehend,' suggest this consideration, that, for the initial
+blessings of the Christian life, forgiveness, acceptance, the sense of
+God's favour, and of reconciliation with him, nothing is needed but the
+simple faith that yields itself altogether to the grasp of Christ's
+hand, but that for my possessing what Christ means that I should possess
+when He lays His hand on me, there is needed not only faith but effort.
+I have to put out _my_ hand and tighten my fingers round the thing, if I
+would make it my own, and keep it.
+
+So--faith, to begin with, and work based on faith, to go on with. It is
+because a man is sure that Jesus Christ has laid His hand upon him, and
+meant something when He did it, that he fights on with all his might to
+realise Christ's purpose, and to get and keep the thing which Christ
+meant him to have. There is stimulus in the thought, I was laid hold of
+by Him for a purpose. There is all the difference between striving,
+however eagerly, however nobly, however strenuously, however constantly,
+after self-improvement, by one's own effort only, and striving after it
+because one knows that he is therein fulfilling the purpose for which
+Jesus Christ drew him to Himself.
+
+And if that be so, then the nature of the thing to be laid hold of
+determines what we are to do to lay hold of it. And since to know
+Christ, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His
+sufferings, is the aim and end of our conversion, the way to secure it
+must be keeping in continual touch with Jesus by meditating upon Him, by
+holding many a moment of still, sacred, sweet communion with Him, by
+carefully avoiding whatever might come between us and our knowledge of
+Him, and the influx of His life into us, and by yielding ourselves, day
+by day, to the continual influence of His divine grace upon us and by
+the discipline which shall make our inward natures more and more capable
+of receiving more and more of that dear Lord. These being the things to
+do, in regard to the inward life, there must be effort too, in regard to
+the outward; for we must, if we are to lay hold of that for which we are
+laid hold of by Jesus Christ, bring all the outward life under the
+dominion of this inward impulse, and when the flood pours into our
+hearts we must, by many a sluice and trench, guide it into every corner
+of the field, that all may be irrigated. The first thing they do when
+they are going to sow rice in an Eastern field is to flood it, and then
+they cast in the seed, and it germinates. Flood your lives with Christ,
+and then sow the seed and you will get a crop.
+
+III. Lastly, the text suggests the incompleteness of our grasp.
+
+'I follow that,' says Paul, 'if that I may apprehend.' This letter was
+written far on in his career, in the time of his imprisonment in Rome,
+which all but ended his ministerial activity; and was many years after
+that day on the road to Damascus. And yet, matured Christian and
+exercised Apostle as he was, with all that past behind him, he says, 'I
+follow after, that I may apprehend.' Ah, brother, our experience must be
+incomplete, for we have an infinite aim set before us, and there is no
+end to the possibilities of plunging deeper and deeper and deeper into
+the knowledge of Christ, and having larger and larger and larger
+draughts of the fulness of His life. We have only been like goldseekers,
+who have contented themselves as yet with washing the precious grains
+out of the gravel of the river. There are great reefs filled with the
+ore that we have not touched. Thank God for the necessary incompleteness
+of our 'apprehending.' It is the very salt of life. To have realised our
+aims, to have fulfilled our ideals, to have sucked dry the cluster of
+the grapes is the death of aspiration, of hope, of blessedness; and to
+have the distance beckoning, and all experience 'an arch, wherethro'
+gleams the untravelled world to which we move,' is the secret of
+perpetual youth and energy.
+
+Because incomplete, our experience should be progressive; and that is a
+truth that needs hammering into Christian people to-day. About how many
+of us can it be said that our light 'shineth more and more unto the
+noonday.' Alas! about an enormous number of us it must be said, 'When
+for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you.'
+All our churches have many grown babies, and cases of arrested
+development--people that ought to be living on strong meat, and are
+unable to masticate or digest it, and by their own fault have still need
+of the milk of infancy. There is an old fable about a strange animal
+that fastened itself to the keel of sailing ships, and by some uncanny
+power was able to arrest them in mid-ocean, though the winds were
+filling all their sails. There is a remora, as they called it, of that
+sort adhering to a great many Christian people, and keeping them fixed
+on one spot, instead of 'following after, if that they may apprehend.'
+
+Dear friends--and especially you younger Christians--Christ has laid
+hold of you. Well and good! that is the beginning. He has laid hold of
+you for an end. That end will not be reached without your effort, and
+that effort must be perpetual. It is a life-long task. Ay! and even up
+yonder the apprehending will be incomplete. Like those mathematical
+lines that ever approximate to a point which they never reach, we shall
+through Eternity be, as it were, rising, in ascending and ever-closer
+drawing spirals, to that great Throne, and to Him that sits upon it. So
+that, striking out the humble 'may' from our text, the rest of it
+describes the progressive blessedness of the endless life in the
+heavens, as truly as it does the progressive duty of the Christian life
+here, and the glorified flock that follows the Lamb in the heavenly
+pastures may each say: I follow after in order to apprehend that 'for
+which,' long ago and down amidst the dim shadows of earth, 'I was
+apprehended of Christ Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RACE AND THE GOAL
+
+          'This one thing I do, forgetting those things
+          which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
+          things which are before, I press toward the mark
+          for the prize.'--PHIL. iii. 13, 14.
+
+
+This buoyant energy and onward looking are marvellous in 'Paul the aged,
+and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.' Forgetfulness of the past and
+eager anticipation for the future are, we sometimes think, the child's
+prerogatives. They may be ignoble and puerile, or they may be worthy and
+great. All depends on the future to which we look. If it be the creation
+of our fancies, we are babies for trusting it. If it be, as Paul's was,
+the revelation of God's purposes, we cannot do a wiser thing than look.
+
+The Apostle here is letting us see the secret of his own life, and
+telling us what made him the sort of Christian that he was. He counsels
+wise obliviousness, wise anticipation, strenuous concentration, and
+these are the things that contribute to success in any field of life.
+Christianity is the perfection of common sense. Men become mature
+Christians by no other means than those by which they become good
+artisans, ripe scholars, or the like. But the misery is that, though
+people know well enough that they cannot be good carpenters, or doctors,
+or fiddlers without certain habits and practices, they seem to fancy
+that they can be good Christians without them.
+
+So the words of my text may suggest appropriate thoughts on this first
+Sunday of a new year. Let us listen, then, to Paul telling us how he
+came to be the sort of Christian man he was.
+
+I. First, then, I would say, make God's aim your aim.
+
+Paul distinguishes here between the 'mark' and the 'prize.' He aims at
+the one for the sake of the other. The one is the object of effort; the
+other is the sure result of successful effort. If I may so say, the
+crown hangs on the winning post; and he who touches the goal clutches
+the garland.
+
+Then, mark that he regards the aim towards which he strains as being the
+aim which Christ had in view in his conversion. For he says in the
+preceding context, 'I labour if that I may lay hold of that for which
+also I have been laid hold of by Jesus Christ.' In the words that follow
+the text he speaks of the prize as being the result and purpose of the
+high calling of God 'in Christ Jesus.' So then he took God's purpose in
+calling, and Christ's purpose in redeeming him, as being his great
+object in life. God's aims and Paul's were identical.
+
+What, then, is the aim of God in all that He has done for us? The
+production in us of God-like and God-pleasing character. For this suns
+rise and set; for this seasons and times come and go; for this sorrows
+and joys are experienced; for this hopes and fears and loves are
+kindled. For this all the discipline of life is set in motion. For this
+we were created; for this we have been redeemed. For this Jesus Christ
+lived and suffered and died. For this God's Spirit is poured out upon
+the world. All else is scaffolding; this is the building which it
+contemplates, and when the building is reared the scaffolding may be
+cleared away. God means to make us like Himself, and so pleasing to
+Himself, and has no other end in all the varieties of His gifts and
+bestowments but only this, the production of character.
+
+Such is the aim that we should set before us. The acceptance of that aim
+as ours will give nobleness and blessedness to our lives as nothing else
+will. How different all our estimates of the meaning and true nature of
+events would be, if we kept clearly before us that their intention was
+not merely to make us blessed and glad, or to make us sorrowful, but
+that, through the blessedness, through the sorrow, through the gift,
+through the withdrawal, through all the variety of dealings, the
+intention was one and the same, to mould us to the likeness of our Lord
+and Saviour! There would be fewer mysteries in our lives, we should
+seldomer have to stand in astonishment, in vain regret, in miserable and
+weakening looking back upon vanished gifts, and saying to ourselves,
+'Why has this darkness stooped upon my path?' if we looked beyond the
+darkness and the light to that for which both were sent. Some plants
+require frost to bring out their savour, and men need sorrow to test and
+to produce their highest qualities. There would be fewer knots in the
+thread of our lives, and fewer mysteries in our experience, if we made
+God's aim ours, and strove through all variations of condition to
+realise it.
+
+How different all our estimate of nearer objects and aims would be, if
+once we clearly recognised what we are here for! The prostitution of
+powers to obviously unworthy aims and ends is the saddest thing in
+humanity. It is like elephants being set to pick up pins; it is like the
+lightning being harnessed to carry all the gossip and filth of one
+capital of the world to the prurient readers in another. Men take these
+great powers which God has given them, and use them to make money, to
+cultivate their intellects, to secure the gratification of earthly
+desires, to make a home for themselves here amidst the illusions of
+time; and all the while the great aim which ought to stand out clear and
+supreme is forgotten by them.
+
+There is nothing that needs more careful examination by us than our
+accepted schemes of life for ourselves; the roots of our errors mostly
+lie in these things that we take to be axioms, and that we never examine
+into. Let us begin this new year by an honest dealing with ourselves,
+asking ourselves this question, 'What am I living for?' And if the
+answer, first of all, be, as, of course, it will be, the accomplishment
+of the nearer and necessary aims, such as the conduct of our business,
+the cultivating of our understandings, the love and peace of our homes,
+then let us press the investigation a little further, and say, What
+then? Suppose I make a fortune, what then? Suppose I get the position I
+am striving for, what then? Suppose I cultivate my understanding and win
+the knowledge that I am nobly striving after, what then? Let us not
+cease to ask the question until we can say, 'Thy aim, O Lord, is my aim,
+and I press toward the mark,' the only mark which will make life noble,
+elastic, stable, and blessed, that I 'may be found in Christ, not having
+mine own righteousness, but that which is of God by faith.' For this we
+have all been made, guided, redeemed. If we carry this treasure out of
+life we shall carry all that is worth carrying. If we fail in this we
+fail altogether, whatever be our so-called success. There is one mark,
+one only, and every arrow that does not hit that target is wasted and
+spent in vain.
+
+II. Secondly, let me say, concentrate all effort on this one aim.
+
+'This one thing I do,' says the Apostle, 'I press toward the mark.' That
+aim is the one which God has in view in all circumstances and
+arrangements. Therefore, obviously, it is one which may be pursued in
+all of these, and may be sought whatsoever we are doing. All
+occupations of life except only sin are consistent with this highest
+aim. It needs not that we should seek any remote or cloistered form of
+life, nor sheer off any legitimate and common interests and occupations,
+but in them all we may be seeking for the one thing, the moulding of our
+characters into the shapes that are pleasing to Him. 'One thing have I
+desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the
+house of the Lord all the days of my life'; wheresoever the outward days
+of my life may be passed. Whatsoever we are doing in business, in shop,
+at a study table, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the road, in the
+house, we may still have the supreme aim in view, that from all
+occupations there may come growth in character and in likeness to Jesus
+Christ.
+
+Only, to keep this supreme aim clear there will require far more
+frequent and resolute effort of what the old mystics used to call
+'recollection' than we are accustomed to put forth. It is hard, amidst
+the din of business, and whilst yielding to other lower, legitimate
+impulses and motives, to set this supreme one high above them all. But
+it is possible if only we will do two things: keep ourselves close to
+God, and be prepared to surrender much, laying our own wills, our own
+fancies, purposes, eager hopes and plans in His hands, and asking Him to
+help us, that we may never lose sight of the harbour light because of
+any tossing waves that rise between us and it, nor may ever be so
+swallowed up in ends, which are only means after all, as to lose sight
+of the only end which is an end in itself. But for the attainment of
+this aim in any measure, the concentration of all our powers upon it is
+absolutely needful. If you want to bore a hole you take a sharp point;
+you can do nothing with a blunt one. Every flight of wild ducks in the
+sky will tell you the form that is most likely to secure the maximum of
+motion with the minimum of effort. The wedge is that which pierces
+through all the loosely-compacted textures against which it is pressed.
+The Roman strategy forced the way of the legion through the
+loose-ordered ranks of barbarian foes by arraying it in that wedge-like
+form. So we, if we are to advance, must gather ourselves together and
+put a point upon our lives by compaction and concentration of effort and
+energy on the one purpose. The conquering word is, 'This one thing I
+do.' The difference between the amateur and the artist is that the one
+pursues an art at intervals by spurts, as a _parergon_--a thing that is
+done in the intervals of other occupations--and that the other makes it
+his life's business. There are a great many amateur Christians amongst
+us, who pursue the Christian life by spurts and starts. If you want to
+be a Christian after God's pattern--and unless you are you are scarcely
+a Christian at all--you have to make it your business, to give the same
+attention, the same concentration, the same unwavering energy to it
+which you do to your trade. The man of one book, the man of one idea,
+the man of one aim is the formidable and the successful man. People will
+call you a fanatic; never mind. Better be a fanatic and get what you aim
+at, which is the highest thing, than be so broad that, like a stream
+spreading itself out over miles of mud, there is no scour in it
+anywhere, no current, and therefore stagnation and death. Gather
+yourselves together, and amidst all the side issues and nearer aims keep
+this in view as the aim to which all are to be subservient--that,
+'whether I eat or drink, or whatsoever I do, I may do all to the glory
+of God.' Let sorrow and joy, and trade and profession, and study and
+business, and house and wife and children, and all home joys, be the
+means by which you may become like the Master who has died for this end,
+that we may become partakers of His holiness.
+
+III. Pursue this end with a wise forgetfulness.
+
+'Forgetting the things that are behind.' The art of forgetting has much
+to do with the blessedness and power of every life. Of course, when the
+Apostle says 'Forgetting the things that are behind,' he is thinking of
+the runner, who has no time to cast his eye over his shoulder to mark
+the steps already trod. He does not mean, of course, either, to tell us
+that we are so to cultivate obliviousness as to let God's mercies to us
+'lie forgotten in unthankfulness, or without praises die.' Nor does he
+mean to tell us that we are to deny ourselves the solace of remembering
+the mercies which may, perhaps, have gone from us. Memory may be like
+the calm radiance that fills the western sky from a sun that has set,
+sad and yet sweet, melancholy and lovely. But he means that we should so
+forget as, by the oblivion, to strengthen our concentration.
+
+So I would say, let us remember, and yet forget, our past failures and
+faults. Let us remember them in order that the remembrance may cultivate
+in us a wise chastening of our self-confidence. Let us remember where we
+were foiled, in order that we may be the more careful of that place
+hereafter. If we know that upon any road we fell into ambushes, 'not
+once nor twice,' like the old king of Israel, we should guard ourselves
+against passing by that road again. He who has not learned, by the
+memory of his past failures, humility and wise government of his life,
+and wise avoidance of places where he is weak, is an incurable fool.
+
+But let us forget our failures in so far as these might paralyse our
+hopes, or make us fancy that future success is impossible where past
+failures frown. Ebenezer was a field of defeat before it rang with the
+hymns of victory. And there is no place in your past life where you have
+been shamefully baffled and beaten, but there, and in that, you may yet
+be victorious. Never let the past limit your hopes of the possibilities
+and your confidence in the certainties and victories of the future. And
+if ever you are tempted to say to yourselves, 'I have tried it so often,
+and so often failed, that it is no use trying it any more. I am beaten
+and I throw up the sponge,' remember Paul's wise exhortation, and
+'forgetting the things that are behind . . . press toward the mark.'
+
+In like manner I would say, remember and yet forget past successes and
+achievements. Remember them for thankfulness, remember them for hope,
+remember them for counsel and instruction, but forget them when they
+tend, as all that we accomplish does tend, to make us fancy that little
+more remains to be done; and forget them when they tend, as all that we
+accomplish ever does tend, to make us think that such and such things
+are our line, and of other virtues and graces and achievements of
+culture and of character, that these are not our line, and not to be won
+by us.
+
+'Our line!' Astronomers take a thin thread from a spider's web and
+stretch it across their object glasses to measure stellar magnitudes.
+Just as is the spider's line in comparison with the whole shining
+surface of the sun across which it is stretched, so is what we have
+already attained to the boundless might and glory of that to which we
+may come. Nothing short of the full measure of the likeness of Jesus
+Christ is the measure of our possibilities.
+
+There is a mannerism in Christian life, as there is in everything else,
+which is to be avoided if we would grow into perfection. There was a
+great artist in the last century who never could paint a picture without
+sticking a brown tree in the foreground. We have all got our 'brown
+trees,' which we think we can do well, and these limit our ambition to
+secure other gifts which God is ready to bestow upon us. So 'forget the
+things that are behind.' Cultivate a wise obliviousness of past sorrows,
+past joys, past failures, past gifts, past achievements, in so far as
+these might limit the audacity of our hopes and the energy of our
+efforts.
+
+IV. So, lastly, pursue the aim with a wise, eager reaching forward.
+
+The Apostle employs a very graphic word here, which is only very
+partially expressed by that 'reaching forth.' It contains a condensed
+picture which it is scarcely possible to put into any one expression.
+'Reaching out over' is the full though clumsy rendering of the word, and
+it gives us the picture of the runner with his whole body thrown
+forward, his hand extended, and his eye reaching even further than his
+hand, in eager anticipation of the mark and the prize. So we are to
+live, with continual reaching out of confidence, clear recognition, and
+eager desire to make our own the unattained.
+
+What is that which gives an element of nobleness to the lives of great
+idealists, whether they be poets, artists, students, thinkers, or what
+not? Only this, that they see the unattained burning ever so clearly
+before them that all the attained seems as nothing in their eyes. And
+so life is saved from commonplace, is happily stung into fresh effort,
+is redeemed from flagging, monotony, and weariness.
+
+The measure of our attainments may be fairly estimated by the extent to
+which the unattained is clear in our sight. A man down in the valley
+sees the nearer shoulder of the hill, and he thinks it the top. The man
+up on the shoulder sees all the heights that lie beyond rising above
+him. Endeavour is better than success. It is more to see the Alpine
+heights unscaled than it is to have risen so far as we have done. They
+who thus have a boundless future before them have an endless source of
+inspiration, of energy, of buoyancy granted to them.
+
+No man has such an absolutely boundless vision of the future which may
+be his as we have, if we are Christian people, as we ought to be. We
+only can thus look forward. For all others a blank wall stretches at the
+end of life, against which hopes, when they strike, fall back stunned
+and dead. But for us the wall may be overleaped, and, living by the
+energy of a boundless hope, we, and only we, can lay ourselves down to
+die, and say then, 'Reaching forth unto the things that are before.'
+
+So, dear friends, make God's aim your aim; concentrate your life's
+efforts upon it; pursue it with a wise forgetfulness; pursue it with an
+eager confidence of anticipation that shall not be put to shame.
+Remember that God reaches His aim for you by giving to you Jesus Christ,
+and that you can only reach it by accepting the Christ who is given and
+being found in Him. Then the years will take away nothing from us which
+it is not gain to lose. They will neither weaken our energy nor flatten
+our hopes, nor dim our confidence, and, at the last we shall reach the
+mark, and, as we touch it, we shall find dropping on our surprised and
+humble heads the crown of life which they receive who have so run, not
+as uncertainly, but doing this one thing, pressing towards the mark for
+the prize.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUL'S PERFECTION
+
+          'Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus
+          minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded,
+          God shall reveal even this unto you.'--PHIL. iii.
+          15.
+
+
+'As many as be perfect'; and how many may they be? Surely a very short
+bede-roll would contain their names; or would there be any other but the
+Name which is above every name upon it? Part of the answer to such a
+question may be found in observing that the New Testament very
+frequently uses the word to express not so much the idea of moral
+completeness as that of physical maturity. For instance, when Paul says
+that he would have his converts to be '_men_ in understanding,' and when
+the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of 'them that are of full age,' the
+same word is used as this 'perfect' in our text. Clearly in such cases
+it means 'full grown,' as in contrast with 'babes,' and expresses not
+absolute completeness, but what we may term a relative perfection, a
+certain maturity of character and advanced stage of Christian
+attainment, far removed from the infantile epoch of the Christian life.
+
+Another contribution to the answer may be found in observing that in
+this very context these 'perfect' people are exhorted to cultivate the
+sense of not having 'already attained,' and to be constantly reaching
+forth to unattained heights, so that a sense of imperfection and a
+continual effort after higher life are parts of Paul's 'perfect man.'
+And it is to be still further noticed that on the same testimony
+'perfect' people may probably be 'otherwise minded'; by which we
+understand not divergently minded from one another, but 'otherwise' than
+the true norm or law of life would prescribe, and so may stand in need
+of the hope that God will by degrees bring them into conformity with His
+will, and show them 'this,' namely, their divergence from His Pattern
+for them.
+
+It is worth our while to look at these large thoughts thus involved in
+the words before us.
+
+I. Then there are people whom without exaggeration the judgment of truth
+calls _perfect_.
+
+The language of the New Testament has no scruple in calling men 'saints'
+who had many sins, and none in calling men perfect who had many
+imperfections; and it does so, not because it has any fantastic theory
+about religious emotions being the measure of moral purity, but partly
+for the reasons already referred to, and partly because it wisely
+considers the main thing about a character to be not the degree to which
+it has attained completeness in its ideal, but what that ideal is. The
+distance a man has got on his journey is of less consequence than the
+direction in which his face is turned. The arrow may fall short, but to
+what mark was it shot? In all regions of life a wise classification of
+men arranges them according to their aims rather than their
+achievements. The visionary who attempts something high and accomplishes
+scarcely anything of it, is often a far nobler man, and his poor,
+broken, foiled, resultless life far more perfect than his who aims at
+marks on the low levels and hits them full. Such lives as these, full
+of yearning and aspiration, though it be for the most part vain, are
+
+          'Like the young moon with a ragged edge
+           E'en in its imperfection beautiful.'
+
+If then it be wise to rank men and their pursuits according to their
+aims rather than their accomplishments, is there one class of aims so
+absolutely corresponding to man's nature and relations that to take them
+for one's own, and to reach some measure of approximation to them, may
+fairly be called the perfection of human nature? Is there one way of
+living concerning which we may say that whosoever adopts it has, in so
+far as he does adopt it, discerned and attained the purpose of his
+being? The literal force of the word in our text gives pertinence to
+that question, for it distinctly means 'having reached the end.' And if
+that be taken as the meaning, there need be no doubt about the answer.
+Grand old words have taught us long ago 'Man's chief end is to glorify
+God and to enjoy Him for ever.' Yes, he who lives for God has taken that
+for his aim which all his nature and all his relations prescribe, he is
+doing what he was made and meant to do; and however incomplete may be
+its attainments, the lowest form of a God-fearing, God-obeying life is
+higher and more nearly 'perfect' than the fairest career or character
+against which, as a blight on all its beauty, the damning accusation may
+be brought, 'The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy
+ways, thou hast not glorified.'
+
+People sneer at 'saints' and point at their failings. They remind us of
+the foul stains in David's career, for instance, and mock as they ask,
+'Is this your man after God's own heart?' Yes, he is; not because
+religion has a morality of its own different from that of the world
+(except as being higher), nor because 'saints' make up for adultery and
+murder by making or singing psalms, but because the main set and current
+of the life was evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous
+sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, as it were,
+wept over with bitter self-abasement and conquered by strenuous effort.
+Better a life of Godward aspiration and straining after purity, even if
+broken by such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward
+grubbing, undisturbed by gross sin.
+
+And another reason warrants the application of the word to men whose
+present is full of incompleteness, namely, the fact that such men have
+in them the germ of a life which has no natural end but absolute
+completeness. The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and
+soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of ragged green,
+very shabby and inconspicuous by the side of the native flowers of earth
+flaunting around it, but it has a divine germinant virtue within, and
+waits but being carried to its own clime and 'planted in the house of
+the Lord' above, to 'flourish in the courts of our God,' when these
+others with their glorious beauty have faded away and are flung out to
+rot.
+
+II. We have set forth here very distinctly two of the characteristics of
+this perfection.
+
+The Apostle in our text exhorts the perfect to be '_thus_ minded.' How
+is that? Evidently the word points back to the previous clauses, in
+which he has been describing his own temper and feeling in the Christian
+race. He sets that before the Philippians as their pattern, or rather
+invites them to fellowship with him in the estimate of themselves and in
+their efforts after higher attainments. 'Be thus minded' means, Think
+as I do of yourselves, and do as I do in your daily life.
+
+How did he think of himself? He tells us in the sentence before, 'Not as
+though I were already perfect. I count not myself to have apprehended.'
+So then a leading characteristic of this true Christian perfection is a
+constant consciousness of imperfection. In all fields of effort, whether
+intellectual, moral, or mechanical, as faculty grows, consciousness of
+insufficiency grows with it. The farther we get up the hill, the more we
+see how far it is to the horizon. The more we know, the more we know our
+ignorance. The better we can do, the more we discern how much we cannot
+do. Only people who never have done and never will do anything, or else
+raw apprentices with the mercifully granted self-confidence of youth,
+which gets beaten out of most of us soon enough, think that they can do
+everything.
+
+In morals and in Christian life the same thing is true. The measure of
+our perfection will be the consciousness of our imperfection--a paradox,
+but a great truth. It is plain enough that it will be so. Conscience
+becomes more sensitive as we get nearer right. The worse a man is the
+less it speaks to him, and the less he hears it. When it ought to
+thunder it whispers; when we need it most it is least active. The thick
+skin of a savage will not be disturbed by lying on sharp stones, while a
+crumpled rose-leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So the practice of
+evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and the practice of goodness
+restores tenderness and sensibility; and many a man laden with crime
+knows less of its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost
+spotless to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be
+conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all dirty and
+dull, a dozen more or fewer will make little difference. As men grow
+better they become like that glycerine barometer recently introduced, on
+which a fall or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to
+record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous. Good people
+sometimes wonder, and sometimes are made doubtful and sad about
+themselves, by this abiding and even increased consciousness of sin.
+There is no need to be so. The higher the temperature the more chilling
+would it be to pass into an ice-house, and the more our lives are
+brought into fellowship with the perfect life, the more shall we feel
+our own shortcomings. Let us be thankful if our consciences speak to us
+more loudly than they used to do. It is a sign of growing holiness, as
+the tingling in a frost-bitten limb is of returning life. Let us seek to
+cultivate and increase the sense of our own imperfection, and be sure
+that the diminution of a consciousness of sin means not diminished power
+of sin, but lessened horror of it, lessened perception of right,
+lessened love of goodness, and is an omen of death, not a symptom of
+life. Painter, scholar, craftsman all know that the condition of advance
+is the recognition of an ideal not attained. Whoever has not before him
+a standard to which he has not reached will grow no more. If we see no
+faults in our work we shall never do any better. The condition of all
+Christian, as of all other progress, is to be drawn by that fair vision
+before us, and to be stung into renewed effort to reach it, by the
+consciousness of present imperfection.
+
+Another characteristic to which these perfect men are exhorted is a
+constant striving after a further advance. How vigorously, almost
+vehemently, that temper is put in the context--'I follow after'; 'I
+press toward the mark'; and that picturesque 'reaching forth,' or, as
+the Revised Version gives it, 'stretching forward.' The full force of
+the latter word cannot be given in any one English equivalent, but may
+be clumsily hinted by some such phrase as 'stretching oneself out over,'
+as a runner might do with body thrown forward and arms extended in
+front, and eagerness in every strained muscle, and eye outrunning foot,
+and hope clutching the goal already. So yearning forward, and setting
+all the current of his being, both faculty and desire, to the yet
+unreached mark, the Christian man is to live. His glances are not to be
+bent backwards, but forwards. He is not to be a 'praiser of the past,'
+but a herald and expectant of a nobler future. He is the child of the
+day and of the morning, forgetting the things which are behind, and ever
+yearning towards the things which are before, and drawing them to
+himself. To look back is to be stiffened into a living death; only with
+faces set forward are we safe and well.
+
+This buoyant energy of hope and effort is to be the result of the
+consciousness of imperfection of which we have spoken. Strange to many
+of us, in some moods, that a thing so bright should spring up from a
+thing so dark, and that the more we feel our own shortcomings, the more
+hopeful should we be of a future unlike the past, and the more earnest
+in our effort to make that future the present! There is a type of
+Christian experience not uncommon among devout people, in which the
+consciousness of imperfection paralyses effort instead of quickening it;
+men lament their evil, their slow progress and so on, and remain the
+same year after year. They are stirred to no effort. There is no
+straining onwards. They almost seem to lose the faith that they can ever
+be any better. How different this from the grand, wholesome completeness
+of Paul's view here, which embraces both elements, and even draws the
+undying brightness of his forward-looking confidence from the very
+darkness of his sense of present imperfection!
+
+So should it be with us, 'as many as be perfect.' Before us stretch
+indefinite possibilities of approximating to the unattainable fulness of
+the divine life. We may grow in knowledge and in holiness through
+endless ages and grades of advance. In a most blessed sense we may have
+that for our highest joy which in another meaning is a punishment of
+unfaithfulness and indocility, that we shall be 'ever learning, and
+never coming to the full knowledge of the truth.' No limit can be put to
+what we may receive of God, nor to the closeness, the fulness of our
+communion with Him, nor to the beauty of holiness which may pass from
+Him into our poor characters, and irradiate our homely faces. Then,
+brethren, let us cherish a noble discontent with all that we at present
+are. Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better things
+beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send out pale shoots that
+feel blindly towards the light, or the seed sown on the top of a rock
+will grope down the bare stone for the earth by which it must be fed.
+Let the sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant confidence in
+what we, even we, may become if we will only take the grace we have. To
+this touchstone let us bring all claims to higher holiness--they who are
+perfect are most conscious of imperfection, and most eager in their
+efforts after a further progress in the knowledge, love, and likeness of
+God in Christ.
+
+III. We have here also distinctly brought out the co-existence with
+these characteristics of their opposites.
+
+'If in anything ye are otherwise minded,' says Paul. I have already
+suggested that this expression evidently refers not to difference of
+opinion among themselves, but to a divergence of character from the
+pattern of feeling and life which he has been proposing to them. If in
+any respects ye are unconscious of your imperfections, if there be any
+'witch's mark' of insensibility in some spot of your conscience to some
+plain transgressions of law, if in any of you there be some complacent
+illusion of your own stainlessness, if to any of you the bright vision
+before you seem faint and unsubstantial, God will show you what you do
+not see. Plainly then he considers that there will be found among these
+perfect men states of feeling and estimates of themselves opposed to
+those which he has been exhorting them to cherish. Plainly he supposes
+that a good man may pass for a time under the dominion of impulses and
+theories which are of another kind from those that rule his life.
+
+He does not expect the complete and uninterrupted dominion of these
+higher powers. He recognises the plain facts that the true self, the
+central life of the soul, the higher nature, 'the new man,' abides in a
+self which is but gradually renewed, and that there is a long distance,
+so to speak, from the centre to the circumference. That higher life is
+planted, but its germination is a work of time. The leaven does not
+leaven the whole mass in a moment, but creeps on from particle to
+particle. 'Make the tree good' and in due time its fruit will be good.
+But the conditions of our human life are conflict, and these peaceful
+images of growth and unimpeded natural development, 'first the blade,
+then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear,' are not meant to
+tell all the truth. Interruptions from external circumstances, struggles
+of flesh with spirit, and of imagination and heart and will against the
+better life implanted in the spirit, are the lot of all, even the most
+advanced here, and however a man may be perfect, there will always be
+the possibility that in something he may be 'otherwise minded.'
+
+Such an admission does not make such interruptions less blameworthy when
+they occur. The doctrine of averages does not do away with the voluntary
+character of each single act. The same number of letters are yearly
+posted without addresses. Does anybody dream of not scolding the errand
+boy who posted them, or the servant who did not address them, because he
+knows that? We are quite sure that we could have resisted each time that
+we fell. That piece of sharp practice in business, or that burst of bad
+temper in the household which we were last guilty of--could we have
+helped it or not? Conscience must answer that question, which does not
+depend at all on the law of averages. Guilt is not taken away by
+asserting that sin cleaves to men, 'perfect men.'
+
+But the feelings with which we should regard sin and contradictions of
+men's truest selves in ourselves and others should be so far altered by
+such thoughts that we should be very slow to pronounce that a man cannot
+be a Christian because he has done so and so. Are there any sins which
+are clearly _incompatible_ with a Christian character? All sins are
+_inconsistent_ with it, but that is a very different matter. The uniform
+direction of a man's life being godless, selfish, devoted to the objects
+and pursuits of time and sense, is incompatible with his being a
+Christian--but, thank God, no single act, however dark, is so, if it be
+in contradiction to the main tendency impressed upon the character and
+conduct. It is not for us to say that any single deed shows a man cannot
+be Christ's, nor to fling ourselves down in despair saying, 'If I were a
+Christian, I could not have done that.' Let us remember that 'all
+unrighteousness is sin,' and the least sin is in flagrant opposition to
+our Christian profession; but let us also remember, and that not to
+blunt our consciences or weaken our efforts, that Paul thought it
+possible for perfect men to be 'otherwise minded' from their deepest
+selves and their highest pattern.
+
+IV. The crowning hope that lies in these words is the certainty of a
+gradual but complete attainment of all the Christian aspirations after
+God and goodness.
+
+The ground of that confidence lies in no natural tendencies in us, in no
+effort of ours, but solely in that great name which is the anchor of all
+our confidence, the name of God. Why is Paul certain that 'God will
+reveal even this unto you'? Because He is God. The Apostle has learned
+the infinite depth of meaning that lies in that name. He has learned
+that God is not in the way of leaving off His work before He has done
+His work, and that none can say of Him, that 'He began to build, and was
+not able to finish.' The assurances of an unchangeable purpose in
+redemption, and of inexhaustible resources to effect it; of a love that
+can never fade, and of a grace that can never be exhausted--are all
+treasured for us in that mighty name. And such confidence is confirmed
+by the manifest tendency of the principles and motives brought to bear
+on us in Christianity to lead on to a condition of absolute perfection,
+as well as by the experience which we may have, if we will, of the
+sanctifying and renewing power of His Spirit in our Spirit.
+
+By the discipline of daily life, by the ministry of sorrow and joy, by
+merciful chastisements dogging our steps when we stray, by duties and
+cares, by the teaching of His word coming even closer to our hearts and
+quickening our consciences to discern evil where we had seen none, as
+well as kindling in us desires after higher and rarer goodness, by the
+reward of enlarged perceptions of duty and greater love towards it, with
+which He recompenses lowly obedience to the duty as yet seen, by the
+secret influences of His Spirit of Power and of Love and of a sound Mind
+breathed into our waiting spirits, by the touch of His own sustaining
+hand and glance of His own guiding eye, He will reveal to the lowly soul
+all that is yet wanting in its knowledge, and communicate all that is
+lacking in character.
+
+So for us, the true temper is confidence in His power and will, an
+earnest waiting on Him, a brave forward yearning hope blended with a
+lowly consciousness of imperfection, which is a spur not a clog, and
+vigorous increasing efforts to bring into life and character the fulness
+and beauty of God. Presumption should be as far from us as despair--the
+one because we have not already attained, the other because 'God will
+reveal even this unto us.' Only let us keep in mind the caution which
+the Apostle, knowing the possible abuses which might gather round His
+teaching, has here attached to it, 'Nevertheless'--though all which I
+have been saying is true, it is only on this understanding--'Whereto we
+have already attained, by the same let us walk.' God will perfect that
+which concerneth you if--and only if--you go on as you have begun, if
+you make your creed a life, if you show what you are. If so, then all
+the rest is a question of time. A has been said, and Z will come in its
+proper place. Begin with humble trust in Christ, and a process is
+commenced which has no natural end short of that great hope with which
+this chapter closes, that the change which begins in the deepest
+recesses of our being, and struggles slowly and with many interruptions,
+into partial visibility in our character, shall one day triumphantly
+irradiate our whole nature out to the very finger-tips, and 'even the
+body of our humiliation shall be fashioned like unto the body of
+Christ's glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to
+subdue all things to Himself.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RULE OF THE ROAD
+
+          'Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained,
+          let us walk by the same rule.'--PHIL. iii. 16.
+
+
+Paul has just been laying down a great principle--viz. that if the main
+direction of a life be right, God will reveal to a man the points in
+which he is wrong. But that principle is untrue and dangerous, unless
+carefully guarded. It may lead to a lazy tolerance of evil, and to
+drawing such inferences as, 'Well! it does not much matter about
+strenuous effort, if we are right at bottom it will all come right
+by-and-by,' and so it may become a pillow for indolence and a clog on
+effort. This possible abuse of a great truth seems to strike the
+Apostle, and so he enters here, with this 'Nevertheless,' a _caveat_
+against that twist of his meaning. It is as if he said, 'Now mind! while
+all that is perfectly true, it is true on conditions; and if they be not
+attended to, it is not true.' God will reveal to a man the things in
+which he is wrong if, and only if, he steadfastly continues in the
+course which he knows and sees to be right. Present attainments, then,
+are in some sense a standard of duty, and if we honestly and
+conscientiously observe that standard we shall get light as we journey.
+In this exhortation of the Apostle's there are many exhortations wrapped
+up; and in trying to draw them out I venture to adhere to the form of
+exhortation for the sake of impressiveness and point.
+
+I. First, then, I would say the Apostle means, 'Live up to your faith
+and your convictions.'
+
+It may be a question whether 'that to which we have already attained'
+means the amount of knowledge which we have won or the amount of
+practical righteousness which we have made our own. But I think that,
+instead of sharply dividing between these two, we shall follow more in
+the course of the Apostle's thought if we unite them together, and
+remember that the Bible does not make the distinct separation which we
+sometimes incline to make between knowledge on the one side and practice
+on the other, but regards the man as a living unity. And thus, both
+aspects of our attainments come into consideration here.
+
+So, then, there are two main thoughts--first, live out your creed, and
+second, live up to your convictions.
+
+Live out your creed. Men are meant to live, not by impulse, by accident,
+by inclination, but by principle. We are not intended to live by rule,
+but we _are_ intended to live by law. And unless we know _why_ we do as
+well as _what_ we do, and give a rational account of our conduct, we
+fall beneath the height on which God intends us to walk. Impulse is all
+very well, but impulse is blind and needs a guide. The imitation of
+those around us, or the acceptance of the apparent necessities of
+circumstances, are, to some extent, inevitable and right. But to be
+driven merely by the force of externals is to surrender the highest
+prerogative of manhood. The highest part of human nature is the reason
+guided by conscience, and a man's conscience is only then rightly
+illuminated when it is illuminated by his creed, which is founded on the
+acceptance of the revelation that God has made of Himself.
+
+And whilst we are clearly meant to be guided by the intelligent
+appropriation of God's truth, that truth is evidently all meant for
+guidance. We are not told anything in the Bible in order that we may
+know as an ultimate object, but we are told it all in order that,
+knowing, we may be, and, being, we may do, according to His will.
+
+Just think of the intensely practical tendency of all the greatest
+truths of Christianity. The Cross is the law of life. The revelation
+that was made there was made, not merely that we might cling to it as a
+refuge from our sins, but that we might accept it as the rule of our
+conduct. All our duties to mankind are summed up in the word 'Love one
+another as I have loved you.' We say that we believe in the divinity of
+Christ; we say that we believe in the great incarnation and sacrificial
+death and eternal priesthood of the loving Son of God. We say that we
+believe in a judgment to come and a future life. Well, then, do these
+truths produce any effect upon my life? have they shaped me in any
+measure into conformity with their great principles? Does there issue
+from them constraining power which grasps me and moulds me as a sculptor
+would a bit of clay in his hands? Am I subject to the Gospel's
+authority, and is the word in which God has revealed Himself to me the
+word which dominates and impels all my life? 'Whereunto we have already
+attained, by the same let us walk.'
+
+But we shall not do that without a distinct effort. For it is a great
+deal easier to live from hand to mouth than to live by principle. It is
+a great deal easier to accept what seems forced upon us by circumstances
+than to exercise control over the circumstances, and make them bend to
+God's holy will. It is a great deal easier to take counsel of
+inclination, and to put the reins in the hands of impulses, passions,
+desires, tastes, or even habits, than it is, at each fresh moment, to
+seek for fresh impulses from a fresh illumination from the ancient and
+yet ever fresh truth. The old kings of France used to be kept with all
+royal state in the palace, but they were not allowed to do anything. And
+there was a rough, unworshipped man that stood by their side, and who
+was the real ruler of the realm. That is what a great many professing
+Christians do with their creeds. They instal them in some inner chamber
+that they very seldom visit, and leave them there, in dignified
+idleness, and the real working ruler of their lives is found elsewhere.
+Let us see to it, brethren, that all our thoughts are incarnated in our
+deeds, and that all our deeds are brought into immediate connection with
+the great principles of God's word. Live by that law, and we live at
+liberty.
+
+And, then, remember that this translating of creed into conduct is the
+only condition of growing illumination. When we act upon a belief, the
+belief grows. That is the source of a great deal of stupid obstinacy in
+this world, because men have been so long accustomed to go upon certain
+principles that it seems incredible to them but that these principles
+should be true. But that, too, is at the bottom of a great deal of
+intelligent and noble firmness of adherence to the true. A man who has
+tested a principle because he has lived upon it has confidence in it
+that nobody else can have.
+
+Projectors may have beautiful specifications with attractive pictures of
+their new inventions; they look very well upon paper, but we must see
+them working before we are sure of their worth. And so, here is this
+great body of Divine truth, which assumes to be sufficient for guidance,
+for conduct, for comfort, for life. Live upon it, and thereby your grasp
+of it and your confidence in it will be immensely increased. And no man
+has a right to say 'I have rejected Christianity as untrue,' unless he
+has put it to the test by living upon it; and if he has, he will never
+say it. A Swiss traveller goes into a shop and buys a brand-new
+alpenstock. Does he lean upon it with as much confidence as another man
+does, who has one with the names of all the mountains that it has helped
+him up branded on it from top to bottom? Take _this_ staff and lean on
+it. Live your creed, and you will believe your creed as you never will
+until you do. Obedience takes a man up to an elevation from which he
+sees further into the deep harmonies of truth. In all regions of life
+the principle holds good: 'To him that hath shall be given.' And it
+holds eminently in reference to our grasp of Christian principles. Use
+them and they grow; neglect them and they perish. Sometimes a man dies
+in a workhouse who has a store of guineas and notes wrapped up in rags
+somewhere about him; and so they have been of no use to him. If you want
+your capital to increase, trade with it. As the Lord said when He gave
+the servants their talents: 'Trade with them till I come.' The creed
+that is utilised is the creed that grows. And that is why so many of you
+Christian people have so little real intellectual grasp of the
+principles of Christianity, because you have not lived upon them, nor
+tried to do it.
+
+And, in like manner, another side of this thought is, be true to your
+convictions. There is no such barrier to a larger and wholesomer view of
+our duty as the neglect of anything that plainly is our duty. It stands
+there, an impassable cliff between us and all progress. Let us live and
+be what we know we ought to be, and we shall know better what we ought
+to be at the next moment.
+
+II. Secondly, let me put the Apostle's meaning in another exhortation,
+Go on as you have begun.
+
+'Whereunto we have already attained, by the same let us walk.' The
+various points to which the men have reached are all points in one
+straight line; and the injunction of my text is 'Keep the road.' There
+are a great many temptations to stray from it. There are nice smooth
+grassy bits by the side of it where it is a great deal easier walking.
+There are attractive things just a footstep or two out of the path--such
+a little deviation that it can easily be recovered. And so, like
+children gathering daisies in the field, we stray away from the path;
+and, like men on a moor, we then look round for it, and it is gone. The
+angle of divergence may be the acutest possible; the deviation when we
+begin may be scarcely visible, but if you draw a line at the sharpest
+angle and the least deviation from a straight line, and carry it out far
+enough, there will be space between it and the line from which it
+started ample to hold a universe. Then, let us take care of small
+deviations from the plain straight path, and give no heed to the
+seductions that lie on either side, but 'whereunto we have already
+attained, by _the same_ let us walk.'
+
+There are temptations, too, to slacken our speed. The river runs far
+more slowly in its latter course than when it came babbling and leaping
+down the hillside. And sometimes a Christian life seems as if it crept
+rather than ran, like those sluggish streams in the Fen country, which
+move so slowly that you cannot tell which way the water is flowing. Are
+not there all round us, are there not amongst ourselves instances of
+checked growth, of arrested development? There are people listening to
+me now, calling themselves--and I do not say that they have not a right
+to do so--Christians, who have not grown a bit for years, but stand at
+the very same point of attainment, both in knowledge and in purity and
+Christlikeness, as they were many, many days ago. I beseech you, listen
+to this exhortation of my text, 'Whereunto we have already attained, by
+the same let us walk,' and continue patient and persistent in the course
+that is set before us.
+
+III. The Apostle's injunction may be cast into this form, Be yourselves.
+
+The representation which underlies my text, and precedes it in the
+context, is that of the Christian community as a great body of
+travellers all upon one road, all with their faces turned in one
+direction, but at very different points on the path. The difference of
+position necessarily involves a difference in outlook. They see their
+duties, and they see the Word of God, in some respects diversely. And
+the Apostle's exhortation is: 'Let each man follow his own insight, and
+whereunto he has attained, by that, and not by his brother's attainment,
+by that let him walk.' From the very fact of the diversity of
+advancement there follows the plain duty for each of us to use our own
+eyesight, and of independent faithfulness to our own measure of light,
+as the guide which we are bound to follow.
+
+There is a dreadful want, in the ordinary Christian life, of any
+appearance of first-hand communication with Jesus Christ, and daring to
+be myself, and to act on the insight into His will which Christ has
+given _me_.
+
+Conventional Godliness, Christian people cut after one pattern, a little
+narrow round of certain statutory duties and obligations, a parrot-like
+repetition of certain words, a mechanical copying of certain methods of
+life, an oppressive sameness, mark so much of modern religion. What a
+freshening up there would come into all Christian communities if every
+man lived by his own perception of truth and duty! If a musician in an
+orchestra is listening to his neighbour's note and time, he will lose
+many an indication from the conductor that would have kept him far more
+right, if he had attended to it. And if, instead of taking our beliefs
+and our conduct from one another, or from the average of Christian men
+round us, we went straight to Jesus Christ and said to Him, 'What
+wouldst _Thou_ have _me_ to do?' there would be a different aspect over
+Christendom from what there is to-day. The fact of individual
+responsibility, according to the measure of our individual light, and
+faithful following of that, wheresoever it may lead us, are the grand
+and stirring principles that come from these words. 'Whereunto we have
+already attained,' by that--and by no other man's attainment or
+rule--let us walk.
+
+But do not let us forget that that same faithful independence and
+independent faithfulness because Christ speaks to us, and we will not
+let any other voice blend with His, are quite consistent with, and,
+indeed, demand, the frank recognition of our brother's equal right. If
+we more often thought of all the great body of Christian people as an
+army, united in its diversity, its line of march stretching for leagues,
+and some in the van, and some in the main body, and some in the rear,
+but all one, we should be more tolerant of divergences, more charitable
+in our judgment of the laggards, more patient in waiting for them to
+come up with us, and more wise and considerate in moderating our pace
+sometimes to meet theirs. All who love Jesus Christ are on the same road
+and bound for the same home. Let us be contented that they shall be at
+different stages on the path, seeing that we know that they will all
+reach the Temple above.
+
+IV. Lastly, cherish the consciousness of imperfection and the confidence
+of success.
+
+'Whereunto we have attained' implies that that is only a partial
+possession of a far greater whole. The road is not finished at the stage
+where we stand. And, on the other hand, 'by the same let us walk,'
+implies that beyond the present point the road runs on equally patent
+and pervious to our feet. These two convictions, of my own imperfection
+and of the certainty of my reaching the great perfectness beyond, are
+indispensable to all Christian progress. As soon as a man begins to
+think that he has realised his ideal, Good-bye! to all advance. The
+artist, the student, the man of business, all must have gleaming before
+them an unattained object, if they are ever to be stirred to energy and
+to run with patience the race that is set before them.
+
+The more distinctly that a man is conscious of his own imperfection in
+the Christian life, the more he will be stung and stirred into
+earnestness and energy of effort, if only, side by side with the
+consciousness of imperfection, there springs triumphant the confidence
+of success. That will give strength to the feeble knees; that will lift
+a man buoyant over difficulties; that will fire desire; that will
+stimulate and solidify effort; that will make the long, monotonous
+stretches of the road easy, the rough places plain, the crooked things
+straight. Over all reluctant, repellent duties it will bear us, in all
+weariness it will re-invigorate us. We are saved by hope, and the more
+brightly there burns before us, not as a tremulous hope, but as a future
+certainty, the thought, 'I shall be like Him, for I shall see Him as He
+is,' the more shall I set my face to the loved goal and my feet to the
+dusty road, and 'press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling
+of God.' Christian progress comes out of the clash and collision of
+these two things, like that of flint and steel--the consciousness of
+imperfection and the confidence of success. And they who thus are driven
+by the one and drawn by the other, in all their consciousness of failure
+are yet blessed, and are crowned at last with that which they believed
+before it came.
+
+'Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house'--the prize won is heaven. But
+'blessed are they in whose hearts are the ways'--the prize desired and
+strained after is heaven upon earth. We may all live a life of continual
+advancement, each step leading upwards, for the road always climbs, to
+purer air, grander scenery, and a wider view. And yonder, progress will
+still be the law, for they who here have followed the Lamb, and sought
+to make Him their pattern and Commander, will there 'follow Him
+whithersoever He goeth.' If here we walk according to that 'whereunto we
+have attained,' there He shall say, 'They will walk with Me in white,
+for they are worthy.'
+
+
+
+
+WARNINGS AND HOPES
+
+          'Brethren, be ye imitators together of me, and
+          mark them which so walk even as ye have us for an
+          ensample. For many walk, of whom I told you often,
+          and now tell you even weeping, that they are the
+          enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is
+          perdition, whose God is the belly, and whose glory
+          is in their shame, who mind earthly things. For
+          our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we
+          wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who
+          shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation,
+          that it may be conformed to the body of His glory,
+          according to the working whereby he is able even
+          to subject all things unto Himself.'--PHIL. iii.
+          17-21 (R.V.).
+
+
+There is a remarkable contrast in tone between the sad warnings which
+begin this section and the glowing hopes with which it closes, and that
+contrast is made the more striking when we notice that the Apostle binds
+the gloom of the one and the radiance of the other by 'For,' which makes
+the latter the cause of the former.
+
+The exhortation in which the Apostle begins by proposing himself as an
+example sounds strange on any lips, and, most of all, on his, but we
+have to note that the points in which he sets himself up as a pattern
+are obviously those on which he touched in the preceding outpouring of
+his heart, and which he has already commended to the Philippians in
+pleading with them to be 'thus minded.' What he desires them to copy is
+his self-distrust, his willingness to sacrifice all things to win
+Christ, his clear sense of his own shortcomings, and his eager straining
+towards as yet unreached perfection. His humility is not disproved by
+such words, but what is remarkable in them is the clear consciousness of
+the main direction and set of his life. We may well hesitate to take
+them for ours, but every Christian man and woman ought to be able to say
+this much. If we cannot in some degree declare that we are so walking,
+we have need to look to our foundations. Such words are really in sharp
+contrast to those in which Jesus is held forth as an example. Notice,
+too, how quickly he passes to associate others with him, and to merge
+the 'Me' into 'Us.' We need not ask who his companions were, since
+Timothy is associated with him at the beginning of the letter.
+
+The exhortation is enforced by pointing to others who had gone far
+astray, and of whom he had warned the Philippians often, possibly by
+letter. Who these unworthy disciples were remains obscure. They were
+clearly not the Judaisers branded in verse 2, who were teachers seeking
+to draw away the Philippians, while these others seem to have been
+'enemies of the Cross of Christ,' not by open hostility nor by
+theoretical errors, but by practical worldliness, and that in these
+ways; they make sense their God, they are proud of what is really their
+disgrace, namely, they are shaking off the restraints of morality; and,
+most black though it may seem least so, they 'mind earthly things' on
+which thought, feeling, and interest are concentrated. Let us lay to
+heart the lesson that such direction of the current of a life to the
+things of earth makes men 'enemies of the Cross of Christ,' whatever
+their professions, and will surely make their end perdition, whatever
+their apparent prosperity. Paul's life seemed loss and was gain; these
+men's lives seemed gain and was loss.
+
+From this dark picture charged with gloom, and in one corner showing
+white waves breaking far out against an inky sky, and a vessel with torn
+sails driving on the rocks, the Apostle turns with relief to the
+brighter words in which he sets forth the true affinities and hopes of a
+Christian. They all stand or fall with the belief in the Resurrection of
+Christ and His present life in His glorified corporeal manhood.
+
+I. Our true metropolis.
+
+The Revised Version puts in the margin as an alternative rendering for
+'citizenship' commonwealth, and there appears to be a renewed allusion
+here to the fact already noted that Philippi was a 'colony,' and that
+its inhabitants were Roman citizens. Paul uses a very emphatic word for
+'is' here which it is difficult to reproduce in English, but which
+suggests essential reality.
+
+The reason why that heavenly citizenship is ours in no mere play of the
+imagination but in most solid substance, is because He is there for whom
+we look. Where Christ is, is our Mother-country, our Fatherland,
+according to His own promise, 'I go to prepare a place for you.' His
+being there draws our thoughts and sets our affections on Heaven.
+
+II. The colonists looking for the King.
+
+The Emperors sometimes made a tour of the provinces. Paul here thinks of
+Christians as waiting for their Emperor to come across the seas to this
+outlying corner of His dominions. The whole grand name is given here,
+all the royal titles to express solemnity and dignity, and the character
+in which we look for Him is that of Saviour. We still need salvation,
+and though in one sense it is past, in another it will not be ours until
+He comes the second time without sin unto salvation. The eagerness of
+the waiting which should characterise the expectant citizens is
+wonderfully described by the Apostle's expression for it, which
+literally means to look away out--with emphasis on both
+prepositions--like a sentry on the walls of a besieged city whose eyes
+are ever fixed on the pass amongst the hills through which the relieving
+forces are to come.
+
+It may be said that Paul is here expressing an expectation which was
+disappointed. No doubt the early Church looked for the speedy return of
+our Lord and were mistaken. We are distinctly told that in that point
+there was no revelation of the future, and no doubt they, like the
+prophets of old, 'searched what manner of time the spirit of Christ
+which was in them did signify.' In this very letter Paul speaks of death
+as very probable for himself, so that he had precisely the same double
+attitude which has been the Church's ever since, in that he looked for
+Christ's coming as possible in his own time, and yet anticipated the
+other alternative. It is difficult, no doubt, to cherish the vivid
+anticipation of any future event, and not to have any certainty as to
+its date. But if we are sure that a given event will come sometime and
+do not know when it may come, surely the wise man is he who thinks to
+himself it may come any time, and not he who treats it as if it would
+come at no time. The two possible alternatives which Paul had before him
+have in common the same certainty as to the fact and uncertainty as to
+the date, and Paul had them both before his mind with the same vivid
+anticipation.
+
+The practical effect of this hope of the returning Lord on our 'walk'
+will be all to bring it nearer Paul's. It will not suffer us to make
+sense our God, nor to fix our affections on things above; it will
+stimulate all energies in pressing towards the goal, and will turn away
+our eyes from the trivialities and transiencies that press upon us, away
+out toward the distance where 'far off His coming shone.'
+
+III. The Christian sharing in Christ's glory.
+
+The same precise distinction between 'fashion' and 'form,' which we have
+had occasion to notice in Chapter II., recurs here. The 'fashion' of
+the body of our humiliation is external and transient; the 'form' of the
+body of His glory to which we are to be assimilated consists of
+essential characteristics or properties, and may be regarded as being
+almost synonymous with 'Nature.' Observing the distinction which the
+Apostle draws by the use of these two words, and remembering their force
+in the former instance of their occurrence, we shall not fail to give
+force to the representation that in the Resurrection the fleeting
+fashion of the bodily frame will be altered, and the glorified bodies of
+the saints made participant of the essential qualities of His.
+
+We further note that there is no trace of false asceticism or of gnostic
+contempt for the body in its designation as 'of our humiliation.' Its
+weaknesses, its limitations, its necessities, its corruption and its
+death, sufficiently manifest our lowliness, while, on the other hand,
+the body in which Christ's glory is manifested, and which is the
+instrument for His glory, is presented in fullest contrast to it.
+
+The great truth of Christ's continual glorified manhood is the first
+which we draw from these words. The story of our Lord's Resurrection
+suggests indeed that He brought the same body from the tomb as loving
+hands had laid there. The invitation to Thomas to thrust his hands into
+the prints of the nails, the similar invitation to the assembled
+disciples, and His partaking of food in their presence, seemed to forbid
+the idea of His rising changed. Nor can we suppose that the body of His
+glory would be congruous with His presence on earth. But we have to
+think of His ascension as gradual, and of Himself as 'changed by still
+degrees' as He ascended, and so as returned to where the 'glory which He
+had with the Father before the world was,' as the Shechinah cloud
+received Him out of the sight of the gazers below. If this be the true
+reading of His last moments on earth, He united in His own experience
+both the ways of leaving it which His followers experience--the way of
+sleep which is death, and the way of 'being changed.'
+
+But at whatever point the change came, He now wears, and for ever will
+wear, the body of a man. That is the dominant fact on which is built the
+Christian belief in a future life, and which gives to that belief all
+its solidity and force, and separates it from vague dreams of
+immortality which are but a wish tremblingly turned into a hope, or a
+dread shudderingly turned into an expectation. The man Christ Jesus is
+the pattern and realised ideal of human life on earth, the revelation of
+the divine life through a human life, and in His glorified humanity is
+no less the pattern and realised ideal of what human nature may become.
+The present state of the departed is incomplete in that they have not a
+body by which they can act on, and be acted on by, an external universe.
+We cannot indeed suppose them lapped in age-long unconsciousness, and it
+may be that the 'dead in Christ' are through Him brought into some
+knowledge of externals, but for the full-summed perfection of their
+being, the souls under the altar have to wait for the resurrection of
+the body. If resurrection is needful for completion of manhood, then
+completed manhood must necessarily be set in a locality, and the
+glorified manhood of Jesus must also now be in a place. To think thus of
+it and of Him is not to vulgarise the Christian conception of Heaven,
+but to give it a definiteness and force which it sorely lacks in popular
+thinking. Nor is the continual manhood of our Lord less precious in its
+influence in helping our familiar approach to Him. It tells us that He
+is still and for ever the same as when on earth, glad to welcome all who
+came and to help and heal all who need Him. It is one of ourselves who
+'sitteth at the right hand of God.' His manhood brings Him memories
+which bind Him to us sorrowing and struggling, and His glory clothes Him
+with power to meet all our needs, to stanch all our wounds, to satisfy
+all our desires.
+
+Our text leads us to think of the wondrous transformation into Christ's
+likeness. We know not what are the differences between the body of our
+humiliation and the body of His glory, but we must not be led away by
+the word Resurrection to fall into the mistake of supposing that in
+death we 'sow that body which shall be.' Paul's great chapter in I.
+Corinthians should have destroyed that error for ever, and it is a
+singular instance of the persistency of the most unsupported mistakes
+that there are still thousands of people who in spite of all that they
+know of what befalls our mortal bodies, and of how their parts pass into
+other forms, still hold by that crude idea. We have no material by which
+to construct any, even the vaguest, outline of that body that shall be.
+We can only run out the contrasts as suggested by Paul in 1st
+Corinthians, and let the dazzling greatness of the positive thought
+which he gives in the text lift our expectations. Weakness will become
+power, corruption incorruption, liability to death immortality,
+dishonour glory, and the frame which belonged and corresponded to 'that
+which was natural,' shall be transformed into a body which is the organ
+of that which is spiritual. These things tell us little, but they may
+be all fused into the great light of likeness to the body of His glory;
+and though that tells us even less, it feeds hope more and satisfies our
+hearts even whilst it does not feed our curiosity. We may well be
+contented to acknowledge that 'it doth not yet appear what we shall be,'
+when we can go on to say, 'We know that when He shall appear we shall be
+like Him.' It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master.
+
+But we must not forget that the Apostle regards even this overwhelming
+change as but part of a mightier process, even the universal subjection
+of all things unto Christ Himself. The Emperor reduces the whole world
+to subjection, and the glorifying of the body as the climax of the
+universal subjugation represents it as the end of the process of
+assimilation begun in this mortal life. There is no possibility of a
+resurrection unto life unless that life has been begun before death.
+That ultimate glorious body is needed to bring men into correspondence
+with the external universe. As is the locality so is the body. Flesh and
+blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. This whole series of thoughts
+makes our glorious resurrection the result not of death, but of Christ's
+living power on His people. It is only in the measure in which He lives
+in us and we in Him, and are partaking by daily participation in the
+power of His Resurrection, that we shall be made subjects of the working
+whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself, and finally
+be conformed to the body of His glory.
+
+
+
+
+_EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+          PHILIPPIANS, COLOSSIANS, FIRST
+          AND SECOND THESSALONIANS
+          AND FIRST TIMOTHY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PHILIPPIANS
+
+A TENDER EXHORTATION (Phil. iv. 1)                                1
+
+NAMES IN THE BOOK OF LIFE (Phil. iv. 3)                          11
+
+REJOICE EVERMORE (Phil. iv. 4)                                   21
+
+HOW TO OBEY AN IMPOSSIBLE INJUNCTION (Phil. iv. 6)               31
+
+THE WARRIOR PEACE (Phil. iv. 7)                                  39
+
+THINK ON THESE THINGS (Phil. iv. 8)                              48
+
+HOW TO SAY 'THANK YOU' (Phil. iv. 10-14, R.V.)                   58
+
+GIFTS GIVEN, SEED SOWN (Phil. iv. 15-19, R.V.)                   66
+
+FAREWELL WORDS (Phil. iv. 20-23, R.V.)                           74
+
+
+COLOSSIANS
+
+SAINTS, BELIEVERS, BRETHREN (Col. i. 2)                          82
+
+THE GOSPEL-HOPE (Col. i. 5)                                      92
+
+'ALL POWER' (Col. i. 11, R.V.)                                   99
+
+THANKFUL FOR INHERITANCE (Col. i. 12, R.V.)                     106
+
+CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR (Col. i. 29)                                114
+
+CHRISTIAN PROGRESS (Col. ii. 6, 7, R.V.)                        124
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST (Col. iii. 1-15)                              127
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST (Col. iii. 1, 2)                              134
+
+WITHOUT AND WITHIN (Col. iv. 5)                                 143
+
+
+I. THESSALONIANS
+
+FAITH, LOVE, HOPE, AND THEIR FRUITS (1 Thess. i. 3)             155
+
+GOD'S TRUMPET (1 Thess. i. 8)                                   164
+
+WALKING WORTHILY (1 Thess. ii. 12)                              170
+
+SMALL DUTIES AND THE GREAT HOPE (1 Thess. iv. 9-18; v. 1, 2)    183
+
+SLEEPING THROUGH JESUS (1 Thess. iv. 14)                        190
+
+THE WORK AND ARMOUR OF THE CHILDREN OF THE DAY (1 Thess. v. 8)  198
+
+WAKING AND SLEEPING (1 Thess. v. 10)                            210
+
+EDIFICATION (1 Thess. v. 11)                                    220
+
+CONTINUAL PRAYER AND ITS EFFECTS (1 Thess. v. 16-18)            229
+
+PAUL'S EARLIEST TEACHING (1 Thess. v. 27)                       237
+
+
+II. THESSALONIANS
+
+CHRIST GLORIFIED IN GLORIFIED MEN (2 Thess. i. 10)              248
+
+WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING (2 Thess. i. 11, 12)                     256
+
+EVERLASTING CONSOLATION AND GOOD HOPE (2 Thess. ii. 16, 17)     267
+
+THE HEART'S HOME AND GUIDE (2 Thess. iii. 5)                    277
+
+THE LORD OF PEACE AND THE PEACE OF THE LORD (2 Thess. iii. 16)  288
+
+
+I. TIMOTHY
+
+THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT (1 Tim. i. 5)                        298
+
+'THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF THE HAPPY GOD' (1 Tim. i. 11)       308
+
+THE GOSPEL IN SMALL (1 Tim. i. 15)                              316
+
+THE CHIEF OF SINNERS (1 Tim. i. 15)                             326
+
+A TEST CASE (1 Tim. i. 16)                                      335
+
+THE GLORY OF THE KING (1 Tim. i. 17)                            344
+
+WHERE AND HOW TO PRAY (1 Tim. ii. 8)                            353
+
+SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS (1 Tim. iv. 7)                              361
+
+THE ONE WITNESS, THE MANY CONFESSORS (1 Tim. vi. 12-14)         370
+
+THE CONDUCT THAT SECURES THE REAL LIFE (1 Tim. vi. 19)          379
+
+
+
+
+A TENDER EXHORTATION
+
+          'Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed
+          for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord,
+          my dearly beloved.'--PHIL. iv. 1.
+
+
+The words I have chosen set forth very simply and beautifully the bond
+which knit Paul and these Philippian Christians together, and the chief
+desire which his Apostolic love had for them. I venture to apply them to
+ourselves, and I speak now especially to the members of my own church
+and congregation.
+
+I. Let us note, then, first, the personal bond which gives force to the
+teacher's words.
+
+That Church at Philippi was, if Paul had any favourites amongst his
+children, his favourite child. The circumstances of its formation may
+have had something to do with that. It was planted by himself; it was
+the first Church in Europe; perhaps the Philippian gaoler and Lydia were
+amongst the 'beloved' and 'longed for' ones who were 'his joy and
+crown.' But be that as it may, all through the letter we can feel the
+throbbing of a very loving heart, and the tenderness of a strong man,
+which is the most tender of all things.
+
+Note how he addresses them. There is no assumption of Apostolic
+authority, but he puts himself on their level, and speaks to them as
+brethren. Then he lets his heart out, and tells them how they lived in
+his love, and how, of course, when he was parted from them, he had
+desired to be with them. And then he touches a deeper and a sacreder
+chord when he contemplates the results of the relation between them, if
+he on his side, and they on theirs, were faithful to it. It says much
+for the teacher, and for the taught, if he can truly say 'My joy,'--'I
+have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in the truth.'
+And not only were they his joy, but they who, by their faithfulness,
+have become his joy, will on that one day in the far future, be his
+'crown.' That metaphor carries on the thoughts to the great Judgment
+Day, and introduces a solemn element, which is as truly present, dear
+friends, in our relation to one another, little of an Apostle as I am,
+as it was in the relation between Paul and the Philippians. They who
+'turn many to righteousness shine as the brightness of the firmament,'
+because those whom they have turned, 'shine as lights in the world.' And
+at that last august and awful tribunal, where you will have to give an
+account for your listening, as I for my speaking, the crown of victory
+laid on the locks of a faithful teacher is the characters of those whom
+he has taught. 'Who is my joy and hope, and crown of rejoicing?' Are not
+even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming?
+
+Now, notice, further, how such mutual affection is needed to give force
+to the teacher's exhortation. Preaching from unloved lips never does any
+good. It irritates, or leaves untouched. Affection melts and opens the
+heart to the entrance of the word. And preaching from unloving lips does
+very little good either. So speaking, I condemn myself. There are men
+who handle God's great, throbbing message of love so coldly as that they
+ice even the Gospel. There are men who have a strange gift of taking all
+the sap and the fervour out of the word that they proclaim, making the
+very grapes of Eshcol into dried raisins. And I feel for myself that my
+ministry may well have failed in this respect. For who is there that can
+modulate his voice so as to reproduce the music of that great message,
+or who can soften and open his heart so as that it shall be a worthy
+vehicle of the infinite love of God?
+
+But, dear brethren, though conscious of many failures in this respect, I
+yet thank God that here, at the end of nearly forty years of a ministry,
+I can look you in the face and believe that your look responds to mine,
+and that I can take these words as the feathers for my arrow, as that
+which will make words otherwise weak go further, and may help to write
+the precepts upon hearts, and to bring them to bear in practice--'My
+beloved and longed for'; 'my joy and my crown.'
+
+Such feelings do not need to be always spoken. There is very little
+chance of us Northerners erring on the side of letting our hearts speak
+too fully and frequently. Perhaps we should be all the better if we were
+a little less reticent, but at any rate you and I can surely trust each
+other after so many years, and now and then, as to-day, let our hearts
+speak.
+
+II. Secondly, notice the all-sufficient precept which such love gives.
+'So stand fast in the Lord.'
+
+That is a very favourite figure of Paul's, as those of you who have any
+reasonable degree of familiarity with his letters will know. Here it
+carries with it, as it generally does, the idea of resistance against
+antagonistic force. But the main thought of it is that of continuous
+steadfastness in our union with Jesus Christ. It applies, of course, to
+the intellect, but not mainly, and certainly not exclusively to
+intellectual adherence to the truths spoken in the Gospel. It covers
+the whole ground of the whole man; will, conscience, heart, practical
+effort, as well as understanding. And it is really Paul's version, with
+a characteristic dash of pugnacity in it, of our Lord's yet deeper and
+calmer words, 'Abide in Me and I in you.' It is the same exhortation as
+Barnabas gave to the infantile church at Antioch, when, to these men
+just rescued from heathenism and profoundly ignorant of much which we
+suppose it absolutely necessary that Christians should know, he had only
+one thing to say, exhorting them all, that 'with purpose of heart they
+should cleave to the Lord.'
+
+Steadfast continuance of personal union with Jesus Christ, extending
+through all the faculties of our nature, and into every corner of our
+lives, is the kernel of this great exhortation. And he who fulfils it
+has little left unfulfilled. Of course, as I said, there is a very
+strong suggestion that such 'standing' is by no means an easy thing, or
+accomplished without much antagonism; and it may help us if, just for a
+moment, we run over the various forms of resistance which they have to
+overcome who stand fast. Nothing stands where it is without effort. That
+is true in the moral world, although in the physical world the law of
+motion is that nothing moves without force being applied to it.
+
+What are the things that would shake our steadfastness, and sweep us
+away? Well, there are, first, the tiny, continuously acting, and
+therefore all but omnipotent forces of daily life--duties, occupations,
+distractions of various kinds--which tend to move us imperceptibly away,
+as by the slow sliding of a glacier, from the hope of the Gospel. There
+is nothing so strong as a gentle pressure, equably and unintermittently
+applied. It is far mightier than thrusts and hammerings and sudden
+assaults. I stood some time ago looking at the Sphinx. The hard
+stone--so hard that it turns the edge of a sculptor's chisel--has been
+worn away, and the solemn features all but obliterated. What by? The
+continual attrition of multitudinous grains of sand from the desert. The
+little things that are always at work upon us are the things that have
+most power to sweep us away from our steadfastness in Jesus Christ.
+
+Then there are, besides, the sudden assaults of strong temptations, of
+sense and flesh, or of a more subtle and refined character. If a man is
+standing loosely, in some careless _dégagé_ attitude, and a sudden
+impact comes upon him, over he goes. The boat upon a mountain-locked
+lake encounters a sudden gust when opposite the opening of a glen, and
+unless there be a very strong hand and a watchful eye at the helm, is
+sure to be upset. Upon us there come, in addition to that silent
+continuity of imperceptible but most real pressure, sudden gusts of
+temptation which are sure to throw us over, unless we are well and
+always on our guard against them.
+
+In addition to all these, there are ups and downs of our own nature, the
+fluctuations which are sure to occur in any human heart, when faith
+seems to ebb and falter, and love to die down almost into cold ashes.
+But, dear brethren, whilst we shall always be liable to these
+fluctuations of feeling, it is possible for us to have, deep down below
+these, a central core of our personality, in which unchanging continuity
+may abide. The depths of the ocean know nothing of the tides on the
+surface that are due to the mutable moon. We can have in our inmost
+hearts steadfastness, immovableness, even though the surface may be
+ruffled. Make your spirits like one of those great cathedrals whose
+thick walls keep out the noises of the world, and in whose still
+equability there is neither excessive heat nor excessive cold, but an
+approximately uniform temperature, at midsummer and at midwinter. 'Stand
+fast in the Lord.'
+
+Now, my text not only gives an exhortation, but, in the very act of
+giving it, suggests how it is to be fulfilled. For that phrase 'in the
+Lord' not only indicates _where_ we are to stand, but also _how_. That
+is to say--it is only in proportion as we keep ourselves in union with
+Christ, in heart and mind, and will, and work, that we shall stand
+steadfast. The lightest substances may be made stable, if they are glued
+on to something stable. You can mortice a bit of thin stone into the
+living rock, and then it will stand 'four-square to every wind that
+blows.' So it is only on condition of our keeping ourselves in Jesus
+Christ, that we are able to keep ourselves steadfast, and to present a
+front of resistance that does not yield one foot, either to
+imperceptible continuous pressure, to sudden assaults, or to the
+fluctuations of our own changeful dispositions and tempers. The ground
+on which a man stands has a great deal to do with the firmness of his
+footing. You cannot stand fast upon a bed of slime, or upon a sand-bank
+which is being undermined by the tides. And if we, changeful creatures,
+are to be steadfast in any region, our surest way of being so is to knit
+ourselves to Him 'who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,'
+and from whose immortality will flow some copy and reflection of itself
+into our else changeful natures.
+
+Still further, in regard to this commandment, I would pray you to notice
+that very eloquent little word which stands at the beginning of it.
+'_So_ stand fast in the Lord.' 'So.' How? That throws us back to what
+the Apostle has been saying in the previous context. And what has he
+been saying there? The keynote of the previous chapter is progress--'I
+follow after; I press toward the mark, forgetting the things that are
+behind, and reaching forth to the things that are before.' To these
+exhortations to progress he appends this remarkable exhortation:
+'So'--that is, by progress--'stand fast in the Lord,' which being turned
+into other words is just this--if you stand still, you will not stand
+fast. There can be no steadfastness without advancement. If a man is not
+going forward, he is going backward. The only way to ensure stability is
+'pressing toward the mark.' Why, a child's top only stands straight up
+as long as it is revolving. If a man on a bicycle stops, he tumbles. And
+so, in the depths of a Christian life, as in all science, and all walks
+of human activity, the condition of steadfastness is advance. Therefore,
+dear brethren, let no man deceive himself with the notion that he can
+keep at the same point of religious experience and of Christian
+character. You are either more of a Christian, or less of one, than you
+were at a past time. '_So_, stand fast,' and remember that to stand
+_still_ is _not_ to stand _fast_.
+
+Now, whilst all these things that I have been trying to say have
+reference to Christian people at all stages of their spiritual history,
+they have a very especial reference to those in the earlier part of
+Christian life.
+
+And I want to say to those who have only just begun to run the Christian
+life, very lovingly and very earnestly, that this is a text for them.
+For, alas! there is nothing more frequent than that, after the first
+dawnings of a Christian life in a heart, there should come a period of
+overclouding; or that, as John Bunyan has taught us, when Christian has
+gone through the wicket-gate, he should fall very soon into the Slough
+of Despond. One looks round, and sees how many professing Christians
+there are who, perhaps, were nearer Jesus Christ on the day of their
+conversion than they have ever been since, and how many cases of
+arrested development there are amongst professing and real Christians;
+so that when for the 'time they ought to be teachers, they have need' to
+be taught again; and when, after the number of years that have passed,
+they ought to be full-grown men, they are but babes yet. And so I say to
+you, dear young friends, stand fast. Do not let the world attract you
+again. Keep near to Jesus. 'Hold fast that thou hast; let no man take
+thy crown.'
+
+III. Lastly, we have here a great motive which encourages obedience to
+this command.
+
+People generally pass over that 'Therefore' which begins my text, but it
+is full of significance and of importance. It links the precept which we
+have been considering with the immediately preceding hope which the
+Apostle has so triumphantly proclaimed, when he says that 'we look for
+the Saviour from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change the
+body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto the body of
+His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue
+all things to Himself.'
+
+So there rises before us that twofold great hope; that the Master
+Himself is coming to the succour of His servants, and that when He
+comes, He will perfect the incomplete work which has been begun in them
+by their faith and steadfastness, and will change their whole humanity
+so that it shall become participant of, and conformed to, the glory of
+His own triumphant manhood.
+
+That hope is presented by the Apostle as having its natural sequel in
+the 'steadfastness' of my text, and that 'steadfastness' is regarded by
+the Apostle as drawing its most animating motives from the contemplation
+of that great hope. Blessed be God! The effort of the Christian life is
+not one which is extorted by fear, or by the cold sense of duty. There
+are no taskmasters with whips to stand over the heart that responds to
+Christ and to His love. But hope and joy, as well as love, are the
+animating motives which make sacrifices easy, soften the yoke that is
+laid upon our shoulders, and turn labour into joy and delight.
+
+So, dear brethren, we have to set before us this great hope, that Jesus
+Christ is coming, and that, therefore, our labour on ourselves is sure
+not to be in vain. Work that is done hopelessly is not done long, and
+there is no heart in it whilst it is being done. But if we know that
+Christ will appear, 'and that when He who is our life shall appear, we
+also shall appear with Him in glory,' then we may go to work in keeping
+ourselves steadfast in Him, with cheery hearts, and with full assurance
+that what we have been doing will have a great result.
+
+You have read, no doubt, about some little force in North-West India,
+hemmed in by enemies. They may well hold out resolutely and hopefully
+when they know that three relieving armies are converging upon their
+stronghold. And we, too, know that our Emperor is coming to raise the
+siege. We may well stand fast with such a prospect. We may well work at
+our own sanctifying when we know that our Lord Himself--like some
+master-sculptor who comes to his pupil's imperfectly blocked-out work,
+and takes his chisel in his hand, and with a touch or two completes
+it--will come and finish what we, by His grace, imperfectly began. 'So
+stand fast in the Lord,' because you have hope that the Lord is about to
+come, and that when He comes you will be like Him.
+
+One last word. That steadfastness is the condition without which we have
+no right to entertain that hope.
+
+If we keep ourselves near Christ, and if by keeping ourselves near Him,
+we are becoming day by day liker Him, then we may have calm confidence
+that He will perfect that which concerns us. But I, for my part, can
+find nothing, either in Scripture or in the analogy of God's moral
+dealings with us in the world, to warrant the holding out of the
+expectation to a man that, if he has kept himself apart from Jesus
+Christ and his quickening and cleansing power all his life long, Jesus
+Christ will take him in hand after he dies, and change him into His
+likeness. Don't you risk it! Begin by 'standing fast in the Lord.' He
+will do the rest then, not else. The cloth must be dipped into the
+dyer's vat, and lie there, if it is to be tinged with the colour. The
+sensitive plate must be patiently kept in position for many hours, if
+invisible stars are to photograph themselves upon it. The vase must be
+held with a steady hand beneath the fountain, if it is to be filled.
+Keep yourselves in Jesus Christ. Then here you will begin to be changed
+into the same image, and when He comes He will come as your Saviour, and
+complete your uncompleted work, and make you altogether like Himself.
+
+'Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and
+crown, so stand fast in the Lord, dearly beloved.'
+
+
+
+
+NAMES IN THE BOOK OF LIFE
+
+          'Other my fellow-labourers whose names are in the
+          book of life.'--PHIL. iv. 3.
+
+
+Paul was as gentle as he was strong. Winsome courtesy and delicate
+considerateness lay in his character, in beautiful union with fiery
+impetuosity and undaunted tenacity of conviction. We have here a
+remarkable instance of his quick apprehension of the possible effects of
+his words, and of his nervous anxiety not to wound even unreasonable
+susceptibilities.
+
+He had had occasion to mention three of his fellow-workers, and he
+wishes to associate with them others whom he does not purpose to name.
+Lest any of these should be offended by the omission, he soothes them
+with this graceful, half-apologetic reminder that their names are
+inscribed on a better page than his. It is as if he had said, 'Do not
+mind though I do not mention you individually. You can well afford to be
+anonymous in my letter since your names are inscribed in the Book of
+Life.'
+
+_There_ is a consolation for obscure good people, who need not expect to
+live except in two or three loving hearts; and whose names will only be
+preserved on mouldering tombstones that will convey no idea to the
+reader. We may well dispense with other commemoration if we have this.
+
+Now, this figure of the Book of Life appears in Scripture at intervals,
+almost from the beginning to the very end. The first instance of its
+occurrence is in that self-sacrificing, intercessory prayer of Moses,
+when he expressed his willingness to be 'blotted out of Thy book' as an
+atonement for the sin of Israel. Its last appearance is when the
+Apocalyptic Seer is told that none enter into the City of God come down
+from Heaven 'save those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of
+Life.' Of course in plain English the expression is just equivalent to
+being a real disciple of Jesus Christ. But then it presents that general
+notion under a metaphor which, in its various aspects, has a very
+distinct and stringent bearing upon our duties as well as upon our
+blessings and our hopes. I, therefore, wish to work out, as well as I
+can, the various thoughts suggested by this emblem.
+
+I. The first of them is Citizenship.
+
+The figure is, of course, originally drawn from the registers of the
+tribes of Israel. In that use, though not without a glance at some
+higher meaning, it appears in the Old Testament, where we read of 'those
+who are written among them living in Jerusalem'; or 'are written in the
+writing of the house of Israel.' The suggestion of being inscribed on
+the burgess-rolls of a city is the first idea connected with the word.
+In the New Testament, for instance, we find in the great passage in the
+Epistle to the Hebrews the two notions of the city and the census
+brought into immediate connection, where the writer says, 'Ye are come
+unto the city of the living God . . . and to the church of the first-born
+whose names are written in heaven.' In this very letter we have, only a
+verse or two before my text, the same idea of citizenship cropping up.
+'Our _citizenship_ is in Heaven, from whence also we look for the
+Saviour.' That, no doubt, helped to suggest to the Apostle the words of
+my text. And there is another verse in the same letter where the same
+idea comes out. 'Only act the citizen as becometh the Gospel of Christ.'
+Now, you will remember, possibly, that Philippi was, as the Acts of the
+Apostles tells us, a Roman colony. And the reference is exquisitely
+close-fitting to the circumstances of the people of that city. For a
+Roman colony was a bit of Rome in another land, and the citizens of
+Philippi had their names inscribed on the registers of the tribes of
+Rome. The writer himself was another illustration of the same thing, of
+living in a community to which he did not belong and of belonging to a
+community in which he did not live. For Paul was a native of Tarsus; and
+Paul, the native of the Asiatic Tarsus, was a Roman.
+
+So, then, the first thought that comes out of this great metaphor is
+that all of us, if we are Christian people, belong to another polity,
+another order of things than that in which our outward lives are spent.
+And the plain, practical conclusion that comes from it is, cultivate the
+sense of belonging to another order. Just as it swelled the heart of a
+Macedonian Philippian with pride, when he thought that he did not belong
+to the semi-barbarous people round about him, but that his name was
+written in the books that lay in the Capitol of Rome, so should we
+cultivate that sense of belonging to another order. It will make our
+work here none the worse, but it will fill our lives with the sense of
+nobler affinities, and point our efforts to grander work than any that
+belongs to 'the things that are seen and temporal.' Just as the little
+groups of Englishmen in treaty-ports own no allegiance to the laws of
+the country in which they live, but are governed by English statutes, so
+we have to take our orders from headquarters to which we have to
+report. Men in our colonies get their instructions from Downing Street.
+The officials there, appointed by the Home Government, think more of
+what they will say about them at Westminster than of what they say about
+them at Melbourne. So we are citizens of another country, and have to
+obey the laws of our own kingdom, and not those of the soil on which we
+dwell. Never mind about the opinions of men, the babblements of the
+people in the land you live in. To us, the main thing is that we be
+acceptable, well-pleasing unto Him. Are you solitary? Cultivate the
+sense of, in your solitude, being a member of a great community that
+stretches through all the ages, and binds into one the inhabitants of
+eternity and of time.
+
+Remember that this citizenship in the heavens is the highest honour that
+can be conferred upon a man. The patricians of Venice used to have their
+names inscribed upon what was called the 'golden book' that was kept in
+the Doge's Palace. If our names are written in the book of gold in the
+heavens, then we have higher dignities than any that belong to the
+fleeting chronicles of this passing, vain world. So we can accept with
+equanimity evil report or good report, and can acquiesce in a wholesome
+obscurity, and be careless though our names appear on no human records,
+and fill no trumpet of fame blown by earthly cheeks. Intellectual power,
+wealth, gratified ambition, and all the other things that men set before
+them, are small indeed compared with the honour, with the blessedness,
+with the repose and satisfaction that attend the conscious possession of
+citizenship in the heavens. Let us lay to heart the great words of the
+Master which put a cooling hand on all the feverish ambitions of earth.
+'In this rejoice, not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather
+rejoice that your names are written in heaven.'
+
+II. Then the second idea suggested by these words is the possession of
+the life which is life indeed.
+
+The 'Book of Life,' it is called in the New Testament. Its designation
+in the Old might as well be translated 'the book of living' as 'the book
+of life.' It is a register of the men who are truly alive.
+
+Now, that is but an imaginative way of putting the commonplace of the
+New Testament, that anything which is worth calling life comes to us,
+not by creation or physical generation, but by being born again through
+faith in Jesus Christ, and by receiving into our else dead spirits the
+life which He bestows upon all them that trust Him.
+
+In the New Testament 'life' is far more than 'being'; far more than
+physical existence; removed by a whole world from these lower
+conceptions, and finding its complete explanation only in the fact that
+the soul which is knit to God by conscious surrender, love, aspiration,
+and obedience, is the only soul that really lives. All else is
+death--death! He 'that liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth.' The
+ghastly imagination of one of our poets, of the dead man standing on the
+deck pulling at the ropes by the side of the living, is true in a very
+deep sense. In spite of all the feverish activities, the manifold
+vitalities of practical and intellectual life in the world, the deepest,
+truest, life of every man who is parted from God by alienation of will,
+by indifference, and neglect of love, lies sheeted and sepulchred in the
+depths of his own heart. Brethren, there is no life worth calling life,
+none to which that august name can without degradation be applied,
+except the complete life of body, soul, and spirit, in lowly obedience
+to God in Christ. The deepest meaning of the work of the Saviour is that
+He comes into a dead world, and breathes into the bones--very many and
+very dry--the breath of His own life. Christ has died for us; Christ
+will live in us if we will; and, unless He does, we are twice dead.
+
+Do not put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It is
+a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which
+concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest,
+best, and noblest life that is possible for him, who is united to Jesus
+Christ, and drawing from Christ his own life. 'He that hath the Son hath
+life; he that hath not the Son hath not life.' Either my name and yours
+are written in the Book of Life, or they are written in the register of
+a cemetery. We have to make our choice which.
+
+III. Another idea suggested by this emblem is experience of divine
+individualising knowledge and care.
+
+In the Old Testament the book is called 'Thy book,' in the New it is
+called 'the Lamb's book.' That is of a piece with the whole relation of
+the New to the Old, and of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word and
+Manifestor of God, to the Jehovah revealed in former ages. For,
+unconditionally, and without thought of irreverence or idolatry, the New
+Testament lifts over and confers upon Jesus Christ the attributes which
+the Old jealously preserved as belonging only to Jehovah. And thus
+Christ the Manifestor of God, and the Mediator to us of all divine
+powers and blessings, takes the Book and makes the entries in it. Each
+man of us, as in your ledgers, has a page to himself. His account is
+opened, and is not confused with other entries. There is
+individualising love and care, and as the basis of both, individualising
+knowledge. My name, the expression of my individual being, stands there.
+Christ does not deal with me as one of a crowd, nor fling out blessings
+broadcast, that I may grasp them in the midst of a multitude, if I
+choose to put out a hand, but He deals with each of us singly, as if
+there were not any beings in the world but He and I, our two selves, all
+alone.
+
+It is hard to realise the essentially individualising and isolating
+character of our relation to Jesus Christ. But we shall never come to
+the heart of the blessedness and the power of His Gospel unless we
+translate all 'us'-es and 'every ones' and 'worlds' in Scripture into
+'I' and 'me,' and can say not only He gives Himself to be 'the
+propitiation for the sins of the whole world,' but 'He loved _me_ and
+gave Himself for _me_.' The same individualising love which is
+manifested in that mighty universal Atonement, if we rightly understand
+it, is manifested in all His dealings with us. One by one we come under
+His notice; the Shepherd tells His sheep singly as they pass out through
+the gate or into the fold. He knows them all by name. 'I have called
+thee by thy name; thou art Mine.'
+
+Lift up your eyes and behold who made all these; the countless host of
+the nightly stars. What are nebulæ to our eyes are blazing suns to His.
+'He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all _by name_ by
+the greatness of His power, for that He is strong in might not one
+faileth.' So we may nestle in the protection of His hand, sure of a
+separate place in His knowledge and His heart.
+
+Deliverance and security are the results of that individualising care.
+In one of the Old Testament instances of the use of this metaphor, we
+read that in the great day of calamity and sorrow 'Thy people shall be
+delivered, even every one that is written in Thy Book.' So we need not
+dread anything if our names are there. The sleepless King will read the
+Book, and will never forget, nor forget to help and succour His poor
+servants.
+
+But there are two other variations of this thought in the Old Testament
+even more tenderly suggestive of that individualising care and strong
+sufficient love than the emblem of my text. We read that when, in the
+exercise of his official functions, the high priest passed into the
+Tabernacle he wore, upon his _breast_, near the seat of personality, and
+the home of love--the names of the tribes graven, and that the same
+names were written on his shoulders, as if guiding the exercise of his
+power. So we may think of ourselves as lying near the beatings of His
+heart, and as individually the objects of the work of His almighty arm.
+Nor is this all. For there is yet another, and still tenderer,
+application of the figure, when we read of the Divine voice as saying to
+Israel, 'I have graven thee on the palms of My hands.' The name of each
+who loves and trusts and serves is written there; printed deep in the
+flesh of the Sovereign Christ. We bear in our bodies the marks, the
+_stigmata_ that tell whose slaves we are--'the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
+And He bears in His body the marks that tell who His servants are.
+
+IV. Lastly, there is suggested by this text the idea of future entrance
+into the land of the living.
+
+The metaphor occurs three times in the final book of Scripture, the book
+which deals with the future and with the last things. And it occurs in
+all these instances in very remarkable connection. First we read, in
+the highly imaginative picture of the final judgment, that when the
+thrones are set two books are opened, one the Book of Life, the other
+the book in which are written the deeds of men, and that by these two
+books men are judged. There is a judgment by conduct. There is also a
+judgment by the Book of Life. That is to say, the question at last comes
+to be, 'Is this man's name written in that book?' Is he a citizen of the
+kingdom, and therefore capable of entering into it? Has he the life from
+Christ in his heart? Or, in other words, the question is, first, has the
+man who stands at the bar faith in Jesus Christ; and, second, has he
+proved that his faith is genuine and real by the course of his earthly
+conduct? These are the books from which the judgment is made.
+
+Further, we read, in that blessed vision which stands at the far-off end
+of all the knowledge of the future which is given to humanity, the
+vision of the City of God 'that came down from heaven as a bride adorned
+for her husband,' that only they enter in there who are 'written in the
+Lamb's Book of Life.' Only citizens are capable of entrance into the
+city. Aliens are necessarily shut out. The Lord, when He writeth up His
+people, shall count that this man was born there, though he never trod
+its streets while on earth, and, therefore, can enter into his native
+home.
+
+Further, in one of the letters to the seven churches our Lord gives as a
+promise to him that overcometh, 'I will not blot his name out of the
+Book of Life, but I will confess his name.'
+
+What need we care what other people may think about us, or whether the
+'hollow wraith of dying fame' that comes like a nimbus round some men
+may fade wholly or no, so long as we may be sure of acknowledgment and
+praise from Him from whom acknowledgment and praise are precious indeed.
+
+I have but one or two more words to add. Remember that Paul had no
+hesitation in taking upon himself to declare that the names of these
+anonymous saints in Philippi were written in the Book of Life. What
+business had he to do that? Had he looked over the pages, and marked the
+entries? He had simply the right of estimating their state by their
+conduct. He saw their works; he knew that these works were the fruit of
+their faith; and he knew that, therefore, their faith had united them to
+Jesus Christ. So, Christian men and women, two things: show your faith
+by your works, and make it impossible for anybody that looks at you to
+doubt what King you serve, and to what city you belong. Again, do not
+ask, 'Is my name there?' Ask, 'Have I faith, and does my faith work the
+works that belong to the Kingdom of Heaven?'
+
+Remember that names can be blotted out of the book. The metaphor has
+often been pressed into the service of a doctrine of unconditional and
+irreversible predestination. But rightly looked at, it points in the
+opposite direction. Remember Moses's agonised cry, 'Blot me out of Thy
+book'; and the Divine answer, 'Him that sinneth against Me, his name
+will I blot out of My book.' And remember that it is only to 'him that
+overcometh' that the promise is made, 'I will not blot him out.' We are
+made partakers of Christ if we 'hold fast the beginning of our
+confidence firm unto the end.'
+
+Remember that it depends upon ourselves whether our names are there or
+not. John Bunyan describes the armed man who came up to the table, where
+the man with the book and the inkhorn was seated, and said: 'Set down
+my name.' And you and I may do that. If we cast ourselves on Jesus
+Christ and yield our wills to be guided by Him, and give our lives for
+His service, then He will write our names in His book. If we trust Him
+we shall be citizens of the City of God; shall be filled with the life
+of Christ; shall be objects of an individualising love and care; shall
+be accepted in that Day; and shall enter in through the gates into the
+city. 'They that forsake me shall be written on the earth'; and there
+wiped out as are the children's scribbles on the sand when the ocean
+come up. They that trust in Jesus Christ shall have their names written
+in the Book of Life; graven on the High Priest's breastplate, and
+inscribed on His mighty hand and His faithful heart.
+
+
+
+
+REJOICE EVERMORE
+
+          'Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say,
+          rejoice!'--PHIL. iv. 4.
+
+
+It has been well said that this whole epistle may be summed up in two
+short sentences: 'I rejoice'; 'Rejoice ye!' The word and the thing crop
+up in every chapter, like some hidden brook, ever and anon sparkling out
+into the sunshine from beneath the shadows. This continual refrain of
+gladness is all the more remarkable if we remember the Apostle's
+circumstances. The letter shows him to us as a prisoner, dependent on
+Christian charity for a living, having no man like-minded to cheer his
+solitude; uncertain as to 'how it shall be with me,' and obliged to
+contemplate the possibility of being 'offered,' or poured out as a
+libation, 'on the sacrifice and service of your faith.' Yet out of all
+the darkness his clear notes ring jubilant; and this sunny epistle
+comes from the pen of a prisoner who did not know but that to-morrow he
+might be a martyr.
+
+The exhortation of my text, with its urgent reiteration, picks up again
+a dropped thread which the Apostle had first introduced in the
+commencement of the previous chapter. He had there evidently been
+intending to close his letter, for he says: 'Finally, my brethren,
+rejoice in the Lord'; but he is drawn away into that precious personal
+digression which we could so ill spare, in which he speaks of his
+continual aspiration and effort towards things not yet attained. And now
+he comes back again, picks up the thread once more, and addresses
+himself to his parting counsels. The reiteration in the text becomes the
+more impressive if we remember that it is a repetition of a former
+injunction. 'Rejoice in the Lord alway'; and then he seems to hear one
+of his Philippian readers saying: 'Why! you told us that once before!'
+'Yes,' he says, 'and you shall hear it once again; so important is my
+commandment that it shall be repeated a third time. So I again say,
+"rejoice!"' Christian gladness is an important element in Christian
+duty; and the difficulty and necessity of it are indicated by the urgent
+repetition of the injunction.
+
+I. So, then, the first thought that suggests itself to me from these
+words is this, that close union with Jesus Christ is the foundation of
+real gladness.
+
+Pray note that 'the Lord' here, as is usually the case in Paul's
+Epistles, means, not the Divine Father, but Jesus Christ. And then
+observe, again, that the phrase 'Rejoice in the Lord' has a deeper
+meaning than we sometimes attach to it. We are accustomed to speak of
+rejoicing in a thing or a person, which, or who, is thereby represented
+as being the occasion or the object of our gladness. And though that is
+true, in reference to our Lord, it is not the whole sweep and depth of
+the Apostle's meaning here. He is employing that phrase, 'in the Lord,'
+in the profound and comprehensive sense in which it generally appears in
+his letters, and especially in those almost contemporaneous with this
+Epistle to the Philippians. I need only refer you, in passing, without
+quoting passages, to the continual use of that phrase in the nearly
+contemporaneous letter to the Ephesians, in which you will find that 'in
+Christ Jesus' is the signature stamped upon all the gifts of God, and
+upon all the possible blessings of the Christian life. 'In Him' we have
+the inheritance; in Him we obtain redemption through His blood, even the
+forgiveness of sins; in Him we are 'blessed with all spiritual
+blessings.' And the deepest description of the essential characteristic
+of a Christian life is, to Paul, that it is a life in Christ.
+
+It is this close union which the Apostle here indicates as being the
+foundation and the source of all that gladness which he desires to see
+spreading its light over the Christian life. 'Rejoice in the
+Lord'--being in Him be glad.
+
+Now that great thought has two aspects, one deep and mysterious, one
+very plain and practical. As to the former, I need not spend much time
+upon it. We believe, I suppose, in the superhuman character and nature
+of Jesus Christ. We believe in His divinity. We can therefore believe
+reasonably in the possibility of a union between Him and us,
+transcending all the forms of human association, and being really like
+that which the creature holds to its Creator in regard to its physical
+being. 'In him we live, and move, and have our being' is the very
+foundation truth in regard to the constitution of the universe. 'In Him
+we live, and move, and have our being' is the very foundation truth in
+regard to the relation of the Christian soul to Jesus Christ. All
+earthly unions are but poor adumbrations from afar of that deep,
+transcendent, mysterious, but most real union, by which the Christian
+soul is in Christ, as the branch is in the vine, the member in the body,
+the planet in its atmosphere, and by which Christ is in the Christian
+soul as the life sap is in every twig, as the mysterious vital power is
+in every member. Thus abiding in Him, in a manner which admits of no
+parallel nor of any doubt, we may, and we shall, be glad.
+
+But then, passing from the mysterious, we come to the plain. To be 'in
+Christ' which is commended to us here as the basis of all true
+blessedness, means that the whole of our nature shall be occupied with,
+and fastened upon, Him; thought turning to Him, the tendrils of the
+heart clinging and creeping around Him, the will submitting itself in
+glad obedience to His beloved and supreme commandments, the aspirations,
+and desires feeling out after Him as the sufficient and eternal good,
+and all the current of our being setting towards Him in earnestness of
+desire, and resting in Him in tranquillity of possession. Thus 'in
+Christ' we may all be.
+
+And, says Paul, in the great words of my text, such a union, reciprocal
+and close, is the secret of all blessedness. If thus we are wedded to
+that Lord, and His life is in us and ours enclosed in Him, then there is
+such correspondence between our necessities and our supplies as that
+there is no room for aching emptiness; no gnawing of unsatisfied
+longings, but the blessedness that comes from having found that which we
+seek, and in the finding being stimulated to a still closer, happier,
+and not restless search after fuller possession. The man that knows
+where to get anything and everything that he needs, and to whom desires
+are but the prophets of instantaneous fruition; surely that man has in
+his possession the talismanic secret of perpetual gladness. They who
+thus dwell in Christ by faith, love, obedience, imitation, aspiration,
+and enjoyment, are like men housed in some strong fortress, who can look
+out over all the fields alive with enemies, and feel that they are safe.
+They who thus dwell in Christ gain command over themselves; and because
+they can bridle passions, and subdue hot and impossible desires, and
+keep themselves well in hand, have stanched one chief source of unrest
+and sadness, and have opened one pure and sparkling fountain of
+unfailing gladness. To rule myself because Christ rules me is no small
+part of the secret of blessedness. And they who thus dwell in Christ
+have the purest joy, the joy of self-forgetfulness. He that is absorbed
+in a great cause; he whose pitiful, personal individuality has passed
+out of his sight; he who is swallowed up by devotion to another, by
+aspiration after 'something afar from the sphere of our sorrow,' has
+found the secret of gladness. And the man who thus can say, 'I live: yet
+not I, but Christ liveth in me,' this is the man who will ever rejoice.
+The world may not call such a temper gladness. It is as unlike the
+sputtering, flaring, foul-smelling joys which it prizes--like those
+filthy but bright 'Lucigens' that they do night work by in great
+factories--it is as unlike the joy of the world as these are to the
+calm, pure moonlight which they insult. The one is of heaven, and the
+other is the foul product of earth, and smokes to extinction swiftly.
+
+II. So, secondly, notice that this joy is capable of being continuous.
+
+'Rejoice in the Lord _always_,' says Paul. That is a hard nut to crack.
+I can fancy a man saying, 'What is the use of giving me such
+exhortations as this? My gladness is largely a matter of temperament,
+and I cannot rule my moods. My gladness is largely a matter of
+circumstances, and I do not determine these. How vain it is to tell me,
+when my heart is bleeding, or beating like a sledge-hammer, to be glad!'
+Yes! Temperament has a great deal to do with joy; and circumstances have
+a great deal to do with it; but is not the mission of the Gospel to make
+us masters of temperament, and independent of circumstances? Is not the
+possibility of living a life that has no dependence upon externals, and
+that may persist permanently through all varieties of mood, the very
+gift that Christ Himself has come to bestow upon us--bringing us into
+communion with Himself, and so making us lords of our own inward nature
+and of externals: so that 'though the fig-tree shall not blossom, and
+there be no fruit in the vine,' yet we may 'rejoice in the Lord, and be
+glad in the God of our salvation.' If a ship has plenty of water in its
+casks or tanks in its hold, it does not matter whether it is sailing
+through fresh water or salt. And if you and I have that union with Jesus
+Christ of which my text speaks, then we shall be, not wholly, but with
+indefinite increase of approximation towards the ideal, independent of
+circumstances and masters of our temperaments. And so it is possible, if
+not absolutely to reach this fair achievement of an unbroken continuity
+of gladness, at least to bring the lucent points so close to one another
+as that the intervals of darkness between shall be scarcely visible,
+and the whole will seem to form one continuous ring of light.
+
+Brother, if you and I can keep near Jesus Christ always--and I suppose
+we can do that in sorrow as in joy--He will take care that our keeping
+near Him will not want its reward in that blessed continuity of felt
+repose which is very near the sunniness of gladness. For, if we in the
+Lord sorrow, we may, then, simultaneously, in the Lord rejoice. The two
+things may go together, if in the one mood and the other we are in union
+with Him. The bitterness of the bitterest calamity is taken away from it
+when it does not separate us from Jesus Christ. And just as the mother
+is specially tender with her sick child, and just as we have often found
+that the sympathy of friends comes to us, when need and grief are upon
+us, in a fashion that would have been incredible beforehand, so it is
+surely true that Jesus Christ can, and does, soften His tone, and select
+the tokens of His presence with especial tenderness for a wounded heart;
+so as that sorrow in the Lord passes into joy in the Lord. And if that
+be so, then the pillar which was cloud in the sunshine brightens into
+fire as night falls on the desert.
+
+But it is not only that this divine gladness is consistent with the
+sorrow that is often necessary for us, but also that the continuity of
+such gladness is secured, because in Christ there are open for us
+sources of blessedness in what is else a dry and thirsty land. If you
+would take this epistle at your leisure, and run over it in order to
+note the various occasions of joy which the Apostle expresses for
+himself, and commends to his brethren, you would see how beautifully
+they reveal to us the power of communion with Jesus Christ, to find
+honey in the rock, good in everything, and a reason for thankful
+gladness in all events.
+
+I have not time, at this stage of my sermon, to do more than just glance
+at these. We find, for instance, that a very large portion of the joy
+which he declares fills his own heart, and which he commends to these
+Philippians, arises from the recognition of good in others. He speaks to
+them of being his 'joy and crown.' He tells them that in his sorrows and
+imprisonment, their 'fellowship in the Gospel, from the first day until
+now,' had brought a whiff of gladness into the close air of the prison
+cell. He begs them to be Christlike in order that they may 'fulfil his
+joy'; and he may lose himself in others' blessings, and therein find
+gladness. A large portion of his joy came from very common things. A
+large portion of the joy that he commends to them he contemplates as
+coming to them from small matters. They were to be glad because Timothy
+came with a message from the Apostle. He is glad because he hears of
+their well-being, and receives a little contribution from them for his
+daily necessities. A large portion of his gladness came from the spread
+of Christ's kingdom. 'Christ is preached,' says he, with a flash of
+triumph, 'and I therein do rejoice; yea, and will rejoice.' And, most
+beautiful of all, no small portion of his gladness came from the
+prospect of martyrdom. 'If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service
+of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all; and do ye joy and
+rejoice with me.'
+
+Now, put all these things together and they just come to this, that a
+heart in union with Jesus Christ can find streams in the desert, joys
+blossoming as the rose, in places that to the un-Christlike eye are
+wilderness and solitary, and out of common things it can bring the
+purest gladness and draw a tribute and revenue of blessedness even from
+the prospect of God-sent sorrows. Dear brethren, if you and I have not
+learned the secret of modest and unselfish delights, we shall vainly
+seek for joy in the vulgar excitements and coarse titillations of
+appetites and desires which the world offers. 'Calm pleasures there
+abide' in Christ. The northern lights are weird and bright, but they
+belong to midwinter, and they come from electric disturbances, and
+portend rough weather afterwards. Sunshine is silent, steadfast, pure.
+Better to walk in that light than to be led astray by fantastic and
+perishable splendours. 'Rejoice in the Lord always.'
+
+III. Lastly, such gladness is an important part of Christian duty.
+
+As I have said, the urgency of the command indicates both its importance
+and its difficulty. It is important that professing Christians should be
+glad Christians (with the joy that is drawn from Jesus Christ, of
+course, I mean), because they thereby become walking advertisements and
+living witnesses for Him. A gloomy, melancholy, professing Christian is
+a poor recommendation of his faith. If you want to 'adorn the doctrine
+of Christ' you will do it a great deal more by a bright face, that
+speaks of a calm heart, calm because filled with Christ, than by many
+more ambitious efforts. This gladness is important because, without it,
+there will be little good work done, and little progress made. It is
+important, surely, for ourselves, for it can be no small matter that we
+should be able to have travelling with us all through the desert that
+mystical rock which follows with its streams of water, and ever provides
+for us the joys that we need. In every aspect, whether as regards men
+who take their notions of Christ and of Christianity, a great deal more
+from the concrete examples of both in human lives than from books and
+sermons, or from the Bible itself--or as regards the work which we have
+to do, or as regards our own inward life, it is all-important that we
+should have that close union with Jesus Christ which cannot but result
+in pure and holy gladness.
+
+But the difficulty, as well as the importance, of the obligation, are
+expressed by the stringent repetition of the commandment, 'And again I
+say, Rejoice.' When objections arise, when difficulties present
+themselves, I repeat the commandment again, in the teeth of them all;
+and I know what I mean when I am saying it. Thus, thought Paul, we need
+to make a definite effort to keep ourselves in touch with Jesus Christ,
+or else gladness, and a great deal besides, will fade away from our
+grasp.
+
+And there are two things that you have to do if you would obey the
+commandment. The one is the direct effort at fostering and making
+continuous your fellowship with Jesus Christ, through your life; and the
+other is looking out for the bright bits in your life, and making sure
+that you do not sullenly and foolishly, perhaps with vain regrets after
+vanished blessings, or perhaps with vain murmurings about unattained
+good, obscure to your sight the mercies that you have, and so cheat
+yourselves of the occasions for thankfulness and joy. There are people
+who, if there be ever such a little bit of a fleecy film of cloud low
+down on their horizon, can see nothing of the sparkling blue arch above
+them for looking at that, and who behave as if the whole sky was one
+roof of doleful grey. Do not you do that! There is always enough to be
+thankful for. Lay hold of Christ, and be sure that you open your eyes
+to His gifts.
+
+Surely, dear friends, if there be offered to us, as there is, a gladness
+which is perfect in the two points in which all other gladness fails, it
+is wise for us to take it. The commonplace which all men believe, and
+most men neglect, is that nothing short of an infinite Person can fill a
+finite soul. And if we look for our joys anywhere but to Jesus Christ,
+there will always be some bit of our nature which, like the sulky elder
+brother in the parable, will scowl at the music and dancing, and refuse
+to come in. All earthly joys are transient as well as partial. Is it not
+better that we should have gladness that will last as long as we do,
+that we can hold in our dying hands, like a flower clasped in some cold
+palm laid in the coffin, that we shall find again when we have crossed
+the bar, that will grow and brighten and broaden for evermore? My joy
+shall remain . . . full.
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO OBEY AN IMPOSSIBLE INJUNCTION
+
+          'Be careful for nothing; but in everything by
+          prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let
+          your requests be made known unto God.'--PHIL. iv.
+          6.
+
+
+It is easy for prosperous people, who have nothing to trouble them, to
+give good advices to suffering hearts; and these are generally as futile
+as they are easy. But who was he who here said to the Church at
+Philippi, 'Be careful for nothing?' A prisoner in a Roman prison; and
+when Rome fixed its claws it did not usually let go without drawing
+blood. He was expecting his trial, which might, so far as he knew, very
+probably end in death. Everything in the future was entirely dark and
+uncertain. It was this man, with all the pressure of personal sorrows
+weighing upon him, who, in the very crisis of his life, turned to his
+brethren in Philippi, who had far fewer causes of anxiety than he had,
+and cheerfully bade them 'be careful for nothing, but in everything by
+prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make their requests known
+unto God.' Had not that bird learned to sing when his cage was darkened?
+And do you not think that advice of that sort, coming not from some one
+perched up on a safe hillock to the strugglers in the field below, but
+from a man in the thick of the fight, would be like a trumpet-call to
+them who heard it?
+
+Now, here are two things. There is an apparently perfectly impossible
+advice, and there is the only course that will make it possible.
+
+I. An apparently impossible advice.
+
+'Be careful for nothing.' I do not need to remind you--for I suppose
+that we all know it--that that word 'careful,' in a great many places in
+the New Testament, does not mean what, by the slow progress of change in
+the significance of words, it has come to mean to-day; but it means what
+it _should_ still mean, 'full of care,' and 'care' meant, not prudent
+provision, forethought, the occupation of a man's common-sense with his
+duty and his work and his circumstances, but it meant the thing which of
+all others unfits a man most for such prudent provision, and that is,
+the nervous irritation of a gnawing anxiety which, as the word in the
+original means, tears the heart apart and makes a man quite incapable of
+doing the wise thing, or seeing the wise thing to do, in the
+circumstances. We all know that; so that I do not need to dwell upon it.
+'Careful' here means neither more nor less than 'anxious.'
+
+But I may just remind you how harm has been done, and good has been lost
+and missed, by people reading that modern meaning into the word. It is
+the same word which Christ employed in the exhortation 'Take no thought
+for to-morrow.' It is a great pity that Christian people sometimes get
+it into their heads that Christ prohibited what common-sense demands,
+and what everybody practises. 'Taking thought for the morrow' is not
+only our duty, but it is one of the distinctions which make us 'much
+better than' the fowls of the air, that have no barns in which to store
+against a day of need. But when our Lord said, 'Take no thought for the
+morrow,' he did not mean 'Do not lay yourselves out to provide for
+common necessities and duties,' but 'Do not fling yourselves into a
+fever of anxiety, nor be too anxious to anticipate the "fashion of
+uncertain evils."'
+
+But even with that explanation, is it not like an unreachable ideal that
+Paul puts forward here? 'Be anxious about nothing'--how can a man who
+has to face the possibilities that we all have to face, and who knows
+himself to be as weak to deal with them as we all are: how can he help
+being anxious? There is no more complete waste of breath than those sage
+and reverend advices which people give us, not to do the things, nor to
+feel the emotions, which our position make absolutely inevitable and
+almost involuntary. Here, for instance, is a man surrounded by all
+manner of calamity and misfortune; and some well-meaning but foolish
+friend comes to him, and, without giving him a single reason for the
+advice, says, 'Cheer up! my friend.' Why should he cheer up? What is
+there in his circumstances to induce him to fall into any other mood? Or
+some unquestionable peril is staring him full in the face, coming
+nearer and nearer to him, and some well-meaning, loose-tongued friend,
+says to him, 'Do not be afraid!'--but he _ought_ to be afraid. That is
+about all that worldly wisdom and morality have to say to us, when we
+are in trouble and anxiety. 'Shut your eyes very hard, and make believe
+very much, and you will not fear.' An impossible exhortation! Just as
+well bid a ship in the Bay of Biscay not to rise and fall upon the wave,
+but to keep an even keel. Just as well tell the willows in the river-bed
+that they are not to bend when the wind blows, as come to me, and say to
+me, 'Be careful about nothing.' Unless you have a great deal more than
+that to say, I must be, and I ought to be, anxious, about a great many
+things. Instead of anxiety being folly, it will be wisdom; and the folly
+will consist in not opening our eyes to facts, and in not feeling
+emotions that are appropriate to the facts which force themselves
+against our eyeballs. Threadbare maxims, stale, musty old commonplaces
+of unavailing consolation and impotent encouragement say to us, 'Do not
+be anxious.' We try to stiffen our nerves and muscles in order to bear
+the blow; or some of us, more basely still, get into a habit of
+feather-headed levity, making no forecasts, nor seeing even what is
+plainest before our eyes. But all that is of no use when once the hot
+pincers of real trouble, impending or arrived, lay hold of our hearts.
+Then of all idle expenditures of breath in the world there is none to
+the wrung heart more idle and more painful than the one that says, Be
+anxious about nothing.
+
+II. So we turn to the only course that makes the apparent impossibility
+possible.
+
+Paul goes on to direct to the mode of feeling and action which will
+give exemption from the else inevitable gnawing of anxious forethought.
+He introduces his positive counsel with an eloquent 'But,' which implies
+that what follows is the sure preservative against the temper which he
+deprecates; 'But in everything by prayer and supplication, with
+thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'
+
+There are, then, these alternatives. If you do not like to take the one,
+you are sure to have to take the other. There is only one way out of the
+wood, and it is this which Paul expands in these last words of my text.
+If a man does not pray about everything, he will be worried about most
+things. If he does pray about everything, he will not be troubled beyond
+what is good for him, about anything. So there are these alternatives;
+and we have to make up our minds which of the two we are going to take.
+The heart is never empty. If not full of God, it will be full of the
+world, and of worldly care. Luther says somewhere that a man's heart is
+like a couple of millstones; if you don't put something between them to
+grind, they will grind each other. It is because God is not in our
+hearts that the two stones rub the surface off one another. So the
+victorious antagonist of anxiety is trust, and the only way to turn
+gnawing care out of my heart and life is to usher God into it, and to
+keep him resolutely in it.
+
+'In everything.' If a thing is great enough to threaten to make me
+anxious, it is great enough for me to talk to God about. If He and I are
+on a friendly footing, the instinct of friendship will make me speak. If
+so, how irrelevant and superficial seem to be discussions whether we
+ought to pray about worldly things, or confine our prayers entirely to
+spiritual and religious matters. Why! if God and I are on terms of
+friendship and intimacy of communication, there will be no question as
+to what I am to talk about to Him; I shall not be able to keep silent as
+to anything that interests me. And we are not right with God unless we
+have come to the point that entire openness of speech marks our
+communications with Him, and that, as naturally as men, when they come
+home from business, like to tell their wives and children what has
+happened to them since they left home in the morning, so naturally we
+talk to our Friend about everything that concerns us. 'In _everything_
+let your requests be made known unto God.' That is the wise course,
+because a multitude of little pimples may be quite as painful and
+dangerous as a large ulcer. A cloud of gnats may put as much poison into
+a man with their many stings as will a snake with its one bite. And if
+we are not to get help from God by telling Him about little things,
+there will be very little of our lives that we shall tell Him about at
+all. For life is a mountain made up of minute flakes. The years are only
+a collection of seconds. Every man's life is an aggregate of trifles.
+'In _everything_ make your requests known.'
+
+'By prayer'--that does not mean, as a superficial experience of religion
+is apt to suppose it to mean, actual petition that follows. For a great
+many of us, the only notion that we have of prayer is asking God to give
+us something that we want. But there is a far higher region of communion
+than that, in which the soul seeks and finds, and sits and gazes, and
+aspiring possesses, and possessing aspires. Where there is no spoken
+petition for anything affecting outward life, there may be the prayer of
+contemplation such as the burning seraphs before the Throne do ever glow
+with. The prayer of silent submission, in which the will bows itself
+before God; the prayer of quiet trust, in which we do not so much seek
+as cleave; the prayer of still fruition--these, in Paul's conception of
+the true order, precede 'supplication.' And if we have such union with
+God, by realising His presence, by aspiration after Himself, by trusting
+Him and submission to Him, then we have the victorious antagonist of all
+our anxieties, and the 'cares that infest the day shall fold their
+tents' and 'silently steal away.' For if a man has that union with God
+which is effected by such prayer as I have been speaking about, it gives
+him a fixed point on which to rest amidst all perturbations. It is like
+bringing a light into a chamber when thunder is growling outside, which
+prevents the flashing of the lightning from being seen.
+
+Years ago an ingenious inventor tried to build a vessel in such a
+fashion as that the saloon for passengers should remain upon one level,
+howsoever the hull might be tossed by waves. It was a failure, if I
+remember rightly. But if we are thus joined to God, He will do for our
+inmost hearts what the inventor tried to do with the chamber within his
+ship. The hull may be buffeted, but the inmost chamber where the true
+self sits will be kept level and unmoved. Brethren! prayer in the
+highest sense, by which I mean the exercise of aspiration, trust,
+submission--prayer will fight against and overcome all anxieties.
+
+'By prayer and supplication.' Actual petition for the supply of present
+wants is meant by 'supplication.' To ask for that supply will very often
+be to get it. To tell God what I think I need goes a long way always to
+bringing me the gift that I do need. If I have an anxiety which I am
+ashamed to speak to Him, that silence is a sign that I ought not to
+have it; and if I have a desire that I do not feel I can put into a
+prayer, that feeling is a warning to me not to cherish such a desire.
+
+There are many vague and oppressive anxieties that come and cast a
+shadow over our hearts, that if we could once define, and put into plain
+words, we should find that we vaguely fancied them a great deal larger
+than they were, and that the shadow they flung was immensely longer than
+the thing that flung it. Put your anxieties into definite speech. It
+will reduce their proportions to your own apprehension very often.
+Speaking them, even to a man who may be able to do little to help, eases
+them wonderfully. Put them into definite speech to God; and there are
+very few of them that will survive.
+
+'By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.' That thanksgiving is
+always in place. If one only considers what he has from God, and
+realises that whatever he has he has received from the hands of divine
+love, thanksgiving is appropriate in any circumstances. Do you remember
+when Paul was in gaol at the very city to which this letter went, with
+his back bloody with the rod, and his feet fast in the stocks, how then
+he and Silas 'prayed and sang praises to God.' Therefore the obedient
+earthquake came and set them loose. Perhaps it was some reminiscence of
+that night which moved him to say to the Church that knew the story--of
+which perhaps the gaoler was still a member--'By prayer and supplication
+with thanksgiving make your requests known unto God.'
+
+One aching nerve can monopolise our attention and make us unconscious of
+the health of all the rest of the body. So, a single sorrow or loss
+obscures many mercies. We are like men who live in a narrow alley in
+some city, with great buildings on either side, towering high above
+their heads, and only a strip of sky visible. If we see up in that strip
+a cloud, we complain and behave as if the whole heavens, right away
+round the three hundred and sixty degrees of the horizon, were black
+with tempest. But we see only a little strip, and there is a great deal
+of blue in the sky; however, there may be a cloud in the patch that we
+see above our heads, from the alley where we live. Everything, rightly
+understood, that God sends to men is a cause of thanksgiving; therefore,
+'in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your
+requests be made known unto God.'
+
+'Casting all your _anxieties_ upon him,' says Peter, 'for He'--not _is
+anxious_; that dark cloud does not rise much above the earth--but, 'He
+careth for you.' And that loving guardianship and tender care is the one
+shield, armed with which we can smile at the poisoned darts of anxiety
+which would else fester in our hearts and, perhaps, kill. 'Be careful
+for nothing'--an impossibility unless 'in everything' we make 'our
+requests known unto God.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WARRIOR PEACE
+
+          'The peace of God, which passeth all
+          understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds
+          through Christ Jesus.'--PHIL. iv. 7.
+
+
+The great Mosque of Constantinople was once a Christian church,
+dedicated to the Holy Wisdom. Over its western portal may still be read,
+graven on a brazen plate, the words, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour
+and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.' For four hundred years
+noisy crowds have fought, and sorrowed, and fretted, beneath the dim
+inscription in an unknown tongue; and no eye has looked at it, nor any
+heart responded. It is but too sad a symbol of the reception which
+Christ's offers meet amongst men, and--blessed be His name!--its
+prominence there, though unread and unbelieved, is a symbol of the
+patient forbearance with which rejected blessings are once and again
+pressed upon us, and He stretches out His hand though no man regards,
+and calls though none do hear. My text is Christ's offer of peace. The
+world offers excitement, Christ promises repose.
+
+I. Mark, then, first, this peace of God.
+
+What is it? What are its elements? Whence does it come? It is of God, as
+being its Source, or Origin, or Author, or Giver, but it belongs to Him
+in a yet deeper sense, for Himself is Peace. And in some humble but yet
+real fashion our restless and anxious hearts may partake in the divine
+tranquillity, and with a calm repose, kindred with that rest from which
+it is derived, may enter into His rest.
+
+If that be too high a flight, at all events the peace that may be ours
+was Christ's, in the perfect and unbroken tranquillity of His perfect
+Manhood. What, then, are its elements? The peace of God must, first of
+all, be peace with God. Conscious friendship with Him is indispensable
+to all true tranquillity. Where that is absent there may be the ignoring
+of the disturbed relationship; but there will be no peace of heart. The
+indispensable requisite is 'a conscience like a sea at rest.' Unless we
+have made sure work of our relationship with God, and know that He and
+we are friends, there is no real repose possible for us. In the whirl of
+excitement we may forget, and for a time turn away from, the realities
+of our relation to Him, and so get such gladness as is possible to a
+life not rooted in conscious friendship with Him. But such lives will be
+like some of those sunny islands in the Eastern Pacific, extinct
+volcanoes, where nature smiles and all things are prodigal and life is
+easy and luxuriant; but some day the clouds gather, and the earth
+shakes, and fire pours forth, and the sea boils, and every living thing
+dies, and darkness and desolation come. You are living, brother, upon a
+volcano's side, unless the roots of your being are fixed in a God who is
+your friend.
+
+Again, the peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human
+life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses.
+Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, 'Do this'; reason,
+judgment, prudence say, 'It is at your peril if you do!' One desire
+fights against another, and so the man is rent asunder. There must be
+the harmonising of all the Being if there is to be real rest of spirit.
+No longer must it be like the chaos ere the creative word was spoken,
+where, in gloom, contending elements strove.
+
+Again, men have not peace, because in most of them everything is topmost
+that ought to be undermost, and everything undermost that ought to be
+uppermost. 'Beggars are on horseback' (and we know where they ride),
+'and princes walking.' The more regal part of the man's nature is
+suppressed, and trodden under foot; and the servile parts, which ought
+to be under firm restraint, and guided by a wise hand, are too often
+supreme, and wild work comes of that. When you put the captain and the
+officers, and everybody on board that knows anything about navigation,
+into irons, and fasten down the hatches on them, and let the crew and
+the cabin boys take the helm and direct the ship, it is not likely that
+the voyage will end anywhere but on the rocks. Multitudes are living
+lives of unrestfulness, simply because they have set the lowest parts of
+their nature upon the throne, and subordinated the highest to these.
+
+Our unrest comes from yet another source. We have not peace, because we
+have not found and grasped the true objects for any of our faculties.
+God is the only possession that brings quiet. The heart hungers until it
+feeds upon Him. The mind is satisfied with no truth until behind truth
+it finds a Person who is true. The will is enslaved and wretched until
+in God it recognises legitimate and absolute authority, which it is
+blessing to obey. Love puts out its yearnings, like the filaments that
+gossamer spiders send out into the air, seeking in vain for something to
+fasten upon, until it touches God, and clings there. There is no rest
+for a man until he rests in God. The reason why this world is so full of
+excitement is because it is so empty of peace, and the reason why it is
+so empty of peace is because it is so void of God. The peace of God
+brings peace with Him, and peace within. It unites our hearts to fear
+His name, and draws all the else turbulent and confusedly flowing
+impulses of the great deep of the spirit after itself, in a tidal wave,
+as the moon draws the waters of the gathered ocean. The peace of God is
+peace with Him, and peace within.
+
+I need not, I suppose, do more than say one word about that descriptive
+clause in my text, It 'passeth understanding.' The understanding is not
+the faculty by which men lay hold of the peace of God any more than you
+can see a picture with your ears or hear music with your eyes. To
+everything its own organ; you cannot weigh truth in a tradesman's scales
+or measure thought with a yard-stick. Love is not the instrument for
+apprehending Euclid, nor the brain the instrument for grasping these
+divine and spiritual gifts. The peace of God transcends the
+understanding, as well as belongs to another order of things than that
+about which the understanding is concerned. You must experience it to
+know it; you must have it in order that you may feel its sweetness. It
+eludes the grasp of the wisest, though it yields itself to the patient
+and loving heart.
+
+II. So notice, in the next place, what the peace of God does.
+
+It 'shall keep your hearts and minds.' The Apostle here blends together,
+in a very remarkable manner, the conceptions of peace and of war, for he
+employs a purely military word to express the office of this Divine
+peace. That word, 'shall keep,' is the same as is translated in another
+of his letters _kept with a garrison_--and, though, perhaps, it might be
+going too far to insist that the military idea is prominent in his mind,
+it will certainly not be unsafe to recognise its presence.
+
+So, then, this Divine peace takes upon itself warlike functions, and
+garrisons the heart and mind. What does he mean by 'the heart and mind'?
+Not, as the English reader might suppose, two different faculties, the
+emotional and the intellectual--which is what we usually roughly mean by
+our distinction between heart and mind--but, as is always the case in
+the Bible, the 'heart' means the whole inner man, whether considered as
+thinking, willing, purposing, or doing any other inward act; and the
+word rendered 'mind' does not mean another part of human nature, but
+the whole products of the operations of the heart. The Revised Version
+renders it by 'thoughts,' and that is correct if it be given a wide
+enough application, so as to include emotions, affections, purposes, as
+well as 'thoughts' in the narrower sense. The whole inner man, in all
+the extent of its manifold operations, that indwelling peace of God will
+garrison and guard.
+
+So note, however profound and real that Divine peace is, it is to be
+enjoyed in the midst of warfare. Quiet is not quiescence. God's peace is
+not torpor. The man that has it has still to wage continual conflict,
+and day by day to brace himself anew for the fight. The highest energy
+of action is the result of the deepest calm of heart; just as the motion
+of this solid, and, as we feel it to be, immovable world, is far more
+rapid through the abysses of space, and on its own axis, than any of the
+motions of the things on its surface. So the quiet heart, 'which moveth
+altogether if it move at all,' rests whilst it moves, and moves the more
+swiftly because of its unbroken repose. That peace of God, which is
+peace militant, is unbroken amidst all conflicts. The wise old Greeks
+chose for the protectress of Athens the goddess of Wisdom, and whilst
+they consecrated to her the olive branch, which is the symbol of peace,
+they set her image on the Parthenon, helmed and spear-bearing, to defend
+the peace, which she brought to earth. So this heavenly Virgin, whom the
+Apostle personifies here, is the 'winged sentry, all skilful in the
+wars,' who enters into our hearts and fights for us to keep us in
+unbroken peace.
+
+It is possible day by day to go out to toil and care and anxiety and
+change and suffering and conflict, and yet to bear within our hearts
+the unalterable rest of God. Deep in the bosom of the ocean, beneath the
+region where winds howl and billows break, there is calm, but the calm
+is not stagnation. Each drop from these fathomless abysses may be raised
+to the surface by the power of the sunbeams, expanded there by their
+heat, and sent on some beneficent message across the world. So, deep in
+our hearts, beneath the storm, beneath the raving winds and the curling
+waves, there may be a central repose, as unlike stagnation as it is
+unlike tumult; and the peace of God may, as a warrior, keep our hearts
+and minds in Christ Jesus.
+
+What is the plain English of that metaphor? Just this, that a man who
+has that peace as his conscious possession is lifted above the
+temptations that otherwise would drag him away. The full cup, filled
+with precious wine, has no room in it for the poison that otherwise
+might be poured in. As Jesus Christ has taught us, there is such a thing
+as cleansing a heart in some measure, and yet because it is 'empty,'
+though it is 'swept and garnished,' the demons come back again. The best
+way to be made strong to resist temptation, is to be lifted above
+feeling it to be a temptation, by reason of the sweetness of the peace
+possessed. Oh! if our hearts were filled, as they might be filled, with
+that divine repose, do you think that the vulgar, coarse-tasting baits
+which make our mouths water now would have any power over us? Will a man
+who bears in his hands jewels of priceless value, and knows them to be
+such, find much temptation when some imitation stone, made of coloured
+glass and a tinfoil backing, is presented to him? Will the world draw us
+away if we are rooted and grounded in the peace of God? Geologists tell
+us that climates are changed and creatures are killed by the slow
+variation of level in the earth. If you and I can only heave our lives
+up high enough, the foul things that live down below will find the air
+too pure and keen for them, and will die and disappear; and all the
+vermin that stung and nestled down in the flats will be gone when we get
+up to the heights. The peace of God will keep our hearts and thoughts.
+
+III. Now, lastly, notice how we get the peace of God.
+
+My text is an exuberant promise, but it is knit on to something before,
+by that 'and' at the beginning of the verse. It is a promise, as all
+God's promises are, on conditions. And here are the conditions. 'Be
+careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with
+thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.' That defines
+the conditions in part; and the last words of the text itself complete
+the definition. 'In Christ Jesus' describes, not so much where we are to
+be kept, as a condition under which we shall be kept. How, then, can I
+get this peace into my turbulent, changeful life?
+
+I answer, first, trust is peace. It is always so; even when it is
+misplaced we are at rest. The condition of repose for the human heart is
+that we shall be 'in Christ,' who has said, 'In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but in Me ye shall have peace.' And how may I be 'in Him'?
+Simply by trusting myself to Him. That brings peace with God.
+
+The sinless Son of God has died on the Cross, a sacrifice for the sins
+of the whole world, for yours and for mine. Let us trust to that, and we
+shall have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. And 'in Him'
+we have, by trust, inward peace, for He, through our faith, controls
+our whole natures, and Faith leads the lion in a silken leash, like
+Spenser's Una. Trust in Christ brings peace amid outward sorrows and
+conflicts. When the pilot comes on board the captain does not leave the
+bridge, but stands by the pilot's side. His responsibility is past, but
+his duties are not over. And when Christ comes into my heart, my effort,
+my judgment, are not made unnecessary, or put on one side. Let Him take
+the command, and stand beside Him, and carry out His orders, and you
+will find rest to your souls.
+
+Again, submission is peace. What makes our troubles is not outward
+circumstances, howsoever afflictive they may be, but the resistance of
+our spirits to the circumstances. And where a man's will bends and says,
+'Not mine but Thine be done,' there is calm. Submission is like the
+lotion that is applied to mosquito bites--it takes away the irritation,
+though the puncture be left. Submission is peace, both as resignation
+and as obedience.
+
+Communion is peace. You will get no quiet until you live with God. Until
+He is at your side you will always be moved.
+
+So, dear friend, fix this in your minds: a life without Christ is a life
+without peace. Without Him you may have excitement, pleasure, gratified
+passions, success, accomplished hopes, but peace never! You never have
+had it, have you? If you live without Him, you may forget that you have
+not Him, and you can plunge into the world, and so lose the
+consciousness of the aching void, but it is there all the same. You
+never will have peace until you go to Him. There is only one way to get
+it. The Christless heart is like the troubled sea that cannot rest.
+There is no peace for it. But in Him you can get it for the asking.
+'The chastisement of our peace was laid upon Him.' For our sakes He died
+on the Cross, so making peace. Trust Him as your only hope, Saviour and
+friend, and the God of peace will 'fill you with all joy and peace in
+believing.' Then bow your wills to Him in acceptance of His providence,
+and in obedience to His commands, and so, 'your peace shall be as a
+river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea.' Then keep your
+hearts in union and communion with Him, and so His presence will keep
+you in perfect peace whilst conflicts last, and, with Him at your side,
+you will pass through the valley of the shadow of death undisturbed, and
+come to the true Salem, the city of peace, where they beat their swords
+into ploughshares, and learn and fear war no more.
+
+
+
+
+THINK ON THESE THINGS
+
+          ' . . . Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
+          things are honest, whatsoever things are just,
+          whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
+          lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if
+          there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
+          think on these things.'--PHIL. iv. 8.
+
+
+I am half afraid that some of you may think, as I have at times thought,
+that I am too old to preach to the young. You would probably listen with
+more attention to one less remote from you in years, and may be disposed
+to discount my advices as quite natural for an old man to give, and
+quite unnatural for a young man to take. But, dear friends, the message
+which I have to bring to you is meant for all ages, and for all sorts of
+people. And, if I may venture a personal word, I proved it, when I stood
+where you stand, and it is fresher and mightier to me to-day than it
+ever was.
+
+You are in the plastic period of your lives, with the world before you,
+and the mightier world within to mould as you will; and you can be
+almost anything you like, I do not mean in regard to externals, or
+intellectual capacities, for these are only partially in our control,
+but in regard to the far more important and real things--viz. elevation
+and purity of heart and mind. You are in the period of life to which
+fair dreams of the future are natural. It is, as the prophet tells us,
+for 'the young man' to 'see visions,' and to ennoble his life thereafter
+by turning them into realities. Generous and noble ideas ought to belong
+to youth. But you are also in the period when there is a keen joy in
+mere living, and when some desires, which get weaker as years go on, are
+very strong, and may mar youthful purity. So, taking all these into
+account, I have thought that I could not do better than press home upon
+you the counsels of this magnificent text, however inadequately my time
+may permit of my dealing with them; for there are dozens of sermons in
+it, if one could expand it worthily.
+
+But my purpose is distinctly practical, and so I wish just to cast what
+I have to say to you into the answer to three questions, the three
+questions that may be asked about everything. What? Why? How?
+
+I. _What_, then, is the counsel here?
+
+'Think on these things.' To begin with, that advice implies that we can,
+and, therefore, that we should, exercise a very rigid control over that
+part of our lives which a great many of us never think of controlling at
+all. There are hosts of people whose thoughts are just hooked on to one
+another by the slightest links of accidental connection, and who
+scarcely ever have put a strong hand upon them, or coerced them into
+order, or decided what they are going to let come into their minds, and
+what to keep out. Circumstances, the necessities of our daily
+occupations, the duties that we owe to one another, all these make
+certain streams of thought very necessary, and to some of us very
+absorbing. And for the rest--well! 'He that hath no rule over his own
+spirit is like a city broken down, without walls'; anybody can go in,
+and anybody can come out. I am sure that amongst young men and women
+there are multitudes who have never realised how responsible they are
+for the flow of the waves of that great river that is always coming from
+the depths of their being, and have never asked whether the current is
+bringing down sand or gold. Exercise control, as becomes you, over the
+run and drift of your thoughts. I said that many of us had minds like
+cities broken down. Put a guard at the gate, as they do in some
+Continental countries, and let in no vagrant that cannot show his
+passport, and a clear bill of health. Now, that is a lesson that some of
+you very much want.
+
+But, further, notice that company of fair guests that you may welcome
+into the hospitalities of your heart and mind. 'Think on these
+things'--and what are they? It would be absurd of me to try to exhaust
+the great catalogue which the Apostle gives here, but let me say a word
+or two about it.
+
+'Whatsoever things are true . . . think on these things.' Let your minds
+be exercised, breathed, braced, lifted, filled by bringing them into
+contact with truth, especially with the highest of all truths, the
+truths affecting God and your relations to Him. Why should you, like so
+many of us, be living amidst the small things of daily life, the trifles
+that are here, and never coming into vital contact with the greatest
+things of all, the truths about God and Christ, and what you have to do
+with them, and what they have to do with you? 'Whatsoever things are
+true . . . think on these things.'
+
+'Whatsoever things are honest,' or, as the word more properly and nobly
+means, 'Whatsoever things are _reverent_, or _venerable_'--let grave,
+serious, solemn thought be familiar to your minds, not frivolities, not
+mean things. There is an old story in Roman history about the barbarians
+breaking into the Capitol, and their fury being awed into silence, and
+struck into immobility, as they saw, round and round in the hall, the
+august Senators, each in his seat. Let your minds be like that, with
+reverent thoughts clustering on every side; and when wild passions, and
+animal desires, and low, mean contemplations dare to cross the
+threshold, they will be awed into silence and stillness. 'Whatsoever
+things are august . . . think on these things.'
+
+'Whatsoever things are just'--let the great, solemn thought of duty,
+obligation, what I ought to be and do, be very familiar to your
+consideration and meditation. 'Whatsoever things are just . . . think on
+these things.'
+
+'Whatsoever things are pure'--let white-robed angels haunt the place.
+Let there be in you a shuddering recoil from all the opposite; and
+entertain angels _not_ unawares. 'Whatsoever things are pure . . . think
+on these things.'
+
+Now, these characteristics of thoughts which I have already touched upon
+all belong to a lofty region, but the Apostle is not contented with
+speaking austere things. He goes now into a region tinged with emotion,
+and he says, 'whatsoever things are lovely'; for goodness is beautiful,
+and, in effect, is the only beautiful. 'Whatsoever things are lovely . . .
+think on these things.' And 'whatsoever things are of good report'--all
+the things that men speak well of, and speak good in the very naming of,
+let thoughts of them be in your minds.
+
+And then he gathers all up into two words. 'If there be any
+virtue'--which covers the ground of the first four, that he has already
+spoken about--viz. true, venerable, just, pure; and 'if there be any
+praise'--which resumes and sums up the two last: 'lovely and of good
+report,' 'think on these things.'
+
+Now, if my purpose allowed it, one would like to point out here how the
+Apostle accepts the non-Christian notions of the people in whose tongue
+he was speaking; and here, for the only time in his letters, uses the
+great Pagan word 'virtue,' which was a spell amongst the Greeks, and
+says, 'I accept the world's notion of what is virtuous and praiseworthy,
+and I bid you take it to your hearts.'
+
+Dear brethren, Christianity covers all the ground that the noblest
+morality has ever attempted to mark out and possess, and it covers a
+great deal more. 'If there be any virtue, as you Greeks are fond of
+talking about, and if there be any praise, if there is anything in men
+which commends noble actions, think on these things.'
+
+Now, you will not obey this commandment unless you obey also the
+negative side of it. That is to say, you will not think on these fair
+forms, and bring them into your hearts, unless you turn away, by
+resolute effort, from their opposites. There are some, and I am afraid
+that in a congregation as large as this there must be some
+representatives of the class, who seem to turn this apostolic precept
+right round about, and whatsoever things are illusory and vain,
+whatsoever things are mean, and frivolous, and contemptible, whatsoever
+things are unjust, and whatsoever things are impure, and whatsoever
+things are ugly, and whatsoever things are branded with a stigma by all
+men they think on _these_ things. Like the flies that are attracted to a
+piece of putrid meat, there are young men who are drawn by all the
+lustful, the lewd, the impure thoughts; and there are young women who
+are too idle and uncultivated to have any pleasure in anything higher
+than gossip and trivial fiction. 'Whatsoever things are noble and
+lovely, think on these things,' and get rid of all the others.
+
+There are plenty of occasions round about you to force the opposite upon
+your notice; and, unless you shut your door fast, and double-lock it,
+they will be sure to come in:--Popular literature, the scrappy
+trivialities that are put into some periodicals, what they call
+'realistic fiction'; modern Art, which has come to be largely the
+servant of sense; the Stage, which has come--and more is the pity! for
+there are enormous possibilities of good in it--to be largely a minister
+of corruption, or if not of corruption at least of frivolity--all these
+things are appealing to you. And some of you young men, away from the
+restraints of home, and in a city, where you think nobody could see you
+sowing your wild oats, have got entangled with them. I beseech you, cast
+out all this filth, and all this meanness and pettiness from your
+habitual thinkings, and let the august and the lovely and the pure and
+the true come in instead. You have the cup in your hand, you can either
+press into it clusters of ripe grapes, and make mellow wine, or you can
+squeeze into it wormwood and gall and hemlock and poison-berries; and,
+as you brew, you have to drink. You have the canvas, and you are to
+cover it with the figures that you like best. You can either do as Fra
+Angelico did, who painted the white walls of every cell in his quiet
+convent with Madonnas and angels and risen Christs, or you can do like
+some of those low-toned Dutch painters, who never can get above a brass
+pan and a carrot, and ugly boors and women, and fill the canvas with
+vulgarities and deformities. Choose which you will have to keep you
+company.
+
+II. Now, let me ask you to think for a moment _why_ this counsel is
+pressed upon you.
+
+Let me put the reasons very briefly. They are, first, because thought
+moulds action. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.' One looks
+round the world, and all these solid-seeming realities of institutions,
+buildings, governments, inventions and machines, steamships and electric
+telegrams, laws and governments, palaces and fortresses, they are all
+but embodied thoughts. There was a thought at the back of each of them
+which took shape. So, in another sense than the one in which the saying
+was originally meant, but yet an august and solemn sense, 'the word is
+made flesh,' and our thoughts became visible, and stand round us, a
+ghastly company. Sooner or later what has been the drift and trend of a
+man's life comes out, flashes out sometimes, and dribbles out at other
+times, into visibility in his actions; and, just as the thunder follows
+on the swift passage of the lightning, so my acts are neither more nor
+less than the reverberation and after-clap of my thoughts.
+
+So if you are entertaining in your hearts and minds this august company
+of which my text speaks, your lives will be fair and beautiful. For what
+does the Apostle immediately go on to add to our text? 'These things
+do'--as you certainly will if you think about them, and as you certainly
+will not unless you do.
+
+Again, thought and work make character. We come into the world with
+certain dispositions and bias. But that is not character, it is only the
+raw material of character. It is all plastic, like the lava when it
+comes out of the volcano. But it hardens, and whatever else my thought
+may do, and whatever effects may follow upon any of my actions, the
+recoil of them on myself is the most important effect to me. And there
+is not a thought that comes into, and is entertained by a man, or rolled
+as a sweet morsel under his tongue, but contributes its own little but
+appreciable something to the making of the man's character. I wonder if
+there is anybody in this chapel now who has been so long accustomed to
+entertain these angels of whom my text speaks as that to entertain their
+opposites would be an impossibility. I hope there is. I wonder if there
+is anybody in this chapel to-night who has been so long accustomed to
+live amidst the thoughts that are small and trivial and frivolous, if
+not amongst those that are impure and abominable, as that to entertain
+their opposites seems almost an impossibility. I am afraid there are
+some. I remember hearing about a Maori woman who had come to live in one
+of the cities in New Zealand, in a respectable station, and after a year
+or two of it she left husband and children, and civilisation, and
+hurried back to her tribe, flung off the European garb, and donned the
+blanket, and was happy crouching over the embers on the clay hearth.
+Some of you have become so accustomed to the low, the wicked, the
+lustful, the impure, the frivolous, the contemptible, that you cannot,
+or, at any rate, have lost all disposition to rise to the lofty, the
+pure, and the true.
+
+Once more; as thought makes deeds, and thought and deeds make character,
+so character makes destiny, here and hereafter. If you have these
+blessed thoughts in your hearts and minds, as your continual companions
+and your habitual guests, then, my friend, you will have a light within
+that will burn all independent of externals; and whether the world
+smiles or frowns on you, you will have the true wealth in yourselves; 'a
+better and enduring substance.' You will have peace, you will be lords
+of the world, and having nothing yet may have all. No harm can come to
+the man who has laid up in his youth, as the best treasure of old age,
+this possession of these thoughts enjoined in my text.
+
+And character makes destiny hereafter. What is a man whose whole life
+has been one long thought about money-making, or about other objects of
+earthly ambition, or about the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the
+eye, and the pride of life, to do in heaven? What would one of those
+fishes in the sunless caverns of America, which, by long living in the
+dark, have lost their eyes, do, if it were brought out into the
+sunshine? A man will go to his own place, the place for which he is
+fitted, the place for which he has fitted himself by his daily life, and
+especially by the trend and the direction of his thoughts.
+
+So do not be led away by talk about 'seeing both sides,' about 'seeing
+life,' about 'knowing what is going on.' 'I would have you simple
+concerning evil, and wise concerning good.' Do not be led away by talk
+about having your fling, and sowing your wild oats. You may make an
+indelible stain on your conscience, which even forgiveness will not wipe
+out; and you may sow your wild oats, but what will the harvest be?
+'Whatsoever a man soweth that'--_that_--'shall he also reap.' Would you
+like all your low thoughts, all your foul thoughts, to return and sit
+down beside you, and say, 'We have come to keep you company for ever'?
+'If there be any virtue . . . think on these things.'
+
+III. Now, lastly, _how_ is this precept best obeyed?
+
+I have been speaking to some extent about that, and saying that there
+must be real, honest, continuous effort to keep out the opposite, as
+well as to bring in the 'things that are lovely and of good report.' But
+there is one more word that I must say in answer to the question how
+this precept can be observed, and it is just this. All these things,
+true, venerable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, are not things
+only; they are embodied in a Person. For whatever things are fair meet
+in Jesus Christ, and He, in His living self, is the sum of all virtue
+and of all praise. So that if we link ourselves to Him by faith and
+love, and take Him into our hearts and minds, and abide in Him, we have
+them all gathered together into that One. Thinking on these things is
+not merely a meditating upon abstractions, but it is clutching and
+living in and with and by the living, loving Lord and Saviour of us all.
+If Christ is in my thoughts, all good things are there.
+
+If you trust Him, and make him your Companion, He will help you, He will
+give you His own life, and in it will give you tastes and desires which
+will make all these fair thoughts congenial to you, and will deliver you
+from the else hopeless bondage of subjection to their very opposites.
+
+Brethren, our souls cleave to the dust, and all our efforts will be
+foiled, partially or entirely, to obey this precept, unless we remember
+that it was spoken to people who had previously obeyed a previous
+commandment, and had taken Christ for their Saviour. We gravitate
+earthwards, alas! after all our efforts, but if we will put ourselves in
+His hands, then He will be as a Magnet drawing us upwards, or rather He
+will give us wings of love and contemplation by which we can soar above
+that dim spot that men call Earth, and walk in the heavenly places. The
+way by which this commandment can be obeyed is by obeying the other
+precept of the same Apostle, 'Set your minds on things which are above,
+where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.'
+
+I beseech you, take Christ and enthrone Him in the very sanctuary of
+your minds. Then you will have all these venerable, pure, blessed
+thoughts as the very atmosphere in which you move. 'Think on these
+things . . . these things do! . . . and the God of Peace shall be with
+you.'
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO SAY 'THANK YOU'
+
+          'But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at
+          length ye have revived your thought for me;
+          wherein ye did indeed take thought, but ye lacked
+          opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want:
+          for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,
+          therein to be content. I know how to be abased,
+          and I know also how to abound: in everything and
+          in all things have I learned the secret both to be
+          filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be
+          in want. I can do all things in Him that
+          strengtheneth me. Howbeit ye did well, that ye had
+          fellowship with my affliction.'--PHIL. iv. 10-14
+          (R.V.).
+
+
+It is very difficult to give money without hurting the recipient. It is
+as difficult to receive it without embarrassment and sense of
+inferiority. Paul here shows us how he could handle a delicate subject
+with a feminine fineness of instinct and a noble self-respect joined
+with warmest gratitude. He carries the weight of obligation, is profuse
+in his thanks, and yet never crosses the thin line which separates the
+expression of gratitude from self-abasing exaggeration, nor that other
+which distinguishes self-respect in the receiver of benefits from proud
+unwillingness to be obliged to anybody. Few words are more difficult to
+say rightly than 'Thank you.' Some people speak them reluctantly and
+some too fluently: some givers are too exacting in the acknowledgments
+they expect, and do not so much give as barter so much help for so much
+recognition of superiority.
+
+The Philippians had sent to Paul some money help by Epaphroditus as we
+heard before in Chapter II., and this gift he now acknowledges in a
+paragraph full of autobiographical interest which may be taken as a very
+model of the money relations between teachers and taught in the church.
+It is besides an exquisite illustration of the fineness and delicacy of
+Paul's nature, and it includes large spiritual lessons.
+
+The stream of the Apostle's thoughts takes three turns here. There is
+first the exuberant and delicate expression of his thanks, then, as
+fearing that they might misunderstand his joy in their affection as if
+it were only selfish gladness that his wants had been met, he gives
+utterance to his triumphant and yet humble consciousness of his
+Christ-given independence in, and of, all circumstances, and then
+feeling in a moment that such words, if they stood alone, might sound
+ungrateful, he again returns to thanks, but not for their gift so much
+as for the sympathy expressed in it. We may follow these movements of
+feeling now.
+
+I. The exuberant expression of thanks, 'I rejoice in the Lord greatly.'
+
+There is an instance of his following his own twice-given precept,
+'Rejoice in the Lord always.' The Philippians' care of him was the
+source of the joy, and yet it was joy in the Lord. So we learn the
+perfect consistency of that joy in Christ with the full enjoyment of all
+other sources of joy, and especially of the joy that arises from
+Christian love and friendship. Union with Christ heightens and purifies
+all earthly relations. Nobody should be so tender and so sweet in these
+as a Christian. His faith should be like the sunshine blazing out over
+the meadows making them greener. It should, and does in the measure of
+its power, destroy selfishness and guard us against the evils which sap
+love and the anxieties which torment it, against the dread that it may
+end, and our hopeless desolation when it does. There is a false ascetic
+idea of Christian devotion as if it were a regard to Christ which made
+our hearts cold to others, which is clean against Paul's experience
+here. His joy went out in fuller stream towards the Philippians because
+it was 'joy in the Lord.'
+
+We may just note in passing the tender metaphor by which the
+Philippians' renewed thought of him is likened to a tree's putting forth
+its buds in a gracious springtide, and may link with it the pretty fancy
+of an old commentator whom some people call prosaic and puritanical
+(Bengel), that the stormy winter had hindered communication, and that
+Epaphroditus and the gifts came with the opening spring.
+
+Paul's inborn delicacy and quick considerateness comes beautifully
+forward in his addition, to remove any suspicion of his thinking that
+his friends in Philippi had been negligent or cold. Therefore he adds
+that he knew that they had always had the will. What had hindered them
+we do not know. Perhaps they had no one to send. Perhaps they had not
+heard that such help would be welcome, but whatever frost had kept the
+tree from budding, he knew that the sap was in it all the same.
+
+We may note that trait of true friendship, confidence in a love that did
+not express itself. Many of us are too exacting in always wanting
+manifestations of our friend's affection. What cries out for these is
+not love so much as self-importance which has not had the attention
+which it thinks its due. How often there have been breaches of intimacy
+which have no better reason than 'He didn't come to see me often
+enough'; 'He hasn't written to me for ever so long'; 'He does not pay me
+the attention I expect.' It is a poor love which is always needing to be
+assured of another's. It is better to err in believing that there is a
+store of goodwill in our friends' hearts to us which only needs occasion
+to be unfolded. One often hears people say that they were quite
+surprised at the proofs of affection which came to them when they were
+in trouble. They would have been happier and more nearly right if they
+had believed in them when there was no need to show them.
+
+II. Consciousness of Christ-given independence and of 'content' is
+scarcely Paul's whole idea here, though that, no doubt, is included. We
+have no word which exactly expresses the meaning. 'Self-sufficient' is a
+translation, but then it has acquired a bad meaning as connoting a false
+estimate of one's own worth and wisdom. What Paul means is that whatever
+be his condition he has in himself enough to meet it. He does not depend
+on circumstances, and he does not depend on other people for strength to
+face them. Many words are not needed to insist that only the man of whom
+these things are true is worth calling a man at all. It is a miserable
+thing to be hanging on externals and so to be always exposed to the
+possibility of having to say, 'They have taken away my Gods.' It is as
+wretched to be hanging on people. 'The good man shall be satisfied for
+himself.' The fortress that has a deep well in the yard and plenty of
+provisions within, is the only one that can hold out.
+
+This independence teaches the true use of all changing circumstances.
+The consequence of 'learning' therewith to be content is further stated
+by the Apostle in terms which perhaps bear some reference to the
+mysteries of Greek religion, since the word rendered 'I have learned the
+secret' means I have been initiated. He can bear either of the two
+extremes of human experience, and can keep a calm and untroubled mind
+whichever of them he has to front. He has the same equable spirit when
+abased and when abounding. He is like a compensation pendulum which
+corrects expansions and contractions and keeps time anywhere. I remember
+hearing of a captain in an Arctic expedition who had been recalled from
+the Tropics and sent straight away to the North Pole. Sometimes God
+gives His children a similar experience.
+
+It is possible for us not only to bear with equal minds both extremes,
+but to get the good out of both. It is a hard lesson and takes much
+conning, to learn to bear sorrow or suffering or want. They have great
+lessons to teach us all, and a character that has not been schooled by
+one of these dwellers in the dark is imperfect as celery is not in
+season till frost has touched it. But it is not less difficult to learn
+how to bear prosperity and abundance, though we think it a pleasanter
+lesson. To carry a full cup without spilling is proverbially difficult,
+and one sees instances enough of men who were far better men when they
+were poor than they have ever been since they were rich, to give a
+terrible significance to the assertion that it is still more difficult
+to live a Christian life in prosperity than in sorrow. But while both
+threaten, both may minister to our growth. Sorrow will drive, and joy
+will draw, us nearer to God. If we are not tempted by abundance to
+plunge our desires into it, nor tempted by sorrow to think ourselves
+hopelessly harmed by it, both will knit us more closely to our true and
+changeless good. The centrifugal and centripetal forces both keep the
+earth in its orbit.
+
+It is only when we are independent of circumstances that we are able to
+get the full good of them. When there is a strong hand at the helm, the
+wind, though it be almost blowing directly against us, helps us forward,
+but otherwise the ship drifts and washes about in the trough. We all
+need the exhortation to be their master, for we can do without them and
+they serve us.
+
+Paul here lets us catch a glimpse of the inmost secret of his power
+without which all exhortations to independence are but waste words. He
+is conscious of a living power flowing through him and making him fit
+for anything, and he is not afraid that any one who studies him will
+accuse him of exaggeration even when he makes the tremendous claim 'I
+can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.' That great word is even
+more emphatic in the original, not only because, as the Revised Version
+shows, it literally is _in_ and not _through_, and so suggests again his
+familiar thought of a vital union with Jesus, but also because he uses a
+compound word which literally means 'strengthening within,' so then the
+power communicated is breathed into the man, and in the most literal
+sense he is 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.' This
+inward impartation of strength is the true and only condition of that
+self-sufficingness which Paul has just been claiming. Stoicism breaks
+down because it tries to make men apart from God sufficient for
+themselves, which no man is. To stand alone without Him is to be weak.
+Circumstances will always be too strong for me, and sins will be too
+strong. A Godless life has a weakness at the heart of its loneliness,
+but Christ and I are always in the majority, and in the face of all
+foes, be they ever so many and strong, we can confidently say, 'They
+that be with us are more than they that be with them.' The old
+experience will prove true in our lives, and though 'they compass us
+about like bees,' the worst that they can do is only to buzz angrily
+round our heads, and their end is in the name of the Lord to be
+destroyed. In ourselves we are weak, but if we are 'rooted, grounded,
+built' on Jesus, we partake of the security of the rock of ages to which
+we are united, and cannot be swept away by the storm, so long as it
+stands unmoved. I have seen a thin hair-stemmed flower growing on the
+edge of a cataract and resisting the force of its plunge, and of the
+wind that always lives in its depths, because its roots are in a cleft
+of the cliff. The secret of strength for all men is to hold fast by the
+'strong Son of God,' and they only are sufficient in whatsoever state
+they are, to whom this loving and quickening voice has spoken the
+charter 'My grace is sufficient for thee.'
+
+III. The renewed thanks for the loving sympathy expressed in the gift.
+
+We have here again an eager anxiety not to be misunderstood as
+undervaluing the Philippians' gift. How beautifully the sublimity of the
+previous words lies side by side with the lowliness and gentleness of
+these.
+
+We note here the combination of that grand independence with loving
+thankfulness for brotherly help. The self-sufficingness of Stoicism is
+essentially inhuman and isolating. It is contrary to God's plan and to
+the fellowship which is meant to knit men together. So we have always to
+take heed to blend with it a loving welcome to sympathy, and not to
+fancy that human help and human kindness is useless. We should be able
+to do without it, but that need not make it the less sweet when it
+comes. We may be carrying water for the march, but shall not the less
+prize a brook by the way. Our firm souls should be like the rocking
+stones in Cornwall, poised so truly that tempests cannot shake them, and
+yet vibrating at the touch of a little child's soft hand. That lofty
+independence needs to be humanised by grateful acceptance of the
+refreshment of human sympathy even though we can do without it.
+
+Paul shows us here what is the true thing in a brother's help for which
+to be thankful. The reason why he was glad of their help was because it
+spoke to his heart and told him that they were making themselves sharers
+with him in his troubles. As he tells us in the beginning of the letter,
+their fellowship in his labours had been from the beginning a joy to
+him. It was not so much their material help as their true sympathy that
+he valued. The high level to which he lifts what was possibly a very
+modest contribution, if measured by money standards, carries with it a
+great lesson for all receivers and for all givers of such gifts,
+teaching the one that they are purely selfish if they are glad of what
+they get, and bidding the other remember that they may give so as to
+hurt by a gift more than by a blow, that they may give infinitely more
+by loving sympathy than by much gold, and that a £5 note does not
+discharge all their obligations. We have to give after His pattern who
+does not toss us our alms from a height, but Himself comes to bestow
+them, and whose gift, though it be the unspeakable gift of eternal life,
+is less than the love it speaks, in that He Himself has in wondrous
+manner become partaker of our weakness. The pattern of all sympathy, the
+giver of all our possessions, is God. Let us hold to Him in faith and
+love, and all earthly love will be sweeter and sympathy more precious.
+Our own hearts will be refined and purified to a delicacy of
+consideration and a tenderness beyond their own. Our souls will be made
+lords of all circumstances and strengthened according to our need. He
+will say to us 'My grace is sufficient for thee,' and we, as we feel His
+strength being made perfect in our weakness, shall be able to say with
+humble confidence, 'I can do all things in Christ who strengtheneth me
+within.'
+
+
+
+
+GIFTS GIVEN, SEED SOWN
+
+          'And ye yourselves also know, ye Philippians, that
+          in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed
+          from Macedonia, no church had fellowship with me
+          in the matter of giving and receiving, but ye
+          only; for even in Thessalonica ye sent once and
+          again unto my need. Not that I seek for the gift;
+          but I seek for the fruit that increaseth to your
+          account. But I have all things, and abound: I am
+          filled, having received from Epaphroditus the
+          things that came from you, an odour of a sweet
+          smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to
+          God. And my God shall fulfil every need of yours
+          according to His riches in glory in Christ
+          Jesus.'--PHIL. iv. 15-19 (R.V.).
+
+
+Paul loved the Philippians too well and was too sure of their love to be
+conscious of any embarrassment in expressing his thanks for money help.
+His thanks are profuse and long drawn out. Our present text still
+strikes the note of grateful acknowledgment. It gives us a little
+glimpse into earlier instances of their liberality, and beautifully
+suggests that as they had done to him so God would do to them, and that
+their liberality was in a fashion a prophecy, because it was in some
+measure an imitation, of God's liberality. He had just said 'I am full,
+having received the things which were sent from you,' and now he says,
+'My God shall fill full all your needs.' The use of the same word in
+these two connections is a piece of what one would call the very
+ingenuity of graceful courtesy, if it were not something far deeper,
+even the utterance of a loving and self-forgetting heart.
+
+I. We may note here Paul's money relations with the churches.
+
+We know that he habitually lived by his own labour. He could call to
+witness the assembled elders at Ephesus, when he declared that 'these
+hands ministered unto my necessities,' and could propose himself as an
+illustration of the words of the Lord Jesus, 'It is more blessed to give
+than to receive.' He firmly holds the right of Christian teachers to be
+supported by the churches, and vehemently insists upon it in the First
+Epistle to the Corinthians. But he waives the right in his own case, and
+passionately insists that it were better for him rather to die than that
+any man should make his glorying void. He will not use to the full his
+right in the Gospel 'that he may make a Gospel without charge,' but when
+needed he gladly accepted money gifts, as he did from the Philippians.
+In our text he points back to an earlier instance of this. The history
+of that instance we may briefly recall. After his indignities and
+imprisonment in Philippi he went straight to Thessalonica, stayed there
+a short time till a riot drove him to take refuge in Berea, whence again
+he had to flee, and guided by brethren reached Athens. There he was
+left alone, and his guides went back to Macedonia to send on Silas and
+Timothy. From Athens he went to Corinth, and there was rejoined by them.
+According to our text, 'in the beginning of the Gospel,' that is, of
+course, its beginning in Philippi, they relieved him twice in
+Thessalonica, and if the words in our text which date the Philippians'
+gift may be read 'when I had departed from Macedonia,' we should have
+here another reference to the same incident mentioned in 2 Corinthians,
+chap. xi. 8-9, where he speaks of being in want there, and having 'the
+measure of my want' supplied by the brethren who came from Macedonia.
+The coincidence of these two incidental references hid away, as it were,
+confirms the historical truthfulness of both Epistles. And if we take
+into view the circumstances in which he was placed in Thessalonica and
+at the beginning of his stay in Corinth, his needing and receiving such
+aid is amply accounted for. Once again, after a long interval, when he
+was a prisoner in Rome, and probably unable to work for his maintenance,
+their care of him flourished again.
+
+In the present circumstances of our churches, it seems necessary that
+the right which Paul so strongly asserted should, for the most part, not
+be waived, but the only true way of giving and receiving as between
+minister and people is when it is a matter not of payment but a gift.
+When it is an expression of sympathy and affection on both sides, the
+relationship is pleasant and may be blessed. When it comes to be a
+business transaction, and is to be measured by the rules applicable to
+such, it goes far to destroy some of the sweetest bonds, and to endanger
+a preacher's best influence.
+
+II. The lofty view here taken of such service.
+
+It is 'the fruit that increaseth to your account.' Fruit, which as it
+were is put to their credit in the account-book of heaven, but it is
+called by Paul by a sacreder name as being an odour of a sweet smell, a
+sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God, in which metaphor all the
+sacred ideas of yielding up precious things to God and of the sacred
+fire that consumed the offering or brought to bear on the prosaic
+material gift.
+
+The principle which the Apostle here lays down in reference to a money
+gift has, of course, a much wider application, and is as true about all
+Christian acts. We need not be staggered at the emphasis with which Paul
+states the truths of their acceptableness and rewardableness, but in
+order fully to understand the ground of his assurance we must remember
+that in his view the root of all such fruit increasing to our account,
+and of everything which can claim to be an odour of a sweet smell well
+pleasing to God, is love to Christ, and the renewal of our nature by the
+spirit of God dwelling in us. In us there dwells no good thing. It is
+only as we abide in Him and His words abide in us that we bear much
+fruit. Separate from Him we can do nothing. If our works are ever to
+smell sweet to God, they must be done for Christ, and in a very profound
+and real sense, done by Him.
+
+The essential character of all work which has the right to be called
+good, and which is acceptable to God, is sacrifice. The one exhortation
+which takes the place and more than fills the place of all other
+commandments, and is enforced by the motive which takes the place, and
+more than takes the place of all other motives, is, 'I beseech you by
+the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice.' It is
+works which in the intention of the doer are offered to Him, and in
+which therefore there is a surrender of our own wills, or tastes, or
+inclinations, or passions, or possessions, that yield to Him an odour of
+a sweet smell. The old condition which touched the chivalrous heart of
+David has to be repeated by us in regard to any work which we can ever
+hope to make well pleasing to God; 'I will not offer burnt offerings
+unto the Lord my God which cost me nothing.'
+
+There is a spurious humility which treats all the works of good men as
+filthy rags, but such a false depreciation is contradicted by Christ's
+'Well done, good and faithful servant.' It is true that all our deeds
+are stained and imperfect, but if they are offered on the altar which He
+provides, it will sanctify the giver and the gift. He is the great Aaron
+who makes atonement for the iniquity of our holy things. And whilst we
+are stricken silent with thankfulness for the wonderful mercy of His
+gracious allowance, we may humbly hope that His 'Well done' will be
+spoken of us, and may labour, not without a foretaste that we do not
+labour in vain, that 'whether present or absent we may be well pleasing
+to Him.'
+
+The fruit is here supposed to be growing, that is, of course, in another
+life. We need not insist that the service and sacrifice and work of
+earth, if the motive be right, tell in a man's condition after death. It
+is not all the same how Christian men live; some gain ten talents, some
+five, and some two, and the difference between them is not always as the
+parable represents it, a difference in the original endowment. An
+entrance may be given into the eternal kingdom, and yet it may not be an
+abundant entrance.
+
+III. The gift that supplies the givers.
+
+Paul has nothing to bestow, but he serves a great God who will see to it
+that no man is the poorer by helping His servants. The king's honour is
+concerned in not letting a poor man suffer by lodging and feeding his
+retainers. The words here suggest to us the source from which our need
+may be filled full, as an empty vessel might be charged to the brim with
+some precious liquid, the measure or limit of the fulness, and the
+channel by which we receive it.
+
+Paul was so sure that the Philippians' needs would all be satisfied,
+because he knew that his own had been; he is generalising from his own
+case, and that, I think, is at all events part of the reason why he says
+with much emphasis, '_My_ God. As He has done to me He will do to you,'
+but even without the 'my,' the great name contains in itself a promise
+and its seal. 'God will supply just because He is God'; that is what His
+name means--infinite fulness and infinite self-communicativeness and
+delight in giving. But is not so absolutely unlimited a promise as this
+convicted of complete unreality when contrasted with the facts of any
+life, even of the most truly Christian or the most outwardly happy? Its
+contradiction of the grim facts of experience is not to be slurred over
+by restricting it to religious needs only. The promise needs the eye of
+Faith to interpret the facts of experience, and to let nothing darken
+the clear vision that if any seeming need is left by God unfilled, it is
+not an indispensable need. If we do not get what we want we may be quite
+sure that we do not need it. The axiom of Christian faith is that
+whatever we do not obtain we do not require. Very desirable things may
+still not be necessary. Let us limit our notions of necessity by the
+facts of God's giving, and then we, too, shall have learned, in
+whatsoever state we are, therein to be content. When the Apostle says
+that God shall fill all our need full up to the brim, was he
+contemplating only such necessities as God could supply through outward
+gifts? Surely not. God Himself is the filler and the only filler of a
+human heart, and it is by this impartation of Himself and by nothing
+else that He bestows upon us the supply of our needs.
+
+Unless we have been initiated into this deepest and yet simplest secret
+of life, it will be full of gnawing pain and unfulfilled longings.
+Unless we have learned that our needs are like the cracks in the parched
+ground, cups to hold the rain from heaven, doors by which God Himself
+can come to us, we shall dwell for ever in a dry and thirsty land. God
+Himself is the only satisfier of the soul. 'Whom have I in heaven but
+Thee, and there is none upon earth that'--if I am not a fool--'I desire
+side by side with Thee?'
+
+But Paul here sets forth in very bold words the measure or limits of the
+divine supply of our need. It is 'according to His riches in glory.'
+Then, all of God belongs to me, and the whole wealth of His aggregated
+perfections is available for stopping the crannies of my heart and
+filling its emptiness. My emptiness corresponds with His fulness as some
+concavity does with the convexity that fits into it, and the whole that
+He is waits to fill and to satisfy me. There is no limit really to what
+a man may have of God except the limitless limit of the infinite divine
+nature, but on the other hand this great promise is not fulfilled all at
+once, and whilst the actual limit is the boundlessness of God, there is
+a working limit, so to speak, a variable one, but a very real one. The
+whole riches of God's glory are available for us, but only so much of
+the boundless store as we desire and are at present capable of taking
+in will belong to us now. What is the use of owning half a continent if
+the owner lives on an acre of it and grows what he wants there, and has
+never seen the broad lands that yet belong to him? Nothing hinders a man
+from indefinitely increased possession of a growing measure of God,
+except his own arbitrarily narrowed measure of desire and capacity.
+Therefore it becomes a solemn question for each of us, Am I day by day
+becoming more and more fit to possess more of God, and enjoy more of the
+God whom I possess? In Him we have each 'a potentiality of wealth beyond
+the dreams of avarice.' Do we growingly realise that boundless
+possibility?
+
+The channel by which that boundless supply is to reach us is distinctly
+set forth here. All these riches are stored up 'in Christ Jesus.' A deep
+lake may be hidden away in the bosom of the hills that would pour
+blessing and fertility over a barren land if it could find a channel
+down into the plains, but unless there be a river flowing out of it, its
+land-locked waters might as well be dried up. When Paul says 'riches in
+glory,' he puts them up high above our reach, but when he adds 'in
+Christ Jesus,' he brings them all down amongst us. In Him is 'infinite
+riches in a narrow room.' If we are in Him then we are beside our
+treasure, and have only to put out our hands and take the wealth that is
+lying there. All that we need is 'in Christ,' and if we are in Christ it
+is all close at our sides.
+
+Then the question comes to be, 'Am I thus near my wealth, and can I get
+at it whenever I want it, as I want it, and as much as I want of it?' We
+can if we will. The path is easy to define, though our slothfulness
+find it hard to tread. That man is in Christ who dwells with Him by
+faith, whose heart is by love plunged in His love, who daily seeks to
+hold communion with Him amid the distractions of life, and who in
+practical submission obeys His will. If thus we trust, if thus we love,
+if thus we hold fast to Him, and if thus we link Him with all our
+activities in the world, need will cease to grow, and will only be an
+occasion for God's gift. 'Delight thyself in the Lord,' and then the
+heart's desires being set upon Him, 'He will give thee the desire of thy
+heart.'
+
+Paul says to us 'My God shall supply all your need.' Let us answer, 'The
+Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.'
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL WORDS
+
+          'Now unto our God and Father be the glory for ever
+          and ever, Amen. Salute every saint in Christ
+          Jesus. The brethren which are with me salute you.
+          All the saints salute you, especially they that
+          are of Cæsar's household. The grace of the Lord
+          Jesus Christ be with your spirit.'--PHIL. iv.
+          20-23 (R.V.).
+
+
+These closing words fall into three unconnected parts, a doxology,
+greetings, and a benediction. As in all his letters, the Apostle follows
+the natural instinct of making his last words loving words. Even when he
+had to administer a bitter draught, the last drops in the cup were
+sweetened, and to the Philippians whom he loved so well, and in whose
+loyal love he confided so utterly, his parting was tender as an embrace.
+Taking together the three elements of this farewell, they present to us
+a soul filled with desire for the glory of God and with loving yearning
+for all His brethren. We shall best deal with them by simply taking them
+in order.
+
+I. The Doxology.
+
+It is possibly evoked by the immediately preceding thought of God's
+infinite supply of all human need 'according to his riches in _glory_';
+but the glory which is so richly stored in Christ, and is the full
+storehouse from which our emptiness is to be filled, is not the same as
+the glory here ascribed to Him. The former is the sum of His divine
+perfections, the light of His own infinite being: the latter is the
+praise rendered to Him when we know Him for what He is, and exalt Him in
+our thankful thoughts and adoration. As this doxology is the last word
+of this whole letter, we may say that it gathers into one all that
+precedes it. Our ascription of glory to God is the highest object of all
+His self-manifestation, and should be the end of all our contemplations
+of Him and of His acts. The faith that God does 'all for His glory' may
+be and often has been so interpreted as to make his character repellent
+and hideous, but in reality it is another way of saying that God is
+love. He desires that all men should be gladdened and elevated by
+knowing Him as He is. His glory is to give. That to which He has
+committed the charge of interpreting Him to our dim eyes and disordered
+natures is not the attributes of sovereign power, or creative wisdom, or
+administrative providence, or any other elements which men lay hold of
+in their conceptions of deity. When men make gods they make them in
+their own image: when God reveals God, the emphasis is put on an
+altogether different aspect of His nature. It is His self-communicating
+and paternal love revealed to the heart of a son which will kindle the
+highest aspiration of praise, and that fatherhood is not found in the
+fact that God has made us, but in the higher fact that He has redeemed
+us and has sent the spirit of His Son into our hearts. The doxology of
+our text is a distinctively Christian doxology which Paul conceives can
+only be uttered by lips which have learned to say 'Abba, Father,' 'and
+have received the adoption of sons' through the eternal Son.
+
+Mark, too, that this glad ascription of glory to God is conceived of as
+sounded forth for ever and ever, or literally through 'ages and ages, as
+long as successive epochs shall unfold.' It is not as if the revelation
+of the divine character were in the past, and the light of it continued
+to touch stony lips to music, but it fills in continuous forthcoming
+every age, and in every age men receive the fulness of God, and in every
+age redeemed hearts bring back their tribute of praise and love to Him.
+
+II. The Greetings.
+
+The Apostle's habit of closing all his letters with kindly messages is,
+of course, more than a habit. It is the natural instinct to which all
+true hearts have a hundred times yielded. It is remarkable that in this
+letter there are no individual greetings, but that instead of such there
+is the emphatic greeting to every saint in Christ Jesus. He will not
+single out any where all are so near His heart, and He will have no
+jealousies to be fed by His selection of more favoured persons. It may
+be too, that the omission of individual messages is partly occasioned by
+some incipient tendencies to alienation and faction of which we see some
+traces in His earnest exhortations to stand fast in one spirit, and to
+be of the same mind, having the same love, and being of one accord, as
+well as in his exhortation to two Philippian women to be of the same
+mind in the Lord. The all-embracing word at parting singularly links the
+end of the letter with its beginning, where we find a remarkable
+sequence of similar allusions to 'all' the Philippian Christians. He
+has them all in His heart; they are all partakers with Him of grace; He
+longs after them all.
+
+The designation by which Paul describes the recipients of his greeting
+carries in it a summons as well as a promise. They are saints, and they
+are so as being 'in Christ.' That name is often used as a clumsy
+sarcasm, but it goes to the very root of Christian character. The
+central idea contained in it is that of consecration to God, and that
+which is often taken to be its whole meaning is but a secondary one, a
+result of that consecration. The true basis of all real purity of
+conduct lies in devotion of heart and life to God, and for want of
+discerning the connection of these two elements the world's ethics fail
+in theory and in practice. A 'saint' is not a faultless monster, and the
+persistence of failures and inconsistencies, whilst affording only too
+sad an occasion for penitence and struggle, afford no occasion for a
+man's shrinking from taking to himself the humble claim to be a saint.
+Both the elements of consecration to God and of real and progressive,
+though never complete perfection of personal character, are realised
+only in Christ; in and only in fellowship with Him whose life was
+unbroken fellowship with the Father, and whose will was completely
+accordant with the Father's, do we rise to the height of belonging to
+God. And only in Him who could challenge a world to convict Him of sin
+shall we make even a beginning of personal righteousness. If we are in
+Christ we should be saints to-day however imperfect our holiness, and
+shall be 'as the angels of God' in the day that is coming--nay, rather
+as the Lord of the Angels, 'not having spot or blemish or any such
+thing.'
+
+The New Testament has other names for believers, each of which expresses
+some great truth in regard to them; for example, the earliest name by
+which they knew themselves was the simple one of 'brethren,' which spoke
+of their common relation to a Father and pledged them to the sweetness
+and blessedness of a family. The sarcastic wits of Antioch called them
+Christians as seeing nothing in them other than what they had many a
+time seen in the adherents of some founder of a school or a party. They
+called themselves disciples or believers, revealing by both names their
+humble attitude and their Lord's authority, and by the latter disclosing
+to seeing eyes the central bond which bound them to Him. But the name of
+Saint declares something more than these in that it speaks of their
+relation to God, the fulfilment of the Old Testament ideal, and carries
+in it a prophecy of personal character.
+
+The sharers in Paul's salutation call for some notice. We do not know
+who 'the brethren that are with me' were. We might have supposed from
+Paul's pathetic words that he had no man like-minded with him, that the
+faithful band whom we find named in the other epistles of the captivity
+were dispersed. But though there were none 'like-minded who will care
+truly for your state,' there were some recognised as brethren who were
+closely associated with him, and who, though they had no such warm
+interest in the Philippians as he had, still had a real affection for
+them, drawn no doubt from him. Distinct from these was the whole body of
+the Roman Christians, from the mention of whom we may gather that his
+imprisonment did not prevent his intercourse with them. Again, distinct
+from these, though a part of them, were the saints of Cæsar's
+household. He had apparently special opportunities for intercourse with
+them, and probably his imprisonment brought him through the prætorian
+guards into association with them, as Cæsar's household included all the
+servants and retainers of Nero.
+
+May we not see in this union of members of the most alien races a
+striking illustration of the new bond which the Gospel had woven among
+men? There was a Jew standing in the midst between Macedonian Greeks and
+proud Roman citizens, including members of that usually most heartless
+and arrogant of all classes, the lackeys of a profligate court, and they
+are all clasping one another's hands in true brotherly love. Society was
+falling to pieces. We know the tragic spectacle that the empire
+presented then. Amidst universal decay of all that held men together,
+here was a new uniting principle; everywhere else dissolution was at
+work; here was again crystallising. A flower was opening its petals
+though it grew on a dunghill. What was it that drew slaves and
+patricians, the Pharisee of Tarsus, rude Lycaonians, the 'barbarous'
+people of Melita, the Areopagite of Athens, the citizens of Rome into
+one loving family? How came Lydia and her slave girl, Onesimus and his
+master, the prætorian guard and his prisoner, the courtier in Nero's
+golden house and the jailer at Philippi into one great fellowship of
+love? They were all one in Christ Jesus.
+
+And what lessons the saints in Cæsar's household may teach us! Think of
+the abyss of lust and murder there, of the Emperor by turns a buffoon, a
+sensualist, and a murderer. A strange place to find saints in that sty
+of filth! Let no man say that it is impossible for a pure life to be
+lived in any circumstances, or try to bribe his conscience by insisting
+on the difficulties of his environment. It may be our duty to stand at
+our post however foul may be our surroundings and however uncongenial
+our company, and if we are sure that He has set us there, we may be sure
+that He is with us there, and that there we can live the life and
+witness to His name.
+
+III. The Parting Benediction.
+
+The form of the benediction seems to be more correctly given in the
+Revised Version, which reads 'with your spirit' instead of 'with you
+all.' That form reappears in Galatians and in Philemon. What Paul
+especially desires of his favourite church is that they may possess 'the
+grace.' Grace is love exercising itself to inferiors, and to those who
+deserve something sadder and darker. The gifts of that one grace are
+manifold. They comprise all blessings that man can need or receive. This
+angel comes with her hands and her lap full of good. Her name is
+shorthand for all that God can bestow or man can ask or think.
+
+And it needs all the names by which Christ is known among men to
+describe the encyclopædiacal Person who can bestow the encyclopædiacal
+gift. Here we have them all gathered, as it were, into one great diadem,
+set on His head where once the crown of thorns was twined. He is Lord,
+the name which implies at least absolute authority, and is most probably
+the New Testament translation of the Old Testament name of Jehovah. He
+is our Lord as supreme over us, and wonderful as it is, as belonging to
+us. He holds the keys of the storehouse of grace. The river of the water
+of life flows where He turns it on. He is Jesus--the personal name which
+He bore in the days of His flesh, and by which men who knew Him only as
+one of themselves called Him. It is the token of His brotherhood and
+the guarantee of the sympathy which will ever bestow 'grace for grace.'
+He is the Christ, the Messiah, the name which points back to the Old
+Testament ideas and declares His office, realising all the rapturous
+anticipations of prophets, and the longings of psalmists, and more than
+fulfilling them all by giving Himself to men.
+
+That great gift is to be the companion of every spirit which looks to
+that Jesus in the reality of His humanity, in the greatness of His
+office, in the loftiness of His divinity, and finds in each of His names
+an anchor for its faith and an authoritative claim for its obedience.
+
+Such a wish as this benediction is the truest expression of human
+friendship; it is the highest desire any of us can form for ourselves or
+for those dearest to us. Do we keep it clear before us in our
+intercourse with them so that the end of that intercourse will naturally
+be such a prayer?
+
+Our human love has its limitations. We can but wish for others the grace
+which Christ can give, but neither our wishes nor His giving can make
+the grace ours unless for ourselves we take the great gift that is
+freely given to us of God. It is no accident that all his letters close
+thus. This benediction is the last word of God's revelation to man, the
+brightness in the clear west, the last strain of the great oratorio. The
+last word or last book of Scripture is 'the grace of our Lord Jesus
+Christ be with you all.' Let us take up the solemn Amen in our lips and
+in our hearts.
+
+
+
+
+COLOSSIANS
+
+
+
+
+SAINTS, BELIEVERS, BRETHREN
+
+          ' . . . The saints and faithful brethren in
+          Christ.'--COL. i. 2.
+
+
+'The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,' says the Acts
+of the Apostles. It was a name given by outsiders, and like most of the
+instances where a sect, or school, or party is labelled with the name of
+its founder, it was given in scorn. It hit and yet missed its mark. The
+early believers were Christians, that is, Christ's men, but they were
+not merely a group of followers of a man, like many other groups of whom
+the Empire at that time was full. So they never used that name
+themselves. It occurs twice only in Scripture, once when King Agrippa
+was immensely amused at the audacity of Paul in thinking that he would
+easily make 'a Christian' of him; and once when Peter speaks of
+'suffering as a Christian,' where he is evidently quoting, as it were,
+the indictment on which the early believers were tried and punished.
+What did they call themselves then?
+
+I have chosen this text not for the purpose of speaking about it only,
+but because it gathers together in brief compass the three principal
+designations by which the early believers knew themselves.
+'Saints'--that tells their relation to God, as well as their character,
+for it means 'consecrated,' set apart for Him, and therefore pure;
+'faithful'--that means 'full of faith' and is substantially equivalent
+to the usual 'believers,' which defines their relation to Jesus Christ
+as the Revealer of God; 'brethren'--that defines their relation and
+sentiment towards their fellows. These terms go a great deal deeper than
+the nickname which the wits of Antioch invented. The members of the
+Church were not content with the vague 'Christian,' but they called
+themselves 'saints,' 'believers,' 'brethren.' One designation does not
+appear here, which we must take into account for completeness: the
+earliest of all--disciples. Now, I purpose to bring together these four
+names, by which the early believers thought and spoke of themselves, in
+order to point the lessons as to our position and our duty, which are
+wrapped up in them. And I may just say that, perhaps, it is no sign of
+advance that the Church, as years rolled on, accepted the world's name
+for itself, and that people found it easier to call themselves
+'Christians'--which did not mean very much--than to call themselves
+'saints' or 'believers.'
+
+Now then, to begin with,
+
+I. They were 'Disciples' first of all.
+
+The facts as to the use of that name are very plain, and as instructive
+as they are plain. It is a standing designation in the Gospels, both in
+the mouths of friends and of outsiders; it is sometimes, though very
+sparingly, employed by Jesus Christ Himself. It persists on through the
+book of the Acts of the Apostles, and then it stops dead, and we never
+hear it again.
+
+Now its existence at first, and its entire abandonment afterwards, both
+seem to me to carry very valuable lessons. Let me try to work them out.
+Of course, 'disciple' or 'scholar' has for its correlative--as the
+logicians call it--'teacher.' And so we find that as the original
+adherents of Jesus called themselves 'disciples,' they addressed Him as
+'Master,' which is the equivalent of 'Rabbi.' That at once suggests the
+thought that to themselves, and to the people who saw the origination of
+the little Christian community, the Lord and His handful of followers
+seemed just to be like John and his disciples, the Pharisees and their
+disciples, and many another Rabbi and his knot of admiring adherents.
+Therefore whilst the name was in one view fitting, it was conspicuously
+inadequate, and as time went on, and the Church became more conscious of
+the uniqueness of the bond that knit it to Jesus Christ, it
+instinctively dropped the name 'disciple,' and substituted others more
+intimate and worthy.
+
+But yet it remains permanently true, that Christ's followers are
+Christ's scholars, and that He is their Rabbi and Teacher. Only the
+peculiarity, the absolute uniqueness, of His attitude and action as a
+Teacher lies in two things: one, that His main subject was Himself, as
+He said, 'I am the Truth,' and consequently His characteristic demand
+from His scholars was not, as with other teachers, 'Accept this, that,
+or the other doctrine which I propound,' but 'Believe in Me'; and the
+other, that He seldom if ever argues, or draws conclusions from previous
+premises, that He never speaks as if He Himself had learnt and fought
+His way to what He is saying, or betrays uncertainty, limitation, or
+growth in His opinions, and that for all confirmation of His
+declarations, He appeals only to the light within and to His own
+authority: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you.' No wonder that the common
+people were astonished at His teaching, and felt that here was an
+authority in which the wearisome citations of what Rabbi So-and-So had
+said, altogether lacked.
+
+That teaching abides still, and, as I believe, opens out into, and is
+our source of, all that we know--in distinction and contrast from,
+'imagine,' 'hope,' 'fear'--of God, and of ourselves, and of the future.
+It casts the clearest light on morals for the individual and on politics
+for the community. Whatever men may say about Christianity being effete,
+it will not be effete till the world has learnt and absorbed the
+teaching of Jesus Christ; and we are a good long way from that yet!
+
+If He is thus the Teacher, the perpetual Teacher, and the only Teacher,
+of mankind in regard to all these high things about God and man and the
+relation between them, about life and death and the world, and about the
+practice and conduct of the individual and of the community, then we, if
+we are His disciples, build houses on the rock, in the degree in which
+we not only hear but do the things that He commands. For this Teacher is
+no theoretical handler of abstract propositions, but the authoritative
+imposer of the law of life, and all His words have a direct bearing upon
+conduct. Therefore it is vain for us to say: 'Lord, Lord, Thou hast
+taught in our streets and we have accepted Thy teaching.' He looks down
+upon us from the Throne, as He looked upon the disciples in that upper
+room, and He says to each of us: 'If ye know these things, happy are ye
+if ye do them.'
+
+But the complete disappearance of the name as the development of the
+Church advanced, brings with it another lesson, and that is, that
+precious and great as are the gifts which Jesus Christ bestows as a
+Teacher, and unique as His act and attitude in that respect are, the
+name either of teacher or of disciple fails altogether to penetrate to
+the essence of the relation which knits us together. It is not enough
+for our needs that we shall be taught. The worst man in the world knows
+a far nobler morality than the best man practises. And if it were true,
+as some people superficially say is the case, that evil-doing is the
+result of ignorance, there would be far less evil-doing in the world
+than, alas! there is. It is not for the want of knowing, that we go
+wrong, as our consciences tell us; but it is for want of something that
+can conquer the evil tendencies within, and lift off the burden of a
+sinful past which weighs on us. As in the carboniferous strata what was
+pliant vegetation has become heavy mineral, our evil deeds lie heavy on
+our souls. What we need is not to be told what we ought to be, but to be
+enabled to be it. Electricity can light the road, and it can drive the
+car along it; and that is what we want, a dynamic as well as an
+illuminant, something that will make us able to do and to be what
+conscience has told us we ought to be and do.
+
+Teacher? Yes. But if _only_ teacher, then He is nothing more than one of
+a multitude who in all generations have vainly witnessed to sinful men
+of the better path. There is no reformation for the individual, and
+little hope for humanity, in a Christ whom you degrade to the level of a
+Rabbi, or in a Church which has not pressed nearer to Him than to feel
+itself His disciples.
+
+There was a man who came to Jesus by night, and was in the dark about
+the Jesus to whom he came, and he said, 'We know that Thou art a Teacher
+come from God.' But Jesus did not accept the witness, though a young
+teacher fighting for recognition might have been glad to get it from an
+authoritative member of the Sanhedrim. But He answered, 'Except a man be
+born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' If we need to be born
+again before we see it, it is not teachers of it that will serve our
+turn, but One who takes us by the hand, and translates us out of the
+tyranny of the darkness into the Kingdom of the Son of God's love. So
+much, then, for the first of these names and lessons.
+
+Now turn to the second--
+
+II. The Disciples must be Believers.
+
+That name begins to appear almost immediately after Pentecost, and
+continues throughout. It comes in two forms, one which is in my text,
+'the faithful,' meaning thereby not the reliable, but the people that
+are full of faith; the other, meaning the same thing, they who believe,
+the 'believers.' The Church found that 'disciple' was not enough. It
+went deeper; and, with a true instinct, laid hold of the unique bond
+which knits men to their Lord and Saviour. That name indicates that
+Jesus Christ appears to the man who has faith in a new character. He is
+not any longer the Teacher who is to be listened to, but He is the
+Object of trust. And that implies the recognition, first, of His
+Divinity, which alone is strong enough to bear up the weight of millions
+of souls leaning hard upon it; and, second, of what He has done and not
+merely of what He has said. We accept the Teacher's word; we trust the
+Saviour's Cross. And in the measure in which men learned that the centre
+of the work of the Rabbi Jesus was the death of the Incarnate Son of
+God, their docility was sublimed into faith.
+
+That faith is the real bond that knits men to Jesus Christ. We are
+united to Him, and become recipient of the gifts that He has to bestow,
+by no sacraments, by no externals, by no reverential admiration of His
+supreme wisdom and perfect beauty of character, not by assuming the
+attitude of the disciple, but by flinging our whole selves upon Him,
+because He is our Saviour. That unites us to Jesus Christ; nothing else
+does. Faith is the opening of the heart, by which all His power can be
+poured into us. It is the grasping of His hand, by which, even though
+the cold waters be above our knees and be rising to our hearts, we are
+lifted above them and they are made a solid pavement for our feet. Faith
+is the door opened by ourselves, and through which will come all the
+Glory that dwelt between the cherubim, and will fill the secret place in
+our hearts. To be the disciple of a Rabbi is something; to be the
+'faithful' dependent on the Saviour is to be His indeed.
+
+And then there is to be remembered, further, that this bond, which is
+the only vital link between a man and Christ, is therefore the basis of
+all virtue, of all nobility, of all beauty of conduct, and that
+'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report' are its natural
+efflorescence and fruit. And so that leads us to the third point--
+
+III. The believing Disciple is a 'Saint.'
+
+That name does not appear in the Gospels, but it begins to show in the
+Acts of the Apostles, and it becomes extremely common throughout the
+Epistles of Paul. He had no hesitation in calling the very imperfect
+disciples in Corinth by this great name. He was going to rebuke them for
+some very great offences, not only against Christian elevation of
+conduct, but against common pagan morality; but he began by calling them
+'saints.'
+
+What is a saint? First and foremost, a man who has given himself to God,
+and is consecrated thereby. Whoever has cast himself on Christ, and has
+taken Christ for his, therein and in the same degree as he is exercising
+faith, has thus yielded himself to God. If your faith has not led you
+to such a consecration of will and heart and self, you had better look
+out and see whether it is faith at all. But then, because faith involves
+the consecration of a man to God, and consecration necessarily implies
+purity, since nothing can be laid on God's altar which is not sanctified
+thereby, the name of saint comes to imply purity of character. Sanctity
+is the Christian word which means the very flower and fragrant aroma of
+what the world calls virtue.
+
+But sanctity is not emotion, A man may luxuriate in devout feeling, and
+sing and praise and pray, and be very far from being a saint; and there
+is a great deal of the emotional Christianity of this day which has a
+strange affinity for the opposite of saintship. Sanctity is not
+aloofness. 'There were saints in Cæsar's household'--a very unlikely
+place; they were flowers on a dunghill, and perhaps their blossoms were
+all the brighter because of what they grew on, and which they could
+transmute from corruption into beauty. So sanctity is no blue ribbon of
+the Christian profession, to be given to a few select (and mostly
+ascetic) specimens of consecration, but it is the designation of each of
+us, if we are disciples who are more than disciples, that is,
+'believers.' And thus, brethren, we have to see to it that, in our own
+cases, our faith leads to surrender, and our self-surrender to purity of
+life and conduct. Faith, if real, brings sanctity; sanctity, if real, is
+progressive. Sanctity, though imperfect, may be real.
+
+IV. The believing Saints are 'Brethren.'
+
+That is the name that predominates over all others in the latter
+portions of the New Testament, and it is very natural that it should do
+so. It reposes upon and implies the three preceding. Its rapid adoption
+and universal use express touchingly the wonder of the early Church at
+its own unity. The then world was rent asunder by deep clefts of
+misunderstanding, alienation, animosity, racial divisions of Jew and
+Greek, Parthian, Scythian; by sexual divisions which flung men and
+women, who ought to have been linked hand in hand, and united heart to
+heart, to opposite sides of a great gulf; by divisions of culture which
+made wise men look down on the unlearned, and the unlearned hate the
+wise men; by clefts of social position, and mainly that diabolical one
+of slave and free. All these divisive and disintegrating forces were in
+active operation. The only thing except Christianity, which produced
+even a semblance of union, was the iron ring of the Roman power which
+compressed them all into one indeed, but crushed the life out of them in
+the process. Into that disintegrating world, full of mutual repulsion,
+came One who drew men to Himself and said, 'One is your Master, even
+Christ, and all ye are brethren.' And to their own astonishment, male
+and female, Greek and Jew, bond and free, philosopher and fool, found
+themselves sitting at the same table as members of one family; and they
+looked in each other's eyes and said, 'Brother!' There had never been
+anything like it in the world. The name is a memorial of the unifying
+power of the Christian faith.
+
+And it is a reminder to us of our own shortcomings. Of course, in the
+early days, the little band were driven together, as sheep that stray
+over a pasture in the sunshine will huddle into a corner in a storm, or
+when the wolves are threatening. There are many reasons to-day which
+make less criminal the alienation from one another of Christian
+communities and Christian individuals. I am not going to dwell on the
+evident signs in this day, for which God be thanked, that Christian men
+are beginning, more than they once did, to realise their unity in Jesus
+Christ, and to be content to think less of the things that separate than
+of the far greater things that unite. But I would lay upon your hearts,
+as individual parts of that great whole, this, that whatever may be the
+differences in culture, outlook, social position, or the like, between
+two Christian men, they each, the rich man and the poor, the educated
+man and the unlettered one, the master and the servant, ought to feel
+that deep down in their true selves they are nearer one another than
+they are to the men who, differing from them in regard to their faith in
+Jesus Christ, are like them in all these superficial respects. Regulate
+your conduct by that thought.
+
+That name, too, speaks to us of the source from which Christian
+brotherhood has come. We are brethren of each other because we have one
+Father, even God, and the Fatherhood which makes us brethren is not that
+which communicates the common life of humanity, but that which imparts
+the new life of sonship through Jesus Christ. So the name points to the
+only way by which the world's dream of a universal brotherhood can ever
+be fulfilled. If there is to be fraternity there must be fatherhood, and
+the life which, possessed by each, makes a family of all, is the life
+which He gives, who is 'the first-born among many brethren,' and who, to
+them who believe on Him, gives power to become the sons of God, and the
+brethren of all the other sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.
+
+So, dear friends, take these names, ponder their significance and the
+duties they impose. Let us make sure that they are true of us. Do not be
+content with the vague, often unmeaning name of Christian, but fill it
+with meaning by being a believer on Christ, a saint devoted to God, and
+a brother of all who, 'by like precious faith,' have become Sons of God.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSPEL-HOPE
+
+          'The hope of the Gospel.'--COL. i. 5.
+
+
+'God never sends mouths but He sends meat to feed them,' says the old
+proverb. And yet it seems as if that were scarcely true in regard to
+that strange faculty called Hope. It may well be a question whether on
+the whole it has given us more pleasure than pain. How seldom it has
+been a true prophet! How perpetually its pictures have been too highly
+coloured! It has cast illusions over the future, colouring the far-off
+hills with glorious purple which, reached, are barren rocks and cold
+snow. It has held out prizes never won. It has made us toil and struggle
+and aspire and fed us on empty husks. Either we have not got what we
+expected or have found it to be less good than it appeared from afar.
+
+If we think of all the lies that hope has told us, of all the vain
+expenditure of effort to which it has tempted us, of the little that any
+of us have of what we began by thinking we should surely attain, hope
+seems a questionable good, and yet how obstinate it is, living on after
+all disappointments and drawing the oldest amongst us onwards. Surely
+somewhere there must be a reason for this great and in some respects
+awful faculty, a vindication of its existence in an adequate object for
+its grasp.
+
+The New Testament has much to say about hope. Christianity lays hold of
+it and professes to supply it with its true nourishment and support. Let
+us look at the characteristics of Christian hope, or, as our text calls
+it, the hope of the Gospel, that is, the hope which the Gospel creates
+and feeds in our souls.
+
+I. What does it hope for?
+
+The weakness of our earthly hopes is that they are fixed on things which
+are contingent and are inadequate to make us blessed. Even when tinted
+with the rainbow hues, which it lends them, they are poor and small. How
+much more so when seen in the plain colourless light of common day. In
+contrast with these the objects of the Christian hope are certain and
+sufficient for all blessedness. In the most general terms they may be
+stated as 'That blessed hope, even the appearing of the Great God and
+our Saviour.' That is the specific Christian hope, precise and definite,
+a real historical event, filling the future with a certain steadfast
+light. Much is lost in the daily experience of all believers by the
+failure to set that great and precise hope in its true place of
+prominence. It is often discredited by millenarian dreams, but
+altogether apart from these it has solidity and substance enough to bear
+the whole weight of a world rested upon it.
+
+That appearance of God brings with it the fulfilment of our highest
+hopes in the 'grace that is to be brought to us at His appearing.' All
+our blessedness of every kind is to be the result of the manifestation
+of God in His unobscured glory. The mirrors that are set round the
+fountain of light flash into hitherto undreamed-of brightness. It is but
+a variation in terms when we describe the blessedness which is to be the
+result of God's appearing as being the Hope of Salvation in its fullest
+sense, or, in still other words, as being the Hope of Eternal Life.
+Nothing short of the great word of the Apostle John, that when He shall
+appear we shall be like Him, exhausts the greatness of the hope which
+the humblest and weakest Christian is not only allowed but commanded to
+cherish. And that great future is certainly capable of, and in Scripture
+receives, a still more detailed specification. We hear, for example, of
+the hope of Resurrection, and it is most natural that the bodily
+redemption which Paul calls the adoption of the body should first emerge
+into distinct consciousness as the principal object of hope in the
+earliest Christian experience, and that the mighty working whereby Jesus
+is able to subdue all things unto Himself, should first of all be
+discerned to operate in changing the body of our humiliation into the
+body of His glory.
+
+But equally natural was it that no merely corporeal transformation
+should suffice to meet the deep longings of Christian souls which had
+learned to entertain the wondrous thought of likeness to God as the
+certain result of the vision of Him, and so believers 'wait for the hope
+of righteousness by faith.' The moral likeness to God, the perfecting of
+our nature into His image, will not always be the issue of struggle and
+restraint, but in its highest form will follow on sight, even as here
+and now it is to be won by faith, and is more surely attained by waiting
+than by effort.
+
+The highest form which the object of our hope takes is, the Hope of the
+Glory of God. This goes furthest; there is nothing beyond this. The eyes
+that have been wearied by looking at many fading gleams and seen them
+die away, may look undazzled into the central brightness, and we may be
+sure that even we shall walk there like the men in the furnace,
+unconsumed, purging our sight at the fountain of radiance, and being
+ourselves glorious with the image of God. This is the crown of glory
+which He has promised to them that love Him. Nothing less than this is
+what our hope has to entertain, and that not as a possibility, but as a
+certainty. The language of Christian hope is not perhaps this may be,
+but verily it shall be. To embrace its transcendent certainties with a
+tremulous faith broken by much unbelief, is sin.
+
+II. The grounds on which the hope of the Gospel rests.
+
+The grounds of our earthly hopes are for the most part possibilities,
+or, at the best, probabilities turned by our wishes into certainties. We
+moor our ships to floating islands which we resolve to think continents.
+So our earthly hopes vary indefinitely in firmness and substance. They
+are sometimes but wishes turned confident, and can never rise higher
+than their source, or be more certain than it is. At the best they are
+building on sand. At the surest there is an element of risk in them. One
+singer indeed may take for his theme 'The pleasures of Hope,' but
+another answers by singing of 'The fallacies of Hope.' Earth-born hopes
+carry no anchor and have always a latent dread looking out of their blue
+eyes.
+
+But it is possible for us to dig down to and build on rock, to have a
+future as certain as our past, to escape in our anticipations from the
+region of the Contingent, and this we assuredly do when we take the hope
+of the Gospel for ours, and listen to Paul proclaiming to us 'Christ
+which is our Hope,' or 'Christ in you the Hope of glory.' If our faith
+grasps Jesus Christ risen from the dead and for us entered into the
+heavenly state as our forerunner, our hope will see in Him the pattern
+and the pledge of our manhood, and will begin to experience even here
+and now the first real though faint accomplishments of itself. The
+Gospel sets forth the facts concerning Christ which fully warrant and
+imperatively require our regarding Him as the perfect realised ideal of
+manhood as God meant it to be, and as bearing in Himself the power to
+make all men even as He is. He has entered into the fellowship of our
+humiliation and become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh that we
+might become life of His Life and spirit of His Spirit. As certain as it
+is that 'we have borne the image of the earthy,' so certain is it that
+'we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.'
+
+What cruel waste of a divine faculty it is, then, of which we are all
+guilty when we allow our hopes to be frittered away and dissipated on
+uncertain and transient goods which they may never secure, and which,
+even if secured, would be ludicrously or rather tragically insufficient
+to make us blessed, instead of withdrawing them from all these and
+fixing them on Him who alone is able to satisfy our hungry souls in all
+their faculties for ever!
+
+The hope of the Gospel is firm enough to rest our all upon because in
+it, by 'two immutable things in which it is impossible that God should
+lie,' His counsel and His oath, He has given strong encouragement to
+them who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before them.
+Well may the hope for which God's own eternal character is the guarantee
+be called 'sure and steadfast.' The hope of the Gospel rests at last on
+the Being and Heart of God. It is that which God 'who cannot lie hath
+promised before the world was' is working towards whilst the world
+lasts, and will accomplish when the world is no more. He has made known
+His purpose and has pledged all the energies and tendernesses of His
+Being to its realisation. Surely on this rock-foundation we may rest
+secure. The hopes that grow on other soils creep along the surface. The
+hope of the Gospel strikes its roots deep into the heart of God.
+
+III. What the hope of the Gospel is and does for us.
+
+We cannot do better than to lay hold of some of the New Testament
+descriptions of it. We recall first that great designation 'A good hope
+through grace.' This hope is no illusion; it does not come from fumes of
+fancy or the play of imagination. The wish is not father to the thought.
+We do not make bricks without straw nor spin ropes of sand on the shore
+of the great waste sea that waits to swallow us up. The cup of Tantalus
+has had its leaks stopped; the sieve carries the treasure unspilled. The
+rock can be rolled to the hill-top. All the disappointments, fallacies,
+and torments of hope pass away. It never makes ashamed. We have a solid
+certainty as solid as memory. The hope which is through grace is the
+full assurance of hope, and that full assurance is just what every other
+hope lacks. In that region and in that region only we can either say I
+hope or I know.
+
+Another designation is 'A lively hope.' It is no poor pale ghost
+brightening and fading, fading and brightening, through which one can
+see the stars shine, and of little power in practical life, but strong
+and vigorous and not the least active amongst the many forces that make
+up the sum of our lives.
+
+It is most significantly designated as 'The blessed hope.' All others
+quickly pass into sorrows. This alone gives lasting joys, for this
+alone is blessed whilst it is only anticipation, and still more blessed
+when its blossoms ripen into full fruition. In all earthly hopes there
+is an element of unrest, but the hope of the Gospel is so remote, so
+certain, and so satisfying, that it works stillness, and they who most
+firmly grasp it 'do with patience wait for it.' Earthly hopes have
+little moral effect and often loosen the sinews of the soul, and are
+distinctly unfavourable to all strenuous effort. But 'every man that
+hath this hope in Jesus purifieth himself even as He is pure,' and the
+Apostle, whose keen insight most surely discerns the character-building
+value of the fundamental facts of Christian experience, was not wrong
+when he bid us find in the hope of the Gospel deeply rooted within us
+the driving force of the most strenuous efforts after purity like His
+whom it is our deepest desire and humble hope to become like.
+
+Let us remember the double account which Scripture gives of the
+discipline by which the hope of the Gospel is won for our very own. On
+the one hand, we have 'joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in
+hope.' Our faith breeds hope because it grasps the divine facts
+concerning Jesus from which hope springs. And faith further breeds hope
+because it kindles joy and peace, which are the foretastes and earnests
+of the future blessedness. On the other hand, the very opposite
+experiences work to the same end, for 'tribulation worketh patience, and
+patience experience, and experience hope.' Sorrow rightly borne tests
+for us the power of the Gospel and the reality of our faith, and so
+gives us a firmer grip of hope and of Him on whom in the last result it
+all depends. Out of this collision of flint and steel the spark springs.
+The water churned into foam and tortured in the cataract has the fair
+bow bending above it.
+
+But this discipline will not achieve its result, therefore comes the
+exhortation to us all, 'Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and
+hope to the end.' The hope of the Gospel is the one thing that we need.
+Without it all else is futile and frail. God alone is worthy to have the
+whole weight and burden of a creature's hope fixed on Him, and it is an
+everlasting truth that they who are 'without God in the world' also
+'have no hope.' Saints of old held fast by an assurance, which they must
+often have felt left many questions still to be asked, and because they
+were sure that they were continually with Him, were also sure of His
+guidance through life and of His afterwards receiving them to glory. But
+for us the twilight has broadened into day, and we shall be wise if,
+knowing our defencelessness, and forsaking all the lies and illusions of
+this vain present, we flee for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before
+us in the Gospel.
+
+
+
+
+'ALL POWER'
+
+          'Strengthened with all power, according to the
+          might of His glory, unto all patience and
+          longsuffering with joy.'--COL. i. 11 (R.V.).
+
+
+There is a wonderful rush and fervour in the prayers of Paul. No parts
+of his letters are so lofty, so impassioned, so full of his soul, as
+when he rises from speaking of God to men to speaking to God for men. We
+have him here setting forth his loving desires for the Colossian
+Christians in a prayer of remarkable fulness and sweep. Broadly taken,
+it is for their perfecting in religious and moral excellence, and it is
+very instructive to note the idea of what a good man is which is put
+forth here.
+
+The main petition is for wisdom and spiritual understanding applied
+chiefly, as is to be carefully noted, to the knowledge of God's _will_.
+The thought is that what it most imports us to know is the Will of God,
+a knowledge not of merely speculative points in the mysteries of the
+divine nature, but of that Will which it concerns us to know because it
+is our life to do it. The next element in Paul's desires, as set forth
+in the ideal here, is a worthy walk, a practical life, or course of
+conduct which is worthy of Jesus Christ, and in every respect pleases
+Him. The highest purpose of knowledge is a good life. The surest
+foundation for a good life is a full and clear knowledge of the Will of
+God.
+
+Then follow a series of clauses which seem to expand the idea of the
+worthy walk and to be co-ordinate or perhaps slightly causal, and to
+express the continuous condition of the soul which is walking worthily.
+Let us endeavour to gather from these words some hints as to what it is
+God's purpose that we should become.
+
+I. The many-sided strength which may be ours.
+
+The form of the word 'strengthened' here would be more fully represented
+by 'being strengthened,' and suggests an unintermitted process of
+bestowal and reception of God's might rendered necessary by our
+continuous human weakness, and by the tear and wear of life. As in the
+physical life there must be constant renewal because there is constant
+waste, and as every bodily action involves destruction of tissue so that
+living is a continual dying, so is it in the mental and still more in
+the spiritual life. Just as there must be a perpetual oxygenation of
+blood in the lungs, so there must be an uninterrupted renewal of
+spiritual strength for the highest life. It is demanded by the
+conditions of our human weakness. It is no less rendered necessary by
+the nature of the divine strength imparted, which is ever communicating
+itself, and like the ocean cannot but pour so much of its fulness as can
+be received into every creek and crack on its shore.
+
+The Apostle not merely emphasises the continuousness of this
+communicated strength, but its many-sided variety, by designating it
+'all power.' In this whole context that word 'all' seems to have a charm
+for him. We read in this prayer of '_all_ spiritual wisdom,' of 'walking
+worthily of the Lord unto _all_ pleasing,' of 'fruit in _every_ good
+work,' and now of '_all_ power,' and lastly of '_all_ patience and
+longsuffering.' These are not instances of being obsessed with a word,
+but each of them has its own appropriate force, and here the
+comprehensive completeness of the strength available for our many-sided
+weakness is marvellously revealed. There is 'infinite riches in a narrow
+room.' All power means every kind of power, be it bodily or mental, for
+all variety of circumstances, and, Protean, to take the shape of all
+exigencies. Most of us are strong only at points, and weak in others. In
+all human experience there is a vulnerable spot on the heel. The most
+glorious image, though it has a head of gold, ends in feet, 'part of
+iron and part of clay.'
+
+And if this ideal of many-sided power stands in contrast with the
+limitations of human strength, how does it rebuke and condemn the very
+partial manifestations of a very narrow and one-sided power which we who
+profess to have received it set forth! We have access to a source which
+can fill our whole nature, can flower into all gracious forms, can cope
+with all our exigencies, and make us all-round men, complete in Jesus
+Christ, and, having this, what do we make of it, what do we show for it?
+Does not God say to us, 'Ye are not straitened in me, ye are straitened
+in yourselves; I beseech you be ye enlarged.'
+
+The conditions on our part requisite for possessing 'all might' are
+plain enough. The earlier portion of the prayer plainly points to them.
+The knowledge of God's Will and the 'walk worthy of the Lord' are the
+means whereby the power which is ever eager to make its dwelling in us,
+can reach its end. If _we_ keep the channel unchoked, no doubt 'the
+river of the water of life which proceedeth from the throne of God and
+the Lamb' will rejoice to fill it to the brim with its flashing waters.
+If we do not wrench away ourselves from contact with Him, He will
+'strengthen us with all might.' If we keep near Him we may have calm
+confidence that power will be ours that shall equal our need and
+outstrip our desires.
+
+II. The measure of the strength.
+
+It is 'according to the power of His glory.' The Authorised Version but
+poorly represents the fulness of the Apostle's thought, which is more
+adequately and accurately expressed in the Revised Version. 'His glory'
+is the flashing brightness of the divine self-manifestation, and in that
+Light resides the strength which is the standard or measure of the gift
+to us. The tremendous force of the sunbeam which still falls so gently
+on a sleeper's face as not to disturb the closed eyes is but a parable
+of the strength which characterises the divine glory. And wonderful and
+condemnatory as the thought is, that power is the unlimited limit of the
+possibilities of our possession. His gifts are proportioned to His
+resources. While He is rich, can I be poor? The only real limit to His
+bestowal is His own fulness. Of course, at each moment, our capacity of
+receiving is for the time being the practical limit of our possession,
+but that capacity varies indefinitely, and may be, and should be,
+indefinitely and continuously increasing. It is an elastic boundary, and
+hence we may go on making our own as much as we will, and progressively
+more and more, of God's strength. He gives it all, but there is a
+tragical difference between the full cup put into our hands and the few
+drops carried to our lips. The key of the treasure-chamber is in our
+possession, and on each of us His gracious face smiles the permission
+which His gracious lips utter in words, 'Be it unto thee even as thou
+wilt.' If we are conscious of defect, if our weakness is beaten by the
+assaults of temptation, or crushed by sorrows that ride it down in a
+fierce attack, the fault is our own. We have, if we choose to make it
+our own and to use it as ours, more than enough to make us 'more than
+conquerors' over all sins and all sorrows.
+
+But when we contrast what we have by God's gift and what we have in our
+personal experience and use in our daily life, the contrast may well
+bring shame, even though the contrast brings to us hope to lighten the
+shame. The average experience of present-day Christians reminds one of
+the great tanks that may be seen in India, that have been suffered to go
+to ruin, and so an elaborate system of irrigation comes to nothing, and
+the great river that should have been drawn off into them runs past
+them, all but unused. Repair them and keep the sluices open, and all
+will blossom again.
+
+III. The great purpose of this strength.
+
+'Patience and longsuffering with joyfulness' seems at first but a poor
+result of such a force, but it comes from a heart that was under no
+illusions as to the facts of human life, and it finds a response in us
+all. It may be difficult to discriminate 'patience' from
+'longsuffering,' but the general notion here is that one of the highest
+uses for which divine strength is given to us, is to make us able to
+meet the antagonism of evil without its shaking our souls. He who
+patiently endures without despondency or the desire to 'recompense evil
+for evil,' and to whom by faith even 'the night is light about him,' is
+far on the way to perfection. God is always near us, but never nearer
+than when our hearts are heavy and our way rough and dark. Our sorrows
+make rents through which His strength flows. We can see more of heaven
+when the leaves are off the trees. It is a law of the Divine dealings
+that His strength is 'made perfect in weakness.' God leads us in to a
+darkened room to show us His wonders.
+
+That strength is to be manifested by us in 'patience and longsuffering,'
+both of which are to have blended with them a real though apparently
+antagonistic joy. True and profound grief is not opposed to such
+patience, but the excess of it, the hopeless and hysterical outbursts
+certainly are. We are all like the figures in some old Greek temples
+which stand upright with their burdens on their heads. God's strength is
+given that we may bear ours calmly, and upright like these fair forms
+that hold up the heavy architecture as if it were a feather, or like
+women with water-jars on their heads, which only make their carriage
+more graceful and their step more firm.
+
+How different the patience which God gives by His own imparted strength,
+from the sullen submission or hysterical abandonment to sorrow, or the
+angry rebellion characterising Godless grief! Many of us think that we
+can get on very well in prosperity and fine weather without Him. We had
+better ask ourselves what we are going to do when the storm comes, which
+comes to all some time or other.
+
+The word here rendered 'patience' is more properly 'perseverance.' It is
+not merely a passive but an active virtue. We do not receive that great
+gift of divine strength to bear only, but also to work, and such work is
+one of the best ways of bearing and one of the best helps to doing so.
+So in our sorrows and trials let us feel that God's strength is not all
+given us to be expended in our own consolation, but also to be used in
+our plain duties. These remain as imperative though our hearts are
+beating like hammers, and there is no more unwise and cowardly surrender
+to trouble than to fling away our tools and fold our hands idly on our
+laps.
+
+But Paul lays a harder duty on us even in promising a great gift to us,
+when he puts before us an ideal of joy mingling with patience and
+longsuffering. The command would be an impossible one if there were not
+the assurance that we should be 'strengthened with all might.' We
+plainly need an infusion of diviner strength than our own, if that
+strange marriage of joy and sorrow should take place, and they should at
+once occupy our hearts. Yet if His strength be ours we shall be strong
+to submit and acquiesce, strong to look deep enough to see His will as
+the foundation of all and as ever busy for our good, strong to hope,
+strong to discern the love at work, strong to trust the Father even when
+He chastens. And all this will make it possible to have the paradox
+practically realised in our own experience, 'As sorrowful yet always
+rejoicing.' One has seen potassium burning underwater. Our joy may burn
+under waves of sorrow. Let us bring our weakness to Jesus Christ and
+grasp Him as did the sinking Peter. He will breathe His own grace into
+us, and speak to our feeble and perchance sorrowful hearts, as He had
+done long before Paul's words to the Colossians, 'My grace is sufficient
+for thee, and my strength is made perfect in weakness.'
+
+
+
+
+THANKFUL FOR INHERITANCE
+
+          'Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet
+          to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
+          in light.'--COL. i. 12 (R.V.)
+
+
+It is interesting to notice how much the thought of inheritance seems to
+have been filling the Apostle's mind during his writing of Ephesians and
+Colossians. Its recurrence is one of the points of contact between them.
+For example, in Ephesians, we read, 'In whom also were made a heritage'
+(i. 11); 'An earnest of our inheritance' (i. 14); 'His inheritance in
+the saints' (i. 18); 'Inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ' (v. 5). We
+notice too that in the address to the Elders of the Church at Ephesus,
+we read of 'the inheritance among all them that are sanctified' (Acts
+20-32).
+
+In the text the climax of the Apostle's prayer is presented as
+thankfulness, the perpetual recognition of the Divine hand in all that
+befalls us, the perpetual confidence that all which befalls us is good,
+and the perpetual gushing out towards Him of love and praise. The
+highest diligence, the most strenuous fruit-bearing, and the most
+submissive patience and longsuffering would be incomplete without the
+consecration of a grateful heart, and the noblest beauty of a Christian
+character would lack its rarest lustre. This crown of Christian
+perfectness the Apostle regards as being called into action mainly by
+the contemplation of that great act and continuous work of God's
+Fatherly love by which he makes us fit for our portion of the
+inheritance which the same love has prepared for us. That inheritance is
+the great cause for Christian thankfulness; the more immediate cause is
+His preparation of us for it. So we have three points here to consider;
+the inheritance; God's Fatherly preparation of His children for it; the
+continual temper of thankfulness which these should evoke.
+
+I. The Inheritance.
+
+The frequent recurrence of this idea in the Old Testament supplies Paul
+with a thought which he uses to set forth the most characteristic
+blessings of the New. The promised land belonged to Israel, and each
+member of each tribe had his own little holding in the tribal territory.
+Christians have in common the higher spiritual blessings which Christ
+brings, and Himself is, and each individual has his own portion of, the
+general good.
+
+We must begin by dismissing from our minds the common idea, which a
+shallow experience tends to find confirmed by the associations
+ordinarily attached to the word 'inheritance,' that it is entered upon
+by death. No doubt, that great change does effect an unspeakable change
+in our fitness for, and consequently in our possession of, the gifts
+which we receive from Christ's pierced hands, and, as the Apostle has
+told us, the highest of these possessed on earth is but the 'earnest of
+the inheritance'; but we must ever bear in mind that the distinction
+between a Christian life on earth and one in heaven is by no means so
+sharply drawn in Scripture as it generally is by us, and that death has
+by no means so great importance as we faithlessly attribute to it. The
+life here and hereafter is like a road which passes the frontiers of two
+kingdoms divided by a bridged river, but runs on in the same direction
+on both sides of the stream. The flood had to be forded until Jesus
+bridged it. The elements of the future and the present are the same, as
+the apostolic metaphor of the 'earnest of the inheritance' teaches us.
+The handful of soil which constitutes the 'arles' is part of the broad
+acres made over by it.
+
+We should be saved from many unworthy conceptions of the future life, if
+we held more steadfastly to the great truth that God Himself is the
+portion of the inheritance. The human spirit is too great and too
+exacting to be satisfied with anything less than Him, and the possession
+of Him opens out into every blessedness, and includes all the minor joys
+and privileges that can gladden and enrich the soul. We degrade the
+future if we think of it only, or even chiefly, as a state in which
+faculties are enlarged, and sorrows and sins are for ever ended. Neither
+such negatives as 'no night there,' 'neither sorrow nor crime,' 'no more
+pain,' nor such metaphors as 'white robes' and 'golden crowns' and
+'seats on thrones' are enough. We are 'heirs of God,' and only as we
+possess Him, and know that we are His, and He is ours, are we 'rich to
+all intents of bliss.' That inheritance is here set forth as being 'in
+light' and as belonging to saints. Light is the element and atmosphere
+of God. He is in light. He is the fountain of all light. He is light;
+perfect in wisdom, perfect in purity. The sun has its spots, but in Him
+is no darkness at all. Moons wax and wane, shadows of eclipse fall,
+stars have their time to set, but 'He is the Father of lights with whom
+can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.' All that
+light is focussed in Jesus the Light of the world. That Light fills the
+earth, but here it shineth in darkness that obstructs its rays. But
+there must be a place and a time where the manifestation of God
+corresponds with the reality of God, where His beams pour out and there
+is nothing hid from the heat thereof, nothing which they do not bless,
+nothing which does not flash them back rejoicing. There is a land
+whereof the Lord God is the Light. In it is the inheritance of the
+'saints,' and in its light live the nations of the saved, and have God
+for their companion. All darkness of ignorance, of sorrow, and of sin
+will fade away as the night flees and ceases to be, before the rising
+sun.
+
+The phrase 'to be partakers' is accurately rendered 'for the portion,'
+and carries a distinct allusion to the partition of the promised land to
+Israel by which each man had his lot or share in the common inheritance.
+So the one word inheritance brings with it blessed thoughts of a common
+possession of a happy society in which no man's gain is another's loss,
+and all envyings, rivalries, and jealousies have ceased to be, and the
+other word, 'the portion,' suggests the individual possession by each of
+his own vision and experience. Each man's 'portion' is capable of
+growth; each has as much of God as he can hold. The measure of his
+desire is the measure of his capacity. There are infinite differences in
+the 'portions' of the saints on earth, and heaven is robbed of one of
+its chief charms unless we recognise that there are infinite differences
+among the saints there. For both states the charter by which the
+portion is held is 'Be it unto thee even as thou wilt,' and in both the
+law holds 'To him that hath shall be given.'
+
+II. The Fatherly preparation for the Inheritance.
+
+It is obvious from all which we have been saying that without holiness
+no man shall see the Lord. The inheritance being what it is, the
+possession, the enjoyment of communion with a Holy God, it is absolutely
+incapable of being entered upon by any who are unholy. That is true
+about both the partial possession of the earnest of it here and of its
+fulness hereafter. In the present life all tolerated sin bars us out
+from enjoying God, and in the future nothing can enter that defileth nor
+whatsoever worketh or maketh a lie. There are many people who think that
+they would like 'to go to heaven,' but who would find it difficult to
+answer such questions as these: Do you like to think of God? Do you find
+any joy in holy thoughts? What do you feel about prayer? Does the name
+of Christ make your heart leap? Is righteousness your passion? If you
+have to answer these questions with a silence which is the saddest
+negative, what do you think you would do in heaven? I remember that the
+Greenlanders told the Moravian missionaries who were trying to move them
+by conventional pictures of its delights, that the heaven which these
+pious souls had painted would not do for them, for there were no seals
+there. There are thousands of us who, if we spoke the truth, would say
+the same thing, with the necessary variations arising from our
+environment. There is not a spinning-mill in it all. How would some of
+us like that? There is not a ledger, nor a theatre, no novels, no
+amusements. Would it not be intolerable ennui to be put down in such an
+order of things? You would be like the Israelites, loathing 'this light
+bread' and hungering for the strong-smelling and savoury-tasting leeks
+and garlic, even if in order to taste them you had to be slaves again.
+
+Heaven would be no heaven to you if you could go there and be thus
+minded. But you could not. God Himself cannot carry men thither but by
+fitting them for it. It is not a place so much as a state, and the
+mighty hand that works on one side of the thick curtain preparing the
+inheritance in light for the saints, is equally busy on this side making
+the saints meet for the inheritance.
+
+I do not wish to enter here on grammatical niceties, but I must point
+out that the form of the word which the Apostle employs to express it
+points to an act in the past which still runs on.
+
+The Revised Version's rendering, 'made us meet,' is preferable to the
+Authorised Version's, because of its omission of the 'hath' which
+relegates the whole process of preparation to the past. And it is of
+importance to recognise that the difference between these two
+representations of the divine preparation is not a piece of pedantry,
+for that preparation has indeed its beginnings in the past of every
+Christian soul, but is continuous throughout its whole earthly
+experience. There is the great act of forgiveness and justifying which
+is cotemporaneous with the earliest and most imperfect faith, and there
+is the being born again, the implanting of a new life which is the life
+of Christ Himself, and has no spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing. That
+new life is infantile, but it is there, the real man, and it will grow
+and conquer. Take an extreme case and suppose a man who has just
+received forgiveness for his past and the endowment of a new nature.
+Though he were to die at that moment he would still in the basis of his
+being and real self be meet for the inheritance. He who truly trusts in
+Jesus is passed from death unto life, though the habits of sins which
+are forgiven still cling to him, and his new life has not yet exercised
+a controlling power or begun to build up character. So Christians ought
+not to think that, because they are conscious of much unholiness, they
+are not ready for the inheritance. The wild brigand through whose
+glazing eyeballs faith looked out to his fellow-sufferer on the central
+cross was adjudged meet to be with him in Paradise, and if all his deeds
+of violence and wild outrages on the laws of God and man did not make
+him unmeet, who amongst us need write bitter things against himself? The
+preparation is further effected through all the future earthly life. The
+only true way to regard everything that befalls us here is to see in it
+the Fatherly discipline preparing us for a fuller possession of a richer
+inheritance. Gains and losses, joys and sorrows, and all the endless
+variety of experiences through which we all have to pass, are an
+unintelligible mystery unless we apply to them this solution, 'He for
+our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness.' It is not a
+blind Fate or a still blinder Chance that hurtles sorrows and changes at
+us, but a loving Father; and we do not grasp the meaning of our lives
+unless we feel, even about their darkest moments, that the end of them
+all is to make us more capable of possessing more of Himself.
+
+III. The thankfulness which these thoughts should evoke.
+
+Thankfulness ought to be a sweet duty. It is a joy to cherish gratitude.
+Generous hearts do not need to be told to be thankful, and they who are
+only thankful to order are not thankful at all. In nothing is the
+ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian more defective, and
+significant of the deficiencies of their faith, than in the tepidness
+and interruptedness of their gratitude. The blessings bestowed are
+continuous and unspeakable. The thanks returned are grudging and scanty.
+The river that flows from God is 'full of water' and pours out
+unceasingly, and all that we return is a tiny trickle, often choked and
+sometimes lost in the sands.
+
+Our thankfulness ought to be constant. The fire on the altar should
+never be quenched. The odour of the sweet-smelling incense should ever
+ascend. Why is it that we have so little of this grace which the Apostle
+in our text regards as the precious stone that binds all Christian
+graces together, the sparkling crest of the wave of a Christian life?
+Mainly because we have so little of the habit of regarding all things as
+God's Fatherly discipline and meditating on that for which they are
+making us meet. We need a far more habitual contemplation of our
+inheritance, of our experience as lovingly given by God to fit us for it
+and of the darkest hours which would otherwise try our faith and silence
+our praise as necessary parts of that preparation. If this be our
+habitual attitude of mind, and these be ever present to us, our song
+will be always of His mercy and our whole lives a thank-offering.
+
+The text is a prophecy describing the inheritance in its perfect form.
+Earthly life must be ended before it is fully understood. Down in the
+valleys we praised God, but tears and mysteries sometimes saddened our
+songs; but now on the summit surveying all behind, and knowing by a
+blessed eternity of experience to what it has led, even an inheritance
+incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, we shall praise
+Him with a new song for ever.
+
+Thankfulness is the one element of worship common to earth and heaven,
+to angels and to us. Whilst they sing, 'Bless the Lord all ye His
+hosts,' redeemed men have still better reason to join in the chorus and
+answer, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul.'
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR
+
+          'I also labour, striving according to His working,
+          which worketh in me mightily.'--COL. i. 29.
+
+
+I have chosen this text principally because it brings together the two
+subjects which are naturally before us to-day. All 'Western
+Christendom,' as it is called, is to-day commemorating the Pentecostal
+gift. My text speaks about that power that 'worketh in us mightily.'
+True, the Apostle is speaking in reference to the fiery energy and
+persistent toil which characterised him in proclaiming Christ, that he
+might present men perfect before Him. But the same energy which he
+expended on his apostolic office he expended on his individual
+personality. And he would not have discharged the one unless he had
+first laboured on the other. And although in a letter contemporary with
+this one from which my text is taken he speaks of himself as no longer
+young, but 'such an one as Paul the aged, and likewise, also a prisoner
+of Jesus Christ,' the young spirit was in him, and the continual
+pressing forward to unattained heights. And that is the spirit, not only
+of a section of the Church divided from the rest by youth and by special
+effort, but of the whole Church if it is worth calling a Church, and
+unless it is thus instinct, it is a mere dead organisation.
+
+So I hope that what few things I have to say may apply to, and be felt
+to be suitable by all of us, whether we are nominally Christian
+Endeavourers or not. If we are Christian people, we are such. If we are
+not endeavouring, shall I venture to say we are not Christians? At any
+rate, we are very poor ones.
+
+Now here, then, are two plain things, a great universal Christian duty
+and a sufficient universal Christian endowment. 'I work striving'; that
+is the description of every true Christian. 'I work striving, according
+to His working, who worketh in me mightily': there is the great gift
+which makes the work and the striving possible. Let me briefly deal,
+then, with these two.
+
+I. The solemn universal Christian obligation.
+
+Now the two words which the Apostle employs here are both of them very
+emphatic. 'His words were half battles,' was said about Luther. It may
+be as truly said about Paul. And that word 'work' which he employs,
+means, not work with one hand, or with a delicate forefinger, but it
+means toil up to the verge of weariness. The notion of fatigue is
+almost, I might say, uppermost in the word as it is used in the New
+Testament. Some people like to 'labour' so as never to turn a hair, or
+bring a sweat-drop on to their foreheads. That is not Christian
+Endeavour. Work that does not 'take it out of you' is not worth doing.
+The other word 'striving' brings up the picture of the arena with the
+combatants' strain of muscle, their set teeth, their quick, short
+breathing, their deadly struggle. That is Paul's notion of Endeavour.
+Now 'Endeavour,' like a great many other words, has a baser and a nobler
+side to it. Some people, when they say, 'I will endeavour,' mean that
+they are going to try in a half-hearted way, with no prospect of
+succeeding. That is not Christian Endeavour. The meaning of the
+word--for the expression in my text might just as well be rendered
+'endeavouring' as 'striving'--is that of a buoyant confident effort of
+all the concentrated powers, with the certainty of success. That is the
+endeavour that we have to cultivate as Christian men. And there is only
+one field of human effort in which that absolute confidence that it
+shall not be in vain is anything but presumptuous arrogance; namely, in
+the effort after making ourselves what God means us to be, what Jesus
+Christ longs for us to be, what the Spirit of God is given to us in
+order that we should be. 'We shall _not_ fail,' ought to be the word of
+every man and woman when they set themselves to the great task of
+working out, in their own characters and personalities, the Divine
+intention which is made a Divine possibility by the sacrifice of Jesus
+Christ and the gift of the Divine Spirit.
+
+So then what we come to is just this, dear brethren, if we are
+Christians at all, we have to make a business of our religion; to go
+about it as if we meant work. Ah! what a contrast there is between the
+languid way in which Christian men pursue what the Bible designates
+their 'calling' and that in which men with far paltrier aims pursue
+theirs! And what a still sadder contrast there is between the way in
+which we Christians go about our daily business, and the way in which we
+go about our Christian life! Why, a man will take more pains to learn
+some ornamental art, or some game, than he will ever take to make
+himself a better Christian. The one is work. What is the other? To a
+very large extent dawdling and make-believe.
+
+You remember the old story,--it may raise a smile, but there should be a
+deep thought below the smile,--of the little child that said as to his
+father that 'he was a Christian, but he had not been working much at it
+lately.' Do not laugh. It is a great deal too true of--I will not
+venture to say what percentage of--the professing Christians of this
+day. Work at your religion. That is the great lesson of my text.
+Endeavour with confidence of success. The Book of Proverbs says: 'He
+that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster,'
+and that is true. A man that does 'the work of the Lord negligently' is
+scarcely to be credited with doing it at all. Dear friends, young or
+old, if you name the name of Christ, be in earnest, and make earnest
+work of your Christian character.
+
+And now may I venture two or three very plain exhortations? First, I
+would say--if you mean to make your Christian life a piece of genuine
+work and striving, the first thing that you have to do is to endeavour
+in the direction of keeping its aim very clear before you. There are
+many ways in which we may state the goal of the Christian life, but let
+us put it now into the all-comprehensive form of likeness to Jesus
+Christ, by entire conformity to His Example and full interpretation of
+His life. I do not say 'Heaven'; I say 'Christ.'
+
+That is our aim, the loftiest idea of development that any human spirit
+can grasp, and rising high above a great many others which are noble but
+incomplete. The Christian ideal is the greatest in the universe. There
+is no other system of thought that paints man as he is, so darkly; there
+is none that paints man as he is meant to be, in such radiant colours.
+The blacks upon the palette of Christianity are blacker, and the whites
+are whiter, and the golden is more radiant, than any other painter has
+ever mixed. And so just because the aim which lies before the least and
+lowest of us, possessing the most imperfect and rudimentary
+Christianity, is so transcendent and lofty, it is hard to keep it clear
+before our eyes, especially when all the shabby little necessities of
+daily life come in to clutter up the foreground, and hide the great
+distance. Men may live up at Darjeeling there on the heights for weeks,
+and never see the Himalayas towering opposite. The lower hills are
+clear; the peaks are wreathed in cloud. So the little aims, the nearer
+purposes, stand out distinct and obtrusive, and force themselves, as it
+were, upon our eyeballs, and the solemn white Throne of the Eternal away
+across the marshy levels, is often hid, and it needs an effort for us to
+keep it clear before us. One of the main reasons for much that is
+unsatisfactory in the spiritual condition of the average Christian of
+this day is precisely that he has not burning ever before him there, the
+great aim to which he ought to be tending. So he gets loose and
+diffused, and vague and uncertain. That is what Paul tells you when he
+proposes himself as an example: 'So run I, not as uncertainly,' The man
+who knows where he is running makes a bee-line for the goal. If he is
+not sure of his destination, of course he zigzags. 'So fight I, not as
+one that beateth the air'--if I see my antagonist I can hit him. If I do
+not see him clearly I strike like a swordsman in the dark, at random,
+and my sword comes back unstained. If you want to make the harbour, keep
+the harbour lights always clear before you, or you will go yawing about,
+and washing here and there, in the trough of the wave, and the tempest
+will be your master. If you do not know where you are going you will
+have to say, like the men in the old story in the Old Book, 'Thy servant
+went no whither.' If you are going to endeavour, endeavour first to keep
+the goal clear before you.
+
+And endeavour next to keep up communion with Jesus Christ, which is the
+secret of all peaceful and of all noble living. And endeavour next after
+concentration. And what does that mean? It means that you have to detach
+yourself from hindrances. It means that you have to prosecute the
+Christian aim all through the common things of Christian life. If it
+were not possible to be pursuing the great aim of likeness to Jesus
+Christ, in the veriest secularities of the most insignificant and
+trivial occupations, then it would be no use talking about that being
+our aim. If we are not making ourselves more like Jesus Christ by the
+way in which we handle our books, or our pen, or our loom, or our
+scalpel, or our kitchen utensils, then there is little chance of our
+ever making ourselves like Jesus Christ. For it is these trifles that
+make life, and to concentrate ourselves on the pursuit of the Christian
+aim is, in other words, to carry that Christian aim into every
+triviality of our daily lives.
+
+There are three Scripture passages which set forth various aspects of
+the aim that we have before us, and from each of these aspects deduce
+the one same lesson. The Apostle says 'giving all diligence, add to your
+faith virtue,' etc., 'for if ye do these things ye shall never fail.' He
+also exhorts: 'Give diligence to make your calling and election sure.'
+And finally he says: 'Be diligent, that ye may be found of Him in peace,
+without spot, blameless.' _There_ are three aspects of the Christian
+course, and the Christian aim, the addition to our faith of all the
+clustering graces and virtues and powers that can be hung upon it, like
+jewels on the neck of a queen; the making our calling and election sure,
+and the being found at last tranquil, spotless, stainless, and being
+found so by Him. These great aims are incumbent on all Christians, they
+require diligence, and ennoble the diligence which they require.
+
+So, brethren, we have all to be Endeavourers if we are Christians, and
+that to the very end of our lives. For our path is the only path on
+which men tread that has for its goal an object so far off that it never
+can be attained, so near that it can ever be approached. This infinite
+goal of the Christian Endeavour means inspiration for youth, and
+freshness for old age, and that man is happy who can say: 'Not as though
+I had already attained' at the end of a long life, and can say it, not
+because he has failed, but because in a measure he has succeeded. Other
+courses of life are like the voyages of the old mariners which were
+confined within the narrow limits of the Mediterranean, and steered from
+headland to headland. But the Christian passes through the jaws of the
+straits, and comes out on a boundless sunlit ocean where, though he sees
+no land ahead, he knows there is a peaceful shore, beyond the western
+waves. 'I work striving.'
+
+Now one word as to the other thought that is here, and that is
+
+II. The all-sufficient Christian gift.
+
+'According to His working, which worketh in me mightily.' I need not
+discuss whether 'His' in my text refers to God or to Christ. The thing
+meant is the operation upon the Christian spirit, of that Divine Spirit
+whose descent the Church to-day commemorates. At this stage of my sermon
+I can only remind you in a word, first of all, that the Apostle here is
+arrogating to himself no special or peculiar gift, is not egotistically
+setting forth something which he possessed and other Christian people
+did not--that power which, 'working in him mightily,' worked in all his
+brethren as well. It was his conviction and his teaching--would that it
+were more operatively and vitally the conviction of all professing
+Christians to-day, and would that it were more conspicuously, and in due
+proportion to the rest of Christian truth, the teaching of all Christian
+teachers to-day!--that that Divine power is in the very act of faith
+received and implanted in every believing soul. 'Know ye not,' the
+Apostle could say to his hearers, 'that ye have the Spirit of God,
+except ye be reprobates.' I doubt whether the affirmative response would
+spring to the lips of all professing or real Christians to-day as
+swiftly as it would have done then. And I cannot help feeling, and
+feeling with increasing gravity of pressure as the days go on, that the
+thing that our churches, and we as individuals, perhaps need most
+to-day, is the replacing of that great truth--I do not call it a
+'doctrine,' that is cold, it is experience--in its proper place. They
+who believe on Him do receive a new life, a supernatural communication
+of the new Spirit, to be the very power that rules in their lives.
+
+It is an inward gift. It is not like the help that men can render us,
+given from without and apprehended and incorporated with ourselves
+through the medium of the understanding or of the heart. There is an old
+story in the history of Israel about a young king that was bid by the
+prophet to bend his bow against the enemies of Israel, as a symbol; and
+the old prophet put his withered, skinny brown hand on the young man's
+fleshy one, and then said to him, 'Shoot.' But this Divine Spirit comes
+to strengthen us in a more intimate and blessed fashion than that, for
+it glides into our hearts and dwells in our spirits, and our work, as
+my text says, is His working. This 'working within' is stated in the
+original of my text most emphatically, for it is literally 'the
+inworking which inworketh in me mightily.'
+
+So, dear brethren, the first direct aim of all our endeavour ought to be
+to receive and to keep and to increase our gift of that Divine Spirit.
+The work and the striving of which my text speaks would be sheer slavery
+unless we had that help. It would be impossible of accomplishment unless
+we had it.
+
+          'If any power we have, it is to ill,
+           And all the power is Thine, to do and eke to will.'
+
+Let us, then, begin our endeavour, not by working, but by receiving. Is
+not that the very meaning of the doctrine that we are always talking
+about, that men are saved, not by works but by faith? Does not that mean
+that the first step is reception, and the first requisite is
+receptiveness, and that then, and after that, second and not first, come
+working and striving? To keep our hearts open by desire, to keep them
+open by purity, are the essentials. The dove will not come into a fouled
+nest. It is said that they forsake polluted places. But also we have to
+use the power which is inwrought. Use is the way to increase all gifts,
+from the muscle in your arm to the Christian life in your spirit. Use
+it, and it grows. Neglect it, and it vanishes, and like the old Jewish
+heroes, a man may go forth to exercise himself as of old time, and know
+not that the Spirit of God hath departed from him. Dear friends, do not
+bind yourselves to the slavery of Endeavour, until you come into the
+liberty and wealth of receiving. He gives first, and then says to you,
+'Now go to work, and keep that good thing which is committed unto
+thee.'
+
+There is but one thought more in this last part of my text, which I must
+not leave untouched, and that is that this sufficient and universal gift
+is not only the means by which the great universal duty can be
+discharged, but it ought to be the measure in which it is discharged. 'I
+work according to the working in me.' That is, all the force that came
+into Paul by that Divine Spirit, came out of Paul in his Christian
+conduct, and the gift was not only the source, but also the measure, of
+this man's Christian Endeavour. Is that true about us? They say that the
+steam-engine is a most wasteful application of power, that a great deal
+of the energy which is generated goes without ever doing any work. They
+tell us that one of the great difficulties in the way of economic
+application of electricity is the loss which comes through using
+accumulators. Is not that like a great many of us? So much power poured
+into us; so little coming out from us and translated into actual work!
+Such a 'rushing mighty wind,' and the air about us so heavy and stagnant
+and corrupt! Such a blaze of fire, and we so cold! Such a cataract of
+the river of the water of life, and our lips parched and our crops
+seared and worthless! Ah, brethren! when we look at ourselves, and when
+we think of the condition of so many of the churches to which we belong,
+the old rebuke of the prophet comes back to us in this generation, 'Thou
+that art named the House of Israel, is the Spirit of the Lord
+straitened? Are these His doings?' We have an all-sufficient power. May
+our working and striving be according to it, and may we work mightily,
+being 'strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!'
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIAN PROGRESS
+
+          'As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord,
+          so walk in Him, rooted and builded up in
+          Him.'--COL. ii. 6, 7 (R.V.).
+
+
+It is characteristic of Paul that he should here use three figures
+incongruous with each other to express the same idea, the figures of
+walking, being rooted, and built up. They, however, have in common that
+they all suggest an initial act by which we are brought into connection
+with Christ, and a subsequent process flowing from and following on it.
+Receiving Christ, being rooted in Him, being founded on Him, stand for
+the first; walking in Him, growing up from the root in Him, being built
+up on Him as foundation, stand for the second. Fully expressed then, the
+text would run, 'As ye have received Christ, so walk in Him; as ye have
+been rooted in Him, so grow up in Him; as ye have been founded on Him,
+so be builded up.' These three clauses present the one idea in slightly
+different forms. The first expresses Christian progress as the
+manifestation before the world of an inward possession, the exhibition
+in the outward life of a treasure hid in the heart. The second expresses
+the same progress as the development by its own vital energy of the life
+of Christ in the soul. The third expresses the progress as the addition,
+by conscious efforts, of portion after portion to the character, which
+is manifestly incomplete until the headstone crowns the structure. We
+may then take the passage before us as exhibiting the principles of
+Christian progress.
+
+I. The origin of all, or how Christian progress begins.
+
+These three figures, receiving, rooted, founded, all express a great
+deal more than merely accepting certain truths about Him. The acceptance
+of truths is the means by which we come to what is more than any belief
+of truths. We possess Christ when we believe with a true faith in Him.
+We are rooted in Him. His life flows into us. We draw nourishment from
+that soil. We are built on Him, and in our compact union find a real
+support to a life which is otherwise baseless and blown about like
+thistledown by every breath. The union which all these metaphors
+presupposes is a vital connection; the possession which is the first
+step in the Christian life is a real possession.
+
+There is no progress without that initial step. Our own experience tells
+us but too plainly and loudly that we need the impartation of a new
+life, and to be set on a new foundation, if we are ever to be anything
+else than failures and blots.
+
+There is sure to be progress if the initial step has been taken. If
+Christ has been received, the life possessed will certainly manifest
+itself. It will go on to perfection. The union effected will work on
+through the whole character and nature. It is the beginning of all; it
+is only the beginning.
+
+II. The manner of Christian progress or in what it consists.
+
+It consists in a more complete possession of Him, in a more constant
+approximation to Him, and a more entire appropriation of Him. Christian
+progress is not a growing up from Christ as starting-point, but into
+Christ as goal. All is contained in the first act by which He is first
+received; the remainder is but the working out of that. All our growth
+in knowledge and wisdom consists in our knowing what we have when we
+receive Christ. We grow in proportion as we learn to see in Him the
+centre of all truth, as the Revealer of God, as the Teacher of man, as
+the Interpreter of nature, as the meaning and end of history, as the
+Lord of life and death. Morals, politics, and philosophy flow from Him.
+His lips and His life and death proclaim all truth, human and divine.
+
+As in wisdom so in character, all progress consists in coming closer to
+Jesus and receiving more and more of His many-sided grace. He is the
+pattern of all excellence, the living ideal of whatsoever things are
+pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
+report, virtue incarnate, praise embodied. He is the power by which we
+become gradually and growingly moulded into His likeness. Every part of
+our nature finds its best stimulus in Jesus for individuals and for
+societies. Christ and growth into Him is progress, and the only way by
+which men can be presented perfect, is that they shall be presented
+'perfect in Christ,' whereunto every man must labour who would that his
+labour should not be in vain. That progress must follow the threefold
+direction in the text. There must first be the progressive manifestation
+in act and life of the Christ already possessed, 'As ye received Christ
+Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.' There must also be the completer growth
+in the soul of the new life already received. As the leaf grows green
+and broad, so a Christlike character must grow not altogether by effort.
+And there must be a continual being builded up in Him by constant
+additions to the fabric of graces set on that foundation.
+
+III. The means, or how it is accomplished.
+
+The first words of our text tell us that 'Ye have received Christ Jesus
+as Lord,' and all depends on keeping the channels of communication open
+so that the reception may be continuous and progressive. We must live
+near and ever nearer to the Lord, and seek that our communion with Him
+may be strengthened. On the other hand, it is not only by the
+spontaneous development of the implanted life, but by conscious and
+continuous efforts which sometimes involve vigorous repression of the
+old self that progress is realised. The two metaphors of our text have
+to be united in our experience. Neither the effortless growth of the
+tree nor the toilsome work of the builder suffice to represent the whole
+truth. The two sides of deep and still communion, and of strenuous
+effort based on that communion, must be found in the experience of every
+Christian who has received Christ, and is advancing through the
+imperfect manifestations of earth to the perfect union with, and perfect
+assimilation to, the Lord.
+
+To all men who are ready to despair of themselves, here is the way to
+realise the grandest hopes. Nothing is too great to be attained by one
+who, having received Christ Jesus as Lord, walks in Him, rooted and
+builded up in Him, 'a holy temple to the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST
+
+          'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those
+          things which are above, where Christ sitteth on
+          the right hand of God. 2. Set your affection on
+          things above, not on things on the earth. 3. For
+          ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
+          God. 4. When Christ, who is our life, shall
+          appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in
+          glory. 5. Mortify therefore your members which are
+          upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness,
+          inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and
+          covetousness, which is idolatry: 6. For which
+          things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the
+          children of disobedience. 7. In the which ye also
+          walked sometime, when ye lived in them. 8. But now
+          ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice,
+          blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
+          9. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put
+          off the old man with his deeds; 10. And have put
+          on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge
+          after the image of Him that created him: 11. Where
+          there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
+          uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
+          free: but Christ is all, and in all. 12. Put on
+          therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved,
+          bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
+          meekness, longsuffering; 13. Forbearing one
+          another, and forgiving one another, if any man
+          have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave
+          you, so also do ye. 14. And above all these things
+          put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
+          15. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts,
+          to the which also ye are called in one body; and
+          be ye thankful.'--COL. iii. 1-15.
+
+
+The resurrection is regarded in Scripture in three aspects--as a fact
+establishing our Lord's Messiahship, as a prophecy of our rising from
+the dead, and as a symbol of the Christian life even now. The last is
+the aspect under which Paul deals with it here.
+
+I. Verses 1-4 set forth the wonderful but most real union of the
+believer with the risen Christ. We have said that the Lord's
+resurrection is regarded as a symbol, but that is an incomplete
+representation of the truth here taught, for Paul believed that the
+Christian is so joined to Jesus as that he has, not in symbol only, but
+in truth, risen with him. Mark the emphasis and depth of the expressions
+setting forth the believer's unity with his Lord: 'Ye were raised
+together with Christ'; 'Ye died, and your life is hid with Christ.' And
+these wonderful statements do not go to the bottom of the fact, for Paul
+goes beyond even them, and does not scruple to say that Christ '_is_ our
+life.'
+
+The ground of these great declarations is found in the fact that faith
+joins us in most real and close union to Jesus Christ, so that in His
+death we die to sin and the world, and that, even while we live the
+bodily life of men here, we have in us another life, derived from Jesus.
+Unless our Christianity has grasped that great truth, it has not risen
+to the height of New Testament teaching and Christian privilege. We
+cannot make too much of 'Christ our sacrifice,' but some of us make too
+little of 'Christ our life,' and thereby fail to understand in all its
+fulness that other truth on which they fasten so exclusively. Union with
+Christ in the possession of His life in us, and the consequent rooting
+of our lives in Him, is a truth which much of the evangelical
+Christianity of this day needs to see more clearly.
+
+The life is 'hid,' as being united with Jesus, and consequently
+withdrawn from the world, which neither comprehends nor sustains it. A
+Christian man is bound to manifest to the utmost of his power what is
+the motive and aim of his life; but the devout life is, like the divine
+life, a mystery, unrevealed after all revelation.
+
+The practical conclusion from this blessed union with Jesus is that we
+are, as Christians, bound to be true in our conduct to the facts of our
+spiritual life, and to turn away from the world, which is now not our
+home, and set our mind (not only our 'affections') on things above.
+Surely the Christ, 'seated on the right hand of God,' will be as a
+magnet to draw our conscious being upwards to Himself. Surely union with
+Him in His death will lead us to die to the world which is alien to us,
+and to live in aspiration, thought, desire, love, and obedience with Him
+in His calm abode, whence He rules and blesses the souls whom, through
+their faith, He has made to live the new life of heaven on earth.
+
+II. The first consequence of the risen life is negative, the death or
+'putting off' of the old nature, the life which belongs to and is ruled
+by earth. Verses 5-9 solemnly lay on the Christian the obligation to put
+this to death. The 'therefore' in verse 5 teaches a great lesson, for it
+implies that the union with Jesus by faith must precede all self-denial
+which is true to the spirit of the Gospel. Asceticism of any sort which
+is not built on the evangelical foundation is thereby condemned,
+whether it is practised by Buddhist, or monk, or Protestant. First be
+partaker of the new life, and then put off the old man with his deeds.
+The withered fronds of last year are pushed off the fern by the new ones
+as they uncurl. That doctrine of life in Christ is set down as mystical;
+but it is mysticism of the wholesome sort, which is intensely practical,
+and comes down to the level of the lowest duties,--for observe what
+homely virtues are enjoined, and how the things prohibited are no
+fantastic classifications of vices, but the things which all the world
+owns to be ugly and wrong.
+
+We cannot here enlarge on Paul's grim catalogue, but only point out that
+it is in two parts, the former (verses 5, 6) being principally sins of
+impurity and unregulated passion, to which is added 'covetousness,' as
+the other great vice to which the old nature is exposed. Lust and greed
+between them are the occasions of most of the sins of men. Stop these
+fountains, and the streams of evil would shrink to very small trickles.
+These twin vices attract the lightning of God's wrath, which 'cometh' on
+their perpetrators, not only in some final future judgment, but here and
+now. If we were not blind, we should see that thundercloud steadily
+drawing nearer, and ready to launch its terrors on impure and greedy
+men. They have set it in motion, and they are right in the path of the
+avalanche which they have loosened.
+
+The possessors of the risen life are exhorted to put off these things,
+not only because of the coming wrath, but because continuance in them is
+inconsistent with their present standing and life (v. 7). They do not
+now 'live in them,' but in the heavenly places with the risen Lord,
+therefore to walk in them is a contradiction. Our conduct should
+correspond to our real affinities, and the surface of our lives should
+be true to their depths and roots.
+
+The second class of vices are those which mar our intercourse with our
+fellows,--the more passionate anger and wrath and the more cold-blooded
+and deadly malice, with the many sins of speech.
+
+III. In verse 9 Paul appends the great reason for all the preceding
+injunctions; namely, the fact, already enlarged on in verses 1-4, of the
+Christian's death and new life by union with Jesus. He need only have
+stated the one-half of the fact here, but he never can touch one member
+of the antithesis without catching fire, as it were, and so he goes on
+to dwell on the new life in Christ, and thus to prepare for the
+transition to the exhortation to 'put on' its characteristic
+excellences. We note how true to fact, though apparently illogical, his
+representation is. He bases the command to put off the old man on the
+fact that Christians have put it off. They are to be what they are, to
+work out in daily acts what they did in its full ideal completeness when
+by faith they died to self and were made alive in and to Christ. A
+strong motive for a continuous Christian life is the recollection of the
+initial Christian act.
+
+But Paul's fervent spirit blazes up as he thinks of that new nature
+which union with Jesus has brought, and he turns aside from his
+exhortations to gaze on that great sight. He condenses volumes into a
+sentence. That new man is not only new, but is perpetually being renewed
+with a renovation penetrating more and more deeply, and extending more
+and more widely, in the Christian's nature. It is continually advancing
+in knowledge, and tending towards perfect knowledge of Christ. It is
+being fashioned, by a better creation than that of Adam, into a more
+perfect likeness of God than our first father bore in his sinless
+freshness. The possession of it gathers all Christians into a unity in
+which all distinctions of nationality, religious privilege, culture, or
+social condition, are lost. Paul the Pharisee and the Colossian
+brethren, Onesimus the slave and Philemon his master, are one in Jesus.
+The new life is one in all its recipients, and makes them one. The
+phenomena of the lowest forms of life are almost repeated in the
+highest, and, just as in a coral reef the myriads of workers are not
+individuals so much as parts of one living whole, 'so also is Christ.'
+The union is the closest possible without destruction of our
+individuality.
+
+IV. The final, positive consequence of the risen life follows in verses
+12-15. Again the Apostle reminds Christians of what they are, as the
+great motive for putting on the new man. The contemplation of privileges
+may tend to proud isolation and neglect of duty to our fellows, but the
+true effect of knowing that we are 'God's elect, holy and beloved,' is
+to soften our hearts, and to lead us to walk among men as mirrors and
+embodiments of God's mercy to us. The only virtues touched on here are
+the various manifestations of love, such as quick susceptibility to
+others' sorrows; readiness to help by act as well as to pity in word;
+lowliness in estimating one's own claims, which will lead to bearing
+evils without resentment or recompensing the like; and patient
+forgiveness, after the pattern and measure of the forgiveness we have
+received. All these graces, which would make earth an Eden, and our
+hearts temples, and our lives calm, are outcomes of love, and must
+never be divorced from it. Paul uses a striking image to express this
+thought of their dependence on it. He likens them to the various
+articles of dress, and bids us hold them all in place with love as a
+girdle, which keeps together all the various graces that make up
+'perfectness.'
+
+Thus living in love, we shall be free from the tumult of spirit which
+ever attends a selfish life; for nothing is more certain to stuff a
+man's pillow with thorns, and to wreck his tranquillity, than to live in
+hate and suspicion, or self-absorbed. 'The peace of Christ' is ours in
+the measure in which we live the risen life and put on the new man, and
+that peace in our hearts will rule, that is, will sit there as umpire;
+for it will instinctively draw itself into itself, as it were, like the
+leaves of a sensitive plant, at the approach of evil, and, if we will
+give heed to its warnings, and have nothing to do with what disturbs it,
+we shall be saved from falling into many a sin. That peace gathers all
+the possessors of the new life into blessed harmony. It is peace with
+God, with ourselves, and with all our brethren; and the fact that all
+Christians are, by their common life, members of the one body, lays on
+them all the obligation to keep the unity in the bond of peace. And for
+all these great blessings, especially for that union with Jesus which
+gives us a share in his risen life, thankfulness should ever fill our
+hearts and make all our days and deeds the sacrifice of praise unto him
+continually.
+
+
+
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST
+
+          'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those
+          things which are above, where Christ sitteth on
+          the right hand of God. Set your affection on
+          things above, not on things on the earth.'--COL.
+          iii. 1, 2.
+
+
+There are three aspects in which the New Testament treats the
+Resurrection, and these three seem to have successively come into the
+consciousness of the Church. First, as is natural, it was considered
+mainly in its bearing on the person and work of our Lord. We may point
+for illustration to the way in which the Resurrection is treated in the
+earliest of the apostolic discourses, as recorded in the Acts of the
+Apostles. Then it came, with further reflection and experience, to be
+discerned that it had a bearing on the hope of the immortality of man.
+And last of all, as the Christian life deepened, it came to be discerned
+that the Resurrection was the pattern of the life of the Christian
+disciples. It was regarded first as a witness, then as a prophecy, then
+as a symbol. Three fragments of Scripture express these three phases:
+for the first, 'Declared to be the Son of God with power by the
+Resurrection from the dead'; for the second, 'Now is Christ risen from
+the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept'; for the
+third, 'God hath raised us up together with Him, and made us sit
+together in the heavenly places.' I have considered incidentally the two
+former aspects in the course of previous sermons; I wish to turn at
+present to that final third one.
+
+One more observation I must make by way of introduction, and that is,
+that the way in which the Apostle here glides from 'being risen with
+Christ' to where 'Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God,'
+confirms what I have pointed out in former discourses, that the
+Ascension of Jesus Christ is always considered in Scripture as being
+nothing more than the necessary outcome and issue of the process which
+began in the Resurrection. They are not separate facts, but they are two
+ends of one process. And so with these thoughts, that Resurrection
+develops into Ascension, and that in both Jesus Christ is the pattern
+for His followers, let us turn to the words before us.
+
+Then we have here
+
+I. The Christian life considered as a risen life.
+
+Now, we are all familiar with the great evangelical point of view from
+which the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ are usually
+contemplated. To many of us Christ's sacrifice is nothing more or less
+than the means by which the world is reconciled to God, and Christ's
+Resurrection nothing more than the seal which was set by Divinity upon
+that work. 'Crucified for our offences, and raised again for our
+justification,' as Paul has it--that is the point of view from which
+most evangelical or orthodox Christian people are contented to regard
+the solemn fact of the Death and the radiant fact of the Resurrection.
+You cannot be too emphatic about these truths, but you may be too
+exclusive in your contemplation of them. You do well when you say that
+they are the Gospel; you do not well when you say, as some of you do,
+that they are the whole Gospel. For there is another stream of teaching
+in the New Testament, of which my text is an example, and a multitude of
+other passages that I cannot refer to now are equally conspicuous
+instances, in which that death and that Resurrection are regarded, not
+so much in respect to the power which they exercise in the
+reconciliation of the world to God, as in their aspect as the type of
+all noble and true Christian life. You remember how, when our Lord
+Himself touched upon the fruitful issues of His death, and said: 'Except
+a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if
+it die it bringeth forth much fruit,' He at once went on to say that a
+man that loved his life would lose it; and that a man that lost his life
+would find it, and proceeded to point, even then, and in that
+connection, to His Cross as our pattern, declaring: 'If any man serve
+Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be.'
+
+          'Made like Him, like Him we rise;
+           Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.'
+
+So, then, a risen life is the type of all noble life, and before there
+can be a risen life there must have been a death. True, we may say that
+the spiritual facts in a man's experience, which are represented by
+these two great symbols of a death and a rising, are but like the
+segment of a circle which, seen from the one side is convex and from the
+other is concave. But however loosely we may feel that the metaphors
+represent the facts, this is plain, that unless a man dies to flesh, to
+self-will, to the world, he never will live a life that is worth calling
+life. The condition of all nobleness and all growth upwards is that we
+shall die daily, and live a life that has sprung victorious from the
+death of self. All lofty ethics teach that; and Christianity teaches it,
+with redoubled emphasis, because it says to us, that the Cross and the
+Resurrection are not merely imaginative emblems of the noble and the
+Christian life, but are a great deal more than that. For, brethren, do
+not forget--if you do, you will be hopelessly at sea as to large tracts
+of blessed Christian truth--that by faith in Jesus Christ we are brought
+into such a true deep union with Him as that, in no mere metaphorical or
+analogous sense, but in most blessed reality, there comes into the
+believing heart a spark of the life that is Christ's own, so that with
+Him we do live, and from Him we do live a life cognate with His, who,
+having risen from the dead, dieth no more, and over whom death hath no
+dominion. So it is not a metaphor only, but a spiritual truth, when we
+speak of being risen with Christ, seeing that our faith, in the measure
+of its genuineness, its depth and its operative power upon our
+characters, will be the gate through which there shall pass into our
+deadness the life that truly is, the life that has nought to do with
+death or sin. And this unity with Jesus, brought about by faith, brings
+about that the depths of the Christian life are hid with Christ in God,
+and that we, risen with Him, do even now sit 'at the right hand in
+heavenly places,' whilst our feet, dusty and sometimes blood-stained,
+are journeying along the paths of life. This is the great teaching of my
+text, and of a multitude of other places; and this is the teaching which
+modern Christianity, in its exclusive, or all but exclusive,
+contemplation of the Cross as the sacrifice for sin, has far too much
+forgotten. 'Ye are risen with Christ.'
+
+Let me remind you that this veritable death and rising again, which
+marks the Christian life, is set forth before us in the initial rite of
+the Christian Church. Some of you do not agree with me in my view,
+either of what is the mode or of who are the subjects of that ordinance,
+but if you know anything about the question, you know that everybody
+that has a right to give a judgment agrees with us Baptists in
+saying--although they may not think that it carries anything obligatory
+upon the practice of to-day--that the primitive Church baptized by
+immersion. Now, the meaning of baptism is to symbolise these two
+inseparable moments, dying to sin, to self, to the world, to the old
+past, and rising again to newness of life. Our sacramentarian friends
+say that, in my text, it was in baptism that these Colossian Christians
+rose again with Christ. I, for my part, do not believe that, but that
+baptism was the speaking sign of what lies at the gate of a true
+Christian life I have no manner of doubt.
+
+So the first thought of our text is not only taught us in words, but it
+stands manifest in the ritual of the Church as it was from the
+beginning. We die, and we rise again, through faith and by union through
+faith, with Christ 'that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is
+even at the right hand of God.'
+
+Let me turn, secondly, to
+
+II. The consequent aims of the Christian life.
+
+'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.'
+'To seek' implies the direction of the external life toward certain
+objects. It is not to seek as if perhaps we might not find; it is not
+even to seek in the sense of searching for, but it is to seek in the
+sense of aiming at. And now do you not think that if we had burning in
+our hearts, and conscious to our experiences, the sense of union with
+Jesus Christ the risen Saviour, that would shape the direction and
+dictate the aims of our earthly life? As surely as the elevation of the
+rocket tube determines the flight of the projectile that comes from it,
+so surely would the inward consciousness, if it were vivid as it ought
+to be in all Christian people, of that risen life throbbing within the
+heart, shape all the external conduct. It would give us wings and make
+us soar. It would make us buoyant, and lift us above the creeping aims
+that constitute the objects of life for so many men.
+
+But you say, 'Things above: that is an indefinite phrase. What do you
+mean by it?' I will tell you what the Bible means by it. It means Jesus
+Christ. All the nebulous splendours of that firmament are gathered
+together into one blazing sun. It is a vague direction to tell a man to
+shoot up, into an empty heaven. It is not a vague direction to tell him
+to seek the 'things above'; for they are all gathered into a person.
+'Where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God,'--that is the
+meaning of 'things above,' which are to be the continual aim of the man
+who is conscious of a risen life. And of course they will be, for if we
+feel, as we ought to feel habitually, though with varying clearness,
+that we do carry within us a spark, if I might use that phrase, of the
+very life of Jesus Christ, so surely as fire will spring upwards, so
+surely as water will rise to the height of its source, so surely will
+our outward lives be directed towards Him, who is the life of our inward
+lives, and the goal therefore of our outward actions?
+
+Jesus Christ is the summing up of 'the things that are above'; therefore
+there stands out clear this one great truth, that the only aim for a
+Christian soul, consistent with the facts of its Christian life, is to
+be like Christ, to be with Christ, to please Christ.
+
+Now, how does that aim--'whether present or absent we labour that we may
+be well pleasing to Him'--how does that aim bear upon the multitude of
+inferior and nearer aims which men pursue, and which Christians have to
+pursue along with other men? How does it bear upon them?--Why thus--as
+the culminating peak of a mountain-chain bears on the lower hills that
+for miles and miles buttress it, and hold it up, and aspire towards it,
+and find their perfection in its calm summit that touches the skies. The
+more we have in view, as our aim in life, Christ who is 'at the right
+hand of God,' and assimilation, communion with Him, approbation from
+Him, the more will all immediate aims be ennobled and delivered from the
+evils that else cleave to them. They are more when they are second than
+when they are first. 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,' and all your
+other aims--as students, as thinkers, as scientists, as men of business,
+as parents, as lovers, or anything else--will be greatened by being
+subordinated to the conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should
+persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden-down, diapason note,
+through all our lives. Perfume can be diffused into the air, and
+dislodge no atom of that which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can
+be pursued through, and by means of, all nearer ones, and is
+inconsistent with nothing but sin. 'Seek the things that are above.'
+
+Lastly, we have here--
+
+III. The discipline which is needed to secure the right direction of the
+life.
+
+The Apostle does not content himself with pointing out the aims. He adds
+practical advice as to how these aims can be made dominant in our
+individual cases, when he says, 'Set your affections on things above.'
+Now, many of you will know that 'affections' is not the full sense of
+the word that is here employed, and that the Revised Version gives a
+more adequate rendering when it says, 'Set your _minds_ on the things
+that are above.' A man cannot do with his love according to his will. He
+cannot say: '_Resolved_, that I love So-and-So'; and then set himself to
+do it. But though you cannot act on the emotions directly by the will,
+you _can_ act directly on your understandings, on your thoughts, and
+your thoughts will act on your affections. If a man wants to love Jesus
+Christ he must think about Him. That is plain English. It is vain for a
+man to try to coerce his wandering affections by any other course than
+by concentrating his thoughts. Set your minds on the things that are
+above, and that will consolidate and direct the emotions; and the
+thoughts and the emotions together will shape the outward efforts.
+Seeking the things that are above will come, and will only come, when
+mind and heart and inward life are occupied with Him. There is no other
+way by which the externals can be made right than by setting a watch on
+the door of our hearts and minds, and this inward discipline must be put
+in force before there will be any continuity or sureness in the outward
+aim. We want, for that direction of the life of which I have been
+speaking, a clear perception and a concentrated purpose, and we shall
+not get either of these unless we fall back, by thought and meditation,
+upon the truths which will provide them both.
+
+Brethren, there is another aspect of the connection between these two
+parts of our text, which I can only touch. Not only is the setting of
+our thoughts on the things above, the way by which we can make these the
+aim of our lives. They are not only aims to be reached at some future
+stage of our progress, but they are possessions to be enjoyed at the
+present. We may have a present Christ and a present Heaven. The
+Christian life is not all aspiration; it is fruition as well. We have to
+seek, but even whilst we seek, we should be conscious that we possess
+what we are seeking, even whilst we seek it. Do you know anything of
+that double experience of having the things that are above, here and
+now, as well as reaching out towards them?
+
+I am afraid that the Christian life of this generation suffers at a
+thousand points, because it is more concerned with the ordering of the
+outward life, and the manifold activities which this busy generation has
+struck out for itself, than it is with the quiet setting of the mind, in
+silent sunken depths of contemplation, on the things that are above. Oh,
+if we would think more about them we should aim more at them; and if we
+were sure that we possessed them to-day we should be more eager for a
+larger possession to-morrow.
+
+Dear brethren, we may all have the risen life for ours, if we will knit
+ourselves, in humble dependence and utter self-surrender, to the Christ
+who died for us that we might be dead to sin, and rose again that we
+might rise to righteousness. And if we have Him, in any deep and real
+sense, as the life of our lives, then we shall be blessed, amid all the
+divergent and sometimes conflicting nearer aims, which we have to
+pursue, by seeing clear above them that to which they all may tend, the
+one aim which corresponds to a man's nature, which meets his condition,
+which satisfies his needs, which can always be attained if it is
+followed, and which, when secured, never disappoints. God help us all to
+say, 'This one thing I do, and all else I count but dung, that I may
+know Him, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His
+sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means I may
+attain unto the Resurrection from the dead!'
+
+
+
+
+WITHOUT AND WITHIN
+
+          'Them that are without.'--COL. iv. 5.
+
+
+That is, of course, an expression for the non-Christian world; the
+outsiders who are beyond the pale of the Church. There was a very broad
+line of distinction between it and the surrounding world in the early
+Christian days, and the handful of Christians in a heathen country felt
+a great gulf between them and the society in which they lived. That
+distinction varies in form, and varies somewhat in apparent magnitude
+according as Christianity has been rooted in a country for a longer or a
+shorter time, but it remains, and is as real to-day as it ever was, and
+there is neither wisdom nor kindness in ignoring the distinction.
+
+The phrase of our text may sound harsh, and might be used, as it was by
+the Jews, from whom it was borrowed, in a very narrow and bitter spirit.
+Close corporations of any sort are apt to generate, not only a wholesome
+_esprit de corps_, but a hostile contempt for outsiders, and
+Christianity has too often been misrepresented by its professors, who
+have looked down upon those that are without with supercilious and
+unchristian self-complacency.
+
+There is nothing of that sort in the words themselves; the very opposite
+is in them. They sound to me like the expression of a man conscious of
+the security and comfort and blessedness of the home where he sat, and
+with his heart yearning for all the houseless wanderers that were
+abiding the pelting of the pitiless storm out in the darkness there. The
+spirit and attitude of Christianity to such is one of yearning pity and
+urgent entreaty to come in and share in the blessings. There is deep
+pathos in the words, as well as solemn earnestness, and in such a spirit
+I wish to dwell upon them now for a short time.
+
+I. I begin with the question: Who are they that are outside? And what is
+it of which they are outside?
+
+As I have already remarked, the phrase was apparently borrowed from
+Judaism, where it meant, 'outside the Jewish congregation,' and its
+primary application, as used here, is no doubt to those who are outside
+the Christian Church. But do not let us suppose that that explanation
+gets to the bottom of the meaning of the words. It may stand as a
+partial answer, but only as partial. The evil tendency which attends all
+externalising of truth in the concrete form of institutions works in
+full force on the Church, and ever tempts us to substitute outward
+connection with the institution for real possession of the truth of
+which the institution is the outgrowth. Therefore I urge upon you very
+emphatically--and all the more earnestly because of the superstitious
+overestimate of outward connection with the outward institution of the
+Church which is eagerly proclaimed all around us to-day--that connection
+with any organised body of believing men is not 'being within,' and that
+isolation from all these is not necessarily 'being without.' Many a man
+who is within the organisation is not 'in the truth,' and, blessed be
+God, a man may be outside all churches, and yet be one of God's hidden
+ones, and may dwell safe and instructed in the very innermost shrine of
+the secret place of the Most High. We hear from priestly lips, both
+Roman Catholic and Anglican, that there is 'no safety outside the
+Church.' The saying is true when rightly understood. If by the Church be
+meant the whole company of those who are trusting to Jesus Christ, of
+course there is no safety outside, because to trust in Jesus is the one
+condition of safety, and unless we belong to those who so trust we shall
+not possess the blessing. So understood, the phrase may pass, and is
+only objectionable as a round-about and easily misunderstood way of
+saying what is much better expressed by 'Whosoever shall call on the
+name of the Lord shall be saved.'
+
+But that is not the meaning of the phrase in the mouths of those who use
+it most frequently. To them the Church is a visible corporation, and not
+only so, but as one of the many organisations into which believers are
+moulded, it is distinguished from the others by certain offices and
+rites, bishops, priests, and sacraments, through whom and which certain
+grace is supposed to flow, no drop of which can reach a community
+otherwise shaped and officered!
+
+Nor is it only Roman Catholics and Anglicans who are in danger of
+externalising personal Christianity into a connection with a church. The
+tendency has its roots deep in human nature, and may be found
+flourishing quite as rankly in the least sacerdotal of the 'sects' as in
+the Vatican itself. There is very special need at present for those who
+understand that Christianity is an immensely deeper thing than
+connection with any organised body of Christians, to speak out the truth
+that is in them, and to protest against the vulgar and fleshly notion
+which is forcing itself into prominence in this day when societies of
+all sorts are gaining such undue power, and religion, like much else, is
+being smothered under forms, as was the maiden in the old story, under
+the weight of her ornaments. External relationships and rites cannot
+determine spiritual conditions. It does not follow because you have
+passed through certain forms, and stand in visible connection with any
+visible community, that you are therefore within the pale and safe.
+Churches are appointed by Christ. Men who believe and love naturally
+draw together. The life of Christ is in them. Many spiritual blessings
+are received through believing association with His people. Illumination
+and stimulus, succour and sympathy pass from one to another, each in
+turn experiencing the blessedness of receiving, and the greater
+blessedness of giving. No wise man who has learned of Christ will
+undervalue the blessings which come through union with the outward body
+which is a consequence of union with the unseen Head. But men may be in
+the Church and out of Christ. Not connection with it, but connection
+with Him, brings us 'within.' 'Those that are without' may be either in
+or out of the pale of any church.
+
+We may put the answer to this question in another form, and going deeper
+than the idea of being within a visible church, we may say, 'those that
+are without' are they who are outside the Kingdom of Christ.
+
+The Kingdom of Christ is not a visible external community. The Kingdom
+of Christ, or of God, or of Heaven, is found wherever human wills obey
+the Law of Christ, which is the will of God, the decrees of Heaven; as
+Christ himself put it, in profound words--profound in all their
+simplicity--when He said, 'Not every man that saith unto Me Lord! Lord!
+shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My
+Father, which is in Heaven.' 'Them that are without' are they whose
+wills are not bent in loving obedience to the Lord of their spirit.
+
+But we must go deeper than that. In the Church? Yes! In the Kingdom?
+Yes! But I venture to take another Scripture phrase as being the one
+satisfactory fundamental answer to the question: What is it that these
+people are outside of? and I say Christ, Christ. If you will take your
+New Testament as your guide, you will find that the one question upon
+which all is suspended is the, Am I, or Am I not, in Jesus Christ? Am I
+in Him, or Am I outside of Him? And the answer to that question is the
+answer to this other: Who are they that are without?
+
+They that are outside are not the 'non-Christian world' who are not
+church members; they that are inside are not the 'Christian world' who
+make an outward profession of being in the Kingdom. It is not going down
+to the foundation to explain the antithesis so; but 'those that are
+within' are those who have simple trust upon Jesus Christ as the sole
+and all-sufficient Saviour of their sinful spirits and the life of their
+life, and having entered into that great love, have plunged themselves,
+as it were, into the very heart of Jesus; have found in Him
+righteousness and peace, forgiveness and love, joy and salvation. Are
+you in Christ because you love Him and trust your soul to Him? If not,
+if not, you are amongst those 'that are without,' though you be ever so
+much joined to the visible Church of the living God.
+
+And then there is one more remark that I must drop in here before I go
+on, namely, that whilst I thankfully admit, and joyfully preach, that
+the most imperfect, rudimentary faith knits a man to Jesus Christ, even
+if in this life it may be found covered over with a great deal that is
+contradictory and inconsistent; on the other hand there are some people
+who stand like the angel in the Apocalypse, with one foot on the solid
+land and one upon the restless sea, half in and half out, undecided,
+halting--that is, 'limping'--between two opinions. Some people of that
+sort are listening to me now, who have been like that for years. Now I
+want them to remember this plain piece of common-sense--half in is
+altogether out! So that is my answer to the first question: Who are they
+that are outside, and what is it that they are outside of?
+
+I cannot carry round these principles and lay them upon the conscience
+of each hearer, but I pray you to listen to your own inmost voice
+speaking, and I am mistaken if many will not hear it saying: 'Thou art
+the man!' Do not stop your ears to that voice!
+
+II. Notice next the force of this phrase as implying the woeful
+condition of those without.
+
+I have said that it is full of pathos. It is the language of a man whose
+heart yearns as, in the midst of his own security, he thinks of the
+houseless wanderers in the dark and the storm. He thinks pityingly of
+what they lose, and of that to which they are exposed.
+
+There are two or three ways in which I may illustrate that condition,
+but perhaps the most graphic and impressive may be just to recall for a
+moment three or four of the Scripture metaphors that fit into this
+representation: 'Those that are without'; and thus to gain some
+different pictures of what the inside and the outside means in these
+varying figures.
+
+First, then, there is a figure drawn from the Old Testament which is
+often applied, and correctly applied, to this subject--Noah's Ark.
+
+Think of that safe abode floating across the waters, whilst all without
+it was a dreary waste. Without were death and despair, but those that
+were within sat warm and dry and safe and fed and living. The men that
+were without, high as they might climb upon rocks and hills, strong as
+they might be--when the dreary rainstorm wept itself dry, 'they were all
+dead corpses.' To be in was life, to be out was death.
+
+That is the first metaphor. Take another. That singular institution of
+the old Mosaic system, in which the man who inadvertently, and therefore
+without any guilt or crime of his own, had been the cause of death to
+his brother, had provided for him, half on one side Jordan and half on
+the other, and dotted over the land, so that it should not be too far to
+run to one of them, Cities of Refuge. And when the wild vendetta of
+those days stirred up the next of kin to pursue at his heels, if he
+could get inside the nearest of these he was secure. They that were
+within could stand at the city gates and look out upon the plain, and
+see the pursuer with his hate glaring from his eyes, and almost feel his
+hot breath on their cheeks, and know that though but a yard from him,
+his arm durst not touch them. To be inside was to be safe, to be outside
+was certain bloody death.
+
+That is the second figure; take a third; one which our Lord Himself has
+given us. Here is the picture--a palace, a table abundantly spread,
+lights and music, delight and banqueting, gladness and fulness, society
+and sustenance. The guests sit close and all partake. To be within means
+food, shelter, warmth, festivity, society; to be without, like Lear on
+the moor, is to stand the pelting of the storm, weary, stumbling in the
+dark, starving, solitary, and sad. Within is brightness and good cheer;
+without is darkness, hunger, death.
+
+That is the third figure. Take a fourth, another of our Master's.
+Picture a little rude, stone-built enclosure with the rough walls piled
+high, and a narrow aperture at one point, big enough for one creature to
+pass through at a time. Within, huddled together, are the innocent
+sheep; without, the lion and the bear. Above, the vault of night with
+all its stars, and watching all, the shepherd, with unslumbering eye. In
+the fold is rest for the weary limbs that have been plodding through
+valleys of the shadow of death, and dusty ways; peace for the panting
+hearts that are trembling at every danger, real and imaginary. Inside
+the fold is tranquillity, repose for the wearied frame, safety, and the
+companionship of the Shepherd; and without, ravening foes and a dreary
+wilderness, and flinty paths and sparse herbage and muddy pools. Inside
+is life; without is death. That is the fourth figure.
+
+In the Ark no Deluge can touch; in the City of Refuge no avenger can
+smite; in the banqueting-hall no thirst nor hunger but can be satisfied;
+in the fold no enemy can come and no terror can live.
+
+Brethren! are you amongst 'them that are without,' or are you within?
+
+III. Lastly--why is anybody outside? Why? It is no one's fault but their
+own. It is not God's. He can appeal with clean hands and ask us to judge
+what more could have been done for His vineyard that He has not done for
+it. The great parable which represents Him as sending out His summons to
+the feast in His palace puts the wonderful words in the mouth of the
+master of the house, after his call by his servants had been refused.
+'Go out into the highways and hedges,' beneath which the beggars squat,
+'and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.' 'Nature abhors
+a vacuum,' the old natural philosophers used to say. So does grace; so
+does God's love. It hates to have His house empty and His provisions
+unconsumed. And so He has done all that He could do to bring you and me
+inside. He has sent His Son, He beckons us, He draws us by countless
+mercies day by day. He appeals to our hearts, and would have us gathered
+into the fold. And if we are outside it is not because He has neglected
+to do anything which He can do in order to bring us in.
+
+But why is it that any of us resist such drawing, and make the wretched
+choice of perishing without, rather than find safety within? The deepest
+reason is an alienated heart, a rebellious will. But the reason for
+alienation and rebellion lie among the inscrutable mysteries of our
+awful being. All sin is irrational. The fact is plain, the temptations
+are obvious; excuses there are in plenty, but reasons there are none.
+Still we may touch for a moment on some of the causes which operate with
+many hearers of God's merciful call to enter in, and keep them without.
+
+Many remain outside because they do not really believe in the danger. No
+doubt there was a great deal of brilliant sarcasm launched at Noah for
+his folly in thinking that there was anything coming that needed an ark.
+It seemed, no doubt, food for much laughter, and altogether impossible
+to think of gravely, that this flood which he talked about should ever
+come. So they had their laughter out as they saw him working away at his
+ludicrous task 'until the day when the flood came and swept them all
+away,' and the laughter ended in gurgling sobs of despair.
+
+If a manslayer does not believe that the next of kin is on his track, he
+will not flee to the City of Refuge. If the sheep has no fear of wolves,
+it will choose to be outside the fold among the succulent herbage. Did
+you ever see how, in a Welsh slate-quarry, before a blast, a horn is
+blown, and at its sound all along the face of the quarry the miners run
+to their shelters, where they stay until the explosion is over? What do
+you suppose would become of one of them who stood there after the horn
+had blown, and said: 'Nonsense! There is nothing coming! I will take my
+chance where I am!' Very likely a bit of slate would end him before he
+had finished his speech. At any rate, do not you, dear friend, trifle
+with the warning that says: 'Flee for refuge to Christ and shelter
+yourself in Him.'
+
+There are some people, too, who stop outside because they do not much
+care for the entertainment that they will get within. It does not strike
+them as being very desirable. They have no appetite for it. We preachers
+seek to draw hearts to Jesus by many motives--and among others by
+setting forth the blessings which he bestows. But if a man does not care
+about pardon, does not fear judgment, does not want to be good, has no
+taste for righteousness, is not attracted by the pure and calm pleasures
+which Christ offers, the invitation falls flat upon his ear. Wisdom
+cries aloud and invites the sons of men to her feast, but the fare she
+provides is not coarse and high spiced enough, and her table is left
+unfilled, while the crowd runs to the strong-flavoured meats and foaming
+drinks which her rival, Folly, offers. Many of us say, like the
+Israelites 'Our souls loathe this light bread,' this manna, white and
+sweet, and Heaven-descended, and angels' food though it be, and we
+hanker after the reeking garlic and leeks and onions of Egypt.
+
+Some of us again, would like well enough to be inside, if that would
+keep us from dangers which we believe to be real, but we do not like the
+doorway. You may see in some remote parts of the country strange,
+half-subterranean structures which are supposed to have been the houses
+of a vanished race. They have a long, narrow, low passage, through which
+a man has to creep with his face very near the ground. He has to go low
+and take to his knees to get through; and at the end the passage opens
+out into ampler, loftier space, where the dwellers could sit safe from
+wild weather and wilder beasts and wildest men. That is like the way
+into the fortress home which we have in Jesus Christ. We must stoop very
+low to enter there. And some of us do not like that. We do not like to
+fall on our knees and say, I am a sinful man, O Lord. We do not like to
+bow ourselves in penitence. And the passage is narrow as well as low. It
+is broad enough for you, but not for what some of you would fain carry
+in on your back. The pack which you bear, of earthly vanities and loves,
+and sinful habits, will be brushed off your shoulders in that narrow
+entrance, like the hay off a cart in a country lane bordered by high
+hedges. And some of us do not like that. So, because the way is narrow,
+and we have to stoop, our pride kicks at the idea of having to confess
+ourselves sinners, and of having to owe all our hope and salvation to
+God's undeserved mercy, therefore we stay outside. And because the way
+is narrow, and we have to put off some of our treasures, our
+earthward-looking desires shrink from laying these aside, and therefore
+we stop outside. There was room in the boat for the last man who stood
+on the deck, but he could not make up his mind to leave a bag of gold.
+There was no room for that. Therefore he would not leap, and went down
+with the ship.
+
+The door is open. The Master calls. The feast is spread. Dangers
+threaten. The flood comes. The avenger of blood makes haste. 'Why
+standest thou without?' Enter in, before the door is shut. And if you
+ask, How shall I pass within?--the answer is plain: 'They could not
+enter in because of unbelief. We which have believed do enter into
+rest.'
+
+
+
+
+I. THESSALONIANS
+
+
+
+
+FAITH, LOVE, HOPE, AND THEIR FRUITS
+
+          'Your work of faith, and labour of love, and
+          patience of hope.'--1 THESS. i. 3.
+
+
+This Epistle, as I suppose we all know, is Paul's first letter. He had
+been hunted out of Thessalonica by the mob, made the best of his way to
+Athens, stayed there for a very short time, then betook himself to
+Corinth, and at some point of his somewhat protracted residence there,
+this letter was written. So that we have in it his first attempt, so far
+as we know, to preach the Gospel by the pen. It is interesting to notice
+how, whatever changes and developments there may have been in him
+thereafter, all the substantial elements of his latest faith beam out in
+this earliest letter, and how even in regard to trifles we see the germs
+of much that came afterwards. This same triad, you remember, 'faith,
+hope, charity,' recurs in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, though
+with a very significant difference in the order, which I shall have to
+dwell upon presently.
+
+The letter is interesting on another account. Remembering that it was
+only a very short time since these Thessalonians had turned from idols
+to serve the living God, there is something very beautiful in the
+overflowing generosity of commendation, which never goes beyond
+veracity, with which he salutes them. Their Christian character, like
+seeds sown in some favoured tropical land, had sprung up swiftly; yet
+not with the dangerous kind of swiftness which presages decay of the
+growth. It was only a few days since they had been grovelling before
+idols, but now he can speak of 'your work of faith, and labour of love,
+and patience of hope' . . . and declare that the Gospel 'sounded out' from
+them--the word which he employs is that which is technically used for
+the blast of a trumpet--'so that we need not to speak anything.' Rapid
+growth is possible for us all, and is not always superficial.
+
+I desire now to consider that pair of triads--the three
+foundation-stones, and the three views of the fair building that is
+reared upon them.
+
+I. The three foundation-stones.
+
+That is a natural metaphor to use, but it is not quite correct, for
+these three--faith, love, hope--are not to be conceived of as lying side
+by side. Rather than three foundations we have three courses of the
+building here; the lowest one, faith; the next one, love; and the top
+one, hope. The order in 1 Corinthians is different, 'faith, hope,
+charity,' and the alteration in the sequence is suggested by the
+difference of purpose. The Apostle intended in 1 Corinthians to dwell at
+some length thereafter on 'charity,' or 'love.' So he puts it last to
+make the link of connection with what he is going to say. But here he is
+dealing with the order of production, the natural order in which these
+three evolve themselves. And his thought is that they are like the
+shoots that successive springs bring upon the bough of a tree, where
+each year has its own growth, and the summit of last year's becomes the
+basis of next. Thus we have, first, faith; then, shooting from that,
+love; and then, sustained by both, hope. Now let us look at that order.
+
+It is a well-worn commonplace, which you may think it not needful for me
+to dwell upon here, that in the Christian theory, both of salvation and
+of morals, the basis of everything is trust. And that is no arbitrary
+theological arrangement, but it is the only means by which the life that
+is the basis both of salvation and of righteousness can be implanted in
+men. There is no other way by which Jesus Christ can come into our
+hearts than by what the New Testament calls 'trust,' which we have
+turned into the hard, theological concept which too often glides over
+people's minds without leaving any dint at all--'faith.' Distrust is
+united with trust. There is no trust without, complementary to it,
+self-distrust. Just as the sprouting seed sends one little radicle
+downwards, and that becomes the root, and at the same time sends up
+another one, white till it reaches the light, and it becomes the stem,
+so the underside of faith is self-distrust, and you must empty
+yourselves before you can open your hearts to be filled by Jesus. That
+being so, this self-distrustful trust is the beginning of everything.
+That is the _alpha_ of the whole alphabet, however glorious and manifold
+may be the words into which its letters are afterwards combined. Faith
+is the hand that grasps. It is the means of communication, it is the
+channel through which the grace which is the life, or, rather, I should
+say, the life which is the grace, comes to us. It is the open door by
+which the angel of God comes in with his gifts. It is like the petals of
+the flowers, opening when the sunshine kisses them, and, by opening,
+laying bare the depths of their calyxes to be illuminated and coloured,
+and made to grow by the sunshine which itself has opened them, and
+without the presence of which, within the cup, there would have been
+neither life nor beauty. So faith is the basis of everything; the first
+shoot from which all the others ascend. Brethren, have you that initial
+grace? I leave the question with you. If you have not that, you have
+nothing else.
+
+Then again, out of faith rises love. No man can love God unless he
+believes that God loves him. I, for my part, am old-fashioned and narrow
+enough not to believe that there is any deep, soul-cleansing or
+soul-satisfying love of God which is not the answer to the love that
+died on the Cross. But you must believe that, and more than believe it;
+you must have trusted and cast yourselves on it, in the utter
+abandonment of self-distrust and Christ-confidence, before there will
+well up in your heart the answering love to God. First faith, then love.
+My love is the reverberation of the primeval voice, the echo of God's.
+The angle at which the light falls on the mirror is the same as the
+angle at which it is reflected from it. And though my love at its
+highest is low, at its strongest is weak: yet, like the echo that is
+faint and far, feeble though it be, it is pitched on the same key, and
+is the prolongation of the same note as the mother-sound. So my love
+answers God's love, and it will never answer it unless faith has brought
+me within the auditorium, the circle wherein the voice that proclaims 'I
+love thee, my child,' can be heard.
+
+Now, we do not need to ask ourselves whether Paul is here speaking of
+love to God or love to man. He is speaking of both, because the New
+Testament deals with the latter as being a part of the former, and sure
+to accompany it. But there is one lesson that I wish to draw. If it be
+true that love in us is thus the result of faith in the love of God, let
+us learn how we grow in love. You cannot say, 'Now I will make an effort
+to love.' The circulation of the blood, the pulsations of the heart, are
+not within the power of the will. But you can say, 'Now I will make an
+effort to trust.' For faith is in the power of the will, and when the
+Master said, 'Ye will not come unto me,' He taught us that unbelief is
+not a mere intellectual deficiency or perversity, but that it is the
+result, in the majority of cases--I might almost say in all-of an
+alienated will. Therefore, if you wish to love, do not try to work
+yourself into a hysteria of affection, but take into your hearts and
+minds the Christian facts, and mainly the fact of the Cross, which will
+set free the frozen and imprisoned fountains of your affections, and
+cause them to flow out abundantly in sweet water. First faith, then
+love; and get at love through faith. That is a piece of practical wisdom
+that it will do us all good to keep in mind.
+
+Then the third of the three, the topmost shoot, is hope. Hope is faith
+directed to the future. So it is clear enough that, unless I have that
+trust of which I have been speaking, I have none of the hope which the
+Apostle regards as flowing from it. But love has to do with hope quite
+as much, though in a different way, as faith has to do with it. For in
+the direct proportion in which we are taking into our hearts Christ and
+His truth, and letting our hearts go out in love towards Him and
+communion with Him, will the glories beyond brighten and consolidate and
+magnify themselves in our eyes. The hope of the Christian man is but the
+inference from his present faith, and the joy and sweetness of his
+present love. For surely when we rise to the heights which are possible
+to us all, and on which I suppose most Christian people have been
+sometimes, though for far too brief seasons; when we rise to the heights
+of communion with God, anything seems more possible to us than that
+death, or anything that lies in the future, should have power over a tie
+so sweet, so strong, so independent of externals, and so all-sufficing
+in its sweetness. Thus we shall be sure that God is our portion for
+ever, in the precise degree in which, by faith and love, we feel that
+'He is the strength of our hearts,' to-day and now. So, then, we have
+the three foundation-stones.
+
+And now a word or two, in the second place, about
+
+II. The fair building which rises on them.
+
+I have already half apologised for using the metaphor of a foundation
+and a building. I must repeat the confession that the symbol is an
+inadequate one. For the Apostle does not conceive of the work and labour
+and patience which are respectively allocated to these three graces as
+being superimposed upon them, as it were, by effort, so much as he
+thinks of them as growing out of them by their inherent nature. The work
+is 'the work of faith,' that which characterises faith, that which
+issues from it, that which is its garment, visible to the world, and the
+token of its reality and its presence. Faith works. It is the foundation
+of all true work; even in the lowest sense of the word we might almost
+say that. But in the Christian scheme it is eminently the underlying
+requisite for all work which God does not consider as busy idleness. I
+might here make a general remark, which, however, I need not dwell upon,
+that we have here the broad thought which Christian people in all
+generations need to have drummed into their heads over and over again,
+and that is that inward experiences and emotions, and states of mind and
+heart, however good and precious, are so mainly as being the necessary
+foundations of conduct. What is the good of praying and feeling
+comfortable within, and having 'a blessed assurance,' a 'happy
+experience,' 'sweet communion,' and so on? What is the good of it all,
+if these things do not make us 'live soberly, righteously, and godly in
+this present world'? What is the good of the sails of a windmill going
+whirling round, if the machinery has been thrown out of gear, and the
+great stones which it ought to actuate are not revolving? What is the
+good of the screw of a steamer revolving, when she pitches, clean above
+the waves? It does nothing then to drive the vessel onwards, but will
+only damage the machinery. And Christian emotions and experiences which
+do not drive conduct are of as little use, often as perilous, and as
+injurious. If you want to keep your 'faith, love, hope,' sound and
+beneficial, set them to work. And do not be too sure that you have them,
+if they do not crave for work, whether you set them to it or not.
+
+'Your work of faith.' There is the whole of the thorny subject of the
+relation of faith and works packed into a nutshell. It is exactly what
+James said and it is exactly what a better than James said. When the
+Jews came to Him with their externalism, and thought that God was to be
+pleased by a whole rabble of separate good actions, and so said, 'What
+shall we do that we might work the works of God?' Jesus said, 'Never
+mind about _works_. This is _the work_ of God, that ye believe on Him
+whom He hath sent,' and out of that will come all the rest. That is the
+mother-tincture; everything will flow from that. So Paul says, 'Your
+work of faith.'
+
+Does your faith work? Perhaps I should ask other people rather than you.
+Do men see that your faith works; that its output is different from the
+output of men who are not possessors of a 'like precious faith'? Ask
+yourselves the question, and God help you to answer it.
+
+Love labours. Labour is more than work, for it includes the notion of
+toil, fatigue, difficulty, persistence, antagonism. Ah! the work of
+faith will never be done unless it is the toil of love. You remember how
+Milton talks about the immortal garland that is to be run for, 'not
+without dust and sweat.' The Christian life is not a leisurely
+promenade. The limit of our duty is not ease of work. There must be
+toil. And love is the only principle that will carry us through the
+fatigues, and the difficulties, and the oppositions which rise against
+us from ourselves and from without. Love delights to have a hard task
+set it by the beloved, and the harder the task the more poignant the
+satisfaction. Loss is gain when it brings us nearer the beloved. And
+whether our love be love to God, or its consequence, love to man, it is
+the only foundation on which toil for either God or man will ever
+permanently be rested. Do not believe in philanthropy which has not a
+bottom of faith, and do not believe in work for Christ which does not
+involve in toil. And be sure that you will do neither, unless you have
+both these things: the faith and the love.
+
+And then comes the last. Faith works, love toils, hope is patient. Is
+that all that 'hope' is? Not if you take the word in the narrow meaning
+which it has in modern English; but that was not what Paul meant. He
+meant something a great deal more than passive endurance, great as that
+is. It is something to be able to say, in the pelting of a pitiless
+storm, 'Pour on! I will endure.' But it is a great deal more to be able,
+in spite of all, not to bate one jot of heart or hope, but 'still bear
+up and steer right onward'; and that is involved in the true meaning of
+the word inadequately rendered 'patience' in the New Testament. For it
+is no passive virtue only, but it is a virtue which, in the face of the
+storm, holds its course; brave persistence, active perseverance, as well
+as meek endurance and submission.
+
+'Hope' helps us both to bear and to do. They tell us nowadays that it is
+selfish for a Christian man to animate himself, either for endurance or
+for activity, by the contemplation of those great glories that lie
+yonder. If that is selfishness, God grant we may all become a great deal
+more selfish than we are! No man labours in the Christian life, or
+submits to Christian difficulty, for the sake of going to heaven. At
+least, if he does, he has got on the wrong tack altogether. But if the
+motive for both endurance and activity be faith and love, then hope has
+a perfect right to come in as a subsidiary motive, and to give strength
+to the faith and rapture to the love. We cannot afford to throw away
+that hope, as so many of us do--not perhaps, intellectually, though I am
+afraid there is a very considerable dimming of the clearness, and a
+narrowing of the place in our thoughts, of the hope of a future
+blessedness, in the average Christian of this day--but practically we
+are all apt to lose sight of the recompense of the reward. And if we do,
+the faith and love, and the work and toil, and the patience will suffer.
+Faith will relax its grasp, love will cool down its fervour; and there
+will come a film over Hope's blue eye, and she will not see the land
+that is very far off. So, dear brethren, remember the sequence, 'faith,
+love, hope,' and remember the issues, 'work, toil, patience.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S TRUMPET
+
+          'From you sounded out the word of God.'--1 THESS.
+          i. 8.
+
+
+This is Paul's first letter. It was written very shortly after his first
+preaching of the Gospel in the great commercial city of Thessalonica.
+But though the period since the formation of the Thessalonian Church was
+so brief, their conversion had already become a matter of common
+notoriety; and the consistency of their lives, and the marvellous change
+that had taken place upon them, made them conspicuous in the midst of
+the corrupt heathen community in which they dwelt. And so says Paul, in
+the text, by reason of their work of faith and labour of love and
+patience of hope, they had become ensamples to all that believe, and
+loud proclaimers and witnesses of the Gospel which had produced this
+change.
+
+The Apostle employs a word never used anywhere else in the New Testament
+to describe the conspicuous and widespread nature of this testimony of
+theirs. He says, 'The word of the Lord _sounded out_' from them. That
+phrase is one most naturally employed to describe the blast of a
+trumpet. So clear and ringing, so loud, penetrating, melodious, rousing,
+and full was their proclamation, by the silent eloquence of their lives,
+of the Gospel which impelled and enabled them to lead such lives. A
+grand ideal of a community of believers! If our churches to-day were
+nearer its realisation there would be less unbelief, and more attraction
+of wandering prodigals to the Father's house. Would that this saying
+were true of every body of professing believers! Would that from each
+there sounded out one clear accordant witness to Christ, in the purity
+and unworldliness of their Christlike lives!
+
+I. This metaphor suggests the great purpose of the Church.
+
+It is God's trumpet, His means of making His voice heard through all the
+uproar of the world. As the captain upon the deck in the gale will use
+his speaking-trumpet, so God's voice needs your voice. The Gospel needs
+to be passed through human lips in order that it may reach deaf ears.
+The purpose for which we have been apprehended of Christ is not merely
+our own personal salvation, whether we understand that in a narrow and
+more outward, or in a broader and more spiritual sense. No man is an end
+in himself, but every man, though he be partially and temporarily an
+end, is also a means. And just as, according to the other metaphor, the
+Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, each particle of the dead dough, as
+soon as it is leavened and vitalised, becoming the medium for
+transmitting the strange, transforming, and living influence to the
+particle beyond, so all of us, if we are Christian people, have received
+that grace into our hearts, for our own sakes indeed, but also that
+through us might be manifested to the darkened eyes beyond, and through
+us might drop persuasively on the dull, cold ears that are further away
+from the Divine Voice, the great message of God's mercy. The Church is
+God's trumpet, and the purpose that He has in view in setting it in the
+world is to make all men know the fellowship of the mystery, and that
+through it there may ring out, as by some artificial means a poor human
+voice will be flung to a greater distance than it would otherwise reach,
+the gentle entreaties, and the glorious proclamation, and the solemn
+threatenings of the Word, the Incarnate as well as the written Word, of
+God.
+
+Of course all this is true, not only about communities, but it is true
+of a community, just because it is true of each individual member of it.
+The Church is worse than as 'sounding brass,' it is as _silent_ brass
+and an _untinkling_ cymbal, unless the individuals that belong to it
+recognise God's meaning in making them His children, and do their best
+to fulfil it. 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith the Lord. You are put into
+the witness-box; see that you speak out when you are there.
+
+II. Another point that this figure may suggest is, the _sort_ of sound
+that should come from the trumpet.
+
+A trumpet note is, first of all, clear. There should be no hesitation in
+our witness; nothing uncertain in the sound that we give. There are
+plenty of so-called Christian people whose lives, if they bear any
+witness for the Master at all, are like the notes that some bungling
+learner will bring out of a musical instrument: hesitating, uncertain,
+so that you do not know exactly what note he wants to produce. How many
+of us, calling ourselves Christian people, testify on both sides;
+sometimes bearing witness for Christ; and alas! alas! oftener bearing
+witness against Him. Will the trumpet, the instrument of clear, ringing,
+unmistakable sounds, be the emblem of your Christian testimony? Would
+not some poor scrannel-pipe, ill-blown, be nearer the mark? The note
+should be clear.
+
+The note should be penetrating. There is no instrument, I suppose, that
+carries further than the ringing clarion that is often heard on the
+field of battle, above all the strife; and this little church at
+Thessalonica, a mere handful of people, just converted, in the very
+centre of a strong, compact, organised, self-confident, supercilious
+heathenism, insisted upon being heard, and got itself made audible,
+simply by the purity and the consistency of the lives of its members. So
+that Paul, a few weeks, or at most a few months, after the formation of
+the church, could say, 'From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not
+only in Macedonia and Achaia,' your own province and the one next door
+to it, 'but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad.'
+No man knows how far his influence will go. No man can tell how far his
+example may penetrate. Thessalonica was a great commercial city. So is
+Manchester. Hosts of people of all sorts came into it as they come here.
+There were many different circles which would be intersected by the
+lives of this Christian church, and wherever its units went they carried
+along with them the conviction that they had turned from idols to serve
+the living God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.
+
+And so, dear brethren, if our witness is to be worth anything it must
+have this penetrating quality. There is a difference in sounds as there
+is a difference in instruments. Some of them carry further than others.
+A clear voice will fling words to a distance that a thick, mumbling one
+never can attain. One note will travel much further than another. Do you
+see to it that your notes are of the penetrating sort.
+
+And then, again, the note should be a musical one. There is nothing to
+be done for God by harshness; nothing to be done by discords and
+gangling; nothing to be done by scolding and rebuke. The ordered
+sequence of melodious sound will travel a great deal further than
+unmusical, plain speech. You can hear a song at a distance at which a
+saying would be inaudible. Which thing is an allegory, and this is its
+lesson,--Music goes further than discord; and the witness that a
+Christian man bears will travel in direct proportion as it is
+harmonious, and gracious and gentle and beautiful.
+
+And then, again, the note should be rousing. You do not play on a
+trumpet when you want to send people to sleep; dulcimers and the like
+are the things for that purpose. The trumpet means strung-up intensity,
+means a call to arms, or to rejoicing; means at any rate, vigour, and is
+intended to rouse. Let your witness have, for its utmost signification,
+'Awake! thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead; and Christ shall
+give thee light.'
+
+III. Then, still further, take another thought that may be suggested
+from this metaphor, the silence of the loudest note.
+
+If you look at the context, you will see that all the ways in which the
+word of the Lord is represented as sounding out from the Thessalonian
+Church were deeds, not words. The context supplies a number of them.
+Such as the following are specified in it: their work; their toil, which
+is more than work; their patience; their assurance; their reception of
+the word, in much affliction with joy in the Holy Ghost; their faith to
+Godward; their turning to God from idols, to serve and to wait.
+
+That is all. So far as the context goes there might not have been a man
+amongst them who ever opened his mouth for Jesus Christ. We know not, of
+course, how far they were a congregation of silent witnesses, but this
+we know, that what Paul meant when he said, 'The whole world is ringing
+with the voice of the word of God sounding from you,' was not their
+going up and down the world shouting about their Christianity, but their
+quiet living like Jesus Christ. That is a louder voice than any other.
+
+Ah! dear friends! it is with God's Church as it is with God's heavens;
+the 'stars in Christ's right hand' sparkle in the same fashion as the
+stars that He has set in the firmament. Of them we read: 'There is
+neither voice nor language, their speech is not heard'; and yet, as man
+stands with bared head and hushed heart beneath the violet abysses of
+the heavens, 'their line' (or chord, the metaphor being that of a
+stringed instrument) 'is gone out through all the earth, and their words
+to the end of the world.' Silent as they shine, they declare the glory
+of God, and proclaim His handiwork. And so you may speak of Him without
+speaking, and though you have no gift of tongues the night may be filled
+with music, and your lives be eloquent of Christ.
+
+I do not mean to say that Christian men and women are at liberty to lock
+their lips from verbal proclamation of the Saviour they have found, but
+I do mean to say that if there was less talk and more living, the
+witness of God's Church would be louder and not lower; 'and men would
+take knowledge of us, that we had been with Jesus'; and of Jesus, that
+He had made us like Himself.
+
+IV. And so, lastly, let me draw one other thought from this metaphor,
+which I hope you will not think fanciful playing with a figure; and that
+is the breath that makes the music.
+
+If the Church is the trumpet, who blows it? God! It is by His Divine
+Spirit dwelling within us, and breathing through us, that the harsh
+discords of our natural lives become changed into melody of praise and
+the music of witness for Him. Keep near Christ, live in communion with
+God, let Him breathe through you, and when His Spirit passes through
+your spirits their silence will become harmonious speech; and from you
+'will sound out the word of the Lord.'
+
+In a tropical country, when the sun goes behind a cloud, all the insect
+life that was cheerily chirping is hushed. In the Christian life, when
+the Son of Righteousness is obscured by the clouds born of our own
+carelessness and sin, all the music in our spirit ceases, and no more
+can we witness for Him. A scentless substance lying in a drawer, with a
+bit of musk, will become perfumed by contact, and will bring the
+fragrance wherever it is carried. Live near God, and let Him speak to
+you and in you; and then He will speak through you. And if He be the
+breath of your spiritual lives, and the soul of your souls, then, and
+only then, will your lives be music, the music witness, and the witness
+conviction. And only then will there be fulfilled what I pray there may
+be more and more fulfilled in us as a Christian community, this great
+word of our text, 'from you sounded out,' clear, rousing, penetrating,
+melodious, 'the word of the Lord,' so that we, with our poor preaching,
+need not to speak anything.
+
+
+
+
+WALKING WORTHILY
+
+          'Walk worthy of God.'--1 THESS. ii. 12.
+
+
+Here we have the whole law of Christian conduct in a nutshell. There may
+be many detailed commandments, but they can all be deduced from this
+one. We are lifted up above the region of petty prescriptions, and
+breathe a bracing mountain air. Instead of regulations, very many and
+very dry, we have a principle which needs thought and sympathy in order
+to apply it, and is to be carried out by the free action of our own
+judgments.
+
+Now it is to be noticed that there are a good many other passages in the
+New Testament in which, in similar fashion, the whole sum of Christian
+conduct is reduced to a 'walking worthy' of some certain thing or other,
+and I have thought that it might aid in appreciating the many-sidedness
+and all-sufficiency of the great principles into which Christianity
+crystallises the law of our life, if we just gather these together and
+set them before you consecutively.
+
+They are these: we are told in our text to 'walk worthy of God.' Then
+again, we are enjoined, in other places, to 'walk worthy of the Lord,'
+who is Christ. Or again, 'of the Gospel of Christ.' Or again, 'of the
+calling wherewith we were called.' Or again, of the name of 'saints.'
+And if you put all these together, you will get many sides of one
+thought, the rule of Christian life as gathered into a single
+expression--correspondence with, and conformity to, a certain standard.
+
+I. And first of all, we have this passage of my text, and the other one
+to which I have referred, 'Walking worthy of the Lord,' by whom we are
+to understand Christ. We may put these together and say that the whole
+sum of Christian duty lies in conformity to the character of a Divine
+Person with whom we have loving relations.
+
+The Old Testament says: 'Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.'
+The New Testament says: 'Be ye imitators of God, and walk in love.' So
+then, whatever of flashing brightness and infinite profundity in that
+divine nature is far beyond our apprehension and grasp, there are in
+that divine nature elements--and those the best and divinest in
+it--which it is perfectly within the power of every man to copy.
+
+Is there anything in God that is more Godlike than righteousness and
+love? And is there any difference in essence between a man's
+righteousness and God's;--between a man's love and God's? The same gases
+make combustion in the sun and on the earth, and the spectroscope tells
+you that it is so. The same radiant brightness that flames burning in
+the love, and flashes white in the purity of God, even that may be
+reproduced in man.
+
+Love is one thing, all the universe over. Other elements of the bond
+that unites us to God are rather correspondent in us to what we find in
+Him. Our concavity, so to speak, answers to His convexity; our
+hollowness to His fulness; our emptiness to His all-sufficiency. So our
+faith, for instance, lays hold upon His faithfulness, and our obedience
+grasps, and bows before, His commanding will. But the love with which I
+lay hold of Him is like the love with which He lays hold on me; and
+righteousness and purity, howsoever different may be their
+accompaniments in an Infinite and uncreated Nature from what they have
+in our limited and bounded and progressive being, in essence are one.
+So, 'Be ye holy, for I am holy'; 'Walk in the light as He is in the
+light,' is the law available for all conduct; and the highest divine
+perfections, if I may speak of pre-eminence among them, are the imitable
+ones, whereby He becomes our Example and our Pattern.
+
+Let no man say that such an injunction is vague or hopeless. You must
+have a perfect ideal if you are to live at all by an ideal. There cannot
+be any flaws in your pattern if the pattern is to be of any use. You aim
+at the stars, and if you do not hit them you may progressively approach
+them. We need absolute perfection to strain after, and one day--blessed
+be His name--we shall attain it. Try to walk worthy of God and you will
+find out how tight that precept grips, and how close it fits.
+
+The love and the righteousness which are to become the law of our lives,
+are revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Whatever may sound impracticable in
+the injunction to imitate God assumes a more homely and possible shape
+when it becomes an injunction to follow Jesus. And just as that form of
+the precept tends to make the law of conformity to the divine nature
+more blessed and less hopelessly above us, so it makes the law of
+conformity to the ideal of goodness less cold and unsympathetic. It
+makes all the difference to our joyfulness and freedom whether we are
+trying to obey a law of duty, seen only too clearly to be binding, but
+also above our reach, or whether we have the law in a living Person whom
+we have learned to love. In the one case there stands upon a pedestal
+above us a cold perfection, white, complete, marble; in the other case
+there stands beside us a living law in pattern, a Brother, bone of our
+bone and flesh of our flesh; whose hand we can grasp; whose heart we can
+trust, and of whose help we can be sure. To say to me: 'Follow the ideal
+of perfect righteousness,' is to relegate me to a dreary, endless
+struggling; to say to me, 'Follow your Brother, and be like your
+Father,' is to bring warmth and hope and liberty into all my effort.
+The word that says, 'Walk worthy of God,' is a royal law, the perfect
+law of perfect freedom.
+
+Again, when we say, 'Walk worthy of God,' we mean two things--one, 'Do
+after His example,' and the other, 'Render back to Him what He deserves
+for what He has done to you.' And so this law bids us measure, by the
+side of that great love that died on the Cross for us all, our poor
+imperfect returns of gratitude and of service. He has lavished all His
+treasure on you; what have you brought him back? He has given you the
+whole wealth of His tender pity, of His forgiving mercy, of His infinite
+goodness. Do you adequately repay such lavish love? Has He not 'sown
+much and reaped little' in all our hearts? Has He not poured out the
+fulness of His affection, and have we not answered Him with a few
+grudging drops squeezed from our hearts? Oh! brethren! 'Walk worthy of
+the Lord,' and neither dishonour Him by your conduct as professing
+children of His, nor affront Him by the wretched refuse and remnants of
+your devotion and service that you bring back to Him in response to His
+love to you.
+
+II. Now a word about the next form of this all-embracing precept. The
+whole law of our Christian life may be gathered up in another
+correspondence, 'Walk worthy of the Gospel' (Phil. i. 27), in a manner
+conformed to that great message of God's love to us.
+
+That covers substantially the same ground as we have already been going
+over, but it presents the same ideas in a different light. It presents
+the Gospel as a rule of conduct. Now people have always been apt to
+think of it more as a message of deliverance than as a practical guide,
+as we all need to make an effort to prevent our natural indolence and
+selfishness from making us forget that the Gospel is quite as much a
+rule of conduct as a message of pardon.
+
+It is both by the same act. In the very facts on which our redemption
+depends lies the law of our lives.
+
+What was Paul's Gospel? According to Paul's own definition of it, it was
+this: 'How that Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the
+Scriptures.' And the message that I desire now to bring to all you
+professing Christians is this: Do not always be looking at Christ's
+Cross only as your means of acceptance. Do not only be thinking of
+Christ's Passion as that which has barred for you the gates of
+punishment, and has opened for you the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven.
+It has done all that; but if you are going to stop there you have only
+got hold of a very maimed and imperfect edition of the Gospel. The Cross
+is your _pattern_, as well as the anchor of your hope and the ground of
+your salvation, if it is anything at all to you. And it is not the
+ground of your salvation and the anchor of your hope unless it is your
+pattern. It is the one in exactly the same degree in which it is the
+other.
+
+So all self-pleasing, all harsh insistence on your own claims, all
+neglect of suffering and sorrow and sin around you, comes under the lash
+of this condemnation: 'They are not worthy of the Gospel.' And all
+unforgivingness of spirit and of temper in individuals and in nations,
+in public and in private matters, that, too, is in flagrant
+contradiction to the principles that are taught on the Cross to which
+you say you look for your salvation. Have you got forgiveness, and are
+you going out from the presence-chamber of the King to take your brother
+by the throat for the beggarly coppers that he owes you, and say: 'Pay
+me what thou owest!' when the Master has forgiven you all that great
+mountain of indebtedness which you owe Him? Oh, my brother! if Christian
+men and women would only learn to take away the scales from their eyes
+and souls; not looking at Christ's Cross with less absolute
+trustfulness, as that by which all their salvation comes, but also
+learning to look at it as closely and habitually as yielding the pattern
+to which their lives should be conformed, and would let the
+heart-melting thankfulness which it evokes when gazed at as the ground
+of our hope prove itself true by its leading them to an effort at
+imitating that great love, and so walking worthy of the Gospel, how
+their lives would be transformed! It is far easier to fetter your life
+with yards of red-tape prescriptions--do this, do not do that--far
+easier to out-pharisee the Pharisees in punctilious scrupulosities, than
+it is honestly, and for one hour, to take the Cross of Christ as the
+pattern of your lives, and to shape yourselves by that.
+
+One looks round upon a lethargic, a luxurious, a self-indulgent, a
+self-seeking, a world-besotted professing Church, and asks: 'Are these
+the people on whose hearts a cross is stamped?' Do these men--or rather
+let us say, do _we_ live as becometh the Gospel which proclaims the
+divinity of self-sacrifice, and that the law of a perfect human life is
+perfect self-forgetfulness, even as the secret of the divine nature is
+perfect love? 'Walk worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'
+
+III. Then again, there is another form of this same general prescription
+which suggests to us a kindred and yet somewhat different standard. We
+are also bidden to bring our lives into conformity to, and
+correspondence with, or, as the Bible has it, 'to walk worthy of the
+calling wherewith we are called' (Eph. iv. 1).
+
+God summons or invites us, and summons us to what? The words which
+follow our text answer, 'Who calleth you into His own kingdom and
+glory.' All you Christian people have been invited, and if you are
+Christians you have accepted the invitation; and all you men and women,
+whether you are Christians or not, have been and are being invited and
+summoned into a state and a world (for the reference is to the future
+life), in which God's will is supreme, and all wills are moulded into
+conformity with that, and into a state and a world in which all
+shall--because they submit to His will--partake of His glory, the
+fulness of His uncreated light.
+
+That being the aim of the summons, that being the destiny that is held
+out before us all, ought not that destiny and the prospect of what we
+may be in the future, to fling some beams of guiding brightness on to
+the present?
+
+Men that are called to high functions prepare themselves therefor. If
+you knew that you were going away to Australia in six months, would you
+not be beginning to get your outfit ready? You Christian men profess to
+believe that you have been called to a condition in which you will
+absolutely obey God's will, and be the loyal subjects of His kingdom,
+and in which you will partake of God's glory. Well then, obey His will
+here, and let some scattered sparklets of that uncreated light that is
+one day going to flood your soul lie upon your face to-day. Do not go
+and cut your lives into two halves, one of them all contradictory to
+that which you expect in the other, but bring a harmony between the
+present, in all its weakness and sinfulness, and that great hope and
+certain destiny that blazes on the horizon of your hope, as the joyful
+state to which you have been invited. 'Walk worthy of the calling to
+which you are called.'
+
+And again, that same thought of the destiny should feed our hope, and
+make us live under its continual inspiration. A walk worthy of such a
+calling and such a caller should know no despondency, nor any weary,
+heartless lingering, as with tired feet on a hard road. Brave good
+cheer, undimmed energy, a noble contempt of obstacles, a confidence in
+our final attainment of that purity and glory which is not depressed by
+consciousness of present failure--these are plainly the characteristics
+which ought to mark the advance of the men in whose ears such a summons
+from such lips rings as their marching orders.
+
+And a walk worthy of our calling will turn away from earthly things. If
+you believe that God has summoned you to His kingdom and glory, surely,
+surely, that should deaden in your heart the love and the care for the
+trifles that lie by the wayside. Surely, surely, if that great voice is
+inviting, and that merciful hand is beckoning you into the light, and
+showing you what you may possess there, it is not walking according to
+that summons if you go with your eyes fixed upon the trifles at your
+feet, and your whole heart absorbed in this present fleeting world.
+Unworldliness, in its best and purest fashion--by which I mean not only
+a contempt for material wealth and all that it brings, but the sitting
+loose by everything that is beneath the stars--unworldliness is the only
+walk that is 'worthy of the calling wherewith ye are called.'
+
+And if you hear that voice ringing like a trumpet call, or a commander's
+shout on the battlefield, into your ears, ever to stimulate you, to
+rebuke your lagging indifference; if you are ever conscious in your
+inmost hearts of the summons to His kingdom and glory, then, no doubt,
+by a walk worthy of it, you will make your calling sure; and there shall
+'an entrance be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting
+kingdom.'
+
+IV. And the last of the phases of this prescription which I have to deal
+with is this. The whole Christian duty is further crystallised into the
+one command, to walk in a manner conformed to, and corresponding with,
+the character which is impressed upon us.
+
+In the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (verse 2), we read
+about a very small matter, that it is to be done 'worthily of the
+saints.' It is only about the receiving of a good woman who was
+travelling from Corinth to Rome, and extending hospitality to her in
+such a manner as became professing Christians; but the very minuteness
+of the details to which the great principle is applied points a lesson.
+The biggest principle is not too big to be brought down to the narrowest
+details, and that is the beauty of principles as distinguished from
+regulations. Regulations try to be minute, and, however minute you make
+them, some case always starts up that is not exactly provided for in
+them, and so the regulations come to nothing. A principle does not try
+to be minute, but it casts its net wide and it gathers various cases
+into its meshes. Like the fabled tent in the old legend that could
+contract so as to have room for but one man, or expand wide enough to
+hold an army, so this great principle of Christian conduct can be
+brought down to giving 'Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the
+church at Cenchrea,' good food and a comfortable lodging, and any other
+little kindnesses, when she comes to Rome. And the same principle may be
+widened out to embrace and direct us in the largest tasks and most
+difficult circumstances.
+
+'Worthily of saints'--the name is an omen, and carries in it rules of
+conduct. The root idea of 'saint' is 'one separated to God,' and the
+secondary idea which flows from that is 'one who is pure.'
+
+All Christians are 'saints.' They are consecrated and set apart for
+God's service, and in the degree in which they are conscious of and live
+out that consecration, they are pure.
+
+So their name, or rather the great fact which their name implies, should
+be ever before them, a stimulus and a law. We are bound to remember that
+we are consecrated, separated as God's possession, and that therefore
+purity is indispensable. The continual consciousness of this relation
+and its resulting obligations would make us recoil from impurity as
+instinctively as the sensitive plant shuts up its little green fingers
+when anything touches it; or as the wearer of a white robe will draw it
+up high above the mud on a filthy pavement. Walk 'worthily of saints' is
+another way of saying, Be true to your own best selves. Work up to the
+highest ideal of your character. That is far more wholesome than to be
+always looking at our faults and failures, which depress and tempt us to
+think that the actual is the measure of the possible, and the past or
+present of the future. There is no fear of self-conceit or of a mistaken
+estimate of ourselves. The more clearly we keep our best and deepest
+self before our consciousness, the more shall we learn a rigid judgment
+of the miserable contradictions to it in our daily outward life, and
+even in our thoughts and desires. It is a wholesome exhortation, when it
+follows these others of which we have been speaking (and not else),
+which bids Christians remember that they are saints and live up to their
+name.
+
+A Christian's inward and deepest self is better than his outward life.
+We have all convictions in our inmost hearts which we do not work out,
+and beliefs that do not influence us as we know they ought to do, and
+sometimes wish that they did. By our own fault our lives but imperfectly
+show their real inmost principle. Friction always wastes power before
+motion is produced.
+
+So then, we may well gather together all our duties in this final form
+of the all-comprehensive law, and say to ourselves, 'Walk worthily of
+saints.' Be true to your name, to your best selves, to your deepest
+selves. Be true to your separation for God's service, and to the purity
+which comes from it. Be true to the life which God has implanted in you.
+That life may be very feeble and covered by a great deal of rubbish, but
+it is divine. Let it work, let it out. Do not disgrace your name.
+
+These are the phases of the law of Christian conduct. They reach far,
+they fit close, they penetrate deeper than the needle points of minute
+regulations. If you will live in a manner corresponding to the
+character, and worthy of the love of God, as revealed in Christ, and in
+conformity with the principles that are enthroned upon His Cross, and in
+obedience to the destiny held forth in your high calling, and in
+faithfulness to the name that He Himself has impressed upon you, then
+your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the painful and
+punctilious pharisaical obedience to outward commands, and all things
+lovely and of good report will spring to life in your hearts and bear
+fruit in your lives.
+
+One last word--all these exhortations go on the understanding that you
+are a Christian, that you have taken Christ for your Saviour, and are
+resting upon Him, and recognising in Him the revelation of God, and in
+His Cross the foundation of your hope; that you have listened to, and
+yielded to, the divine summons, and that you have a right to be called a
+saint. Is that presumption true about you, my friend? If it is not,
+Christianity thinks that it is of no use wasting time talking to you
+about conduct.
+
+It has another word to speak to you first, and after you have heard and
+accepted it, there will be time enough to talk to you about rules for
+living. The first message which Christ sends to you by my lips is, Trust
+your sinful selves to Him as your only all-sufficient Saviour. When you
+have accepted Him, and are leaning on Him with all your weight of sin
+and suffering, and loving Him with your ransomed heart, then, and not
+till then, will you be in a position to hear His law for your life, and
+to obey it. Then, and not till then, will you appreciate the divine
+simplicity and breadth of the great command to walk worthy of God, and
+the divine tenderness and power of the motive which enforces it, and
+prints it on yielding and obedient hearts, even the dying love and Cross
+of His Son. Then, and not till then, will you know how the voice from
+heaven that calls you to His kingdom stirs the heart like the sound of a
+trumpet, and how the name which you bear is a perpetual spur to heroic
+service and priestly purity. Till then, the word which we would plead
+with you to listen to and accept is that great answer of our Lord's to
+those who came to Him for a rule of conduct, instead of for the gift of
+life: 'This is the work of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He
+hath sent.'
+
+
+
+
+SMALL DUTIES AND THE GREAT HOPE
+
+          'But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that
+          I write unto you; for ye yourselves are taught of
+          God to love one another. 10. And indeed ye do it
+          toward all the brethren which are in all
+          Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye
+          increase more and more; 11. And that ye study to
+          be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work
+          with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12. That
+          ye may walk honestly toward them that are without,
+          and that ye may have lack of nothing. 13. But I
+          would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,
+          concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow
+          not, even as others which have no hope. 14. For if
+          we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even
+          so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring
+          with Him. 15. For this we say unto you by the word
+          of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain
+          unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent
+          them which are asleep. 16. For the Lord Himself
+          shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the
+          voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:
+          and the dead in Christ shall rise first; 17. Then
+          we which are alive and remain shall be caught up
+          together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord
+          in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
+          18. Wherefore comfort one another with these
+          words.'--1 THESS. iv. 9-18.
+
+          'But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye
+          have no need that I write unto you. 2. For
+          yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the
+          Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.'--1 THESS.
+          v. 1-2.
+
+
+This letter was written immediately on the arrival of Silas and Timothy
+in Corinth (1 Thess. iii. 6, 'even now'), and is all flushed with the
+gladness of relieved anxiety, and throbs with love. It gains in pathetic
+interest when we remember that, while writing it, the Apostle was in the
+thick of his conflict with the Corinthian synagogue. The thought of his
+Thessalonian converts came to him like a waft of pure, cool air to a
+heated brow.
+
+The apparent want of connection in the counsels of the two last chapters
+is probably accounted for by supposing that he takes up, as they
+occurred to him, the points reported by the two messengers. But we may
+note that the plain, prosaic duties enjoined in verses 7-12 lead on to
+the lofty revelations of the rest of the context without any sense of a
+gap, just because to Paul the greatest truths had a bearing on the
+smallest duties, and the vision of future glory was meant to shape the
+homely details of present work.
+
+I. We need to make an effort to realise the startling novelty of 'love
+of the brethren' when this letter was written. The ancient world was
+honeycombed with rents and schisms, scarcely masked by political union.
+In the midst of a world of selfishness this new faith started up, and by
+some magic knit warring nationalities and hostile classes and wide
+diversities of culture and position into a strange whole, transcending
+all limits of race and language. The conception of brotherhood was new,
+and the realisation of it in Christian love was still more astonishing.
+The world wondered; but to the Christians the new affection was, we
+might almost say, instinctive, so naturally and spontaneously did it
+fill their hearts.
+
+Paul's graceful way of enjoining it here is no mere pretty compliment.
+The Thessalonians did not need to be bidden to love the brethren, for
+such love was a part of their new life, and breathed into their hearts
+by God Himself. They were drawn together by common relation to Jesus,
+and driven together by common alienation from the world. Occasions of
+divergence had not yet risen. The world had not yet taken on a varnish
+of Christianity. The new bond was still strong in its newness. So, short
+as had been the time since Paul landed at Neapolis, the golden chain of
+love bound all the Macedonian Christians together, and all that Paul had
+to exhort was the strengthening of its links and their tightening.
+
+That fair picture faded soon, but it still remains true that the deeper
+our love to Jesus, the warmer will be our love to all His lovers. The
+morning glow may not come back to the prosaic noonday, but love to the
+brethren remains as an indispensable token of the Christian life. Let us
+try ourselves thereby.
+
+II. What have exhortations to steady work to do with exhortations to
+increasing love? Not much, apparently; but may not the link be, 'Do not
+suppose that your Christianity is to show itself only in emotions,
+however sweet; the plain humdrum tasks of a working man's life are quite
+as noble a field as the exalted heights of brotherly love.' A loving
+heart is good, but a pair of diligent hands are as good. The
+juxtaposition of these two commands preaches a lesson which we need
+quite as much as the Thessalonians did. Possibly, too, as we see more
+fully in the second Epistle, the new truths, which had cut them from
+their old anchorage, had set some of them afloat on a sea of unquiet
+expectation. So much of their old selves had been swept away, that it
+would be hard for some to settle down to the old routine. That is a
+common enough experience in all 'revivals,' and at Thessalonica it was
+intensified by speculations about Christ's coming.
+
+The 'quiet' which Paul would have us cultivate is not only external, but
+the inward tranquillity of a spirit calm because fixed on God and filled
+with love. The secret place of the Most High is ever still, and, if we
+dwell there, our hearts will not be disturbed by any tumults without. To
+'do our own business' is quite a different thing from selfish 'looking
+on our own things,' for a great part of our business is to care for
+others, and nothing dries up sympathy and practical help more surely
+than a gossiping temper, which is perpetually buzzing about other
+people's concerns, and knows everybody's circumstances and duties
+better than its own. This restless generation, whose mental food is so
+largely the newspaper, with its floods of small-talk about people, be
+they politicians, ministers, or murderers, sorely needs these precepts.
+We are all so busy that we have no time for quiet meditation, and so
+much occupied with trivialities about others that we are strangers to
+ourselves. Therefore religious life is low in many hearts.
+
+The dignity of manual labour was a new doctrine to preach to Greeks, but
+Paul lays stress on it repeatedly in his letters to Thessalonica.
+Apparently most of the converts there were of the labouring class, and
+some of them needed the lesson of Paul's example as well as his precept.
+A Christian workman wielding chisel or trowel for Christ's sake will
+impress 'them that are without.' Dignity depends, not on the nature, but
+on the motive, of our work. 'A servant with this clause makes drudgery
+divine.' It is permissible to take the opinion of those who are not
+Christians into account, and to try to show them what good workmen
+Christ can turn out. It is right, too, to cultivate a spirit of
+independence, and to prefer a little earned to abundance given as a gift
+or alms. Perhaps some of the Thessalonians were trying to turn brotherly
+love to profit, and to live on their richer brethren. Such people infest
+the Church at all times.
+
+III. With what ease, like a soaring song-bird, the letter rises to the
+lofty height of the next verses, and how the note becomes more musical,
+and the style richer, more sonorous and majestic, with the changed
+subject! From the workshop to the descending Lord and the voice of the
+trumpet and the rising saints, what a leap, and yet how easily it is
+made! Happy we if we keep the future glory and the present duty thus
+side by side, and pass without jar from the one to the other!
+
+The special point which Paul has in view must be kept well in mind. Some
+of the Thessalonians seem to have been troubled, not by questions about
+the Resurrection, as the Corinthians afterwards were, but by a curious
+difficulty, namely, whether the dead saints would not be worse off at
+Christ's coming than the living, and to that one point Paul addresses
+himself. These verses are not a general revelation of the course of
+events at that coming, or of the final condition of the glorified
+saints, but an answer to the question, What is the relation between the
+two halves of the Church, the dead and the living, in regard to their
+participation in Christ's glory when He comes again? The question is
+answered negatively in verse 15, positively in verses 16 and 17.
+
+But, before considering them, note some other precious lessons taught
+here. That sweet and consoling designation for the dead, 'them who sleep
+in Jesus,' is Christ's gift to sorrowing hearts. No doubt, the idea is
+found in pagan thinkers, but always with the sad addition, 'an eternal
+sleep.' Men called death by that name in despair. The Christian calls it
+so because he knows that sleep implies continuous existence, repose,
+consciousness, and awaking. The sleepers are not dead, they will be
+roused to refreshed activity one day.
+
+We note how emphatically verse 14 brings out the thought that Jesus
+died, since He suffered all the bitterness of death, not only in
+physical torments, but in that awful sense of separation from God which
+is the true death in death, and that, because He did, the ugly thing
+wears a softened aspect to believers, and is but sleep. He died that we
+might never know what the worst sting of death is.
+
+We note further that, in order to bring out the truth of the gracious
+change which has passed on death physical for His servants, the
+remarkable expression is used, in verse 14, 'fallen asleep through
+Jesus'; His mediatorial work being the reason for their death becoming
+sleep. Similarly, it is only in verse 16 that the bare word 'dead' is
+used about them, and there it is needed for emphasis and clearness. When
+we are thinking of Resurrection we can afford to look death in the face.
+
+We note that Paul here claims to be giving a new revelation made to him
+directly by Christ. 'By (or, "in") the word of the Lord' cannot mean
+less than that. The question arises, in regard to verse 15, whether Paul
+expected that the advent would come in his lifetime. It need not startle
+any if he were proved to have cherished such a mistaken expectation; for
+Christ Himself taught the disciples that the time of His second coming
+was a truth reserved, and not included in His gifts to them. But two
+things may be noted. First, that in the second Epistle, written very
+soon after this, Paul sets himself to damp down the expectation of the
+nearness of the advent, and points to a long course of historical
+development of incipient tendencies which must precede it; and, second,
+that his language here does not compel the conclusion that he expected
+to be alive at the second coming. For he is distinguishing between the
+two classes of the living and the dead, and he naturally puts himself in
+the class to which, at that time, he and his hearers belonged, without
+thereby necessarily deciding, or even thinking about, the question
+whether he and they would or would not belong to that class at the
+actual time of the advent.
+
+The revelation here reveals much, and leaves much unrevealed. It is
+perfectly clear on the main point. Negatively, it declares that the
+sleeping saints lose nothing, and are not anticipated or hindered in any
+blessedness by the living. Positively, it declares that they precede the
+living, inasmuch as they 'rise first'; that is, before the living
+saints, who do not sleep, but are changed (1 Cor. xv. 51), are thus
+transfigured. Then the two great companies shall unitedly rise to meet
+the descending Lord; and their unity in Him, and, therefore, their
+fellowship with one another, shall be eternal.
+
+That great hope helps us to bridge the dark gorge of present separation.
+It leaves unanswered a host of questions which our lonely hearts would
+fain have cleared up; but it is enough for hope to hold by, and for
+sorrow to be changed into submission and anticipation. As to the many
+obscurities that still cling to the future, the meaning and the nature
+of the accompaniments, the shout, the trumpet, and the like, the way of
+harmonising the thought that the departed saints attend the descending
+Lord, with whom they dwell now, with the declaration here that they rise
+from the earth to meet Him, the question whether these who are thus
+caught up from earth to meet the Lord in the air come back again with
+Him to earth,--all these points of curious speculation we may leave. We
+know enough for comfort, for assurance of the perfect reunion of the
+saints who sleep in Jesus and of the living, and of the perfect
+blessedness of both wings of the great army. We may be content with what
+is clearly revealed, and be sure that, if what is unrevealed would have
+been helpful to us, He would have told us. We are to use the revelation
+for comfort and for stimulus, and we are to remember that 'times and
+seasons' are not told us, nor would the knowledge of them profit us.
+
+Paul took for granted that the Thessalonians remembered the Lord's word,
+which he had, no doubt, told them, that He would come 'as a thief in the
+night.' So he discourages a profitless curiosity, and exhorts to a
+continual vigilance. When He comes, it will be suddenly, and will wake
+some who live from a sinful sleep with a shock of terror, and the dead
+from a sweet sleep in Him with a rush of gladness, as in body and spirit
+they are filled with His life, and raised to share in His triumph.
+
+
+
+
+SLEEPING THROUGH JESUS
+
+          ' . . . Them also which sleep in Jesus . . .'--1
+          THESS. iv. 14.
+
+
+That expression is not unusual, in various forms, in the Apostle's
+writings. It suggests a very tender and wonderful thought of closeness
+and union between our Lord and the living dead, so close as that He is,
+as it were, the atmosphere in which they move, or the house in which
+they dwell. But, tender and wonderful as the thought is, it is not
+exactly the Apostle's idea here. For, accurately rendered--and accuracy
+in regard to Scripture language is not pedantry--the words run, 'Them
+which sleep _through_ Jesus.'
+
+Now, that is a strange phrase, and, I suppose, its strangeness is the
+reason why our translators have softened it down to the more familiar
+and obvious 'in Jesus.' We can understand living through Christ, on
+being sacred through Christ, but what can _sleeping_ through Christ
+mean? I shall hope to answer the question presently, but, in the
+meantime, I only wish to point out what the Apostle does say, and to
+plead for letting him say it, strange though it sounds. For the strange
+and the difficult phrases of Scripture are like the hard quartz reefs in
+which gold is, and if we slur them over we are likely to loose the
+treasure. Let us try if we can find what the gold here may be.
+
+Now, there are only two thoughts that I wish to dwell upon as suggested
+by these words. One is the softened aspect of death, and of the state of
+the Christian dead; and the other is the ground or cause of that
+softened aspect.
+
+I. First, then, the softened aspect of death, and of the state of the
+Christian dead.
+
+It is to Jesus primarily that the New Testament writers owe their use of
+this gracious emblem of sleep. For, as you remember, the word was twice
+upon our Lord's lips; once when, over the twelve-years-old maid from
+whom life had barely ebbed away, He said, 'She is not dead, but
+sleepeth'; and once when in regard of the man Lazarus, from whom life
+had removed further, He said, 'Our friend sleepeth, but I go that I may
+awake him out of sleep.' But Jesus was not the originator of the
+expression. You find it in the Old Testament, where the prophet Daniel,
+speaking of the end of the days and the bodily Resurrection, designates
+those who share in it as 'them that sleep in the dust of the earth.' And
+the Old Testament was not the sole origin of the phrase. For it is too
+natural, too much in accordance with the visibilities of death, not to
+have suggested itself to many hearts, and been shrined in many
+languages. Many an inscription of Greek and Roman date speaks of death
+under this figure; but almost always it is with the added, deepened note
+of despair, that it is a sleep which knows no waking, but lasts through
+eternal night.
+
+Now, the Christian thought associated with this emblem is the precise
+opposite of the pagan one. The pagan heart shrank from naming the ugly
+thing because it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled round the
+man, as he contemplated it, that he sought to drape the dreadfulness in
+some kind of thin, transparent veil, and to put the buffer of a word
+between him and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive for the use
+of the word is the precise opposite. He uses the gentler expression
+because the thing has become gentler.
+
+It is profoundly significant that throughout the whole of the New
+Testament the plain, naked word 'death' is usually applied, not to the
+physical fact which we ordinarily designate by the name, but to the grim
+thing of which that physical fact is only the emblem and the parable,
+viz., the true death which lies in the separation of the soul from God;
+whilst predominately the New Testament usage calls the physical fact by
+some other gentler form of expression, because, as I say, the gentleness
+has enfolded the thing to be designated.
+
+For instance, you find one class of representations which speak of death
+as being a departing and a being with Christ; or which call it, as one
+of the apostles does, an 'exodus,' where it is softened down to be
+merely a change of environment, a change of locality. Then another class
+of representations speak of it as 'putting off this my tabernacle,' or,
+the dissolution of the 'earthly house'--where there is a broad, firm
+line of demarcation drawn between the inhabitant and the habitation, and
+the thing is softened down to be a mere change of dwelling. Again,
+another class of expressions speak of it as being an 'offering,' where
+the main idea is that of a voluntary surrender, a sacrifice or libation
+of myself, and my life poured out upon the altar of God. But sweetest,
+deepest, most appealing to all our hearts, is that emblem of my text,
+'them that sleep.' It is used, if I count rightly, some fourteen times
+in the New Testament, and it carries with it large and plain lessons, on
+which I touch but for a moment. What, then, does this metaphor say to
+us?
+
+Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether an attractive
+conception to some of us. If it be taken exclusively it is by no means
+wholesome. I suppose that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and
+the ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the notion of their
+activities being stiffened into slumber. But, dear friends, there are
+some of us like tired children in a fair, who would fain have done with
+the weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and
+bewildering changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts
+are heavy with loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of
+shuffling off this weary coil of responsibilities and duties and tasks
+and sorrows, and of passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I
+believe, for my part, that, after all, the deepest longing of
+men--though they search for it through toil and effort--is for repose.
+As the poet has taught us, 'there is no joy but calm.' Every heart is
+weary enough, and heavy laden, and labouring enough, to feel the
+sweetness of a promise of rest:--
+
+          'Sleep, full of rest from head to foot,
+             Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.'
+
+Yes! but the rest of which our emblem speaks is, as I believe, only
+applicable to the bodily frame. The word 'sleep' is a transcript of what
+sense enlightened by faith sees in that still form, with the folded
+hands and the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us remember that
+this repose, deep and blessed as it is, is not, as some would say, the
+repose of unconsciousness. I do not believe, and I would have you not
+believe, that this emblem refers to the vigorous, spiritual life, or
+that the passage from out of the toil and moil of earth into the calm of
+the darkness beyond has any power in limiting or suspending the vital
+force of the man.
+
+Why, the very metaphor itself tells us that the sleeper is not
+unconscious. He is parted from the outer world, he is unaware of
+externals. When Stephen knelt below the old wall, and was surrounded by
+howling fanatics that slew him, one moment he was gashed with stones and
+tortured, and the next 'he fell on sleep.' They might howl, and the
+stones fly as they would, and he was all unaware of it. Like Jonah
+sleeping in the hold, what mattered the roaring of the storm to him? But
+separation from externals does not mean suspense of life or of
+consciousness, and the slumberer often dreams, and is aware of himself
+persistently throughout his slumber. Nay! some of his faculties are set
+at liberty to work more energetically, because his connection with the
+outer world is for the time suspended.
+
+And so I say that what on the hither side is sleep, on the further side
+is awaking, and that the complex whole of the condition of the sainted
+dead may be described with equal truth by either metaphor; 'they sleep
+in Jesus'; or, 'when I awake I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness.'
+
+Scripture, as it seems to me, distinctly carries this limitation of the
+emblem. For what does it mean when the Apostle says that to depart and
+to be with Christ is far better? Surely he who thus spoke conceived that
+these two things were contemporaneous, the departing and the being with
+Him. And surely he who thus spoke could not have conceived that a
+millennium-long parenthesis of slumberous unconsciousness was to
+intervene between the moment of his decease and the moment of his
+fellowship with Jesus. How could a man prefer that dormant state to the
+state here, of working for and living with the Lord? Surely, being with
+Him must mean that we know where we are, and who is our companion.
+
+And what does that text mean: 'Ye are come unto the spirits of just men
+made perfect,' unless it means that of these two classes of persons who
+are thus regarded as brought into living fellowship, each is aware of
+the other? Does perfecting of the spirit mean the smiting of the spirit
+into unconsciousness? Surely not, and surely in view of such words as
+these, we must recognise the fact that, however limited and imperfect
+may be the present connection of the disembodied dead, who sleep in
+Christ, with external things, they know themselves, they know their home
+and their companion, and they know the blessedness in which they are
+lapped.
+
+But another thought which is suggested by this emblem is, as I have
+already said, most certainly the idea of awaking. The pagans said, as
+indeed one of their poets has it, 'Suns can sink and return, but for us,
+when our brief light sinks, there is but one perpetual night of
+slumber.' The Christian idea of death is, that it is transitory as a
+sleep in the morning, and sure to end. As St. Augustine says somewhere,
+'Wherefore are they called sleepers, but because in the day of the Lord
+they will be reawakened?'
+
+And so these are the thoughts, very imperfectly spoken, I know, which
+spring like flowers from this gracious metaphor 'them that sleep'--rest
+and awaking; rest and consciousness.
+
+II. Note the ground of this softened aspect.
+
+They 'sleep through Him.' It is by reason of Christ and His work, and by
+reason of that alone, that death's darkness is made beautiful, and
+death's grimness is softened down to this. Now, in order to grasp the
+full meaning of such words as these of the Apostle, we must draw a broad
+distinction between the physical fact of the ending of corporeal life
+and the mental condition which is associated with it by us. What we call
+death, if I may so say, is a complex thing--a bodily phenomenon _plus_
+conscience, the sense of sin, the certainty of retribution in the dim
+beyond. And you have to take these elements apart. The former remains,
+but if the others are removed, the whole has changed its character and
+is become another thing, and a very little thing.
+
+The mere physical fact is a trifle. Look at it as you see it in the
+animals; look at it as you see it in men when they actually come to it.
+In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is painless and easy, and men
+sink into slumber. Strange, is it not, that so small a reality should
+have power to cast over human life so immense and obscuring a shadow!
+Why? Because, as the Apostle says, 'the sting of death is sin,' and if
+you can take the sting out of it, then there is very little to fear, and
+it comes down to be an insignificant and transient element in our
+experience.
+
+Now, the death of Jesus Christ takes away, if I may so say, the _nimbus_
+of apprehension and dread arising from conscience and sin, and the
+forecast of retribution. There is nothing left for us to face except the
+physical fact, and any rough soldier, with a coarse, red coat upon him,
+will face that for eighteenpence a day, and think himself well paid.
+Jesus Christ has abolished death, leaving the mere shell, but taking all
+the substance out of it. It has become a different thing to men, because
+in that death of His He has exhausted the bitterness, and has made it
+possible that we should pass into the shadow, and not fear either
+conscience or sin or judgment.
+
+In this connection I cannot but notice with what a profound meaning the
+Apostle, in this very verse, uses the bare, naked word in reference to
+Him, and the softened one in reference to us. 'If we believe that Jesus
+Christ _died_ and rose again, even so them also which sleep.' Ah! yes!
+He died indeed, bearing all that terror with which men's consciences
+have invested death. He died indeed, bearing on Himself the sins of the
+world. He died that no man henceforward need ever die in that same
+fashion. His death makes our deaths sleep, and His Resurrection makes
+our sleep calmly certain of a waking.
+
+So, dear 'brethren, I would not have you ignorant concerning them which
+are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope.' And I
+would have you to remember that, whilst Christ by His work has made it
+possible that the terror may pass away, and death may be softened and
+minimised into slumber, it will not be so with you--unless you are
+joined to Him, and by trust in the power of His death and the
+overflowing might of His Resurrection, have made sure that what He has
+passed through, you will pass through, and where He is, and what He is,
+you will be also.
+
+Two men die by one railway accident, sitting side by side upon one seat,
+smashed in one collision. But though the outward fact is the same about
+each, the reality of their deaths is infinitely different. The one falls
+asleep through Jesus, in Jesus; the other dies indeed, and the death of
+his body is only a feeble shadow of the death of his spirit. Do you knit
+yourself to the Life, which is Christ, and then 'he that believeth on Me
+shall never die.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WORK AND ARMOUR OF THE CHILDREN OF THE DAY
+
+          'Let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on
+          the breastplate of faith and love; and for a
+          helmet the hope of salvation.'--1 THESS. v. 8.
+
+
+This letter to the Thessalonians is the oldest book of the New
+Testament. It was probably written within something like twenty years of
+the Crucifixion; long, therefore, before any of the Gospels were in
+existence. It is, therefore, exceedingly interesting and instructive to
+notice how this whole context is saturated with allusions to our Lord's
+teaching, as it is preserved in these Gospels; and how it takes for
+granted that the Thessalonian Christians were familiar with the very
+words.
+
+For instance: 'Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so
+cometh as a thief in the night' (ver. 2). How did these people in
+Thessalonica know that? They had been Christians for a year or so only;
+they had been taught by Paul for a few weeks only, or a month or two at
+the most. How did they know it? Because they had been told what the
+Master had said: 'If the goodman of the house had known at what hour the
+thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his
+house to be broken up.'
+
+And there are other allusions in the context almost as obvious: 'The
+children of the light.' Who said that? Christ, in His words: 'The
+children of this world are wiser than the children of light.' 'They that
+sleep, sleep in the night, and if they be drunken, are drunken in the
+night.' Where does that metaphor come from? 'Take heed lest at any time
+ye be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this
+life, and so that day come upon you unawares.' 'Watch, lest coming
+suddenly He find you sleeping!'
+
+So you see all the context reposes upon, and presupposes the very words,
+which you find in our present existing Gospels, as the words of the Lord
+Jesus. And this is all but contemporaneous, and quite independent,
+evidence of the existence in the Church, from the beginning, of a
+traditional teaching which is now preserved for us in that fourfold
+record of His life.
+
+Take that remark for what it is worth; and now turn to the text itself
+with which I have to deal in this sermon. The whole of the context may
+be said to be a little dissertation upon the moral and religious uses of
+the doctrine of our Lord's second coming. In my text these are summed
+up in one central injunction which has preceding it a motive that
+enforces it, and following it a method that ensures it. 'Let us be
+sober'; that is the centre thought; and it is buttressed upon either
+side by a motive and a means. 'Let us who are of the day,' or 'since we
+are of the day,--be sober.' And let us _be_ it by 'putting on the
+breastplate and helmet of faith, love, and hope.' These, then, are the
+three points which we have to consider.
+
+I. First, this central injunction, into which all the moral teaching
+drawn from the second coming of Christ is gathered--'Let us be sober.'
+Now, I do not suppose we are altogether to omit any reference to the
+literal meaning of this word. The context seems to show that, by its
+reference to night as the season for drunken orgies. Temperance is
+moderation in regard not only to the evil and swinish sin of
+drunkenness, which is so manifestly contrary to all Christian integrity
+and nobility of character, but in regard to the far more subtle
+temptation of another form of sensual indulgence--gluttony. The
+Christian Church needed to be warned of that, and if these people in
+Thessalonica needed the warning I am quite sure that we need it. There
+is not a nation on earth which needs it more than Englishmen. I am no
+ascetic, I do not want to glorify any outward observance, but any doctor
+in England will tell you that the average Englishman eats and drinks a
+great deal more than is good for him. It is melancholy to think how many
+professing Christians have the edge and keenness of their intellectual
+and spiritual life blunted by the luxurious and senseless
+table-abundance in which they habitually indulge. I am quite sure that
+water from the spring and barley-bread would be a great deal better for
+their souls, and for their bodies too, in the case of many people who
+call themselves Christians. Suffer a word of exhortation, and do not let
+it be neglected because it is brief and general. Sparta, after all, is
+the best place for a man to live in, next to Jerusalem.
+
+But, passing from that, let us turn to the higher subject with which the
+Apostle is here evidently mainly concerned. What is the meaning of the
+exhortation 'Be sober'? Well, first let me tell you what I think is not
+the meaning of it. It does not mean an unemotional absence of fervour in
+your Christian character.
+
+There is a kind of religious teachers who are always preaching down
+enthusiasm, and preaching up what they call a 'sober standard of
+feeling' in matters of religion. By which, in nine cases out of ten,
+they mean precisely such a tepid condition as is described in much less
+polite language, when the voice from heaven says, 'Because thou art
+neither cold nor hot I will spue thee out of My mouth.' That is the real
+meaning of the 'sobriety' that some people are always desiring you to
+cultivate. I should have thought that the last piece of furniture which
+any Christian Church in the twentieth century needed was a refrigerator!
+A poker and a pair of bellows would be very much more needful for them.
+For, dear brethren, the truths that you and I profess to believe are of
+such a nature, so tremendous either in their joyfulness and beauty, or
+in their solemnity and awfulness, that one would think that if they once
+got into a man's head and heart, nothing but the most fervid and
+continuous glow of a radiant enthusiasm would correspond to their
+majesty and overwhelming importance. I venture to say that the only
+consistent Christian is the enthusiastic Christian; and that the only
+man who will ever do anything in this world for God or man worth doing
+is the man who is not _sober_, according to that cold-blooded definition
+which I have been speaking about, but who is all ablaze with an
+enkindled earnestness that knows no diminution and no cessation.
+
+Paul, the very man that is exhorting here to sobriety, was the very type
+of an enthusiast all his life. So Festus thought him mad, and even in
+the Church at Corinth there were some to whom in his fervour, he seemed
+to be 'beside himself' (2 Cor. v. 13).
+
+Oh! for more of that insanity! You may make up your minds to this; that
+any men or women that are in thorough earnest, either about Christianity
+or about any other great, noble, lofty, self-forgetting purpose, will
+have to be content to have the old Pentecostal charge flung at
+them:--'These men are full of new wine!' Well for the Church, and well
+for the men who deserve the taunt; for it means that they have learned
+something of the emotion that corresponds to such magnificent and awful
+verities as Christian faith converses with.
+
+I did not intend to say so much about that; I turn now for a moment to
+the consideration of what this exhortation really means. It means, as I
+take it, mainly this: the prime Christian duty of self-restraint in the
+use and the love of all earthly treasures and pleasures.
+
+I need not do more than remind you how, in the very make of a man's
+soul, it is clear that unless there be exercised rigid self-control he
+will go all to pieces. The make of human nature, if I may say so, shows
+that it is not meant for a democracy but a monarchy.
+
+Here are within us many passions, tastes, desires, most of them rooted
+in the flesh, which are as blind as hunger and thirst are. If a man is
+hungry, the bread will satisfy him all the same whether he steals it or
+not; and it will not necessarily be distasteful even if it be poisoned.
+And there are other blind impulses and appetites in our nature which ask
+nothing except this:--'Give me my appropriate gratification, though all
+the laws of God and man be broken in order to get it!'
+
+And so there has to be something like an eye given to these blind
+beasts, and something like a directing hand laid upon these instinctive
+impulses. The true temple of the human spirit must be built in stages,
+the broad base laid in these animal instincts; above them, and
+controlling them, the directing and restraining will; above it the
+understanding which enlightens it and them; and supreme over all the
+conscience with nothing between it and heaven. Where that is not the
+order of the inner man you get wild work. You have set 'beggars on
+horseback,' and we all know where they go! The man who lets passion and
+inclination guide is like a steam-boat with all the furnaces banked up,
+with the engines going full speed, and nobody at the wheel. It will
+drive on to the rocks, or wherever the bow happens to point, no matter
+though death and destruction lie beyond the next turn of the screw. That
+is what you will come to unless you live in the habitual exercise of
+rigid self-control.
+
+And that self-control is to be exercised mainly, or at least as one very
+important form of it, in regard to our use and estimate of the pleasures
+of this present life. Yes! it is not only from the study of a man's make
+that the necessity for a very rigid self-government appears, but the
+observation of the conditions and circumstances in which he is placed
+points the same lesson. All round about him are hands reaching out to
+him drugged cups. The world with all its fading sweet comes tempting
+him, and the old fable fulfils itself--Whoever takes that Circe's cup
+and puts it to his lips and quaffs deep, turns into a swine, and sits
+there imprisoned at the feet of the sorceress for evermore!
+
+There is only one thing that will deliver you from that fate, my
+brother. 'Be sober,' and in regard to the world and all that it offers
+to us--all joy, possession, gratification--'set a knife to thy throat if
+thou be a man given to appetite.' There is no noble life possible on any
+other terms--not to say there is no Christian life possible on any other
+terms--but suppression and mortification of the desires of the flesh and
+of the spirit. You cannot look upwards and downwards at the same moment.
+Your heart is only a tiny room after all, and if you cram it full of the
+world, you relegate your Master to the stable outside. 'Ye cannot serve
+God and Mammon.' 'Be sober,' says Paul, then, and cultivate the habit of
+rigid self-control in regard to this present. Oh! what a melancholy,
+solemn thought it is that hundreds of professing Christians in England,
+like vultures after a full meal, have so gorged themselves with the
+garbage of this present life that they cannot fly, and have to be
+content with moving along the ground, heavy and languid. Christian men
+and women, are you keeping yourselves in spiritual health by a very
+sparing use of the dainties and delights of earth? Answer the question
+to your own souls and to your Judge.
+
+II. And now let me turn to the other thoughts that lie here. There is,
+secondly, a motive which backs up and buttresses this exhortation. 'Let
+us who are of the day'--or as the Revised Version has it a little more
+emphatically and correctly, 'Let us, since we are of the day, be sober.'
+'The day'; what day? The temptation is to answer the question by
+saying--'of course the specific day which was spoken about in the
+beginning of the section, "the day of the Lord," that coming judgment by
+the coming Christ.' But I think that although, perhaps, there may be
+some allusion here to that specific day, still, if you will look at the
+verses which immediately precede my text, you will see that in them the
+Apostle has passed from the thought of 'the day of the Lord' to that of
+day in general. That is obvious, I think, from the contrast he draws
+between the 'day' and the 'night,' the darkness and the light. If so,
+then, when he says 'the children of the day' he does not so much
+mean--though that is quite true--that we are, as it were, akin to that
+day of judgment, and may therefore look forward to it without fear, and
+in quiet confidence, lifting up our heads because our redemption draws
+nigh; but rather he means that Christians are the children of that which
+expresses knowledge, and joy, and activity. Of these things the day is
+the emblem, in every language and in every poetry. The day is the time
+when men see and hear, the symbol of gladness and cheer all the world
+over.
+
+And so, says Paul, you Christian men and women belong to a joyous realm,
+a realm of light and knowledge, a realm of purity and righteousness. You
+are children of the light; a glad condition which involves many glad and
+noble issues. Children of the light should be brave, children of the
+light should not be afraid of the light, children of the light should be
+cheerful, children of the light should be buoyant, children of the
+light should be transparent, children of the light should be hopeful,
+children of the light should be pure, and children of the light should
+walk in this darkened world, bearing their radiance with them; and
+making things, else unseen, visible to many a dim eye.
+
+But while these emblems of cheerfulness, hope, purity, and illumination
+are gathered together in that grand name--'Ye are the children of the
+day,' there is one direction especially in which the Apostle thinks that
+that consideration ought to tell, and that is the direction of
+self-restraint. '_Noblesse oblige!_'--the aristocracy are bound to do
+nothing low or dishonourable. The children of the light are not to stain
+their hands with anything foul. Chambering and wantonness, slumber and
+drunkenness, the indulgence in the appetites of the flesh,--all that may
+be fitting for the night, it is clean incongruous with the day.
+
+Well, if you want that turned into pedestrian prose--which is no more
+clear, but a little less emotional--it is just this: You Christian men
+and women belong--if you are Christians--to another state of things from
+that which is lying round about you; and, therefore, you ought to live
+in rigid abstinence from these things that are round about you.
+
+That is plain enough surely, nor do I suppose that I need to dwell on
+that thought at any length. We belong to another order of things, says
+Paul; we carry a day with us in the midst of the night. What follows
+from that? Do not let us pursue the wandering lights and treacherous
+will-o'-the-wisps that lure men into bottomless bogs where they are
+lost. If we have light in our dwellings whilst Egypt lies in darkness,
+let it teach us to eat our meat with our loins girded, and our staves
+in our hands, not without bitter herbs, and ready to go forth into the
+wilderness. You do not belong to the world in which you live, if you are
+Christian men and women; you are only camped here. Your purposes,
+thoughts, hopes, aspirations, treasures, desires, delights, go up
+higher. And so, if you are children of the day, be self-restrained in
+your dealings with the darkness.
+
+III. And, last of all, my text points out for us a method by which this
+great precept may be fulfilled:--'Putting on the breastplate of faith
+and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation.'
+
+That, of course, is the first rough draft occurring in Paul's earliest
+Epistle, of an image which recurs at intervals, and in more or less
+expanded form in other of his letters, and is so splendidly worked out
+in detail in the grand picture of the Christian armour in the Epistle to
+the Ephesians.
+
+I need not do more than just remind you of the difference between that
+finished picture and this outline sketch. Here we have only defensive
+and not offensive armour, here the Christian graces are somewhat
+differently allocated to the different parts of the armour. Here we have
+only the great triad of Christian graces, so familiar on our
+lips--faith, hope, charity. Here we have faith and love in the closest
+possible juxtaposition, and hope somewhat more apart. The breastplate,
+like some of the ancient hauberks, made of steel and gold, is framed and
+forged out of faith and love blended together, and faith and love are
+more closely identified in fact than faith and hope, or than love and
+hope. For faith and love have the same object--and are all but
+contemporaneous. Wherever a man lays hold of Jesus Christ by faith,
+there cannot but spring up in his heart love to Christ; and there is no
+love without faith. So that we may almost say that faith and love are
+but the two throws of the shuttle, the one in the one direction and the
+other in the other; whereas hope comes somewhat later in a somewhat
+remoter connection with faith, and has a somewhat different object from
+these other two. Therefore it is here slightly separated from its sister
+graces. Faith, love, hope--these three form the defensive armour that
+guard the soul; and these three make self-control possible. Like a diver
+in his dress, who is let down to the bottom of the wild, far-weltering
+ocean, a man whose heart is girt by faith and charity, and whose head is
+covered with the helmet of hope, may be dropped down into the wildest
+sea of temptation and of worldliness, and yet will walk dry and unharmed
+through the midst of its depths, and breathe air that comes from a world
+above the restless surges.
+
+And in like manner the cultivation of faith, charity, and hope is the
+best means for securing the exercise of sober self-control.
+
+It is an easy thing to say to a man, 'Govern yourself!' It is a very
+hard thing with the powers that any man has at his disposal to do it. As
+somebody said about an army joining the rebels, 'It's a bad job when the
+extinguisher catches fire!' And that is exactly the condition of things
+in regard to our power of self-government. The powers that should
+control are largely gone over to the enemy, and become traitors.
+
+'Who shall keep the very keepers?' is the old question, and here is the
+answer:--You cannot execute the gymnastic feat of 'erecting yourself
+above yourself' any more than a man can take himself by his own coat
+collar and lift himself up from the ground with his own arms. But you
+can cultivate faith, hope, and charity, and these three, well cultivated
+and brought to bear upon your daily life, will do the governing for you.
+Faith will bring you into communication with all the power of God. Love
+will lead you into a region where all the temptations round you will be
+touched as by an Ithuriel spear, and will show their foulness. And hope
+will turn away your eyes from looking at the tempting splendours around,
+and fix them upon the glories that are above.
+
+And so the reins will come into your hands in an altogether new manner,
+and you will be able to be king over your own nature in a fashion that
+you did not dream of before, if only you will trust in Christ, and love
+Him, and fix your desires on the things above.
+
+Then you will be able to govern yourself when you let Christ govern you.
+The glories that are to be done away, that gleam round you like foul,
+flaring tallow-candles, will lose all their fascination and brightness,
+by reason of the glory that excelleth, the pure starlike splendour of
+the white inextinguishable lights of heaven.
+
+And when by faith, charity, and hope you have drunk of the new wine of
+the kingdom, the drugged and opiate cup which a sorceress world
+presents, jewelled though it be, will lose its charms, and it will not
+be hard to turn from it and dash it to the ground.
+
+God help you, brother, to be 'sober,' for unless you are 'you cannot see
+the kingdom of God!'
+
+
+
+
+WAKING AND SLEEPING
+
+          'Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we
+          wake or sleep, we should live together with
+          Him.'--1 THESS. v. 10.
+
+
+In these words the Apostle concludes a section of this, his earliest
+letter, in which he has been dealing with the aspect of death in
+reference to the Christian. There are two very significant usages of
+language in the context which serve to elucidate the meaning of the
+words of our text, and to which I refer for a moment by way of
+introduction.
+
+The one is that throughout this portion of his letter the Apostle
+emphatically reserves the word 'died' for Jesus Christ, and applies to
+Christ's followers only the word 'sleep.' Christ's death makes the
+deaths of those who trust Him a quiet slumber. The other is that the
+antithesis of waking and sleep is employed in two different directions
+in this section, being first used to express, by the one term, simply
+physical life, and by the other, physical death; and secondly, to
+designate respectively the moral attitude of Christian watchfulness and
+that of worldly apathy to things unseen and drowsy engrossment with the
+present.
+
+So in the words immediately preceding my text, we read, 'let us not
+sleep, as do others, but let us watch and be sober.' The use of the
+antithesis in our text is chiefly the former, but there cannot be
+discharged from one of the expressions, 'wake,' the ideas which have
+just been associated with it, especially as the word which is translated
+'wake' is the same as that just translated in the sixth verse, 'let us
+watch.' So that here there is meant by it, not merely the condition of
+life but that of Christian life--sober-minded vigilance and
+wide-awakeness to the realities of being. With this explanation of the
+meanings of the words before us, we may now proceed to consider them a
+little more minutely.
+
+I. Note the death which is the foundation of life.
+
+Recalling what I have said as to the precision and carefulness with
+which the Apostle varies his expressions in this context; speaking of
+Christ's death only by that grim name, and of the death of His servants
+as being merely a slumber, we have for the first thought suggested in
+reference to Christ's death, that it exhausted all the bitterness of
+death. Physically, the sufferings of our Lord were not greater, they
+were even less, than that of many a man. His voluntary acceptance of
+them was peculiar to Himself. But His death stands alone in this, that
+on His head was concentrated the whole awfulness of the thing. So far as
+the mere external facts go, there is nothing special about it. But I
+know not how the shrinking of Jesus Christ from the Cross can be
+explained without impugning His character, unless we see in His death
+something far more terrible than is the common lot of men. To me
+Gethsemane is altogether mysterious, and that scene beneath the olives
+shatters to pieces the perfectness of His character, unless we recognise
+that there it was the burden of the world's sin, beneath which, though
+His will never faltered, His human power tottered. Except we understand
+that, it seems to me that many who derived from Jesus Christ all their
+courage, bore their martyrdom better than He did; and that the servant
+has many a time been greater than his Lord. But if we take the Scripture
+point of view, and say, 'The Lord has made to meet upon Him the iniquity
+of us all,' then we can understand the agony beneath the olives, and
+the cry from the Cross, 'Why hast Thou forsaken Me?'
+
+Further, I would notice that this death is by the Apostle set forth as
+being the main factor in man's redemption. This is the first of Paul's
+letters, dating long before the others with which we are familiar.
+Whatever may have been the spiritual development of St. Paul in certain
+directions after his conversion--and I do not for a moment deny that
+there was such--it is very important to notice that the fundamentals of
+his Christology and doctrine of salvation were the same from the
+beginning to the end, and that in this, his first utterance, he lays
+down, as emphatically and clearly as ever afterwards he did, the great
+truth that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on the Cross, thereby
+secured man's redemption. Here he isolates the death from the rest of
+the history of Christ, and concentrates the whole light of his thought
+upon the Cross, and says, There! that is the power by which men have
+been redeemed. I beseech you to ask yourselves whether these
+representations of Christian truth adhere to the perspective of
+Scripture, which do not in like manner set forth in the foreground of
+the whole the atoning death of Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+Then note, further, that this death, the fountain of life, is a death
+for us. Now I know, of course, that the language here does not
+necessarily involve the idea of one dying instead of, but only of one
+dying on behalf of, another. But then I come to this question, In what
+conceivable sense, except the sense of bearing the world's sins, and,
+therefore, mine, is the death of Jesus Christ of advantage to me? Take
+the Scripture narratives. He died by the condemnation of the Jewish
+courts as a blasphemer; by the condemnation of the supercilious Roman
+court--cowardly in the midst of its superciliousness--as a possible
+rebel, though the sentencer did not believe in the reality of the
+charges. I want to know what good that is to me? He died, say some
+people, as the victim of a clearer insight and a more loving heart than
+the men around Him could understand. What advantage is that to me?
+
+Oh, brethren! there is no meaning in the words 'He died for us' unless
+we understand that the benefit of His death lies in the fact that it was
+the sacrifice and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; and
+that, therefore, He died for us.
+
+But then remember, too, that in this expression is set forth, not only
+the objective fact of Christ's death for us, but much in reference to
+the subjective emotions and purposes of Him who died. Paul was writing
+to these Thessalonians, of whom none, I suppose, except possibly a few
+Jews who might be amongst them, had ever seen Jesus Christ in the flesh,
+or known anything about Him. And yet he says to them, 'Away across the
+ocean there, Jesus Christ died for you men, not one of whom had ever
+appealed to His heart through His eyes.'
+
+The principle involved is capable of the widest possible expansion. When
+Christ went to the Cross there was in His heart, in His purposes, in His
+desires, a separate place for every soul of man whom He embraced, not
+with the dim vision of some philanthropist, who looks upon the masses of
+unborn generations as possibly beneficially affected by some of his
+far-reaching plans, but with the individualising and separating
+knowledge of a divine eye, and the love of a divine heart. Jesus Christ
+bore the sins of the world because He bore in His sympathies and His
+purposes the sins of each single soul. Yours and mine and all our
+fellows' were there. Guilt and fear and loneliness, and all the other
+evils that beset men because they have departed from the living God, are
+floated away
+
+          'By the water and the blood
+           From Thy wounded side which flowed';
+
+and as the context teaches us, it is because He died for us that He is
+our Lord, and because He died for every man that He is every man's
+Master and King.
+
+II. Note, secondly, the transformation of our lives and deaths affected
+thereby.
+
+You may remember that, in my introductory remarks, I pointed out the
+double application of that antithesis of waking or sleeping in the
+context as referring in one case to the fact of physical life or death,
+and in the other to the fact of moral engrossment with the slumbering
+influences of the present, or of Christian vigilance. I carry some
+allusion to both of these ideas in the remarks that I have to make.
+
+Through Jesus Christ life may be quickened into watchfulness. It is not
+enough to take waking as meaning living, for you may turn the metaphor
+round and say about a great many men that living means dreamy sleeping.
+Paul speaks in the preceding verses of 'others' than Christians as being
+asleep, and their lives as one long debauch and slumber in the night.
+Whilst, in contrast with physical death, physical life may be called
+'waking'; the condition of thousands of men, in regard to all the higher
+faculties, activities, and realities of being, is that of
+somnambulists--they are walking indeed, but they are walking in their
+sleep. Just as a man fast asleep knows nothing of the realities round
+him; just as he is swallowed up in his own dreams, so many walk in a
+vain show. Their highest faculties are dormant; the only real things do
+not touch them, and their eyes are closed to these. They live in a
+region of illusions which will pass away at cock-crowing, and leave them
+desolate. For some of us here living is only a distempered sleep,
+troubled by dreams which, whether they be pleasant or bitter, equally
+lack roots in the permanent realities to which we shall wake some day.
+But if we hold by Jesus Christ, who died for us, and let His love
+constrain us, His Cross quicken us, and the might of His great sacrifice
+touch us, and the blood of sprinkling be applied to our eyeballs as an
+eye-salve, that we may see, we shall wake from our opiate sleep--though
+it may be as deep as if the sky rained soporifics upon us--and be
+conscious of the things that are, and have our dormant faculties roused,
+and be quickened into intense vigilance against our enemies, and brace
+ourselves for our tasks, and be ever looking forward to that joyful
+hope, to that coming which shall bring the fulness of waking and of
+life. So, you professing Christians, do you take the lessons of this
+text? A sleeping Christian is on the high road to cease to be a
+Christian at all. If there be one thing more comprehensively imperative
+upon us than another, it is this, that, belonging, as we do by our very
+profession, to the day, and being the children of the light, we shall
+neither sleep nor be drunken, but be sober, watching as they who expect
+their Lord. You walk amidst realities that will hide themselves unless
+you gaze for them; therefore, watch. You walk amidst enemies that will
+steal subtly upon you, like some gliding serpent through the grass, or
+some painted savage in the forest; therefore, watch. You expect a Lord
+to come from heaven with a relieving army that is to raise the siege
+and free the hard-beset garrison from its fears and its toilsome work;
+therefore, watch. 'They that sleep, sleep in the night.' They who are
+Christ's should be like the living creatures in the Revelation, all eyes
+round about, and every eye gazing on things unseen and looking for the
+Master when He comes.
+
+On the other hand, the death of Christ will soften our deaths into
+slumber. The Apostle will not call what the senses call death, by that
+dread name, which was warranted when applied to the facts of Christ's
+death. The physical fact remaining the same, all that is included under
+the complex whole called death which makes its terrors, goes, for a man
+who keeps fast hold of Christ who died and lives. For what makes the
+sting of death? Two or three things. It is like some poisonous insect's
+sting, it is a complex weapon. One side of it is the fear of
+retribution. Another side of it is the shrinking from loneliness.
+Another side of it is the dread of the dim darkness of an unknown
+future. And all these are taken clean away. Is it guilt, dread of
+retribution? 'Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.' Is it loneliness? In the
+valley of darkness 'I will be with thee. My rod and My staff will
+comfort thee.' Is it a shrinking from the dim unknown and all the
+familiar habitudes and occupations of the warm corner where we have
+lived? 'Jesus Christ has brought immortality to light by the Gospel.' We
+do _not_, according to the sad words of one of the victims of modern
+advanced thought, pass by the common road into the great darkness, but
+by the Christ-made living Way into the everlasting light. And so it is a
+misnomer to apply the same term to the physical fact plus the
+accompaniment of dread and shrinking and fear of retribution and
+solitude and darkness, and to the physical fact invested with the direct
+and bright opposites of all these.
+
+Sleep is rest; sleep is consciousness; sleep is the prophecy of waking.
+We know not what the condition of those who sleep in Jesus may be, but
+we know that the child on its mother's breast, and conscious somehow, in
+its slumber, of the warm place where its head rests, is full of repose.
+And they that sleep in Jesus will be _so_. Then, whether we wake or
+sleep does not seem to matter so very much.
+
+III. The united life of all who live with Christ.
+
+Christ's gift to men is the gift of life in all senses of that word,
+from the lowest to the highest. That life, as our text tells us, is
+altogether unaffected by death. We cannot see round the sharp angle
+where the valley turns, but we know that the path runs straight on
+through the gorge up to the throat of the pass--and so on to the
+'shining table-lands whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon.' There are
+some rivers that run through stagnant lakes, keeping the tinge of their
+waters, and holding together the body of their stream undiverted from
+its course, and issuing undiminished and untarnished from the lower end
+of the lake. And so the stream of our lives may run through the Dead
+Sea, and come out below none the worse for the black waters through
+which it has forced its way. The life that Christ gives is unaffected by
+death. Our creed is a risen Saviour, and the corollary of that creed is,
+that death touches the circumference, but never gets near the man. It is
+hard to believe, in the face of the foolish senses; it is hard to
+believe, in the face of aching sorrow. It is hard to-day to believe, in
+the face of passionate and ingenious denial, but it is true all the
+same. Death is sleep, and sleep is life.
+
+And so, further, my text tells us that this life is life with Christ. We
+know not details, we need not know them. Here we have the presence of
+Jesus Christ, if we love Him, as really as when He walked the earth. Ay!
+more really, for Jesus Christ is nearer to us who, having not seen Him,
+love Him, and somewhat know His divinity and His sacrifice, than He was
+to the men who companied with Him all the time that He went in and out
+amongst them, whilst they were ignorant of who dwelt with them, and
+entertained the Lord of angels and men unawares. He is with us, and it
+is the power and the privilege and the joy of our lives to realise His
+presence. That Lord who, whilst He was on earth, was the Son of Man
+which is in heaven, now that He is in heaven in His corporeal humanity
+is the Son of God who dwells with us. And as He dwells with us, if we
+love Him and trust Him, so, but in fashion incapable of being revealed
+to us, now does He dwell with those of whose condition this is the only
+and all-sufficing positive knowledge which we have, that they are
+'absent from the body; present with the Lord.'
+
+Further, that united life is a social life. The whole force of my text
+is often missed by English readers, who run into one idea the two words
+'together with.' But if you would put a comma after 'together,' you
+would understand better what Paul meant. He refers to two forms of
+union. Whether we wake or sleep we shall live all aggregated together,
+and all aggregated 'together' because each is 'with Him.' That is to
+say, union with Jesus Christ makes all who partake of that union,
+whether they belong to the one side of the river or the other, into a
+mighty whole. They are together because they are with the Lord.
+
+Suppose a great city, and a stream flowing through its centre. The
+palace and all pertaining to the court are on one side of the water;
+there is an outlying suburb on the other, of meaner houses, inhabited by
+poor and humble people. But yet it is one city. 'Ye are come unto the
+heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, and to the spirits of
+just men made perfect.' We are knit together by one life, one love, one
+thought; and the more we fix our hearts on the things which those above
+live among and by, the more truly are we knit to them. As a quaint old
+English writer says, 'They are gone but into another pew in the same
+church.'
+
+We are one in Him, and so there will be a perfecting of union in
+reunion; and the inference so craved for by our hearts seems to be
+warranted to our understandings, that that society above, which is the
+perfection of society, shall not be lacking in the elements of mutual
+recognition and companionship, without which we cannot conceive of
+society at all. 'And so we shall ever be with the Lord.'
+
+Dear friends, I beseech you to trust your sinful souls to that dear Lord
+who bore you in His heart and mind when He bore His cross to Calvary and
+completed the work of your redemption. If you will accept Him as your
+sacrifice and Saviour, when He cried 'It is finished,' united to Him
+your lives will be quickened into intense activity and joyful vigilance
+and expectation, and death will be smoothed into a quiet falling asleep.
+'The shadow feared of man,' that strikes threateningly across every
+path, will change as we approach it, if our hearts are anchored on Him
+who died for us, into the Angel of Light to whom God has given charge
+concerning us to bear up our feet upon His hands, and land us in the
+presence of the Lord and in the perfect society of those who love Him.
+And so shall we live together, and all together, with Him.
+
+
+
+
+EDIFICATION
+
+          'Edify one another.'--1 THESS. v. 11.
+
+
+I do not intend to preach about that clause only, but I take it as
+containing, in the simplest form, one of the Apostle's favourite
+metaphors which runs through all his letters, and the significance of
+which, I think, is very little grasped by ordinary readers.
+
+'Edify one another.' All metaphorical words tend to lose their light and
+colour, and the figure to get faint, in popular understanding. We all
+know that 'edifice' means a building; we do not all realise that 'edify'
+means _to build up_. And it is a great misfortune that our Authorised
+Version, in accordance with the somewhat doubtful principle on which its
+translators proceeded, varies the rendering of the one Greek word so as
+to hide the frequent recurrence of it in the apostolic teaching. The
+metaphor that underlies it is the notion of building up a structure. The
+Christian idea of the structure to be built up is that it is a temple. I
+wish in this sermon to try to bring out some of the manifold lessons and
+truths that lie in this great figure, as applied to the Christian life.
+
+Now, glancing over the various uses of the phrase in the New Testament,
+I find that the figure of 'building,' as the great duty of the Christian
+life, is set forth under three aspects; self-edification, united
+edification, and divine edification. And I purpose to look at these in
+order.
+
+I. First, self-edification.
+
+According to the ideal of the Christian life that runs through the New
+Testament, each Christian man is a dwelling-place of God's, and his work
+is to build himself up into a temple worthy of the divine indwelling.
+Now, I suppose that the metaphor is such a natural and simple one that
+we do not need to look for any Scriptural basis of it. But if we did, I
+should be disposed to find it in the solemn antithesis with which the
+Sermon on the Mount is closed, where there are the two houses pictured,
+the one built upon the rock and standing firm, and the other built upon
+the sand. But that is perhaps unnecessary.
+
+We are all builders; building up--what? Character, ourselves. But what
+sort of a thing is it that we are building? Some of us pigsties, in
+which gross, swinish lusts wallow in filth; some of us shops; some of us
+laboratories, studies, museums; some of us amorphous structures that
+cannot be described. But the Christian man is to be building himself up
+into a temple of God. The aim which should ever burn clear before us,
+and preside over even our smallest actions, is that which lies in this
+misused old word, 'edify' yourselves.
+
+The first thing about a structure is the foundation. And Paul was narrow
+enough to believe that the one foundation upon which a human spirit
+could be built up into a hallowed character is Jesus Christ. He is the
+basis of all our certitude. He is the anchor for all our hopes. To Him
+should be referred all our actions; for Him and by Him our lives should
+be lived. On Him should rest, solid and inexpugnable, standing
+four-square to all the winds that blow, the fabric of our characters.
+Jesus Christ is the pattern, the motive which impels, and the power
+which enables, me to rear myself into a habitation of God through the
+Spirit. Whilst I gladly acknowledge that very lovely structures may be
+reared upon another foundation than Him, I would beseech you all to lay
+this on your hearts and consciences, that for the loftiest, serenest
+beauty of character there is but one basis upon which it can be rested.
+'Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
+Christ.'
+
+Then there is another aspect of this same metaphor, not in Paul's
+writings but in another part of the New Testament, where we read: 'Ye,
+beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith.' So that, in a
+subordinate sense, a man's faith is the basis upon which he can build
+such a structure of character; or, to put it into other words--in regard
+to the man himself, the first requisite to the rearing of such a fabric
+as God will dwell in is that he, by his own personal act of faith,
+should have allied himself to Jesus Christ, who is the foundation; and
+should be in a position to draw from Him all the power, and to feel
+raying out from Him all the impulses, and lovingly to discern in Him all
+the characteristics, which make Him a pattern for all men in their
+building.
+
+The first course of stone that we lay is Faith; and that course is, as
+it were, mortised into the foundation, the living Rock. He that builds
+on Christ cannot build but by faith. The two representations are
+complementary to one another, the one, which represents Jesus Christ as
+the foundation, stating the ultimate fact, and the other, which
+represents faith as the foundation, stating the condition on which we
+come into vital contact with Christ Himself.
+
+Then, further, in this great thought of the Christian life being
+substantially a building up of oneself on Jesus is implied the need for
+continuous labour. You cannot build up a house in half an hour. You
+cannot do it, as the old fable told us that Orpheus did, by music, or by
+wishing. There must be dogged, hard, continuous, life-long effort if
+there is to be this building up. No man becomes a saint _per saltum_. No
+man makes a character at a flash. The stones are actions; the mortar is
+that mystical, awful thing, habit; and deeds cemented together by custom
+rise into that stately dwelling-place in which God abides. So, there is
+to be a life-long work in character, gradually rearing it into His
+likeness.
+
+The metaphor also carries with it the idea of orderly progression. There
+are a number of other New Testament emblems which set forth this notion
+of the true Christian ideal as being continual growth. For instance,
+'first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,'
+represents it as resembling vegetable growth, while elsewhere it is
+likened to the growth of the human body. Both of these are beautiful
+images, in that they suggest that such progressive advancement is the
+natural consequence of life; and is in one aspect effortless and
+instinctive.
+
+But then you have to supplement that emblem with others, and there comes
+in sharp contrast to it the metaphor which represents the Christian
+progress as being warfare. There the element of resistance is
+emphasised, and the thought is brought out that progress is to be made
+in spite of strong antagonisms, partly to be found in external
+circumstances, and partly to be found in our own treacherous selves. The
+growth of the corn or of the body does not cover the whole facts of the
+case, but there must be warfare in order to growth.
+
+There is also the other metaphor by which this Christian progress, which
+is indispensable to the Christian life, and is to be carried on,
+whatever may oppose it, is regarded as a race. There the idea of the
+great, attractive, but far-off future reward comes into view, as well as
+the strained muscles and the screwed-up energy with which the runner
+presses towards the mark. But we have not only to fling the result
+forward into the future, and to think of the Christian life as all
+tending towards an end, which end is not realised here; but we have to
+think of it, in accordance with this metaphor of my text, as being
+continuously progressive, so as that, though unfinished, the building is
+there; and much is done, though all is not accomplished, and the courses
+rise slowly, surely, partially realising the divine Architect's ideal,
+long before the headstone is brought out with shoutings and tumult of
+acclaim. A continuous progress and approximation towards the perfect
+ideal of the temple completed, consecrated, and inhabited by God, lies
+in this metaphor.
+
+Is that _you_, Christian man and woman? Is the notion of progress a part
+of _your_ working belief? Are _you_ growing, fighting, running, building
+up yourselves more and more in your holy faith? Alas! I cannot but
+believe that the very notion of progress has died out from a great many
+professing Christians.
+
+There is one more idea in this metaphor of self-edification, viz., that
+our characters should be being modelled by us on a definite plan, and
+into a harmonious whole. I wonder how many of us in this chapel this
+morning have ever spent a quiet hour in trying to set clearly before
+ourselves what we want to make of ourselves, and how we mean to go
+about it. Most of us live by haphazard very largely, even in regard to
+outward things, and still more entirely in regard to our characters.
+Most of us have not consciously before us, as you put a pattern-line
+before a child learning to write, any ideal of ourselves to which we are
+really seeking to approximate. Have you? And could you put it into
+words? And are you making any kind of intelligent and habitual effort to
+get at it? I am afraid a great many of us, if we were honest, would have
+to say, No! If a man goes to work as his own architect, and has a very
+hazy idea of what it is that he means to build, he will not build
+anything worth the trouble. If your way of building up yourselves is, as
+Aaron said his way of making the calf was, putting all into the fire,
+and letting chance settle what comes out, nothing will come out better
+than a calf. Brother! if you are going to build, have a plan, and let
+the plan be the likeness of Jesus Christ. And then, with continuous
+work, and the exercise of continuous faith, which knits you to the
+foundation, 'build up yourselves for an habitation of God.'
+
+II. We have to consider united edification.
+
+There are two streams of representation about this matter in the Pauline
+Epistles, the one with which I have already been dealing, which does not
+so often appear, and the other which is the habitual form of the
+representation, according to which the Christian community, as a whole,
+is a temple, and building up is a work to be done reciprocally and in
+common. We have that representation with special frequency and detail in
+the Epistle to the Ephesians, where perhaps we may not be fanciful in
+supposing that the great prominence given to it, and to the idea of the
+Church as the temple of God, may have been in some degree due to the
+existence, in that city, of one of the seven wonders of the world, the
+Temple of Diana of the Ephesians.
+
+But, be that as it may, what I want to point out is that united building
+is inseparable from the individual building up of which I have been
+speaking.
+
+Now, it is often very hard for good, conscientious people to determine
+how much of their efforts ought to be given to the perfecting of their
+own characters in any department, and how much ought to be given to
+trying to benefit and help other people. I wish you to notice that one
+of the most powerful ways of building up myself is to do my very best to
+build up others. Some, like men in my position, for instance, and others
+whose office requires them to spend a great deal of time and energy in
+the service of their fellows, are tempted to devote themselves too much
+to building up character in other people, and to neglect their own. It
+is a temptation that we need to fight against, and which can only be
+overcome by much solitary meditation. Some of us, on the other hand, may
+be tempted, for the sake of our own perfecting, intellectual
+cultivation, or improvement in other ways, to minimise the extent to
+which we are responsible for helping and blessing other people. But let
+us remember that the two things cannot be separated; and that there is
+nothing that will make a man more like Christ, which is the end of all
+our building, than casting himself into the service of his fellows with
+self-oblivion.
+
+Peter said, 'Master! let us make here three tabernacles.' Ay! But there
+was a demoniac boy down below, and the disciples could not cast out the
+demon. The Apostle did not know what he said when he preferred building
+up himself, by communion with God and His glorified servants, to
+hurrying down into the valley, where there were devils to fight and
+broken hearts to heal. Build up yourselves, by all means; if you do you
+will have to build up your brethren. 'The edifying of the body of
+Christ' is a plain duty which no Christian man can neglect without
+leaving a tremendous gap in the structure which he ought to rear.
+
+The building resulting from united edification is represented in
+Scripture, not as the agglomeration of a number of little shrines, the
+individuals, but as one great temple. That temple grows in two respects,
+both of which carry with them imperative duties to us Christian people.
+It grows by the addition of new stones. And so every Christian is bound
+to seek to gather into the fold those that are wandering far away, and
+to lay some stone upon that sure foundation. It grows, also, by the
+closer approximation of all the members one to another, and the
+individual increase of each in Christlike characteristics. And we are
+bound to help one another therein, and to labour earnestly for the
+advancement of our brethren, and for the unity of God's Church. Apart
+from such efforts our individual edifying of ourselves will become
+isolated, the results one-sided, and we ourselves shall lose much of
+what is essential to the rearing in ourselves of a holy character. 'What
+God hath joined together let not man put asunder.' Neither seek to build
+up yourselves apart from the community, nor seek to build up the
+community apart from yourselves.
+
+III. Lastly, the Apostle, in his writings, sets forth another aspect of
+this general thought, viz., divine edification.
+
+When he spoke to the elders of the church of Ephesus he said that Christ
+was able 'to build them up.' When he wrote to the Corinthians he said,
+'Ye are _God's_ building.' To the Ephesians he wrote, 'Ye are built for
+an habitation of God _through the Spirit_.' And so high above all our
+individual and all our united effort he carries up our thoughts to the
+divine Master-builder, by whose work alone a Paul, when he lays the
+foundation, and an Apollos, when he builds thereupon, are of any use at
+all.
+
+Thus, dear brethren, we have to base all our efforts on this deeper
+truth, that it is God who builds us into a temple meet for Himself, and
+then comes to dwell in the temple that He has built.
+
+So let us keep our hearts and minds expectant of, and open for, that
+Spirit's influences. Let us be sure that we are using all the power that
+God does give us. His work does not supersede mine. My work is to avail
+myself of His. The two thoughts are not contradictory. They correspond
+to, and fill out, each other, though warring schools of one-eyed
+theologians and teachers have set them in antagonism. 'Work _out_ . . .
+for it is God that worketh _in_.' That is the true reconciliation. 'Ye
+are God's building; build up yourselves in your most holy faith.'
+
+If God is the builder, then boundless, indomitable hope should be ours.
+No man can look at his own character, after all his efforts to mend it,
+without being smitten by a sense of despair, if he has only his own
+resources to fall back upon. Our experience is like that of the monkish
+builders, according to many an old legend, who found every morning that
+yesterday's work had been pulled down in the darkness by demon hands.
+There is no man whose character is anything more than a torso, an
+incomplete attempt to build up the structure that was in his mind--like
+the ruins of half-finished palaces and temples which travellers came
+across sometimes in lands now desolate, reared by a forgotten race who
+were swept away by some unknown calamity, and have left the stones
+half-lifted to their courses, half-hewed in their quarries, and the
+building gaunt and incomplete. But men will never have to say about any
+of God's architecture, He 'began to build and was not able to finish.'
+As the old prophecy has it, 'His hands have laid the foundation of the
+house, His hands shall also finish it.' Therefore, we are entitled to
+cherish endless hope and quiet confidence that we, even we, shall be
+reared up into an habitation of God through the Spirit.
+
+What are you building? 'Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone.'
+Let every man take heed _what_ and _how_ and _that_ he buildeth thereon.
+
+
+
+
+CONTINUAL PRAYER AND ITS EFFECTS
+
+          'Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In
+          everything give thanks.'--1 THESS. v. 16-18.
+
+
+The peculiarity and the stringency of these three precepts is the
+unbroken continuity which they require. To rejoice, to pray, to give
+thanks, are easy when circumstances favour, as a taper burns steadily in
+a windless night; but to do these things always is as difficult as for
+the taper's flame to keep upright when all the winds are eddying round
+it. 'Evermore'--'without ceasing'--'in everything'--these qualifying
+words give the injunctions of this text their grip and urgency. The
+Apostle meets the objections which he anticipates would spring to the
+lips of the Thessalonians, to the effect that he was requiring
+impossibilities, by adding that, hard and impracticable as they might
+think such a constant attitude of mind and heart, 'This is the will of
+God in Christ Jesus concerning you.' So, then, a Christian life may be
+lived continuously on the high level; and more than that, it is our duty
+to try to live ours thus.
+
+We need not fight with other Christian people about whether absolute
+obedience to these precepts is possible. It will be soon enough for us
+to discuss whether a completely unbroken uniformity of Christian
+experience is attainable in this life, when we have come a good deal
+nearer to the attainable than we have yet reached. Let us mend our
+breaches of continuity a good deal more, and then we may begin to
+discuss the question whether an absolute absence of any cessation of the
+continuity is consistent with the conditions of Christian life here.
+
+Now it seems to me that these three exhortations hold together in a very
+striking way, and that Paul knew what he was about when he put in the
+middle, like the strong central pole that holds up a tent, that
+exhortation, 'Pray without ceasing.' For it is the primary precept, and
+on its being obeyed the possibility of the fulfilment of the other two
+depends. If we pray without ceasing, we shall rejoice evermore and in
+everything give thanks. So, then, the duty of continual prayer, and the
+promise, as well as the precept, that its results are to be continual
+joy and continual thanksgiving, are suggested by these words.
+
+I. The duty of continual prayer.
+
+Roman Catholics, with their fatal habit of turning the spiritual into
+material, think that they obey that commandment when they set a priest
+or a nun on the steps of the altar to repeat _Ave Marias_ day and night.
+That is a way of praying without ceasing which we can all see to be
+mechanical and unworthy. But have we ever realised what this commandment
+necessarily reveals to us, as to what real prayer is? For if we are told
+to do a thing uninterruptedly, it must be something that can run
+unbroken through all the varieties of our legitimate duties and
+necessary occupations and absorptions with the things seen and temporal.
+Is that your notion of prayer? Or do you fancy that it simply means
+dropping down on your knees, and asking God to give you some things that
+you very much want? Petition is an element in prayer, and that it shall
+be crystallised into words is necessary sometimes; but there are prayers
+that never get themselves uttered, and I suppose that the deepest and
+truest communion with God is voiceless and wordless. 'Things which it
+was not possible for a man to utter,' was Paul's description of what he
+saw and felt, when he was most completely absorbed in, and saturated
+with, the divine glory. The more we understand what prayer is, the less
+we shall feel that it depends upon utterance. For the essence of it is
+to have heart and mind filled with the consciousness of God's presence,
+and to have the habit of referring everything to Him, in the moment when
+we are doing it, or when it meets us. That, as I take it, is prayer. The
+old mystics had a phrase, quaint, and in some sense unfortunate, but
+very striking, when they spoke about 'the practice of the presence of
+God.' God is here always, you will say; yes, He is, and to open the
+shutters, and to let the light always in, into every corner of my heart,
+and every detail of my life--that is what Paul means by 'Praying
+without ceasing.' Petitions? Yes; but something higher than
+petitions--the consciousness of being in touch with the Father, feeling
+that He is all round us. It was said about one mystical thinker that he
+was a 'God-intoxicated man.' It is an ugly word, but it expresses a very
+deep thing; but let us rather say a _God-filled_ man. He who is such
+'prays always.'
+
+But how may we maintain that state of continual devotion, even amidst
+the various and necessary occupations of our daily lives? As I said, we
+need not trouble ourselves about the possibility of complete attainment
+of that ideal. We know that we can each of us pray a great deal more
+than we do, and if there are regions in our lives into which we feel
+that God will not come, habits that we have dropped into which we feel
+to be a film between us and Him, the sooner we get rid of them the
+better. But into all our daily duties, dear friends, however absorbing,
+however secular, however small, however irritating they may be, however
+monotonous, into all our daily duties it is possible to bring Him.
+
+          'A servant with this clause
+           Makes drudgery divine,
+           Who sweeps a room, as by Thy laws,
+           Makes that and the calling fine.'
+
+But if that is our aim, our conscious aim, our honest aim, we shall
+recognise that a help to it is _words of_ prayer. I do not believe in
+silent adoration, if there is nothing but silent; and I do not believe
+in a man going through life with the conscious presence of God with him,
+unless, often, in the midst of the stress of daily life, he shoots
+little arrows of two-worded prayers up into the heavens, 'Lord! be with
+me.' 'Lord! help me.' 'Lord! stand by me now'; and the like. 'They
+cried unto God in the battle,' when some people would have thought they
+would have been better occupied in trying to keep their heads with their
+swords. It was not a time for very elaborate supplications when the
+foemen's arrows were whizzing round them, but 'they cried unto the Lord,
+and He was entreated of them.' 'Pray without ceasing.'
+
+Further, if we honestly try to obey this precept we shall more and more
+find out, the more earnestly we do so, that set seasons of prayer are
+indispensable to realising it. I said that I do not believe in silent
+adoration unless it sometimes finds its tongue, nor do I believe in a
+diffused worship that does not flow from seasons of prayer. There must
+be, away up amongst the hills, a dam cast across the valley that the
+water may be gathered behind it, if the great city is to be supplied
+with the pure fluid. What would become of Manchester if it were not for
+the reservoirs at Woodhead away among the hills? Your pipes would be
+empty. And that is what will become of you Christian professors in
+regard to your habitual consciousness of God's presence, if you do not
+take care to have your hours of devotion sacred, never to be interfered
+with, be they long or short, as may have to be determined by family
+circumstances, domestic duties, daily avocations, and a thousand other
+causes. But, unless we pray at set seasons, there is little likelihood
+of our praying without ceasing.
+
+II. The duty of continual rejoicing.
+
+If we begin with the central duty of continual prayer, then these other
+two which, as it were, flow from it on either side, will be possible to
+us; and of these two the Apostle sets first, 'Rejoice evermore.' This
+precept was given to the Thessalonians, in Paul's first letter, when
+things were comparatively bright with him, and he was young and buoyant;
+and in one of his later letters, when he was a prisoner, and things were
+anything but rosy coloured, he struck the same note again, and in spite
+of his 'bonds in Christ' bade the Philippians 'Rejoice in the Lord
+always, and again I say, Rejoice.' Indeed, that whole prison-letter
+might be called the Epistle of Joy, so suffused with sunshine of
+Christian gladness is it. Now, no doubt, joy is largely a matter of
+temperament. Some of us are constitutionally more buoyant and cheerful
+than others. And it is also very largely a matter of circumstances.
+
+I admit all that, and yet I come back to Paul's command: 'Rejoice
+evermore.' For if we are Christian people, and have cultivated what I
+have called 'the practice of the presence of God' in our lives, then
+that will change the look of things, and events that otherwise would be
+'at enmity with joy' will cease to have a hostile influence over it.
+There are two sources from which a man's gladness may come, the one his
+circumstances of a pleasant and gladdening character; the other his
+communion with God. It is like some river that is composed of two
+affluents, one of which rises away up in the mountains, and is fed by
+the eternal snows; the other springs on the plain somewhere, and is but
+the drainage of the surface-water, and when hot weather comes, and
+drought is over all the land, the one affluent is dry, and only a chaos
+of ghastly white stones litters the bed where the flashing water used to
+be. What then? Is the stream gone because one of its affluents is dried
+up, and has perished or been lost in the sands? The gushing fountains
+away up among the peaks near the stars are bubbling up all the same,
+and the heat that dried the surface stream has only loosened the
+treasures of the snows, and poured them more abundantly into the other's
+bed. So 'Rejoice in the Lord always'; and if earth grows dark, lift your
+eyes to the sky, that is light. To one walking in the woods at nightfall
+'all the paths are dim,' but the strip of heaven above the trees is the
+brighter for the green gloom around. The organist's one hand may be
+keeping up one sustained note, while the other is wandering over the
+keys; and one part of a man's nature may be steadfastly rejoicing in the
+Lord, whilst the other is feeling the weight of sorrows that come from
+earth. The paradox of the Christian life may be realised as a blessed
+experience of every one of us: a surface troubled, a central calm; an
+ocean tossed with storm, and yet the crest of every wave flashing in the
+sunshine. 'Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.'
+
+III. Lastly, the duty of continual thankfulness.
+
+That, too, is possible only on condition of continual communion with
+God. As I said in reference to joy, so I say in reference to
+thankfulness; the look of things in this world depends very largely on
+the colour of the spectacles through which you behold them.
+
+          'There's nothing either good or bad
+           But thinking makes it so.'
+
+And if a man in communion with God looks at the events of his life as he
+might put on a pair of coloured glasses to look at a landscape, it will
+be tinted with a glory and a glow as he looks. The obligation to
+gratitude, often neglected by us, is singularly, earnestly, and
+frequently enjoined in the New Testament. I am afraid that the average
+Christian man does not recognise its importance as an element in his
+Christian experience. As directed to the past it means that we do not
+forget, but that, as we look back, we see the meaning of these old days,
+and their possible blessings, and the loving purposes which sent them, a
+great deal more clearly than we did whilst we were passing through them.
+The mountains that, when you are close to them, are barren rock and cold
+snow, glow in the distance with royal purples. And so if we, from our
+standing point in God, will look back on our lives, losses will disclose
+themselves as gains, sorrows as harbingers of joy, conflict as a means
+of peace, the crooked things will be straight, and the rough places
+plain; and we may for every thing in the past give thanks, if only we
+'pray without ceasing.' The exhortation as applied to the present means
+that we bow our wills, that we believe that all things are working
+together for our good, and that, like Job in his best moments, we shall
+say, 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the Name of
+the Lord.' Ah, that is hard. It is possible, but it is only possible if
+we 'pray without ceasing,' and dwell beside God all the days of our
+lives, and all the hours of every day. Then, and only then, shall we be
+able to thank Him for all the way by which He hath led us these many
+years in the wilderness, that has been brightened by the pillar of cloud
+by day, and the fire by night.
+
+
+
+
+PAUL'S EARLIEST TEACHING
+
+          'I charge you, by the Lord, that this epistle be
+          read unto all the holy brethren,'--1 THESS. v. 27.
+
+
+If the books of the New Testament were arranged according to the dates
+of their composition, this epistle would stand first. It was written
+somewhere about twenty years after the Crucifixion, and long before any
+of the existing Gospels. It is, therefore, of peculiar interest, as
+being the most venerable extant Christian document, and as being a
+witness to Christian truth quite independent of the Gospel narratives.
+
+The little community at Thessalonica had been gathered together as the
+result of a very brief period of ministration by Paul. He had spoken for
+three successive Sabbaths in the synagogue, and had drawn together a
+Christian society, mostly consisting of heathens, though with a
+sprinkling of Jews amongst them. Driven from the city by a riot, he had
+left it for Athens, with many anxious thoughts, of course, as to whether
+the infant community would be able to stand alone after so few weeks of
+his presence and instruction. Therefore he sent back one of his
+travelling companions, Timothy by name, to watch over the young plant
+for a little while. When Timothy returned with the intelligence of their
+steadfastness, it was good news indeed, and with a sense of relieved
+anxiety, he sits down to write this letter, which, all through, throbs
+with thankfulness, and reveals the strain which the news had taken off
+his spirit.
+
+There are no such definite doctrinal statements in it as in the most of
+Paul's longer letters; it is simply an outburst of confidence and love
+and tenderness, and a series of practical instructions. It has been
+called the least doctrinal of the Pauline Epistles. And in one sense,
+and under certain limitations, that is perfectly true. But the very fact
+that it is so makes its indications and hints and allusions the more
+significant; and if this letter, not written for the purpose of
+enforcing any special doctrinal truth, be so saturated as it is with the
+facts and principles of the Gospel, the stronger is the attestation
+which it gives to the importance of these. I have, therefore, thought it
+might be worth our while now, and might, perhaps, set threadbare truth
+in something of a new light, if we put this--the most ancient Christian
+writing extant, which is quite independent of the four Gospels--into the
+witness-box, and see what it has to say about the great truths and
+principles which we call the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is my simple
+design, and I gather the phenomena into three or four divisions for the
+sake of accuracy and order.
+
+I. First of all, then, let us hear its witness to the divine Christ.
+
+Look how the letter begins. 'Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the
+church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father, and in the Lord
+Jesus Christ.' What is the meaning of that collocation, putting these
+two names side by side, unless it means that the Lord Jesus Christ sits
+on the Father's throne, and is divine?
+
+Then there is another fact that I would have you notice, and that is
+that more than twenty times in this short letter that great name is
+applied to Jesus, 'the Lord.' Now mark that that is something more than
+a mere title of human authority. It is in reality the New Testament
+equivalent of the Old Testament Jehovah, and is the transference to Him
+of that incommunicable name.
+
+And then there is another fact which I would have you weigh, viz., that
+in this letter direct prayer is offered to our Lord Himself. In one
+place we read the petition, 'May our God and Father Himself and our Lord
+Jesus direct our way unto you,' where the petition is presented to both,
+and where both are supposed to be operative in the answer. And more than
+that, the word 'direct,' following upon this _plural_ subject, is itself
+a _singular_ verb. Could language more completely express than that
+grammatical solecism does, the deep truth of the true and proper
+divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? There is nothing in any
+part of Scripture more emphatic and more lofty in its unfaltering
+proclamation of that fundamental truth of the Gospel than this
+altogether undoctrinal Epistle.
+
+The Apostle does not conceive himself to be telling these men, though
+they were such raw and recent Christians, anything new when he
+presupposes the truth that to Him desires and prayers may go. Thus the
+very loftiest apex of revealed religion had been imparted to that
+handful of heathens in the few weeks of the Apostle's stay amongst them.
+And nowhere upon the inspired pages of the fourth Evangelist, nor in
+that great Epistle to the Colossians, which is the very citadel and
+central fort of that doctrine in Scripture, is there more emphatically
+stated this truth than here, in these incidental allusions.
+
+This witness, at any rate, declares, apart altogether from any other
+part of Scripture, that so early in the development of the Church's
+history, and to people so recently dragged from idolatry, and having
+received but such necessarily partial instruction in revealed truth,
+this had not been omitted, that the Christ in whom they trusted was the
+Everlasting Son of the Father. And it takes it for granted that, so
+deeply was that truth embedded in their new consciousness that an
+allusion to it was all that was needed for their understanding and their
+faith. That is the first part of the testimony.
+
+II. Now, secondly, let us ask what this witness has to say about the
+dying Christ.
+
+There is no doctrinal theology in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, they
+tell us. Granted that there is no articulate argumentative setting forth
+of great doctrinal truths. But these are implied and involved in almost
+every word of it; and are definitely stated thus incidentally in more
+places than one. Let us hear the witness about the dying Christ.
+
+First, as to the fact, 'The Jews killed the Lord Jesus.' The historical
+fact is here set forth distinctly. And then, beyond the fact, there is
+as distinctly, though in the same incidental fashion, set forth the
+meaning of that fact--'God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain
+salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us.'
+
+Here are at least two things--one, the allusion, as to a well-known and
+received truth, proclaimed before now to them, that Jesus Christ in His
+death had died for them; and the other, that Jesus Christ was the medium
+through whom the Father had appointed that men should obtain all the
+blessings which are wrapped up in that sovereign word 'salvation.' I
+need but mention in this connection another verse, from another part of
+the letter, which speaks of Jesus as 'He that delivereth us from the
+wrath to come.' Remark that there our Authorised Version fails to give
+the whole significance of the words, because it translates _delivered_,
+instead of, as the Revised Version correctly does, _delivereth_. It is a
+continuous deliverance, running all through the life of the Christian
+man, and not merely to be realised away yonder at the far end; because
+by the mighty providence of God, and by the automatic working of the
+consequences of every transgression and disobedience, that 'wrath' is
+ever coming, coming, coming towards men, and lighting on them, and a
+continual Deliverer, who delivers us by His death, is what the human
+heart needs. This witness is distinct that the death of Christ is a
+sacrifice, that the death of Christ is man's deliverance from wrath,
+that the death of Christ is a present deliverance from the consequences
+of transgression.
+
+And was that Paul's peculiar doctrine? Is it conceivable that, in a
+letter in which he refers--once, at all events--to the churches in Judea
+as their 'brethren,' he was proclaiming any individual or schismatic
+reading of the facts of the life of Jesus Christ? I believe that there
+has been a great deal too much made of the supposed divergencies of
+types of doctrine in the New Testament. There are such types, within
+certain limits. Nobody would mistake a word of John's calm, mystical,
+contemplative spirit for a word of Paul's fiery, dialectic spirit. And
+nobody would mistake either the one or the other for Peter's impulsive,
+warm-hearted exhortations. But whilst there are diversities in the way
+of apprehending, there are no diversities in the declaration of what is
+the central truth to be apprehended. These varyings of the types of
+doctrine in the New Testament are one in this, that all point to the
+Cross as the world's salvation, and declare that the death there was the
+death for all mankind.
+
+Paul comes to it with his reasoning; John comes to it with his adoring
+contemplation; Peter comes to it with his mind saturated with Old
+Testament allusions. Paul declares that the 'Christ died for us'; John
+declares that He is 'the Lamb of God'; Peter declares that 'Christ bare
+our sins in His own body on the tree.' But all make one unbroken phalanx
+of witness in their proclamation, that the Cross, because it is a cross
+of sacrifice, is a cross of reconciliation and peace and hope. And this
+is the Gospel that they all proclaim, 'how that Jesus Christ died for
+our sins according to the Scriptures,' and Paul could venture to say,
+'Whether it were they or I, so we preach, and so ye believed.'
+
+That was the Gospel that took these heathens, wallowing in the mire of
+sensuous idolatry, and lifted them up to the elevation and the
+blessedness of children of God.
+
+And if you will read this letter, and think that there had been only a
+few weeks of acquaintance with the Gospel on the part of its readers,
+and then mark how the early and imperfect glimpse of it had transformed
+them, you will see where the power lies in the proclamation of the
+Gospel. A short time before they had been heathens; and now says Paul,
+'From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and
+Achaia, but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad;
+so that we need not to speak anything.' We do not need to talk to you
+about 'love of the brethren,' for 'yourselves are taught of God to love
+one another, and my heart is full of thankfulness when I think of your
+work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope.' The men had been
+transformed. What transformed them? The message of a divine and dying
+Christ, who had offered up Himself without spot unto God, and who was
+their peace and their righteousness and their power.
+
+III. Thirdly, notice what this witness has to say about the risen and
+ascended Christ. Here is what it has to say: 'Ye turned unto God . . . to
+wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead.' And again:
+'The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.' The risen
+Christ, then, is in the heavens, and Paul assumes that these people,
+just brought out of heathenism, have received that truth into their
+hearts in the love of it, and know it so thoroughly that he can take for
+granted their entire acquiescence in and acceptance of it.
+
+Remember, we have nothing to do with the four Gospels here. Remember,
+not a line of them had yet been written. Remember, that we are dealing
+here with an entirely independent witness. And then tell us what
+importance is to be attached to this evidence of the Resurrection of
+Jesus Christ. Twenty years after His death here is this man speaking
+about that Resurrection as being not only something that he had to
+proclaim, and believed, but as being the recognised and notorious fact
+which all the churches accepted, and which underlay all their faith.
+
+I would have you remember that if, twenty years after this event, this
+witness was borne, that necessarily carries us back a great deal nearer
+to the event than the hour of its utterance, for there is no mark of
+its being new testimony at that instant, but every mark of its being the
+habitual and continuous witness that had been borne from the instant of
+the alleged Resurrection to the present time. It at least takes us back
+a good many years nearer the empty sepulchre than the twenty which mark
+its date. It at least takes us back to the conversion of the Apostle
+Paul; and that necessarily involves, as it seems to me, that if that
+man, believing in the Resurrection, went into the Church, there would
+have been an end of his association with them, unless he had found there
+the same faith. The fact of the matter is, there is not a place where
+you can stick a pin in, between the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the
+date of this letter, wide enough to admit of the rise of the faith in a
+Resurrection. We are necessarily forced by the very fact of the
+existence of the Church to the admission that the belief in the
+Resurrection was contemporaneous with the alleged Resurrection itself.
+
+And so we are shut up--in spite of the wriggling of people that do not
+accept that great truth--we are shut up to the old alternative, as it
+seems to me, that either Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or the noblest
+lives that the world has ever seen, and the loftiest system of morality
+that has ever been proclaimed, were built upon a lie. And we are called
+to believe that at the bidding of a mere unsupported, bare, dogmatic
+assertion that miracles are impossible. Believe it who will, I decline
+to be coerced into believing a blank, staring psychological
+contradiction and impossibility, in order to be saved the necessity of
+admitting the existence of the supernatural. I would rather believe in
+the supernatural than the ridiculous. And to me it is unspeakably
+ridiculous to suppose that anything but the fact of the Resurrection
+accounts for the existence of the Church, and for the faith of this
+witness that we have before us.
+
+And so, dear friends, we come back to this, the Christianity that flings
+away the risen Christ is a mere mass of tatters with nothing in it to
+cover a man's nakedness, an illusion with no vitality in it to quicken,
+to comfort, to ennoble, to raise, to teach aspiration or hope or effort.
+The human heart needs the 'Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen
+again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh
+intercession for us.' And this independent witness confirms the Gospel
+story: 'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits
+of them that slept.'
+
+IV. Lastly, let us hear what this witness has to say about the returning
+Christ.
+
+That is the characteristic doctrinal subject of the letter. We all know
+that wonderful passage of unsurpassed tenderness and majesty, which has
+soothed so many hearts and been like a gentle hand laid upon so many
+aching spirits, about the returning Jesus 'coming in the clouds,' with
+the dear ones that are asleep along with Him, and the reunion of them
+that sleep and them that are alive and remain, in one indissoluble
+concord and concourse, when we shall ever be with the Lord, and 'clasp
+inseparable hands with joy and bliss in over-measure for ever.' The
+coming of the Master does not appear here with emphasis on its judicial
+aspect. It is rather intended to bring hope to the mourners, and the
+certainty that bands broken here may be re-knit in holier fashion
+hereafter. But the judicial aspect is not, as it could not be, left out,
+and the Apostle further tells us that 'that day cometh as a thief in the
+night.' That is a quotation of the Master's own words, which we find in
+the Gospels; and so again a confirmation, so far as it goes, from an
+independent witness, of the Gospel story. And then he goes on, in
+terrible language, to speak of 'sudden destruction, as of travail upon a
+woman with child; and they shall not escape.'
+
+These, then, are the points of this witness's testimony as to the
+returning Lord--a personal coming, a reunion of all believers in Him, in
+order to eternal felicity and mutual gladness, and the destruction that
+shall fall by His coming upon those who turn away from Him.
+
+What a revelation that would be to men who had known what it was to
+grope in the darkness of heathendom, and to have new light upon the
+future!
+
+I remember once walking in the long galleries of the Vatican, on the one
+side of which there are Christian inscriptions from the catacombs, and
+on the other heathen inscriptions from the tombs. One side is all dreamy
+and hopeless; one long sigh echoing along the line of white
+marbles--'Vale! vale! in aeternum vale!' (Farewell, farewell, for ever
+farewell.) On the other side--'In Christo, in pace, in spe.' (In Christ,
+in peace, in hope.) That is the witness that we have to lay to our
+hearts. And so death becomes a passage, and we let go the dear hands,
+believing that we shall clasp them again.
+
+My brother! this witness is to a gospel that is the gospel for
+Manchester as well as for Thessalonica. You and I want just the same as
+these old heathens there wanted. We, too, need the divine Christ, the
+dying Christ, the risen Christ, the ascended Christ, the returning
+Christ. And I beseech you to take Him for _your_ Christ, in all the
+fulness of His offices, the manifoldness of His power, and the sweetness
+of His love, so that of you it may be said, as this Apostle says about
+these Thessalonians, 'Ye received it not as the word of man, but, as it
+is in truth, as the word of God.'
+
+
+
+
+II. THESSALONIANS
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST GLORIFIED IN GLORIFIED MEN
+
+          'He shall come to be glorified in His saints; and
+          to be admired in all them that believe.'--2 THESS.
+          i. 10.
+
+
+The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the Apostle's earliest
+letters, both give very great prominence to the thought of the second
+coming of our Lord to judgment. In the immediate context we have that
+coming described, with circumstances of majesty and of terror. He 'shall
+be revealed . . . with the angels of His power.' 'Flaming fire' shall
+herald His coming; vengeance shall be in His hands, punishment shall
+follow His sentence; everlasting destruction shall be the issue of evil
+confronted with 'the face of the Lord'--for so the words in the previous
+verse rendered 'the presence of the Lord' might more accurately be
+translated.
+
+And all these facts and images are, as it were, piled up in one half of
+the Apostle's sky, as in thunderous lurid masses; and on the other side
+there is the pure blue and the peaceful sunshine. For all this terror
+and destruction, and flashing fire, and punitive vengeance come to pass
+in the day when 'He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be
+wondered at in all them that believe.'
+
+There be the two halves--the aspect of that day to those to whom it is
+the revelation of a stranger, and the aspect of that day to those to
+whom it is the glorifying of Him who is their life.
+
+I. The remarkable words which I have taken for my text suggest to us,
+first of all, some thoughts about that striking expression that Christ
+is glorified in the men who are glorified in Christ.
+
+If you look on a couple of verses you will find that the Apostle returns
+to this thought, and expresses in the clearest fashion the reciprocal
+character of that 'glorifying' of which he has been speaking. 'The name
+of our Lord Jesus Christ,' says he, 'may be glorified in you, and ye in
+Him.'
+
+So, then, glorifying has a double meaning. There is a double process
+involved. It means either 'to make glorious' or 'to manifest as being
+glorious.' And men are glorified in the former sense in Christ, that
+Christ in them may, in the latter sense, be glorified. He makes them
+glorious by imparting to them of the lustrous light and flashing beauty
+of His own perfect character, in order that that light, received into
+their natures, and streaming out at last conspicuously manifest from
+their redeemed perfectness, may redound to the praise and the honour,
+before a whole universe, of Him who has thus endued their weakness with
+His own strength, and transmuted their corruptibility into His own
+immortality. We are glorified in Christ in some partial, and, alas!
+sinfully fragmentary, manner here; we shall be so perfectly in that day.
+And when we are thus glorified in Him, then--wondrous thought!--even we
+shall be able to manifest Him as glorious before some gazing eyes, which
+without us would have seen Him as less fair. Dim, and therefore great
+and blessed thoughts about what men may become are involved in such
+words. The highest end, the great purpose of the Gospel and of all
+God's dealings with us in Christ Jesus is to make us like our Lord. As
+we have borne the image of the earthly we shall also bear the image of
+the heavenly. 'We, beholding the glory, are changed into the glory.'
+
+And that glorifying of men in Christ, which is the goal and highest end
+of Christ's Cross and passion and of all God's dealings, is accomplished
+only because Christ dwells in the men whom He glorifies. We read words
+applying to His relation to His Father which need but to be transferred
+to our relation to Him, in order to teach us high and blessed things
+about this glorifying. The Father dwelt in Christ, therefore Christ was
+glorified by the indwelling divinity, in the sense that His humanity was
+made partaker of the divine glory, and thereby He glorified the divinity
+that dwelt in Him, in the sense that He conspicuously displayed it
+before the world as worthy of all admiration and love.
+
+And, in like manner, as is the Son with the Father, participant of
+mutual and reciprocal glorification, so is the Christian with Christ,
+glorified in Him and therefore glorifying Him.
+
+What may be involved therein of perfect moral purity, of enlarged
+faculties and powers, of a bodily frame capable of manifesting all the
+finest issues of a perfect spirit, it is not for us to say. These things
+are great, being hidden; and are hidden because they are great. But
+whatever may be the lofty heights of Christlikeness to which we shall
+attain, all shall come from the indwelling Lord who fills us with His
+own Spirit.
+
+And, then, according to the great teaching here, this glorified
+humanity, perfected and separated from all imperfection, and helped into
+all symmetrical unfolding of dormant possibilities, shall be the
+highest glory of Christ even in that day when He comes in His glory and
+sits upon the throne of His glory with His holy angels with Him. One
+would have thought that, if the Apostle wanted to speak of the
+glorifying of Jesus Christ, he would have pointed to the great white
+throne, His majestic divinity, the solemnities of His judicial office;
+but he passes by all these, and says, 'Nay! the highest glory of the
+Christ lies here, in the men whom He has made to share His own nature.'
+
+The artist is known by his work. You stand in front of some great
+picture, or you listen to some great symphony, or you read some great
+book, and you say, 'This is the glory of Raphael, Beethoven,
+Shakespeare.' Christ points to His saints, and He says, 'Behold My
+handiwork! Ye are my witnesses. This is what I can do.'
+
+But the relation between Christ and His saints is far deeper and more
+intimate than simply the relation between the artist and his work, for
+all the flashing light of moral beauty, of intellectual perfectness
+which Christian men can hope to receive in the future is but the light
+of the Christ that dwells in them, 'and of whose fulness all they have
+received.' Like some poor vapour, in itself white and colourless, which
+lies in the eastern sky there, and as the sun rises is flushed up into a
+miracle of rosy beauty, because it has caught the light amongst its
+flaming threads and vaporous substance, so we, in ourselves pale,
+ghostly, colourless as the mountains when the Alpine snow passes off
+them, being recipient of an indwelling Christ, shall blush and flame in
+beauty. 'Then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in my
+Father's kingdom.' Or, rather they are not suns shining by their own
+light, but moons reflecting the light of Christ, who is their light.
+
+And perchance some eyes, incapable of beholding the sun, may be able to
+look undazzled upon the sunshine in the cloud, and some eyes that could
+not discern the glory of Christ as it shines in His face as the sun
+shineth in its strength, may not be too weak to behold and delight in
+the light as it is reflected from the face of His servants. At all
+events, He shall come to be glorified in the saints whom He has made
+glorious.
+
+II. And now, notice again, out of these full and pregnant words the
+other thought, that this transformation of men is the great miracle and
+marvel of Christ's power.
+
+'He shall come to be admired'--which word is employed in its old English
+signification, 'to be wondered at'--'in all them that believe.' So fair
+and lovely is He that He needs but to be recognised for what He is in
+order to be glorified. So great and stupendous are His operations in
+redeeming love that they need but to be beheld to be the object of
+wonder. 'His name shall be called Wonderful,' and wonderfully the energy
+of His redeeming and sanctifying grace shall then have wrought itself
+out to its legitimate end. There you get the crowning marvel of marvels,
+and the highest of miracles. He did wonderful works upon earth which we
+rightly call miraculous,--things to be wondered at--but the highest of
+all His wonders is the wonder that takes such material as you and me,
+and by such a process, and on such conditions, simply because we trust
+Him, evolves such marvellous forms of beauty and perfectness from us.
+'He is to be wondered at in all them that believe.'
+
+Such results from such material! Chemists tell us that the black bit of
+coal in your grate and the diamond on your finger are varying forms of
+the one substance. What about a power that shall take all the black
+coals in the world and transmute them into flashing diamonds, prismatic
+with the reflected light that comes from His face, and made gems on His
+strong right hand? The universe will wonder at such results from such
+material.
+
+And it will wonder, too, at the process by which they were accomplished,
+wondering at the depth of His pity revealed all the more pathetically
+now from the great white throne which casts such a light on the Cross of
+Calvary; wondering at the long, weary path which He who is now declared
+to be the Judge humbled Himself to travel in the quest of these poor
+sinful souls whom He has redeemed and glorified. The miracle of miracles
+is redeeming love; and the high-water mark of Christ's wonders is
+touched in this fact, that out of men He makes saints; and out of saints
+He makes perfect likenesses of Himself.
+
+III. And now a word about what is _not_ expressed, but is necessarily
+implied in this verse, viz., the spectators of this glory.
+
+The Apostle does not tell us what eyes they are before which Christ is
+thus to be glorified. He does not summon the spectators to look upon
+this wonderful exhibition of divine judgment and divine glory; but we
+may dwell for a moment on the thought that to whomsoever in the whole
+universe Christ at that great day shall be manifested, to them, whoever
+they be, will His glory, in His glorified saints, be a revelation beyond
+what they have known before. 'Every eye shall see Him.' And whatsoever
+eyes look upon Him, then on His throne, they shall behold the attendant
+courtiers and the assessors of His judgment, and see in them the
+manifestation of His own lustrous light.
+
+We read that 'unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places
+shall be made known' in future days, 'by the Church, the manifold wisdom
+of God.' We hear that, after the burst of praise which comes from
+redeemed men standing around the throne, every creature in the earth and
+in the heavens, and in the sea and all that are therein were heard
+saying, 'Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that
+sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'
+
+We need not speculate, it is better not to enter into details, but this,
+at least, is clear, that that solemn winding up of the long, mysterious,
+sad, blood and tear-stained history of man upon the earth is to be an
+object of interest and a higher revelation of God to other creatures
+than those that dwell upon the earth; and we may well believe that for
+that moment, at all events, the centre of the universe, which draws the
+thoughts of all thinking, and the eyes of all seeing, creatures to it,
+shall be that valley of judgment wherein sits the Man Christ and judges
+men, and round Him the flashing reflectors of His glory in the person of
+His saints.
+
+IV. And lastly, look at men's path to this glorifying.
+
+'He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in
+all them that _believed_'; as that word ought to be rendered. That is to
+say, they who on earth were His, consecrated and devoted to Him, and in
+some humble measure partaking even here of His reflected beauty and
+imparted righteousness--these are they in whom He shall be glorified.
+They who 'believed'; poor, trembling, struggling, fainting souls, that
+here on earth, in the midst of many doubts and temptations, clasped His
+hand; and howsoever tremulously, yet truly put their trust in Him, these
+are they in whom He shall 'be wondered at.'
+
+The simple act of faith knits us to the Lord. If we trust Him He comes
+into our hearts here, and begins to purify us, and to make us like
+Himself; and, if that be so, and we keep hold of Him, we shall finally
+share in His glory.
+
+What a hope, what an encouragement, what a stimulus and exhortation to
+humble and timorous souls there is in that great word, 'In _all_ them
+that believed'! Howsoever imperfect, still they shall be kept by the
+power of God unto that final salvation. And when He comes in His glory,
+not one shall be wanting that put their trust in Him.
+
+It will take them all, each in his several way reflecting it, to set
+forth adequately the glory. As many diamonds round a central light,
+which from each facet give off a several ray and a definite colour; so
+all that circle round Christ and partaking of His glory, will each
+receive it, transmit it, and so manifest it in a different fashion. And
+it needs the innumerable company of the redeemed, each a several
+perfectness, to set forth all the fulness of the Christ that dwells in
+us.
+
+So, dear brethren, beginning with simple faith in Him, partially
+receiving the beauty of His transforming spirit, seeking here on earth
+by assimilation to the Master in some humble measure to adorn the
+doctrine and to glorify the Christ, we may hope that each blackness will
+be changed into brightness, our limitations done away with, our weakness
+lifted into rejoicing strength; and that we shall be like Him, seeing
+Him as He is, and glorified in Him, shall glorify Him before the
+universe.
+
+You and I will be there. Choose which of the two halves of that sky that
+I was speaking about in my introductory remarks will be your sky;
+whether He shall be revealed, and the light of His face be to you like a
+sword whose flashing edge means destruction, or whether the light of His
+face shall fall upon your heart because you love Him and trust Him, like
+the sunshine on the Alpine snow, lifting it to a more lustrous
+whiteness, and tingeing it with an ethereal hue of more than earthly
+beauty, which no other power but an indwelling Christ can give. He shall
+come with 'everlasting destruction from the face'; and 'He shall come to
+be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in all them that
+believed.' Do you choose which of the two shall be your portion in that
+day.
+
+
+
+
+WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING
+
+          'We pray always for you, that our God would count
+          you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the
+          good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of
+          faith with power; 12. That the name of our Lord
+          Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in
+          Him.'--2 THESS. i. 11, 12.
+
+
+In the former letter to the Church of Thessalonica, the Apostle had
+dwelt, in ever-memorable words--which sound like a prelude of the trump
+of God--on the coming of Christ at the end to judge the world, and to
+gather His servants into His rest. That great thought seems to have
+excited some of the hotter heads in Thessalonica, and to have led to a
+general feverishness of unwholesome expectancy of the near approach or
+actual dawn of the day. This letter is intended as a supplement to the
+former Epistle, and to damp down the fire which had been kindled. It,
+therefore, dwells with emphasis on the necessary preliminaries to the
+dawning of that day of the Lord, and throughout seeks to lead the
+excited spirits to patience and persistent work, and to calm their
+feverish expectations. This purpose colours the whole letter.
+
+Another striking characteristic of it is the frequent gushes of short
+prayer for the Thessalonians with which the writer turns aside from the
+main current of his thoughts. In its brief compass there are four of
+these prayers, which, taken together, present many aspects of the
+Christian life, and hold out much for our hopes and much for our
+efforts. The prayer which I have read for our text is the first of
+these. The others, the consideration of which will follow on subsequent
+occasions, are these:--'Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our
+Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation
+and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and stablish you in
+every good word and work.' And, again, 'The Lord direct your hearts into
+the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.' And, finally,
+summing up all, 'The Lord of peace Himself give you peace always, by all
+means.' So full, so tender, so directed to the highest blessings, and to
+those only, are the wishes of a true Christian teacher, and of a true
+Christian friend, for those to whom He ministers and whom He loves. It
+is a poor love that cannot express itself in prayer. It is an earthly
+love which desires for its objects anything less than the highest of
+blessings.
+
+I. Notice, first, here, the divine test for Christian lives: 'We pray
+for you, that God would count you worthy of your calling.'
+
+Now, it is to be observed that this 'counting worthy' refers mainly to a
+future estimate to be made by God of the completed career and permanent
+character brought out of earth into another state by Christian souls.
+That is obvious from the whole strain of the letter, which I have
+already pointed out as mainly being concerned with the future coming to
+judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is also, I think, made probable by
+the fact that the same expression, 'counting worthy,' occurs in an
+earlier verse of this chapter, where the reference is exclusively to the
+future judgment.
+
+So, then, we are brought face to face with this thought of an actual,
+stringent judgment which God will apply in the future to the lives and
+characters of professing Christians. Now, that is a great deal too much
+forgotten in our popular Christian teaching and in our average Christian
+faith. It is perfectly true that he who trusts in Jesus Christ will 'not
+come into condemnation, but has passed from death unto life.' But it is
+just as true that 'judgment shall begin at the house of God,' and that,
+'the Lord will judge His people.' And therefore, it becomes us to lay to
+heart this truth, that we, just because, if we are Christians, we stand
+nearest to God, are surest to be searched through and through by the
+light that streams from Him, and to have every flaw and corrupt speck
+and black spot brought out into startling prominence. Let no Christian
+man fancy that he shall escape the righteous judgment of God. The great
+doctrine of forgiveness does not mean that He suffers our sin to remain
+upon us unjudged, ay! or unavenged. But just as, day by day, there is an
+actual estimate in the divine mind, according to truth, of what we
+really are, so, at the last, God's servants will be gathered before His
+throne. 'They that have made a covenant with Him by sacrifice' shall be
+assembled there--as the Psalm has it--'that the Lord may judge His
+people.'
+
+Then, if the actual passing of a divine judgment day by day, and a
+future solemn act of judgment after we have done with earth, and our
+characters are completed, and our careers rounded into a whole, is to be
+looked for by Christians, what is the standard by which their worthiness
+is to be judged?
+
+'Your calling.' The 'this' of my text in the Authorised Version is a
+supplement, and a better supplement is that of the Revised Version,
+'your calling.' Now _calling_ does not mean 'avocation' or 'employment,'
+as I perhaps need scarcely explain, but the divine fact of our having
+been summoned by Him to be His. Consider who calls. God Himself.
+Consider how He calls. By the Gospel, by Jesus Christ, or, as another
+apostle has it, 'by His own glory and virtue' manifested in the world.
+That great voice which is in Jesus Christ, so tender, so searching, so
+heart-melting, so vibrating with the invitation of love and the yearning
+of a longing heart, summons or calls us. Consider, also, what this
+calling is to. 'God hath not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness,'
+or, as this letter has it, in another part, 'unto salvation through
+sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.' By all the
+subduing and animating and restraining and impelling tones in the
+sacrifice and life of Jesus Christ we are summoned to a life of
+self-crucifixion, of subjection of the flesh, of aspiration after God,
+of holy living according to the pattern that was showed us in Him. We
+are summoned here and now to a life of purity and righteousness and
+self-sacrifice. But also 'He hath called us to His everlasting kingdom
+and glory.' That voice sounds from above now. From the Cross it said to
+us, 'I die that ye may live'; from the throne it says to us, 'Live
+because I live, and come to live where I live.' The same invitation,
+which calls us to a life of righteousness and self-suppression and
+purity, also calls us, with the sweet promise that is firm as the throne
+of God, to the everlasting felicities of that perfect kingdom in which,
+because the obedience is entire, the glory shall be untremulous and
+unstained. Therefore, considering who summons, by what He summons, and
+to what He calls us, do there not lie in the fact of that divine call to
+which we Christians say that we have yielded, the solemnest motives, the
+loftiest standard, the most stringent obligations for life? What sort of
+a life will that be which is worthy of that voice? Is yours? Is mine?
+Are there not the most flagrant examples of professing Christians, whose
+lives are in the most outrageous discordance with the lofty obligations
+and mighty motives of the summons which they profess to have obeyed?
+'Worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called!' Have I made my own the
+things which I am invited to possess? Have I yielded to the obligations
+which are enwrapped in that invitation? Does my life correspond to the
+divine purpose in calling me to be His? Can I say, 'Lord, Thou art mine,
+and I am Thine, and here my life witnesses to it, because self is
+banished from it, and I am full of God, and the life which I live in
+the flesh I live not to myself, but to Him that died for me?'
+
+An absolute correspondence, a complete worthiness or perfect desert, is
+impossible for us all, but a worthiness which His merciful judgment who
+makes allowance for us all may accept, as not too flagrantly
+contradictory of what He meant us to be, is possible even for our poor
+attainments and our stained lives. If it were Paul's supreme prayer,
+should it not be our supreme aim, that we may be worthy of Him that hath
+called us, and 'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called'?
+
+II. Note, here, the divine help to meet the test.
+
+If it were a matter of our own effort alone, who of us could pretend to
+reach to the height of conformity with the great design of the loving
+Father in summoning us, or with the mighty powers that are set in motion
+by the summons for the purifying of men's lives? But here is the great
+characteristic and blessing of God's Gospel, that it not only summons us
+to holiness and to heaven, but reaches out a hand to help us thither.
+Therein it contrasts with all other voices--and many of them are noble
+and pathetic in their insistence and vehemence--which call men to lofty
+lives. Whether it be the voice of conscience, or of human ethics, or of
+the great ones, the elect of the race, who, in every age, have been as
+voices crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'--all
+these call us, but reach no hand out to draw us. They are all as voices
+from the heights and are of God, but they are voices only; they summon
+us to noble deeds, and leave us floundering in the mire.
+
+But we have not a God who tells us to be good, and then watches to see
+if we will obey, but we have a God who, with all His summonses, brings
+to us the help to keep His commandments. Our God has more than a voice
+to enjoin, He has a hand to lift, 'Give what Thou commandest, and
+command what Thou wilt,' said Augustine. There is the blessing and glory
+of the Gospel, that its summons has in it an impelling power which makes
+men able to be what it enjoins them to become. My text, therefore,
+follows the prayer 'that God would count you worthy,' which contemplates
+God simply as judging men's correspondence with the ideal revealed in
+their calling, and is the cry of faith to the giving God, who works in
+us, if we will let Him, that which He enjoins on us. There are two
+directions of that divine working specified in the text. Paul asks that
+God would fulfil 'every desire of goodness and every work of faith,' as
+the Revised Version renders the words. Two things, then, we may hope
+that God will do for us--He will fulfil every yearning after
+righteousness and purity in our hearts, and will perfect the active
+energy which faith puts forth in our lives.
+
+Paul says, in effect, first, that God will fulfil every desire that
+longs for goodness. He is scarcely deserving of being called good who
+does not desire to be better. Aspiration must always be ahead of
+performance in a growing life, such as every Christian life ought to be.
+To long for any righteousness and beauty of goodness is, in some
+imperfect and incipient measure, to possess the good for which we long.
+This is the very signature of a Christian life--yearning after
+unaccomplished perfection. If you know nothing of that desire that
+stings and impels you onwards; if you do not know what it is to say,
+'Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
+death?' if you do not know what it is to follow the fair ideal realised
+in Jesus Christ with infinite longing, what right have you to call
+yourself a Christian? The very essence of the Christian life is yearning
+for completeness, and restlessness as long as sin has any power over us.
+We live not only by admiration, faith, and love, but we live by hope;
+and he who does not hunger and thirst after righteousness has yet to
+learn what are the first principles of the Gospel of Christ.
+
+If there be not the desire after goodness, the restlessness and
+dissatisfaction with every present good, the brave ambition that says,
+'Forgetting the things that are behind, I reach forth unto the things
+that are before,' there is nothing in a man to which God's grace can
+attach itself. God cannot make you better if you do not wish to be
+better. There is no point upon which His hallowing and ennobling grace
+can lay hold in your hearts without such desire. 'Open thy mouth wide
+and I will fill it.' If, as is too often the case with hosts of
+professing Christians, you shut your mouths tight and lock your teeth,
+how can God put any food between your lips? There must, first of all, be
+the aspiration, and then there will be the satisfaction.
+
+I look out upon my congregation, or, better still, I look into my own
+heart, and I say, If I, if you, dear brethren, are not worthy of the
+vocation wherewith we are called, we have not because we ask not. If
+there be no desire after goodness in our hearts, God cannot make us
+good. Our wishes are the mould into which the molten metal from the
+great furnace of His love will run. If we bring but a little vessel we
+cannot get a large supply. The manna lies round our tents; it is for us
+to determine how much we will gather.
+
+And in like manner, says Paul, God will fulfil every work of faith. Our
+faith in Jesus Christ will naturally tend to influence our lives, and to
+manifest itself as a driving power which will set all the wheels of
+conduct in motion. Paul is quite sure that if we trust ourselves to God,
+all the beneficent and holy work that flows from such confidence will by
+Him be fully perfected.
+
+God's fulfilment is to be done _with power_. That is to say, He will fit
+us to be worthy of our calling, He will answer our desires, He will give
+energy to our faith, and complete in number and in quality its
+operations in our lives, by reason of His dwelling with us and in us by
+that spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind which works all
+righteousness in believing hearts, and sheds divine beauty and goodness
+over character and life.
+
+III. Lastly, note the divine glory of the worthy.
+
+This fulfilment of every desire of goodness and work of faith is in
+order 'that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you
+and ye in Him.'
+
+Here, again, as in the first clause of our text, I take, in accordance
+with the prevailing tone of this letter, the reference to be mainly,
+though perhaps not exclusively, to a future transcendent glorifying of
+the name of Christ in perfected saints, and glorifying of perfected
+saints in Jesus Christ.
+
+We have, then, set forth, first, as the result of the fulfilling of
+Christian men's desires after goodness, and the work of their faith, the
+glory that accrues to Christ from perfected saints. They are His
+workmanship. You remember the old story of the artist who went into a
+fellow-artist's studio and left upon the easel one complete circle,
+swept with one master-whirl of the brush. Jesus Christ presents
+perfected men to an admiring universe as specimens of what He can do.
+His highest work is the redeeming of poor creatures like you and me, and
+the making of us perfect in goodness and worthy of our calling. We are
+His _chefs-d'oeuvre_, the master work of the great divine artist.
+
+Think, then, brethren, how, here and now, Christ's reputation is in our
+hands. Men judge of Him by us. The name of the Lord Jesus is glorified
+in you if you live 'worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,' and
+people will think better of the Master if His disciples are faithful.
+Depend upon it, if we of this church, for instance, and the Christian
+people within these walls now, lived the lives that they ought to do,
+and manifested the power of the Gospel as they might, there would be
+many who would say, 'They have been with Jesus, and the Jesus that has
+made them what they are must be mighty and great.' The best evidence of
+the power of the Gospel is your consistent lives.
+
+Think, too, of that strange dignity that in the future, in manners and
+in regions all undiscernible by us, Christians, who have been made out
+of stones into children of God, will make known 'unto principalities and
+powers in heavenly places' the wisdom and the love and the energy of the
+redeeming God. Who knows to what regions the commission of the perfected
+saints to make Christ known may carry them? Light travels far, and we
+cannot tell into what remote corners of the universe this may penetrate.
+This only we know, that they who shall be counted worthy to attain that
+life and the Resurrection from the dead shall bear the image of the
+heavenly, and perhaps to creations yet uncreated, and still to be
+evolved through the ages of eternity, it may be their part to carry the
+lustre of the light of the glory of God who redeemed and purified them.
+
+On the other hand, there is glory accruing to perfected saints in
+Christ. 'And ye in Him.' There will be a union so close as that nothing
+closer is possible, personality being preserved, between Christ and the
+saints above, who trust Him and love Him and serve Him there. And that
+union will lead to a participation in His glory which shall exalt their
+limited, stained, and fragmentary humanity into 'the measure of the
+stature of the fulness of Christ.' Astronomers tell us that dead, cold
+matter falls from all corners of the system into the sun, drawn by its
+magic magnetism from farthest space, and, plunging into that great
+reservoir of fire, the deadest and coldest matter glows with fervid heat
+and dazzling light. So you and I, dead, cold, dull, opaque, heavy
+fragments, drawn into mysterious oneness with Christ, the Sun of our
+souls, shall be transformed into His own image, and like Him be light
+and heat which shall radiate through the universe.
+
+Brethren, meditate on your calling, the fact, its method, its aim, its
+obligations, and its powers. Cherish hopes and desires after goodness,
+the only hopes and desires that are certain to be fulfilled. Cultivate
+the life of faith working by love, and let us all live in the light of
+that solemn expectation that the Lord will judge His people. Then we may
+hope that the voice which summoned us will welcome us, and proclaim even
+of us, stained and undeserving as we rightly feel ourselves to be:
+'They have not defiled their garments, therefore they shall walk with Me
+in white, for they are worthy.'
+
+
+
+
+EVERLASTING CONSOLATION AND GOOD HOPE
+
+          'Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even
+          our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us
+          everlasting consolation, and good hope through
+          grace. 17. Comfort your hearts, and stablish you
+          in every good word and work.'--2 THESS. ii. 16,
+          17.
+
+
+This is the second of the four brief prayers which, as I pointed out in
+my last sermon, break the current of Paul's teaching in this letter, and
+witness to the depth of his affection to his Thessalonian converts. We
+do not know the special circumstances under which these then were, but
+there are many allusions, both in the first and second epistles, which
+seem to indicate that they specially needed the gift of consolation.
+
+They were a young Church, just delivered from paganism. Like lambs in
+the midst of wolves, they stood amongst bitter enemies, their teacher
+had left them alone, and their raw convictions needed to be consolidated
+and matured in the face of much opposition. No wonder then that over and
+over again, in both letters, we have references to the persecutions and
+tribulations which they endured, and to the consolations which would
+much more abound.
+
+But whatever may have been their specific circumstances, the prayer
+which puts special emphasis on comfort is as much needed by each of us
+as it could ever have been by any of them. For there are no eyes that
+have not wept, or will not weep; no breath that has not been, or will
+not be, drawn in sighs; and no hearts that have not bled, or will not
+bleed. So, dear friends, the prayer that went up for these long since
+comforted brothers, in their forgotten obscure sorrows, is as needful
+for each of us--that the God who has given everlasting consolation may
+apply the consolations which He has supplied, and 'comfort our hearts
+and stablish them in every good word and work.'
+
+The prayer naturally falls, as all true prayer will, into three
+sections--the contemplation of Him to whom it is addressed, the grasping
+of the great act on which it is based, and the specification of the
+desires which it includes. These three thoughts may guide us for a few
+moments now.
+
+I. First of all, then, note the divine hearers of the prayer.
+
+The first striking thing about this prayer is its emphatic recognition
+of the divinity of Jesus Christ as a truth familiar to these
+Thessalonian converts. Note the solemn accumulation of His august
+titles, 'Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.' Note, further, that
+extraordinary association of His name with the Father's. Note, still
+further, the most remarkable order in which these two names occur--Jesus
+first, God second. If we were not so familiar with the words, and with
+their order, which reappears in Paul's well-known and frequently-used
+Benediction, we should be startled to find that Jesus Christ was put
+before God in such a solemn address. The association and the order of
+mention of the names are equally outrageous, profane, and inexplicable,
+except upon one hypothesis, and that is that Jesus Christ is divine.
+
+The reason for the order may be found partly in the context, which has
+just been naming Christ, but still more in the fact that whilst he
+writes, the Apostle is realising the mediation of Christ, and that the
+order of mention is the order of our approach. The Father comes to us in
+the Son; we come to the Father by the Son; and, therefore, it is no
+intercepting of our reverence, nor blasphemously lifting the creature to
+undue elevation, when in one act the Apostle appeals to 'our Lord Jesus
+Christ Himself, and God our Father.'
+
+Note, still further, the distinct address to Christ as the Hearer of
+Prayer. And, note, last of all, about this matter, the singular
+grammatical irregularity in my text, which is something much more than a
+mere blunder or slip of the pen. The words which follow, viz., 'comfort'
+and 'stablish,' are in the singular, whilst these two mighty and august
+names are their nominatives, and would therefore, by all regularity,
+require a plural to follow them. That this peculiarity is no mere
+accident, but intentional and deliberate, is made probable by the two
+instances in our text, and is made certain, as it seems to me, by the
+fact that the same anomalous and eloquent construction occurs in the
+previous epistle to the same church, where we have in exact parallelism
+with our text, 'God Himself, our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ,'
+with the singular verb, 'direct our way unto you.' The phraseology is
+the expression, in grammatical form, of the great truth, 'Whatsoever
+things the Father doeth, these also doth the Son likewise.' And from it
+there gleam out unmistakably the great principles of the unity of action
+and the distinction of person between Father and Son, in the depths of
+that infinite and mysterious Godhead.
+
+Now all this, which seems to me to be irrefragable, is made the more
+remarkable and the stronger as a witness of the truth, from the fact
+that it occurs in this perfectly incidental fashion, and without a word
+of explanation or apology, as taking for granted that there was a
+background of teaching in the Thessalonian Church which had prepared the
+way for it, and rendered it intelligible, as well as a background of
+conviction which had previously accepted it.
+
+And, remember, these two letters, thus full-toned in their declaration,
+and taking for granted the previous acceptance of the great doctrine of
+the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, are the earliest
+portions of the New Testament, and are often spoken about as being
+singularly undogmatic. So they are, and therefore all the more eloquent
+and all the more conclusive is such a testimony as this to the sort of
+teaching which from the beginning the Apostle addressed to his converts.
+
+Now is that your notion of Jesus Christ? Do you regard Him as the sharer
+in the divine attributes and in the divine throne? It was a living
+Christ that Paul was thinking about when he wrote these words, who could
+hear him praying in Corinth, and could reach a helping hand down to
+these poor men in Thessalonica. It was a divine Christ that Paul was
+thinking about when he dared to say, 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, and God our
+Father.' And I beseech you to ask yourself the question whether your
+faith accepts that great teaching, and whether to you He is far more
+than 'the Man Christ Jesus'; and just because He is _the_ man, is
+therefore the Son of God. Brethren! either Jesus lies in an unknown
+grave, ignorant of all that is going on here, and the notion that He can
+help is a delusion and a dream, or else He is the ever-living because He
+is the divine Christ, to whom we poor men can speak with the certainty
+that He hears us, and who wields the energies of Deity, and works the
+same works as the Father, for the help and blessing of the souls that
+trust Him.
+
+II. Secondly, note the great fact on which this prayer builds itself.
+
+The form of words in the original, 'loved' and 'given,' all but
+necessarily requires us to suppose that their reference is to some one
+definite historical act in which the love was manifested, and, as love
+always does, found voice in giving. Love is the infinite desire to
+bestow, and its language is always a gift. Then, according to the
+Apostle's thought, there is some one act in which all the fulness of the
+divine love manifests itself; some one act in which all the treasures
+which God can bestow upon men are conveyed and handed over to a world.
+
+The statement that there is such renders almost unnecessary the question
+what such an act is. For there can be but one in all the sweep of the
+magnificent and beneficent divine deeds, so correspondent to His love,
+and so inclusive of all His giving, as that it shall be the ground of
+our confidence and the warrant for our prayers. The gift of Jesus Christ
+is that in which everlasting consolation and good hope are bestowed upon
+men. When our desires are widened out to the widest they must be based
+upon the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ; and when we would think most
+confidently and most desiringly of the benefits that we seek, for
+ourselves or for our fellows, we must turn to the Cross. My prayer is
+then acceptable and prevalent when it foots itself on the past divine
+act, and looking to the life and death of Jesus Christ, is widened out
+to long for, ask for, and in the very longing and asking for to begin
+to possess, the fulness of the gifts which then were brought to men in
+Him.
+
+'Everlasting consolation and good hope.' I suppose the Apostle's
+emphasis is to be placed quite as much on the adjectives as on the
+nouns; for there are consolations enough in the world, only none of them
+are permanent; and there are hopes enough that amuse and draw men, but
+one of them only is 'good.' The gift of Christ, thinks Paul, is the gift
+of a comfort which will never fail amidst all the vicissitudes and
+accumulated and repeated and prolonged sorrows to which flesh is heir,
+and is likewise the gift of a hope which, in its basis and in its
+objects, is equally noble and good.
+
+Look at these two things briefly. Paul thinks that in Jesus Christ you
+and I, and all the world, if it will have it, has received the gift of
+an everlasting comfort. Ah! sorrow is more persistent than consolation.
+The bandaged wounds bleed again; the fire damped down for a moment
+smoulders, even when damped, and bursts out again. But there is one
+source of comfort which, because it comes from an unchangeable Christ,
+and because it communicates unfailing gifts of patience and insight, and
+because it leads forward to everlasting blessedness and recompenses, may
+well be called 'eternal consolation.' Of course, consolation is not
+needed when sorrow has ceased; and when the wiping away of all tears
+from off all faces, and the plunging of grief into the nethermost fires,
+there to be consumed, have come about, there is no more need for
+comfort. Yet that which made the comfort while sorrow lasts, makes the
+triumph and the rapture when sorrow is dead, and is everlasting, though
+its office of consolation determines with earth.
+
+'Good hope through grace.' This is the weakness of all the hopes which
+dance like fireflies in the dark before men, and are often like
+will-o'-the-wisps in the night tempting men into deep mire, where there
+is no standing--that they are uncertain in their basis and inadequate in
+their range. The prostitution of the great faculty of hope is one of the
+saddest characteristics of our feeble and fallen manhood; for the bulk
+of our hopes are doubtful and akin to fears, and are mean and low, and
+disproportioned to the possibilities, and therefore the obligations, of
+our spirits. But in that Cross which teaches us the meaning of sorrows,
+and in that Christ whose presence is light in darkness, and the very
+embodied consolation of all hearts, there lie at once the foundation and
+the object of a hope which, in consideration both of object and
+foundation, stands unique in its excellence and sufficient in its
+firmness. 'A good hope'; good because well founded; and good because
+grasping worthy objects; eternal consolation outlasting all
+sorrows--these things were given once for all, to the whole world when
+Jesus Christ came and lived and died. The materials for a comfort that
+shall never fail me, and for the foundation and the object of a hope
+that shall never be ashamed, are supplied in Jesus Christ our Lord. And
+so these gifts, already passed under the great seal of heaven, and
+confirmed to us all, if we choose to take them for ours, are the ground
+upon which the largest prayers may be rested, and the most ardent
+desires may be unblamably cherished, in the full confidence that no
+petitions of ours can reach to the greatness of the divine purpose, and
+that the widest and otherwise wildest of our hopes and wishes are sober
+under-estimates of what God has already given to us. For if He has
+given the material, He will apply what He has supplied. And if He has
+thus in the past bestowed the possibilities of comfort and hope upon the
+world, He will not slack His hand, if we desire the possibility to be in
+our hearts turned into the actuality.
+
+God has given, therefore God will give. That in heaven's logic, but it
+does not do for men. It presupposes inexhaustible resources,
+unchangeable purposes of kindness, patience that is not disgusted and
+cannot be turned away by our sin. These things being presupposed it is
+true; and the prayer of my text, that God would comfort, can have no
+firmer foundation than the confidence of my text, that God has given
+'everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.' 'Thou hast helped
+us; leave us not, neither forsake us, O God of our salvation.'
+
+III. The last thing here is the petitions based upon the contemplation
+of the divine hearers of the prayer, and of the gift already bestowed by
+God.
+
+May He 'comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and
+work.' I have already said all that perhaps is necessary in regard to
+the connection between the past gift of everlasting consolation and the
+present and future comforting of hearts which is here desired. It seems
+to me that the Apostle has in his mind the distinction between the great
+work of Christ, in which are supplied for us the materials for comfort
+and hope, and the present and continuous work of that Divine Spirit, by
+which God dwelling in our hearts in Jesus Christ makes real for each of
+us the universal gift of consolation and of hope. God has bestowed the
+materials for comfort; God will give the comfort for which He has
+supplied the materials. It were a poor thing if all that we could
+expect from our loving Father in the heavens were that He should
+contribute to us what might make us peaceful and glad and calm in
+sorrow, if we chose to use it. Men comfort from without; God steals into
+the heart, and there diffuses the aroma of His presence. Christ comes
+into the ship before He says, 'Peace! be still!' It is not enough for
+our poor troubled heart that there should be calmness and consolation
+twining round the Cross if we choose to pluck the fruit. We need, and
+therefore we have, an indwelling God who, by that Spirit which is the
+Comforter, will make for each of us the everlasting consolation which He
+has bestowed upon the world our individual possession. God's husbandry
+is not merely broadcast sowing of the seed, but the planting in each
+individual heart of the precious germ. And the God who has given
+everlasting consolation to a whole world will comfort _thy_ heart.
+
+Then, again, the comforted heart will be a stable heart. Our fixedness
+and stability are not natural immobility, but communicated
+steadfastness. There must be, first, the consolation of Christ before
+there can be the calmness of a settled heart. We all know how
+vacillating, how driven to and fro by gusts of passion and winds of
+doctrine and forces of earth our resolutions and spirits are. But
+thistledown glued to a firm surface will be firm, and any light thing
+lashed to a solid one will be solid; and reeds shaken with the wind may
+be turned into brazen pillars that cannot be moved. If we have Christ in
+our hearts, He will be our consolation first and our stability next. Why
+should it be that we are spasmodic and fluctuating, and the slaves of
+ups and downs, like some barometer in stormy weather; now at 'set
+fair,' and then away down where 'much rain' is written? There is no need
+for it. Get Christ into your heart, and your mercury will always stand
+at one height. Why should it be that at one hour the flashing waters
+fill the harbour, and that six hours afterwards there is a waste of ooze
+and filth? It need not be. Our hearts may be like some landlocked lake
+that knows no tide. 'His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.'
+
+The comforted and stable heart will be a fruitful heart. 'In _every_
+good word and work.' Ah! how fragmentary is our goodness, like the
+broken torsos of the statues of fair gods dug up in some classic land.
+There is no reason why each of us should not appropriate and make our
+own the forms of goodness to which we are least naturally inclined, and
+cultivate and possess a symmetrical, fully-developed, all-round
+goodness, in some humble measure after the pattern of Jesus Christ our
+Lord. Practical righteousness, 'in every good word and work,' is the
+outcome of all the sacred and secret consolations and blessings that
+Jesus Christ imparts. There are many Christian people who are like those
+swallow-holes, as they call them, characteristic of limestone countries,
+where a great river plunges into a cave and is no more heard of. You do
+not get your comforts and your blessing for that, brother, but in order
+that all the joy and peace, all the calmness and the communion, which
+you realise in the secret place of the Most High, may be translated into
+goodness and manifest righteousness in the market-place and the street.
+We get our goodness where we get our consolation, from Jesus Christ and
+His Cross.
+
+And so, dear friends, all your comforts will die, and your sorrows will
+live, unless you have Christ for your own. The former will be like some
+application that is put on a poisoned bite, which will soothe it for a
+moment, but as soon as the anodyne dries off the skin, the poison will
+tingle and burn again, and will be working in the blood, whilst the
+remedy only touched the surface of the flesh. All your hopes will be
+like a child's castles on the sand, which the next tide will smooth out
+and obliterate, unless your hope is fixed on Him. You may have
+everlasting consolation, you may have a hope which will enable you to
+look serenely on the ills of life, and on the darkness of death, and on
+what darkly looms beyond death. You may have a calmed and steadied
+heart; you may have an all-round, stable, comprehensive goodness. But
+there is only one way to get these blessings, and that is to grasp and
+make our own, by simple faith and constant clinging, that great gift,
+given once for all in Jesus Christ, the gift of comfort that never dies,
+and of hope that never deceives, and then to apply that gift day by day,
+through God's good Spirit, to sorrows and trials and duties as they
+emerge.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART'S HOME AND GUIDE
+
+          'The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God,
+          and into the patient waiting for Christ.'--2
+          THESS. iii. 5.
+
+
+A word or two of explanation of terms may preface our remarks on this,
+the third of the Apostle's prayers for the Thessalonians in this letter.
+The first point to be noticed is that by 'the Lord' here is meant, as
+usually in the New Testament, Jesus Christ. So that here again we have
+the distinct recognition of His divinity, and the direct address of
+prayer to Him.
+
+The next thing to notice is that by 'the love of God' is here meant, not
+God's to us, but ours to Him; and that the petition, therefore, respects
+the emotions and sentiments of the Thessalonians towards the Father in
+heaven.
+
+And the last point is that the rendering of the Authorised Version,
+'patient waiting for Christ,' is better exchanged for that of the
+Revised Version, 'the patience of Christ,' meaning thereby the same
+patience as He exhibited in His earthly life, and which He is ready to
+bestow upon us.
+
+It is not usual in the New Testament to find Jesus Christ set forth as
+the great Example of patient endurance; but still there are one or two
+instances in which the same expression is applied to Him. For example,
+in two contiguous verses in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read of His
+'enduring contradiction of sinners against Himself,' and 'enduring the
+Cross, despising the shame,' in both of which cases we have the verb
+employed of which the noun is here used. Then in the Apocalypse we have
+such expressions as 'the patience of Christ,' of which John says that he
+and his brethren whom he is addressing are 'participators,' and, again,
+'thou hast kept the word of my patience.'
+
+So, though unusual, the thought of our text as presented in the amended
+version is by no means singular. These things, then, being premised, we
+may now look at this petition as a whole.
+
+I. The first thought that it suggests to me is, the home of the heart.
+
+'The Lord direct you _into_ the love of God and the patience of Christ.'
+The prayers in this letter with which we have been occupied for some
+Sundays present to us Christian perfection under various aspects. But
+this we may, perhaps, say is the most comprehensive and condensed of
+them all. The Apostle gathers up the whole sum of his desires for his
+friends, and presents to us the whole aim of our efforts for ourselves,
+in these two things, a steadfast love to God, and a calm endurance of
+evil and persistence in duty, unaffected by suffering or by pain. If we
+have these two we shall not be far from being what God wishes to see us.
+
+Now the Apostle's thought here, of 'leading us into' these two seems to
+suggest the metaphor of a great home with two chambers in it, of which
+the inner was entered from the outer. The first room is 'the love of
+God,' and the second is 'the patience of Christ.' It comes to the same
+thing whether we speak of the heart as dwelling in love, or of love as
+dwelling in the heart. The metaphor varies, the substance of the thought
+is the same, and that thought is that the heart should be the sphere and
+subject of a steadfast, habitual, all-pleasing love, which issues in
+unbroken calmness of endurance and persistence of service, in the face
+of evil.
+
+Let us look, then, for a moment at these two points. I need not dwell
+upon the bare idea of love to God as being the characteristic of the
+Christian attitude towards Him, or remind you of how strange and
+unexampled a thing it is that all religion should be reduced to this one
+fruitful germ, love to the Father in heaven. But it is more to the
+purpose for me to point to the constancy, the unbrokenness, the depth,
+which the Apostle here desires should be the characteristics of
+Christian love to God. We sometimes cherish such emotion; but, alas, how
+rare it is for us to dwell in that calm home all the days of our lives!
+We visit that serene sanctuary at intervals, and then for the rest of
+our days we are hurried to and fro between contending affections, and
+wander homeless amidst inadequate loves. But what Paul asked, and what
+should be the conscious aim of the Christian life, is, that we should
+'dwell all our days in the house of the Lord, to behold the beauty of
+the Lord and to enquire in His temple.'
+
+Alas, when we think of our own experiences, how fair and far seems that
+other, contemplated as a possibility in my text, that our hearts should
+'abide in the love of God'!
+
+Let me remind you, too, that steadfastness of habitual love all round
+our hearts, as it were, is the source and germ of all perfectness of
+life and conduct. 'Love and do as Thou wilt,' is a bold saying, but not
+too bold. For the very essence of love is the smelting of the will of
+the lover into the will of the beloved. And there is nothing so certain
+as that, in regard to all human relations, and in regard to the
+relations to God which in many respects follow, and are moulded after
+the pattern of, our earthly relations of love, to have the heart fixed
+in pure affection is to have the whole life subordinated in glad
+obedience. Nothing is so sweet as to do the beloved's will. The germ of
+all righteousness, as well as the characteristic spirit of every
+righteous deed, lies in love to God. This is the mother tincture which,
+variously coloured and with various additions, makes all the different
+precious liquids which we can pour as libations on His altar. The one
+saving salt of all deeds in reference to Him is that they are the
+outcome and expression of a loving heart. He who loves is righteous,
+and doeth righteousness. So, 'love is the fulfilling of the law.'
+
+That the heart should be fixed in its abode in love to God is the secret
+of all blessedness, as it is the source of all righteousness. Love is
+always joy in itself; it is the one deliverance from self-bondage to
+which self is the one curse and misery of man. The emancipation from
+care and sorrow and unrest lies in that going out of ourselves which we
+call by the name of love. There be things masquerading about the world,
+and profaning the sacred name of love by taking it to themselves, which
+are only selfishness under a disguise. But true love is the
+annihilation, and therefore the apotheosis and glorifying, of self; and
+in that annihilation lies the secret charm which brings all blessedness
+into a life.
+
+But, then, though love in itself be always bliss, yet, by reason of the
+imperfections of its objects, it sometimes leads to sorrow. For
+limitations and disappointments and inadequacies of all sorts haunt our
+earthly loves whilst they last; and we have all to see them fade, or to
+fade away from them. The thing you love may change, the thing you love
+must die; and therefore love, which in itself is blessedness, hath
+often, like the little book that the prophet swallowed, a bitter taste
+remaining when the sweetness is gone. But if we set our hearts on God,
+we set our hearts on that which knows no variableness, neither the
+shadow of turning. _There_ are no inadequate responses, no changes that
+we need fear. On that love the scythe of death, which mows down all
+other products of the human heart, hath no power; and its stem stands
+untouched by the keen edge that levels all the rest of the herbage. Love
+God, and thou lovest eternity; and therefore the joy of the love is
+eternal as its object. So he who loves God is building upon a rock, and
+whosoever has this for his treasure carries his wealth with him
+whithersoever he goes. Well may the Apostle gather into one potent word,
+and one mighty wish, the whole fulness of his desires for his friends.
+And wise shall we be if we make this the chiefest of our aims, that our
+hearts may have their home in the love of God.
+
+Still further, there is another chamber in this house of the soul. The
+outer room, where the heart inhabits that loves God, leads into another
+compartment, 'the patience of Christ.'
+
+Now, I suppose I need not remind many of you that this great New
+Testament word 'patience' has a far wider area of meaning than that
+which is ordinarily covered by that expression. For _patience_, as we
+use it, is simply a passive virtue. But the thing that is meant by the
+New Testament word which is generally so rendered has an active as well
+as a passive side. On the passive side it is the calm, unmurmuring,
+unreluctant submission of the will to whatsoever evil may come upon us,
+either directly from God's hand, or through the ministration and
+mediation of men who are His sword. On the active side it is the
+steadfast persistence in the path of duty, in spite of all that may
+array itself against us. So there are the two halves of the virtue which
+is here put before us--unmurmuring submission and bold continuance in
+well-doing, whatsoever storms may hurtle in our faces.
+
+Now, in both of these aspects, the life of Jesus Christ is the great
+pattern. As for the passive side, need I remind you how, 'as a sheep
+before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'? 'When He was
+reviled He reviled not again, but committed Himself unto Him that
+judgeth uprightly.' No anger ever flushed His cheek or contracted His
+brow. He never repaid scorn with scorn, nor hate with hate. All men's
+malice fell upon Him, like sparks upon wet timber, and kindled no
+conflagration.
+
+As for the active side, I need not remind you how 'He set His face to go
+to Jerusalem'--how the great solemn '_must_' which ruled His life bore
+Him on, steadfast and without deflection in His course, through all
+obstacles. There never was such heroic force as the quiet force of the
+meek and gentle Christ, which wasted no strength in displaying or
+boasting of itself, but simply, silently, unconquerably, like the
+secular motions of the stars, dominated all opposition, and carried Him,
+unhasting and unresting, on His path. That life, with all its surface of
+weakness, had an iron tenacity of purpose beneath, which may well stand
+for our example. Like some pure glacier from an Alpine peak, it comes
+silently, slowly down into the valley; and though to the eye it seems
+not to move, it presses on with a force sublime in its silence and
+gigantic in its gentleness, and buries beneath it the rocks that stand
+in its way. The patience of Christ is the very sublimity of persistence
+in well-doing. It is our example, and more than our example--it is His
+gift to us.
+
+Such passive and active patience is the direct fruit of love to God. The
+one chamber opens into the other. For they whose hearts dwell in the
+sweet sanctities of the love of God will ever be those who say, with a
+calm smile, as they put out their hand to the bitterest draught, 'the
+cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?'
+
+Love, and evil dwindles; love, and duty becomes supreme; and in the
+submission of the will, which is the true issue of love, lies the
+foundation of indomitable and inexhaustible endurance and perseverance.
+
+Nor need I remind you, I suppose, that in this resolve to do the will of
+God, in spite of all antagonism and opposition, lies a condition at once
+of moral perfection and of blessedness. So, dear friends, if we would
+have a home for our hearts, let us pass into that sweet, calm,
+inexpugnable fortress provided for us in the love of God and the
+patience of Christ.
+
+II. Now notice, secondly, the Guide of the heart to its home.
+
+'The Lord direct you.' I have already explained that we have here a
+distinct address to Jesus Christ as divine, and the hearer of prayer.
+The Apostle evidently expects a present, personal influence from Christ
+to be exerted upon men's hearts. And this is the point to which I desire
+to draw your attention in a word or two. We are far too oblivious of the
+present influence of Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, upon the hearts of men
+that trust Him. We have very imperfectly apprehended our privileges as
+Christians if our faith do not expect, and if our experience have not
+realised, the inward guidance of Christ moment by moment in our daily
+lives. I believe that much of the present feebleness of the Christian
+life amongst its professors is to be traced to the fact that their
+thoughts about Jesus Christ are predominantly thoughts of what He did
+nineteen centuries ago, and that the proportion of faith is not observed
+in their perspective of His work, and that they do not sufficiently
+realise that to-day, here, in you and me, if we have faith in Him, He
+is verily and really putting forth His power.
+
+Paul's prayer is but an echo of Christ's promise. The Master said, 'He
+shall guide you into all truth.' The servant prays, 'The Lord direct
+your hearts into the love of God.' And if we rightly know the whole
+blessedness that is ours in the gift of Jesus Christ, we shall recognise
+His present guidance as a reality in our lives.
+
+That guidance is given to us mainly by the Divine Spirit laying upon our
+hearts the great facts which evoke our answering love to God. 'We love
+Him because He first loved us'; and the way by which Jesus directs our
+hearts into the love of God is mainly by shedding abroad God's love to
+us in our spirits by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.
+
+But, besides that, all these movements in our hearts so often neglected,
+so often resisted, by which we are impelled to a holier life, to a
+deeper love, to a more unworldly consecration--all these, rightly
+understood, are Christ's directions. He leads us, though often we know
+not the hand that guides; and every Christian may be sure of this--and
+he is sinful if he does not live up to the height of his
+privileges--that the ancient promises are more than fulfilled in his
+experience, and that he has a present Christ, an indwelling Christ, who
+will be his Shepherd, and lead him by green pastures and still waters
+sometimes and through valleys of darkness and rough defiles sometimes,
+but always with the purpose of bringing him nearer and nearer to the
+full possession of the love of God and the patience of Christ.
+
+The vision which shone before the eyes of the father of the forerunner,
+was that 'the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to guide our feet
+into the way of peace.' It is fulfilled in Jesus who directs our hearts
+into love and patience, which are the way of peace.
+
+We are not to look for impressions and impulses distinguishable from the
+operations of our own inward man. We are not to fall into the error of
+supposing that a conviction of duty or a conception of truth is of
+divine origin because it is strong. But the true test of their divine
+origin is their correspondence with the written word, the standard of
+truth and life. Jesus guides us to a fuller apprehension of the great
+facts of the infinite love of God in the Cross. Shedding abroad a
+Saviour's love does kindle ours.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the heart's yielding to its guide.
+
+If this was Paul's prayer for his converts, it should be our aim for
+ourselves. Christ is ready to direct our hearts, if we will let Him. All
+depends on our yielding to that sweet direction, loving as that of a
+mother's hand on her child's shoulder.
+
+What is our duty and wisdom in view of these truths? The answer may be
+thrown into the shape of one or two brief counsels.
+
+First, desire it. Do you Christian people want to be led to love God
+more? Are you ready to love the world less, which you will have to do if
+you love God more? Do you wish Christ to lay His hand upon you, and
+withdraw you from much, that He may draw you into the sanctities and
+sublimities of His own experienced love? I do not think the lives of
+some of us look very like as if we should welcome that direction. And it
+is a sharp test, and a hard commandment to say to a Christian professor,
+'Desire to be led into the love of God.'
+
+Again, expect it. Do not dismiss all that I have been saying about a
+present Christ leading men by their own impulses, which are His
+monitions, as fanatical and mystical and far away from daily experience.
+Ah! it is not only the boy Samuel whose infancy was an excuse for his
+ignorance, who takes God's voice to be only white-bearded Eli's. There
+are many of us who, when Christ speaks, think it is only a human voice.
+Perhaps His deep and gentle tones are thrilling through my harsh and
+feeble voice; and He is now, even by the poor reed through which He
+breathes His breath, saying to some of you, 'Come near to Me.' Expect
+the guidance.
+
+Still your own wills that you may hear His voice. How can you be led if
+you never look at the Guide? How can you hear that still small voice
+amidst the clattering of spindles, and the roar of wagons, and the
+noises in your own heart? Be still, and He will speak.
+
+Follow the guidance, and at once, for delay is fatal. Like a man walking
+behind a guide across some morass, set your feet in the print of the
+Master's and keep close at His heels, and then you will be safe. And so,
+dear friends, if we want to have anchorage for our love, let us set our
+love on God, who alone is worthy of it, and who alone of all its objects
+will neither fail us nor change. If we would have the temper which lifts
+us above the ills of life and enables us to keep our course unaffected
+by them all, as the gentle moon moves with the same silent, equable pace
+through piled masses of cloud and clear stretches of sky, we must attain
+submission through love, and gain unreluctant endurance and steadfast
+wills from the example and source of both, the gentle and strong
+Christ. If we would have our hearts calm, we must let Him guide them,
+sway them, curb their vagrancies, stimulate their desires, and satisfy
+the desires which He has stimulated. We must abandon self, and say,
+'Lord, I cannot guide myself. Do Thou direct my wandering feet.' The
+prayer will not be in vain. He will guide us with His eye, and that
+directing of our hearts will issue in experiences of love and patience,
+whose 'very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for
+immortality.' The Guide and the road foreshadow the goal. The only
+natural end to which such a path can lead and such guidance point is a
+heaven of perfect love, where patience has done its perfect work, and is
+called for no more. The experience of present direction strengthens the
+hope of future perfection. So we may take for our own the triumphant
+confidence of the Psalmist, and embrace the nearest and the remotest
+future in one calm vision of faith that 'Thou wilt guide me with Thy
+counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.'
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF PEACE AND THE PEACE OF THE LORD
+
+          'Now the Lord of Peace Himself give you peace
+          always, by all means. The Lord be with you
+          all.'--2 THESS. iii. 16.
+
+
+We have reached here the last of the brief outbursts of prayer which
+characterise this letter, and bear witness to the Apostle's affection
+for his Thessalonian converts. It is the deepening of the ordinary
+Jewish formula of meeting and parting. We find that, in most of his
+letters, the Apostle begins with wishing 'grace and peace,' and closes
+with an echo of the wish. 'Peace be unto you' was often a form which
+meant nothing. But true religion turns conventional insincerities into
+real, heartfelt desires. It was often a wish destined to remain
+unfulfilled. But loving wishes are potent when they are changed into
+petitions.
+
+The relation between the two clauses of my text seems to be that the
+second, 'The Lord be with you all,' is not so much a separate,
+additional supplication as rather the fuller statement, in the form of
+prayer, of the means by which the former supplication is to be
+accomplished. 'The Lord of Peace' gives peace by giving His own
+presence. This, then, is the supreme desire of the Apostle, that Christ
+may be with them all, and in His presence they may find the secret of
+tranquillity.
+
+I. The deepest longing of every human soul is for peace.
+
+There are many ways in which the supreme good may be represented, but
+perhaps none of them is so lovely, and exercises such universal
+fascination of attraction, as that which presents it in the form of
+rest. It is an eloquent testimony to the unrest which tortures every
+heart that the promise of peace should to all seem so fair. It may be
+presented and aimed at in very ignoble and selfish ways. It may be
+sought for in cowardly shirking of duty, in sluggish avoidance of
+effort, in selfish absorption, apart from all the miseries of mankind.
+It may be sought for in the ignoble paths of mere pleasure, amidst the
+sanctities of human love, amidst the nobilities of intellectual effort
+and pursuit. But all men in their workings are aiming at rest of spirit,
+and only in such rest does blessedness lie. 'There is no joy but calm.'
+It is better than all the excitements of conflict, and better than the
+flush of victory. Best which is not apathy, rest which is not
+indolence, rest which is contemporaneous with, and the consequence of,
+the full wholesome activity of the whole nature in its legitimate
+directions, that is the good that we are all longing for. The sea is not
+stagnant, though it be calm. There will be the slow heave of the calm
+billow, and the wavelets may sparkle in the sunlight, though they be
+still from all the winds that rave. Deep in every human heart, in yours
+and mine, brother, is this cry for rest and peace. Let us see to it that
+we do not mistranslate the meaning of the longing, or fancy that it can
+be found in the ignoble, the selfish, the worldly ways to which I have
+referred. We want, most of all, peace in our inmost hearts.
+
+II. Then the second thing to be suggested here is that the Lord of Peace
+Himself is the only giver of peace.
+
+I suppose I may take for granted, on the part at least of the members of
+my own congregation, some remembrance of a former discourse upon another
+of these petitions, in which I pointed out how, in phraseology analogous
+to that of my text, there were the distinct reference to the divinity of
+Jesus Christ, the distinct presentation of prayer to Him, the
+implication of His present activity upon Christian hearts.
+
+And here again we have the august and majestic 'Himself.' Here again we
+have the distinct reference of the title 'Lord' to Jesus. And here again
+we have plainly prayer to Him.
+
+But the title by which He is addressed is profoundly significant, 'The
+Lord of Peace.' Now we find, in another of Paul's letters, in immediate
+conjunction with His teaching, that casting all our care upon God is
+the sure way to bring the peace of God into our hearts, the title 'the
+God of Peace'; and he employs the same phraseology in another of his
+letters, when he prays that the 'God of Peace' would fill the Roman
+Christians 'with all joy and peace in believing.'
+
+So, then, here is a title which is all but distinctively divine. 'The
+_Lord_ of Peace' is brought into parallelism and equality with 'the God
+of Peace'; which were blasphemy unless the underlying implication was
+that Jesus Christ Himself was divine.
+
+He is the 'Lord of Peace' because that tranquillity of heart and spirit,
+that unruffled calm which we all see from afar, and long to possess, was
+verily His, in His manhood, during all the calamities and changes and
+activities of His earthly life. I have said that 'peace' is not apathy,
+that it is not indifference, that it is not self-absorption. Look at the
+life of the 'Lord of Peace.' In Him there were wholesome human emotions.
+He sorrowed, He wept, He wondered, He was angry, He pitied, He loved.
+And yet all these were perfectly consistent with the unruffled calm
+which marked His whole career. So peace is not stolid indifference, nor
+is it to be found in the avoidance of difficult duties, or the cowardly
+shirking of sacrifices and pains and struggles; but rather it is 'peace
+subsisting at the heart of endless agitation,' of which the great
+example stands in Him who was 'the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with
+grief,' and who yet, in it all, was 'the Lord of Peace.'
+
+Why was Christ's manhood so perfectly tranquil? The secret lies here. It
+was a manhood in unbroken communion with the Father. And what was the
+secret of that unbroken communion with the Father? It lies here, in the
+perfect submission of His will. Resignation is peace. The surrender of
+self-will is peace. Obedience is peace. Trust is peace, and fellowship
+with the divine is peace. So Christ has taught us in His life--'The
+Father hath not left Me alone, because I do always the things that
+please Him.' And therein He has marked out for us the path of
+righteousness and communion, which is ever the path of peace. 'Thou wilt
+keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he
+trusteth in Thee.' That is the secret of the tranquillity of the
+ever-calm Christ.
+
+Being thus the Lord of Peace, inasmuch as it was His own constant and
+unbroken possession, He is the sole giver of it to others.
+
+Ah! brethren, our hearts want far more, for their stable restfulness,
+than we can find in any hand, or in any heart, except those of Jesus
+Christ Himself. For what do we need? We need, in order that we should
+know the sweetness of repose, an adequate object for every part of our
+nature. If we find something that is good and sweet and satisfying for
+some portion of this complex being of ours, all its other hungry desires
+are apt to be left unappeased. So we are shuttle-cocked from one wish to
+another, and bandied about from one partial satisfaction to another, and
+in them all it is but segments of our being that are satisfied, whilst
+all the rest of the circumference remains disquieted. We need that, in
+one attainable and single object, there shall be at once that which will
+subjugate the will, that which will illuminate and appease the
+conscience, that which will satisfy the seeking intellect, and hold
+forth the promise of endless progress in insight and knowledge, that
+which will meet all the desires of our ravenous clamant nature, and
+that which will fill every creek and cranny of our empty hearts as with
+the flashing brightness of an inflowing tide.
+
+And where shall we find all these, but in one dear heart, and where
+shall we discern the one object, whom, possessing, we have enough; and
+without whom, possessing all beside, we are mendicants and starving?
+Where, but in that dear Lord, who Himself will supply all our needs, and
+will minister to us peace, because for will and conscience and intellect
+and affections and desires He supplies the pabulum that they require,
+and gives more than enough for their satisfaction?
+
+We want, if we are to be at rest, that there shall be some absolute
+control over our passions, lusts, desires, which torture us for ever, as
+long as they are ungoverned. There is only one hand which will take the
+wild beasts of our nature, bind them in the silken leash of His love,
+and lead them along, tamed and obedient.
+
+We want, for our peace, that all our relations with circumstances and
+men around us shall be rectified. And who is there that can bring about
+such harmony between us and our surroundings that calamities shall not
+press upon us with their heaviest weight, nor opposing circumstances
+kindle angry resistance, but only patient perseverance and thankful
+persistence in the path of duty? It is only Christ that can regulate our
+relations to the things and the men around us, and make all things work
+together to our consciousness for our good.
+
+Further, if we are to be at rest, and possess any true, fundamental, and
+stable tranquillity, we want that our relations with God shall
+consciously be rectified and made blessed. And I, for my part, do not
+believe that any man comes into the full sweetness of an assured
+friendship with God, unless he comes to it by the road of faith in that
+Saviour in whom God draws near to us with tenderness in His heart, and
+blessings dropping from His open Hands. To be at peace with God is the
+beginning of all true tranquillity, and that can be secured only by
+faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+So, because He brings the reconciliation between man and God, because He
+brings the rectification of our relation to circumstances and men,
+because He brings the control of desires and passions and inclinations,
+and because He satisfies all the capacities of our natures, in Him, and
+in Him only, is there peace for us.
+
+III. So note, thirdly, that the peace of the Lord of Peace is perfect.
+
+'Give you peace always,' that points to perpetual, unbroken duration in
+time, and through all changing circumstances which might threaten a less
+stable and deeply-rooted tranquillity. And then, 'by all means,' as our
+Authorised Version has it, or, better, 'in all ways,' as the Revised
+Version reads, the reference being, not so much to the various manners
+in which the divine peace is to be bestowed, as to the various aspects
+which that peace is capable of assuming. Christ's peace, then, is
+perpetual and multiform, unbroken, and presenting itself in all the
+aspects in which tranquillity is possible for a human spirit.
+
+It is possible, then, thinks Paul, that there shall be in our hearts a
+deep tranquillity, over which disasters, calamities, sorrows, losses,
+need have no power. There is no necessity why, when my outward life is
+troubled, my inward life should be perturbed. There may be light in the
+dwellings of Goshen, while darkness lies over all the land of Egypt. The
+peace which Christ gives is no exemption from warfare, but is realised
+in the midst of warfare. It is no immunity from sorrows, but is then
+most felt when the storm of sorrow beating upon us is patiently
+accepted. The rainbow steadfastly stands spanning the tortured waters of
+the cataract. The fire may burn, like that old Greek fire, beneath the
+water. The surface may be agitated, but the centre may be calm. It is
+not calamity that breaks our peace, but it is the resistance of our
+wills to calamity which troubles us. When we can bow and submit and say,
+'Thy will be done,' 'it seemeth good to Thee, do as Thou wilt,' then
+nothing can break the peace of God in our hearts. We seek in the wrong
+quarter for peace when we seek it in the disposition of outward things
+according to our wills. We seek in the right way when we seek it in the
+disposition of our wills according to the will of the Father manifest in
+our circumstances. There may be peace always, even whilst the storms,
+efforts, and calamities of life are in full operation around us and on
+us. That peace may be uninterrupted and uniform, extended on one high
+level, as it were through all our lives. It is not so with us, dear
+brethren; there are ups and downs which are our own fault. The peace of
+God may be permanent, but, in order that it should be, there must be
+permanent communion and permanent obedience.
+
+Further, says the Apostle, Christ's peace will not manifest itself in
+one form only, but in all the shapes in which peace is possible. There
+are many enemies that beset this calmness of spirit; for them all there
+is the appropriate armour and defence in the peace of God, I have
+already enumerated in part some of the requirements for true and
+permanent tranquillity of soul. All these are met in the peace of
+Christ. Whatever it is that disturbs men, He has His anodyne that will
+soothe. If circumstances threaten, if men array themselves against us,
+if our own evil hearts rise up in rebellion, if our passions disturb us,
+if our consciences accuse: for all these Christ brings tranquillity and
+calm. In every way in which men can be disturbed, and in every way,
+therefore, in which peace can be manifest, Christ's gift avails. 'Come
+unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
+rest.'
+
+IV. Lastly, 'the Lord of Peace' gives it by giving His own presence.
+
+The Thessalonians, as they listened to Paul's first prayer, might think
+to themselves, 'Always, by all means.' That is a large petition! Can it
+be fufilled? And so the Apostle adds, 'The Lord be with you all.' You
+cannot separate Christ's gifts from Christ. The only way to get anything
+that He gives is to get Him. It is His presence that does everything. If
+He is with me, the world's annoyances will seem very small. If I hold
+His hand I shall not be much troubled. If I can only nestle close to His
+side, and come under His cloak, He will shield me from the cold blast,
+from whatever side it blows. If my heart is twined around Him it will
+partake of the stability and calm of the great heart on which it rests.
+
+The secret of tranquillity is the presence of Christ. When He is in the
+vessel the waves calm themselves. So, Christian men and women, if you
+and I are conscious of breaches of our restfulness, interruptions of
+our tranquillity by reason of surging, impatient passions, and hot
+desires within ourselves, or by reason of the pressure of outward
+circumstances, or by reason of our having fallen beneath our
+consciences, and done wrong things, let us understand that the breaches
+of our peace are not owing to Him, but only to our having let go His
+hand. It is our own faults if we are ever troubled; if we kept close to
+Him we should not be. It is our own faults if the world ever agitates us
+beyond the measure that is compatible with central calm. Sorrow should
+not have the power to touch the citadel of our lives. Effort should not
+have the power to withdraw us from our trustful repose in Him. And
+nothing here would have the power, if we did not let our hand slip out
+of His, and break our communion with Him.
+
+So, dear brethren, 'in the world ye shall have tribulation, in Me ye
+shall have peace.' Keep inside the fortress and nothing will disturb.
+'He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under
+the shadow of the Almighty.' The only place where that hungry,
+passion-ridden heart of yours, conscious of alienation from God, can
+find rest, is close by Jesus Christ. 'The Lord be with us all,' and then
+the peace of that Lord shall clothe and fill our hearts in Christ
+Jesus.
+
+
+
+
+I. TIMOTHY
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT
+
+          'Now, the end of the commandment is love, out of a
+          pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith
+          unfeigned.'--1 TIM. 1. 6.
+
+
+The Apostle has just said that he left Timothy in Ephesus, in order to
+check some tendencies there which were giving anxiety. Certain teachers
+had appeared, the effect of whose activity was to create parties, to
+foster useless speculations, and to turn the minds of the Ephesian
+Christians away from the practical and moral side of Christianity. In
+opposition to these, the Apostle here lays down the broad principle that
+God has spoken, not in order to make acute theologians, or to provide
+materials for controversy, but in order to help us to love. The whole of
+these latest letters of the Apostle breathe the mellow wisdom of old
+age, which has learned to rate brilliant intellectualism, agility,
+incontroversial fence and the like, far lower than homely goodness. And
+so, says Paul, 'the end of the commandment is love.'
+
+Now he here states, not only the purpose of the divine revelation, but
+gives us a summary, but yet sufficient, outline of the method by which
+God works towards that purpose. The commandment is the beginning, love
+is the end or aim. And between these two there are inserted three
+things, a 'pure heart,' a 'good conscience,' 'faith unfeigned.' Now of
+these three the two former are closely connected, and the third is the
+cause, or condition, of both of them. It is, therefore, properly named
+last as being first in order, and therefore last reached in analysis.
+When you track a stream from its mouth to its source, the fountain-head
+is the last thing that you come to. And here we have, as in these great
+lakes in Central Africa--out of which finally the Nile issues--the
+stages of the flow. There are the twin lakes, a 'good conscience' and a
+'pure heart.' These come from 'unfeigned faith,' which lies higher up in
+the hills of God; and they run down into the love which is the 'end of
+the commandment.' The faith lays hold on the commandment, and so the
+process is complete. Or, if you begin at the top, instead of at the
+bottom, God gives the word; faith grasps the word, and thereby nourishes
+a 'pure heart' and a 'good conscience,' and thereby produces a universal
+love. So, then, we have three steps to look at here.
+
+I. First of all, what God speaks to us for.
+
+'The end of the commandment is love.'
+
+Now, I take it that the word 'commandment' here means, not this or that
+specific precept, but the whole body of Christian revelation, considered
+as containing laws for life. And to begin with, and only to mention, it
+is something to get that point of view, that all which God says, be it
+promise, be it self-manifestation, be it threatening, or be it anything
+else, has a preceptive bearing, and is meant to influence life and
+conduct. I shall have a word or two more to say about that presently,
+but note, just as we go on, how remarkable it is, and how full of
+lessons, if we will ponder it, that one name for the Gospel on the lips
+of the man who had most to say about the contrast between Gospel and
+Law is 'commandment.' Try to feel the stringency of that aspect of
+evangelical truth and of Christian revelation.
+
+Then I need not remind you how here the indefinite expression 'love'
+must be taken, as I think is generally the case in the New Testament,
+when the object on which the love rests is not defined, as including
+both of the twin commandments, of which the second, our Master says, is
+like unto the first, love to God and love to man. In the Christian idea
+these two are one. They are shoots from the one root. The only
+difference is that the one climbs and the other grows along the levels
+of earth. There is no gulf set in the New Testament teaching, and there
+ought to be none in the practice and life of a Christian man, between
+the love of God and the love of man. They are two aspects of one thing.
+
+Then, if so, mark how, according to the Apostle's teaching here, in this
+one thought of a dual-sided love, one turned upwards, one turned
+earthwards, there lies the whole perfection of a human soul. You want
+nothing more if you are 'rooted and grounded in love.' That will secure
+all goodness, all morality, all religion, everything that is beautiful,
+and everything that is noble. And all this is meant to be the result of
+God's speech to us.
+
+So, then, two very plain practical principles may be deduced and
+enforced from this first thought. First, the purpose of all revelation
+and the test of all religion is--character and conduct.
+
+It is all very well to know about God, to have our minds filled with
+true thoughts about Him, His nature, and dealings with us. Orthodoxy is
+good, but orthodoxy is a means to an end. There should be nothing in a
+man's creed which does not act upon his life. Or, if I may put it into
+technical words, all a man's _credenda_ should be his _agenda_; and
+whatsoever he believes should come straight into his life to influence
+it, and to shape character. Here, then, is the warning against a mere
+notional orthodoxy, and against regarding Christian truth as being
+intended mainly to illuminate the understanding, or to be a subject of
+speculation and discussion. There are people in all generations, and
+there are plenty of them to-day, who seem to think that the great
+verities of the Gospel are mainly meant to provide material for
+controversy--
+
+          'As if religion were intended
+           For nothing else but to be mended';
+
+and that they have done all that can be expected when they have tried to
+apprehend the true bearing of this revelation, and to contend against
+misinterpretations. This is the curse of religious controversy, that it
+blinds men to the practical importance of the truths for which they are
+fighting. It is as if one were to take some fertile wheat-land, and sand
+it all over, and roll it down, and make it smooth for a gymnasium, where
+nothing would grow. So the temper which finds in Christian truth simply
+a 'ministration of questions,' as my text says, mars its purpose, and
+robs itself of all the power and nourishment that it might find there.
+
+No less to be guarded against is the other misconception which the clear
+grasp of our text would dismiss at once, that the great purpose for
+which God speaks to us men, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, is that
+we may, as we say, be 'forgiven,' and escape any of the temporal or
+eternal consequences of our wrongdoing. That _is_ a purpose, no doubt,
+and men will never rise to the apprehension of the loftiest purposes,
+nor penetrate to a sympathetic perception of the inmost sweetness of the
+Gospel, unless they begin with its redemptive aspect, even in the
+narrowest sense of that word. But there are a miserable number of
+so-called and of real Christians in this world, and in our churches
+to-day, who have little conception that God has spoken to them for
+anything else than to deliver them from the fear of death, and from the
+incidence on them of future condemnation. He _has_ spoken for this
+purpose, but the ultimate end of all is that we may be helped to love
+Him, and so to be like Him. The aim of the commandment is love, and if
+you ever are tempted to rest in intellectual apprehensions, or to
+pervert the truth of God into a mere arena on which you can display your
+skill of fence and your intellectual agility, or if ever you are tempted
+to think that all is done when the sweet message of forgiveness is
+sealed upon a man's heart, remember the solemn and plain words of my
+text--the final purpose of all is that we may love God and man.
+
+But then, on the other side, note that no less distinctly is the sole
+foundation of this love laid in God's speech. My text, in its elevation
+of sentiment and character and conduct above doctrine, falls in with the
+prevailing tendencies of this day; but it provides the safeguards which
+these tendencies neglect. Notice that this favourite saying of the most
+advanced school of broad thinkers, who are always talking about the
+decay of dogma, and the unimportance of doctrine as compared with love,
+is here uttered by a man who was no sentimentalist, but to whom the
+Christian system was a most distinct and definite thing, bristling all
+over with the obnoxious doctrines which are by some of us so summarily
+dismissed as of no importance. My very text protests against the modern
+attempt to wrench away the sentiments and emotions produced in men, by
+the reception of Christian truth, from the truth which it recognises as
+the only basis on which they can be produced. It declares that the
+'commandment' must come first, before love can follow; and the rest of
+the letter, although, as I say, it decisively places the end of
+revelation as being the moral and religious perfecting of men into
+assimilation with the divine love, no less decisively demands that for
+such a perfecting there shall be laid the foundation of the truth as it
+is revealed in Jesus Christ.
+
+And that is what we want to-day in order to make breadth wholesome, and
+if only we will carry with us the two thoughts, the commandment and
+love, we shall not go far wrong. But what would you think of a man that
+said, 'I do not want any foundations. I want a house to live in'? And
+pray how are you going to get your house without the foundations? Or
+would he be a wise man who said, 'Oh, never mind about putting grapes
+into the vine vat, and producing fermentation; give me the wine!' Yes!
+But you must have the fermentation first. The process is not the result,
+of course, but there is no result without the process. And according to
+New Testament teaching, which, I am bold to say, is verified by
+experience, there is no deep, all-swaying, sovereign, heart-uniting love
+to God which is not drawn from the acceptance of the truth as it is in
+Jesus Christ.
+
+II. And so I come, secondly, to note the purifying which is needed prior
+to such love.
+
+Our text, as I said, divides the process into stages; or, if I may go
+back to a former illustration, into levels. And on the level
+immediately above the love, down into which the waters of the twin lakes
+glide, are a pure heart and a good conscience. These are the requisites
+for all real and operative love. Now they are closely connected, as it
+seems to me, more closely so than with either the stage which precedes
+or that which follows. They are, in fact, two twin thoughts, very
+closely identified, though not quite identical.
+
+A pure heart is one that has been defecated and cleansed from the
+impurities which naturally attach to human affections. A 'good
+conscience' is one which is void of offence towards God and man, and
+registers the emotions of a pure heart. It is like a sheet of sensitive
+paper that, with a broken line, indicates how many hours of sunshine in
+the day there have been. We need not discuss the question as to which of
+these two great gifts and blessings which sweeten a whole life come
+first. In the initial stages of the Christian life I suppose the good
+conscience precedes the pure heart. For forgiveness which calms the
+conscience and purges it of the perilous stuff which has been injected
+into it by our corruptions--forgiveness comes before cleansing, and the
+conscience is calm before the heart is purified. But in the later stages
+of the Christian life the order seems to be reversed, and there cannot
+be in a man a conscience that is good unless there is a heart that is
+pure.
+
+But however that may be--and it does not affect the general question
+before us--mark how distinctly Paul lays down here the principle that
+you will get no real love of God or man out of men whose hearts are
+foul, and whose consciences are either torpid or stinging them. I need
+not dwell upon that, for it is plain to anybody that will think for a
+moment that all sin separates between a man and God; and that from a
+heart all seething and bubbling, like the crater of a volcano, with foul
+liquids, and giving forth foul odours, there can come no love worth
+calling so to God, nor any benevolence worth calling so to man. Wherever
+there is sin, unrecognised, unconfessed, unpardoned, there there is a
+black barrier built up between a man's heart and the yearning heart of
+God on the other side. And until that barrier is swept away, until the
+whole nature receives a new set, until it is delivered from the love of
+evil, and from its self-centred absorption, and until conscience has
+taken into grateful hands, if I might so say, the greatest of all gifts,
+the assurance of the divine forgiveness, I, for one, do not believe that
+deep, vital, and life-transforming love to God is possible. I know that
+it is very unfashionable, I know it is exceedingly narrow teaching, but
+it seems to me that it is Scriptural teaching; and it seems to me that
+if we will strip it of the exaggerations with which it has often been
+surrounded, and recognise that there may be a kind of instinctive and
+occasional recognition of a divine love, there may be a yearning after a
+clear light, and fuller knowledge of it, and yet all the while no real
+love to God, rooted in and lording over and moulding the life, we shall
+not find much in the history of the world, or in the experience of
+ourselves or of others, to contradict the affirmation that you need the
+cleansing of forgiveness, and the recognition of God's love in Jesus
+Christ, before you can get love worth calling so in return to Him in
+men's hearts.
+
+Brethren, there is much to-day to shame Christian men in the singular
+fact which is becoming more obvious daily, of a divorce between human
+benevolence and godliness. It is a scandal that there should be so many
+men in the world who make no pretensions to any sympathy with your
+Christianity, and who set you an example of benevolence, self-sacrifice,
+enthusiasm for humanity, as it is called. I believe that the one basis
+upon which there can be solidly built benevolence to men is devotion to
+God, because of God's great love to us in Jesus Christ. But I want to
+stir, if I might not say sting, you and myself into a recognition of our
+obligations to mankind, more stringent and compelling than we have ever
+felt it, by this phenomenon of modern life, that a divorce has been
+proclaimed between philanthropy and religion. The end of the commandment
+is love, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the condition of such purifying.
+
+To recur to my former illustration, we have to go up country to a still
+higher level. What feeds the two reservoirs that feed the love? What
+makes the heart pure and the conscience good? Paul answers, 'faith
+unfeigned'; not mere intellectual apprehension, not mere superficial or
+professed, but deep, genuine, and complete faith which has in it the
+element of reliance as well as the element of credence. Belief is not
+all that goes to make faith. Trust is not all that goes to make faith.
+Belief and trust are indissolubly wedded in the conception of it. Such a
+faith, which knows what it lays hold of--for it lays hold upon definite
+truth, and lays hold on what it knows, for it trusts in Him whom the
+truth reveals--such a faith makes the heart pure and the conscience
+good.
+
+And how does it do so? By nothing in itself. There is no power in my
+faith to make me one bit better than I am. There is no power in it to
+still one accusation of conscience. It is only the condition on which
+the one power that purges and that calms enters into my heart and works
+there. The power of faith is the power of that which faith admits to
+operate in my life. If we open our hearts the fire will come in, and it
+will thaw the ice, and melt out the foulness from my heart. It is
+important for practice that we should clearly understand that the great
+things which the Bible says of faith it says of it only because it is
+the channel, the medium, the condition, by and on which the real power,
+which is Jesus Christ Himself, acts upon us. It is not the window, but
+the sunshine, that floods this building with light. It is not the opened
+hand, but the gift laid in it, that enriches the pauper. It is not the
+poor leaden pipe, but the water that flows through it, that fills the
+cistern, and cleanses it, whilst it fills. It is not your faith, but the
+Christ whom your faith brings into your heart and conscience, that
+purges the one, and makes the other void of offence towards God and man.
+
+So, brethren, let us learn the secret of all nobility, of all power, of
+all righteousness of character and conduct. Put your foot on the lowest
+round of the ladder, and then aspire and climb, and you will reach the
+summit. Take the first step, and be true to it after you have taken it,
+and the last will surely come. He that can say, 'We have known and
+believed the love that God hath to us,' will also be able to say, 'We
+love Him because He first loved us.' 'And this commandment have we of
+God, that he who loves God loves his brother also.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF THE HAPPY GOD'
+
+          'The glorious gospel of the blessed God.'--1 TIM.
+          i. 11.
+
+
+Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for our
+consideration of this text. The first is, that the proper rendering is
+that which is given in the Revised Version--'the gospel of the glory,'
+not the 'glorious gospel.' The Apostle is not telling us what kind of
+thing the Gospel is, but what it is about. He is dealing not with its
+quality, but with its contents. It is a Gospel which reveals, has to do
+with, is the manifestation of, the glory of God.
+
+Then the other remark is with reference to the meaning of the word
+'blessed.' There are two Greek words which are both translated 'blessed'
+in the New Testament. One of them, the more common, literally means
+'well spoken of,' and points to the action of praise or benediction;
+describes what a man is when men speak well of him, or what God is when
+men praise and magnify His name. But the other word, which is used here,
+and is only applied to God once more in Scripture, has no reference to
+the human attribution of blessing and praise to Him, but describes Him
+altogether apart from what men say of Him, as what He is in Himself, the
+'blessed,' or, as we might almost say, the 'happy' God. If the word
+happy seems too trivial, suggesting ideas of levity, of turbulence, of
+possible change, then I do not know that we can find any better word
+than that which is already employed in my text, if only we remember that
+it means the solemn, calm, restful, perpetual gladness that fills the
+heart of God.
+
+So much, then, being premised, there are three points that seem to me to
+come out of this remarkable expression of my text. First, the revelation
+of God in Christ, of which the Gospel is the record, is the glory of
+God. Second, that revelation is, in a very profound sense, an element in
+the blessedness of God. And, lastly, that revelation is the good news
+for men. Let us look at these three points, then, in succession.
+
+I. Take, first, that striking thought that the revelation of God in
+Jesus Christ is the glory of God.
+
+The theme, or contents, or purpose of the whole Gospel, is to set forth
+and make manifest to men the glory of God.
+
+Now what do we mean by 'the glory'? I think, perhaps, that question may
+be most simply answered by remembering the definite meaning of the word
+in the Old Testament. There it designates, usually, that supernatural
+and lustrous light which dwelt between the Cherubim, the symbol of the
+presence and of the self-manifestation of God. So that we may say, in
+brief, that the glory of God is the sum-total of the light that streams
+from His self-revelation, considered as being the object of adoration
+and praise by a world that gazes upon Him.
+
+And if this be the notion of the glory of God, is it not a startling
+contrast which is suggested between the apparent contents and the real
+substance of that Gospel? Suppose a man, for instance, who had no
+previous knowledge of Christianity, being told that in it he would find
+the highest revelation of the glory of God. He comes to the book, and
+finds that the very heart of it is not about God, but about a man; that
+this revelation of the glory of God is the biography of a man; and more
+than that, that the larger portion of that biography is the story of
+the humiliations, and the sufferings, and the death of the man. Would it
+not strike him as a strange paradox that the history of a _man's_ life
+was the shining apex of all revelations of the glory of _God_? And yet
+so it is, and the Apostle, just because to him the Gospel was the story
+of the Christ who lived and died, declares that in this story of a human
+life, patient, meek, limited, despised, rejected, and at last crucified,
+lies, brighter than all other flashings of the divine light, the very
+heart of the lustre and palpitating centre and fontal source of all the
+radiance with which God has flooded the world. The history of Jesus
+Christ is the glory of God. And that involves two or three
+considerations on which I dwell briefly.
+
+One of them is this: Christ, then, is the self-revelation of God. If,
+when we deal with the story of His life and death, we are dealing simply
+with the biography of a man, however pure, lofty, inspired he may be,
+then I ask what sort of connection there is between that biography which
+the four Gospels gives us, and what my text says is the substance of the
+Gospel? What force of logic is there in the Apostle's words: 'God
+commendeth _His_ love toward us in that whilst we were yet sinners
+_Christ_ died for us,' unless there is some altogether different
+connection between the God who commends His love and the Christ who dies
+to commend it, than exists between a mere man and God? Brethren! to
+deliver my text, and a hundred other passages of Scripture, from the
+charge of being extravagant nonsense, and clear, illogical _non
+sequiturs_, you must believe that in that man Christ Jesus 'we behold
+His glory--the glory of the only begotten of the Father'; and that when
+we look--haply not without some touch of tenderness and awed admiration
+in our hearts--upon His gentleness, we have to say, 'the patient God';
+when we look upon His tears we have to say, 'the pitying God'; when we
+look upon His Cross we have to say, 'the redeeming God'; and gazing upon
+the Man, to see in Him the manifest divinity. Oh! listen to that voice,
+'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' and bow before the story of
+the human life as being the revelation of the indwelling God.
+
+And then, still further, my text suggests that this self-revelation of
+God in Jesus Christ is the very climax and highest point of all God's
+revelations to men. I believe that the loftiest exhibition and
+conception of the divine character which is possible to us must be made
+to us in the form of a man. I believe that the law of humanity, for
+ever, in heaven as on earth, is this, that the Son is the revealer of
+God; and that no loftier--yea, at bottom, no other--communication of the
+divine nature can be made to man than is made in Jesus Christ.
+
+But be that as it may, let me urge upon you this thought, that in that
+wondrous story of the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ the very
+high-water mark of divine self-communication has been touched and
+reached. All the energies of the divine nature are embodied there. The
+'riches, both of the _wisdom_ and of the _knowledge_ of God,' are in the
+Cross and Passion of our Saviour. 'To declare at this time His
+_righteousness_' Jesus Christ came to die. The Cross is 'the _power_ of
+God unto salvation.' Or, to put it into other words, and avail oneself
+of an illustration, we know the old story of the queen who, for the love
+of an unworthy human heart, dissolved pearls in the cup and gave them to
+him to drink. We may say that God comes to us, and for the love of us,
+reprobate and unworthy, has melted all the jewels of His nature into
+that cup of blessing which He offers to us, saying: 'Drink ye all of
+it.' The whole Godhead, so to speak, is smelted down to make that
+rushing river of molten love which flows from the Cross of Christ into
+the hearts of men. Here is the highest point of God's revelation of
+Himself.
+
+And my text implies, still further, that the true living, flashing
+centre of the glory of God is the love of God. Christendom is more than
+half heathen yet, and it betrays its heathenism not least in its vulgar
+conceptions of the divine nature and its glory. The majestic attributes
+which separate God from man, and make Him unlike His creatures, are the
+ones which people too often fancy belong to the glorious side of His
+character. They draw distinctions between 'grace' and 'glory,' and think
+that the latter applies mainly to what I might call the physical and the
+metaphysical, and less to the moral, attributes of the divine nature. We
+adore power, and when it is expanded to infinity we think that it is the
+glory of God. But my text delivers us from all such misconceptions. If
+we rightly understand it, then we learn this, that the true heart of the
+glory is tenderness and love. Of power that weak man hanging on the
+Cross is a strange embodiment; but if we learn that there is something
+more godlike in God than power, then we can say, as we look upon Jesus
+Christ: 'Lo! this is our God. We have waited for Him, and He will save
+us.' Not in the wisdom that knows no growth, not in the knowledge which
+has no border-land of ignorance ringing it round about, not in the
+unwearied might of His arm, not in the exhaustless energy of His being,
+not in the unslumbering watchfulness of His all-seeing eye, not in that
+awful presence wheresoever creatures are; not in any or in all of these
+lies the glory of God, but in His love. These are the fringes of the
+brightness; this is the central blaze. The Gospel is the Gospel of the
+glory of God, because it is all summed up in the one word--'God so loved
+the world that He gave His only begotten Son.'
+
+II. Now, in the next place, the revelation of God in Christ is an
+element in the blessedness of God.
+
+We are come here into places where we see but very dimly, and it becomes
+us to speak very cautiously. Only as we are led by the divine teaching
+may we affirm at all. But it cannot be unwise to accept in simple
+literality utterances of Scripture, however they may seem to strike us
+as strange. And so I would say--the philosopher's God may be
+all-sufficient and unemotional, the Bible's God 'delighteth in mercy,'
+rejoiceth in His gifts, and is glad when men accept them. It is
+something, surely, amid all the griefs and sorrows of this
+sorrow-haunted and devil-hunted world, to rise to this lofty region and
+to feel that there is a living personal joy at the heart of the
+universe. If we went no further, to me there is infinite beauty and
+mighty consolation and strength in that one thought--the happy God. He
+is not, as some ways of representing Him figure Him to be, what the
+older astronomers thought the sun was, a great cold orb, black and
+frigid at the heart, though the source and centre of light and warmth to
+the system. But He Himself is joy, or if we dare not venture on that
+word, which brings with it earthly associations, and suggests the
+possibility of alteration--He is the blessed God. And the Psalmist saw
+deeply into the divine nature, who, not contented with hymning His
+praise as the possessor of the fountain of life, and the light whereby
+we see light, exclaimed in an ecstasy of anticipation, 'Thou makest us
+to drink of the rivers of Thy pleasures.'
+
+But there is a great deal more than that here, if not in the word
+itself, at least in its connection, which connection seems to suggest
+that, howsoever the divine nature must be supposed to be blessed in its
+own absolute and boundless perfectness, an element in the blessedness of
+God Himself arises from His self-communication through the Gospel to the
+world. All love delights in imparting. Why should not God's? On the
+lower level of human affection we know that it is so, and on the highest
+level we may with all reverence venture to say, The quality of that
+mercy . . . 'is twice blest,' and that divine love 'blesseth Him that
+gives and them that take.'
+
+He created a universe because He delights in His works, and in having
+creatures on whom He can lavish Himself. He 'rests in His love, and
+rejoices over us with singing' when we open our hearts to the reception
+of His light, and learn to know Him as He has declared Himself in His
+Christ. The blessed God is blessed because He is God. But He is blessed
+too because He is the loving and, therefore, the giving God.
+
+What a rock-firmness such a thought as this gives to the mercy and the
+love that He pours out upon us! If they were evoked by our worthiness we
+might well tremble, but when we know, according to the grand words
+familiar to many of us, that it is His nature and property to be
+merciful, and that He is far gladder in giving than we can be in
+receiving, then we may be sure that His mercy endureth for ever, and
+that it is the very necessity of His being--and He cannot turn His back
+upon Himself--to love, to pity, to succour, and to bless.
+
+III. And so, lastly, the revelation of God in Christ is good news for us
+all.
+
+'The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God.' How that word 'Gospel' has
+got tarnished and enfeebled by constant use and unreflective use, so
+that it slips glibly off my tongue and falls without producing any
+effect upon your hearts! It needs to be freshened up by considering what
+really it means. It means this: here are we like men shut up in a
+beleaguered city, hopeless, helpless, with no power to break out or to
+raise the siege; provisions failing, death certain. Some of you older
+men and women remember how that was the case in that awful siege of
+Paris, in the Franco-German War, and what expedients were adopted in
+order to get some communication from without. And here to us, prisoned,
+comes, as it did to them, a despatch borne under a dove's wing, and the
+message is this:--God is love; and that you may know that He is, He has
+sent you His Son who died on the Cross, the sacrifice for a world's sin.
+Believe it, and trust it, and all your transgressions will pass away.
+
+My brother, is not that good news? Is it not _the_ good news that you
+need--the news of a Father, of pardon, of hope, of love, of strength, of
+purity, of heaven? Does it not meet our fears, our forebodings, our
+wants at every point? It comes to you. What do you do with it? Do you
+welcome it eagerly, do you clutch it to your hearts, do you say, 'This
+is _my_ Gospel'? Oh! let me beseech you, welcome the message; do not
+turn away from the word from heaven, which will bring life and
+blessedness to all your hearts! Some of you have turned away long
+enough, some of you, perhaps, are fighting with the temptation to do so
+again even now. Let me press that ancient Gospel upon your acceptance,
+that Christ the Son of God has died for you, and lives to bless and help
+you. Take it and live! So shall you find that, 'as cold water to a
+thirsty soul,' so is this best of all news from the far country.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSPEL IN SMALL
+
+          'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
+          acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
+          to save sinners.'--1 TIM. i. 15.
+
+
+Condensation is a difficult art. There are few things drier and more
+unsatisfactory than small books on great subjects, abbreviated
+statements of large systems. Error lurks in summaries, and yet here the
+whole fulness of God's communication to men is gathered into a sentence;
+tiny as a diamond, and flashing like it. My text is the one precious
+drop of essence, distilled from gardens full of fragrant flowers. There
+is an old legend of a magic tent, which could be expanded to shelter an
+army, and contracted to cover a single man. That great Gospel which
+fills the Bible and overflows on the shelves of crowded libraries is
+here, without harm to its power, folded up into one saying, which the
+simplest can understand sufficiently to partake of the salvation which
+it offers.
+
+There are five of these 'faithful sayings' in the letters of Paul,
+usually called 'the pastoral epistles.' It seems to have been a manner
+with him, at that time of his life, to underscore anything which he felt
+to be especially important by attaching to it this label. They are all,
+with one exception, references to the largest truths of the Gospel. I
+turn to this one, the first of them now, for the sake of gathering some
+lessons from it.
+
+I. Note, then, first, here the Gospel in a nutshell.
+
+'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' Now, every word
+there is weighty, and might be, not beaten out, but opened out into
+volumes. Mark who it is that comes--the solemn double name of that great
+Lord, 'Christ Jesus.' The former tells of His divine appointment and
+preparation, inasmuch as the Spirit of the Lord God is upon Him,
+anointing Him to proclaim good tidings to the poor, and to open the
+prison doors to all the captives, and asserts that it is He to whom
+prophets and ritual witnessed, and for whose coming prophets and kings
+looked wearily through the ages, and died rejoicing even to see afar off
+the glimmer of His day. The name of Jesus tells of the child born in
+Bethlehem, who knows the experience of our lives by His own, and not
+only bends over our griefs with the pity and omniscience of a God, but
+with the experience and sympathy of a man.
+
+'Christ Jesus came.' Then He _was_ before He came. His own will impelled
+His feet, and brought Him to earth.
+
+'Christ Jesus came to save.' Then there is disease, for saving is
+healing; and there is danger, for saving is making secure.
+
+'Christ Jesus came to save sinners'--the universal condition,
+co-extensive with the 'world' into which, and for which, He came. And so
+the essence of the Gospel, as it lay in Paul's mind, and had been
+verified in his experience, was this--that a divine person had left a
+life of glory, and in wonderful fashion had taken upon Himself manhood
+in order to deliver men from the universal danger and disease. That is
+the Gospel which Paul believed, and which he commends to us as 'a
+faithful saying.'
+
+Well, then, if that be so, there are two or three things very important
+for us to lay to heart. The first is the universality of sin. That is
+the thing in which we are all alike, dear friends. That is the one thing
+about which any man is safe in his estimate of another. We differ
+profoundly. The members of this congregation, gathered accidentally
+together, and perhaps never to be all together again, may be at the
+antipodes of culture, of condition, of circumstances, of modes of life;
+but, just as really below all the diversities there lies the common
+possession of the one human heart, so really and universally below all
+diversities there lies the black drop in the heart, and 'we all have
+sinned and come short of the glory of God.' It is that truth which I
+want to lay on your hearts as the first condition to understanding
+anything about the power, the meaning, the blessedness of the Gospel
+which we say we believe.
+
+And what does Paul mean by this universal indictment? If you take the
+vivid autobiographical sketch in the midst of which it is embedded, you
+will understand. He goes on to say, 'of whom I am chief.' It was the
+same man that said, without supposing that he was contradicting this
+utterance at all, 'touching the righteousness which is in the law' I was
+'blameless.' And yet, 'I am chief.' So all true men who have ever shown
+us their heart, in telling their Christian faith, have repeated Paul's
+statement; from Augustine in his wonderful _Confessions_, to John Bunyan
+in his _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_. And then prosaic men
+have said, 'What profligates they must have been, or what exaggerators
+they are now!' No. Sewer gas of the worst sort has no smell; and the
+most poisonous exhalations are only perceptible by their effects. What
+made Paul think himself the chief of sinners was not that he had broken
+the commandments, for he might have said, and in effect did say, 'All
+these have I kept from my youth up,' but that, through all the
+respectability and morality of his early life there ran this streak--an
+alienation of heart, in the pride of self-confidence, from God, and an
+ignorance of his own wretchedness and need. Ah! brethren, I do not need
+to exaggerate, nor to talk about 'splendid vices,' in the untrue
+language of one of the old saints, but this I seek to press on you: that
+the deep, universal sin does not lie in the indulgence of passions, or
+the breach of moralities, but it lies here--'thou hast left Me, the
+fountain of living water.' That is what I charge on myself, and on every
+one of you, and I beseech you to recognise the existence of this
+sinfulness beneath all the surface of reputable and pure lives.
+Beautiful they may be; God forbid that I should deny it: beautiful with
+many a strenuous effort after goodness, and charming in many respects,
+but yet vitiated by this, 'The God in whose hand thy breath is, and
+whose are all thy ways, thou hast not glorified.' That is enough to make
+a man brush away all the respectabilities and proprieties and graces,
+and look at the black reality beneath, and wail out 'of whom I am
+chief.'
+
+But, further, Paul's condensed summary of the Gospel implies the fatal
+character of this universal sin. 'He comes to save,' says he. Now what
+answers to 'save' is either disease or danger. The word is employed in
+the original in antithesis to both conditions. To save is to heal and to
+make safe. And I need not remind you, I suppose, of how truly the
+alienation from God, and the substitution for Him of self or of
+creature, is the sickness of the whole man. But the end of sickness
+uncured is death. We 'have no healing medicine,' and the 'wound is
+incurable' by the skill of any earthly chirurgeon. The notion of
+sickness passes, therefore, at once into that of danger: for unhealed
+sickness can only end in death. Oh! that my words could have the waking
+power that would startle some of my complacent hearers into the
+recognition of the bare facts of their lives and character, and of the
+position in which they stand on a slippery inclined plane that goes
+straight down into darkness!
+
+You do not hear much about the danger of sin from some modern pulpits.
+God forbid that it should be the staple of any; but God forbid that it
+should be excluded from any! Whilst fear is a low motive,
+self-preservation is not a low one; and it is to that that I now appeal.
+Brethren, the danger of every sin is, first, its rapid growth; second,
+its power of separating from God; third, the certainty of a future--ay!
+and _present_--retribution.
+
+To me, the proof of the fatal effect of sin is what God had to do in
+order to stop it. Do you think that it would be a small, superficial cut
+which could be stanched by nothing else but the pierced hand of Jesus
+Christ? Measure the intensity of danger by the cost of deliverance, and
+judge how grave are the wounds for the healing of which stripes had to
+be laid on Him. Ah! if you and I had not been in danger of death, Jesus
+Christ would not have died. And if it be true that the Son of God laid
+aside His glory, and came into the world and died on the Cross for men,
+out of the very greatness of the gift, and the marvellousness of the
+mercy, there comes solemn teaching as to the intensity of the misery and
+the reality and awfulness of the retribution from which we were
+delivered by such a death. Sin, the universal condition, brings with it
+no slight disease and no small danger.
+
+Further, we may gather from this condensed summary where the true heart
+and essence of the Christian revelation is. You will never understand it
+until you are contented to take the point of view which the New
+Testament takes, and give all weight and gravity to the fact of man's
+transgression and the consequences thereof. We shall never know what the
+power and the glory of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is until we
+recognise that, first and foremost, it is the mighty means by which
+man's ruin is repaired, man's downrush is stopped, sin is forgiven and
+capable of being cleansed. Only when we think of the Gospel of Jesus
+Christ as being, first and foremost, the redemption of the world by the
+great act of incarnation and sacrifice, do we come to be in a position
+in any measure to estimate its superlative worth.
+
+And, for my part, I believe that almost all the mistakes and errors and
+evaporations of Christianity into a mere dead nothing which have
+characterised the various ages of the Church come mainly from this, that
+men fail to see how deep and how fatal are the wounds of sin, and so
+fail to apprehend the Gospel as being mainly and primarily a system of
+redemption. There are many other most beautiful aspects about it, much
+else in it, that is lovely and of good report, and fitted to draw men's
+hearts and admiration; but all is rooted in this, the life and death of
+Jesus Christ, the sacrifice by whom we are forgiven, and in whom we are
+healed. And if you strike that out, you have a dead nothing left--an
+eviscerated Gospel.
+
+I believe that we all need to be reminded of that to-day, as we always
+do, but mainly to-day, when we hear from so many lips estimates,
+favourable or unfavourable to Christianity and its mission in the world,
+which leave out of sight, or minimise into undue insignificance, or
+shove into a backward place, its essential characteristic, that it is
+the power of God through Christ, His Son Incarnate, dying and rising
+again for the salvation of individual souls from the penalty, the guilt,
+the habit, and the love of their sins, and only secondarily is it a
+morality, a philosophy, a social lever. I take for mine the quaint
+saying of one of the old Puritans, 'When so many brethren are preaching
+to the times, it may be allowed one poor brother to preach for
+eternity.'
+
+'This is a faithful saying, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
+save sinners.'
+
+II. Now, secondly, note the reliableness of this condensed Gospel.
+
+When a man in the middle of some slight plank, thrown across a stream,
+tests it with a stamp of his foot, and calls to his comrades, 'It is
+quite firm,' there is reason for their venturing upon it too. That is
+exactly what Paul is doing here. How does he know that it is 'a faithful
+saying'? Because he has proved it in his own experience, and found that
+in his case the salvation which Jesus Christ was said to effect has been
+effected. Now there are many other grounds of certitude besides this,
+but, after all, it is worth men's while to consider how many millions
+there have been from the beginning who would be ready to join chorus
+with the Apostle here, and to say, 'One thing I know, that whereas I
+was blind, now I see.' My experience cannot be your certitude; but if
+you and I are suffering from precisely the same disease, and I have
+tested a cure, my experiences should have some weight with you. And so,
+brethren, I point you to all the thousands who are ready to say, 'This
+poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him.' Are there any
+who give counter-evidence; that say, 'We have tried it. It is all a sham
+and imagination. We have asked this Christ of yours to forgive us, and
+He has not. We have asked Him to cleanse us, and He has not. We have
+tried Him, and He is an impostor, and we will have no more to do with
+Him.' There are people, alas! who have gone back to their wallowing in
+the mire, but it was not because Christ had failed in His promises, but
+because they did not care to have them fulfilled any more. Jesus Christ
+does not promise that His salvation shall work against the will of men
+who submit themselves to it.
+
+But it is not only because of that consentient chorus of many
+voices--the testimony of which wise men will not reject--that the word
+is 'a faithful saying.' This is no place or time to enter upon anything
+like a condensation of the Christian evidence; but, in lieu of
+everything else, I point to one proof. There is no fact in the history
+of the world better attested, and the unbelief of which is more
+unreasonable, than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if Christ rose
+from the dead--and you cannot understand the history of the world unless
+He did, nor the existence of the Church either--if Jesus Christ rose
+from the dead, it seems to me that almost all the rest follows of
+necessity: the influx of the supernatural, the unique character of His
+career, the correspondence of the end with the beginning, the broad seal
+of the divine confirmation stamped upon His claims to be the Son of God
+and the Redeemer of the world. All these things seem to me to come
+necessarily from that fact. And I say, given the consentient witness of
+nineteen centuries, given the existence of the Church, given the effects
+of Christianity in the world, given that upon which they repose--the
+Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead--the conclusion is sound,
+'This is a faithful saying . . . that He came into the world to save
+sinners.'
+
+Men talk, nowadays, very often as if the progress of science and new
+views as to the evolution of creatures or of mankind had effected the
+certitude of the Gospel. It does not seem to me that they have in the
+smallest degree. 'The foundation of God standeth sure,' whatever may
+become of some of the superstructures which men have built upon it. They
+may very probably be blown away. So much the better if we get the rock
+to build upon once more. A great deal is going, but not the Gospel. Do
+not let us be afraid, or suppose that it will suffer. Do not let us
+dread every new speculation as if it was going to finish Christianity,
+but recognise this--that the fact of man's sin and, blessed be God! the
+fact of man's redemption stands untouched by them all; and to-day, as of
+old, Jesus Christ is, and is firmly manifested to be, the world's
+Saviour. Whatsoever refuge may be swept away by any storms, 'Behold, I
+lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried corner-stone, a sure
+foundation: He that believeth shall not be confounded.'
+
+III. Lastly, notice the consequent wisdom and duty of acceptance.
+
+'Worthy of all acceptation,' says Paul. Yes, of course, if it is
+reliable. That word of the Lord which is 'sure, making wise the simple,'
+deserves to be received. Now this phrase, 'all acceptation,' may mean
+either of two things: it may either mean worthy of being welcomed by all
+men, or by the whole of each man.
+
+This Gospel deserves to be welcomed by every man, for it is fitted for
+every man, since it deals with the primary human characteristic of
+transgression. Brethren! we need different kinds of intellectual
+nutriment, according to education and culture. We need different kinds
+of treatment, according to condition and circumstance. The morality of
+one age is not the morality of another. Much, even of right and wrong,
+is local and temporary; but black man and white, savage and civilised,
+philosopher and fool, king and clown, all need the same air to breathe,
+the same water to drink, the same sun for light and warmth, and all need
+the same Christ for redemption from the same sin, for safety from the
+same danger, for snatching from the same death. This Gospel is a Gospel
+for the world, and for every man in it. Have you taken it for yours? If
+it is 'worthy of all acceptation,' it is worthy of _your_ acceptation.
+If you have not, you are treating Him and it with indignity, as if it
+was a worthless letter left in the post-office for you, which you knew
+was there, but which you did not think valuable enough to take the
+trouble to go for. The gift lies at your side. It is less than truth to
+say that it is '_worthy_ of being accepted.' Oh! it is infinitely more
+than that.
+
+It is, also, 'worthy of all acceptation' in the sense of worthy of being
+accepted into all a man's nature, because it will fit it all and bless
+it all. Some of us give it a half welcome. We take it into our heads,
+and then we put a partition between them and our hearts, and keep our
+religion on the other side, so that it does not influence us at all. It
+is worthy of being received by the understanding, to which it will bring
+truth absolute; of being received by the will, to which it will bring
+the freedom of submission; of being received by the conscience, to which
+it will bring quickening; of being received by the affections, to which
+it will bring pure and perfect love. For hope, it will bring a certainty
+to gaze upon; for passions, a curb; for effort, a spur and a power; for
+desires, satisfaction; for the whole man, healing and light.
+
+Brother! take it. And, if you do, begin where it begins, with your sins;
+and be contented to be saved as a sinner in danger and sickness, who can
+neither defend nor heal yourself. And thus coming, you will test the
+rope and find it hold; you will take the medicine and know that it
+cures; and, by your own experience, you will be able to say, 'This _is_
+a faithful saying, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIEF OF SINNERS
+
+          'Of whom I am chief.'--1 TIM. i. 15.
+
+
+The less teachers of religion talk about themselves the better; and yet
+there is a kind of personal reference, far removed from egotism and
+offensiveness. Few such men have ever spoken more of themselves than
+Paul did, and yet none have been truer to his motto: 'We preach not
+ourselves, but Christ Jesus.' For the scope of almost all his personal
+references is the depreciation of self, and the magnifying of the
+wonderful mercy which drew him to Jesus Christ. Whenever he speaks of
+his conversion it is with deep emotion and with burning cheeks. Here,
+for instance, he adduces himself as the typical example of God's
+long-suffering. If _he_ were saved none need despair.
+
+I take it that this saying of the Apostle's, 'Of whom I am chief,'
+paradoxical and exaggerated as it seems to many men, is in spirit that
+which all who know themselves ought to re-echo; and without which there
+is little strength in Christian life.
+
+I. And so I ask you to note, first, what this man thinks of himself.
+
+'Of whom I am chief.' Now, if we set what we know of the character of
+Saul of Tarsus before he was a Christian by the side of that of many who
+have won a bad supremacy in wickedness, the words seem entirely strange
+and exaggerated. But, as I have often had to say, the principle of the
+Apostle's estimate is to be found in his belief that, not the outward
+manifestation of evil in specific acts of immorality, or flagrant
+breaches of commandment, but the inward principle from which the deeds
+flowed, is the measure of a man's criminality, and that, according to
+the uniform teaching of Scripture, the very root of sin, and that which
+is common to all the things that the world's conscience and ordinary
+morality designate as wrong, is to be found here, that self has become
+the centre, the aim, and the law instead of God. 'This is the
+condemnation,' said Paul's Master--_not_ that men have done so-and-so
+and so-and-so, but--'that light is come into the world, and men love
+darkness.' That is the root of evil. 'When the Comforter is come,' said
+Paul's Master, 'He will convince the world of sin.' Because they have
+broken the commandments? Because they have been lustful, ambitious,
+passionate, murderous, profligate, and so on? No! 'Because they believe
+not in Me.'
+
+The common root of all sin is alienation of heart and will from God. And
+it is by the root, and not by the black clusters of poisonous berries
+that have come from it, that men are to be judged. Here is the
+mother-tincture. You may colour it in different ways, and you may
+flavour it with different essences, and you will get a whole
+_pharmacopoeia_ of poisons out of it. But the mother-poison of them
+all is this, that men turn away from the light, which is God; and for
+you and me is God in Christ.
+
+So this man, looking back from the to-day of his present devotion and
+love to the yesterdays of his hostility, avails himself indeed of the
+palliation, 'I did it ignorantly, in unbelief,' but yet is smitten with
+the consciousness that whilst as touching the righteousness that is of
+the law he was blameless, his attitude to that incarnate love was such
+as now, he thinks, stamps him as the worst of men.
+
+Brethren, _there_ is the standard by which we have to try ourselves. If
+we get down below the mere surface of acts, and think, not of what we
+do, but of what we are, we shall then, at any rate, have in our hands
+the means by which we can truly estimate ourselves.
+
+But what have we to say about that word 'chief'? Is not that
+exaggeration? Well, yes and no. For every man ought to know the weak and
+evil places of his own heart better than he does those of any besides.
+And if he does so know them, he will understand that the ordinary
+classification of sin, according to the apparent blackness of the deed,
+is very superficial and misleading. Obviously, the worst of acts need
+not be done by the worst of men, and it does not at all follow that the
+man who does the awful deed stands out from his fellows in the same bad
+pre-eminence in which his deed stands out from theirs.
+
+Take a concrete case. Go into the slums of Manchester, and take some of
+the people there, battered almost out of the semblance of humanity, and
+all crusted over and leprous with foul-smelling evils that you and I
+never come within a thousand miles of thinking it possible that we
+should do. Did you ever think that it is quite possible that the worst
+harlot, thief, drunkard, profligate in your back streets may be more
+innocent in their profligacy than you are in your respectability; and
+that we may even come to this paradox, that the worse the act, as a
+rule, the less guilty the doer? It is not such a paradox as it looks,
+because, on the one hand, the presence of temptation, and, on the other
+hand, the absence of light, make all the difference. And these people,
+who could not have been anything else, are innocent in degradation as
+compared with you, with all your education and culture, and
+opportunities of going straight, and knowledge of Christ and His love.
+The little transgressions that you do are far greater than the gross
+ones that they do. 'But for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford,'
+said the old preacher, when he saw a man going to the scaffold. And you
+and I, if we know ourselves, will not think that we have an instance of
+exaggeration, but only of the object nearest seeming the largest, when
+Paul said 'Of whom I am chief.'
+
+Only go and look for your sin in the way they look for Guy Fawkes at the
+House of Commons before the session. Take a dark lantern, and go down
+into the cellars. And If you do not find something there that will take
+all the conceit out of you, it must be because you are very
+short-sighted, or phenomenally self-complacent.
+
+What does it matter though there be vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius,
+and bright houses nestling at its base, and beauty lying all around like
+the dream of a god, if, when a man cranes his neck over the top of the
+crater, he sees that that cone, so graceful on the outside, is seething
+with fire and sulphur? Let us look down into the crater of our own
+hearts, and what we see there may well make us feel as Paul did when he
+said, 'Of whom I am chief.'
+
+Now, such an estimate is perfectly consistent with a clear recognition
+of any good that may be in the character and manifest in life. For the
+same Paul who says, 'Of whom I am chief,' says, in the almost
+contemporaneous letter sent to the same person, 'I have fought a good
+fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith'; and he is the
+same man who asserted, 'In nothing am I behind the very chiefest
+apostles, though I be nothing.' The true Christian estimate of one's own
+evil and sin does not in the least interfere with the recognition of
+what God strengthens one to do, or of the progress which, by God's
+grace, may have been made in holiness and righteousness. The two things
+may lie side by side with perfect harmony, and ought to do so, in every
+Christian heart.
+
+But notice one more point. The Apostle does not say 'I _was_,' but 'I
+_am_ chief.' What! A man who could say, in another connection, 'If any
+man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature; old things are passed
+away'--the man who could say, in another connection, 'I live, yet not
+I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I
+live by the faith of the Son of God'--does he also say, 'I _am_ chief'?
+Is he speaking about his present? Are old sins bound round a man's neck
+for evermore? If they be, what is the meaning of the Gospel that Jesus
+Christ redeems us from our sins? Well, he means this. No lapse of time,
+nor any gift of divine pardon, nor any subsequent advancement in
+holiness and righteousness, can alter the fact that I, the very same I
+that am now rejoicing in God's salvation, am the man that did all these
+things; and, in a very profound sense, they remain mine through all
+eternity. I may be a forgiven sinner, and a cleansed sinner, and a
+sanctified sinner, but I _am_ a sinner--not I _was_. The imperishable
+connection between a man and his past, which may be so tragical, and,
+thank God, may be so blessed, even in the case of remembered and
+confessed sin, is solemnly hinted at in the words before us. We carry
+with us ever the fact of past transgression, and no forgiveness, nor any
+future 'perfecting of holiness in the fear' and by the grace 'of the
+Lord' can alter that fact. Therefore, let us beware lest we bring upon
+our souls any more of the stains which, though they be in a blessed and
+sufficient sense blotted out, do yet leave the marks where they have
+fallen for ever.
+
+II. Note how this man comes to such an estimate of himself.
+
+He did not think so deeply and penitently of his past at the beginning
+of his career, true and deep as his repentance, and valid and genuine as
+his conversion were. But as he advanced in the love of Jesus Christ, his
+former active hostility became more monstrous to him, and the higher he
+rose, the clearer was his vision of the depth from which he had
+struggled; for growth in Christian holiness deepens the conviction of
+prior imperfection.
+
+If God has forgiven my sin the more need for me to remember it. 'Thou
+shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more
+because of thy transgressions, when I am pacified towards thee for all
+that thou hast done.' If you, my brother, have any real and genuine hold
+of God's pardoning mercy, it will bow you down the more completely on
+your knees in the recognition of your own sin. The man who, as soon as
+the pressure of guilt and danger which is laid upon him seems to him to
+be lifted off, springs up like some elastic figure of indiarubber, and
+goes on his way in jaunty forgetfulness of his past evil, needs to ask
+himself whether he has ever passed from death unto life. Not to remember
+the old sin is to be blind. The surest sign that we are pardoned is the
+depth of our habitual penitence. Try yourselves, you Christian people
+who are so sure of your forgiveness, try yourselves by that test, and if
+you find that you are thinking less of your past evil, be doubtful
+whether you have ever entered into the genuine possession of the
+forgiving mercy of your God.
+
+And then, still further, this penitent retrospect is the direct result
+of advancement in Christian characteristics. We are drawn to begin some
+study or enterprise by the illusion that there is but a little way to
+go. 'Alps upon alps arise' when once we have climbed a short distance up
+the hill, and it has become as difficult to go back as to go forward.
+
+So it is in the Christian life--the sign of growing perfection is the
+growing consciousness of imperfection. A spot upon a clean palm is more
+conspicuous than a diffuse griminess over all the hand. One stain upon
+a white robe spoils it which would not be noticed upon one less
+lustrously clean. And so the more we grow towards God in Christ, and the
+more we appropriate and make our own His righteousness, the more we
+shall be conscious of our deficiencies, and the less we shall be
+prepared to assert virtues for ourselves.
+
+Thus it comes to pass that conscience is least sensitive when it is most
+needed, and most swift to act when it has least to do. So it comes to
+pass, too, that no man's acquittal of himself can be accepted as
+sufficient; and that he is a fool in self-knowledge who says, 'I am not
+conscious of guilt, therefore I am innocent.' 'I know nothing against
+myself, yet am I not hereby justified: but He that judgeth me is the
+Lord.' The more you become like Christ the more you will find out your
+unlikeness to Him.
+
+III. Lastly, note what this judgment of himself did for this man.
+
+I said in the beginning of my remarks that it seemed to me that without
+the reproduction of this estimate of ourselves there would be little
+strong Christian life in us. It seems to me that that continual
+remembrance which Paul carried with him of what he had been, and of
+Christ's marvellous love in drawing him to Himself, was the very spring
+of all that was noble and conspicuously Christian in his career. And I
+venture to say, in two or three words, what I think you and I will never
+have unless we have this lowly self-estimate.
+
+Without it there will be no intensity of cleaving to Jesus Christ. If
+you do not know that you are ill, you will not take the medicine. If you
+do not believe that the house is on fire, you will not mind the escape.
+The life-buoy lies unnoticed on the shelf above the berth as long as the
+sea is calm and everything goes well. Unless you have been down into the
+depths of your own heart, and seen the evil that is there, you will not
+care for the redeeming Christ, nor will you grasp Him as a man does who
+knows that there is nothing between him and ruin except that strong
+hand. We must be driven to the Saviour as well as drawn to Him if there
+is to be any reality or tightness in the clutch with which we hold Him.
+And if you do not hold Him with a firm clutch you do not hold Him at
+all.
+
+Further, without this lowly estimate there will be no fervour of
+grateful love. That is the reason why so much both of orthodox and
+heterodox religion amongst us to-day is such a tepid thing as it is. It
+is because men have never felt either that they need a Redeemer, or that
+Jesus Christ has redeemed them. I believe that there is only one power
+that will strike the rock of a human heart, and make the water of
+grateful devotion flow out, and that is the belief in Jesus Christ as
+the Redeemer of mankind, and as my Saviour. Unless that be your faith,
+which it will not be except you have this conviction of my text in its
+spirit and essence, there will not be in your hearts the love which will
+glow there, an all-transforming power.
+
+And is there anything in the world more obnoxious, more insipid, than
+lukewarm religion? If, with marks of quotation, I might use the coarse,
+strong expression of John Milton--'It gives a vomit to God Himself.'
+'Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my
+mouth.'
+
+And without it there will be little pity of, and love for, our fellows.
+Unless we feel the common evil, and estimate by the intensity of its
+working in ourselves how sad are its ravages in others, our charity to
+men will be as tepid as our love to God. Did you ever notice that,
+historically, the widest benevolence to men goes along with what some
+people call the 'narrowest' theology? People tell us, for instance, to
+mark the contrast between the theology which is usually called
+evangelical and the wide benevolence usually accompanying it, and ask
+how the two things agree. The 'wide' benevolence comes directly from the
+'narrow' theology. He that knows the plague of his own heart, and how
+Christ has redeemed him, will go, with the pity of Christ in his heart,
+to help to redeem others.
+
+So, dear friends, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.'
+'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,
+and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'
+
+
+
+
+A TEST CASE
+
+          'Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in
+          me first Jesus Christ might show forth all
+          long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should
+          hereafter believe.'--1 TIM. i. 16.
+
+
+The smallest of God's creatures, if it were only a gnat dancing in a
+sunbeam, has a right to have its well-being considered as an end of
+God's dealings. But no creature is so isolated or great as that it has a
+right to have its well-being regarded as the sole end of God's dealings.
+That is true about all His blessings and gifts; it is eminently true
+about His gift of salvation. He saves men because He loves them
+individually, and desires to make them blessed; but He also saves them
+because He desires that through them others shall be brought into the
+living knowledge of His love. It is most especially true about great
+religious teachers and guides.
+
+Paul's humility is as manifest as his self-consciousness when he says in
+my text, 'This is what I was saved for. Not merely, not even
+principally, for the blessings that thereby accrue to myself, but that
+in me, as a crucial instance, there should be manifested the whole
+fulness of the divine love and saving power.' So he puts his own
+experience as giving no kind of honour or glory to himself, but as
+simply showing the grace and infinite love of Jesus Christ. Paul
+disappears as but a passive recipient; and Christ strides into the front
+as the actor in his conversion and apostleship.
+
+So we may take this point of view of my text, and look at the story of
+what befell the great Apostle as being in many different ways an
+exhibition of the great verities of the Gospel. I desire to signalise,
+especially, three points here. We see in it the demonstration of the
+life of Christ; an exhibition of the love of the living Christ; and a
+marvellous proof of the power of that loving and living Lord.
+
+I. First, then, take the experience of this Apostle as a demonstration
+of the exalted life, and continuous energy in the world, of Jesus
+Christ.
+
+What was it that turned the brilliant young disciple of Gamaliel, the
+rising hope of the Pharisaic party, the hammer of the heretics, into one
+of themselves? The appearance of Jesus Christ. Paul rode out of
+Jerusalem believing Him to be dead, and His Resurrection a lie. He
+staggered into Damascus, blind but seeing, and knowing that Jesus
+Christ lived and reigned. Now if you will let the man tell you himself
+what he saw, or thought he saw, you will come to this, that it was a
+visible, audible manifestation of a corporeal Christ. For it is
+extremely noteworthy that the Apostle ranks the appearance to himself,
+on the road to Damascus, as in the same class with the appearances to
+the other apostles which he enumerates in the great chapter in the
+Epistle to the Corinthians. He draws no distinction, as far as
+evidential force goes, between the appearance to Simon and to the five
+hundred brethren and to the others, and that which flashed upon him and
+made a Christian of him. Other men that were with him saw the light. He
+saw the Christ within the blaze. Other men heard a noise; he heard
+audible and intelligible words in his own speech. This is _his_ account
+of the phenomenon. What do _you_ think of his account?
+
+There are but three possible answers! It was imposture; it was delusion;
+it was truth. The theory of imposture is out of court. 'Do men gather
+grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?' Such a life as followed is
+altogether incongruous with the notion that the man who lived it was a
+deceiver. A fanatic he may have been; self-deceived he may have been;
+but transparently sincere he undeniably was. It is not given to
+impostors to move the world, as Paul did and does.
+
+Was it delusion? Well it is a strange kind of hallucination which has
+such physical accompaniments and consequences as those in the story--not
+wanting confirmation from witnesses--which has come to us.
+
+'At midday, O king'--in no darkness; in no shut-up chamber, 'at midday,
+O king--I heard . . . I saw . . .' 'The men that were with me' partly
+shared in the vision. There was a lengthened conversation; two senses at
+least were appealed to, vision and hearing, and in both vision and
+hearing there were partial participators. Physical consequences that
+lasted for three days accompanied the hallucination; and the man 'was
+blind, not seeing the sun, and neither did eat nor drink.' There must be
+some soil beforehand in which delusions of such a sort can root
+themselves. But, if we take the story in the Acts of the Apostles, there
+is not the smallest foothold for the fashionable notion, which is
+entirely due to men's dislike of the supernatural, that there was any
+kind of misgiving in the young Pharisee, springing from the influence of
+Stephen's martyrdom, as he went forth breathing out threatenings and
+slaughter. The plain fact is that, at one moment he hated Jesus Christ
+as a bad man, and believed that the story of the Resurrection was a
+gross falsehood; and that at the next moment he knew Him to be living
+and reigning, and the Lord of his life and of the world. Hallucinations
+do not come thus, like a thunderclap on unprepared minds. Nor is there
+anything in the subsequent history of the man that seems to confirm, but
+everything that contradicts, the idea that such a revolutionary change
+as upset all his mental furniture, and changed the whole current of his
+life, and slammed in his face the door that was wide open to advancement
+and reputation, came from a delusion.
+
+I think the hallucination theory is out of court, too, and there is
+nothing left but the old-fashioned one, that what he said he saw, _he
+saw_, and did not fancy; and that which he said he heard, _he heard_;
+and that it was not a buzzing of a diseased nerve in his own ears, but
+the actual speech of the glorified Christ. Very well, then; if that be
+true, what then? The old-fashioned belief--Jesus who died on the Cross
+is living, Jesus who died on the Cross is glorified, Jesus who died on
+the Cross is exalted to the throne of the universe, puts His hand into
+the affairs of the world as a power amongst them. Paul's Christology is
+but the _rationale_ of the vision that led to Paul's conversion. It was
+in part because he 'saw that Just One, and heard the words of His
+mouth,' that he declares, 'God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a
+name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
+should bow.' I do not say that the vision to Paul is a demonstration of
+the reality of the Resurrection, but I do say that it is a very strong
+confirmatory evidence, which the opponents of that truth will have much
+difficulty in legitimately putting aside.
+
+II. Secondly, let me ask you to consider how this man's experience is an
+exhibition of the love of the living Lord.
+
+That is the main point on which the Apostle dwells in my text, in which
+he says that in him Jesus Christ 'shows forth all long-suffering.' The
+whole fulness of His patient, pitying grace was lavished upon him. He
+says this because he puts side by side his hostility and Christ's love,
+what he had believed of Jesus, and how Jesus had borne with him and
+loved him through all, and had drawn him to Himself and received him. So
+he established by his own experience this great truth, that the love of
+Jesus Christ is never darkened by one single speck of anger, that He
+'suffereth long, and is kind'; that He meets hostility with patient
+love, hatred with a larger outpouring of His affection, and that His
+only answer to men's departures from Him in heart and feeling is more
+mightily to seek to draw them to Himself. 'Long-suffering' means, in its
+true and proper sense, the patient acceptance, without the smallest
+movement of indignation, of unworthy treatment. And just as Christ on
+earth 'gave His back to the smiter, and His cheeks to them that pulled
+off the hair'; and let the lips of Judas touch His, nor withdrew His
+face from 'shame and spitting'; and was never stirred to one impatient
+or angry word by any opposition, so now, and to us all, with equal
+boundlessness of endurance, He lets men hate Him, and revile Him, and
+forget Him, and turn their backs upon Him; and for only answer has,
+'Come unto Me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give
+you rest.'
+
+Oh, dear brethren, we can weary out all loves except one. By
+carelessness, rebelliousness, the opposition of indifference, we can
+chill the affection of those to whom we are dearest. 'Can a mother
+forget? Yea, she may forget,' but you cannot provoke Jesus Christ to
+cease His love. Some of you have been trying it all your days, but you
+have not done it yet. There does come a time when 'the wrath of the
+Lamb'--which is a very terrible paradox--is kindled, and will fall, I
+fear, on some men and women who are listening now. But not yet. You
+cannot make Christ angry. 'For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me
+Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, _for a pattern_'--for
+the same long-suffering is extended to us all.
+
+And then, in like manner, I may remind you that out of Paul's
+experience, as a cardinal instance and standing example of Christ's
+heart and dealings, comes the thought that that long-suffering is always
+wooing men to itself, and making efforts to draw them away from their
+own evil. In Paul's case there was a miracle. That difference is of
+small consequence. As truly as ever Christ spoke to Paul from the
+heavens, so truly, and so tenderly, does He speak to every one of us. He
+is drawing us all--you that yield and you that do not yield to His
+attractions, by the kindliest gifts of His love, by the revelations of
+His grace, by the movements of His Spirit, by the providences of our
+days, by even my poor lips addressing you now--for, if I be speaking His
+truth, it is not I that speak, but He that speaks in me. I beseech you,
+dear friends, recognise in this old story of the persecutor turned
+apostle nothing exceptional, though there be something miraculous, but
+only an exceptional form of manifestation of the normal activity of the
+love of Christ towards every soul. He loves, He draws, He welcomes all
+that come to Him. His servant, who stood over the blind, penitent
+persecutor, and said to him, '_Brother_ Saul!' was only faintly echoing
+the glad reception which the elder Brother of the family gives to this
+and to every prodigal who comes back; because He Himself has drawn Him.
+
+If we will only recognise the undying truth for all of us that lies
+beneath the individual experience of this apostle, we, too, may share in
+the attraction of His love, in the constraining and blessed influences
+of that love received, and in the welcome with which He hails us when we
+turn. If this man were thus dealt with, no man need despair.
+
+III. Lastly, we may notice how this experience is a manifestation of the
+power of the living, loving Lord.
+
+The first and plainest thing that it teaches us about that power is that
+Jesus Christ is able in one moment to revolutionise a life. There is
+nothing more striking than the suddenness and completeness of the
+change which passed. 'One day is with the Lord as a thousand years'; and
+there come moments in every life into which there is crammed and
+condensed a whole world of experience, so as that a man looks back from
+this instant to that before, and feels that a gulf, deep as infinity,
+separates him from his old self.
+
+Now, it is very unfashionable in these days to talk about conversion at
+all. It is even more unfashionable to talk about sudden conversions. I
+venture to say that there are types of character and experience which
+will never be turned to good, unless they are turned suddenly; while
+there are others, no doubt, to whom the course is a gradual one, and you
+cannot tell where the dawn broadens into perfect day. But, in the case
+of men who have grown up to some degree of maturity of life, either in
+sensuous sin or crusted over with selfish worldliness, or in any other
+way, by reason of intellectual pursuits, or others have become forgetful
+of God and careless of religion--unless such men are in a moment
+arrested and wheeled round at once, there is very little chance of their
+ever being so at all.
+
+I am sure I am speaking to some now who, unless the truth of Christ
+comes into their minds with arresting flash, and unless they are in one
+moment, into which an eternity is condensed, changed in their purposes,
+will never be changed.
+
+Do not, my friend, listen to the talk that sudden conversion is
+impossible or unlikely. It is the only kind of conversion that some of
+you are capable of. I remember a man, one of the best Christian men in a
+humble station in life that I ever knew--he did not live in
+Manchester--he had been a drunkard up to his fortieth or fiftieth year.
+One day he was walking across an open field, and a voice, as he
+thought, spoke to him and said, naming him, 'If you don't sign the
+pledge to-day you will be damned!' He turned on his heel, and walked
+straight down the street to the house of a temperance friend, and said,
+'I have come to sign the pledge.' He signed it, and from that day to the
+day of his death 'adorned the doctrine of Jesus Christ' his Saviour. If
+that man had not been suddenly converted he would never have been
+converted. So I say that this story of the text is a crucial instance of
+Christ's power to lay hold upon a man, and wheel him right round all in
+a moment, and send him on a new path. He wants to do that with all of
+you to whom He has not already done it. I beseech you, do not stick your
+heels into the ground in resistance, nor when He puts His hand on your
+shoulder stiffen your back that He may not do what He desires with you.
+
+May we not see here, too, a demonstration of Christ's power to make a
+life nobly and blessedly new, different from all its past, and adorned
+with strange and unexpected fruits of beauty and wisdom and holiness?
+This man's account of his future, from the moment of that incident on
+the Damascus road to the headman's block outside the walls of Rome, is
+this: 'If any man be in Christ he is a new creature'; 'I live, yet not
+I, but Christ liveth in me.' Christ will do that for us all; for
+long-suffering was shown on the Apostle for a pattern to them who should
+hereafter believe.
+
+So, you Christian people, it is as much your business as it was Paul's,
+to be visible rhetoric, manifest demonstrations in your lives of the
+truth of the Gospel. Men ought to say about us, 'There must be something
+in the religion that has done that for these people.' We ought to be
+such that our characters shall induce the thought that the Christ who
+has made men like us cannot be a figment. Do you show, Christian men,
+that you are grafted upon the true Vine by the abundance of the fruit
+that you bring forth? Can you venture to say, as Paul said, If you want
+to know what Jesus Christ's love and power are, look at me? Do not
+venture adducing yourself as a specimen of His power unless you have a
+life like Paul's to look back upon.
+
+For us all the fountain to which Paul had recourse is open. Why do we
+draw so little from it? The fire which burned, refining and
+illuminating, in him may be kindled in all our hearts. Why are we so
+icy? His convictions are of some value, as subsidiary evidence to Gospel
+facts; his experience is of still more value as an attestation and an
+instance of Gospel blessings. Believe like Paul and you will be saved
+like Paul. Jesus Christ will show to you all long-suffering. For though
+Paul received it all he did not exhaust it, and the same long-suffering
+which was lavished on him is available for each of us. Only you too must
+say like him, 'I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.'
+
+
+
+
+THE GLORY OF THE KING
+
+          'Now, unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible,
+          the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever
+          and ever. Amen.'--1 TIM. i. 17.
+
+
+With this burst of irrepressible praise the Apostle ends his reference
+to his own conversion as a transcendent, standing instance of the
+infinite love and transforming power of God. Similar doxologies
+accompany almost all his references to the same fact. This one comes
+from the lips of 'Paul the aged,' looking back from almost the close of
+a life which owed many sorrows and troubles to that day on the road to
+Damascus. His heart fills with thankfulness that overflows into the
+great words of my text. He had little to be thankful for, judged
+according to the rules of sense; but, though weighed down with care,
+having made but a poor thing of the world because of that vision which
+he saw that day, and now near martyrdom, he turns with a full heart to
+God, and breaks into this song of thanksgiving. There are lives which
+bear to be looked back upon. Are ours of that kind?
+
+But my object is mainly to draw your attention to what seems to me a
+remarkable feature in this burst of thanksgiving. And perhaps I shall
+best impress the thought which it has given to me if I ask you to look,
+first, at the character of the God who is glorified by Paul's salvation;
+second, at the facts which glorify such a God; and, last, at the praise
+which should fill the lives of those who know the facts.
+
+I. First, then, notice the God who is glorified by Paul's salvation.
+
+Now what strikes me as singular about this great doxology is the
+characteristics, or, to use a technical word, the attributes, of the
+divine nature which the Apostle selects. They are all those which
+separate God from man; all those which present Him as arrayed in
+majesty, apart from human weaknesses, unapproachable by human sense, and
+filling a solitary throne. These are the characteristics which the
+Apostle thinks receive added lustre, and are lifted to a loftier height
+of 'honour and glory,' by the small fact that he, Paul, was saved from
+sins as he journeyed to Damascus.
+
+It would be easy to roll out oratorical platitudes about these specific
+characteristics of the divine nature, but that would be as unprofitable
+as it would be easy. All that I want to do now is just to note the force
+of the epithets; and, if I can, to deepen the impression of the
+remarkableness of their selection.
+
+With regard, then, to the first of them, we at once feel that the
+designation of 'the King' is unfamiliar to the New Testament. It brings
+with it lofty ideas, no doubt; but it is not a name which the writers of
+the New Testament, who had been taught in the school of love, and led by
+a Son to the knowledge of God, are most fond of using. 'The King' has
+melted into 'the Father.' But here Paul selects that more remote and
+less tender name for a specific purpose. He is 'the King'--not
+'_eternal_,' as our Bible renders it, but more correctly 'the King of
+the Ages.' The idea intended is not so much that of unending existence
+as that He moulds the epochs of the world's history, and directs the
+evolution of its progress. It is the thought of an overruling
+Providence, with the additional thought that all the moments are a
+linked chain, through which He flashes the electric force of His will.
+He is 'King of the Ages.'
+
+The other epithets are more appropriately to be connected with the word
+'God' which follows than with the word 'King' which precedes. The
+Apostle's meaning is this: 'The King of the ages, even the God who is,'
+etc. And the epithets thus selected all tend in the same direction.
+'Incorruptible.' That at once parts that mystic and majestic Being from
+all of which the law is _decay_. There may be in it some hint of moral
+purity, but more probably it is simply what I may call a physical
+attribute, that that immortal nature not only _does_ not, but _cannot_,
+pass into any less noble forms. Corruption has no share in His immortal
+being.
+
+As to 'invisible,' no word need be said to illustrate that. It too
+points solely to the separation of God from all approach by human sense.
+
+And then the last of the epithets, which, according to the more accurate
+reading of the text, should be, not as our Bible has it, 'the only
+_wise_ God,' but 'the _only_ God,' lifts Him still further above all
+comparison and contact with other beings.
+
+So the whole set forth the remote attributes which make a man feel, 'The
+gulf between Him and me is so great that thought cannot pass across it,
+and I doubt whether love can live half-way across that flight, or will
+not rather, like some poor land bird with tiny wings, drop exhausted,
+and be drowned in the abyss before it reaches the other side.' We expect
+to find a hymn to the infinite love. Instead of that we get praise,
+which might be upon the lips of many a thinker of Paul's day and of
+ours, who would laugh the idea of revelation, and especially of a
+revelation such as Paul believed in, to absolute scorn. And yet he knew
+what he was saying when he did not lift up his praise to the God of
+tenderness, of pity, of forgiveness, of pardoning love, but to 'the King
+of the ages; the incorruptible, invisible, only God'; the God whose
+honour and glory were magnified by the revelation of Himself in Jesus
+Christ.
+
+II. And so that brings me, in the second place, to ask you to look at
+the facts which glorify even such a God.
+
+Paul was primarily thinking of his own individual experience; of what
+passed when the voice spoke to him, 'Why persecutest thou Me?' and of
+the transforming power which had changed him, the wolf, with teeth red
+with the blood of the saints, into a lamb. But, as he is careful to
+point out, the personal allusion is lost in his contemplation of his own
+history, as being a specimen and test-case for the blessing and
+encouragement of all who 'should hereafter believe upon Him unto life
+everlasting.' So what we come to is this--that the work of Jesus Christ
+is that which paints the lily and gilds the refined gold of the divine
+loftinesses and magnificence, and which brings honour and glory even to
+that remote and inaccessible majesty. For, in that revelation of God in
+Jesus Christ, there is added to all these magnificent and all but
+inconceivable attributes and excellences, something that is far diviner
+and nobler than themselves.
+
+There be two great conceptions smelted together in the revelation of God
+in Jesus Christ, of which neither attains its supremest beauty except by
+the juxtaposition of the other. Power is harsh, and scarcely worthy to
+be called divine, unless it be linked with love. Love is not glorious
+unless it be braced and energised by power. And, says Paul, these two
+are brought together in Jesus; and therefore each is heightened by the
+other. It is the love of God that lifts His power to its highest height;
+it is the revelation of Him as stooping that teaches us His loftiness.
+It is because He has come within the grasp of our humanity in Jesus
+Christ that we can hymn our highest and noblest praises to 'the King
+eternal, the invisible God.'
+
+The sunshine falls upon the snow-clad peaks of the great mountains and
+flushes them with a tender pink that makes them nobler and fairer by far
+than when they were veiled in clouds. And so all the divine majesty
+towers higher when we believe in the divine condescension, and there is
+no god that men have ever dreamed of so great as the God who stoops to
+sinners and is manifest in the flesh and Cross of the Man of Sorrows.
+
+Take these characteristics of the divine nature as get forth in the text
+one by one, and consider how the Revelation in Jesus Christ, and its
+power on sinful men, raises our conceptions of them. 'The King of the
+ages'--and do we ever penetrate so deeply into the purpose which has
+guided His hand, as it moulded and moved the ages, as when we can say
+with Paul that His 'good pleasure' is that, 'in the dispensation of the
+fulness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ.'
+The intention of the epochs as they emerge, the purpose of all their
+linked intricacies and apparently diverse movements, is this one thing,
+that God in Christ may be manifest to men, a nd that humanity may be
+gathered, like sheep round the Shepherd, into the one fold of the one
+Lord. For that the world stands; for that the ages roll, and He who is
+the King of the epochs hath put into the hands of the Lamb that was
+slain the Book that contains all their events; and only His hand,
+pierced upon Calvary, is able to open the seals, to read the Book. The
+King of the ages is the Father of Christ.
+
+And in like manner, that incorruptible God, far away from us because He
+is so, and to whom we look up here doubtingly and despairingly and often
+complainingly and ask, 'Why hast Thou made us thus, to be weighed upon
+with the decay of all things and of ourselves?' comes near to us all in
+the Christ who knows the mystery of death, and thereby makes us
+partakers of an inheritance incorruptible. Brethren, we shall never
+adore, or even dimly understand, the blessedness of believing in a God
+who cannot decay nor change, unless from the midst of graves and griefs
+we lift our hearts to Him as revealed in the face of the dying Christ.
+He, though He died, did not see corruption, and we through Him shall
+pass into the same blessed immunity.
+
+'The King . . . the God invisible.' No man hath seen God 'at any time, nor
+can see Him.' Who will honour and glorify that attribute which parts Him
+wholly from our sense, and so largely from our apprehension, as will he
+who can go on to say, 'the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of
+the Father, He hath declared Him.' We look up into a waste Heaven;
+thought and fear, and sometimes desire, travel into its tenantless
+spaces. We say the blue is an illusion; there is nothing there but
+blackness. But 'he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' And we can
+lift thankful praise to Him, the King invisible, when we hear Jesus
+saying, 'thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.'
+
+'The only God.' How that repels men from His throne! And yet, if we
+apprehend the meaning of Christ's Cross and work, we understand that the
+solitary God welcomes my solitary soul into such mysteries and sacred
+sweetnesses of fellowship with Himself that, the humanity remaining
+undisturbed, and the divinity remaining unintruded upon, we yet are one
+in Him, and partakers of a divine nature. Unless we come to God through
+Jesus Christ, the awful attributes in the text spurn a man from His
+throne, and make all true fellowship impossible.
+
+So let me remind you that the religion which does not blend together in
+indissoluble union these two, the majesty and the lowliness, the power
+and the love, the God inaccessible and the God who has tabernacled with
+us in Jesus Christ, is sure to be almost an impotent religion. Deism in
+all its forms, the religion which admits a God and denies a revelation;
+the religion which, in some vague sense, admits a revelation and denies
+an incarnation; the religion which admits an incarnation and denies a
+sacrifice; all these have little to say to man as a sinner; little to
+say to man as a mourner; little power to move his heart, little power to
+infuse strength into his weakness. If once you strike out the thought of
+a redeeming Christ from your religion, the temperature will go down
+alarmingly, and all will soon be frost bound.
+
+Brethren, there is no real adoration of the loftiness of the King of the
+ages, no true apprehension of the majesty of the God incorruptible,
+invisible, eternal, until we see Him in the face and in the Cross of
+Jesus Christ. The truths of this gospel of our salvation do not in the
+smallest degree impinge upon or weaken, but rather heighten, the glory
+of God. The brightest glory streams from the Cross. It was when He was
+standing within a few hours of it, and had it full in view, that Jesus
+Christ broke out into that strange strain of triumph, 'Now is God
+glorified.' 'The King of the ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only
+God,' is more honoured and glorified in the forgiveness that comes
+through Jesus Christ, and in the transforming power which He puts forth
+in the Gospel, than in all besides.
+
+III. Lastly, let me draw your attention to the praise which should fill
+the lives of those who know these facts.
+
+I said that this Apostle seems always, when he refers to his own
+individual conversion, to have been melted into fresh outpourings of
+thankfulness and of praise. And that is what ought to be the life of all
+of you who call yourselves Christians; a continual warmth of
+thankfulness welling up in the heart, and not seldom finding utterance
+in the words, but always filling the life.
+
+Not seldom, I say, finding utterance in the words. It is a delicate
+thing for a man to speak about himself, and his own religious
+experience. Our English reticence, our social habits, and many other
+even less worthy hindrances rise in the way; and I should be the last
+man to urge Christian people to cast their pearls before swine, or too
+fully to
+
+          'Open wide the bridal chamber of the heart,'
+
+to let in the day. There is a wholesome fear of men who are always
+talking about their own religious experiences. But there are times and
+people to whom it is treason to the Master for us not to be frank in the
+confession of what we have found in Him. And I think there would be less
+complaining of the want of power in the public preaching of the Word if
+more professing Christians more frequently and more simply said to those
+to whom their words are weighty, 'Come and hear and I will tell you what
+God hath done for my soul.' 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith the Lord. It is
+a strange way that Christian people in this generation have of
+discharging their obligations that they should go, as so many of them
+do, from the cradle of their Christian lives to their graves, never
+having opened their lips for the Master who has done all for them.
+
+Only remember, if you venture to speak you will have to live your
+preaching. 'There is no speech nor language, their voice is not heard,
+their sound is gone out through all the earth.' The silent witness of
+life must always accompany the audible proclamation, and in many cases
+is far more eloquent than it. Your consistent thankfulness manifested in
+your daily obedience, and in the transformation of your character, will
+do far more than all my preaching, or the preaching of thousands like
+me, to commend the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
+
+One last word, brethren. This revelation is made to us all. What is God
+to you, friend? Is He a remote, majestic, unsympathising, terrible
+Deity? Is He dim, shadowy, unwelcome; or is He God whose love softens
+His power; Whose power magnifies his love? Oh! I beseech you, open your
+eyes and your hearts to see that that remote Deity is of no use to you,
+will do nothing for you, cannot help you, may probably judge you, but
+will never heal you. And open your hearts to see that 'the only God'
+whom men can love is God in Christ. If here we lift up grateful praise
+'unto Him that loveth us and hath loosed us from our sins in His blood,'
+we, too, shall one day join in that great chorus which at last will be
+heard saying, 'Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that
+sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'
+
+
+
+
+WHERE AND HOW TO PRAY
+
+          'I will therefore that men pray every where,
+          lifting up holy hands without wrath and
+          doubting.'--1 TIM. ii. 8.
+
+
+The context shows that this is part of the Apostle's directory for
+public worship, and that, therefore, the terms of the first clause are
+to be taken somewhat restrictedly. They teach the duty of the male
+members of the Church to take public, audible part in its worship.
+
+Everywhere, therefore, must here properly be taken in the restricted
+signification of 'every place of Christian assembly.' And from the whole
+passage there comes a picture of what sort of thing a meeting of the
+primitive Church for worship was, very different from anything that we
+see nowadays. 'Every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath an
+exhortation.' I fancy that some of the eminently respectable and utterly
+dead congregations which call themselves Christian Churches would be
+very much astonished if they could see what used to be the manner of
+Christian worship nineteen hundred years ago, and would get a new notion
+of what was meant by 'decently, and in order.'
+
+But we may fairly, I suppose, if once we confess that this is so, widen
+somewhat the scope of these words, and take them rather as expressive of
+the Apostle's desire and injunction, for the word that he used here, 'I
+will,' is a very strong one, to all Christian people, be they men or
+women, that they pray 'everywhere,' in the widest sense of that
+expression, 'lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting.'
+
+I do not attempt anything more than just to go, step by step, through
+the Apostle's words and gather up the duties which each enjoins.
+
+'I will that men pray everywhere.' That is the same in spirit as the
+Apostle's other command: 'Pray without ceasing; in everything give
+thanks.' A very high ideal, but a very reasonable one, for unless we can
+find some place where God is not, and where the telegraph between heaven
+and earth is beyond our reach, there is no place where we should not
+pray. And unless we can find a place where we do not want God, nor need
+Him, there is no place where we should not pray. Because, then,
+'everywhere' is equally near Him, and the straight road to His throne is
+of the same length from every hole and corner of the world; therefore,
+wherever men are, they ought to be clinging to His skirts, and reaching
+out their open hands for His benefits; and because, wherever a man is,
+there he utterly depends upon God, and needs the actual intervention of
+His love, and the energising of His power for everything, even for his
+physical life, so that he cannot wink his eyelashes without God's help,
+therefore, 'In every place I will that men pray.'
+
+And how is that to be done? First of all, by keeping out of all places
+where it is impossible that we should pray; for although He is
+everywhere, and we want Him everywhere, there are places--and some of us
+know the roads to them but too well, and are but too often in
+them--where prayer would be a strange incongruity. A man will not pray
+over the counter of a public-house. A man will not pray over a sharp
+bargain. A man will not pray that God may bless his outbursts of anger,
+or sensuality and the like. A man will not pray when he feels that he is
+deep down in some pit of self-caused alienation from God. The
+possibility of praying in given circumstances is a sharp test, although
+a very rough and ready one, whether we ought to be in these
+circumstances or not. Do not let us go where we cannot take God with us;
+and if we feel that it would be something like blasphemy to call to Him
+from such a place, do not let us trust ourselves there. Jonah could pray
+out of the belly of the fish, and there was no incongruity in that; but
+many a professing Christian man gets swallowed up by monsters of the
+deep, and durst not for very shame send up a prayer to God. Get out of
+all such false positions.
+
+But if the Apostle wills 'that men pray alway,' it must be possible
+while going about business, study, daily work, work at home amongst the
+children, work in the factory amongst spindles, work in the
+counting-house amongst ledgers, work in the study amongst lexicons, not
+only to pray whilst we are working, but to make work prayer, which is
+even better. The old saying that is often quoted with admiration, 'work
+is worship,' is only half true. There is a great deal of work that is
+anything but worship. But it is true that if, in all that I do, I try to
+realise my dependence on God for power; to look to Him for direction,
+and to trust to Him for issue, then, whether I eat, or drink, or pray,
+or study, or buy and sell, or marry or am given in marriage, all will be
+worship of God. 'I will that men pray everywhere.' What a noble ideal,
+and not an impossible or absurd one! This was not the false ideal of a
+man that had withdrawn himself from duty in order to cultivate his own
+soul, but the true ideal of one of the hardest workers that ever lived.
+Paul could say 'I am pressed above measure, insomuch that I despair of
+life, and that which cometh upon me daily is the care of all the
+churches,' and yet driven, harassed beyond his strength with business
+and cares as he was, he did himself what he bids us do. His life was
+prayer, therefore his life was Christ, therefore he was equal to all
+demands. None of us are as hard-worked, as heavily pressed, as much
+hunted by imperative and baying dogs of duties as Paul was. It is
+possible for us to obey this commandment and to pray everywhere. A
+servant girl down on her knees doing the doorsteps may do that task from
+such a motive, and with such accompaniments, as she dips her cloth into
+the hot-water bucket, as to make even it prayer to God. We each can lift
+all the littlenesses of our lives into a lofty region, if only we will
+link them on to the throne of God by prayer.
+
+There is another way by which this ideal can be attained, and that is to
+cultivate the habit, which I think many Christian people do not
+cultivate, of little short swallow-flights of prayer in the midst of our
+daily work. 'They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of
+them.' If a Philistine sword was hanging over the man's head, do you
+think he would have much time to drop down upon his knees, to make a
+petition, divided into all the parts which divines tell us go to make up
+the complete idea of prayer? I should think not; but he could say, 'Save
+me, O Lord!' 'They cried to God in the battle--little, sharp, short
+shrieks of prayer--and He was entreated of them.' If you would cast
+swift electric flashes of that kind more frequently up to heaven, you
+would bring down the blessings that very often do not come after the
+most elaborate and proper and formal petitions. 'Lord, save or I
+perish!' It did not take long to say that, but it made the difference
+between drowning and deliverance.
+
+Still further, notice the conditions of true prayer that are here
+required. I will that men pray everywhere 'lifting up _holy_ hands.'
+That is a piece of symbolism, of course. Apparently the Jewish attitude
+of prayer was unlike ours. They seem to have stood during devotion and
+to have elevated their hands with open, empty, upturned palms to heaven.
+We clasp ours in entreaty, or fold them as a symbol of resignation and
+submission. They lifted them, with the double idea, I suppose, of
+offering themselves to God thereby, and of asking Him to put something
+into the empty hand, just as a beggar says nothing, but holds out a
+battered hat, in order to get a copper from a passer-by. The psalmist
+desired that the lifting up of his hands might be as the 'evening
+sacrifice.'
+
+If a man stands with his open, empty palm held up to God, it is as much
+as to say 'I need, I desire, I expect.' And these elements are what we
+must have in our prayers; the sense of want, the longing for supply, the
+anticipation of an answer. What do you hold out your hand for? Because
+you expect me to drop something into it, because you want to get
+something. How do you hold out your hand? Empty. And if I am clasping my
+five fingers round some earthly good it is of no use to hold up that
+hand to God. Nothing will come into it. How can it? He must first take
+the imitation diamonds out of it or we must turn it round and shake them
+out before He can fill it with real jewels. As for him who continues to
+clutch worldly goods, 'let not that man think that he shall receive
+anything of the Lord.' Empty the palm before you lift it.
+
+Still further, says Paul, 'lifting up _holy_ hands.' That, of course,
+needs no explanation. One of the psalms, you may remember, says 'I will
+wash mine hands in innocency, so will I compass Thine altar.' The
+psalmist felt that unless there was a previous lustration and cleansing,
+it was vain for him to go round the altar. And you may remember how
+sternly and eloquently the prophet Isaiah rebukes the hypocritical
+worshippers in Jerusalem when he says to them, 'Your hands are full of
+blood. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings,' and
+_then_ come and pray. A foul hand gets nothing from God. How can it?
+God's best gift is of such a sort as cannot be laid upon a dirty palm. A
+little sin dams back the whole of God's grace, and there are too many
+men that pray, pray, pray, and never get any of the things that we pray
+for, because there is something stopping the pipe, and they do not know
+what it is, and perhaps would be very sorry to clear it out if they did.
+But all the same, the channel of communication is blocked and stopped,
+and it is impossible that any blessing should come. Geographers tell us
+that a microscopic vegetable grows rapidly in one of the upper affluents
+of the Nile, and makes a great dam across the river which keeps back the
+water, and so makes one of the lakes which have recently been explored;
+and then, when the dam breaks, the rising of the Nile fertilises Egypt.
+Some of us have growing, unchecked, and unnoticed, in the innermost
+channels of our hearts, little sins that mat themselves together and
+keep increasing until the grace of God is utterly kept from permeating
+the parched recesses of our spirits. 'I will that men pray, lifting up
+holy hands,' and unless we do, alas! for us.
+
+If these are the requirements, you will say, 'How can I pray at all?'
+Well, do you remember what the Psalmist says? 'If I regard iniquity in
+my heart, the Lord will not hear me,' but then he goes on, 'Blessed be
+God, who hath not turned away my prayer nor His mercy from me.' It is
+always true that if we regard iniquity in our hearts, if in our inmost
+nature we love the sin, that stops the prayer from being answered. But,
+blessed be God, it is not true that our having done the sin prevents our
+petitions being granted. For the sin that is not regarded in the heart,
+but is turned away from with loathing hath no intercepting power. So,
+though the uplifted hands art stained, He will cleanse them if, as we
+lift them to Him, we say, 'Lord, they are foul, if thou wilt Thou canst
+make them clean.'
+
+But the final requirement is: 'Without wrath or doubting.' I do not
+think that Christian people generally recognise with sufficient
+clearness the close and inseparable connection which subsists between
+their right feelings towards their fellow-men and the acceptance of
+their prayers with God. It is very instructive that here, alongside of
+requirements which apply to our relations to God, the Apostle should put
+so emphatically and plainly one which refers to our relations to our
+fellows. An angry man is a very unfit man to pray, and a man who
+cherishes in his heart any feelings of that nature towards anybody may
+be quite sure that he is thereby shutting himself out from blessings
+which otherwise might be his. We do not sufficiently realise, or act on
+the importance, in regard to our relations with God, of our living in
+charity with all men. 'First, go and be reconciled to thy brother,' is
+as needful to-day as when the word was spoken.
+
+'Without . . . doubting.' Have I the right to be perfectly sure that my
+prayer will be answered? Yes and no. If my prayer is, as all true prayer
+ought to be, the submission of my will to God's and not the forcing of
+my will upon God, then I have the right to be perfectly sure. But if I
+am only asking in self-will, for things that my own heart craves, that
+is not prayer; that is dictation. That is sending instructions to
+heaven; that is telling God what He ought to do. That is not the kind of
+prayer that may be offered 'without doubting.' It might, indeed, be
+offered, if offered at all, with the certainty that it will not be
+answered. For this is the assurance on which we are to rest--and some of
+us may think it is a very poor one--'we know that, if we ask anything
+_according to His will_, He heareth us.' To get what we want would often
+be our ruin. God loves His children a great deal too well to give them
+serpents when they ask for them, thinking they are fish, or to give them
+stones when they beseech Him for them, believing them to be bread. He
+will never hand you a scorpion when you ask Him to give it you, because,
+with its legs and its sting tucked under its body, it is like an egg.
+
+We make mistakes in our naming of things and in our desires after
+things, and it is only when we have learned to say 'Not my will but
+Thine be done,' that we have the right to pray, 'without doubting.' If
+we do so pray, certainly we receive. But a tremulous faith brings little
+blessing, and small answer. An unsteady hand cannot hold the cup still
+for Him to pour in the wine of His grace, but as the hand shakes, the
+cup moves, and the precious gift is spilled. The still, submissive soul
+will be filled, and the answer to its prayer will be, 'Whatsoever things
+ye desire believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'
+
+
+
+
+SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS
+
+          'Exercise thyself unto Godliness.'--1 TIM. iv. 7.
+
+
+Timothy seems to have been not a very strong character: sensitive,
+easily discouraged, and perhaps with a constitutional tendency to
+indolence. At all events, it is very touching to notice how the old
+Apostle--a prisoner, soon to be a martyr--forgot all about his own
+anxieties and burdens, and, through both of his letters to his young
+helper, gives himself to the task of bracing him up. Thus he says to
+him, in my text, amongst other trumpet-tongued exhortations, 'Exercise
+thyself unto godliness.'
+
+If I were preaching to ministers, I should have a good deal to say about
+the necessity of this precept for them, and to remind them that it was
+first spoken, not to a private member of the Church, as an injunction
+for the Christian life in general, but as having a special bearing on
+the temptations and necessities of those who stand in official positions
+in the Church. For there is nothing that is more likely to sap a man's
+devotion, and to eat out the earnestness and sincerity of a Christian
+life, than that he should be--as I, for instance, and every man in my
+position has to be--constantly occupied with presenting God's Word to
+other people. We are apt to look upon it as, in some sense, our
+stock-in-trade, and to forget to apply it to ourselves. So it was with a
+very special bearing on the particular occupation and temptation of his
+correspondent that Paul said 'Exercise thyself unto godliness' before
+you begin to talk to other people.
+
+But that would not be appropriate to my present audience. And I take
+this injunction as one of universal application.
+
+I. Notice, then, here expressed the ever-present and universal aim of
+the Christian life.
+
+Paul does not say 'be godly'; but 'exercise thyself unto'--with a view
+towards--'godliness.' In other words, to him godliness is the great aim
+which every Christian man should set before him as the one supreme
+purpose of his life.
+
+Now I am not going to spend any time on mere verbal criticism, but I
+must point to the somewhat unusual word which the Apostle here employs
+for 'godliness.' It is all but exclusively confined to these last
+letters of the Apostle. It was evidently a word that had unfolded the
+depth and fulness and comprehensiveness of its meaning to him in the
+last stage of his religious experience. For it is only once employed in
+the Acts of the Apostles, and some two or three times in the doubtful
+second Epistle of St. Peter. And all the other instances of its use lie
+in these three letters--the one to Titus and two to Timothy; and eight
+of them are in this first one. The old Apostle keeps perpetually
+recurring to this one idea of 'godliness.' What does he mean by it? The
+etymological meaning of the word is 'well-directed reverence,' but it is
+to be noticed that the context specifically points to one form of
+well-directed reverence, viz. as shown in conduct. 'Active godliness' is
+the meaning of the word; religion embodied in deeds, emotions, and
+sentiments, and creeds, put into fact.
+
+This noble and pregnant word teaches us, first of all, that all true
+religion finds its ultimate sphere and best manifestation in the conduct
+of daily life. That sounds like a platitude. I wish it were. If we
+believed that, and worked it out, we should be very different people
+from what the most of us are; and our chapels would be very different
+places, and the professing Church would have a new breath of life over
+it. Religion must have its foundation laid deep in the truths revealed
+by God for our acceptance. And does God tell us anything simply that we
+may believe it, and there an end? What is the purpose of all the
+principles and facts which make up the body of the Christian revelation?
+To enlighten us? Yes! To enlighten us only? A hundred times no! The
+destination of a principle, of a truth, is to pass out from the
+understanding into the whole nature of man.
+
+And if, as I said, the foundation of religion is laid in truths,
+principles, facts, the second story of the building is certain emotions,
+sentiments, feelings, desires, and affections, and 'experiences'--as
+people call them--which follow from the acceptance of these truths and
+principles. And is that all? A thousand times no! What do we get the
+emotions for? What does God give you a Revelation of Himself for, that
+kindles your love if you believe it? That you may love? Yes! Only that
+you may love? Certainly not. And so the top story is conduct, based upon
+the beliefs, and inspired by the emotions.
+
+In former centuries, the period between the Reformation and our fathers'
+time, the tendency of the Protestant Church was very largely to let the
+conception of religion as a body of truths overshadow everything else.
+And nowadays, amongst a great many people, the temptation is to take the
+second story for the main one, and to think that if a man loves, and has
+the glow at his heart of the conscious reception of God's love, and has
+longings and yearnings, and Christian hopes and desires, and passes into
+the sweetnesses of communion with God, in his solitary moments, and
+plunges deep into the truths of God's Word, that is godliness. But the
+true exhortation to us is--Do not stop with putting in the foundations
+of a correct creed, nor at the second stage of an emotional religion.
+Both are needful. Number one and number two are infinitely precious, but
+both exist for number three. And true religion has its sphere in
+conduct. 'Exercise thyself unto godliness.' That does not mean
+_only_--for it does include that--cultivate devout emotions, or realise
+the facts and the principles of the Gospel, but it means, take these
+along with you into your daily life, and work them out there. Bring all
+the facts and truths of your creed, and all the sweet and select, the
+secret and sacred, emotions which you have felt, to bear upon your daily
+life. The soil in which the tree grows, and the roots of the tree, its
+stem and its blossoms, are all means to the end--fruit. What is the use
+of the clearest conceptions, and of the most tender, delicate, holy
+emotions, if they do not drive the wheels of action? God does not give
+us the Gospel to make us wise, nor even to make us blessed, but He gives
+it to us to make us good men and women, working His work in our daily
+tasks. All true religion has its sphere in conduct.
+
+But then there is another side to that. All true conduct must have its
+root in religion, and I, for my part--though of course it is extremely
+'narrow' and 'antiquated' to profess it--I, for my part, do not believe
+that in the long-run, and in general, you will get noble living apart
+from the emotions and sentiments which the truths of Christianity,
+accepted and fed upon, are sure to produce. And so this day, with its
+very general depreciation of the importance of accurate conceptions of
+revealed truth, and its exaltation of conduct, is on the verge of a very
+serious error. Godliness, well-directed reverence, is the parent of all
+noble living, and the one infallible way to produce a noble life is
+faith in Christ, and love which flows from the faith.
+
+If all that is so, if godliness is, not singing psalms, not praying, not
+saying 'How sweet it is to feel the love of God,' still less saying 'I
+accept the principles of Christianity as they are laid down in the
+Bible'; but carrying out beliefs and emotions in deeds, then the true
+aim which we should have continually before us as Christians is plain
+enough. We may not reach it completely, but we can approximate
+indefinitely towards it. Aim is more important than achievement.
+Direction is more vital in determining the character of a life than
+progress actually made. Note the form of the exhortation, 'exercise
+thyself _towards_ godliness,' which involves the same thought as is
+expressed in Paul's other utterance of irrepressible aspiration and
+effort, 'Not as if I had already attained, either were already perfect,
+but I follow after,' or as he had just said, 'press towards the mark,'
+in continual approximation to the ideal. A complete penetration of all
+our actions by the principles and emotions of the Gospel is what is set
+before us here.
+
+And that is the only aim that corresponds to what and where I am and to
+what I need. I fall back upon the grandly simple old words, very dear to
+some of us, perhaps, by boyish associations, 'Man's chief end is to
+glorify God, and (so) to enjoy Him for ever.' 'Unto Godliness' is to be
+the aim of every true life, and it is the only aim which corresponds to
+our circumstances and our relations, our powers and possibilities.
+
+II. Notice the discipline which such an aim demands.
+
+'Exercise thyself.' Now, I have no doubt that the bulk of my hearers
+know that the word here rendered 'exercise' is drawn from the athlete's
+training-ground, and is, in fact, akin to the word which is transported
+into English under the form 'gymnasium.' The Apostle's notion is that,
+just as the athlete, racer, or boxer goes through a course of training,
+so there is a training as severe, necessary for the godliness which Paul
+regards as the one true aim of life.
+
+You Christian people ought to train your spirits at least as carefully
+as the athlete does his muscles. There are plenty of people, calling
+themselves Christians, who never give one-hundredth part as much
+systematic and diligent pains to fulfil the ideal of their Christian
+life as men will take to learn to ride a bicycle or to pull the stroke
+oar in a college boat. The self-denial and persistence and concentration
+which are freely spent upon excellence in athletic pursuits might well
+put to shame the way in which Christians go about the task of 'doing'
+their religion.
+
+I suppose there never was a time, in England's history at any rate,
+whatever it may have been in Greece, when modern instances might give
+more point to an old saw than to-day does for this text, when athletic
+sports of all kinds are taking up so much of the time and the energy of
+our young men. I do not want to throw cold water on that, but I do say
+it is a miserable thing to think that so many professing Christians will
+give a great deal more pains to learn to play lawn tennis than ever they
+did to learn to be good, Christian people.
+
+'Exercise thyself unto godliness.' Make a business of living your
+Christianity. Be in earnest about it. A tragically large number of
+professing Christians never were in earnest about mending themselves.
+And that is why they are so far, far behind. 'Exercise thyself.' You
+say, How?
+
+'Well, I say, first of all, concentration. 'This _one_ thing I do.' That
+does not mean narrowing, because this 'one thing' can be done by means
+of all the legitimate things that we have to do in the world. Next
+Friday, when you go on 'Change, you can be exercising yourself to
+godliness there. Whatever may be the form of our daily occupation, it is
+the _gymnasium_ where God has put us to exercise our muscles in, and so
+to gain 'the wrestling thews that throw the world.' 'Be strong in the
+Lord, and in the power of His might.' The concentration for which I
+plead does not shut us out from any place but the devil's
+wrestling-ground. All that is legitimate, all that is innocent, may be
+made a means for manifesting and for increasing our godliness. Only you
+have to take God with you into your life, and to try, more and more
+consciously, to make Him the motive-power of all that you do. Then the
+old saying which is profoundly true as it was originally meant, and has
+of late years been so misused as to become profoundly false, will be
+true again, '_Laborare est orare_.' Yes! it is; if worship underlies the
+work, but not else.
+
+Again I say, exercise yourselves by abstinence. How many things did the
+athlete at Corinth do without in his training? How many things do
+prizefighters and rowing men do without when in training to-day? How
+rigidly, for a while at any rate, they abstain--whether they recompense
+themselves afterwards or not has nothing to do with my present purpose.
+And is it not a shame that some sensual man shall, for the sake of
+winning a medal or a cup, be able gladly to abandon the delights of
+sense--eating, drinking, and the like--and content himself with a
+hermit's Spartan fare, and that Christian people so seldom, and so
+reluctantly, and so partially turn away from the poisoned cups and the
+indigestible dainties which the world provides for them? I think that
+any Christian man who complains of the things which he is shut out from
+doing if he is to cultivate the godliness which should be his life need
+only go to any place where horse-jockeys congregate to get a lesson that
+he may well lay to heart. 'Exercise thyself,' for it is unto godliness.
+
+And then what I said in a former part of this sermon about the various
+stages of religion may suggest another view of the method of discipline
+proper to the Christian life. The strenuous exercise of all our powers
+is called for. But if it is true that the godliness of my text is the
+last outcome of the emotions which spring from the reception of certain
+truths, then if we work backwards, as it were, we shall get the best way
+of producing the godliness. That is to say, the main effort for all men
+who are in earnest in regard to their own growth in Christlikeness is to
+keep themselves in touch with the truths of the Gospel, and in the
+exercise of the sentiments and emotions which flow from these. Or, to
+put it into other words, the 'gymnastic' is to be, mainly, the man's
+clinging, with all his might of mind and heart, to Christ, and the
+truths that are wrapped up in Him; and the cultivation of the habit of
+continual faith and love turned to that Lord. If I see to number
+one--the creed, and to number two--the emotions, they will see to number
+three--the conduct. Keep the truths of the Gospel well in your minds,
+and keep yourselves well in the attitude of contact with Jesus Christ,
+and power for life will come into you. But if the fountain is choked,
+the bed of the stream will be dry. They tell us that away up in
+Abyssinia there form across the bed of one of the branches of the Nile
+great fields of weed. And as long as they continue unbroken the lower
+river is shrunken. But when the stream at the back of them bursts its
+way through them, then come the inundations down in Egypt, and bring
+fertility. And there are hundreds of professing Christians whose fields
+lie barren and baked in the sunshine, because they have stopped with
+weeds, far away up amongst the hills, the stream that would water them.
+Clear out the weeds, and the water will do the rest.
+
+And 'exercise thyself unto godliness' by keeping the crown and the prize
+often and clear in view. 'Paul the aged' in this very letter says: 'I
+have finished my course, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
+glory.' He had said, in the midst of the strife: 'Not as though I had
+already attained--I press toward the mark for the prize.' And the prize
+which gleamed before him through all the dust of the arena now shone
+still more brightly when his hand had all but clasped it. If we desire
+to 'run with perseverance the race that is set before us' we must keep
+our eyes fixed on Jesus, and see in Him, not only the Rewarder, but the
+Reward, of the 'exercise unto godliness.'
+
+
+
+
+ONE WITNESS, MANY CONFESSORS
+
+          'Thou . . . hast professed a good profession before
+          many witnesses. 13. I give thee charge in the
+          sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and
+          before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate
+          witnessed a good confession, 14. That thou keep
+          this commandment. . . .'--1 TIM. vi. 12-14.
+
+
+You will observe that 'a good confession,' or rather 'the good
+confession,' is said here to have been made both by Timothy and by
+Christ. But you will observe also that whilst the subject-matter is the
+same, the action of Timothy and Jesus respectively is different. The
+former professes, or rather confesses, the good confession; the latter
+witnesses. There must be some reason for the significant variation of
+terms to indicate that the relation of Timothy and Jesus to the good
+confession which they both made was, in some way, a different one, and
+that though what they said was identical, their actions in saying it
+were different.
+
+Then there is another point of parallelism to be noticed. Timothy made
+his profession 'before many witnesses,' but the Apostle calls to his
+remembrance, and summons up before the eye of his imagination, a more
+august tribunal than that before which he had confessed his faith, and
+says that he gives him charge 'before God' (for the same word is used in
+the original in both verses), 'who quickeneth all things, and before
+Christ Jesus.' So the earthly witnesses of the man's confession dwindle
+into insignificance when compared with the heavenly ones. And upon these
+thoughts is based the practical exhortation, 'Keep the commandment
+without spot.' So, then, we have three things: the great Witness and His
+confession, the subordinate confessors who echo His witness, and the
+practical issue that comes out of both thoughts.
+
+I. We have the great Witness and His confession.
+
+Now, you will remember, perhaps, that if we turn to the Gospels, we find
+that all of them give the subject-matter of Christ's confession before
+Pilate, as being that He was the King of the Jews. But the Evangelist
+John expands that conversation, and gives us details which present a
+remarkable verbal correspondence with the words of the Apostle here, and
+must suggest to us that, though John's Gospel was not written at the
+date of this Epistle, the fact that is enshrined for us in it was
+independently known by the Apostle Paul.
+
+For, if I may for a moment recall the incident to you, you will remember
+that when Pilate put to the Saviour the question, 'Art Thou a King?'
+our Lord, before He would answer, took pains to make quite clear the
+sense in which the judge asked Him of His royal state. For He said,
+'Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me? If
+it is your Roman idea of a king, the answer must be, "No." If it is the
+Jewish Messianic idea, the answer must be, "Yes." I must know first what
+the question means, in the mind of the questioner, before I answer it.'
+And when Pilate brushes aside Christ's question, with a sort of
+impatient contempt, and returns to the charge, 'What hast Thou done?'
+our Lord, whilst He makes the claim of sovereignty, takes care to make
+it in such a way as to show that Rome need fear nothing from Him, and
+that His dominion rested not upon force. 'My Kingdom is not of this
+world.' And then, when Pilate, like a practical Roman, bewildered with
+all these fine-spun distinctions, sweeps them impatiently out of the
+field, and comes back to 'Yes, or No; are you a King?' our Lord gives a
+distinct affirmative answer, but at once soars up into the region where
+Pilate had declined to follow Him: 'To this end was I born, and for this
+cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth.'
+'Before Pontius Pilate he witnessed the good confession.' And His
+confession was His royalty, His relation to the truth, and His
+pre-existence. 'To this end was I born,' and the next clause is no mere
+tautology, nor a non-significant parallelism, 'and for this cause came I
+into the world.' Then He was before He came, and birth to Him was not
+the beginning of being, but the beginning of a new relation.
+
+So, then, out of this great word of our text, which falls into line with
+a great many other words of the New Testament, we may gather important
+and significant truths with regard to two things, the matter and the
+manner of Christ's witnessing. You remember how the same Apostle
+John--for whom that word 'witness' has a fascination in all its manifold
+applications--in that great vision of the Apocalypse, when to his
+blessed sight the vision of the Master was once given, extols Him as
+'the faithful witness, and the First-begotten from the dead, and the
+Prince of the kings of the earth.' And you may remember how our Lord
+Himself, after His conversation with Nicodemus, says, 'We speak that we
+do know, and bear witness to that we have seen,' and how again, in
+answer to the taunts of the Jews, He takes the taunt as the most
+intimate designation of the peculiarity of His person and of His work,
+when He says, 'I am one that bear witness of Myself.' So, then, we have
+to interpret his declaration before Pilate in the light of all these
+other sayings, and to remember that He who said that He came to bear
+witness to the truth, said also, 'I am the truth,' and therefore that
+his great declaration that He was the witness-bearer to the truth is
+absolutely synonymous with His other declaration that He bears witness
+of Himself.
+
+Now, here we come upon one of the great peculiarities of Christ as a
+religious teacher. The new thing, the distinctive peculiarity, the
+differentia between Him and all other teachers, lies just here, that His
+theme is not so much moral or religious principles, as His own nature
+and person. He was the most egotistical man that ever lived on the face
+of the earth, with an egotism only to be accounted for, if we believe,
+as He Himself said, that in His person was the truth that He proclaimed,
+and that when He witnessed to Himself He revealed God. And thus He
+stands, separate from all other teachers, by this, that He is His own
+theme and His own witness.
+
+So much for the matter of the good confession to which we need only add
+here its pendant in the confession before the High Priest. To the
+representative of the civil government He said, 'I am a king,' and then,
+as I remarked, He soared up into regions where no Roman official could
+rise to follow Him, and to the representative of the Theocratic
+government He said, 'Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at
+the right hand of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' These two
+truths, that He is the Son of God, who by His witness to the truth, that
+is, Himself, lays the foundations of a Monarchy which shall stretch far
+further than the pinions of the Roman eagles could ever fly, and that he
+is the Son of Man who, exalted to the right hand of God, is to be the
+Judge of mankind--these are the good confessions to which the Lord
+witnessed.
+
+Then with regard to the manner of His witness. That brings us to another
+of the peculiarities of Christ's teaching. I have said that He was the
+most egotistical of men. I would say, too, that there never was another
+who clashed down in the front of humanity such tremendous assertions,
+with not the faintest scintilla of an attempt to prove them to our
+understandings, or commend them by any other plea than this, 'Verily,
+verily, I say unto you!'
+
+A witness does not need to argue. A witness is a man who reports what he
+has seen and heard. The whole question is as to his veracity and
+competency. Jesus Christ states it for the characteristic of His work,
+'We speak that we do know, and bear witness to that we have seen.' His
+relation to the truth which He brings to us is not that of a man who has
+thought it out, who has been brought to it by experience, or by feeling,
+or by a long course of investigation; still less is it the relation
+which a man would bear to a truth that he had learnt from others
+originally, however much he had made it his own thereafter: but it is
+that of one who is not a thinker, or a learner, or a reasoner, but who
+is simply an attester, a witness. And so He stands before us, and says,
+'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life.
+Believe Me, and believe the words, for no other reason, primarily, than
+because I speak them.' In these two respects, then, the matter and the
+manner of His witness, He stands alone, and we have to bow before Him
+and say, 'Speak, Lord! for thy servant heareth.' 'Before Pontius Pilate
+He witnessed a good confession.'
+
+II. We have here suggested to us the subordinate confessors who echo the
+Lord's witness.
+
+It is a matter of no consequence when, and before whom, this Timothy
+professed his good profession. It may have been at his baptism. It may
+have been when he was installed in his office. It may have been before
+some tribunal of which we know nothing. That does not matter. The point
+is that a Christian man is to be an echo of the Lord's good confession,
+and is to keep within the lines of it, and to be sure that all of it is
+echoed in his life. Christ has told us what to say, and we are here to
+say it over again. Christ has witnessed; we are to confess. Our relation
+to that truth is different from His. We hear it; He speaks it. We accept
+it; He reveals it. We are influenced by it; He _is_ it. He brings it to
+the world on His own authority; we are to carry it to the world on His.
+
+Be sure that you Christian men are echoes of your Master. Be sure that
+you reverberate the note that He struck. Be sure that all its music is
+repeated by you And take care that you neither fall short of it, nor go
+beyond it, in your faith and in your profession. Echoes of Christ--that
+is the highest conception of a Christian life.
+
+But though there is all the difference between the Witness and the
+confessors, do not let us forget that, if we are truly Christian, there
+is a very deep and blessed sense in which we, too, may witness what we
+have seen and heard. A Christian preacher of any sort--and by that I
+mean, not merely a man who stands in a pulpit, as I do, but all
+Christian people, in their measure and degree--will do nothing by
+professing the best profession, unless that profession sounds like the
+utterance of a man who speaks that he knows, and who can say, 'that
+which our eyes have beheld, that which we have handled, of the Word of
+life, we make known unto you.' And so, by the power of personal
+experience speaking out in our lives, and by the power of it alone, as I
+believe, will victories be won, and the witness of Jesus Christ be
+repeated in the world. Christian men and women, the old saying which was
+addressed by a prophet to Israel is more true, more solemnly true of us,
+and presses on us with a heavier weight of obligation, as well as lifts
+us up into a position of greater blessedness: 'Ye are my witnesses,
+saith the Lord.' That is what you and I are here for--to bear witness,
+different and yet like to, the witness borne by the Lord. We have all to
+do that, by words, though not only by them. That is the obligation that
+a great many Christian people take very lightly. That yoke of Jesus
+Christ many of us slip our necks out of. If He has witnessed, you have
+to confess. But some of you carry your Christianity in secret, and
+button your coats over the cockade that should tell whose soldiers you
+are, and are ashamed, or too shy, or too nervous, or too afraid of
+ridicule, or not sufficiently sure of your own grip of the Master, to
+confess Him before men. I beseech you remember that a Christian man is
+no Christian unless 'with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,'
+as well as 'with the heart' belief is exercised unto righteousness.
+
+III. Lastly, we have here the practical issue of all this.
+
+'I charge thee before God, who quickeneth all things, and before Jesus
+Christ, that thou keep the commandment without spot.' The 'commandment,'
+of course, may be used in a specific sense, referring to what has just
+been enjoined, but more probably we are to regard the same thing which,
+considered in its relation to Jesus Christ, is His testimony, as being,
+in its relation to us, His commandment. For all Christ's gospel of
+revelation that He has made of Himself to the world, is meant to
+influence, not only belief and feeling, but conduct and character as
+well. All the New Testament, in so far as it is a record of what Christ
+is, and thereby a declaration of what God is, is also for us an
+injunction as to what we ought to be. The whole Gospel is law, and the
+testimony is commandment, and we have to keep it, as well as to confess
+it. Let me put the few things that I have to say, under this last
+division of my subject, the practical issue, into the shape of three
+exhortations, not for the sake of seeming to arrogate any kind of
+superiority, but for the sake of point and emphasis.
+
+Let the life bear witness to the confession. What is the use of
+Timothy's standing there, and professing himself a Christian before many
+witnesses if, when he goes out into the world, his conduct gives the lie
+to his creed, and he lives like the men that are not Christians? Back up
+your confession by your conduct, and when you say 'I believe in Jesus
+Christ,' let your life be as true an echo of His life as your confession
+is of His testimony. Else we shall come under the condemnation, 'Nothing
+but leaves,' and shall fall under the punishment of the continuance of
+unfruitfulness, which is our crime as well as our punishment. There is a
+great deal more done by consistent living for, and by inconsistent
+living against, the truth of the Gospel, than by all the words of all
+the preachers in the world. Your faults go further, and tell more, than
+my sermons, and your Christian characters will go further than all the
+eloquence of the most devoted preachers. 'There is no voice nor
+language, where their sound is not heard. Their line is gone out into
+all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.'
+
+Again, let the thought of the Great Witness stimulate us. He, too, took
+His place by our sides, though with the differences that I have pointed
+out, yet with resemblances which bring Him very near us. He, too; knew
+what it was to stand amongst those who shrugged their shoulders, and
+knit their brows at His utterances, and turned away from Him, calling
+Him sometimes 'dreamer,' sometimes 'revolutionary,' sometimes
+'blasphemer,' and now and then a messenger of good tidings and a
+preacher of the gospel of peace. He knows all our hesitations, all our
+weaknesses, all our temptations. He was the first of the martyrs, in the
+narrower sense of the word. He is the leader of the great band of
+witnesses for God. Let us stand by His side, and be like Him in our
+bearing witness in this world.
+
+Again, let the thought of the great tribunal stimulate us. 'I give thee
+charge before God, who quickeneth all things--and who therefore will
+quicken you--and before Jesus Christ, that thou keep this commandment.'
+Jesus, who witnessed to the truth, witnesses, in the sense of beholding
+and watching, us, knowing our weakness and ready to help us. 'The
+faithful witness, and the first begotten from the dead, and the Prince
+of the kings of the earth,' is by us, as we witness for Him. And so,
+though we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, the
+saints in the past who have witnessed for God, and been witnessed to by
+Him, we have to turn away from them, and 'look off' from all others,
+'unto Jesus.' And we may, like the first of the noble army of martyrs,
+see the heavens opened, and Jesus 'standing'--started to His feet, to
+see and to help Stephen--'at the right hand of God.'
+
+Brethren, let us listen to His witness, let us accept it, setting to our
+seals that God is true. Then let us try to echo it back by word, and to
+attest our confession by our conduct, and then we may comfort ourselves
+with the great word, 'He that confesseth Me before men, Him will I also
+confess before My Father which is in Heaven.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CONDUCT THAT SECURES THE REAL LIFE
+
+          'Laying up in store for themselves a good
+          foundation against the time to come, that they may
+          lay hold on eternal life.'--1 TIM. vi. 19.
+
+
+In the first flush of the sense of brotherhood, the Church of Jerusalem
+tried the experiment of having all things in common. It was not a
+success, it was soon abandoned, it never spread. In the later history of
+the Church, and especially in these last Pauline letters, we see clearly
+that distinctions of pecuniary position were very definitely marked
+amongst the believers. There were 'rich men' in the churches of which
+Timothy had charge. No doubt they were rich after a very modest fashion,
+for Paul's standard of opulence is not likely to have been a very high
+one, seeing that he himself ministered with his own hands to his
+necessities, and had only one cloak to keep him warm in winter time. But
+great or small as were the resources of these men, they were rich in
+comparison with some of their brethren. The words of my text are the
+close of the very plain things which Paul commands Timothy to tell them.
+He assures them that if they will be rich in good works, and ready to
+distribute, they will lay up for themselves a good 'foundation against
+the time to come.'
+
+The teaching in the text is, of course, a great deal wider than any
+specific application of it. It is very remarkable, especially as coming
+from Paul. 'Lay up a good foundation'--has he not said, 'Other
+foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
+Christ'? 'That they may lay hold on eternal life'--has he not said, 'The
+_gift_ of God is eternal life'? Is he not going dead in the teeth of his
+own teaching, 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by
+His mercy He saved us'? I think not. Let us see what he does say.
+
+I. First, then, he says that the real life is the future life.
+
+Those of you who use the Revised Version will see that it makes an
+alteration in the last clause of our text, and instead of 'eternal
+life' it reads 'the life which is life indeed,' the true life; not
+simply designating it as eternal, but designating it as being the only
+thing that is worth calling by the august name of life.
+
+Now it is quite clear that Paul here is approximating very closely to
+the language of his brother John, and using this great word 'life' as
+being, in substance, equivalent to his own favourite word of
+'salvation,' as including in one magnificent generalisation all that is
+necessary for the satisfaction of man's needs, the perfection of his
+blessedness, and the glorifying of his nature. Paul's notion of life,
+like John's, is that it is the one all-comprehensive good which men need
+and seek.
+
+And here he seems to relegate that 'life which is life indeed' to the
+region of the future, because he contemplates it as being realised 'in
+the time to come,' and as being the result of the conduct which is here
+enjoined. But you will find that substantially the same exhortation is
+given in the 12th verse of this chapter, 'Fight the good fight of faith;
+lay hold on the life eternal'--where the process of grasping this
+'life,' and therefore the possession of it, are evidently regarded as
+possible here, and the duty of every Christian man in this present
+world. That is to say, there is a double aspect of this august
+conception of the 'life which is life indeed.' In one aspect it is
+present, may be and ought to be ours, here and now; in another aspect it
+lies beyond the flood, and is the inheritance reserved in the heavens.
+That double aspect is parallel with the way in which the New Testament
+deals with the other cognate conception of salvation, which it sometimes
+regards as past, sometimes as present, sometimes as future. The complete
+idea is that the life of the Christian soul here and yonder, away out
+into the furthest extremities of eternity, and up to the loftiest climax
+of perfectness, is in essence one, whilst yet the differences between
+the degree in which its germinal possession here and its full-fruited
+enjoyment hereafter differ is so great as that, in comparison with the
+completion that is waiting the Christian soul beyond the grave, all of
+the same life that is here enjoyed dwindles into nothingness. It appears
+to me that these two sides of the truth, the essential identity of the
+life of the Christian soul beyond and here, and the all but infinite
+differences and progresses which separate the two, are both needful,
+very needful, to be kept in view by us.
+
+There is here on earth, amidst all our imperfections and weakness and
+sin, a root in the heart that trusts in Christ, which only needs to be
+transplanted into its congenial soil to blossom and burgeon into
+undreamed of beauty, and to bear fruit the savour of which no mortal
+lips can ever taste. The dwarfed rhododendrons in our shrubberies have
+in them the same nature as the giants that adorn the slopes of the
+Himalayas. Transplant these exotics to their native soil, and you would
+see what it was in them to be. Think of the life that is now at its
+best; its weakness, its blighted hopes, its thwarted aims, its foiled
+endeavours; think of its partings, its losses, its conflicts. Think of
+its disorders, its sins, and consequent sufferings; think of the shadow
+at its close, which flings long trails of blackness over many preceding
+years. Think of its swift disappearance, and then say if such a poor,
+fragmentary thing is worthy of the name of life, if that were all that
+the man was for.
+
+But it is not all. There is a 'life which is life indeed,' over which
+no shadow can pass, nor any sorrow darken the blessed faces or clog the
+happy hearts of those who possess it. They 'have all and abound.' They
+know all and are at rest. They dread nothing, and nothing do they
+regret. They leave nothing behind as they advance, and of their serenity
+and their growth there is no end. That is worth calling life. It lies
+beyond this dim spot of earth. It is 'hid with Christ in God.'
+
+II. Secondly, notice that conduct here determines the possession of the
+true life.
+
+Paul never cares whether he commits the rhetorical blunder of mixing up
+metaphors or not. That matters very little, except to a pedant and a
+rhetorician. In his impetuous way he blends three here, and has no time
+to stop to disentangle them. They all mean substantially the same thing
+which I have stated in the words that conduct here determines the
+possession of life hereafter; but they put it in three different
+figurative fashions which we may separate and look at one by one.
+
+The first of them is this, that by our actions here we accumulate
+treasure hereafter. 'Laying up in store for themselves' is one word in
+the original, and it contains even more than is expressed in our
+paraphrase, for it is really 'treasuring off.' And the idea is that the
+rich man is bade to take a portion of his worldly goods, and, by using
+these for beneficent purposes, out of them to store a treasure beyond
+the grave. What is employed thus, and from the right motives and in the
+right way, is not squandered, but laid up in store. You remember the old
+epitaph,
+
+          'What I spent I lost;
+           What I gave I have.'
+
+Now that is Christ's teaching, for did He not say: 'Sell all that thou
+hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven'? Did
+He not say: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, . . . but lay
+up treasures in heaven'? And if anybody's theology finds it difficult to
+incorporate these solemn teachings of our Lord with the rest of it, so
+much the worse for the theology.
+
+I have no doubt at all that Christianity has yet a great deal to teach
+the Christian Church and the world about the acquisition of money and
+the disposal of money; and, though I do not want to dwell now upon that
+specific application of the general principle of my text, I cannot help
+reminding you, dear friends, that for a very large number of us, almost
+the most important influence shaping our characters is the attitude that
+we take in regard to these things--the getting and the distribution of
+worldly wealth. For the bulk of Christian people there are few things
+more important as sharp tests of the reality of their religion, or more
+effective in either ennobling or degrading their whole character, than
+what they do about these two plain matters.
+
+But then my text goes a great deal further than that; and whilst it
+applies unflinchingly this principle to the one specific case, it
+invites us to apply it all round the circumference of our earthly
+conduct. What you are doing here is piling up for you, on the other side
+of the wall, what you will have to live with, and either get good or
+evil out of, through all eternity. A man who is going to Australia pays
+some money into a bank here, and when he gets to Melbourne it is
+punctually paid out to him across the counter. That is what we are doing
+here, lodging money on this side that we are going to draw on that. And
+it is this which gives to the present its mystical significance and
+solemnity, that all our actions are piling up for us future possessions:
+'treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath'; or, contrariwise,
+'glory, immortality, honour, eternal life.' We are like men digging a
+trench on one side of a hedge and flinging the spadefuls over to the
+other. They are all being piled up behind the barrier, and when we go
+round the end of it we shall find them all waiting for us.
+
+Then the Apostle superimposes upon this another metaphor. He does not
+care to unravel it. 'Laying up in store for themselves a store,' he
+would have said if he had been a pedant, 'which is also a good
+foundation.' Now I take it that that does not mean a basis for hope, or
+anything of that sort, but that it conveys this thought, that our
+actions here are putting in the foundations on which the eternal
+building of our future life shall be reared. When a man excavates and
+lays the first courses of the stones of his building, he thereby
+determines every successive stage of it, until the headstone is brought
+forth with rejoicing. We are laying foundations in that profound sense
+in this world. Our nature takes a set here, and I fail to see any reason
+cognisable by us why that ply of the nature should ever be taken out of
+it in any future. I do not dogmatise; but it seems to me that all that
+we do know of life and of God's dealings in regard to man leads us to
+suppose that the next world is a world of continuations, not of
+beginnings; that it is the second volume of the book, and hangs
+logically and necessarily upon the first that was finished when a man
+died. Our lives here and hereafter appear to me to be like some
+geometrical figure that wants two sheets of paper for its completion:
+on the first the lines run up to the margin, and on the second they are
+carried on in the direction which was manifest in the section that was
+visible here.
+
+And so, dear friends, let us remember that this is the reason why our
+smallest acts are so tremendous that by our actions we are making
+character, and that character is destiny, here and hereafter. You are
+putting in the foundations of the building that you have to live in; see
+that they are of such a sort as will support a house eternal in the
+heavens.
+
+The last of the metaphors under which the Apostle suggests the one idea
+is that our conduct here determines our capacity to lay hold of the
+prize. It seems to me that the same allusion is lingering in his mind
+which is definitely stated in the previous verse to which I have already
+referred, where the eternal life which Timothy is exhorted to lay hold
+of is regarded as being the prize of the good fight of faith, which he
+is exhorted to fight. And so the third metaphor here is that which is
+familiar in Paul's writings, where eternal life is regarded as a garland
+or prize, given to the victor in race or arena. It is exactly the same
+notion as he otherwise expresses when he says that he follows after if
+that he may 'lay hold of that for which also he is laid hold of by Jesus
+Christ.' This is the underlying thought, that according to a Christian
+man's acts here is his capacity of receiving the real life yonder.
+
+That is not given arbitrarily. Each man gets as much of it when he goes
+home as he can hold. The tiniest vessel is filled, the largest vessel is
+filled. But the little vessel may, and will, grow bigger if that which
+is deposited in it be rightly employed. Let us lay this to heart, that
+Christian men dare not treat it as a matter of indifference whether to
+the full they live lives consistent with their profession, and do the
+will of their Master or no. It is not all the same, and it will not be
+all the same yonder, whether we have adorned the teaching, or whether
+our lives have habitually and criminally fallen beneath the level of our
+professions. Brethren, we are too apt to forget that there is such a
+thing as being 'saved, yet so as by fire'; and that there is such a
+thing as 'having an entrance ministered abundantly into the Kingdom.' Be
+you sure of this, that if the hands of your spirits are ever to be
+capable of grasping the prize, it must be as the result of conduct here
+on earth, which has been treasuring up treasures yonder, and laying a
+foundation on which the incorruptible house may solidly rest.
+
+III. And now the last word that I have to say is that these principles
+are perfectly compatible with the great truth of salvation by faith.
+
+For observe to whom the text is spoken. It is to men who have professed
+to be believers, and it is on the ground of their faith that these rich
+men in Timothy's churches are exhorted to this conduct. There is no
+incompatibility between the doctrine that eternal life is the gift of
+God, and the placing of those who have received that gift under a strict
+law of recompense.
+
+That is the teaching of the whole New Testament. It was to _Christian_
+men that it was said: 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked, whatsoever a
+man soweth that shall he also reap.' It is the teaching of Jesus Christ
+Himself.
+
+But there is a dreadful danger that we, with our partial vision, shall
+see one side of the truth so clearly that we do not see the other; and
+so you get two antagonistic schools of Christian teaching who have torn
+the one word into halves. One of them says, 'Man is saved by faith
+only,' and forgets 'faith without works is dead'; and the other says,
+'Do your duty, and never mind about your belief,' and forgets that the
+belief--the trust--is the only sure foundation on which conduct can be
+based, and the only source from which it is certain to flow.
+
+Now, if I should not be misunderstood by that same narrow and contracted
+vision of which I have been speaking, I would venture to say that
+salvation by faith alone may be so held as to be a very dangerous
+doctrine, and that there is a very real sense in which a man is saved by
+works. And if you do not like that, go home and read the Epistle of
+James, and see what you make of his teaching: 'Ye see, brethren, how
+that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.' 'Faith wrought
+with his works, and by his works was his faith made perfect.'
+
+Only let us understand where the exhortation of the text comes in. We
+have to begin with absolute departure from all merit in work, and the
+absolute casting of ourselves on Jesus Christ. If you have not done
+that, my brother, the teaching 'Laying up in store for themselves a good
+foundation' has no application to you, but this teaching has, 'Other
+foundation can no man lay. Behold, I lay in Zion a tried corner-stone.
+Whosoever believeth in Him shall not make haste.' If you have not
+committed your souls and selves and lives and hopes to Jesus Christ, the
+teaching 'Lay hold on eternal life' has only a very modified application
+to you, because the only hand that can grasp that life is the hand of
+faith that is content to receive it from His hands with the prints of
+the nails in them. But if you have given yourselves to that Saviour, and
+received the germinal gift of eternal life from Him, then, take my text
+as absolutely imperative for you. Remember that it is for you, resting
+on Christ, to treasure up eternal life; for you to build on that sure
+foundation gold and silver and precious stones which may stand the fire;
+for you, by faithful continuance in well-doing, to lay hold of that for
+which you have been laid hold of by Jesus Christ. May it be true of all
+of us that 'our works do follow us'!
+
+          'Thy works, thine alms, and all thy good endeavour
+             Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod,
+             But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
+           Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Part I,
+
+Page 44, "transcendant" changed to "transcendent" (this one
+transcendent)
+
+Page 59, "entrace" changed to "entrance" (a private entrance)
+
+Page 72, "for for" changed to "for" (day, for one)
+
+Page 150, "roalties" changed to "royalties" (symbols for royalties)
+
+Page 269, "immoveable" changed to "immovable" (firm and immovable)
+
+Part II,
+
+Page 52, "whatsover" changed to "whatsoever" (whatsoever things are
+lovely)
+
+Page 63, "centifugal" changed to "centrifugal" (centrifugal and
+centripetal)
+
+Page 118, a bit of text was not inked in the original, the following
+words have been presumed:
+
+          clea        clear
+          an          and
+          kno         know
+          me          men
+
+  For:                                      "clear
+  before you, or you will go yawing about, and washing
+  here and there, in the trough of the wave, and
+  the tempest will be your master. If you do not know
+  where you are going you will have to say, like the men"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture, by 
+Alexander Maclaren
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians and First Timothy, by Alexander Maclaren, D. D., Litt. D.
+    </title>
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture
+       Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters
+              I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+Release Date: April 19, 2007 [EBook #21190]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1><i>EXPOSITIONS OF<br />
+HOLY SCRIPTURE</i></h1>
+
+<h2>ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.</h2>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>
+SECOND CORINTHIANS,<br />
+GALATIANS,<br />
+AND PHILIPPIANS</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTERS I TO END</h3>
+
+<h2>COLOSSIANS, THESSALONIANS,<br />
+AND FIRST TIMOTHY<br /></h2>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+NEW YORK<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+
+<h2><i>EXPOSITIONS OF<br />
+HOLY SCRIPTURE</i><br /></h2>
+
+<h3>ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.<br /></h3>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>SECOND CORINTHIANS<br /></h2>
+
+<h3><i>Chaps. VII to End</i><br /></h3>
+
+<h2>GALATIANS AND<br />
+PHILIPPIANS<br /></h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents: Part 1">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>II. CORINTHIANS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hope and Holiness</span> (2 Cor. vii. 1)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sorrow according to God</span> (2 Cor. vii. 10)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_8'>8</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Giving and Asking</span> (2 Cor. viii. 1-12)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_20'>20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Rich yet Poor</span> (2 Cor. viii. 9)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_27'>27</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Willing and not Doing</span> (2 Cor. viii. 11)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_36'>36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">All Grace Abounding</span> (2 Cor. ix. 8)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_42'>42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">God's Unspeakable Gift</span> (2 Cor. ix. 15)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_50'>50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Militant Message</span> (2 Cor. x. 5 and 6, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_57'>57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span><span class="smcap">Simplicity towards Christ</span> (2 Cor. xi. 3)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Strength in Weakness</span> (2 Cor. xii. 8, 9)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_74'>74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Not Yours but You</span> (2 Cor. xii. 14)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_83'>83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />GALATIANS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">From Centre to Circumference</span> (Gal. ii. 20)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_91'>91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Evil Eye and the Charm</span> (Gal. iii. 1)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_100'>100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lessons of Experience</span> (Gal. iii. 4)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Universal Prison</span> (Gal. iii. 22)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_116'>116</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Son Sent</span> (Gal. iv. 4, 5, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_126'>126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">What Makes a Christian: Circumcision or Faith?</span> (Gal. v. 6)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_136'>136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">Walk in the Spirit</span>' (Gal. v. 16)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Fruit of the Spirit</span> (Gal. v. 22, 23)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_162'>162</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span><span class="smcap">Burden-Bearing</span> (Gal. vi. 2-5)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_171'>171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Doing Good to All</span> (Gal. vi. 10)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_180'>180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Owner's Brand</span> (Gal. vi. 17)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_189'>189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />PHILIPPIANS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Loving Greetings</span> (Phil. i. 1-8, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_200'>200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Comprehensive Prayer</span> (Phil. i. 9-11, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_206'>206</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Prisoner's Triumph</span> (Phil. i. 12-20, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_211'>211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Strait betwixt Two</span> (Phil. i. 21-25)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Citizens of Heaven</span> (Phil. i. 27, 28)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_233'>233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Plea for Unity</span> (Phil. ii. 1-4, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_244'>244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Descent of the Word</span> (Phil. ii. 5-8, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Ascent of Jesus</span> (Phil. ii. 9-11, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_260'>260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Work out your Own Salvation</span> (Phil. ii. 12, 13)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_268'>268</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span><span class="smcap">Copies of Jesus</span> (Phil. ii. 14-16, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_281'>281</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Willing Sacrifice</span> (Phil. ii. 16-18, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Paul and Timothy</span> (Phil. ii. 19-24, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_295'>295</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Paul and Epaphroditus</span> (Phil. ii. 25-30, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_305'>305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Preparing to End</span> (Phil. iii. 1-3, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_311'>311</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Loss of All</span> (Phil. iii. 4-8, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_321'>321</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Gain of Christ</span> (Phil. iii. 8, 9, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_328'>328</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Saving Knowledge</span> (Phil. iii. 10, 11, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_336'>336</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Laid Hold of and Laying Hold</span> (Phil. iii. 12)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_348'>348</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Race and the Goal</span> (Phil. iii. 13, 14)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_359'>359</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Soul's Perfection</span> (Phil. iii. 15)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_369'>369</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Rule of the Road</span> (Phil. iii. 16)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_381'>381</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Warnings and Hopes</span> (Phil. iii. 17-21, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_391'>391</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>II. CORINTHIANS</h2>
+
+<h2>HOPE AND HOLINESS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Having therefore these promises .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness
+of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> vii. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is often made a charge against professing Christians
+that their religion has very little to do with common
+morality. The taunt has sharpened multitudes of
+gibes and been echoed in all sorts of tones: it is very
+often too true and perfectly just, but if ever it is, let
+it be distinctly understood that it is not so because of
+Christian men's religion but in spite of it. Their
+bitterest enemy does not condemn them half so emphatically
+as their own religion does: the sharpest censure
+of others is not so sharp as the rebukes of the New
+Testament. If there is one thing which it insists upon
+more than another, it is that religion without morality
+is nothing&mdash;that the one test to which, after all, every
+man must submit is, what sort of character has he and
+how has he behaved&mdash;is he pure or foul? All high-flown
+pretension, all fervid emotion has at last to face
+the question which little children ask, 'Was he a good
+man?'</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle has been speaking about very high and
+mystical truths, about all Christians being the temple
+of God, about God dwelling in men, about men and
+women being His sons and daughters; these are the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+very truths on which so often fervid imaginations
+have built up a mystical piety that had little to do
+with the common rules of right and wrong. But Paul
+keeps true to the intensely practical purpose of his
+preaching and brings his heroes down to the prosaic
+earth with the homely common sense of this far-reaching
+exhortation, which he gives as the fitting
+conclusion for such celestial visions.</p>
+
+<p>I. A Christian life should be a life of constant self-purifying.</p>
+
+<p>This epistle is addressed to the church of God which
+is at Corinth with all the <i>saints</i> which are in all Achaia.</p>
+
+<p>Looking out over that wide region, Paul saw
+scattered over godless masses a little dispersed company
+to each of whom the sacred name of Saint
+applied. They had been deeply stained with the vices
+of their age and place, and after a black list of criminals
+he had had to say to them 'such were some of you,'
+and he lays his finger on the miracle that had changed
+them and hesitates not to say of them all, 'But ye are
+washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in
+the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our
+God.'</p>
+
+<p>The first thing, then, that every Christian has is a
+cleansing which accompanies forgiveness, and however
+his garment may have been 'spotted by the flesh,' it
+is 'washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.'
+Strange cleansing by which black stains melt out of
+garments plunged in red blood! With the cleansing
+of forgiveness and justification comes, wherever they
+come, the gift of the Holy Spirit&mdash;a new life springing
+up within the old life, and untouched by any contact
+with its evils. These gifts belong universally to the
+initial stage of the Christian life and require for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+their possession only the receptiveness of faith. They
+admit of no co-operation of human effort, and to
+possess them men have only to 'take the things that
+are freely given to them of God.' But of the subsequent
+stages of the Christian life, the laborious and
+constant effort to develop and apply that free gift is
+as essential as, in the earliest stage, it is worse than
+useless. The gift received has to be wrought into the
+very substance of the soul, and to be wrought out in
+all the endless varieties of life and conduct. Christians
+are cleansed to begin with, but they have still daily to
+cleanse themselves: the leaven is hid in the three
+measures of meal, but ''tis a life-long task till the
+lump be leavened,' and no man, even though he has the
+life that was in Jesus within him, will grow up 'into
+the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ'
+unless, by patient and persistent effort, he is ever
+pressing on to 'the things that are before' and daily
+striving to draw nearer to the prize of his high calling.
+We are cleansed, but we have still to cleanse ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Yet another paradox attaches to the Christian life,
+inasmuch as God cleanses us, but we have to cleanse
+ourselves. The great truth that the spirit of God in
+a man is the fontal source of all his goodness, and that
+Christ's righteousness is given to us, is no pillow on
+which to rest an idle head, but should rather be a
+trumpet-call to effort which is thereby made certain of
+success. If we were left to the task of self-purifying
+by our own efforts we might well fling it up as impossible.
+It is as easy for a man to lift himself from
+the ground by gripping his own shoulders as it is for
+us to rise to greater heights of moral conduct by our
+own efforts; but if we can believe that God gives the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+impulse after purity, and the vision of what purity is,
+and imparts the power of attaining it, strengthening
+at once our dim sight and stirring our feeble desires
+and energising our crippled limbs, then we can 'run
+with patience the race that is set before us.'</p>
+
+<p>We must note the thoroughness of the cleansing
+which the Apostle here enjoins. What is to be got rid
+of is not this or that defect or vice, but '<i>all</i> filthiness
+of flesh and spirit.' The former, of course, refers
+primarily to sins of impurity which in the eyes of the
+Greeks of Corinth were scarcely sins at all, and the
+latter to a state of mind when fancy, imagination, and
+memory were enlisted in the service of evil. Both are
+rampant in our day as they were in Corinth. Much
+modern literature and the new gospel of 'Art for Art's
+sake' minister to both, and every man carries in himself
+inclinations to either. It is no partial cleansing
+with which Paul would have us to be satisfied: '<i>all</i>'
+filthiness is to be cast out. Like careful housewives
+who are never content to cease their scrubbing while
+a speck remains upon furniture, Christian men are to
+regard their work as unfinished as long as the least
+trace of the unclean thing remains in their flesh or in
+their spirit. The ideal may be far from being realised
+at any moment, but it is at the peril of the whole
+sincerity and peacefulness of their lives if they, in the
+smallest degree, lower the perfection of their ideal in
+deference to the imperfection of their realisation of it.</p>
+
+<p>It must be abundantly clear from our own experience
+that any such cleansing is a very long process. No
+character is made, whether it be good or bad, but by
+a slow building up: no man becomes most wicked all
+at once, and no man is sanctified by a wish or at a
+jump. As long as men are in a world so abounding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+with temptation, 'he that is washed' will need daily
+to 'wash his feet' that have been stained in the foul
+ways of life, if he is to be 'clean every whit.'</p>
+
+<p>As long as the spirit is imprisoned in the body and
+has it for its instrument there will be need for much
+effort at purifying. We must be content to overcome
+one foe at a time, and however strong may be the
+pilgrim's spirit in us, we must be content to take one
+step at a time, and to advance by very slow degrees.
+Nor is it to be forgotten that as we get nearer what
+we ought to be, we should be more conscious of the
+things in which we are not what we ought to be. The
+nearer we get to Jesus Christ, the more will our
+consciences be enlightened as to the particulars in
+which we are still distant from Him. A speck on a
+polished shield will show plain that would never have
+been seen on a rusty one. The saint who is nearest
+God will think more of his sins than the man who is
+furthest from him. So new work of purifying will
+open before us as we grow more pure, and this will
+last as long as life itself.</p>
+
+<p>II. The Christian life is to be not merely a continual
+getting rid of evil, but a continual becoming good.</p>
+
+<p>Paul here draws a distinction between cleansing
+ourselves from filthiness and perfecting holiness, and
+these two, though closely connected and capable of
+being regarded as being but the positive and negative
+sides of one process, are in reality different, though
+in practice the former is never achieved without the
+latter, nor the latter accomplished without the former.
+Holiness is more than purity; it is consecration. That
+is holy which is devoted to God, and a saint is one
+whose daily effort is to devote his whole self, in all his
+faculties and nature, thoughts, heart, and will, more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+and more, to God, and to receive into himself more and
+more of God.</p>
+
+<p>The purifying which Paul has been enjoining will
+only be successful in the measure of our consecration,
+and the consecration will only be genuine in the
+measure of our purifying. Herein lies the broad and
+blessed distinction between the world's morality and
+Christian ethics. The former fails just because it
+lacks the attitude towards a Person who is the very
+foundation of Christian morality, and changes a hard
+and impossible law into love. There is no more futile
+waste of breath than that of teachers of morality who
+have no message but Be good! Be good! and no motive
+by which to urge it but the pleasures of virtue and the
+disadvantages of vice, but when the vagueness of the
+abstract thought of goodness solidifies into a living
+Person and that Person makes his appeal first to our
+hearts and bids us love him, and then opens before us
+the unstained light of his own character and beseeches
+us to be like him, the repellent becomes attractive: the
+impossible becomes possible, and 'if ye love Me keep
+My commandments' becomes a constraining power and
+a victorious impulse in our lives.</p>
+
+<p>III. The Christian life of purifying and consecration
+is to be animated by hope and fear.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle seems to connect hope more immediately
+with the cleansing, and holiness with the fear of God,
+but probably both hope and fear are in his mind as the
+double foundation on which both purity and consecration
+are to rest, or the double emotion which is to
+produce them both. These promises refer directly to
+the immediately preceding words, 'I will be a Father
+unto you and ye shall be My sons and daughters,'
+in which all the blessings which God can give or men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+can receive are fused together in one lustrous and all-comprehensive
+whole. So all the great truths of the
+Gospel and all the blessed emotions of sonship which
+can spring up in a human heart are intended to find
+their practical result in holy and pure living. For this
+end God has spoken to us out of the thick darkness;
+for this end Christ has come into our darkness; for
+this end He has lived; for this end He died; for this
+end He rose again; for this end He sends His Spirit
+and administers the providence of the world. The
+purpose of all the Divine activity as regards us men is
+not merely to make us happy, but to make us happy
+in order that we may be good. He whom what he
+calls his religion has only saved from the wrath of God
+and the fear of hell has not learned the alphabet of
+religion. Unless God's promises evoke men's goodness
+it will be of little avail that they seem to quicken
+their hope. Joyful confidence in our sonship is only
+warranted in the measure in which we are like our
+Father. Hope often deludes and makes men dreamy
+and unpractical. It generally paints pictures far lovelier
+than the realities, and without any of their shadows;
+it is too often the stimulus and ally of ignoble lives,
+and seldom stirs to heroism or endurance, but its many
+defects are not due to itself but to its false choice of
+objects on which to fix. The hope which is lifted from
+trailing along the earth and twining round creatures
+and which rises to grasp these promises ought to be,
+and in the measure of its reality is the ally of all
+patient endurance and noble self-sacrifice. Its vision
+of coming good is all directed to the coming Christ,
+and 'every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth
+himself even as He is pure.'</p>
+
+<p>In Paul's experience there was no contrariety between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+hope set on Jesus and fear directed towards God. It
+is in the fear of God that holiness is to be perfected.
+There is a fear which has no torment. Yet more, there
+is no love in sons or daughters without fear. The
+reverential awe with which God's children draw near
+to God has in it nothing slavish and no terror. Their
+love is not only joyful but lowly. The worshipping
+gaze upon His Divine majesty, the reverential and
+adoring contemplation of His ineffable holiness, and
+the poignant consciousness, after all effort, of the
+distance between us and Him will bow the hearts that
+love Him most in lowliest prostration before Him.
+These two, hope and fear, confidence and awe, are
+like the poles on which the whole round world turns
+and are united here in one result. They who 'set their
+hope in God' must 'not forget the works of God but
+keep His commandments'; they who 'call Him Father,'
+'who without respect of persons judgeth' must 'pass
+the time of their sojourning here in fear,' and their
+hopes and their fears must drive the wheels of life,
+purify them from all filthiness and perfect them in
+all holiness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but
+the sorrow of the world worketh death.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> vii. 10.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Very near the close of his missionary career the
+Apostle Paul summed up his preaching as being all
+directed to enforcing two points, 'Repentance towards
+God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' These two,
+repentance and faith, ought never to be separated
+in thought, as they are inseparable in fact. True<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+repentance is impossible without faith, true faith
+cannot exist without repentance.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the two are separated very often, even by
+earnest Christian teachers. The tendency of this day
+is to say a great deal about faith, and not nearly
+enough in proportion about repentance; and the
+effect is to obscure the very idea of faith, and not
+seldom to preach 'Peace! peace! when there is no
+peace.' A gospel which is always talking about faith,
+and scarcely ever talking about sin and repentance,
+is denuded, indeed, of some of its most unwelcome
+characteristics, but is also deprived of most of its
+power, and it may very easily become an ally of
+unrighteousness, and an indulgence to sin. The
+reproach that the Christian doctrine of salvation
+through faith is immoral in its substance derives most
+of its force from forgetting that 'repentance towards
+God' is as real a condition of salvation as is 'faith in
+our Lord Jesus Christ.' We have here the Apostle's
+deliverance about one of these twin thoughts. We
+have three stages&mdash;the root, the stem, the fruit;
+sorrow, repentance, salvation. But there is a right
+and a wrong kind of sorrow for sin. The right kind
+breeds repentance, and thence reaches salvation; the
+wrong kind breeds nothing, and so ends in death.</p>
+
+<p>Let us then trace these stages, not forgetting that
+this is not a complete statement of the case, and needs
+to be supplemented in the spirit of the words which I
+have already quoted, by the other part of the inseparable
+whole, 'faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, consider the true and the false sorrow
+for sin.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle takes it for granted that a recognition
+of our own evil, and a consequent penitent regretful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>ness,
+lie at the foundation of all true Christianity.
+Now I do not insist upon any uniformity of experience
+in people, any more than I should insist that all their
+bodies should be of one shape or of one proportion.
+Human lives are infinitely different, human dispositions
+are subtly varied, and because neither the one
+nor the other are ever reproduced exactly in any two
+people, therefore the religious experience of no two
+souls can ever be precisely alike.</p>
+
+<p>We have no right to ask&mdash;and much harm has been
+done by asking&mdash;for an impossible uniformity of
+religious experience, any more than we have a right to
+expect that all voices shall be pitched in one key, or
+all plants flower in the same month, or after the same
+fashion. You can print off as many copies as you
+like, for instance, of a drawing of a flower on a
+printing-press, and they shall all be alike, petal for
+petal, leaf for leaf, shade for shade; but no two hand-drawn
+copies will be so precisely alike, still less will
+any two of the real buds that blow on the bush. Life
+produces resemblance with differences; it is machinery
+that makes facsimiles.</p>
+
+<p>So we insist on no pedantic or unreal uniformity;
+and yet, whilst leaving the widest scope for divergencies
+of individual character and experience, and
+not asking that a man all diseased and blotched with
+the leprosy of sin for half a lifetime, and a little child
+that has grown up at its mother's knee, 'in the nurture
+and admonition of the Lord,' and so has been kept
+'innocent of much transgression,' shall have the same
+experience; yet Scripture, as it seems to me, and the
+nature of the case do unite in asserting that there are
+certain elements which, in varying proportions indeed,
+will be found in all true Christian experience, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+these an indispensable one&mdash;and in a very large
+number, if not in the majority of cases, a fundamental
+one&mdash;is this which my text calls 'godly sorrow.'</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, surely a reasonable consideration of
+the facts of our conduct and character point to that as
+the attitude that becomes us. Does it not? I do not
+charge you with crimes in the eye of the law. I do
+not suppose that many of you are living in flagrant
+disregard of the elementary principles of common
+every-day morality. Some are, no doubt. There are,
+no doubt, unclean men here; there are some who eat
+and drink more than is good for them, habitually;
+there are, no doubt, men and women who are living
+in avarice and worldliness, and doing things which the
+ordinary conscience of the populace points to as faults
+and blemishes. But I come to you respectable people
+that can say: 'I am not as other men are, unjust,
+adulterers, or even as this publican'; and pray you,
+dear friends, to look at your character all round, in the
+light of the righteousness and love of God, and to
+plead to the indictment which charges you with neglect
+of many a duty and with sin against Him. How do
+you plead, 'guilty or not guilty, sinful or not sinful?'
+Be honest with yourselves, and the answer will not be
+far to seek.</p>
+
+<p>Notice how my text draws a broad distinction
+between the right and the wrong kind of sorrow for
+sin. 'Godly sorrow' is, literally rendered,'sorrow
+according to God,' which may either mean sorrow
+which has reference to God, or sorrow which is in
+accordance with His will; that is to say, which is
+pleasing to Him. If it is the former, it will be the
+latter. I prefer to suppose that it is the former&mdash;that
+is, sorrow which has reference to God. And then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+there is another kind of sorrow, which the Apostle
+calls the 'sorrow of the world,' which is devoid of that
+reference to God. Here we have the characteristic
+difference between the Christian way of looking at
+our own faults and shortcomings, and the sorrow of
+the world, which has got no blessing in it, and will
+never lead to anything like righteousness and peace.
+It is just this&mdash;one has reference to God, puts its sin
+by His side, sees its blackness relieved against the
+'fierce light' of the Great White Throne, and the other
+has not that reference.</p>
+
+<p>To expand that for a moment,&mdash;there are plenty of
+us who, when our sin is behind us, and its bitter fruits
+are in our hands, are sorry enough for our faults. A
+man that is lying in the hospital a wreck, with the
+sins of his youth gnawing the flesh off his bones, is
+often enough sorry that he did not live more soberly
+and chastely and temperately in the past days. That
+fraudulent bankrupt who has not got his discharge
+and has lost his reputation, and can get nobody to
+lend him money enough to start him in business again,
+as he hangs about the streets, slouching in his rags, is
+sorry enough that he did not keep the straight road.
+The 'sorrow of the world' has no thought about God
+in it at all. The consequences of sin set many a man's
+teeth on edge who does not feel any compunction for
+the wrong that he did. My brethren, is that the
+position of any that are listening to me now?</p>
+
+<p>Again, men are often sorry for their conduct without
+thinking of it as sin against God. Crime means
+the transgression of man's law, wrong means the
+transgression of conscience's law, sin is the transgression
+of God's law. Some of us would perhaps
+have to say&mdash;'I have done crime.' We are all of us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+quite ready to say: 'I have done wrong many a
+time'; but there are some of us who hesitate to take
+the other step, and say: 'I have done sin.' Sin
+has, for its correlative, God. If there is no God
+there is no sin. There may be faults, there may
+be failures, there may be transgressions, breaches of
+the moral law, things done inconsistent with man's
+nature and constitution, and so on; but if there be a
+God, then we have personal relations to that Person
+and His law; and when we break His law it is more
+than crime; it is more than fault; it is more than
+transgression; it is more than wrong; it is sin. It is
+when you lift the shutter off conscience, and let the
+light of God rush in upon your hearts and consciences,
+that you have the wholesome sorrow that worketh
+repentance and salvation and life.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, dear friends, I do beseech you to lay these
+simple thoughts to heart. Remember, I urge no rigid
+uniformity of experience or character, but I do say
+that unless a man has learned to see his sin in the
+light of God, and in the light of God to weep over it, he
+has yet to know 'the strait gate that leadeth unto life.'</p>
+
+<p>I believe that a very large amount of the superficiality
+and easy-goingness of the Christianity of to-day
+comes just from this, that so many who call
+themselves Christians have never once got a glimpse
+of themselves as they really are. I remember once
+peering over the edge of the crater of Vesuvius, and
+looking down into the pit, all swirling with sulphurous
+fumes. Have you ever looked into your hearts, in
+that fashion, and seen the wreathing smoke and the
+flashing fire there? If you have, you will cleave to
+that Christ, who is your sole deliverance from sin.</p>
+
+<p>But, remember, there is no prescription about depth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+or amount or length of time during which this sorrow
+shall be felt. If, on the one hand, it is essential, on
+the other hand there are a great many people who
+ought to be walking in the light and the liberty of
+God's Gospel who bring darkness and clouds over
+themselves by the anxious scrutinising question: 'Is
+my sorrow deep enough?' Deep enough! What for?
+What is the use of sorrow for sin? To lead a man to
+repentance and to faith. If you have as much sorrow
+as leads you to penitence and trust you have enough.
+It is not your sorrow that is going to wash away your
+sin, it is Christ's blood. So let no man trouble himself
+about the question, Have I sorrow enough? The one
+question is: 'Has my sorrow led me to cast myself on
+Christ?'</p>
+
+<p>II. Still further, look now for a moment at the next
+stage here. 'Godly sorrow worketh repentance.'</p>
+
+<p>What is repentance? No doubt many of you would
+answer that it is 'sorrow for sin,' but clearly this text
+of ours draws a distinction between the two. There
+are very few of the great key-words of Christianity
+that have suffered more violent and unkind treatment,
+and have been more obscured by misunderstandings,
+than this great word. It has been weakened
+down into penitence, which in the ordinary acceptation,
+means simply the emotion that I have already
+been speaking about, viz., a regretful sense of my own
+evil. And it has been still further docked and
+degraded, both in its syllables and in its substance,
+into <i>penance</i>. But the 'repentance' of the New
+Testament and of the Old Testament&mdash;one of the twin
+conditions of salvation&mdash;is neither sorrow for sin nor
+works of restitution and satisfaction, but it is, as the
+word distinctly expresses, a change of purpose in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+regard to the sin for which a man mourns. I cannot
+now expand and elaborate this idea as I should
+like, but let me remind you of one or two passages in
+Scripture which may show that the right notion of the
+word is not sorrow but changed attitude and purpose
+in regard to my sin.</p>
+
+<p>We find passages, some of which ascribe and some
+deny repentance to the Divine nature. But if there be
+a repentance which is possible for the Divine nature,
+it obviously cannot mean sorrow for sin, but must
+signify a change of purpose. In the Epistle to the
+Romans we read, 'The gifts and calling of God are
+without repentance,' which clearly means without
+change of purpose on His part. And I read in the
+story of the mission of the Prophet Jonah, that 'the
+Lord repented of the evil which He had said He would
+do unto them, and He did it not.' Here, again, the
+idea of repentance is clearly and distinctly that of a
+change of purpose. So fix this on your minds, and lay
+it on your hearts, dear friends, that the repentance of
+the New Testament is not idle tears nor the twitchings
+of a vain regret, but the resolute turning away of the
+sinful heart from its sins. It is 'repentance toward
+God,' the turning from the sin to the Father, and that
+is what leads to salvation. The sorrow is separated
+from the repentance in idea, however closely they may
+be intertwined in fact. The sorrow is one thing, and
+the repentance which it works is another.</p>
+
+<p>Then notice that this change of purpose and breaking
+off from sin is produced by the sorrow for sin, of
+which I have been speaking; and that the production
+of this repentance is the main characteristic difference
+between the godly sorrow and the sorrow of the
+world. A man may have his paroxysms of regret, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+the question is: Does it make any difference in his
+attitude? Is he standing, after the tempest of sorrow
+has swept over him, with his face in the same direction
+as before; or has it whirled him clean round, and set
+him in the other direction? The one kind of sorrow,
+which measures my sin by the side of the brightness
+and purity of God, vindicates itself as true, because it
+makes me hate my evil and turn away from it. The
+other, which is of the world, passes over me like the
+empty wind through an archway, it whistles for a
+moment and is gone, and there is nothing left to show
+that it was ever there. The one comes like one of
+those brooks in tropical countries, dry and white for
+half the year, and then there is a rush of muddy
+waters, fierce but transient, and leaving no results
+behind. My brother! when your conscience pricks,
+which of these two things does it do? After the
+prick, is the word of command that your Will issues
+'Right about face!' or is it 'As you were'? Godly
+sorrow worketh a change of attitude, purpose, mind;
+the sorrow of the world leaves a man standing where
+he was. Ask yourselves the question: Which of the
+two are you familiar with?</p>
+
+<p>Again, the true means of evoking true repentance is
+the contemplation of the Cross. Law and the fear of
+hell may startle into sorrow, and even lead to some
+kind of repentance. But it is the great power of
+Christ's love and sacrifice which will really melt the
+heart into true repentance. You may hammer ice to
+pieces, but it is ice still. You may bray a fool in a
+mortar, and his folly will not depart from him. Dread
+of punishment may pulverise the heart, but not change
+it; and each fragment, like the smallest bits of a
+magnet, will have the same characteristics as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+whole mass. But 'the goodness of God leads to
+repentance' as the prodigal is conquered and sees the
+true hideousness of the swine's trough, when he
+bethinks himself of the father's love. I beseech you
+to put yourselves under the influence of that great
+love, and look on that Cross till your hearts melt.</p>
+
+<p>III. We come to the last stage here. Salvation is
+the issue of repentance. 'Godly sorrow worketh repentance
+unto salvation not to be repented of.'</p>
+
+<p>What is the connection between repentance and
+salvation? Two sentences will answer the question.
+You cannot get salvation without repentance. You
+do not get salvation by repentance.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot get the salvation of God unless you
+shake off your sin. It is no use preaching to a man,
+'Faith, Faith, Faith!' unless you preach along with
+it,'Break off your iniquities.' 'Let the wicked forsake
+his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and
+let him turn unto the Lord.' The nature of the case
+forbids it. It is a clear contradiction in terms, and an
+absolute impossibility in fact, that God should save a
+man with the salvation which consists in the deliverance
+from sin, whilst that man is holding to his sin. Unless,
+therefore, you have not merely sorrow, but repentance,
+which is turning away from sin with resolute
+purpose, as a man would turn from a serpent, you
+cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>But you do not get salvation for your repentance.
+It is no case of barter, it is no case of salvation by
+works, that work being repentance:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Could my zeal no respite know">
+<tr><td align='left'>'Could my zeal no respite know,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Could my tears for ever flow,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All for sin could not atone,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou must save, and Thou alone.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Not my penitence, but Christ's death, is the ground of
+the salvation of every one that is saved at all. Yet
+repentance is an indispensable condition of salvation.</div>
+
+<p>What is the connection between repentance and
+faith? There can be no true repentance without trust
+in Christ. There can be no true trust in Christ without
+the forsaking of my sin. Repentance without faith,
+in so far as it is possible, is one long misery; like the
+pains of those poor Hindoo devotees that will go all
+the way from Cape Comorin to the shrine of Juggernaut,
+and measure every foot of the road with the
+length of their own bodies in the dust. Men will do
+anything, and willingly make any sacrifice, rather
+than open their eyes to see this,&mdash;that repentance,
+clasped hand in hand with Faith, leads the guiltiest
+soul into the forgiving presence of the crucified Christ,
+from whom peace flows into the darkest heart.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, faith without repentance is not
+possible, in any deep sense. But in so far as it is
+possible, it produces a superficial Christianity which
+vaguely trusts to Christ without knowing exactly
+what it is trusting Him for, or why it needs Him; and
+which has a great deal to say about what I may call
+the less important parts of the Christian system, and
+nothing to say about its vital centre; which preaches
+a morality which is not a living power to create;
+which practises a religion which is neither a joy nor a
+security. The old word of the Master has a deep truth
+in it: 'These are they which heard the word, and anon
+with joy received it.' Having no sorrow, no penitence,
+no deep consciousness of sin, 'they have no root in
+themselves, and in time of temptation they fall away.'
+If there is to be a profound, an all-pervading, life-transforming-sin,
+and devil-conquering faith, it must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+be a faith rooted deep in penitence and sorrow for
+sin.</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, if, by God's grace, my poor words
+have touched your consciences at all, I beseech you, do
+not trifle with the budding conviction! Do not seek
+to have the wound skinned over. Take care that you
+do not let it all pass in idle sorrow or impotent regret.
+If you do, you will be hardened, and the worse for it,
+and come nearer to that condition which the sorrow of
+the world worketh, the awful death of the soul. Do
+not wince from the knife before the roots of the
+cancer are cut out. The pain is merciful. Better the
+wound than the malignant growth. Yield yourselves
+to the Spirit that would convince you of sin, and
+listen to the voice that calls to you to forsake your
+unrighteous ways and thoughts. But do not trust to
+any tears, do not trust to any resolves, do not trust
+to any reformation. Trust only to the Lord who died
+on the Cross for you, whose death for you, whose
+life in you, will be deliverance from your sin. Then
+you will have a salvation which, in the striking
+language of my text, 'is not to be repented of,' which
+will leave no regrets in your hearts in the day when
+all else shall have faded, and the sinful sweets of this
+world shall have turned to ashes and bitterness on the
+lips of the men that feed on them.</p>
+
+<p>'The sorrow of the world works death.' There are
+men and women listening to me now who are half
+conscious of their sin, and are resisting the pleading
+voice that comes to them, who at the last will open
+their eyes upon the realities of their lives, and in a
+wild passion of remorse, exclaim: 'I have played the
+fool, and have erred exceedingly.' Better to make
+thorough work of the sorrow, and by it to be led to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+repentance toward God and faith in Christ, and so
+secure for our own that salvation for which no man
+will ever regret having given even the whole world,
+since he gains his own soul.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GIVING AND ASKING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace of God bestowed on the
+churches of Macedonia; 2. How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance
+of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality.
+3. For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were
+willing of themselves; 4. Praying us with much entreaty that we would receive
+the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. 5. And
+this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and
+unto us by the will of God: 6. Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he had
+begun, so he would also finish in you the same grace also. 7. Therefore, as ye
+abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence,
+and in your love to us; see that ye abound in this grace also. 8. I speak not by
+commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the
+sincerity of your love. 9. For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that,
+though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His
+poverty might be rich. 10. And herein I give my advice: for this is expedient for
+you, who have begun before, not only to do, but also to be forward a year ago.
+11. Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so
+there may be a performance also out of that which ye have. 12. For if there be
+first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according
+to that he hath not.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> viii. 1-12.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A collection from Gentile churches for their poor
+brethren in Jerusalem occupied much of Paul's time
+and efforts before his last visit to that city. Many
+events, which have filled the world with noise and
+been written at length in histories, were less significant
+than that first outcome of the unifying spirit of
+common faith. It was a making visible of the grand
+thought, 'Ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' Practical
+help, prompted by a deep-lying sense of unity which
+overleaped gulfs of separation in race, language, and
+social conditions, was a unique novelty. It was the
+first pulsation of that spirit of Christian liberality which
+has steadily grown in force and sweep ever since.
+Foolish people gibe at some of its manifestations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+Wiser ones regard its existence as not the least of the
+marks of the divine origin of Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>This passage is a striking example of the inimitable
+delicacy of the Apostle. His words are full of what we
+should call tact, if it were not manifestly the spontaneous
+utterance of right feeling. They are a perfect
+model of the true way to appeal for money, and set
+forth also the true spirit in which such appeals should
+be made.</p>
+
+<p>In verses 1 to 5, Paul seeks to stimulate the liberality
+of the Corinthians by recounting that of the Macedonian
+churches. His sketch draws in outline the picture of
+what all Christian money-giving should be. We note
+first the designation of the Macedonian Christians'
+beneficence as 'a grace' given by God to them. It
+is twice called so (vers. 1, 4), and the same name is
+applied in regard to the Corinthians' giving (vers. 6, 7).
+That is the right way to look at money contributions.
+The opportunity to give them, and the inclination to
+do so, are God's gifts. How many of us think that
+calls for service or money are troublesome obligations,
+to be got out of as easily as possible! A true Christian
+will be thankful, as for a love token from God, for
+every occasion of giving to Him. It would be a sharp
+test for many of us to ask ourselves whether we can
+say, 'To me .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. is this grace given,' that I should part
+with my money for Christ's sake.</p>
+
+<p>Note, further, the lovely picture of these Macedonian
+givers. They were plunged in sorrows and troubles,
+but these did not dry their fountains of sympathy.
+Nothing is apt to be more selfish than grief; and if we
+have tears to spare for others, when they are flowing
+bitterly for ourselves, we have graduated well in
+Christ's school. Paul calls the Macedonians' troubles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+'proof of their affliction,' meaning that it constituted a
+proof of their Christian character; that is, by the
+manner in which it was borne; and in it they had still
+'abundance of joy,' for the paradox of the Christian
+life is that it admits of the co-existence of grief and
+gladness.</p>
+
+<p>Again, Christian giving gives from scanty stores.
+'Deep poverty' is no excuse for not giving, and will be
+no hindrance to a willing heart. 'I cannot afford it' is
+sometimes a genuine valid reason, but oftener an insincere
+plea. Why are subscriptions for religious
+purposes the first expenditure to be reduced in bad
+times?</p>
+
+<p>Further, Christian giving gives up to the very edge
+of ability, and sometimes goes beyond the limits of so-called
+prudence. In all regions 'power to its last
+particle is duty,' and unless power is strained it is not
+fully exercised. It is in trying to do what we cannot do
+that we do best what we can do. He who keeps well
+within the limits of his supposed ability will probably
+not do half as much as he could. While there is a
+limit behind which generosity even for Christ may
+become dishonesty or disregard of other equally sacred
+claims, there is little danger of modern Christians
+transgressing that limit, and they need the stimulus to
+do a little more than they think they can do, rather
+than to listen to cold-blooded prudence.</p>
+
+<p>Further, Christian giving does not wait to be asked,
+but takes the opportunity to give as itself 'grace' and
+presses its benefactions. It is an unwonted experience
+for a collector of subscriptions to be besought to
+take them 'with much entreaty,' but it would not
+be so anomalous if Christian people understood their
+privileges.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Further, Christian giving begins with the surrender
+of self to Christ, from which necessarily follows the
+glad offering of wealth. These Macedonians did more
+than Paul had hoped, and the explanation of the unexpected
+largeness of their contributions was their
+yielding of themselves to Jesus. That is the deepest
+source of all true liberality. If a man feels that he
+does not own himself, much less will he feel that his
+goods are his own. A slave's owner possesses the
+slave's bit of garden ground, his hut, and its furniture.
+If I belong to Christ, to whom does my money belong?
+But the consciousness that my goods are not mine, but
+Christ's, is not to remain a mere sentiment. It can
+receive practical embodiment by my giving them to
+Christ's representatives. The way for the Macedonians
+to show that they regarded their goods as Christ's, was
+to give them to Paul for Christ's poor saints. Jesus
+has His representatives still, and it is useless for people
+to talk or sing about belonging to Him, unless they
+verify their words by deeds.</p>
+
+<p>Verse 6 tells the Corinthians that the success of the
+collection in Macedonia had induced Paul to send Titus
+to Corinth to promote it there. He had previously
+visited it on the same errand (chap. xii. 14), and now is
+coming to complete 'this grace.' The rest of the
+passage is Paul's appeal to the Corinthians for their
+help in the matter, and certainly never was such an
+appeal made in a more dignified, noble, and lofty tone.
+He has been dilating on the liberality of others, and
+thereby sanctioning the stimulating of Christian liberality,
+in the same way as other graces may legitimately
+be stimulated, by example. That is delicate ground to
+tread on, and needs caution if it is not to degenerate
+into an appeal to rivalry, as it too often does, but in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+itself is perfectly legitimate and wholesome. But,
+passing from that incitement, Paul rests his plea on
+deeper grounds.</p>
+
+<p>First, Christian liberality is essential to the completeness
+of Christian character. Paul's praise in verse 7 is
+not mere flattery, nor meant to put the Corinthians
+into good humour. He will have enough to say hereafter
+about scandals and faults, but now he gives them
+credit for all the good he knew to be in them. Faith
+comes first, as always. It is the root of every Christian
+excellence. Then follow two graces, eminently
+characteristic of a Greek church, and apt to run to seed
+in it,&mdash;utterance and knowledge. Then two more, both
+of a more emotional character,&mdash;earnestness and love,
+especially to Paul as Christ's servant. But all these
+fair attributes lacked completeness without the crowning
+grace of liberality. It is the crowning grace,
+because it is the practical manifestation of the highest
+excellences. It is the result of sympathy, of unselfishness,
+of contact with Christ, of drinking in of His spirit,
+Love is best. Utterance and knowledge and earnestness
+are poor beside it. This grace is like the diamond
+which clasps a necklace of jewels.</p>
+
+<p>Christian giving does not need to be commanded. 'I
+speak not by way of commandment.' That is poor
+virtue which only obeys a precept. Gifts given because
+it is duty to give them are not really gifts, but taxes.
+They leave no sweet savour on the hand that bestows,
+and bring none to that which receives. 'I call you not
+servants, but friends.' The region in which Christian
+liberality moves is high above the realm of law and its
+correlative, obligation.</p>
+
+<p>Further, Christian liberality springs spontaneously
+from conscious possession of Christ's riches. We can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>not
+here enter on the mysteries of Christ's emptying
+Himself of His riches of glory. We can but touch the
+stupendous fact, remembering that the place whereon
+we stand is holy ground. Who can measure the nature
+and depth of that self-denuding of the glory which He
+had with the Father before the world was? But, thank
+God, we do not need to measure it, in order to feel the
+solemn, blessed force of the appeal which it makes to
+us. Adoring wonder and gratitude, unfaltering trust
+and absolute self-surrender to a love so self-sacrificing,
+must ever follow the belief of that mystery of Divine
+mercy, the incarnation and sacrifice of the eternal Son.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul would have us remember that the same
+mighty act of stooping love, which is the foundation of
+all our hope, is to be the pattern for all our conduct.
+Even in His divinest and most mysterious act, Christ is
+our example. A dewdrop is rounded by the same laws
+which shape the planetary spheres or the sun himself;
+and Christians but half trust Christ if they do not
+imitate Him. What selfishness in enjoyment of our
+'own things' could live in us if we duly brought ourselves
+under the influence of that example? How
+miserably poor and vulgar the appeals by which money
+is sometimes drawn from grudging owners and tight-buttoned
+pockets, sound beside that heart-searching
+and heart-moving one, 'Ye know the grace of our Lord
+Jesus Christ!'</p>
+
+<p>Further, Christian liberality will not go off in good
+intentions and benevolent sentiments. The Corinthians
+were ready with their 'willing' on Titus's previous
+visit. Now Paul desires them to put their good feelings
+into concrete shape. There is plenty of benevolence
+that never gets to be beneficence. The advice here has
+a very wide application: 'As there was the readiness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+to will, so there may be the completion also.' We all
+know where the road leads that is paved with good
+intentions.</p>
+
+<p>Further, Christian liberality is accepted and rewarded
+according to willingness, if that is carried into act
+according to ability. While the mere wish to help is
+not enough, it is the vital element in the act which
+flows from it; and there may be more of it in the
+widow's mite than in the rich man's large donation&mdash;or
+there may be less. The conditions of acceptable
+offerings are twofold&mdash;first, readiness, glad willingness
+to give, as opposed to closed hearts or grudging
+bestowals; and, second, that willingness embodied in
+the largest gift possible. The absence of either vitiates
+all. The presence of both gives trifles a place in God's
+storehouse of precious things. A father is glad when
+his child brings him some utterly valueless present,
+not because he must, but because he loves; and many
+a parent has such laid away in sacred repositories.
+God knows how to take gifts from His children, not less
+well than we who are evil know how to do it.</p>
+
+<p>But the gracious saying of our passage has a solemn
+side; for if only gifts 'according as a man hath' are
+accepted, what becomes of the many which fall far
+short of our ability, and are really given, not because
+we have the willing mind, but because we could not get
+out of the unwelcome necessity to part with a miserably
+inadequate percentage of our possessions. Is God
+likely to be satisfied with the small dividends which we
+offer as composition for our great debt?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>RICH YET POOR</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich
+yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.'&mdash;2
+<span class="smcap">Cor.</span> viii. 9.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle has been speaking about a matter which,
+to us, seems very small, but to him was very great
+viz., a gathering of pecuniary help from the Gentile
+churches for the poor church in Jerusalem. Large
+issues, in his estimation, attended that exhibition of
+Christian unity, and, be it great or small, he applies the
+highest of all motives to this matter. 'For ye know
+the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was
+rich yet for your sakes He became poor.' The trivial
+things of life are to be guided and shaped by reference
+to the highest of all things, the example of Jesus
+Christ; and that in the whole depth of His humiliation,
+and even in regard to His cross and passion. We
+have here set forth, as the pattern to which the
+Christian life is to be conformed, the deepest conception
+of what our Lord's career on earth was.</p>
+
+<p>The whole Christian Church is about to celebrate the
+nativity of our Lord at this time. This text gives us
+the true point of view from which to regard it. We
+have here the work of Christ in its deepest motive,
+'The grace of our Lord Jesus.' We have it in its transcendent
+self-impoverishment, 'Though He was rich,
+yet for our sakes He became poor.' We have it in its
+highest issue, 'That ye through His poverty might
+become rich.' Let us look at those points.</p>
+
+<p>I. Here we have the deepest motive which underlies
+the whole work of Christ, unveiled to us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
+Every word here is significant. It is very unusual in
+the New Testament to find that expression 'grace'
+applied to Jesus Christ. Except in the familiar benediction,
+I think there are only one or two instances of such
+a collocation of words. It is 'the grace of God' which,
+throughout the New Testament, is the prevailing expression.
+But here 'grace is attributed to Jesus';
+that is to say, the love of the Divine heart is, without
+qualification or hesitation, ascribed to Him. And what
+do we mean by grace? We mean love in exercise to
+inferiors. It is infinite condescension in Jesus to love.
+His love stoops when it embraces us. Very significant,
+therefore, is the employment here of the solemn full
+title, 'the Lord Jesus Christ,' which enhances the condescension
+by making prominent the height from
+which it bent. The 'grace' is all the more wonderful
+because of the majesty and sovereignty, to say the
+least of it, which are expressed in that title, the Lord.
+The highest stoops and stands upon the level of the
+lowest. 'Grace' is love that expresses itself to those
+who deserve something else. And the deepest motive,
+which is the very key to the whole phenomena of the
+life of Jesus Christ, is that it is all the exhibition, as it
+is the consequence, of a love that, stooping, forgives.
+'Grace' is love that, stooping and forgiving, communicates
+its whole self to unworthy and transgressing
+recipients. And the key to the life of Jesus is that
+we have set forth in its operation a love which is
+not content to speak only the ordinary language of
+human affection, or to do its ordinary deeds, but is
+self-impelled to impart what transcends all other gifts
+of human tenderness, and to give its very self. And
+so a love that condescends, a love that passes by un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>worthiness,
+is turned away by no sin, is unmoved to
+any kind of anger, and never allows its cheek to flush
+or its heart to beat faster, because of any provocation
+and a love that is content with nothing short of entire
+surrender and self-impartation underlies all that
+precious life from Bethlehem to Calvary.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another word in our text that may well
+be here taken into consideration. 'For your sakes,'
+says the Apostle to that Corinthian church, made up
+of people, not one of whom had ever seen or been seen
+by Jesus. And yet the regard to them was part of the
+motive that moved the Lord to His life, and His death.
+That is to say, to generalise the thought, this grace,
+thus stooping and forgiving and self-imparting, is a
+love that gathers into its embrace and to its heart all
+mankind; and is universal because it is individualising.
+Just as each planet in the heavens, and each tiny
+plant upon the earth, are embraced by, and separately
+receive, the benediction of that all-encompassing arch
+of the heaven, so that grace enfolds all, because it takes
+account of each. Whilst it is love for a sinful world,
+every soul of us may say: 'He loved me, and'&mdash;therefore&mdash;'gave
+Himself for me.' Unless we see beneath
+the sweet story of the earthly life this deep-lying
+source of it all, we fail to understand that life itself.
+We may bring criticism to bear upon it; we may apprehend
+it in diverse affecting, elevating, educating
+aspects; but, oh! brethren, we miss the blazing centre
+of the light, the warm heart of the fire, unless we see
+pulsating through all the individual facts of the life
+this one, all-shaping, all-vitalising motive; the grace&mdash;the
+stooping, the pardoning, the self-communicating,
+the individualising, and the universal love of Jesus
+Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So then, we have here set before us the work of
+Christ in its&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>II. Most mysterious and unique self-impoverishment.</p>
+
+<p>'He was .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He became,' there is one strange contrast.
+'He was <i>rich</i> .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He became <i>poor</i>,' there is
+another. 'He was .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He became.' What does that
+say? Well, it says that if you want to understand Bethlehem,
+you must go back to a time before Bethlehem.
+The meaning of Christ's birth is only understood when
+we turn to that Evangelist who does not narrate it.
+For the meaning of it is here; 'the Word became
+flesh, and dwelt among us.' The surface of the fact is
+the smallest part of the fact. They say that there is
+seven times as much of an iceberg under water as
+there is above the surface. And the deepest and most
+important fact about the nativity of our Lord is that
+it was not only the birth of an Infant, but the Incarnation
+of the Word. 'He was .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He became.' We have
+to travel back and recognise that that life did not begin
+in the manger. We have to travel back and recognise
+the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>And these two words 'He was .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He became,' imply
+another thing, and that is, that Jesus Christ who died
+because He chose, was not passive in His being born,
+but as at the end of His earthly life, so at its beginning
+exercised His volition, and was born because He
+willed, and willed because of 'the grace of our Lord
+Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>Now in this connection it is very remarkable, and
+well worth our pondering, that throughout the whole
+of the Gospels, when Jesus speaks of His coming into
+the world, He never uses the word 'born' but once, and
+that was before the Roman governor, who would not
+have understood or cared for anything further, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+whom He did say,'To this end was I born.' But even
+when speaking to him His consciousness that that word
+did not express the whole truth was so strong that He
+could not help adding&mdash;though He knew that the hard
+Roman procurator would pay no attention to the
+apparent tautology&mdash;the expression which more truly
+corresponded to the fact, 'and for this cause came I
+into the world.' The two phrases are not parallel.
+They are by no means synonymous. One expresses the
+outward fact; the other expresses that which underlay
+it. 'To this end was I born.' Yes! 'And for this
+cause came I.' He Himself put it still more definitely
+when He said, 'I came forth from the Father, and am
+come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go
+unto the Father.' So the two extremities of the earthly
+manifestation are neither of them ends; but before the
+one, and behind the other, there stretches an identity
+or oneness of Being and condition. The one as the
+other, the birth and the death, may be regarded as, in
+deepest reality, not only what He passively endured,
+but what He actively did. He was born, and He died,
+that in all points He might be 'like unto His brethren.'
+He 'came' into the world, and He 'went' to the
+Father. The end circled round to the beginning, and
+in both He acted because He chose, and chose because
+He loved.</p>
+
+<p>So much, then, lies in the one of these two antitheses
+of my text; and the other is no less profound and
+significant. 'He was rich; He became poor.' In this
+connection 'rich' can only mean possessed of the
+Divine fulness and independence; and 'poor' can only
+mean possessed of human infirmity, dependence, and
+emptiness. And so to Jesus of Nazareth, to be born
+was impoverishment. If there is nothing more in His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+birth than in the birth of each of us, the words are
+grotesquely inappropriate to the facts of the case.
+For as between nothingness, which is the alternative,
+and the possession of conscious being, there is surely
+a contrast the very reverse of that expressed here.
+For us, to be born is to be endowed with capacities,
+with the wealth of intelligent, responsible, voluntary
+being; but to Jesus Christ, if we accept the New Testament
+teaching, to be born was a step, an infinite step,
+downwards, and He, alone of all men, might have been
+'ashamed to call men brethren.' But this denudation
+of Himself, into the particulars of which I do not care
+to enter now, was the result of that stooping grace
+which 'counted it not a thing to be clutched hold of, to
+be equal with God; but He made Himself of no reputation,
+and was found in fashion as a man, and became
+obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.'</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear friends, we know the measure of the
+stooping love of Jesus only when we read the history
+by the light of this thought, that 'though He was
+rich' with all the fulness of that eternal Word which
+was 'in the beginning with God,' 'He became poor,'
+with the poverty, the infirmity, the liability to temptation,
+the weakness, that attach to humanity; 'and
+was found in all points like unto His brethren,' that
+He might be able to help and succour them all.</p>
+
+<p>The last thing here is&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>III. The work of Christ set forth in its highest
+issue.</p>
+
+<p>'That we through His poverty might become rich.'
+Of course, the antithetical expressions must be taken
+to be used in the same sense, and with the same width
+of application, in both of the clauses. And if so, just
+think reverently, wonderingly, thankfully, of the infinite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+vista of glorious possibility that is open to us here.
+Christ was rich in the possession of that Divine glory
+which Had had with the Father before the world was.
+'He became poor,' in assuming the weakness of the
+manhood that you and I carry, that we, in the human
+poverty which is like His poverty, may become rich
+with wealth that is like His riches, and that as He
+stooped to earth veiling the Divine with the human,
+we may rise to heaven, clothing the human with the
+Divine.</p>
+
+<p>For surely there is nothing more plainly taught in
+Scriptures, and I am bold to say nothing to which any
+deep and vital Christian experience even here gives
+more surely an anticipatory confirmation, than the
+fact that Christ became like unto us, that each of us
+may become like unto Him. The divine and the
+human natures are similar, and the fact of the
+Incarnation, on the one hand, and of the man's glorification
+by possession of the divine nature on the other,
+equally rest upon that fundamental resemblance
+between the divine nature and the human nature which
+God has made in His own image. If that which in
+each of us is unlike God is cleared away, as it can be
+cleared away, through faith in that dear Lord, then the
+likeness as a matter of course, comes into force.</p>
+
+<p>The law of all elevation is that whosoever desires to
+lift must stoop; and the end of all stooping is to lift
+the lowly to the place from which the love hath bent
+itself. And this is at once the law for the Incarnation
+of the Christ, and for the elevation of the Christian. 'We
+shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.' And
+the great love, the stooping, forgiving, self-communicating
+love, doth not reach its ultimate issue, nor effect
+fully the purposes to which it ever is tending, unless and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+until all who have received it are 'changed from glory
+to glory even into the image of the Lord.' We do not
+understand Jesus, His cradle, or His Cross, unless on the
+one hand we see in them His emptying Himself that He
+might fill us, and, on the other hand, see, as the only
+result which warrants them and satisfies Him, our
+complete conformity to His image, and our participation
+in that glory which He has at the right hand of
+God. That is the prospect for humanity, and it is
+possible for each of us.</p>
+
+<p>I do not dwell upon other aspects of this great self-emptying
+of our Lord's, such as the revelation in it to
+us of the very heart of God, and of the divinest thing
+in the divine nature, which is love, or such as the sympathy
+which is made possible thereby to Him, and
+which is not only the pity of a God, but the compassion
+of a Brother. Nor do I touch upon many other aspects
+which are full of strengthening and teaching. That
+grand thought that Jesus has shared our human
+poverty that we may share His divine riches is the very
+apex of the New Testament teaching, and of the
+Christian hope. We have within us, notwithstanding
+all our transgressions, what the old divines used to
+call a 'deiform nature,' capable of being lifted up into
+the participation of divinity, capable of being cleansed
+from all the spots and stains which make us so unlike
+Him in whose likeness we were made.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, let us not forget that this stooping, and
+pardoning, and self-imparting love, has for its main
+instrument to appeal to our hearts, not the cradle but
+the Cross. We are being told by many people to-day
+that the centre of Christianity lies in the thought of
+an Incarnation. Yes. But our Lord Himself has told
+us what that was for.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but
+to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.'
+It is only when we look to that Lord in His death, and
+see there the very lowest point to which He stooped,
+and the supreme manifestation of His grace, that we
+shall be drawn to yield our hearts and lives to Him in
+thankfulness, in trust, and in imitation: and shall set
+Him before us as the pattern for our conduct, as well
+as the Object of our trust.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, my text was spoken originally as presenting
+the motive and the example for a little piece of
+pecuniary liability. Do you take the cradle and the
+Cross as the law of your lives? For depend upon it,
+the same necessity which obliged Jesus to come down
+to our level, if He would lift us to His; to live our life
+and die our death, if He would make us partakers of
+His immortal life, and deliver us from death; makes it
+absolutely necessary that if we are to live for anything
+nobler than our own poor, transitory self-aggrandisement,
+we too must learn to stoop to forgive, to impart
+ourselves, and must die by self-surrender and sacrifice,
+if we are ever to communicate any life, or good of
+life, to others. He has loved us, and given Himself for
+us. He has set us therein an example which He commends
+to us by His own word when He tells us that
+'if a corn of wheat' is to bring forth 'much fruit' it
+must die, else it 'abideth alone.' Unless we die, we
+never truly live; unless we die to ourselves for others,
+and like Jesus, we live alone in the solitude of a self-enclosed
+self-regard. So living, we are dead whilst we
+live.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WILLING AND NOT DOING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will
+so there may be a performance also.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> viii. 11.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Revised Version reads: 'But now complete the
+doing also; that as there was the readiness to will, so
+there may be the completion also out of your ability.'
+A collection of money for the almost pauper church at
+Jerusalem bulked very largely in the Apostle's mind
+at the date of the writing of the two letters to the
+Corinthian church. We learn that that church had
+been the first to agree to the project, and then had
+very distinctly hung back from implementing its
+promises and fulfilling its good intentions. So the
+Apostle, in the chapter from which my text is taken,
+with wonderful delicacy, dignity, and profundity, sets
+forth the true principle, not only of Christian giving,
+but of Christian asking. The text advises that the gushing
+sentiments of brotherly sympathy and liberality
+which had inspired the Corinthians a year ago should
+now bear some fruit in action. So Paul is going to
+send Titus, his right-hand man at the time, to hurry
+up and finish off the collection and have done with it.
+The text is in effect the message which Titus was to
+carry; but it has a far wider application than that.
+It is a needful advice for us all about a great many
+other things: 'As there was a readiness to will, so let
+there be a performance also.'</p>
+
+<p>Resolutions, noble and good and Christlike, have a
+strange knack of cheating the people who make them.
+So we all need the exhortation not to be befooled by
+fancying that we have done, when we have only willed.
+Of course we shall not do unless we will. But there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+a wide gap, as our experience witnesses, between the
+two things. We all know what place it is to which,
+according to the old proverb, the road is paved with
+good intentions; and the only way to pull up that
+paving is to take Paul's advice here and always, and
+immediately to put into action the resolves of our
+hearts. Now I desire to say two or three very plain
+and simple things about this matter.</p>
+
+<p>I. I would have you consider the necessity of this
+commandment.</p>
+
+<p>Consider that the fault here warned against is a
+universal one. What different men we should be if
+our resolutions had fruited in conduct! In all regions
+of life that is true, but most emphatically is it true in
+regard to religion. The damning tragedy of many
+lives, and I dare say of those of some of my hearers,
+is that men have over and over again determined that
+they would be Christians, and they are not Christians
+yet; just because they have let 'the native hue of
+resolution be sicklied over' by some paleness or other,
+and so have resolved and resolved and resolved till
+every nerve of action is rotted away, and they will die
+unchristian. I dare say that there are men or women
+listening to me now, perhaps with grey hairs upon
+them, who can remember times, in the springtide of
+their youth, when they said, 'I will give my heart to
+Jesus Christ, and set my faith upon Him'; and they
+have not done it yet. Now, therefore, 'as there was
+a readiness to will, let there be also the performance.'</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only in regard to that most important
+of all resolves that I wish to say a word. All Christians,
+I am sure, know what it is, over and over again, to
+have had stirrings in their hearts which they have been
+able to consolidate into determination, but have not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+been able to carry into act. 'The children have come
+to the birth, and there is not strength to bring them
+forth.' That is true about all of us, more or less, and
+it is very solemnly true of a great many of us professing
+Christians. We have tried to cure&mdash;we have
+determined that we will cure&mdash;manifest and flagrant
+defects or faults in our Christian life. We have
+resolved, and some nipping frost has come, and the
+blossoms have dropped on the grass before they have
+ever set into fruit. I know that is so about you, because
+I know that it is so about myself. And therefore, dear
+brethren, I appeal to you, and ask you whether the
+exhortation of my text has not a sharp point for every
+one of us&mdash;whether the universality of this defect does
+not demand that we all should gravely consider the
+exhortation here before us?</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, let me remind you how this injunction
+is borne in upon us by the consideration of the strength
+of the opposition with which we have always to contend,
+in every honest attempt to bring to act our best
+resolutions. Did you ever try to cure some little habit,
+some mere trifle, a trick of manner or twist of the
+finger, or some attitude or tone that might be ugly and
+awkward, and that people told you that it would be
+better to get rid of? You know how hard it is. There
+is always a tremendous gulf between the ideal and its
+realisation in life. As long as we are moving <i>in vacuo</i>
+we move without any friction or difficulty; but as soon
+as we come out into a world where there are an atmosphere
+and opposing forces, then friction comes in, and
+speed diminishes; and we never become what we aim
+to be. We begin with grand purposes, and we end
+with very poor results. We all start, in our early
+days, with the notion that our lives are going to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+radiant and beautiful, and all unlike what the limitations
+of power and the antagonisms that we have to
+meet make of them at last. The tree of our life's doings
+has to grow, like those contorted pines on the slopes of
+the Alps, in many storms, with heavy weights of snow
+on its branches, and beaten about by tempests from
+every quarter of the heavens; and so it gets gnarled
+and knotted and very unlike the symmetrical beauty
+that we dreamed would adorn it. We begin with saying:
+'Come! Let us build a tower whose top shall reach to
+heaven'; and we are contented at last, if we have put
+up some little tumble-down shed where we can get
+shelter for our heads from the blast.</p>
+
+<p>And the difficulty in bringing into action our best
+selves besets us in the matter of translating our resolutions
+into practice. What are arrayed against it? A
+feeble will, enslaved too often by passions and flesh
+and habits, and all about us lie obstacles to our
+carrying into action our conscientious convictions, our
+deepest resolutions; obstacles to our being true to our
+true selves; to which obstacles, alas, far too many of
+us habitually, and all of us occasionally, succumb. That
+being the case, do not we all need to ponder in our
+deepest hearts, and to pray for grace to make the
+motto of our lives, 'As there was a readiness to will,
+let there be a performance'?</p>
+
+<p>II. Consider the importance of this counsel.</p>
+
+<p>That is borne in upon mind and conscience by looking
+at the disastrous effects of letting resolutions
+remain sterile. Consider how apt we are to deceive
+ourselves with unfulfilled purposes. The quick response
+which an easily-moved nature may make to
+some appeal of noble thought or lofty principle is
+mistaken for action, and we are tempted to think that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+willing is almost as good as if we had done what we
+half resolved on. And there is a kind of glow of satisfaction
+that comes when such a man thinks, 'I have
+done well in that I have determined.' The Devil will
+let you resolve as much as you like&mdash;the more the
+better; only the more easily you resolve, the more
+certainly he will block the realisation. Let us take
+care of that seducing temptation which is apt to lead
+us all to plume ourselves on good resolutions, and to
+fancy that they are almost equivalent to their own
+fulfilment. Cheques are all very well if there be bullion
+in the bank cellars to pay them with when they fall
+due, but if that be not so, then the issuing of them is
+crime and fraud. Our resolutions, made and forgotten
+as so many of our good resolutions are, are very little
+better.</p>
+
+<p>Note, too, how rapidly the habit of substituting
+lightly-made resolutions for seriously-endeavoured
+acts grows.</p>
+
+<p>And mark, further, how miserable and debilitating
+it is to carry the dead weight of such unaccomplished
+intentions.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing so certainly weakens a man as a multitude
+of resolves that he knows he has never fulfilled. They
+weaken his will, burden his conscience, stand in the
+way of his hopes, make him feel as if the entail of
+evil was too firm and strong to be ever broken. 'O
+wretched man that I am!' said one who had made
+experience of what it was to will what was good, and
+not to find how to perform, 'who shall deliver me from
+the body of this death?' It is an awful thing to have
+to carry a corpse about on your back. And that was
+what Paul thought the man did who loaded his own
+shoulders with abortive resolutions, that perished in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+the birth, and never grew up to maturity. Weak and
+miserable is always the man who is swift to resolve
+and slow to carry out his resolutions.</p>
+
+<p>III. And now let me say a word before I close about
+how this universal and grave disease is to be coped with.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I should say to begin with, let us take very
+soberly and continually into our consciousness the recognition
+of the fact that the disease is there. And
+then may I say, let us be rather slower to resolve than
+we often are. 'Better is it that thou shouldest not
+vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.'
+The man who has never had the determination to give
+up some criminal indulgence&mdash;say, drink&mdash;is possibly
+less criminal, and certainly less weak, than the man
+who, when his head aches, and the consequences of his
+self-indulgence are vividly realised by him, makes up
+his mind to be a teetotaller, and soon stumbles into
+the first dram-shop that is open, and then reels out
+a drunkard. Do not vow until you have made up your
+minds to pay. Remember that it is a solemn act to
+determine anything, especially anything bearing on
+moral and religious life; and that you had far better
+keep your will in suspense than spring to the resolution
+with thoughtless levity and leave it with the same.</p>
+
+<p>Further, the habit of promptly carrying out our
+resolves is one that, like all other habits, can be cultivated.
+And we can cultivate it in little things, in the
+smallest trifles of daily life, which by their myriads
+make up life itself, in order that it may be a fixed
+custom of our minds when great resolves have to be
+made. The man who has trained himself day in and
+day out, in regard to the insignificances of daily life,
+to let act follow resolve as the thunder peal succeeds
+the lightning flash, is the man who, if he is moved to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+make a great resolve about his religion, or about his
+conduct, will be most likely to carry it out. Get the
+magical influence of habit on your side, and you
+will have done much to conquer the evil of abortive
+resolutions.</p>
+
+<p>But then there is something a great deal more than
+that to be said. The Apostle did not content himself,
+in the passage already referred to, with bewailing the
+wretchedness of the condition in which to will was
+present, but how to perform he found not. He asked,
+and he triumphantly answered, the question, 'Who
+shall deliver me?' with the great words, 'I thank God
+through Jesus Christ our Lord.' There is the secret;
+keep near Him, trust Him, open your hearts to the
+influences of that Divine Spirit who makes us free
+from the law of sin and death. And if thus, knowing
+our weakness, recognising our danger, humbly trying
+to cultivate the habit of prompt discharge of all discerned
+duty, we leave ourselves in Jesus Christ's hands,
+and wait, and ask, and believe that we possess, His
+cleansing Spirit, then we shall not ask and wait in
+vain. 'Work out your own salvation, .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. for it is God
+that worketh in you, both the willing and the doing.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ALL GRACE ABOUNDING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all-sufficiency
+in all things, may abound to every good work.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> ix. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In addition to all his other qualities the Apostle was an
+extremely good man of business; and he had a field for
+the exercise of that quality in the collection for the
+poor saints of Judea, which takes up so much of this
+letter, and occupied for so long a period so much of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+thoughts and efforts. It was for the sake of showing
+by actual demonstration that would 'touch the hearts'
+of the Jewish brethren, the absolute unity of the two
+halves of the Church, the Gentile and the Jewish, that
+the Apostle took so much trouble in this matter. The
+words which I have read for my text come in the midst
+of a very earnest appeal to the Corinthian Christians
+for their pecuniary help. He is dwelling upon the same
+thought which is expressed in the well-known words:
+'What I gave I kept; what I kept I lost.'</p>
+
+<p>But whilst the words of my text primarily applied
+to money matters, you see that they are studiously
+general, universal. The Apostle, after his fashion, is
+lifting up a little 'secular' affair into a high spiritual
+region; and he lays down in my text a broad general
+law, which goes to the very depths of the Christian
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Now, notice, we have here in three clauses three
+stages which we may venture to distinguish as the
+fountain, the basin, the stream. 'God is able to make
+all grace abound toward you';&mdash;there is the fountain.
+'That ye always, having all-sufficiency in all things';&mdash;there
+is the basin that receives the gush from the
+fountain. 'May abound in every good work';&mdash;there
+is the steam that comes from the basin. The fountain
+pours into the basin, that the flow from the basin may
+feed the stream.</p>
+
+<p>Now this thought of Paul's goes to the heart of
+things. So let us look at it.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Fountain.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian life in all its aspects and experiences
+is an outflow from the 'the Fountain of Life,' the giving
+God. Observe how emphatically the Apostle, in the
+context, accumulates words that express universality:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+'<i>all</i> grace .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. <i>all</i>-sufficiency for <i>all</i> things .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. <i>every</i>
+good work.' But even these expressions do not satisfy
+Paul, and he has to repeat the word 'abound,' in order
+to give some faint idea of his conception of the full
+tide which gushes from the fountain. It is 'all grace,'
+and it is abounding grace.</p>
+
+<p>Now what does he mean by 'grace'? That word is a
+kind of shorthand for the whole sum of the unmerited
+blessings which come to men through Jesus Christ.
+Primarily, it describes what we, for want of a better
+expression, have to call a 'disposition' in the divine
+nature; and it means, then, if so looked at, the unconditioned,
+undeserved, spontaneous, eternal, stooping,
+pardoning love of God. That is grace, in the
+primary New Testament use of the phrase.</p>
+
+<p>But there are no idle 'dispositions' in God. They
+are always energising, and so the word glides from
+meaning the disposition, to meaning the manifestation
+and activities of it, and the 'grace' of our Lord is that
+love in exercise. And then, since the divine energies
+are never fruitless, the word passes over, further, to
+mean all the blessed and beautiful things in a soul
+which are the consequences of the Promethean truth
+of God's loving hand, the outcome in life of the inward
+bestowment which has its cause, its sole cause, in God's
+ceaseless, unexhausted love, unmerited and free.</p>
+
+<p>That, very superficially and inadequately set forth,
+is at least a glimpse into the fulness and greatness of
+meaning that lies in that profound New Testament
+word, 'grace.' But the Apostle here puts emphasis on
+the variety of forms which the one divine gift assumes.
+It is '<i>all</i> grace' which God is able to make abound
+toward you. So then, you see this one <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'transcendant'">transcendent</ins>
+gift from the divine heart, when it comes into our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+human experience, is like a meteor when it passes
+into the atmosphere of earth, and catches fire and
+blazes, showering out a multitude of radiant points of
+light. The grace is many-sided&mdash;many-sided to us, but
+one in its source and in its character. For at bottom,
+that which God in His grace gives to us as His grace is
+what? Himself; or if you like to put it in another
+form, which comes to the same thing&mdash;new life through
+Jesus Christ. That is the encyclop&aelig;diacal gift, which
+contains within itself all grace. And just as the
+physical life in each of us, one in all its manifestations,
+produces many results, and shines in the eye,
+and blushes in the cheek, and gives strength to the
+arm, and flexibility and deftness to the fingers and
+swiftness to the foot: so also is that one grace which,
+being manifold in its manifestations, is one in its
+essence. There are many graces, there is one Grace.</p>
+
+<p>But this grace is not only many-sided, but abounding.
+It is not congruous with God's wealth, nor with His
+love, that He should give scantily, or, as it were, should
+open but a finger of the hand that is full of His gifts,
+and let out a little at a time. There are no sluices on
+that great stream so as to regulate its flow, and to give
+sometimes a painful trickle and sometimes a full gush,
+but this fountain is always pouring itself out, and it
+'abounds.'</p>
+
+<p>But then we are pulled up short by another word in
+this first clause: 'God is <i>able</i> to make.' Paul does not
+say, 'God will make.' He puts the whole weight of
+responsibility for that ability becoming operative upon
+us. There are conditions; and although we may have
+access to that full fountain, it will not pour on us 'all
+grace' and 'abundant grace,' unless we observe these,
+and so turn God's ability to give into actual giving.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+And how do we do that? By desire, by expectance, by
+petition, by faithful stewardship. If we have these
+things, if we have tutored ourselves, and experience
+has helped in the tuition, to make large our expectancy,
+God will smile down upon us and 'do exceeding
+abundantly above all' that we 'think' as well as
+above all that we 'ask.' Brethren, if our supplies are
+scant, when the full fountain is gushing at our sides,
+we are 'not straitened in God, we are straitened in
+ourselves.' Christian possibilities are Christian obligations,
+and what we might have and do not have, is our
+condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>I turn, in the next place, to what I have, perhaps too
+fancifully, called</p>
+
+<p>II. The Basin.</p>
+
+<p>'God is able to make all grace abound toward you,
+that ye, having always all-sufficiency in all things,
+may,' .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. etc.</p>
+
+<p>The result of all this many-sided and exuberant outpouring
+of grace from the fountain is that the basin
+may be full. Considering the infinite source and the
+small receptacle, we might have expected something
+more than 'sufficiency' to have resulted.</p>
+
+<p>Divine grace is sufficient. Is it not more than sufficient?
+Yes, no doubt. But what Paul wishes us to
+feel is this&mdash;to put it into very plain English&mdash;that the
+good gifts of the divine grace will always be proportioned
+to our work, and to our sufferings too. We
+shall feel that we have enough, if we are as we ought
+to be. Sufficiency is more than a man gets anywhere
+else. 'Enough is as good as a feast.' And if we have
+strength, which we may have, to do the day's tasks, and
+strength to carry the day's crosses, and strength to
+accept the day's sorrows, and strength to master the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+day's temptations, that is as much as we need wish to
+have, even out of the fulness of God. And we shall
+get it, dear brethren, if we will only fulfil the conditions.
+If we exercise expectance, and desire and
+petition and faithful stewardship, we shall get what
+we need. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' if the
+road is a steep and rocky one that would wear out
+leather. 'As thy days so shall thy strength be.' God
+does not hurl His soldiers in a blundering attack on
+some impregnable mountain, where they are slain in
+heaps at the base; but when He lays a commandment
+on my shoulders, He infuses strength into me, and
+according to the good homely old saying that has
+brought comfort to many a sad and weighted heart,
+makes the back to bear the burden. The heavy task or
+the crushing sorrow is often the key that opens the
+door of God's treasure-house. You have had very little
+experience either of life or of Christian life, if you have
+not learnt by this time that the harder your work, and
+the darker your sorrows, the mightier have been God's
+supports, and the more starry the lights that have
+shone upon your path. 'That ye, always having all-sufficiency
+in all things.'</p>
+
+<p>One more word: this sufficiency <i>should be</i> more
+uniform, <i>is</i> uniform in the divine intention, and in
+so far as the flow of the fountain is concerned. Always
+having had I may be sure that I always shall have. Of
+course I know that, in so far as our physical nature
+conditions our spiritual experience, there will be ups
+and downs, moments of emancipation and moments of
+slavery. There will be times when the flower opens,
+and times when it shuts itself up. But I am sure that
+the great mass of Christian people might have a far
+more level temperature in their Christian experience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+than they have; that we could, if we would, have far
+more experimental knowledge of this 'always' of my
+text. God means that the basin should be always full
+right up to the top of the marble edge, and that the
+more is drawn off from it, the more should flow into
+it. But it is very often like the reservoirs in the hills
+for some great city in a drought, where great stretches
+of the bottom are exposed, and again, when the
+drought breaks, are full to the top of the retaining
+wall. That should not be. Our Christian life should
+run on the high levels. Why does it not? Possibilities
+are duties.</p>
+
+<p>And now, lastly, we have here what, adhering to my
+metaphor, I call</p>
+
+<p>III. The stream.</p>
+
+<p>'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things,
+may abound to every good work.'</p>
+
+<p>That is what God gives us His grace for; and that is
+a very important consideration. The end of God's
+dealings with us, poor, weak, sinful creatures, is character
+and conduct. Of course you can state the end in
+a great many other ways; but there have been terrible
+evils arising from the way in which Evangelical
+preachers have too often talked, as if the end of God's
+dealings with us was the vague thing which they call
+'salvation,' and by which many of their hearers take
+them to mean neither more nor less than dodging Hell.
+But the New Testament, with all its mysticism, even
+when it soars highest, and speaks most about the perfection
+of humanity, and the end of God's dealings
+being that we may be 'filled with the fulness of God,'
+never loses its wholesome, sane hold of the common
+moralities of daily life, and proclaims that we receive
+all, in order that we may be able to 'maintain good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+works for necessary uses.' And if we lay that to heart,
+and remember that a correct creed, and a living faith,
+and precious, select, inward emotions and experiences
+are all intended to evolve into lives, filled and radiant
+with common moralities and 'good works'&mdash;not meaning
+thereby the things which go by that name in
+popular phraseology, but 'whatsoever things are lovely
+.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and of good report'&mdash;then we shall understand a
+little better what we are here for and what Jesus
+Christ died for, and what His Spirit is given and lives
+in us for. So 'good works' is the end, in one very important
+aspect, of all that avalanche of grace which
+has been from eternity rushing down upon us from
+the heights of God.</p>
+
+<p>There is one more thing to note, and that is that, in
+our character and conduct, we should copy the 'giving
+grace.' Look how eloquently and significantly, in the
+first and last clauses of my text, the same words recur.
+'God is able to make <i>all</i> grace abound, that ye may
+<i>abound</i> in <i>all</i> good work.' Copy God in the many-sidedness
+and in the copiousness of the good that flows
+out from your life and conduct, because of your possession
+of that divine grace. And remember, 'to him
+that hath shall be given.' We pray for more grace;
+we need to pray for that, no doubt. Do we use the
+grace that God has given us? If we do not, the
+remainder of that great word which I have just quoted
+will be fulfilled in you. God forbid that any of us
+should receive the grace of God in vain, and therefore
+come under the stern and inevitable sentence,
+'From him that hath not shall be taken away, even
+that which he hath!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GOD'S UNSPEAKABLE GIFT</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> ix. 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It seems strange that there should ever have been any
+doubt as to what gift it is which evokes this burst of
+thanksgiving. There is but one of God's many mercies
+which is worthy of being thus singled out. There
+is one blazing central sun which shines out amidst
+all the galaxy of lights which fill the heavens. There
+is one gift of God which, beyond all others, merits the
+designation of 'unspeakable.' The gift of Christ draws
+all other divine gifts after it. 'How should He not
+with Him also freely give us all things.'</p>
+
+<p>The connection in which this abrupt jet of praise
+stands is very remarkable. The Apostle has been
+dwelling on the Christian obligation of giving bountifully
+and cheerfully, and on the great law that a glad
+giver is 'enriched' and not impoverished thereby,
+whilst the recipients, for their part, are blessed by
+having thankfulness evoked towards the givers. And
+that contemplation of the happy interchange of benefit
+and thanks between men leads the fervid Apostle to
+the thoughts which were always ready to spring to his
+lips&mdash;of God as the great pattern of giving and of the
+gratitude to Him which should fill all our souls. The
+expression here 'unspeakable' is what I wish chiefly
+to fix upon now. It means literally that which cannot
+be fully declared. Language fails because thought
+fails.</p>
+
+<p>I. The gift comes from unspeakable love.</p>
+
+<p>God <i>so</i> loved the world that He gave His only begotten
+Son. The love is the cause of the gift: the gift
+is the expression of the love. John's Gospel says that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+the Son which is in the bosom of the Father has <i>declared</i>
+Him. Paul here uses a related word for <i>unspeakable</i>
+which might be rendered 'that which cannot be fully
+declared.' The declaration of the Father partly consists
+in this, that He is declared to be undeclarable,
+the proclamation of His name consists partly in this
+that it is proclaimed to be a name that cannot be proclaimed.
+Language fails when it is applied to the
+expression of human emotion; no tongue can ever
+fully serve the heart. Whether there be any thoughts
+too great for words or no, there are emotions too
+great. Language is ever 'weaker than our grief' and
+not seldom weaker than our love. It is but the surface
+water that can be run off through the narrow
+channel of speech: the central deep remains. If it be
+so with human affection, how much more must it be
+so with God's love? With lowly condescension He uses
+all sweet images drawn from earthly relationships, to
+help us in understanding His. Every dear name is
+pressed into the service&mdash;father, mother, husband, wife,
+brother, friend, and after all are exhausted, the love
+which clothed itself in them all in turn, and used them
+all to give some faint hint of its own perfection,
+remains unspoken. We know human love, its limitations,
+its changes, its extravagances, its shortcomings,
+and cannot but feel how unworthy it is to mirror for
+us that perfection in God which we venture to name
+by a name so soiled. The analogies between what we
+call love in man and love in God must be supplemented
+by the differences between them, if we are ever to
+approach a worthy conception of the unspeakable love
+that underlies the unspeakable gift.</p>
+
+<p>II. The gift involves unspeakable sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Human love desires to give its most precious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+treasures to its object and is then most blessed: divine
+love cannot come short of human in this most characteristic
+of its manifestations. Surely the copy is not
+to surpass the original, nor the mirror to flash more
+brightly than the sun which, at the brightest, it but
+reflects. In such a matter we can but stammer when
+we try to find words. As our text warns us, we are
+trying to utter the unutterable when we seek to speak
+of God's giving up for us; but however such a thought
+may seem to be forbidden by other aspects of the
+divine nature, it seems to be involved in the great
+truth that 'God is love.' Since He is, His blessedness
+too, must be in imparting, and in parting with what
+He gives. A humble worshipper in Jewish times loved
+enough to say that he would not offer unto God an
+offering that cost him nothing, and that loving height
+of self-surrender was at the highest, but a lowly imitation
+of the love to which it looked up. When Paul in
+the Epistle to the Romans says, 'He that spared not
+His own Son but delivered Him up for us all,' he is
+obviously alluding to, and all but quoting, the divine
+words to Abraham, 'Seeing thou hast not withheld
+thy son, thine only son, from Me,' and the allusion
+permits us to parallel what God did when He sent His
+Son with what Abraham did when, with wrung heart,
+but with submission, he bound and laid Isaac on the
+altar and stretched forth his hand with the knife in it
+to slay him. Such a representation contradicts the
+vulgar conceptions of a passionless, self-sufficing, icy
+deity, but reflection on the facts of our own experience
+and on the blessed secrets of our own love, leads us to
+believe that some shadow of loss passed across the infinite
+and eternal completeness of the divine nature
+when 'God sent forth His Son made of a woman.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+And may we not go further and say that when Jesus
+on the Cross cried from out of the darkness of eclipse,
+'My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?'
+there was something in the heavens corresponding to
+the darkness that covered the earth and something in
+the Father's heart that answered the Son's. But our
+text warns us that such matters are not for our handling
+in speech, and are best dealt with, not as matters
+of possibly erring speculation, but as materials for
+lowly thanks unto God for His unspeakable gift.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may be true about the love of the
+Father who sent, there can be no doubt about the love
+of the Son who came. No man helps his fellows in
+suffering but at the cost of his own suffering. Sympathy
+means <i>fellow-feeling</i>, and the one indispensable
+condition of all rescue work of any sort is that the
+rescuer must bear on his own shoulders the sins or
+sorrows that he is able to bear away. Heartless help
+is no help. It does not matter whether he who 'stands
+and says, "Be ye clothed and fed,"' gives or does not
+give 'the things necessary,' he will be but a 'miserable
+comforter' if he has not in heart and feeling entered
+into the sorrows and pains which he seeks to alleviate.
+We need not dwell on the familiar truths concerning
+Him who was a 'man of sorrows and acquainted with
+grief.' All through His life He was in contact with
+evil, and for Him the contact was like that of a naked
+hand pressed upon hot iron. The sins and woes of the
+world made His path through it like that of bare feet
+on sharp flints. If He had never died it would still
+have been true that 'He was wounded for our transgressions
+and bruised for our iniquities.' On the
+Cross He completed the libation which had continued
+throughout His life and 'poured out His soul unto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+death' as He had been pouring it out all through His
+life. We have no measure by which we can estimate
+the inevitable sufferings in such a world as ours of
+such a spirit as Christ's. We may know something of
+the solitude of uncongenial society; of the pain of
+seeing miseries that we cannot comfort, of the horrors
+of dwelling amidst impurities that we cannot cleanse,
+and of longings to escape from them all to some
+nest in the wilderness, but all these are but the
+feeblest shadows of the incarnate sorrows whose name
+among men was Jesus. Nothing is more pathetic than
+the way in which our Lord kept all these sorrows close
+locked within His own heart, so that scarcely ever did
+they come to light. Once He did permit a glimpse into
+that hidden chamber when He said, 'O faithless generation,
+how long shall I be with you, how long shall I
+suffer you?' But for the most part His sorrow was
+unspoken because it was 'unspeakable.' Once beneath
+the quivering olives in the moonlight of Gethsemane,
+He made a pitiful appeal for the little help which three
+drowsy men could give Him, when He cried, 'My soul
+is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye
+here and watch with Me,' but for the most part the
+silence at which His judges 'marvelled greatly,' and
+raged as much as they marvelled, was unbroken, and
+as 'a sheep before her shearers is dumb,' so 'He opened
+not His mouth.' The sacrifice of His death was, for
+the most part, silent like the sacrifice of His life.
+Should it not call forth from us floods of praise and
+thanks to God for His unspeakable gift?</p>
+
+<p>III. The gift brings with it unspeakable results.</p>
+
+<p>In Christ are hid 'all the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge.' When God gave us Him, He gave us a
+storehouse in which are contained treasures of truth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+which can never be fully comprehended, and which,
+even if comprehended, can never be exhausted. The
+mystery of the Divine Name revealed in Jesus, the
+mystery of His person, are themes on which the
+Christian world has been nourished ever since, and
+which are as full of food, not for the understanding
+only, but far more for the heart and the will, to-day as
+ever they were. The world may think that it has left
+the teaching of Jesus behind, but in reality the teaching
+is far ahead, and the world's practise is but slowly
+creeping towards its imperfect attainment. The Gospel
+is the guide of the race, and each generation gathers
+something more from it, and progresses in the measure
+in which it follows Christ; and as for the race, so for
+the individual. Each of Christ's scholars finds his own
+gift, and in the measure of his faithfulness to what he
+has found makes ever new discoveries in the unsearchable
+riches of Christ. After all have fed full there still
+remain abundant baskets full to be taken up.</p>
+
+<p>He who has sounded the depths of Jesus most completely
+is ever the first to acknowledge that he has been
+but as a child 'gathering pebbles on the beach while
+the great ocean lies unsounded before him.' No single
+soul, and no multitude of souls, can exhaust Jesus;
+neither our individual experiences, nor the experiences
+of a believing world can fully realise the endless wealth
+laid up in Him. He is the Alpha and the Omega of all
+our speech, the first letter and the last of our alphabet,
+between which lie all the rest.</p>
+
+<p>The gift is completed in consequences yet unspeakable.
+Even the first blessings which the humblest faith
+receives from the pierced hands have more in them
+than words can tell. Who has ever spoken adequately
+and in full correspondence with reality what it is to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+God's pardoning love flowing in upon the soul? Many
+singers have sung sweet psalms and hymns and
+spiritual songs on which generations of devout souls
+have fed, but none of them has spoken the deepest
+blessedness of a Christian life, or the calm raptures of
+communion with God. It is easy to utter the words
+'forgiveness, reconciliation, acceptance, fellowship,
+eternal life'; the syllables can be spoken, but who
+knows or can utter the depths of the meanings? After
+all human words the half has not been told us, and as
+every soul carries within itself unrevealable emotions,
+and is a mystery after all revelation, so the things
+which God's gift brings to a soul are after all speech
+unspeakable, and the words 'cannot be uttered' which
+they who are caught up into the third heavens hear.</p>
+
+<p>Then we may extend our thoughts to the future
+form of Christian experience. 'It doth not yet appear
+what we should be.' All our conceptions of a future
+existence must necessarily be inadequate. Nothing
+but experience can reveal them to us, and our experience
+there will be capable of indefinite expansion, and
+through eternity there will be endless growth in the
+appropriation of the unspeakable gift.</p>
+
+<p>For us the only recompense that we can make for the
+unspeakable gift is to receive it with 'thanks unto
+God' and the yielding up of our hearts to Him. God
+pours this love upon us freely, without stint. It is
+unspeakable in the depths of its source, in the manner
+of its manifestation, in the glory of its issues. It is
+like some great stream, rising in the trackless mountains,
+broad and deep, and leading on to a sunlit
+ocean. We stand on the bank; let us trust ourselves
+to its broad bosom. It will bear us safe. And let us
+take heed that we receive not the gift of God <i>in vain</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A MILITANT MESSAGE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the
+knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of
+Christ; and being in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience
+shall be fulfilled.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> x. 5 and 6 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>None of Paul's letters are so full of personal feeling
+as this one is. It is written, for the most part, at a
+white heat; he had heard from his trusted Titus tidings
+which on one hand filled him with a thankfulness of
+which the first half of the letter is the expression; but
+there had also been tidings of a very different kind,
+and from this point onwards the letter is seething with
+the feelings which these had produced. There was in
+the Corinthian Church a party, probably Judaisers,
+which denied his authority and said bitter things about
+his character. They apparently had contrasted the
+force of his letters and the feebleness of his 'bodily
+presence' and speech. They insinuated that his 'bark
+was worse than his bite.' Their language put into
+plain English would be something like this, 'Ah! He
+is very bold at a distance, let him come and face us
+and we shall see a difference. Vapouring in his letters,
+he will be meek enough when he is here.'</p>
+
+<p>These slanderers seem to have thought of Paul as if
+he 'warred according to flesh,' and it is this charge,
+that he was actuated in his opposition to the evils in
+Corinth by selfish considerations and worldly interests,
+which seems to have set the Apostle on fire. In answer
+he pours out quick, indignant questionings, sharp irony,
+vehement self-vindication, passionate remonstrances,
+flashes of wrath, sudden jets of tenderness. What a
+position for him to have to say, 'I am not a low
+schemer; I am not working for myself.' Yet it is the
+common lot of all such men to be misread by little,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+crawling creatures who cannot believe in heroic self-forgetfulness.
+He answers the taunt that he 'walked
+according to the flesh' in the context by saying, 'Yes,
+I live in the flesh, my outward life is like that of other
+men, but I do not go a-soldiering <i>according</i> to the flesh.
+It is not for my own sinful self that I get the rules of
+my life's battle, neither do I get my weapons from the
+flesh. They could not do what they do if that were their
+origin: they are of God and therefore mighty.' Then
+the metaphor as it were catches fire, and in our text
+he expands the figure of a warfare and sets before us
+the destruction of fortresses, the capture of their
+garrisons, and the leading of them away into another
+land, the stern punishment of the rebels who still hold
+out, and the merciful delay in administering it. It has
+been suggested that there is an allusion in our text to
+the extermination of the pirates in Paul's native Cilicia
+which happened some fifty or sixty years before his
+birth and ended in destroying their robber-holds and
+taking some thousands of prisoners. Whether that be
+so or no, the Apostle's kindled imagination sets forth
+here great truths as to the effects which his message is
+meant to produce and, thank God, has produced.</p>
+
+<p>I. The opposing fortresses.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle conceives of himself and of his brother
+preachers of Christ as going forth on a merciful warfare.
+He thinks of strong rock fortresses, with lofty
+walls set on high, and frowning down on any assailants.
+No doubt he is thinking first of the opposition which
+he had to front in Corinth from the Judaisers to whom
+we have referred, but the application of the metaphor
+goes far beyond the petty strife in Corinth and carries
+for us the wholesome lesson that one main cause which
+keeps men back from Christ is a too high estimate of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+themselves. Some of us are enclosed in the fortress of
+self-sufficiency: we will not humbly acknowledge our
+dependence on God, and have turned self-reliance into
+the law of our lives. There are many voices, some of
+them sweet and powerful, which to-day are preaching
+that gospel. It finds eager response in many hearts,
+and there is something in us all to which it appeals.
+We are often tempted to say defiantly, 'Who is Lord
+over us?' And the teaching that bids us rely on ourselves
+is so wholly in accord with the highest wisdom
+and the noblest life that what is good and what is evil
+in each of us contribute to reinforce it. Self-dependence
+is a great virtue, and the mother of much energy
+and nobleness, but it is also a great error and a great
+sin. To be so self-sufficing as not to need externals is
+good; to be so self-sufficing as not to need or to see
+God is ruin and death. The title which, as one of our
+great thinkers tells us, a humourist put on the back of
+a volume of heterodox tracts, 'Every man his own
+redeemer,' makes a claim for self-sufficiency which
+more or less unconsciously shuts out many men from
+the salvation of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>There is the fortress of culture and the pride of it in
+which many of us are to-day entrenched against the
+Gospel. The attitude of mind into which persons of
+culture tend to fall is distinctly adverse to their reception
+of the Gospel, and that is not because the Gospel
+is adverse to culture, but because cultured people do
+not care to be put on the same level with publicans
+and harlots. They would be less disinclined to go into
+the feast if there were in it reserved seats for superior
+people and a private <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'entrace'">entrance</ins> to them. If the wise and
+prudent were more of both, they would be liker the
+babes to whom these things are revealed, and they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+would be revealed to them too. Not knowledge but
+the superciliousness which is the result of the conceit
+of knowledge hinders from God, and is one of the
+strongest fortresses against which the weapons of our
+warfare have to be employed.</p>
+
+<p>There is the fortress of ignorance. Most men who
+are kept from Christ are so because they know neither
+themselves nor God. The most widely prevailing
+characteristic of the superficial life of most men is
+their absolute unconsciousness of the fact of sin; they
+neither know it as universal nor as personal. They
+have never gone deeply enough down into the depths
+of their own hearts to have come up scared at the
+ugly things that lie sleeping there, nor have they ever
+reflected on their own conduct with sufficient gravity
+to discern its aberrations from the law of right, hence
+the average man is quite unconscious of sin, and is a
+complete stranger to himself. The cup has been drunk
+by and intoxicated the world, and the masses of men
+are quite unaware that it has intoxicated them.</p>
+
+<p>They are ignorant of God as they are of themselves,
+and if at any time, by some flash of light, they see
+themselves as they are, they think of God as if He were
+altogether such an one as themselves, and fall back on
+a vague trust in the vaguer mercy of their half-believed-in
+God as their hope for a vague salvation. Men who
+thus walk in a vain show will never feel their need of
+Jesus, and the lazy ignorance of themselves and the
+as lazy trust in what they call their God, are a fortress
+against which it will task the power of God to make
+any weapons of warfare mighty to its pulling down.</p>
+
+<p>II. The casting down of fortresses.</p>
+
+<p>The first effect of any real contact with Christ and
+His Gospel is to reveal a man to himself, to shatter his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+delusive estimates of what he is, and to pull down
+about his ears the lofty fortress in which he has
+ensconced himself. It seems strange work for what
+calls itself a Gospel to begin by forcing a man to cry
+out with sobs and tears, Oh, wretched man that I am!
+But no man will ever reach the heights to which Christ
+can lift him, who does not begin his upward course by
+descending to the depths into which Christ's Gospel
+begins its work by plunging him. Unconsciousness of
+sin is sure to lead to indifference to a Saviour, and
+unless we know ourselves to be miserable and poor and
+blind and naked, the offer of gold refined by fire and
+white garments that we may clothe ourselves will
+make no appeal to us. The fact of sin makes the need
+for a Saviour; our individual sense of sin makes us
+sensible of our need of a Saviour.</p>
+
+<p>Paul believed that the weapons of his warfare were
+mighty enough to cast down the strongest of all
+strongholds in which men shut themselves up against
+the humbling Gospel of salvation by the mercy of God.
+The weapons to which he thus trusted were the same
+to which Jesus pointed His disciples when, about to
+leave them, He said, 'When the Comforter is come He
+will convict the world of sin because they believe not
+in Me.' Jesus brought to the world the perfect revelation
+of the holiness of God, and set before us all a
+divine pattern of manhood to rebuke and condemn our
+stained and rebellious lives, and He turned us away
+from the superficial estimate of actions to the careful
+scrutiny of motives. By all these and many other
+ways He presented Himself to the world a perfect man,
+the incarnation of a holy God and the revelation and
+condemnation of sinful humanity. Yet, all that miracle
+of loveliness, gentleness, and dignity is beheld by men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+without a thrill, and they see in Him no 'beauty that
+they should desire Him,' and no healing to which they
+will trust. Paul's way of kindling penitence in impenitent
+spirits was not to brandish over them the
+whips of law or to seek to shake souls with terror of
+any hell, still less was it to discourse with philosophic
+calm on the obligations of duty and the wisdom of
+virtuous living; his appeal to conscience was primarily
+the pressing on the heart of the love of God in Christ
+Jesus our Lord. When the heart is melted, the conscience
+will not long continue indurated. We cannot
+look lovingly and believingly at Jesus and then turn
+to look complacently on ourselves. Not to believe on
+Him is the sin of sins, and to be taught that it is so is
+the first step in the work of Him who never merits the
+name of the Comforter more truly than when He convicts
+the world of sin.</p>
+
+<p>For a Christianity that does not begin with the deep
+consciousness of sin has neither depth nor warmth and
+has scarcely vitality. The Gospel is no Gospel, and we
+had almost said, 'The Christ is no Christ' to one who
+does not feel himself, if parted from Christ, 'dead in
+trespasses and sins.' Our religion depends for all its
+force, our gratitude and love for all their devotion,
+upon our sense that 'the chastisement of our peace
+was laid upon Him, and that by His stripes we are
+healed.' Since He gave Himself for us, it is meet that
+we give ourselves to Him, but there will be little
+fervour of devotion or self-surrender, unless there has
+been first the consciousness of the death of sin and
+then the joyous consciousness of newness of life in
+Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>III. The captives led away to another land.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle carries on his metaphor one step further<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+when he goes on to describe what followed the casting
+down of the fortresses. The enemy, driven from their
+strongholds, have nothing for it but to surrender and
+are led away in captivity to another land. The long
+strings of prisoners on Assyrian and Egyptian monuments
+show how familiar an experience this was. It
+may be noted that perhaps our text regards the
+obedience of Christ as being the far country into
+which 'every thought was to be brought.' At all
+events Paul's idea here is that the end of the whole
+struggle between 'the flesh' and the weapons of God
+is to make men willing captives of Jesus Christ. We
+are Christians in the measure in which we surrender
+our wills to Christ. That surrender rests upon, and is
+our only adequate answer to, His surrender for us.
+The 'obedience of Christ' is perfect freedom; His
+captives wear no chains and know nothing of forced
+service; His yoke is easy, not because it does not press
+hard upon the neck but because it is lined with love,
+and 'His burden is light' not because of its own weight
+but because it is laid on us by love and is carried by
+kindred love. He only commands himself who gladly
+lets Christ command him. Many a hard task becomes
+easy; crooked things are straightened out and rough
+places often made surprisingly plain for the captives
+of Christ, whom He leads into the liberty of obedience
+to Him.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Fate of the disobedient.</p>
+
+<p>Paul thinks that in Corinth there will be found some
+stiff-necked opponents of whom he cannot hope that
+their 'obedience shall be fulfilled,' and he sees in the
+double issue of the small struggle that was being
+waged in Corinth a parable of the wider results of the
+warfare in the world. 'Some believed and some believed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+not'; that has been the brief summary of the experience
+of all God's messengers everywhere, and it is their
+experience to-day. No doubt when Paul speaks of
+'being in readiness to avenge all disobedience,' he is
+alluding to the exercise of his apostolic authority
+against the obdurate antagonists whom he contemplates
+as still remaining obdurate, and it is beautiful
+to note the long-suffering patience with which he will
+hold his hand until all that can be won has been won.
+But we must not forget that Paul's demeanour is but a
+faint shadow of his Lord's, and that the weapons which
+were ready to avenge all disobedience were the weapons
+of God. If a man steels himself against the efforts of
+divine love, builds up round himself a fortress of self-righteousness
+and locks its gates against the merciful
+entrance of convictions of sin and the knowledge of a
+Saviour, and if he therefore lives, year in, year out, in
+disobedience, the weapons which he thinks himself to
+have resisted will one day make him feel their edge.
+We cannot set ourselves against the salvation of Jesus
+without bringing upon ourselves consequences which
+are wholly evil and harmful. Torpid consciences,
+hungry hearts, stormy wills, tyrannous desires, vain
+hopes and not vain fears come to be, by slow degrees,
+the tortures of the man who drops the portcullis and
+lifts the bridge against the entrance of Jesus. There
+are hells enough on earth if men's hearts were displayed.</p>
+
+<p>But the love which is obliged to smite gives warning
+that it is ready to avenge, long before it lets the blow
+fall, and does so in order that it may never need to fall.
+As long as it is possible that the disobedient shall
+become obedient to Christ, He holds back the vengeance
+that is ready to fall and will one day fall 'on all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+disobedience.' Not till all other means have been
+patiently tried will He let that terrible ending crash
+down. It hangs over the heads of many of us who are
+all unaware that we walk beneath the shadow of a
+rock that at any moment may be set in motion and
+bury us beneath its weight. It is 'in readiness,' but it
+is still at rest. Let us be wise in time and yield to the
+merciful weapons with which Jesus would make His
+way into our hearts. Or if the metaphor of our text
+presents Him in too warlike a guise, let us listen to
+His own gentle pleading, 'Behold, I stand at the door
+and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the
+door, I will come in to him.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SIMPLICITY TOWARDS CHRIST</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty,
+so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span>
+xi. 3.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Revised Version, amongst other alterations, reads,
+'the simplicity that is <i>towards</i> Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>The inaccurate rendering of the Authorised Version
+is responsible for a mistake in the meaning of these
+words, which has done much harm. They have been
+supposed to describe a quality or characteristic belonging
+to Christ or the Gospel; and, so construed, they
+have sometimes been made the watchword of narrowness
+and of intellectual indolence. 'Give us the simple
+Gospel' has been the cry of people who have thought
+themselves to be evangelical when they were only lazy,
+and the consequence has been that preachers have been
+expected to reiterate commonplaces, which have made
+both them and their hearers listless, and to sink the
+educational for the evangelistic aspect of the Christian
+teacher's function.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that the Gospel is simple, but it is also
+true that it is deep, and they will best appreciate its
+simplicity who have most honestly endeavoured to
+fathom its depth. When we let our little sounding
+lines out, and find that they do not reach the bottom,
+we begin to wonder even more at the transparency of
+the clear abyss. It is not simplicity <i>in</i> Christ, but
+<i>towards</i> Christ of which the Apostle is speaking; not a
+quality in Him, but a quality in <i>us</i> towards Him. I
+wish, then, to turn to the two thoughts that these
+words suggest. First and chiefly, the attitude towards
+Christ which befits our relation to Him; and, secondly
+and briefly, the solicitude for its maintenance.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, look at the attitude towards Christ
+which befits the Christian relation to Him.</p>
+
+<p>The word 'simplicity' has had a touch of contempt
+associated with it. It is a somewhat doubtful compliment
+to say of a man that he is 'simple-minded.' All
+noble words which describe great qualities get oxidised
+by exposure to the atmosphere, and rust comes over
+them, as indeed all good things tend to become deteriorated
+in time and by use. But the notion of the word
+is really a very noble and lofty one. To be 'without a
+fold,' which is the meaning of the Greek word and of its
+equivalent 'simplicity,' is, in one aspect, to be transparently
+honest and true, and in another to be out and
+out of a piece. There is no underside of the cloth,
+doubled up beneath the upper which shows, and running
+in the opposite direction; but all tends in one way.
+A man with no under-currents, no by-ends, who is
+down to the very roots what he looks, and all whose
+being is knit together and hurled in one direction,
+without reservation or back-drawing, that is the
+'simple' man whom the Apostle means. Such sim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>plicity
+is the truest wisdom; such simplicity of devotion
+to Jesus Christ is the only attitude of heart and mind
+which corresponds to the facts of our relation to Him.
+That relation is set forth in the context by a very
+sweet and tender image, in the true line of scriptural
+teaching, which in many a place speaks of the Bride
+and Bridegroom, and which on its last page shows us
+the Lamb's wife descending from Heaven to meet her
+husband. The state of devout souls and of the community
+of such here on earth is that of betrothal.
+Their state in heaven is that of marriage. Very beautiful
+it is to see how this fiery Paul, like the ascetic
+John, who never knew the sacred joys of that state,
+lays hold of the thought of the Bridegroom and the
+Bride, and of his individual relation to both as indicating
+the duties of the Church and the solicitude of
+the Apostle. He says that he has been the intermediary
+who, according to Oriental custom, arranged
+the preliminaries of the marriage, and brought the
+bride to the bridegroom, and, as the friend of the latter,
+standing by rejoices greatly to hear the bridegroom's
+voice, and is solicitous mainly that in the tremulous
+heart of the betrothed there should be no admixture of
+other loves, but a whole-hearted devotion, an exclusive
+affection, and an absolute obedience. 'I have espoused
+you,' says he, 'to one husband that I may present you
+as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. your
+mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is
+towards Him.'</p>
+
+<p>Now that metaphor carries in its implication all that
+anybody can say about the exclusiveness, the depth,
+the purity, the all-pervasiveness of the dependent love
+which should knit us to Jesus Christ. The same thought
+of whole-hearted, single, absolute devotion is conveyed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+by other Scripture metaphors, the <i>slave</i> and the <i>soldier</i>
+of Christ. But all that is repellent or harsh in these is
+softened and glorified when we contemplate it in the
+light of the metaphor of my text.</p>
+
+<p>So I might leave it to do its own work, but I may
+perhaps be allowed to follow out the thought in one or
+two directions.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude, then, which corresponds to our relation
+to Jesus Christ is that, first, of a faith which looks to
+Him exclusively as the source of salvation and of light.
+The specific danger which was alarming Paul, in reference
+to that little community of Christians in Corinth,
+was one which, in its particular form, is long since dead
+and buried. But the principles which underlay it, the
+tendencies to which it appealed, and the perils which
+alarmed Paul for the Corinthian Church, are perennial.
+He feared that these Judaising teachers, who dogged
+his heels all his life long, and whose one aim seemed to
+be to build upon his foundation and to overthrow his
+building, should find their way into this church and
+wreck it. The keenness of the polemic, in this and in
+the contextual chapters, shows how real and imminent
+the danger was. Now what they did was to tell people
+that Jesus Christ had a partner in His saving work.
+They said that obedience to the Jewish law, ceremonial
+and other, was a condition of salvation, along with
+trust in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And because they
+thus shared out the work of salvation between Jesus
+Christ and something else, Paul thundered and lightened
+at them all his life, and, as he tells us in this
+context, regarded them as preaching another Jesus,
+another spirit, and another gospel. That particular
+error is long dead and buried.</p>
+
+<p>But is there nothing else that has come into its place?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+Has this old foe not got a new face, and does not it live
+amongst us as really as it lived then? I think it does;
+whether in the form of the grosser kind of sacramentarianism
+and ecclesiasticism which sticks sacraments
+and a church in front of the Cross, or in the form of
+the definite denial that Jesus Christ's death on the
+Cross is the one means of salvation, or simply in the
+form of the coarse, common wish to have a finger in
+the pie and a share in the work of saving oneself, as a
+drowning man will sometimes half drown his rescuer
+by trying to use his own limbs. These tendencies that
+Paul fought, and which he feared would corrupt the
+Corinthians from their simple and exclusive reliance on
+Christ, and Christ alone, as the ground and author of
+their salvation, are perennial in human nature, and
+we have to be on our guard for ever and for ever
+against them. Whether they come in organised, systematic,
+doctrinal form, or whether they are simply the
+rising in our own hearts of the old Adam of pride and
+self-trust, they equally destroy the whole work of
+Christ, because they infringe upon its solitariness and
+uniqueness. It is not Christ and anything else. Men
+are not saved by a syndicate. It is Jesus Christ alone,
+and 'beside Him there is no Saviour.' You go into a
+Turkish mosque and see the roof held up by a forest
+of slim pillars. You go into a cathedral chapter-house
+and see one strong support in the centre that
+bears the whole roof. The one is an emblem of the
+Christless multiplicity of vain supports, the other of
+the solitary strength and eternal sufficiency of the one
+Pillar on which the whole weight of a world's salvation
+rests, and which lightly bears it triumphantly aloft.
+'I fear lest your minds be corrupted from the simplicity'
+of a reasonable faith directed towards Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And in like manner He is the sole light and teacher
+of men as to God, themselves, their duty, their destinies
+and prospects. He, and He alone, brings these things
+to light. His word, whether it comes from His lips or
+from the deeds which are part of His revelation, or
+from the voice of the Spirit which takes of His and
+speaks to the ages through His apostles, should be 'the
+end of all strife.' What He says, and all that He says,
+and nothing else than what He says, is the creed of the
+Christian. He, and He only, is 'the light which lighteth
+every man that cometh into the world.' In this day of
+babblements and confusions, let us listen for the voice
+of Christ and accept all which comes from Him, and let
+the language of our deepest hearts be, 'Lord, to whom
+shall we go? Thou only hast the words of eternal
+life.'</p>
+
+<p>Again, our relation to Jesus Christ demands exclusive
+love to Him. 'Demands' is an ugly word to bracket
+with love. We might say, and perhaps more truly,
+permits or privileges. It is the joy of the betrothed
+that her duty is to love, and to keep her heart clear
+from all competing affections. But it is none the less
+her duty because it is her joy. What Christ is to you,
+if you are a Christian, and what He longs to be to us
+all, whether we are Christians or not, is of such a
+character as that the only fitting attitude of our hearts
+to Him in response is that of exclusive affection. I do
+not mean that we are to love nothing but Him, but I
+mean that we are to love all things else in Him, and
+that, if any creature so delays or deflects our love as
+that either it does not pass, by means of the creature,
+into the presence of the Christ, or is turned away from
+the Christ by the creature, then we have fallen beneath
+the sweet level of our lofty privilege, and have won for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+ourselves the misery due to distracted and idolatrous
+hearts. Love to one who has done what He has done
+for us is in its very nature exclusive, and its exclusiveness
+is all-pervasive exclusiveness. The centre diamond
+makes the little stones set round it all the more lustrous.
+We must love Jesus Christ all in all or not at
+all. Divided love incurs the condemnation that falls
+heavily upon the head of the faithless bride.</p>
+
+<p>Dear friends, the conception of the essence of religion
+as being love is no relaxation, but an increase, of its
+stringent requirements. The more we think of that
+sweet bond as being the true union of the soul with
+God, who is its only rest and home, the more reasonable
+and imperative will appear the old commandment,
+'Thou shalt love Him with all thy heart, and soul, and
+strength, and mind.'</p>
+
+<p>But, further, our relation to Jesus Christ is such as
+that nothing short of absolute obedience to His commandment
+corresponds to it. There must be the simplicity,
+the single-mindedness that thus obeys, obeys
+swiftly, cheerfully, constantly. In all matters His
+command is my law, and, as surely as I make His
+command my law, will He make my desire His motive.
+For He Himself has said, in words that bring together
+our obedience to His will and His compliance with
+our wishes, in a fashion that we should not have ventured
+upon unless He had set us an example, 'If ye
+love Me, keep My commandments. If ye ask anything
+in My name I will do it.' The exclusive love that binds
+us, by reason of our faith in Him alone, to that Lord
+ought to express itself in unhesitating, unfaltering,
+unreserved, and unreluctant obedience to every word
+that comes from His mouth.</p>
+
+<p>These brief outlines are but the poorest attempt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+draw out what the words of my text imply. But such
+as they are, let us remember that they do set forth the
+only proper response of the saved man to the saving
+Christ. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' Anything
+short of a faith that rests on Him alone, of a love
+that knits itself to His single, all-sufficient heart, and
+of an obedience that bows the whole being to the sweet
+yoke of His commandment is an unworthy answer to
+the Love that died, and that lives for us all.</p>
+
+<p>II. And now I have only time to glance at the solicitude
+for the maintenance of this exclusive single-mindedness
+towards Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Think of what threatens it. I say nothing about the
+ferment of opinion in this day, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'for for'">for</ins> one man that
+is swept away from a thorough whole-hearted faith by
+intellectual considerations, there are a dozen from
+whom it is filched without their knowing it, by their
+own weaknesses and the world's noises. And so it is
+more profitable that we should think of the whole
+crowd of external duties, enjoyments, sweetnesses,
+bitternesses, that solicit us, and would seek to draw us
+away. Who can hear the low voice that speaks peace
+and wisdom when Niagara is roaring past his ears?
+'The world is too much with us, late and soon. Buying
+and selling we lay waste our powers,' and break ourselves
+away from our simple devotion to that dear
+Lord. But it is possible that we may so carry into all
+the whirl the central peace, as that we shall not be
+disturbed by it; and possible that 'whether we eat or
+drink, or whatsoever we do, we may do all to His glory,'
+so that we can, even in the midst of our daily pressing
+avocations and cares be keeping our hearts in the
+heavens, and our souls in touch with our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only things without that draw us away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+Our own weaknesses and waywardnesses, our strong
+senses, our passions, our desires, our necessities, all
+these have a counteracting force, which needs continual
+watchfulness in order to be neutralised. No man can
+grasp a stay, which alone keeps him from being immersed
+in the waves, with uniform tenacity, unless
+every now and then he tightens his muscles. And no
+man can keep himself firmly grasping Jesus Christ
+without conscious effort directed to bettering his hold.</p>
+
+<p>If there be dangers around us, and dangers within
+us, the discipline which we have to pursue in order to
+secure this uniform, single-hearted devotion is plain
+enough. Let us be vividly conscious of the peril&mdash;which
+is what some of us are not. Let us take stock of ourselves
+lest creeping evil may be encroaching upon us,
+while we are all unaware&mdash;which is what some of us
+never do. Let us clearly contemplate the possibility of
+an indefinite increase in the closeness and thoroughness
+of our surrender to Him&mdash;a conviction which has
+faded away from the minds of many professing Christians.
+Above all, let us find time or make time for the
+patient, habitual contemplation of the great facts
+which kindle our devotion. For if you never think of
+Jesus Christ and His love to you, how can you love
+Him back again? And if you are so busy carrying
+out your own secular affairs, or pursuing your own
+ambitions, or attending to your own duties, as they
+may seem to be, that you have no time to think of
+Christ, His death, His life, His Spirit, His yearning
+heart over His bride, how can it be expected that you
+will have any depth of love to Him? Let us, too, wait
+with prayerful patience for that Divine Spirit who will
+knit us more closely to our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>Unless we do so, we shall get no happiness out of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+religion, and it will bring no praise to Christ or profit
+to ourselves. I do not know a more miserable man
+than a half-and-half Christian, after the pattern of, I
+was going to say, the ordinary average of professing
+Christians of this generation. He has religion enough
+to prick and sting him, and not enough to impel him
+to forsake the evil which yet he cannot comfortably
+do. He has religion enough to 'inflame his conscience,'
+not enough to subdue his will and heart. How many
+of my hearers are in that condition it is for them to
+settle. If we are to be Christian men at all, let us be it
+out and out. Half-and-half religion is no religion.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="One foot in sea, and one on shore">
+<tr><td align='left'>'One foot in sea, and one on shore;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To one thing constant never!'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>That is the type of thousands of professing Christians.
+'I fear lest by any means your minds be corrupted
+from the simplicity that is towards Christ.'</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And
+He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect
+in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that
+the power of Christ may rest upon me.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> xii. 8, 9.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This very remarkable page in the autobiography of
+the Apostle shows us that he, too, belonged to the
+great army of martyrs who, with hearts bleeding and
+pierced through and through with a dart, yet did their
+work for God. It is of little consequence what his
+thorn in the flesh may have been. The original word
+suggests very much heavier sorrow than the metaphor
+of 'a thorn' might imply. It really seems to mean
+not a tiny bit of thorn that might lie half concealed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+the finger tip, but one of those hideous stakes on which
+the cruel punishment of impalement used to be inflicted.
+And Paul's thought is, not that he has a little, trivial
+trouble to bear, but that he is, as it were, forced quivering
+upon that tremendous torture.</p>
+
+<p>Unquestionably, what he means is some bodily ailment
+or other. The hypothesis that the 'thorn in the flesh'
+was the sting of the animal nature inciting him to evil
+is altogether untenable, because such a thorn could
+never have been left when the prayer for its removal
+was earnestly presented; nor could it ever have been,
+when left, an occasion for glorifying. Manifestly it
+was no weakness removable by his own effort, no
+incapacity for service which in any manner approximated
+to being a fault, but purely and simply some
+infliction from God's hand (though likewise capable of
+being regarded as a 'messenger of Satan') which
+hindered him in his work, and took down any proud
+flesh and danger of spiritual exaltation in consequence
+of the largeness of his religious privileges.</p>
+
+<p>Our text sets before us three most instructive windings,
+as it were, of the stream of thoughts that passed
+through the Apostle's mind, in reference to this burden
+that he had to carry, and may afford wholesome contemplation
+for us to-day. There is, first, the instinctive
+shrinking which took refuge in prayer. Then there is
+the insight won by prayer into the sustaining strength
+for, and the purposes of, the thorn that was not to be
+plucked out. And then, finally, there is the peace of
+acquiescence, and a will that accepts&mdash;not the inevitable,
+but the loving.</p>
+
+<p>I. First of all we see the instinctive shrinking from
+that which tortured the flesh, which takes refuge in
+prayer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is a wonderful, a beautiful, and, I suppose, an
+intentional parallel between the prayers of the servant
+and of the Master. Paul's petitions are the echo of
+Gethsemane. There, under the quivering olives, in the
+broken light of the Paschal moon, Jesus 'thrice' prayed
+that the cup might pass from Him. And here the
+servant, emboldened and instructed by the example of
+the Master, 'thrice' reiterates his human and natural
+desire for the removal of the pain, whatever it was,
+which seemed to him so to hinder the efficiency and
+the fulness, as it certainly did the joy, of his service.</p>
+
+<p>But He who prayed in Gethsemane was He to whom
+Paul addressed his prayer. For, as is almost always
+the case in the New Testament, 'the Lord' here
+evidently means Christ, as is obvious from the connection
+of the answer to the petition with the Apostle's
+final confidence and acquiescence. For the answer was,
+'My strength is made perfect in weakness'; and the
+Apostle's conclusion is, 'Most gladly will I glorify in
+infirmity,' that the strength or 'power <i>of Christ</i> may
+rest upon me.' Therefore the prayer with which we
+have to deal here is a prayer offered to Jesus, who
+prayed in Gethsemane, and to whom we can bring our
+petitions and our desires.</p>
+
+<p>Notice how this thought of prayer directed to the
+Master Himself helps to lead us deep into the sacredest
+and most blessed characteristics of prayer. It is only
+telling Christ what is in our hearts. Oh, if we lived in
+the true understanding of what prayer really is&mdash;the
+emptying out of our inmost desire and thoughts before
+our Brother, who is likewise our Lord&mdash;questions as to
+what it was permissible to pray for, and what it was
+not permissible to pray for, would be irrelevant, and
+drop away of themselves. If we had a less formal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+notion of prayer, and realised more thoroughly what
+it was&mdash;the speech of a confiding heart to a sympathising
+Lord&mdash;then everything that fills our hearts would
+be seen to be a fitting object of prayer. If anything is
+large enough to interest me, it is not too small to be
+spoken about to Him.</p>
+
+<p>So the question, which is often settled upon very
+abstract and deep grounds that have little to do with
+the matter&mdash;the question as to whether prayer for
+outward blessings is permissible&mdash;falls away of itself.
+If I am to talk to Jesus Christ about everything that
+concerns me, am I to keep my thumb upon all that
+great department and be silent about it? One reason
+why our prayers are often so unreal is, because they
+do not fit our real wants, nor correspond to the
+thoughts that are busy in our minds at the moment of
+praying. Our hearts are full of some small matter of
+daily interest, and when we kneel down not a word
+about it comes to our lips. Can that be right?</p>
+
+<p>The difference between the different objects of prayer
+is not to be found in the rejection of all temporal and
+external, but in remembering that there are two sets
+of things to be prayed about, and over one set must
+ever be written 'If it be Thy will,' and over the other it
+need not be written, because we are sure that the
+granting of our wishes <i>is</i> His will. We know about
+the one that 'if we ask anything according to His will,
+He heareth us.' That may seem to be a very poor and
+shrunken kind of hope to give a man, that if his prayer
+is in conformity with the previous determination of
+the divine will, it will be answered. But it availed for
+the joyful confidence of that Apostle who saw deepest
+into the conditions and the blessedness of the harmony
+of the will of God and of man. But about the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+set we can only say, 'Not my will, but Thine be done.'
+With that sentence, not as a formula upon our lips but
+deep in our hearts, let us take everything into His
+presence&mdash;thorns and stakes, pinpricks and wounds out
+of which the life-blood is ebbing&mdash;let us take them all
+to Him, and be sure that we shall take none of them in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p>So then we have the Person to whom the prayer is
+addressed, the subjects with which it is occupied, and
+the purpose to which it is directed. 'Take away the
+burden' was the Apostle's petition; but it was a mistaken
+petition and, therefore, unanswered.</p>
+
+<p>II. That brings me to the second of the windings, as
+I have ventured to call them, of this stream&mdash;viz. the
+insight into the source of strength for, and the purpose
+of, the thorn that could not be taken away. The Lord
+said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee. For My
+strength' (where the word 'My' is a supplement, but a
+necessary one) 'is made perfect in weakness.'</p>
+
+<p>The answer is, in form and in substance, a gentle
+refusal of the form of the petition, but it is a more than
+granting of its essence. For the best answer to such
+a prayer, and the answer which a true man means
+when he asks, 'Take away the burden,' need not be the
+external removal of the pressure of the sorrow, but the
+infusing of power to sustain it. There are two ways
+of lightening a burden, one is diminishing its actual
+weight, the other is increasing the strength of the
+shoulder that bears it. And the latter is God's way, is
+Christ's way, of dealing with us.</p>
+
+<p>Now mark that the answer which this faithful prayer
+receives is no communication of anything fresh, but it
+is the opening of the man's eyes to see that already he
+has all that he needs. The reply is not, 'I <i>will</i> give<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+thee grace sufficient,' but 'My grace' (which thou hast
+now) 'is sufficient for thee.' That grace is given and
+possessed by the sorrowing heart at the moment when
+it prays. Open your eyes to see what you have, and
+you will not ask for the load to be taken away. Is not
+that always true? Many a heart is carrying some
+heavy weight; perhaps some have an incurable sorrow,
+some are stricken by disease that they know can never
+be healed, some are aware that the shipwreck has been
+total, and that the sorrow that they carry to-day will lie
+down with them in the dust. Be it so! 'My grace (not
+shall be, but) <i>is</i> sufficient for thee.' And what thou
+hast already in thy possession is enough for all that
+comes storming against thee of disease, disappointment,
+loss, and misery. Set on the one side all possible
+as well as all actual weaknesses, burdens, pains, and set
+on the other these two words&mdash;'My grace,' and all these
+dwindle into nothingness and disappear. If troubled
+Christian men would learn what they have, and would
+use what they already possess, they would less often
+beseech Him with vain petitions to take away their
+blessings which are in the thorns in the flesh. 'My
+grace is sufficient.'</p>
+
+<p>How modestly the Master speaks about what He
+gives! 'Sufficient'? Is not there a margin? Is there
+not more than is wanted? The overplus is 'exceeding
+abundant,' not only 'above what we ask or think,' but
+far more than our need. 'Two hundred pennyworth of
+bread is not <i>sufficient</i> that every one may take a little,'
+says Sense. Omnipotence says, 'Bring the few small
+loaves and fishes unto Me'; and Faith dispensed them
+amongst the crowd; and Experience 'gathered up of the
+fragments that remained' more than there had been
+when the multiplication began. So the grace utilised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+increases; the gift grows as it is employed. 'Unto him
+that hath shall be given.' And the 'sufficiency' is not
+a bare adequacy, just covering the extent of the need,
+with no overlapping margin, but is large beyond expectation,
+desire, or necessity; so leading onwards to
+high hopes and a wider opening of the open mouths of
+our need that the blessing may pour in.</p>
+
+<p>The other part of this great answer, that the Christ
+from Heaven spoke in or to the praying spirit of this
+not disappointed, though refused, Apostle, unveiled the
+purpose of the sorrow, even as the former part had
+disclosed the strength to bear it. For, says He, laying
+down therein the great law of His kingdom in all
+departments and in all ways, 'My strength is made
+perfect'&mdash;that is, of course, perfect in its manifestation
+or operations, for it is perfect in itself already. 'My
+strength is made perfect in weakness.' It works in and
+through man's weakness.</p>
+
+<p>God works with broken reeds. If a man conceits
+himself to be an iron pillar, God can do nothing with
+or by him. All the self-conceit and confidence have to
+be taken out of him first. He has to be brought low
+before the Father can use him for His purposes. The
+lowlands hold the water, and, if only the sluice is open,
+the gravitation of His grace does all the rest and
+carries the flood into the depths of the lowly heart.</p>
+
+<p>His strength loves to work in weakness, only the
+weakness must be conscious, and the conscious weakness
+must have passed into conscious dependence.
+There, then, you get the law for the Church, for the
+works of Christianity on the widest scale, and in
+individual lives. Strength that conceits itself to be
+such is weakness; weakness that knows itself to be
+such is strength. The only true source of Power, both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+for Christian work and in all other respects, is God
+Himself; and our strength is ours but by derivation
+from Him. And the only way to secure that derivation
+is through humble dependence, which we call faith in
+Jesus Christ. And the only way by which that faith
+in Jesus Christ can ever be kindled in a man's soul is
+through the sense of his need and emptiness. So when
+we know ourselves weak, we have taken the first step
+to strength; just as, when we know ourselves sinners,
+we have taken the first step to righteousness; just as
+in all regions the recognition of the doleful fact of our
+human necessity is the beginning of the joyful confidence
+in the glad, triumphant fact of the divine fulness.
+All our hollownesses, if I may so say, are met with His
+fulness that fits into them. It only needs that a man
+be aware of that which he is, and then turn himself to
+Him who is all that he is not, and then into his empty
+being will flow rejoicing the whole fulness of God.
+'My strength is made perfect in weakness.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, mark the calm final acquiescence in the
+loving necessity of continued sorrow. 'Most gladly,
+therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmity that the
+power of Christ may rest upon me.' The will is entirely
+harmonised with Christ's. The Apostle begins with
+instinctive shrinking, he passes onwards to a perception
+of the purpose of his trial and of the sustaining
+grace; and he comes now to acquiescence which is not
+passivity, but glad triumph. He is more than submissive,
+he gladly glories in his infirmity in order that
+the power of Christ may 'spread a tabernacle over'
+him. 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted,' said
+the old prophet. Paul says, in a yet higher note of
+concord with God's will, 'I am glad that I sorrow. I
+rejoice in weakness, because it makes it easier for me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+to cling, and, clinging, I am strong, and conquer evil.'
+Far better is it that the sting of our sorrow should be
+taken away, by our having learned what it is for,
+and having bowed to it, than that it should be taken
+away by the external removal which we sometimes
+long for. A grief, a trial, an incapacity, a limitation, a
+weakness, which we use as a means of deepening our
+sense of dependence upon Him, is a blessing, and not a
+sorrow. And if we would only go out into the world
+trying to interpret its events in the spirit of this great
+text, we should less frequently wonder and weep over
+what sometimes seem to us the insoluble mysteries of
+the sorrows of ourselves and of other men. They are
+all intended to make it more easy for us to realise our
+utter hanging upon Him, and so to open our hearts to
+receive more fully the quickening influences of His
+omnipotent and self-sufficing grace.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is a lesson for those who have to carry
+some cross and know they must carry it throughout
+life. It will be wreathed with flowers if you accept it.
+Here is a lesson for all Christian workers. Ministers
+of the Gospel especially should banish all thoughts
+of their own cleverness, intellectual ability, culture,
+sufficiency for their work, and learn that only when
+they are emptied can they be filled, and only when
+they know themselves to be nothing are they ready
+for God to work through them. And here is a lesson
+for all who stand apart from the grace and power
+of Jesus Christ as if they needed it not. Whether
+you know it or not, you are a broken reed; and the
+only way of your ever being bound up and made
+strong is that you shall recognise your sinfulness,
+your necessity, your abject poverty, your utter emptiness,
+and come to Him who is righteousness, riches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+fulness, and say, 'Because I am weak, be Thou my
+strength.' The secret of all noble, heroic, useful, happy
+life lies in the paradox, 'When I am weak, then am I
+strong,' and the secret of all failures, miseries, hopeless
+losses, lies in its converse, 'When I am strong, then am
+I weak.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>NOT YOURS BUT YOU</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'I seek not yours, but you.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> xii. 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Men are usually quick to suspect others of the vices to
+which they themselves are prone. It is very hard for
+one who never does anything but with an eye to what
+he can make out of it, to believe that there are other
+people actuated by higher motives. So Paul had, over
+and over again, to meet the hateful charge of making
+money out of his apostleship. It was one of the
+favourite stones that his opponents in the Corinthian
+Church, of whom there were very many, very bitter
+ones, flung at him. In this letter he more than once
+refers to the charge. He does so with great dignity,
+and with a very characteristic and delicate mixture of
+indignation and tenderness, almost playfulness. Thus,
+in the context, he tells these Corinthian grumblers
+that he must beg their pardon for not having taken
+anything of them, and so honoured them. Then he
+informs them that he is coming again to see them for
+the third time, and that that visit will be marked by
+the same independence of their help as the others had
+been. And then he just lets a glimpse of his pained
+heart peep out in the words of my text. 'I seek not
+yours, but you.' <i>There</i> speaks a disinterested love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+which feels obliged, and yet reluctant, to stoop to say
+that it <i>is</i> love, and that it <i>is</i> disinterested. Where did
+Paul learn this passionate desire to possess these people,
+and this entire suppression of self in the desire? It
+was a spark from a sacred fire, a drop from an infinite
+ocean, an echo of a divine voice. The words of my
+text would never have been Paul's if the spirit of them
+had not first been Christ's. I venture to take them in
+that aspect, as setting forth Christ's claims upon us,
+and bearing very directly on the question of Christian
+service and of Christian liberality.</p>
+
+<p>I. So, then, first of all, I remark, Christ desires
+personal surrender.</p>
+
+<p>'I seek not yours, but <i>you</i>,' is the very mother-tongue
+of love; but upon our lips, even when our love
+is purest, there is a tinge of selfishness blending with
+it, and very often the desire for another's love is as
+purely selfish as the desire for any material good. But
+in so far as human love is pure in its desire to possess
+another, we have the right to believe the deep and
+wonderful thought that there is something corresponding
+to it in the heart of Christ, which is a revelation
+for us of the heart of God; and that, however little we
+may be able to construe the whole meaning of the fact,
+He does stretch out an arm of desire towards us; and
+for His own sake, as for ours, would fain draw us near
+to Himself, and is 'satisfied,' as He is not without it,
+when men's hearts yield themselves up to Him, and let
+Him love them and lavish Himself upon them. I do
+not venture into these depths, but I would lay upon
+our hearts that the very inmost meaning of all that
+Jesus Christ has said, and is saying, to each of us by
+the records of His life, by the pathos of His death, by
+the miracle of His Resurrection, by the glory of His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+Ascension, by the power of His granted Spirit, is, 'I
+seek you.'</p>
+
+<p>And, brethren, our self-surrender is the essence of our
+Christianity. Our religion lies neither in our heads
+nor in our acts; the deepest notion of it is that it is
+the entire yielding up of ourselves to Jesus Christ our
+Lord. There is plenty of religion which is a religion
+of the head and of creeds. There is plenty of religion
+which is the religion of the hand and of the tongue,
+and of forms and ceremonies and sacraments; external
+worship. There is plenty of religion which surrenders
+to Him some of the more superficial parts of our
+personality, whilst the ancient Anarch, Self, sits undisturbed
+on his dark throne, in the depths of our
+being. But none of these are the religion that either
+Christ requires or that we need. The only true notion
+of a Christian is a man who can truly say, 'I live, yet
+not I, but Christ liveth in me.'</p>
+
+<p>And that is the only kind of life that is blessed; our
+only true nobleness and beauty and power and sweetness
+are measured by, and accurately correspond with,
+the completeness of our surrender of ourselves to Jesus
+Christ. As long as the earth was thought to be the
+centre of the planetary system there was nothing but
+confusion in the heavens. Shift the centre to the sun
+and all becomes order and beauty. The root of sin,
+and the mother of death, is making myself my own
+law and Lord; the germ of righteousness, and the first
+pulsations of life, lie in yielding ourselves to God in
+Christ, because He has yielded Himself unto us.</p>
+
+<p>I need not remind you, I suppose, that this self-surrender
+is a great deal more than a vivid metaphor:
+that it implies a very hard fact; implies at least two
+things, that we have yielded ourselves to Jesus Christ,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+by the love of our hearts, and by the unreluctant submission
+of our wills, whether He commands or whether
+He sends sufferings or joys.</p>
+
+<p>And, oh, brethren, be sure of this, that no such giving
+of myself away, in the sweet reciprocities of a higher
+than human affection, is possible, in the general, and
+on the large scale, if you evacuate from the Gospel the
+great truth, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.'
+I believe&mdash;and therefore I am bound to preach it&mdash;that
+the only power which can utterly annihilate and cast
+out the dominion of self from a human soul is the
+power that is lodged in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on
+the Cross for sinful men.</p>
+
+<p>And whilst I would fully recognise all that is noble,
+and all that is effective, in systems either of religion,
+or of irreligious morality, which have no place within
+their bounds for that great motive, I am sure of this,
+that the evil self within us is too strong to be exorcised
+by anything short of the old message, 'Jesus Christ
+has given His life for thee, wilt thou not give thyself
+unto Him?'</p>
+
+<p>II. Christ seeks personal service.</p>
+
+<p>'I seek .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. you'; not only for My love, but for My
+tools; for My instruments in carrying out the purposes
+for which I died, and establishing My dominion in the
+world. Now I want to say two or three very plain
+things about this matter, which lies very near my
+heart, as to some degree responsible for the amount of
+Christian activity and service in this my congregation.
+Brethren, the surrender of ourselves to Jesus Christ in
+acts of direct Christian activity and service, will be the
+outcome of a real surrender of ourselves to Him in
+love and obedience.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot imagine a man who, in any deep sense, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+realised his obligations to that Saviour, and in any
+real sense has made the great act of self-renunciation,
+and crowned Christ as his Lord, living for the rest of
+his life, as so many professing Christians do, dumb and
+idle, in so far as work for the Master is concerned. It
+seems to me that, among the many wants of this
+generation of professing Christians, there is none that
+is more needed than that a wave of new consecration
+should pass over the Church. If men who call themselves
+Christians lived more in habitual contact with
+the facts of their redeeming Saviour's sacrifice for
+them, there would be no need to lament the fewness of
+the labourers, as measured against the overwhelming
+multitude of the fields that are white to harvest. If
+once that flood of a new sense of Christ's gift, and a
+consequent new completeness of our returned gifts to
+Him, flowed over the churches, then all the little empty
+ravines would be filled with a flashing tide. Not a
+shuttle moves, not a spindle revolves, until the strong
+impulse born of fire rushes in; and then, all is activity.
+It is no use to flog, flog, flog, at idle Christians, and try
+to make them work. There is only one thing that will
+set them to work, and that is that they shall live nearer
+their Master, and find out more of what they owe to
+Him; and so render themselves up to be His instruments
+for any purpose for which He may choose to use
+them.</p>
+
+<p>This surrender of ourselves for direct Christian service
+is the only solution of the problem of how to win the
+world for Jesus Christ. Professionals cannot do it.
+Men of my class cannot do it. We are clogged very
+largely by the fact that, being necessarily dependent
+on our congregations for a living, we cannot, with as
+clear an emphasis as you can, go to people and say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+'We seek not yours, but you.' I have nothing to
+say about the present ecclesiastical arrangements of
+modern Christian communities. That would take me
+altogether from my present purposes, but I want to
+lay this upon your consciences, dear brethren, that
+you who have other means of living than proclaiming
+Christ's name have an advantage, which it is
+at your peril that you fling away. As long as the
+Christian Church thought that an ordained priest was
+a man who could do things that laymen could not do,
+the limitation of Christian service to the priesthood was
+logical. But when the Christian Church, especially as
+represented by us Nonconformists, came to believe that
+a minister was only a man who preached the Gospel,
+which every Christian man is bound to do, the limitations
+of Christian service to the official class became an
+illogical survival, utterly incongruous with the fundamental
+principles of our conception of the Christian
+Church. And yet here it is, devastating our churches
+to-day, and making hundreds of good people perfectly
+comfortable, in an unscriptural and unchristian indolence,
+because, forsooth, it is the minister's business
+to preach the Gospel. I know that there is not nearly
+as much of that indolence as there used to be. Thank
+God for that. There are far more among our congregations
+than in former times who have realised the
+fact that it is <i>every</i> Christian man's task, somehow or
+other, to set forth the great name of Jesus Christ. But
+still, alas, in a church with, say, 400 members, you may
+knock off the last cypher, and you will get a probably
+not too low statement of the number of people in it
+who have realised and fulfilled this obligation. What
+about the other 360 'dumb dogs, that will not bark'?
+And in that 360 there will probably be several men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+who can make speeches on political platforms, and in
+scientific lecture-halls, and about social and economical
+questions, only they cannot, for the life of them, open
+their mouths and say a word to a soul about Him
+whom they say they serve, and to whom they say they
+belong.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, this direct service cannot be escaped from,
+or commuted by a money payment. In the old days a
+man used to escape serving in the militia if he found a
+substitute, and paid for him. There are a great many
+good Christian people who seem to think that Christ's
+army is recruited on that principle. But it is a mistake.
+'I seek you, not yours.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, and only a word. Christ seeks us, <i>and</i>
+ours.</p>
+
+<p>Not you <i>without</i> yours, still less yours without you.
+This is no place, nor is the fag end of a sermon the
+time, to talk about so wide a subject as the ethics of
+Christian dealing with money. But two things I will
+say&mdash;consecration of self is extremely imperfect which
+does not include the consecration of possessions, and,
+conversely, consecration of possessions which does not
+flow from, and is not accompanied by, the consecration
+of self, is nought.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, the great law of self-surrender is to run
+through the whole Christian life, that law, as applied
+to our dealing with what we own, prescribes three
+things. The first is <i>stewardship</i>, not ownership; and
+that all round the circumference of our possessions.
+Depend upon it, the angry things that we hear to-day
+about the unequal distribution of wealth will get
+angrier and angrier, and will be largely justified in
+becoming so by the fact that so many of us, <i>Christians
+included</i>, have firmly grasped the notion of posses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>sion,
+and utterly forgotten the obligation of stewardship.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the law of self-surrender, in its application to
+all that we have, involves our continual reference to
+Jesus Christ in our disposition of these our possessions.
+I draw no line of distinction, in this respect, between
+what a man spends upon himself, and what he spends
+upon 'charity,' and what he spends upon religious
+objects. <i>One</i> principle is to govern, getting, hoarding,
+giving, enjoying, and that is, that in it all Christ shall
+be Master.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the law of self-surrender, in its application to
+our possessions, implies that there shall be an element
+of sacrifice in our use of these; whether they be
+possessions of intellect, of acquirement, of influence, of
+position, or of material wealth. The law of help is
+sacrifice, and the law for a Christian man is that he
+shall not offer unto the Lord his God that which costs
+him nothing.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, let us all get near to that great
+central fire till it melts our hearts. Let the love which
+is our hope be our pattern. Remember that though
+only faintly, and from afar, can the issues of Christ's
+great sacrifice be reproduced in any actions of ours,
+the spirit which brought Him to die is the spirit
+which must instruct and inspire us to live. Unless we
+can say, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me; I
+yield myself to Him'; and unless our lives confirm the
+utterance, we have little right to call ourselves His
+disciples.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GALATIANS</h2>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>FROM CENTRE TO CIRCUMFERENCE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God,
+who loved me, and gave Himself for me.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> ii. 20.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have a bundle of paradoxes in this verse. First,
+'I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.' The
+Christian life is a dying life. If we are in any real
+sense joined to Christ, the power of His death makes
+us dead to self and sin and the world. In that region,
+as in the physical, death is the gate of life; and, inasmuch
+as what we die to in Christ is itself only a living
+death, we live because we die, and in proportion as we
+die.</p>
+
+<p>The next paradox is, 'Yet not I, but Christ liveth in
+me.' The Christian life is a life in which an indwelling
+Christ casts out, and therefore quickens, self. We gain
+ourselves when we lose ourselves. His abiding in us
+does not destroy but heightens our individuality. We
+then most truly live when we can say, 'Not I, but
+Christ liveth in me'; the soul of my soul and the self
+of myself.</p>
+
+<p>And the last paradox is that of my text, 'The life
+which I live in the flesh, I live in' (not 'by') 'the
+faith of the Son of God.' The true Christian life moves
+in two spheres at once. Externally and superficially
+it is 'in the flesh,' really it is 'in faith.' It belongs not
+to the material nor is dependent upon the physical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+body in which we are housed. We are strangers here,
+and the true region and atmosphere of the Christian
+life is that invisible sphere of faith.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, we have in these words of my text a
+Christian man's frank avowal of the secret of his own
+life. It is like a geological cutting, it goes down from
+the surface, where the grass and the flowers are,
+through the various strata, but it goes deeper than
+these, to the fiery heart, the flaming nucleus and
+centre of all things. Therefore it may do us all good
+to make a section of our hearts and see whether the
+<i>strata</i> there are conformable to those that are here.</p>
+
+<p>I. Let us begin with the centre, and work to the
+surface. We have, first, the great central fact named
+last, but round which all the Christian life is gathered.</p>
+
+<p>'The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself
+for me.' These two words, the 'loving' and the
+'giving,' both point backwards to some one definite
+historical fact, and the only fact which they can have
+in view is the great one of the death of Jesus Christ.
+That is His giving up of Himself. That is the signal
+and highest manifestation and proof of His love.</p>
+
+<p>Notice (though I can but touch in the briefest
+possible manner upon the great thoughts that gather
+round these words) the three aspects of that transcendent
+fact, the centre and nucleus of the whole
+Christian life, which come into prominence in these
+words before us. Christ's death is a great act of self-surrender,
+of which the one motive is His own pure
+and perfect love. No doubt in other places of Scripture
+we have set forth the death of Christ as being
+the result of the Father's purpose, and we read that in
+that wondrous surrender there were two givings up
+The Father 'freely gave Him up to the death for us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+all.' That divine surrender, the Apostle ventures, in
+another passage, to find dimly suggested from afar, in
+the silent but submissive and unreluctant surrender
+with which Abraham yielded his only begotten son on
+the mountain top. But besides that ineffable giving
+up by the Father of the Son, Jesus Christ Himself,
+moved only by His love, willingly yields Himself. The
+whole doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has been
+marred by one-sided insisting on the truth that God
+sent the Son, to the forgetting of the fact that the Son
+'came'; and that He was bound to the Cross neither
+by cords of man's weaving nor by the will of the
+Father, but that He Himself bound Himself to that
+Cross with the 'cords of love and the bands of a man,'
+and died from no natural necessity nor from any
+imposition of the divine will upon Him unwilling, but
+because He would, and that He would because He
+loved. 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.'</p>
+
+<p>Then note, further, that here, most distinctly, that
+great act of self-surrendering love which culminates
+on the Cross is regarded as being for man in a special
+and peculiar sense. I know, of course, that from the
+mere wording of my text we cannot argue the atoning
+and substitutionary character of the death of Christ,
+for the preposition here does not necessarily mean
+'instead of,' but 'for the behoof of.' But admitting
+that, I have another question. If Christ's death is for
+'the behoof of' men, in what conceivable sense does it
+benefit them, unless it is in the place of men? The
+death 'for me' is only for me when I understand that
+it is 'instead of' me. And practically you will find
+that wherever the full-orbed faith in Christ Jesus as
+the death for all the sins of the whole world, bearing
+the penalty and bearing it away, has begun to falter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+and grow pale, men do not know what to do with
+Christ's death at all, and stop talking about it to a
+very large extent.</p>
+
+<p>Unless He died as a sacrifice, I, for one, fail to see in
+what other than a mere sentimental sense the death of
+Christ is a death for men.</p>
+
+<p>And lastly, about this matter, observe how here we
+have brought into vivid prominence the great thought
+that Jesus Christ in His death has regard to single
+souls. We preach that He died for all. If we believe
+in that august title which is laid here as the vindication
+of our faith on the one hand, and as the ground
+of the possibility of the benefits of His death being
+world-wide on the other&mdash;viz. the Son of God&mdash;then
+we shall not stumble at the thought that He died for
+all, because He died for each. I know that if you only
+regard Jesus Christ as human I am talking utter
+nonsense; but I know, too, that if we believe in the
+divinity of our Lord, there need be nothing to stumble
+us, but the contrary, in the thought that it was not an
+abstraction that He died for, that it was not a vague
+mass of unknown beings, clustered together, but so
+far away that He could not see any of their faces,
+for whom He gave His life on the Cross. That is the
+way in which, and in which alone, <i>we</i> can embrace
+the whole mass of humanity&mdash;by losing sight of the
+individuals. We generalise, precisely because we do
+not see the individual units; but that is not God's
+way, and that is not Christ's way, who is divine.
+For Him the <i>all</i> is broken up into its parts, and when
+we say that the divine love loves all, we mean that
+the divine love loves each. I believe (and I commend
+the thought to you) that we do not fathom the depth
+of Christ's sufferings unless we recognise that the sins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+of each man were consciously adding pressure to the
+load beneath which He sank; nor picture the wonders
+of His love until we believe that on the Cross it distinguished
+and embraced each, and, therefore, comprehended
+all. Every man may say, 'He loved me, and
+gave Himself for me.'</p>
+
+<p>II. So much, then, for the first central fact that is
+here. Now let me say a word, in the second place,
+about the faith which makes that fact the foundation
+of my own personal life.</p>
+
+<p>'I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me,
+and gave Himself for me.' I am not going to plunge
+into any unnecessary dissertations about the nature
+of faith; but may I say that, like all other familiar
+conceptions, it has got worn so smooth that it glides
+over our mental palate without roughening any of the
+<i>papill&aelig;</i> or giving any sense or savour at all? And I
+do believe that dozens of people like you, who have
+come to church and chapel all your lives, and fancy
+yourselves to be fully <i>au fait</i> at all the Christian truth
+that you will ever hear from my lips, do not grasp
+with any clearness of apprehension the meaning of
+that fundamental word 'faith.'</p>
+
+<p>It is a thousand pities that it is confined by the
+accidents of language to our attitude in reference to
+Jesus Christ. So some of you think that it is some
+kind of theological juggle which has nothing to do
+with, and never can be seen in operation in, common
+life. Suppose, instead of the threadbare, technical
+'faith' we took to a new translation for a minute, and
+said '<i>trust</i>,' do you think that would freshen up the
+thought to you at all? It is the very same thing
+which makes the sweetness of your relations to wife
+and husband and friend and parent, which, transferred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+to Jesus Christ and glorified in the process, becomes
+the seed of immortal life and the opener of the gate of
+Heaven. Trust Jesus Christ. That is the living centre
+of the Christian life; that is the process by which we
+draw the general blessing of the Gospel into our own
+hearts, and make the world-wide truth, our truth.</p>
+
+<p>I need not insist either, I suppose, on the necessity,
+if our Christian life is to be modelled upon the Apostolic
+lines, of our faith embracing the Christ in all
+these aspects in which I have been speaking about His
+work. God forbid that I should seem to despise rudimentary
+and incomplete feelings after Him in any
+heart which may be unable to say 'Amen' to Paul's
+statement here. I want to insist very earnestly, and
+with special reference to the young, that the true
+Christian faith is not merely the grasp of the person,
+but it is the grasp of the Person who is 'declared to be
+the Son of God,' and whose death is the voluntary self-surrender
+motived by His love, for the carrying away
+of the sins of every single soul in the whole universe.
+That is the Christ, the full Christ, cleaving to whom
+our faith finds somewhat to grasp worthy of grasping.
+And I beseech you, be not contented with a partial
+grasp of a partial Saviour; neither shut your eyes to
+the divinity of His nature, nor to the efficacy of His
+death, but remember that the true Gospel preaches
+Christ and Him crucified; and that for us, saving faith
+is the faith that grasps the Son of God 'Who loved
+me and gave Himself for me.'</p>
+
+<p>Note, further, that true faith is personal faith, which
+appropriates, and, as it were, fences in as my very
+own, the purpose and benefit of Christ's giving of
+Himself. It is always difficult for lazy people (and
+most of us are lazy) to transfer into their own personal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+lives, and to bring into actual contact with themselves
+and their own experience, wide, general truths. To
+assent to them, when we keep them in their generality,
+is very easy and very profitless. It does no man any
+good to say 'All men are mortal'; but how different it
+is when the blunt end of that generalisation is shaped
+into a point, and I say 'I have to die!' It penetrates
+then, and it sticks. It is easy to say 'All men are
+sinners.' That never yet forced anybody down on
+his knees. But when we shut out on either side the
+lateral view and look straight on, on the narrow line
+of our own lives, up to the Throne where the Lawgiver
+sits, and feel 'I am a sinful man,' that sends us to our
+prayers for pardon and purity. And in like manner
+nobody was ever wholesomely terrified by the thought
+of a general judgment. But when you translate it
+into 'I must stand there,' the terror of the Lord
+persuades men.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner that great truth which we all of us
+say we believe, that Christ has died for the world, is
+utterly useless and profitless to us until we have
+translated it into Paul's world, 'loved <i>me</i> and gave
+Himself for <i>me</i>.' I do not say that the essence of faith
+is the conversion of the general statement into the
+particular application, but I do say that there is no
+faith which does not realise one's personal possession
+of the benefits of the death of Christ, and that until
+you turn the wide word into a message for yourself
+alone, you have not yet got within sight of the blessedness
+of the Christian life. The whole river may flow
+past me, but only so much of it as I can bring into my
+own garden by my own sluices, and lift in my own
+bucket, and put to my own lips, is of any use to me.
+The death of Christ for the world is a commonplace of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+superficial Christianity, which is no Christianity; the
+death of Christ for myself, as if He and I were the
+only beings in the universe, that is the death on which
+faith fastens and feeds.</p>
+
+<p>And, dear brother, you have the right to exercise it.
+The Christ loves each, and therefore He loves all;
+that is the process in the divine mind. The converse
+is the process in the revelation of that mind; the Bible
+says to us, Christ loves all, and therefore we have the
+right to draw the inference that He loves each. You
+have as much right to take every 'whosoever' of the
+New Testament as your very own, as if on the page
+of your Bible that 'whosoever' was struck out, and
+your name, John, Thomas, Mary, Elizabeth, or whatever
+it is, were put in there. 'He loved <i>me</i>.' Can <i>you</i>
+say that? Have you ever passed from the region of
+universality, which is vague and profitless, into the
+region of personal appropriation of the person of Jesus
+Christ and His death?</p>
+
+<p>III. And now, lastly, notice the life which is built
+upon this faith.</p>
+
+<p>The true Christian life is dual. It is a life in the
+flesh, and it is also a life in faith. These two, as I
+have said, are like two spheres, in either of which a
+man's course is passed, or, rather, the one is surface
+and the other is central. Here is a great trailing
+spray of seaweed floating golden on the unquiet
+water, and rising and falling on each wave or ripple.
+Aye! but its root is away deep, deep, deep below the
+storms, below where there is motion, anchored upon
+a hidden rock that can never move. And so my life,
+if it be a Christian life at all, has its surface amidst
+the shifting mutabilities of earth, but its root in the
+silent eternities of the centre of all things, which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+Christ in God. I live in the flesh on the outside, but
+if I am a Christian at all, I live in the faith in regard
+of my true and proper being.</p>
+
+<p>This faith, which grasps the Divine Christ as the
+person whose love-moved death is my life, and who
+by my faith becomes Himself the Indwelling Guest in
+my heart; this faith, if it be worth anything, will
+mould and influence my whole being. It will give
+me motive, pattern, power for all noble service and
+all holy living. The one thing that stirs men to true
+obedience is that their hearts be touched with the
+firm assurance that Christ loved them and died for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>We sometimes used to see men starting an engine
+by manual force; and what toil it was to get the
+great cranks to turn, and the pistons to rise! So we
+set ourselves to try and move our lives into holiness
+and beauty and nobleness, and it is dispiriting work.
+There is a far better, surer way than that: let the
+steam in, and that will do it. That is to say&mdash;let the
+Christ in His dying power and the living energy of His
+indwelling Spirit occupy the heart, and activity
+becomes blessedness, and work is rest, and service is
+freedom and dominion.</p>
+
+<p>The life that I live in the flesh is poor, limited,
+tortured with anxiety, weighed upon by sore distress,
+becomes dark and gray and dreary often as we travel
+nearer the end, and is always full of miseries and of
+pains. But if within that life in the flesh there be a
+life in faith, which is the life of Christ Himself brought
+to us through our faith, that life will be triumphant,
+quiet, patient, aspiring, noble, hopeful, gentle, strong,
+Godlike, being the life of Christ Himself within us.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, test your faith by these two tests,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+what it grasps and what it does. If it grasps a whole
+Christ, in all the glory of His nature and the blessedness
+of His work, it is genuine; and it proves its
+genuineness if, and only if, it works in you by love;
+animating all your action, bringing you ever into the
+conscious presence of that dear Lord, and making
+Him pattern, law, motive, goal, companion and reward.
+'To me to live is Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>If so, then we live indeed; but to live in the flesh is
+to die; and the death that we die when we live in
+Christ is the gate and the beginning of the only real
+life of the soul.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE EVIL EYE AND THE CHARM</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eye
+Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> iii. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Revised Version gives a shorter, and probably
+correct, form of this vehement question. It omits the
+two clauses 'that ye should not obey the truth' and
+'among you.' The omission increases the sharpness of
+the thrust of the interrogation, whilst it loses nothing
+of the meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a very striking metaphor runs through the
+whole of this question, which may easily be lost sight
+of by ordinary readers. You know the old superstition
+as to the Evil Eye, almost universal at the date of this
+letter and even now in the East, and lingering still
+amongst ourselves. Certain persons were supposed to
+have the power, by a look, to work mischief, and by
+fixing the gaze of their victims, to suck the very life
+out of them. So Paul asks who the malign sorcerer
+is who has thus fascinated the fickle Galatians, and is
+draining their Christian life out of their eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Very appropriately, therefore, if there is this reference,
+which the word translated 'bewitched' carries
+with it, he goes on to speak about Jesus Christ as
+having been displayed before their eyes. They had seen
+Him. How did they come to be able to turn away to
+look at anything else?</p>
+
+<p>But there is another observation to be made by way
+of introduction, and that is as to the full force of the
+expression 'evidently set forth.' The word employed,
+as commentators tell us, is that which is used for the
+display of official proclamations, or public notices, in
+some conspicuous place, as the Forum or the market,
+that the citizens might read. So, keeping up the metaphor,
+the word might be rendered, as has been suggested
+by some eminent scholars, 'placarded'&mdash;'Before whose
+eyes Jesus Christ has been placarded.' The expression
+has acquired somewhat ignoble associations from
+modern advertising, but that is no reason why we
+should lose sight of its force. So, then, Paul says, 'In
+my preaching, Christ was conspicuously set forth. It
+is like some inexplicable enchantment that, having
+seen Him, you should turn away to gaze on others.'
+It is insanity which evokes wonder, as well as sin which
+deserves rebuke; and the fiery question of my text
+conveys both.</p>
+
+<p>I. Keeping to the metaphor, I note first the placard
+which Paul had displayed.</p>
+
+<p>'Jesus Christ crucified has been conspicuously set
+forth before you,' he says to these Galatians. Now, he
+is referring, of course, to his own work of preaching
+the Gospel to them at the beginning. And the vivid
+metaphor suggests very strikingly two things. We see
+in it the Apostle's notion of what He had to do. His
+had been a very humble office, simply to hang up a pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>clamation.
+The one virtue of a proclamation is that
+it should be brief and plain. It must be authoritative,
+it must be urgent, it must be 'writ large,' it must be
+easily intelligible. And he that makes it public has
+nothing to do except to fasten it up, and make sure
+that it is legible. If I might venture into modern
+phraseology, what Paul means is that he was neither
+more nor less than a bill-sticker, that he went out with
+the placards and fastened them up.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! if we ministers universally acted up to the
+implications of this metaphor, do you not think the
+pulpit would be more frequently a centre of power
+than it is to-day? And if, instead of presenting our
+own ingenuities and speculations, we were to realise
+the fact that we have to hide ourselves behind the
+broad sheet that we fasten up, there would be a new
+breath over many a moribund church, and we should
+hear less of the often warrantable sarcasms about the
+inefficiency of the modern pulpit.</p>
+
+<p>But I turn from Paul's conception of the office to his
+statement of his theme. '<i>Jesus</i> was displayed amongst
+you.' If I might vary the metaphor a little, the placard
+that Paul fastened up was like those that modern advertising
+ingenuity displays upon all our walls. It was
+a picture-placard, and on it was portrayed one sole figure&mdash;Jesus,
+the Person. Christianity is Christ, and Christ
+is Christianity; and wherever there is a pulpit or a
+book which deals rather with doctrines than with Him
+who is the Fountain and Quarry of all doctrine, there
+is divergence from the primitive form of the Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>I know, of course, that doctrines&mdash;which are only
+formal and orderly statements of principles involved
+in the facts&mdash;must flow from the proclamation of the
+person, Christ. I am not such a fool as to run amuck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+against theology, as some people in this day do. But
+what I wish to insist upon is that the first form of
+Christianity is not a theory, but a history, and that
+the revelation of God is the biography of a man. We
+must begin with the person, Christ, and preach Him.
+Would that all our preachers and all professing
+Christians, in their own personal religious life, had
+grasped this&mdash;that, since Christianity is not first a
+philosophy but a history, and its centre not an ordered
+sequence of doctrines but a living person, the act that
+makes a man possessor of Christianity is not the
+intellectual process of assimilating certain truths, and
+accepting them, but the moral process of clinging, with
+trust and love, to the person, Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>But, further, if any of you consult the original, you
+will see that the order of the sentence is such as to
+throw a great weight of emphasis on that last word
+'crucified.' It is not merely a person that is portrayed
+on the placard, but it is that person <i>upon the Cross</i>.
+Ah! brethren, Paul himself puts his finger, in the words
+of my text, on what, in his conception, was the throbbing
+heart of all his message, the vital point from which all
+its power, and all the gleam of its benediction, poured
+out upon humanity&mdash;'Christ crucified.' If the placard
+is a picture of Christ in other attitudes and in other
+aspects, without the picture of Him crucified, it is
+an imperfect representation of the Gospel that Paul
+preached and that Christ was.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, think, secondly, of the fascinators that draw
+away the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's question is not one of ignorance, but it is a
+rhetorical way of rebuking, and of expressing wonder.
+He knew, and the Galatians knew, well enough who it
+was that had bewitched them. The whole letter is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+polemic worked in fire, and not in frost, as some argumentation
+is, against a very well-marked class of
+teachers&mdash;viz. those emissaries of Judaism who had
+crept into the Church, and took it as their special
+function to dog Paul's steps amongst the heathen
+communities that he had gathered together through
+faith in Christ, and used every means to upset his
+work.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot but pause for a moment upon this original
+reference of my text, because it is very relevant to the
+present condition of things amongst us. These men
+whom Paul is fighting as if he were in a sawpit with
+them, in this letter, what was their teaching? This:
+they did not deny that Jesus was the Christ; they did
+not deny that faith knit a man to Him, but what they
+said was that the observance of the external rites
+of Judaism was necessary in order to entrance into
+the Church and to salvation. They did not in their
+own estimation detract from Christ, but they added
+to Him. And Paul says that to add is to detract, to
+say that anything is necessary except faith in Jesus
+Christ's finished work is to deny that that finished
+work, and faith in it, are the means of salvation; and
+the whole evangelical system crumbles into nothingness
+if once you admit that.</p>
+
+<p>Now, is there anybody to-day who is saying the same
+things, with variations consequent upon change of
+external conditions? Are there no people within the
+limits of the Christian Church who are reiterating the
+old Jewish notion that external ceremonies&mdash;baptism
+and the Lord's Supper&mdash;are necessary to salvation and
+to connection with the Christian Church? And is it
+not true now, as it was then, that though they do not
+avowedly detract, they so represent these external rites<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+as to detract, from the sole necessity of faith in the perfected
+work of Jesus Christ? The centre is shifted from
+personal union with a personal Saviour by a personal
+faith to participation in external ordinances. And I
+venture to think that the lava stream which, in this
+Epistle to the Galatians, Paul pours on the Judaisers
+of his day needs but a little deflection to pour its hot
+current over, and to consume, the sacramentarian
+theories of this day. 'O foolish Galatians, who hath
+bewitched you?' Is it not like some malignant sorcery,
+that after the Evangelical revival of the last century
+and the earlier part of this, there should spring up
+again this old, old error, and darken the simplicity of
+the Gospel teaching, that Christ's work, apprehended
+by faith, without anything else, is the means, and the
+only means, of salvation?</p>
+
+<p>But I need not spend time upon that original application.
+Let us rather come more closely to our own
+individual lives and their weaknesses. It is a strange
+thing, so strange that if one did not know it by one's
+own self, one would be scarcely disposed to believe it
+possible, that a man who has 'tasted the good word
+of God and the powers of the world to come,' and has
+known Jesus Christ as Saviour and Friend, should
+decline from Him, and turn to anything besides. And
+yet, strange and sad, and like some enchantment as it
+is, it is the experience at times and in a measure, of us
+all; and, alas! it is the experience, in a very tragical
+degree, of many who have walked for a little while
+behind the Master, and then have turned away and
+walked no more with Him. We may well wonder;
+but the root of the mischief is in no baleful glitter of
+a sorcerer's eye without us, but it is in the weakness of
+our own wills and the waywardness of our own hearts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+and the wandering of our own affections. We often
+court the coming of the evil influence, and are willing
+to be fascinated and to turn our backs upon Jesus.
+Mysterious it is, for why should men cast away diamonds
+for paste? Mysterious it is, for we do not usually
+drop the substance to get the shadow. Mysterious it
+is, for a man does not ordinarily empty his pockets of
+gold in order to fill them with gravel. Mysterious it
+is, for a thirsty man will not usually turn away from
+the full, bubbling, living fountain, to see if he can find
+any drops still remaining, green with scum, stagnant
+and odorous, at the bottom of some broken cistern.
+But all these follies are sanity as compared with the
+folly of which we are guilty, times without number,
+when, having known the sweetness of Jesus Christ,
+we turn away to the fascinations of the world. Custom,
+the familiarity that we have with Him, the attrition
+of daily cares&mdash;like the minute grains of sand that are
+cemented on to paper, and make a piece of sandpaper
+that is strong enough to file an inscription off iron&mdash;the
+seductions of worldly delights, the pressure of our
+daily cares&mdash;all these are as a ring of sorcerers that
+stand round about us, before whom we are as powerless
+as a bird in the presence of a serpent, and they bewitch
+us and draw us away.</p>
+
+<p>The sad fact has been verified over and over again
+on a large scale in the history of the Church. After
+every outburst of renewed life and elevated spirituality
+there is sure to come a period of reaction when torpor
+and formality again assert themselves. What followed
+the Reformation in Germany? A century of death.
+What followed Puritanism in England? An outburst
+of lust and godlessness.</p>
+
+<p>So it has always been, and so it is with us individually,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+as we too well know. Ah, brethren! the seductions are
+omnipresent, and our poor eyes are very weak, and we
+turn away from the Lord to look on these misshapen
+monsters that are seeking by their gaze to draw us into
+destruction. I wonder how many professing Christians
+are in this audience who once saw Jesus Christ a great
+deal more clearly, and contemplated Him a great deal
+more fixedly, and turned their hearts to Him far more
+lovingly, than they do to-day? Some of the great
+mountain peaks of Africa are only seen for an hour or
+two in the morning, and then the clouds gather around
+them, and hide them for the rest of the day. It is like
+the experience of many professing Christians, who see
+Him in the morning of their Christian life far more
+vividly than they ever do after. 'Who hath bewitched
+you?' The world; but the arch-sorcerer sits safe in
+our own hearts.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, keeping to the metaphor, let me suggest,
+although my text does not touch upon it, the Amulet.</p>
+
+<p>One has seen fond mothers in Egypt and Palestine
+who hang on their babies' necks charms, to shield them
+from the influence of the Evil Eye; and there is a
+charm that we may wear if we will, which will keep
+us safe. There is no fascination in the Evil Eye if you
+do not look at it.</p>
+
+<p>The one object that the sorcerer has is to withdraw
+our gaze from Christ; it is not illogical to say that
+the way to defeat the object is to keep our gaze fixed
+on Christ. If you do not look at the baleful glitter
+of the Evil Eye it will exercise no power over you;
+and if you will steadfastly look at Him, then, and only
+then, you will not look at it. Like Ulysses in the
+legend, bandage the eyes and put wax in the ears,
+if you would neither be tempted by hearing the songs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+nor by seeing the fair forms, of the sirens on their
+island. To look fixedly at Jesus Christ, and with the
+resolve never to turn away from Him, is the only safety
+against these tempting delights around us.</p>
+
+<p>But, brethren, it is the crucified Christ, looking to
+whom, we are safe amidst all seductions and snares.
+I doubt whether a Christ who did not die for men has
+power enough over men's hearts and minds to draw
+them to Himself. The cords which bind us to Him are
+the assurance of His dying love which has conquered
+us. If only we will, day by day, and moment by
+moment, as we pass through the duties and distractions,
+the temptations and the trials, of this present life, by
+an act of will and thought turn ourselves to Him, then
+all the glamour of false attractiveness will disappear
+from the temptations around us, and we shall see that
+the sirens, for all their fair forms, end in loathly fishes'
+tails and sit amidst dead men's bones.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, 'looking <i>off</i> unto Jesus' is the secret of
+triumph over the fascinations of the world. And if
+we will habitually so look, then the sweetness that we
+shall experience will destroy all the seducing power of
+lesser and earthly sweetness, and the blessed light of
+the sun will dim and all but extinguish the deceitful
+gleams that tempt us into the swamps where we shall
+be drowned. Turn away, then, from these things;
+cleave to Jesus Christ; and though in ourselves we
+may be as weak as a humming-bird before a snake,
+or a rabbit before a tiger, He will give us strength, and
+the light of His face shining down upon us will fix
+our eyes and make us insensible to the fascinations
+of the sorcerers. So we shall not need to dread the
+question, 'Who hath bewitched you?' but ourselves
+challenge the utmost might of the fascination with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+the triumphant question, 'Who shall separate us from
+the love of Christ?'</p>
+
+<p>Help us, O Lord! we beseech Thee, to live near Thee.
+Turn away our eyes from beholding vanity, and enable
+us to set the Lord always before us that we be not
+moved.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Have ye suffered so many things in vain?'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> iii 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class='center'><small>Preached on the last Sunday of the year.</small></div>
+<p>This vehement question is usually taken to be a
+reminder to the fickle Galatians that their Christian
+faith had brought upon them much suffering from
+the hands of their unbelieving brethren, and to imply
+an exhortation to faithfulness to the Gospel lest
+they should stultify their past brave endurance.
+Yielding to the Judaising teachers, and thereby escaping
+the 'offence of the Cross,' they would make their
+past sufferings vain. But it may be suggested that
+the word 'suffered' here is rather used in what is its
+known sense elsewhere, namely, with the general idea
+of <i>feeling</i>, the nature of the feeling being undefined.
+It is a touching proof of the preponderance of pain
+and sorrow that by degrees the significance of the
+word has become inextricably intertwined with the
+thought of sadness; still, it is possible to take it in the
+text as meaning <i>experienced</i> or <i>felt</i>, and to regard the
+Apostle as referring to the whole of the Galatians' past
+experience, and as founding his appeal for their steadfastness
+on all the joys as well as the sorrows, which
+their faith had brought them.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Taking the words in this more general sense they
+become a question which it is well for us to ask ourselves
+at such a time as this, when the calendar
+naturally invites us to look backwards and ask ourselves
+what we have made of all our experiences in the
+past, or rather what, by the help of them all, we have
+made of ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>I. The duty of retrospect.</p>
+
+<p>For almost any reason it is good for us to be delivered
+from our prevailing absorption in the present.
+Whatever counterpoises the overwhelming weight of
+the present is, so far, a blessing and a good, and whatever
+softens the heart and keeps up even the lingering
+remembrance of early, dewy freshness and of the
+high aspirations which, even for a brief space, elevated
+our past selves is gain amidst the dusty commonplaces
+of to-day. We see things better and more clearly
+when we get a little away from them, as a face is
+more distinctly visible at armslength than when held
+close.</p>
+
+<p>But our retrospects are too often almost as trivial and
+degrading as is our absorption in the present, and to
+prevent memory from becoming a minister of frivolity
+if not of sin, it is needful that such a question as that
+of our text be urgently asked by each of us. Memory
+must be in closest union with conscience, as all our
+faculties must be, or she is of little use. There is a
+mere sentimental luxury of memory which finds a
+pensive pleasure in the mere passing out from the hard
+present into the soft light, not without illusion in its
+beams, of the 'days that are no more.' Merely to live
+over again our sorrows and joys without any clear discernment
+of what their effects on our moral character
+have been, is not the retrospect that becomes a man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+however it might suit an animal. We have to look
+back as a man might do escaping from the ocean on
+to some frail sand-bank which ever breaks off and
+crumbles away at his very heels. To remember the
+past mainly as it affected our joy or our sorrow is as
+unworthy as to regard the present from the same
+point of view, and robs both of their highest worth.
+To remember is only then blessed and productive of
+its highest possible good in us, when the question of
+our text insists on being faced, and the object of retrospect
+is not to try to rekindle the cold coals of past
+emotions, but to ascertain what effect on our present
+characters our past experiences have had. We have
+not to turn back and try to gather some lingering
+flowers, but to look for the fruit which has followed
+the fallen blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>II. The true test for the past.</p>
+
+<p>The question of our text implies, as we have already
+suggested, that our whole lives, with all their various
+and often opposite experiences, are yet an ordered
+whole, having a definite end. There is some purpose
+beyond the moment to be served. Our joys and our
+sorrows, our gains and our losses, the bright hours and
+the dark hours, and the hours that are neither
+eminently bright nor supremely dark, our failures and
+our successes, our hopes disappointed or fulfilled, and
+all the infinite variety of condition and environment
+through which our varying days and years have led
+us, co-operate for one end. It is life that makes men;
+the infant is a bundle of possibilities, and as the years
+go on, one possible avenue of development after
+another is blocked. The child might have been almost
+anything; the man has become hardened and fixed
+into one shape.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But all this variety of impulses and complicated
+experiences need the co-operation of the man himself
+if they are to reach their highest results in him. If he
+is simply recipient of these external forces acting upon
+him, they will shape him indeed, but he will be a poor
+creature. Life does not make men unless men take
+the command of life, and he who lets circumstances
+and externals guide him, as the long water weeds in a
+river are directed by its current, will, from the highest
+point of view, have experienced the variations of a
+lifetime in vain.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt each of our experiences has its own immediate
+and lower purpose to serve, and these purposes
+are generally accomplished, but beyond these each has
+a further aim which is not reached without diligent
+carefulness and persistent effort on our parts. If we
+would be sure of what it is to suffer life's experiences
+in vain, we have but to ask ourselves what life is
+given us for, and we all know that well enough to be
+able to judge how far we have used life to attain the
+highest ends of living. We may put these ends in
+various ways in our investigation of the results of our
+manifold experiences. Let us begin with the lowest&mdash;we
+received life that we might learn truth, then if our
+experience has not taught us wisdom it has been in
+vain. It is deplorable to have to look round and see
+how little the multitude of men are capable of forming
+anything like an independent and intelligent opinion,
+and how they are swayed by gusts of passion, by blind
+prejudice, by pretenders and quacks of all sorts. It is
+no less sad for us to turn our eyes within and discover,
+perhaps not without surprise and shame, how few of
+what we are self-complacent enough to call our
+opinions are due to our own convictions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If we ever are honest enough with ourselves to
+catch a glimpse of our own unwisdom, the question of
+our text will press heavily upon us, and may help to
+make us wiser by teaching us how foolish we are. An
+infinite source of wisdom is open to us, and all the rich
+variety of our lives' experiences has been lavished on
+us to help us, and what have we made of it all?</p>
+
+<p>But we may rise a step higher and remember that
+we are made moral creatures. Therefore, whatever
+has not developed infant potentialities in us, and made
+them moral qualities, has been experienced in vain.
+'Not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end and
+way.' Life is meant to make us love and do the good,
+and unless it has produced that effect on us, it has
+failed. If this be true, the world is full of failures, like
+the marred statues in a bad sculptor's studio, and we
+ourselves have earnestly to confess that the discipline
+of life has too often been wasted upon us, and that of
+us the divine complaint from of old has been true:
+'In vain have I smitten thy children, they have received
+no correction.'</p>
+
+<p>There is no sadder waste than the waste of sorrow,
+and alas! we all know how impotent our afflictions
+have been to make us better. But not afflictions only
+have failed in their appeal to us, our joys have as often
+been in vain as our sorrows, and memory, when it
+turns its lamp on the long past, sees so few points at
+which life has taught us to love goodness, and be good,
+that she may well quench her light and let the dead
+past bury its dead.</p>
+
+<p>But we must rise still higher, and think of men as
+being made for God, and as being the only creatures
+known to us who are capable of religion. 'Man's chief
+end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+this chief end is in fullest harmony with the lower ends
+to which we have just referred, and they will never be
+realised in their fullest completeness unless that completeness
+is sought in this the chief end. From of old
+meditative souls have known that the beginning of
+wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and that that fear is as
+certainly the beginning of goodness. It was not an
+irrelevant rebuke to the question, 'What good thing
+shall I do?' when Jesus set the eager young soul who
+asked it, to justify to himself his courteous and superficial
+application to Him of the abused and vulgarised
+title of 'Good,' and pointed him to God as the only Being
+to whom that title, in its perfectness, could be given.
+If 'there is none good but one, that is God,' man's goodness
+must be drawn from Him, and morality without
+religion will in theory be incomplete, and in practice
+a delusion. If, then, men are made to need God, and
+capable of possessing Him, and of being possessed by
+Him, then the great question for all of us is, has life,
+with all its rapid whirl of changing circumstance and
+varying fortunes, drawn us closer to God, and made us
+more fit to receive more of Him? So supreme is this
+chief end that a life which has not attained it can only
+be regarded as 'in vain' whatever other successes it
+may have attained. So unspeakably more important
+and necessary is it, that compared with it all else sinks
+into nothingness; hence many lives which are dazzling
+successes in the eyes of men are ghastly failures in
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if we take these plain principles with us in our
+retrospect of the past year we shall be launched on a
+very serious inquiry, and brought face to face with a
+very penitent answer. Some of us may have had great
+sorrows, and the tears may be scarcely dry upon our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+cheeks: some of us may have had great gladnesses,
+and our hearts may still be throbbing with the thrill:
+some of us may have had great successes, and some of
+us heavy losses, but the question for us to ask is not of
+the quality of our past experiences, but as to their
+effects upon us. Has life been so used by us as to help
+us to become wiser, better, more devout? And the
+answer to that question, if we are honest in our
+scrutiny of ourselves, and if memory has not been a
+mere sentimental luxury, must be that we have too
+often been but unfaithful recipients alike of God's
+mercies and God's chastisements, and have received
+much of the discipline of life, and remained undisciplined.
+The question of our text, if asked by me,
+would be impertinent, but it is asked of each of us
+by the stern voice of conscience, and for some of us
+by the lips of dear ones whose loss has been among
+our chiefest sufferings. God asks us this question, and
+it is hard to make-believe to Him.</p>
+
+<p>III. The best issue of the retrospect.</p>
+
+<p>The world says, 'What I have written I have written,'
+and there is a very solemn and terrible reality in the
+thought of the irrevocable past. Whether life has
+achieved the ends for which it was given or no, it
+has achieved some ends. It may have made us into
+characters the very opposite of God's intention for us,
+but it has made us into certain characters which, so
+far as the world sees, can never be unmade or re-made.
+The world harshly preaches the indelibility of character,
+and proclaims that the Ethiopian may as soon be
+expected to change his skin or the leopard his spots
+as the man accustomed to do evil may learn to do
+well. That dreary fatalism which binds the effects of a
+dead past on a man's shoulders, and forbids him to hope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+that anything will obliterate the marks of 'what once
+hath been,' is in violent contradiction to the large
+hope brought into the world by Jesus Christ. What
+we have written we <i>have</i> written, and we have no
+power to erase the lines and make the sheet clean
+again, but Jesus Christ has taken away the handwriting
+'that was against us,' nailing it to His cross.
+Instead of our old sin-worn and sin-marked selves,
+He proffers to each of us a new self, not the outcome
+of what we have been, but the image of what
+He is and the prophecy of what we shall be. By
+the great gift of holiness for the future by the impartation
+of His own life and spirit, Jesus makes
+all things new. The Gospel recognises to the full
+how bad some who have received it were, but it can
+willingly admit their past foulness, because it contrasts
+with all that former filth their present cleanness,
+and to the most inveterately depraved who have
+trusted in Christ rejoices to say, 'Ye were washed, ye
+were sanctified, ye were justified in the name of the
+Lord Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE UNIVERSAL PRISON</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of
+Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> iii. 22.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle uses here a striking and solemn figure,
+which is much veiled for the English reader by the
+ambiguity attaching to the word 'concluded.' It
+literally means 'shut up,' and is to be taken in its
+literal sense of confining, and not in its secondary
+sense of inferring. So, then, we are to conceive of a
+vast prison-house in which mankind is confined. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+then, very characteristically, the Apostle passes at
+once to another metaphor when he goes on to say
+'under sin.' What a moment before had presented
+itself to his vivid imagination as a great dungeon is
+now represented as a heavy weight, pressing down
+upon those beneath; if, indeed, we are not, perhaps,
+rather to think of the low roof of the dark dungeon
+as weighing on the captives.</p>
+
+<p>Further, he says that Scripture has driven men into
+this captivity. That, of course, cannot mean that
+revelation makes us sinners, but it does mean that it
+makes us more guilty, and that it declares the fact of
+human sinfulness as no other voice has ever done.
+And then the grimness of the picture is all relieved
+and explained, and the office ascribed to God's revelation
+harmonised with God's love, by the strong, steady
+beam of light that falls from the last words, which tell
+us that the prisoners have not been bound in chains for
+despair or death, but in order that, gathered together
+in a common doleful destiny, they may become recipients
+of a common blessed salvation, and emerge
+into liberty and light through faith in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>So here are three things&mdash;the prison-house, its
+guardian, and its breaker. 'The Scripture hath shut
+up all under sin, in order that the promise by faith
+of Jesus Christ might be given unto all them that
+believe.'</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, note the universal prison-house.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Apostle says two things&mdash;and we may put
+away the figure and look at the facts that underlie it.
+The one is that all sin is imprisonment, the other is
+that all men are in that dungeon, unless they have
+come out of it through faith in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>All sin is imprisonment. That is the direct contrary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+of the notion that many people have. They say to
+themselves, 'Why should I be fettered and confined
+by these antiquated restrictions of a conventional
+morality? Why should I not break the bonds, and do
+as I like?' And they laugh at Christian people who
+recognise the limitations under which God's law has
+put them; and tell us that we are 'cold-blooded folks
+who live by rule,' and contrast their own broad 'emancipation
+from narrow prejudice.' But the reality is the
+other way. The man who does wrong is a slave in the
+measure in which he does it. If you want to find out&mdash;and
+mark this, you young people, who may be
+deceived by the false contrasts between the restraints
+of duty and the freedom of living a dissolute life&mdash;if
+you want to find out how utterly 'he that committeth
+sin is the slave of sin,' try to break it off, and you will
+find it out fast enough. We all know, alas! the impotence
+of the will when it comes to hand grips with
+some evil to which we have become habituated; and
+how we determine and determine, and try, and fail,
+and determine again, with no better result. We are
+the slaves of our own passions; and no man is free who
+is hindered by his lower self from doing that which his
+better self tells him he ought to do. The tempter
+comes to you, and says, 'Come and do this thing, just
+for once. You can leave off when you like, you know.
+There is no need to do it a second time.' And when
+you have done it, he changes his note, and says, 'Ah!
+you are in, and you cannot get out. You have done it
+once; and in my vocabulary once means twice, and
+once and twice mean <i>always</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Insane people are sometimes tempted into a house of
+detention by being made to believe that it is a grand
+mansion, where they are just going to pay a flying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+visit, and can come away when they like. But once
+inside the walls, they never get past the lodge gates
+any more. The foolish birds do not know that there is
+lime on the twigs, and their little feet get fastened to
+the branch, and their wings flutter in vain. 'He that
+committeth sin is the slave of sin&mdash;shut up,' dungeoned,
+'under sin.'</p>
+
+<p>But do not forget, either, the other metaphor in our
+text, in which the Apostle, with characteristic rapidity,
+and to the horror of rhetorical propriety, passes at
+once from the thought of a dungeon to the thought
+of an impending weight, and says, 'Shut up <i>under</i>
+sin.'</p>
+
+<p>What does that mean? It means that we are guilty
+when we have done wrong; and it means that we are
+under penalties which are sure to follow. No deed
+that we do, howsoever it may fade from the tablets of
+our memory, but writes in visible characters, in proportion
+to its magnitude, upon our characters and lives.
+All human acts have perpetual consequences. The
+kick of the rifle against the shoulder of the man that
+fires it is as certain as the flight of the bullet from its
+muzzle. The chalk cliffs that rise above the Channel
+entomb and perpetuate the relics of myriads of
+evanescent lives; and our fleeting deeds are similarly
+preserved in our present selves. Everything that a
+man wills, whether it passes into external act or not,
+leaves, in its measure, ineffaceable impressions on himself.
+And so we are not only dungeoned in, but weighed
+upon by, and lie under, the evil that we do.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, dear friends, dare I pass in silence what is too
+often passed in silence in the modern pulpit, the plain
+fact that there is a future waiting for each of us
+beyond the grave, of which the most certain character<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>istic,
+certified by our own forebodings, required by the
+reasonableness of creation, and made plain by the
+revelation of Scripture, is that it is a future of retribution,
+where we shall have to carry our works; and
+as we have brewed so shall we drink; and the beds
+that we have made we shall have to lie upon. 'God
+shut up all under sin.'</p>
+
+<p>Note, again, the universality of the imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am not going to exaggerate, I hope. I want
+to keep well within the limits of fact, and to say
+nothing that is not endorsed by your own consciences,
+if you will be honest with yourselves. And I say that
+the Bible does not charge men universally with gross
+transgressions. It does not talk about the virtues that
+grow in the open as if they were splendid vices; but it
+does say, and I ask you if our own hearts do not tell
+us that it says truly, that no man is, or has been, does,
+or has done, that which his own conscience tells him
+he should have been and done. We are all ready to
+admit faults, in a general way, and to confess that we
+have come short of what our own consciousness tells
+us we ought to be. But I want you to take the other
+step, and to remember that since we each stand in a
+personal relation to God, therefore all imperfections,
+faults, negligences, shortcomings, and, still more,
+transgressions of morality, or of the higher aspirations
+of our lives, are sins. Because sin&mdash;to use fine words&mdash;is
+the correlative of God. Or, to put it into plainer
+language, the deeds which in regard to law may be
+crimes, or those which in regard to morality may be
+vices, or in regard to our own convictions of duty may
+be shortcomings, seeing they all have some reference
+to Him, assume a very much graver character, and
+they are all sins.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Oh, brethren, if we realise how intimately and inseparably
+we are knit to God, and how everything that
+we do, and do not do, but should have done, has an
+aspect in reference to Him, I think we should be less
+unwilling to admit, and less tinged with levity and
+carelessness in admitting, that all our faults are transgressions
+of His law, and we should find ourselves
+more frequently on our knees before Him, with the
+penitent words on our lips and in our hearts, 'Against
+Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy
+sight.'</p>
+
+<p>That was the prayer of a man who had done a foul
+evil in other people's sight; who had managed to
+accumulate about as many offences to as many people
+in one deed as was possible. For, as a king he had
+sinned against his nation, as a friend he had sinned
+against his companion, as a captain he had sinned
+against his brave subordinate, as a husband he had
+sinned against his wife, and he had sinned against
+Bathsheba. And yet, with all that tangle of offences
+against all these people, he says, 'Against Thee, Thee
+only.' Yes! Because, accurately speaking, the <i>sin</i>
+had reference to God, and to God alone. And I wish
+for myself and for you to cultivate the habit of connecting,
+thus, all our actions, and especially our imperfections
+and our faults, with the thought of God, that
+we may learn how universal is the enclosure of man
+in this dreadful prison-house.</p>
+
+<p>II. And so, I come, in the second place, to look at the
+guardian of the prison.</p>
+
+<p>That is a strange phrase of my text attributing the
+shutting of men up in this prison-house to the merciful
+revelation of God in the Scripture. And it is made
+still more striking and strange by another edition of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+the same expression in the Epistle to the Romans,
+where Paul directly traces the 'concluding all in disobedience'
+to God Himself.</p>
+
+<p>There may be other subtle thoughts connected with
+that expression which I do not need to enter upon
+now. But one that I would dwell upon, for a moment,
+is this, that one great purpose of Scripture is to convince
+us that we are sinful in God's sight. I do not
+need to remind you, I suppose, how that was, one
+might almost say, the dominant intention of the whole
+of the ceremonial and moral law of Israel, and explains
+its many else inexplicable and apparently petty commandments
+and prohibitions. They were all meant to
+emphasise the difference between right and wrong,
+obedience and disobedience, and so to drive home to
+men's hearts the consciousness that they had broken
+the commandments of the living God. And although
+the Gospel comes with a very different guise from that
+ancient order, and is primarily gift and not law, a
+Gospel of forgiveness, and not the promulgation of
+duty or the threatening of condemnation, yet it, too,
+has for one of its main purposes, which must be accomplished
+in us before it can reach its highest aim in us,
+the kindling in men's hearts of the same consciousness
+that they are sinful men in God's sight.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, brethren, we all need it. There is nothing that
+we need more than to have driven deep into us the
+penetrating point of that conviction. There must be
+some external standard by which men may be convinced
+of their sinfulness, for they carry no such
+standard within them. Your conscience is only <i>you</i>
+judging on moral questions, and, of course, as you
+change, it will change too. A man's whole state determines
+the voice with which conscience shall speak to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+him, and so the worse he is, and the more he needs it,
+the less he has it. The rebels cut the telegraph wires.
+The waves break the bell that hangs on the reef, and so
+the black rocks get many a wreck to gnaw with their
+sharp teeth. A man makes his conscience dumb by
+the very sins that require a conscience trumpet-tongued
+to reprehend them. And therefore it needs that God
+should speak from Heaven, and say to us, '<i>Thou</i> art
+the man,' or else we pass by all these grave things
+that I am trying to urge upon you now, and fall back
+upon our complacency and our levity and our unwillingness
+to take stock of ourselves, and front the facts
+of our condition. And so we build up a barrier between
+ourselves and God, and God's grace, which nothing
+short of that grace and an omnipotent love and an all-powerful
+Redeemer can ever pull down.</p>
+
+<p>I wish to urge in a few words, yet with much
+earnestness, this thought, that until we have laid to
+heart God's message about our own personal sinfulness
+we have not got to the place where we can in the least
+understand the true meaning of His Gospel, or the
+true work of His Son. May I say that I, for one, am
+old-fashioned enough to look with great apprehension
+on certain tendencies of present-day presentations of
+Christianity which, whilst they dwell much upon the
+social blessings which it brings, do seem to me to be in
+great peril of obscuring the central characteristic of
+the Gospel, that it is addressed to sinful men, and that
+the only way by which individuals can come to the possession
+of any of its blessings is by coming as penitent
+sinners, and casting themselves on the mercy of God in
+Jesus Christ? The beginning of all lies here, where Paul
+puts it, 'the Scripture hath herded all men,' in droves,
+into the prison, that it might have mercy upon all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dear friend, as the old proverb has it, deceit lurks in
+generalities. I have no doubt you are perfectly willing
+to admit that all are sinful. Come a little closer to the
+truth, I beseech you, and say each is sinful, and I am
+one of the captives.</p>
+
+<p>III. And so, lastly, the breaker of the prison-house.</p>
+
+<p>I need not spend your time in commenting on the
+final words of this text. Suffice it to gather their
+general purport and scope. The apparently stern
+treatment which God by revelation applies to the
+whole mass of mankind is really the tenderest beneficence.
+He has shut them up in the prison-house in
+order that, thus shut up, they may the more eagerly
+apprehend and welcome the advent of the Deliverer.
+He tells us each our state, in order that we may the
+more long for, and the more closely grasp, the great
+mercy which reverses the state. And so how shallow
+and how unfair it is to talk about evangelical Christianity
+as being gloomy, stern, or misanthropical! You
+do not call a doctor unkind because he tells an unsuspecting
+patient that his disease is far advanced, and
+that if it is not cured it will be fatal. No more should
+a man turn away from Christianity, or think it harsh
+and sour, because it speaks plain truths. The question
+is, are they true? not, are they unpleasant?</p>
+
+<p>If you and I, and all our fellows, are shut up in this
+prison-house of sin, then it is quite clear that none of
+us can do anything to get ourselves out. And so the
+way is prepared for that great message with which
+Jesus opened His ministry, and which, whilst it has a
+far wider application, and reference to social as well as
+to individual evils, begins with the proclamation of
+liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison
+to them that are bound.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was once a Roman emperor who wished that
+all his enemies had one neck, that he might slay them
+all at one blow. The wish is a fact in regard to Christ
+and His work, for by it all our tyrants have been
+smitten to death by one stroke; and the death of Jesus
+Christ has been the death of sin and death and hell&mdash;of
+sin in its power, in its guilt, and in its penalty. He
+has come into the prison-house, and torn the bars
+away, and opened the fetters, and every man may,
+if he will, come out into the blessed sunshine and
+expatiate there.</p>
+
+<p>And if, brethren, it is true that the universal
+prison-house is opened by the death of Jesus
+Christ, who is the Propitiation for the sins of the
+whole world, and the power by which the most
+polluted may become clean, then there follows, as
+plainly, that the only thing which we have to do
+is, recognising and feeling our bound impotence, to
+stretch out chained hands and take the gift that He
+brings. Since all is done for each of us, and since none
+of us can do sufficient for himself to break the bond,
+then what we should do is to trust to Him who has
+broken every chain and let the oppressed go free.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, dear friend, if you want to get to the heart of
+the sweetness and the blessedness and power of the
+Gospel, you must begin here, with the clear and
+penitent consciousness that you are a sinful man in
+God's sight, and can do nothing to cleanse, help, or
+liberate yourself. Is Jesus Christ the breaker of the
+bond for you? Do you learn from Him what your
+need is? Do you trust yourself to Him for Pardon, for
+cleansing, for emancipation? Unless you do, you will
+never know His most precious preciousness, and you
+have little right to call yourself a Christian. If you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+do, oh, than a great light will shine in the prison-house,
+and your chains will drop from your wrists, and the
+iron door will open of its own accord, and you will
+come out into the morning sunshine of a new day,
+because you have confessed and abhorred the bondage
+into which you have cast yourselves, and accepted the
+liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE SON SENT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman,
+born under the law, that He might redeem them which were under the law, that we
+might receive the adoption of sons.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> iv. 4, 5 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is generally supposed that by the 'fulness of time'
+Paul means to indicate that Christ came at the moment
+when the world was especially prepared to receive
+Him, and no doubt that is a true thought. The Jews
+had been trained by law to the conviction of sin;
+heathenism had tried its utmost, had reached the full
+height of its possible development, and was decaying.
+Rome had politically prepared the way for the spread
+of the Gospel. Vague expectations of coming change
+found utterance even from the lips of Roman courtier
+poets, and a feeling of unrest and anticipation pervaded
+society; but while no doubt all this is true and becomes
+more certain the more we know of the state of things
+into which Christ came, it is to be noted that Paul is
+not thinking of the fulness of time primarily in reference
+to the world which received Him, but to the Father
+who sent Him. Our text immediately follows words
+in which the air is described as being 'under guardians
+and stewards' until the time appointed of His Father,
+and the fulness of time is therefore the moment which
+God had ordained from the beginning for His coming.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+He, from of old, had willed that at that moment this
+Son should be born, and it is to the punctual accomplishment
+of His eternal purpose that Paul here directs
+our thoughts. No doubt the world's preparedness is
+part of the reason for the divine determination of the
+time, but it is that divine determination rather than
+the world's preparedness to which the first words of
+our text must be taken to refer.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining portion of our text is so full of meaning
+that one shrinks from attempting to deal with it
+in our narrow space, but though it opens up depths
+beyond our fathoming, and gathers into one concentrated
+brightness lights on which our dim eyes can
+hardly look, we may venture to attempt some imperfect
+consideration even of these great words. Following
+their course of thought we may deal with</p>
+
+<p>I. The mystery of love that sent.</p>
+
+<p>The most frequent form under which the great fact
+of the incarnation is represented in Scripture is that
+of our text&mdash;'God sent His Son.' It is familiar on the
+lips of Jesus, but He also says that 'God gave His Son.'
+One can feel a shade of difference in the two modes of
+expression. The former bringing rather to our thoughts
+the representative character of the Son as Messenger,
+and the latter going still deeper into the mystery of
+Godhead and bringing into view the love of the
+Father who spared not His Son but freely bestowed
+Him on men. Yet another word is used by Jesus Himself
+when He says, 'I came forth from God,' and that
+expression brings into view the perfect willingness
+with which the Son accepted the mission and gave
+Himself, as well as was given by God. All three phases
+express harmonious, though slightly differing aspects
+of the same fact, as the facets of a diamond might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+flash into different colours, and all must be held fast if
+we would understand the unspeakable gift of God.
+Jesus was sent; Jesus was given; Jesus came. The
+mission from the Father, the love of the Father, the
+glad obedience of the Son, must ever be recognised as
+interpenetrating, and all present in that supreme act.</p>
+
+<p>There have been many men specially sent forth from
+God, whose personal existence began with their birth,
+and so far as the words are concerned, Jesus might
+have been one of these. There was a man sent from
+God whose name was John, and all through the ages
+he has had many companions in his mission, but there
+has been only one who 'came' as well as 'was sent,'
+and He is the true light which lighteth every man.
+To speak in theological language of the pre-existence
+of the Son is cold, and may obscure the truth which it
+formulates in so abstract a fashion, and may rob it of
+power to awe and impress. But there can be no
+question that in our text, as is shown by the juxtaposition
+of 'sent' and 'born,' and in all the New Testament
+references to the subject, the birth of Jesus is not
+regarded as the beginning of the being of the Son.
+The one lies far back in the depths of eternity and the
+mystery of the divine nature, the other is a historical
+fact occurring in a definite place and at a dated
+moment. Before time was the Son was, delighting in
+the Father, and 'in the beginning was the word and
+the word was with God,' and He who in respect of His
+expression of the Father's mind and will was the Word,
+was the Son in respect of the love that bound the
+Father and Him in one. Into the mysteries of that
+love and union no eyes can penetrate, but unless our
+faith lays hold of it, we know not the God whom Jesus
+has declared to us. The mysteries of that divine union<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+and communion lie beyond our reach, but well within
+the grasp of our faith and the work of the Son in the
+world, ever since there was a world, is not obscurely
+declared to all who have eyes to see and hearts to
+understand. For He has through all ages been the
+active energy of the divine power, or as the Old Testament
+words it, 'The Arm of the Lord,' the Agent of
+creation, the Revealer of God, the Light of the world
+and the Director of Providence. 'He was in the world
+and the world was made by Him, and the world knew
+Him not.'</p>
+
+<p>Now all this teaching that the Son was long before
+Jesus was born is no mere mysterious dogma without
+bearing on daily needs, but stands in the closest connection
+with Christ's work and our faith in it. It is the
+guarantee of His representative character; on it depends
+the reliableness of His revelation of God. Unless
+He is the Son in a unique sense, how could God have
+spoken unto us in Him, and how could we rely on His
+words? Unless He was 'the effulgence of His glory and
+the express image of His person': how could we be
+sure that the light of His countenance was light from
+God and that in His person God was so presented as
+that he who had seen Him had seen the Father? The
+completeness and veracity of His revelation, the authoritative
+fulness of His law, the efficacy of His sacrifice
+and the prevalence of His intercession all depend on
+the fact of His divine life with God long before His
+human life with men. It is a plain historical fact that
+a Christianity which has no place for a pre-existent
+Son in the bosom of the Father has only a maimed
+Christ in reference to the needs of sinful men. If our
+Christ were not the eternal Son of God, He will not be
+the universal Saviour of men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nor is this truth less needful in its bearing on modern
+theories which will have nothing to say to the supernatural,
+and in a fatalistic fashion regard history as
+all the result of an orderly evolution in which the
+importance of personal agents is minimised. To it
+Jesus, like all other great men, is a product of His age,
+and the immediate result of the conditions under which
+He appeared. But when we look far beyond the manger
+of Bethlehem into the depths of Eternity and see God
+so loving the world as to give His Son, we cannot but
+recognise that He has intervened in the course of
+human history and that the mightiest force in the
+development of man is the eternal Son whom He sent
+to save the world.</p>
+
+<p>II. The miracle of lowliness that came.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle goes on from describing the great fact
+which took place in heaven to set forth the great fact
+which completed it on earth. The sending of the Son
+took effect in the birth of Jesus, and the Apostle puts
+it under two forms, both of which are plainly designed
+to present Christ's manhood as His full identification of
+Himself with us. The Son of God became the son of a
+woman; from His mother He drew a true and complete
+humanity in body and soul. The humanity which He
+received was sufficiently kindred with the divinity
+which received it to make it possible that the one
+should dwell in the other and be one person. As born
+of a woman the Son of God took upon Himself all
+human experiences, became capable of sharing our
+pure emotions, wept our tears, partook in our joys,
+hoped and feared as we do, was subject to our changes,
+grew as we grow, and in everything but sin, was a man
+amongst men.</p>
+
+<p>But the Son of God could not be as the sons of men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+Him the Father heard always. Even when He came
+down from Heaven and became the Son of Man, He
+continued to be 'The Son of Man which is in Heaven.'
+Amid all the distractions and limitations of His earthly
+life, the continuity and depth of His communion with
+the Father were unbroken and the completeness of His
+obedience undiminished. He was a Man, but He was
+also the Man, the one realised ideal of humanity that
+has ever walked the earth, to whom all others, even
+the most complete, are fragments, the fairest foul, the
+most gracious harsh. In Him and in Him only has
+been 'given the world assurance of a man.'</p>
+
+<p>The other condition which is here introduced is 'born
+under the law,' by which it may be noted that the
+Apostle does not mean the Jewish law, inasmuch as he
+does not use the definite article with the word. No
+doubt our Lord was born as a Jew and subject to the
+Jewish law, but the thought here and in the subsequent
+clause is extended to the general notion of law. The
+very heart of our Lord's human identification is that
+He too had duties imperative upon Him, and the
+language of one of the Messianic psalms was the voice
+of His filial will during all His earthly life; 'Lo! I
+come, in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I
+delight to do Thy will and Thy law is within My heart.'
+The very secret of His human life was discovered by
+the heathen centurion, at whose faith He marvelled,
+who said, 'I <i>also</i> am a man under authority'; so was
+Jesus. The Son had ever been obedient in the sweet
+communion of Heaven, but the obedience of Jesus was
+not less perfect, continual and unstained. It was the
+man Jesus who summed up His earthly life in 'I do
+always the things that please Him'; it was the man
+Jesus who, under the olives in Gethsemane, made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+great surrender and yielded up His own will to the
+will of the Father who sent Him.</p>
+
+<p>He was under law in that the will of God dominated
+His life, but He was not so under it as we are on whom
+its precepts often press as an unwelcome obligation,
+and who know the weight of guilt and condemnation.
+If there is any one characteristic of Jesus more conspicuous
+than another it is the absence in Him of any
+consciousness of deficiency in His obedience to law, and
+yet that absence does not in the smallest degree infringe
+on His claim to be 'meek and lowly in heart.'
+'Which of you convinceth Me of sin?' would have been
+from any other man a defiance that would have provoked
+a crushing answer if it had not been taken as a
+proof of hopeless ignorance of self, but when Christ asks
+the question, the world is silent. The silence has been
+all but unbroken for nineteen hundred years, and of
+all the busy and often unfriendly eyes that have been
+occupied with Him and the hostile pens that have been
+eager to say something new about Him, none have
+discovered a flaw, or dared to 'hint a fault.' That
+character has stamped its own impression of perfectness
+on all eyes even the most unfriendly or indifferent.
+In Him there is seen the perfect union and balance of
+opposite characteristics; the rest of us, at the best,
+are but broken arcs; Jesus is the completed round.
+He is under law as fully, continuously and joyfully
+obedient; but for Him it had no accusing voice, and it
+laid on Him no burden of broken commandments. He
+was born of a woman, born under law, but he lived
+separate from sinners though identified with them.</p>
+
+<p>III. The marvel of exaltation that results.</p>
+
+<p>Our Lord's lowliness is described in the two clauses
+which we have just been considering. They express<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+His identification with us from a double point of view,
+and that double point of view is continued in the final
+clauses of our text which state the double purpose of
+God in sending His Son. He became one with us that
+we might become one with Him. The two elements of
+this double purpose are stated in the reverse order to
+the two elements of Christ's lowliness. The redemption
+of them that were under law is presented as the
+reason for His being born under law, and our reception
+of the 'adoption of sons' is the purpose of the Son's
+being sent and born of a woman. The order in which
+Paul here deals with the two parts of the divine
+purpose is not to be put down to mere rhetorical ornament,
+but corresponds to the order in which these two
+elements are realised by men. For there must be
+redemption from law before there is the adoption of
+sons.</p>
+
+<p>We have already had occasion to point out that 'law'
+here must be taken in the wide sense and not restricted
+to the Jewish law. It is a world-wide redemption
+which the Father's love had in view in sending His
+Son, but that all-comprehending, fatherly love could
+not reach its aim by the mere forth-putting of its own
+energy. A process was needed if the divine heart was
+to accomplish its desire, and the majestic stages in
+that process are set forth here by Paul. The world
+was under law in a very sad fashion, and though Jesus
+has come to redeem them that are under law, the
+crushing weight of commandments flouted, of duties
+neglected, of sins done, presses heavily upon many of
+us. And yet how many of us there are who do not
+know the burden that we carry and have had no personal
+experience like that of Bunyan's Christian with
+the pack on his back all but weighing him down?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+Jesus Christ has become one of us, and in His sinless
+life has 'magnified the law and made it honourable,'
+and in His sinless death He endures the consequences
+of sin, not as due to Himself, but because they are
+man's. But we must carefully keep in view, that as
+we have already pointed out, we are to think of Christ's
+mission as His coming as well as the Father's sending,
+and that therefore we do not grasp the full idea of our
+Lord's enduring the consequences of sin unless we
+take it as meaning His voluntary identification of Himself
+in love with us sinful men. His obedience was
+perfect all His life long, and His last and highest act
+of obedience was when He became obedient unto death,
+even the death of the Cross.</p>
+
+<p>This is the only means by which the burden of law
+in any of its forms can be taken away from us. For a
+law which is not loved will be heavy and hard however
+holy and just and good it may be, and a law which we
+have broken will become sooner or later its own
+avenger. Faithful in <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> tells how 'So
+soon as a man overtook me he was but a word and a
+blow, for down he knocked me and laid me for dead.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He
+struck me another deadly blow on the breast
+and beat me down backward, so I lay at his foot as
+dead as before, so when I came to myself again I cried
+him "Mercy," but he said, "I know not how to show
+mercy," and with that knocked me down again; he
+had doubtless made an end of me but that one came
+by and bid him forbear.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I did not know him at
+first, but as he went by I perceived the holes in his
+hands and in his sides.' He was born under law that
+He might redeem them that were under law.</p>
+
+<p>The slaves bought into freedom are received into the
+great family. The Son has become flesh that they who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+dwell in the flesh may rise to be sons, but the Son
+stands alone even in the midst of His identification
+with us, and of the great results which follow for us
+from it. He is the Son by nature; we are sons by
+adoption. He became man that we might share in the
+possession of God. When the burden of law is lifted off
+it is possible to bestow the further blessing of sonship,
+but that blessing is only possible through Him in whom,
+and from whom, we derive a life which is divine life.
+There is a profound truth in the prophetic sentence,
+'Behold I and the children which God hath given me!'
+for, in one aspect, believers are the children of Christ,
+and in another, they are sons of God.</p>
+
+<p>We have been speaking of the Son's identification
+with us in His mission, and our identification with
+Him, but that identification depends on ourselves and
+is only an accomplished fact through our faith. When
+we trust in Him it is true that all His&mdash;His righteousness,
+His Sonship, His union with the Father&mdash;is ours,
+and that all ours&mdash;our sins, our guilt, our alienation
+from God and our dwelling in the far-off land of rags
+and vice&mdash;is His. In His voluntary identification with
+us, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
+It is for us to determine whether we will lay on Him
+our iniquities, as the Father has already laid the
+iniquities of us all. Are we by faith in Him who was
+born of a woman, born under law, making our very
+own the redemption from the law which He has wrought
+and the adoption of sons which He bestows?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WHAT MAKES A CHRISTIAN: CIRCUMCISION
+OR FAITH?</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision,
+but faith which worketh by love.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> v. 6.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is a very singular instance of imaginative misreading
+of plain facts that the primitive Church should be
+held up as a pattern Church. The early communities
+had apostolic teaching; but beyond that, they seem to
+have been in no respect above, and in many respects
+below, the level of subsequent ages. If we may judge
+of their morality by the exhortations and dehortations
+which they received from the Apostle, Corinth and
+Thessalonica were but beginners in holiness. If we
+may judge of their intelligence by the errors into which
+they were in danger of falling, these first congregations
+had indeed need that one should teach them which
+were the first principles of the oracles of God. It could
+not be otherwise. They were but just rescued from
+heathenism, and we need not wonder if their spirits
+long bore the scars of their former bondage. If we
+wish to know what the apostolic churches were like,
+we have but to look at the communities gathered by
+modern missionaries. The same infantile simplicity,
+the same partial apprehensions of the truth, the same
+danger of being led astray by the low morality of their
+heathen kindred, the same openness to strange heresy,
+the same danger of blending the old with the new, in
+opinion and in practice, beset both.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the first theological difference in the
+early churches is a striking confutation of the dream
+that they were perfect, and a striking illustration of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+the dangers to which they were exposed from the
+attempt, so natural to us all, to put new wine into old
+bottles. The Jewish and the Gentile elements did not
+coalesce. The point round which the strife was waged
+was not whether Gentiles might come into the Church.
+That was conceded by the fiercest Judaisers. But it
+was whether they could come in as Gentiles, without
+first being incorporated into the Jewish nation by
+circumcision, and whether they could remain in as
+Gentiles, without conforming to Jewish ceremonial
+and law.</p>
+
+<p>Those who said 'No' <i>were</i> members of the Christian
+communities, and, being so, they still insisted that
+Judaism was to be eternal. They demanded that the
+patched and stiff leathern bottle, which had no elasticity
+or pliability, should still contain the quick fermenting
+new wine of the kingdom. And certainly, if ever man
+had excuse for clinging to what was old and formal,
+these Judaising Christians held it. They held by a law
+written with God's own finger, by ordinances awful
+by reason of divine appointment, venerable by reason
+of the generations to which they had been of absolute
+authority, commended by the very example of Christ
+Himself. Every motive which can bind heart and
+conscience to the reverence and the practice of the
+traditions of the Fathers, bound them to the Law and
+the ordinances which had been Israel's treasure from
+Abraham to Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>Those who said 'Yes' were mostly Gentiles, headed
+and inspired by a Hebrew of the Hebrews. They
+believed that Judaism was preparatory, and that its
+work was done. For those among themselves who
+were Jews, they were willing that its laws should still
+be obligatory; but they fought against the attempt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+compel all Gentile converts to enter Christ's kingdom
+through the gate of circumcision.</p>
+
+<p>The fight was stubborn and bitter. I suppose it is
+harder to abolish forms than to change opinions.
+Ceremonies stand long after the thought which they
+express has fled, as a dead king may sit on his throne
+stiff and stark in his golden mantle, and no one come
+near enough to see that the light is gone out of his
+eyes, and the will departed from the hand that still
+clutches the sceptre. All through Paul's life he was
+dogged and tormented by this controversy. There was
+a deep gulf between the churches he planted and this
+reactionary section of the Christian community. Its
+emissaries were continually following in his footsteps.
+As he bitterly reproaches them, they entered upon
+another man's line of things made ready to their hand,
+not caring to plant churches of circumcised Gentiles
+themselves, but starting up behind him as soon as his
+back was turned, and spoiling his work.</p>
+
+<p>This Epistle is the memorial of that foot-to-foot feud.
+It is of perennial use, as the tendencies against which
+it is directed are constant in human nature. Men are
+ever apt to confound form and substance, to crave
+material embodiments of spiritual realities, to elevate
+outward means into the place of the inward and real,
+to which all the outward is but subsidiary. In every
+period of strife between the two great opponents, this
+letter has been the stronghold of those who fight for
+the spiritual conception of religion. With it Luther
+waged his warfare, and in this day, too, its words are
+precious.</p>
+
+<p>My text contains Paul's condensed statement of
+his whole position in the controversy. It tells us
+what he fought for, and why he fought, against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+attempt to suspend union to Christ on an outward
+rite.</p>
+
+<p>I. The first grand principle contained in these words
+is that faith working by love makes a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>The antithesis of our text appears in somewhat varied
+forms in two other places in the Apostle's writings. To
+the Corinthians he says, 'Circumcision is nothing, and
+uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments
+of God.' His last word to the Galatians&mdash;the
+gathering up into one strong sentence of his
+whole letter&mdash;is, 'In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision
+availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new
+creature.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, all these assertions embody substantially the
+same opposition between the conception of Christianity
+as depending upon a ceremonial rite, and as being a
+spiritual change. And the variations in the second
+member of the contrast throw light on each other. In
+one, the essential thing is regarded from the divine
+side as being not a rite performed on the body, but a
+new nature, the result of a supernatural regeneration.
+In another, the essential thing is set forth as being not
+an outward act, but an inward principle, which produces
+appropriate effects on the whole being. In yet
+another the essential thing is conceived as being not a
+mere ceremonial, but practical obedience, the consequence
+of the active principle of faith, and the sign of
+the new life. There is an evident sequence in the three
+sayings. They begin with the deepest, the divine act
+of a new creation&mdash;and end with the outermost, the
+last result and object of both the others&mdash;deeds of
+conformity to God's law.</p>
+
+<p>This one process in its triple aspects, says Paul, constitutes
+a man a Christian. What correspondence is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+there between it, in any of its parts, and a carnal
+ordinance? They belong to wholly different categories,
+and it is the most preposterous confusion to try to mix
+them up together. Are we to tack on to the solemn
+powers and qualities, which unite the soul to Christ,
+this beggarly addition that the Judaisers desire, and to
+say, the essentials of Christianity are a new creature,
+faith, obedience&mdash;and circumcision? That is, indeed,
+sewing old cloth on a new garment, and huddling
+together in grotesque chaos things which are utterly
+diverse. It is as absurd bathos as to say the essentials
+of a judge are integrity, learning, patience&mdash;and an
+ermine robe!</p>
+
+<p>There would be less danger of being entangled in
+false notions of the sort which devastated Galatia and
+have afflicted the Church ever since, if people would
+put a little more distinctly before their own minds
+what they mean by 'religion'; what sort of man they
+intend when they talk about 'a Christian.' A clear
+notion of the thing to be produced would thin away a
+wonderful deal of mist as to the way of producing it.
+So then, beginning at the surface, in order to work
+inward, my first remark is that religion is the harmony
+of the soul with God, and the conformity of the life to
+His law.</p>
+
+<p>The loftiest purpose of God, in all His dealings, is to
+make us like Himself; and the end of all religion is the
+complete accomplishment of that purpose. There is
+no religion without these elements&mdash;consciousness of
+kindred with God, recognition of Him as the sum of
+all excellence and beauty, and of His will as unconditionally
+binding upon us, aspiration and effort after a
+full accord of heart and soul with Him and with His
+law, and humble confidence that that sovereign beauty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+will be ours. 'Be ye imitators of God as dear children'
+is the pure and comprehensive dictate which expresses
+the aim of all devout men. 'To keep His commandments'
+goes deeper than the mere external deeds.
+Were it not so, Paul's grand words would shrink to a
+very poor conception of religion, which would then
+have its shrine and sphere removed from the sacred
+recesses of the inmost spirit to the dusty Babel of the
+market-place and the streets. But with that due and
+necessary extension of the words which results from
+the very nature of the case, that obedience must be
+the obedience of a man, and not of his deeds only,
+and must include the submission of the will and the
+prostration of the whole nature before Him; they teach
+a truth which, fully received and carried out, clears
+away whole mountains of theoretical confusion and
+practical error. Religion is no dry morality; no slavish,
+punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion
+is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion
+alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the
+semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated
+feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal
+connection with the Christian community, nor participation
+in its ordinances and its worship. But to be
+godly is to be godlike. The full accord of all the soul
+with His character, in whom, as their native home,
+dwell 'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things
+are lovely,' and the full glad conformity of the will to
+His sovereign will, who is the life of our lives&mdash;this,
+and nothing shallower, nothing narrower, is religion
+in its perfection; and the measure in which we have
+attained to this harmony with God, is the measure in
+which we are Christians. As two stringed instruments
+may be so tuned to one keynote that, if you strike the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+one, a faint ethereal echo is heard from the other,
+which blends undistinguishably with its parent sound;
+so, drawing near to God, and brought into unison with
+His mind and will, our responsive spirits vibrate in
+accord with His, and give forth tones, low and thin
+indeed, but still repeating the mighty music of heaven.
+'Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,
+but the keeping of the commandments of God.'</p>
+
+<p>But our text tells us, further, that if we look backwards
+from character and deed to motive, this harmony
+with God results from love becoming the ruling power of
+our lives. The imitation of the object of worship has
+always been felt to be the highest form of worship.
+Many an ancient teacher, besides the Stoic philosopher,
+has said, 'He who copies the gods worships them
+adequately.' One of the prophets lays it down as a
+standing rule, 'The people will walk every one in the
+name of his God.' But it is only in the Christian attitude
+towards God that the motive power is found which
+makes such imitation more than an impossible duty,
+even as it is only in the revealed character of God that
+a pattern is found, to imitate which is to be perfect.
+Everywhere besides, harmony with the gods meant
+discord with conscience and flagrant outrages of the
+commonest moralities. Everywhere else, the task of
+copying them was one lightened by no clear confidence
+in their love, and by no happy consciousness of our
+own. But for us, the love revealed is the perfect law,
+and the love evoked is the fulfilling of the law.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the might and nobleness of the Christian
+love to God; that it is no idle emotion or lazy rapture,
+no vague sentiment, but the root of all practical goodness,
+of all strenuous effort, of all virtue, and of all
+praise. That strong tide is meant to drive the busy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+wheels of life and to bear precious freightage on its
+bosom; not to flow away in profitless foam. Love is
+the fruitful mother of bright children, as our great
+moralist-poet learned when he painted her in the
+House of Holiness:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="A multitude of babes about her hung">
+<tr><td align='left'>'A multitude of babes about her hung,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Playing their sport that joyed her to behold.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Her sons are Strength and Justice, and Self-control and
+Firmness, and Courage and Patience, and many more
+besides; and her daughters are Pity with her sad eyes,
+and Gentleness with her silvery voice, and Mercy whose
+sweet face makes sunshine in the shade of death, and
+Humility all unconscious of her loveliness; and linked
+hand in hand with these, all the radiant band of sisters
+that men call Virtues and Graces. These will dwell in
+our hearts, if Love their mighty mother be there. If
+we are without her, we shall be without them.</div>
+
+<p>There is discord between man and God which can
+only be removed by the sweet commerce of love, established
+between earth and heaven. God's love has come
+to us. When ours springs responsive to Him, then the
+schism is ended, and the wandering child forgets his
+rebellion, as he lays his aching head on the father's
+bosom, and feels the beating of the father's heart. Our
+souls by reason of sin are 'like sweet bells jangled,
+out of tune and harsh.' Love's master hand laid upon
+them restores to them their part in 'the fair music
+that all creatures make to their great Lord,' and brings
+us into such accord with God that</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="We on earth with undiscording voice">
+<tr><td align='left'>'We on earth with undiscording voice</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">May rightly answer'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>even the awful harmonies of His lips. The essential of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+religion is concord with God, and the power which
+makes that concord is love to God.</div>
+
+<p>But this text leads to a still further consideration,
+namely, the dominion of love to God in our hearts arises
+from faith.</p>
+
+<p>We thus reach the last link, or rather the staple, of
+the chain from which all hangs. Religion is harmony
+with God; that harmony is produced by love; and that
+love is produced by faith. Therefore the fundamental
+of all Christianity in the soul is faith. Would this
+sound any fresher and more obvious if we varied the
+language, and said that to be religious we must be like
+God, that to be like Him we must love Him, and that
+to love Him we must be sure that He loves us? Surely
+that is too plain to need enlarging on.</p>
+
+<p>And is it not true that faith must precede our love
+to God, and affords the only possible basis on which
+that can be built? How can we love Him so long as
+we are in doubt of His heart, or misconceive His
+character, as if it were only power and wisdom, or
+awful severity? Men cannot love an unseen person at
+all, without some very special token of his personal
+affection for them. The history of all religions shows
+that where the gods have been thought of as unloving,
+the worshippers have been heartless too. It is only
+when we know and believe the love that God hath to
+us, that we come to cherish any corresponding emotion
+to Him. Our love is secondary, His is primary; ours
+is reflection, His the original beam; ours is echo, His
+the mother-tone. Heaven must bend to earth before
+earth can rise to heaven. The skies must open and
+drop down love, ere love can spring in the fruitful
+fields. And it is only when we look with true trust to
+that great unveiling of the heart of God which is in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+Jesus Christ, only when we can say, 'Herein is love&mdash;that
+He gave His Son to be the propitiation for our
+sins,' that our hearts are melted, and all their snows
+are dissolved into sweet waters, which, freed from
+their icy chains, can flow with music in their ripple
+and fruitfulness along their course, through our otherwise
+silent and barren lives. Faith in Christ is the
+only possible basis for active love to God.</p>
+
+<p>And this thought presents the point of contact between
+the teaching of Paul and John. The one dwells
+on faith, the other on love, but he who insists most on
+the former declares that it produces its effects on
+character by the latter; and he who insists most on
+the latter is forward to proclaim that it owes its very
+existence to the former.</p>
+
+<p>It presents also the point of contact between Paul
+and James. The one speaks of the essential of
+Christianity as faith, the other as works. They are
+only striking the stream at different points, one at the
+fountain-head, one far down its course among the
+haunts of men. They both preach that faith must be
+'faith that worketh,' not a barren assent to a dogma,
+but a living trust that brings forth fruits in the life.
+Paul believes as much as James that faith without
+works is dead, and demands the keeping of the commandments
+as indispensable to all true Christianity.
+James believes as much as Paul that works without
+faith are of none effect. So all three of these great
+teachers of the Church are represented in this text, to
+which each of them might seem to have contributed a
+word embodying his characteristic type of doctrine.
+The threefold rays into which the prism parts the
+white light blend again here, where faith, love, and
+work are all united in the comprehensive saying, 'In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything,
+nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.'</p>
+
+<p>The sum of the whole matter is this&mdash;He who is one
+in will and heart with God is a Christian. He who
+loves God is one in will and heart with Him. He who
+trusts Christ loves God. That is Christianity in its
+ultimate purpose and result. That is Christianity in
+its means and working forces. That is Christianity in
+its starting-point and foundation.</p>
+
+<p>II. But we have to consider also the negative side of
+the Apostle's words. They affirm that in comparison
+with the essential&mdash;faith, all externals are infinitely
+unimportant.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's habit was always to settle questions by the
+widest principles he could bring to bear upon them&mdash;which
+one may notice in passing is the very opposite
+to the method that has been in favour with many
+Church teachers and guides since, who have preferred
+to live from hand to mouth, and to dispose of difficulties
+by the narrowest considerations that would avail to
+quiet them. In our text the question in hand is settled
+on a ground which covers a great deal more than the
+existing dispute. Circumcision is regarded as one of
+a whole class&mdash;namely, the class of outward rites and
+observances; and the contrast drawn between it and
+faith extends to all the class to which it belongs. It is
+not said to be powerless because it is an Old Testament
+rite, but because it is a rite. Its impotence lies in the
+very nature which it has in common with all external
+institutions, whether they be of the Old Testament or
+of the New, whether they be enjoined of God or invented
+by men. To them all the same characteristic
+cleaves. Compared with faith they are of no avail.
+Not that they are absolutely useless. They have their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+place, but '<i>in Christ Jesus</i>' they are nothing. Union
+to Him depends on quite another order of facts, which
+may or may not exist along with circumcision, or with
+baptism, or with the Lord's Supper. However important
+these may be, they have no place among the
+things which bind a soul to its Saviour. They may be
+helps to these things, but nothing more. The rite does
+not ensure the faith, else the antithesis of our text
+were unmeaning. The rite does not stand in the place
+of faith, or the contrast implied were absurd. But the
+two belong to totally different orders of things, which
+may co-exist indeed, but may also be found separately;
+the one is the indispensable spiritual experience which
+makes us Christians, the other belongs to a class of
+material institutions which are much as helps to, but
+nothing as substitutes or equivalents for, faith.</p>
+
+<p>Keep firm hold of the positive principle with which
+we have been dealing in the former part of this sermon,
+and all forms and externals fall as a matter of course
+into their proper place. If religion be the loving
+devotion of the soul to God, resting upon reasonable
+faith, then all besides is, at the most, a means which
+may further it. If loving trust which apprehends the
+truth, and cleaves to the Person, revealed to us in the
+Gospel, be the link which binds men to God, then the
+only way by which these externals can be 'means of
+grace' is by their aiding us to understand better and
+to feel more the truth as it is in Jesus, and to cleave
+closer to Him who is the truth. Do they enlighten
+the understanding? Do they engrave deeper the loved
+face carven on the tablets of memory, which the
+attrition of worldly cares is ever obliterating, and the
+lichens of worldly thoughts ever filling up? Do they
+clear out the rubbish from the channels of the heart,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+that the cleansing stream may flow through them?
+Do they, through the senses, minister to the soul its
+own proper food of clear thought, vivid impressions,
+loving affections, trustful obedience? Do they bring
+Christ to us, and us to Him, in the only way in which
+approach is possible&mdash;through the occupation of mind
+and heart and will with His great perfectness? Then
+they are means of grace, precious and helpful, the gifts
+of His love, the tokens of His wise knowledge of our
+weakness, the signs of His condescension, in that He
+stoops to trust some portion of our remembrance of
+Him to the ministry of sense. But in comparison with
+that faith which they cannot plant, though they may
+strengthen it, they are nothing; and in the matter of
+uniting the soul to God and making men 'religious,'
+they are of no avail at all.</p>
+
+<p>And such thoughts as these have a very wide sweep,
+as well as a very deep influence. Religion is the
+devotion of the soul to God. Then <i>everything</i> besides
+is not religion, but at most a means to it. That is true
+about all Christian ordinances. Baptism is spoken
+about by Paul in terms which plainly show that he
+regarded it as 'nothing' in the same sense, and under
+the same limitations, as he thought that circumcision
+was nothing. 'I baptized some of you,' says he to
+the Corinthians; 'I scarcely remember whom, or how
+many. I have far more important work to do&mdash;to
+preach the Gospel.' It is true about all acts and forms
+of Christian worship. These are not religion, but
+means to it. Their only value and their only test is&mdash;Do
+they help men to know and feel Christ and His
+truth? It is true about laws of life, and many points
+of conventional morality. Remember the grand freedom
+with which the same Apostle dealt with questions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+about meats offered to idols, and the observance of
+days and seasons. The same principle guided him
+there too, and he relegated the whole question back to
+its proper place with, 'Meat commendeth us not to
+God; for neither if we eat are we the better, neither
+if we eat not are we the worse.' 'He that regardeth
+the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth
+not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard
+it.' It is true, though less obviously and simply, about
+subordinate doctrines. It is true about the mere
+intellectual grasp of the fundamental truths of God's
+revelation. These, and the belief of these, are not
+Christianity, they are helps towards it.</p>
+
+<p>The separation is broad and deep. On one side are
+all externals, rites, ceremonies, politics, Church arrangements,
+forms of worship, modes of life, practices of
+morality, doctrines, and creeds&mdash;all which are externals
+to the soul: on the other is faith working through love,
+the inmost attitude and deepest emotion of the soul.
+The great heap is fuel. The flame is loving faith. The
+only worth of the fuel is to feed the flame. Otherwise
+it is of no avail, but lies dead and cold, a mass of
+blackness. We are joined to God by faith. Whatever
+strengthens that faith is precious as a help, but is
+worthless as a substitute.</p>
+
+<p>III. There is a constant tendency to exalt these
+unimportant externals into the place of faith.</p>
+
+<p>The whole purpose of the Gospel may be described
+to be our deliverance from the dominion of sense, and
+the transference of the centre of our life to the unseen
+world. This end is no doubt partly accomplished by
+the help of sense. So long as men have bodily organisations,
+there will be need for outward helps. Men's
+indolence, and men's sense-ridden natures, will take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+symbols for <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'roalties'">royalties</ins>, bank-notes for wealth. The eye
+will be tempted to stay on the rich colours of the glowing
+glass, instead of passing through them to heaven's light
+beyond. To make the senses a ladder for the soul to
+climb to heaven by, will be perilously likely to end in
+the soul going down the ladder instead of up. Forms
+are sure to encroach, to overlay the truth that lies at
+their root, to become dimly intelligible, or quite unmeaning,
+and to constitute at last the end instead of the
+means. Is it not then wise to minimise these potent
+and dangerous allies? Is it not needful to use them
+with the remembrance that a minute quantity may
+strengthen, but an overdose will kill&mdash;ay, and that the
+minute quantity may kill too? Christ instituted two
+outward rites. There could not have been fewer if
+there was to be an outward community at all, and they
+could not have been simpler; but look at the portentous
+outgrowth of superstition, and the unnumbered
+evils, religious, moral, social, and even political, which
+have come from the invincible tendency of human
+nature to corrupt forms, even when the forms are the
+sweet and simple ones of Christ's own appointment.
+What a lesson the history of the Lord's Supper, and its
+gradual change from the domestic memorial of the
+dying love of our Lord to the 'tremendous sacrifice,'
+reads us as to the dangerous ally which spiritual religion&mdash;and
+there is no other religion than spiritual&mdash;enlists
+when it seeks the help of external rites!</p>
+
+<p>But remember that this danger of converting religion
+into outward actions has its root in us all, and is not
+annihilated by our rejection of an elaborate ceremonial.
+There is much significance in the double negation of
+my text, 'Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.' If
+the Judaisers were tempted to insist on the former,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+as indispensable, their antagonists were as much
+tempted to insist on the latter. The one were saying,
+'A man cannot be a Christian unless he be circumcised.'
+The other would be in danger of replying, 'He cannot
+be a Christian if he is.' There may be as much
+formalism in protesting against forms as in using
+them. Extremes meet; and an unspiritual Quaker,
+for instance, is at bottom of the same way of thinking
+as an unspiritual Roman Catholic. They agree in their
+belief that certain outward acts are essential to worship,
+and even to religion. They only differ as to what
+these acts are. The Judaiser who says, 'You must be
+circumcised,' and his antagonist who says, 'You must
+be uncircumcised,' are really in the same boat.</p>
+
+<p>And this is especially needful to be kept in mind by
+those who, like the most of us, hold fast by the free
+and spiritual conception of Christianity. That freedom
+we may turn into a bondage, and that spirituality into
+a form, if we confound it with the essentials of Christianity,
+and deny the possibility of the life being
+developed except in conjunction with it. My text has
+a double edge. Let us use it against all this Judaising
+which is going on round about us, and against all the
+tendency to it in our own hearts. The one edge smites
+the former, the other edge the latter. Circumcision is
+nothing, as most of us are forward to proclaim. But,
+also, remember, when we are tempted to trust in our
+freedom, and to fancy that in itself it is good, <i>uncircumcision
+is nothing</i>. You are no more a Christian for
+your rejection of forms than another man is for his
+holding them. Your negation no more unites you to
+Christ than does his affirmation. One thing alone does
+that,&mdash;faith which worketh by love, against which sense
+ever wars, both by tempting some of us to place religion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+in outward acts and ceremonies, and by tempting
+others of us to place it in rejecting the forms which
+our brethren abuse.</p>
+
+<p>IV. When an indifferent thing is made into an
+essential, it ceases to be indifferent, and must be fought
+against.</p>
+
+<p>Paul proclaimed that circumcision and uncircumcision
+were alike unavailing. A man might be a good
+Christian either way. They were not unimportant in
+all respects, but in regard to being united to Christ, it
+did not matter which side one took. And, in accordance
+with this noble freedom, he for himself practised
+Jewish rites; and, when he thought it might conciliate
+prejudice without betraying principle, had Timothy
+circumcised. But when it came to be maintained as a
+principle that Gentiles <i>must</i> be circumcised, the time
+for conciliation was past. The other side had made
+further concession impossible. The Apostle had no
+objection to circumcision. What he objected to was
+its being forced upon all as a necessary preliminary to
+entering the Church. And as soon as the opposite
+party took that ground, then there was nothing for it
+but to fight against them to the last. They had turned
+an indifferent thing into an essential, and he could no
+longer treat it as indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>So whenever parties or Churches insist on external
+rites as essential, or elevate any of the subordinate
+means of grace into the place of the one bond which
+fastens our souls to Jesus, and is the channel of grace
+as well as the bond of union, then it is time to arm for
+the defence of the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, and
+to resist the attempt to bind on free shoulders the
+iron yoke. Let men and parties do as they like, so
+long as they do not turn their forms into essentials.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+In broad freedom of speech and spirit, which holds by
+the one central principle too firmly to be much troubled
+about subordinate matters&mdash;in tolerance of diversities,
+which does not spring from indifference, but from the
+very clearness of our perception of, and from the very
+fervour of our adherence to, the one essential of the
+Christian life&mdash;let us take for our guide the large,
+calm, lofty thoughts which this text sets forth before
+us. Let us thankfully believe that men may love
+Jesus, and be fed from His fulness, whether they be on
+one side of this undying controversy or on the other.
+Let us watch jealously the tendencies in our own hearts
+to trust in our forms or in our freedom. And whensoever
+or wheresoever these subordinates are made
+into things essential, and the ordinances of Christ's
+Church are elevated into the place which belongs to
+loving trust in Christ's love, then let <i>our</i> voices at least
+be heard on the side of that mighty truth that 'in
+Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything,
+nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>'WALK IN THE SPIRIT'</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> v. 16.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We are not to suppose that the Apostle here uses the
+familiar contrast of spirit and flesh to express simply
+different elements of human nature. Without entering
+here on questions for which a sermon is scarcely a
+suitable vehicle of discussion, it may be sufficient for
+our present purpose to say that, as usually, when
+employing this antithesis the Apostle means by Spirit
+the divine, the Spirit of God, which he triumphed in
+proclaiming to be the gift of every believing soul. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+other member of the contrast, 'flesh,' is similarly not
+to be taken as equivalent to body, but rather as meaning
+the whole human nature considered as apart
+from God and kindred with earth and earthly things.
+The flesh, in its narrower sense, is no doubt a predominant
+part of this whole, but there is much in
+it besides the material organisation. The ethics of
+Christianity suffered much harm and were degraded
+into a false and slavish asceticism for long centuries, by
+monastic misunderstandings of what Paul meant by
+the flesh, but he himself was too clear-sighted and too
+high-toned to give his adhesion to the superficial
+notion that the body is the seat and source of sin. We
+need look no further than the catalogue of the 'works
+of the flesh' which immediately follows our text, for,
+although it begins with gross sins of a purely fleshly
+kind, it passes on to such as hatred, emulations, wrath,
+envyings and suchlike. Many of these works of the
+flesh are such as an angel with an evil heart could do,
+whether he had a body or not. It seems therefore
+right to say that the one member of the contrast is the
+divine Spirit of holiness, and the other is man as he is,
+without the life-giving influence of the Spirit of God.
+In Paul's thought the idea of the flesh always included
+the idea of sin, and the desires of the flesh were to him
+not merely rebellious, sensuous passion, but the sinful
+desires of godless human nature, however refined, and
+as some would say, 'spiritual' these might be. We do
+not need to inquire more minutely as to the meaning
+of the Apostle's terms, but may safely take them as, on
+the one hand, referring to the divine Spirit which
+imparts life and holiness, and on the other hand, to
+human nature severed from God, and distracted by evil
+desires because wrenched away from Him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The text is Paul's battle-cry, which he opposed to the
+Judaising disturbers in Galatia. They said 'Do this
+and that; labour at a round of observances; live by
+rule.' Paul said, 'No! That is of no use; you will
+make nothing of such an attempt nor will ever conquer
+evil so. Live by the spirit and you will not need a
+hard outward law, nor will you be in bondage to the
+works of the flesh.' That feud in the Galatian churches
+was the earliest battle which Christianity had to fight
+between two eternal tendencies of thought&mdash;the conception
+of religion as consisting in outward obedience
+to a law, and consequently as made up of a series of
+painful efforts to keep it, and the conception of religion
+as being first the implanting of a new, divine life, and
+needing only to be nourished and cared for in order
+to drive forth evils from the heart, and so to show
+itself living. The difference goes very far and very
+deep, and these two views of what religion is have
+each their adherents to-day. The Apostle throws the
+whole weight of his authority into the one scale, and
+emphatically declares this as the one secret of victory,
+'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
+the flesh.'</p>
+
+<p>I. What it is to walk in the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The thought which is but touched upon here is set
+forth more largely, and if we may so say, profoundly,
+in the Epistle to the Romans (chap. viii.). There, to
+walk after the flesh, is substantially the same as to be
+carnally minded, and that 'mind of the flesh' is regarded
+as being by fatal necessity not 'subject to the
+law of God,' and consequently as in itself, with regard
+to future consequences, to be death. The fleshly mind
+which is thus in rebellion against the law of God is
+sure to issue in 'desires of the flesh,' just as when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+pressure is taken off, some ebullient liquid will bubble.
+They that are after the flesh of course will 'mind the
+things of the flesh.' The vehement desires which we
+cherish when we are separated from God and which we
+call sins, are graver as a symptom than even they are
+in themselves, for they show which way the wind blows,
+and are tell-tales that betray the true direction of our
+nature. If we were not after the flesh we should not
+mind the things of the flesh. The one expression
+points to the deep-seated nature, the other to the
+superficial actions to which it gives rise.</p>
+
+<p>And the same duality belongs to the life of those
+who are 'after the Spirit.' 'To walk,' of course, means
+to carry on the practical life, and the Spirit is here
+thought of not so much perhaps as the path on which
+we are to travel, but rather as the norm and direction
+by which we are to travel on life's common way. Just
+as the desires of the flesh were certain to be done by
+those who in their deepest selves belonged to the flesh,
+so every soul which has received the unspeakable gift
+of newness of life through the Spirit of God will have
+the impulses to mind and do the things of the Spirit. If
+we live in the Spirit we shall also&mdash;and let us also&mdash;walk
+in the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>But let us make no mistakes, or think that our text
+in its great commandment and radiant hope has any
+word of cheer to those who have not received into
+their hearts, in however feeble a manner and minute a
+measure, the Spirit of the Son. The first question for
+us all is, have we received the Holy Ghost?&mdash;and the
+answer to that question is the answer to the other,
+have we accepted Christ? It is through Him and
+through faith in Him that that supreme gift of a living
+spirit is bestowed. And only when our spirits bear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+witness with that Spirit that we are the children of
+God, have we a right to look upon the text as pointing
+our duty and stimulating our hope. If our practical
+life is to be directed by the Spirit of God, He must
+enter into our spirits, and we shall not be in Him but
+in the measure that He is in us. Nor will our spirits
+be life because of righteousness unless He dwells in us
+and casts forth the works of the flesh. There will be
+no practical direction of our lives by the Spirit of God
+unless we make conscience of cultivating the reception
+of His life-giving and cleansing influences, and unless
+we have inward communion with our inward guide,
+intimate and frank, prolonged and submissive. If we
+are for ever allowing the light of our inward godliness
+to be blown about by gusts, or to show in our inmost
+hearts but a faint and flickering spark, how can we
+expect that it will shine safe direction on our outward
+path?</p>
+
+<p>II. Such walking in the Spirit conquers the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>We all know it as a familiar experience that the
+surest way to conquer any strong desire or emotion is
+to bring some other into operation. To concentrate
+attention on any overmastering thought or purpose,
+even if our object is to destroy it, is but too apt to
+strengthen it. And so to fix our minds on our own
+desires of the flesh, even though we may be honestly
+wishing to suppress them, is a sure way to invest them
+with new force; therefore the wise counsels of sages
+and moralists are, for the most part, destined to lead
+those who listen to them astray. Many a man has, in
+good faith, set himself to conquer his own evil lusts
+and has found that the nett result of his struggles has
+been to make the lusts more conspicuous and correspondingly
+more powerful. The Apostle knows a better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+way, which he has proved to his own experience, and
+now, with full confidence and triumph, presses upon his
+hearers. He would have them give up the monotonous
+and hopeless fight against the flesh and bring another
+ally into the field. His chief exhortation is a positive,
+not a negative one. It is vain to try to tie up men with
+restrictions and prohibitions, which when their desires
+are stirred will be burst like Samson's bonds. But if
+once the positive exhortation here is obeyed, then it
+will surely make short work of the desires and passions
+which otherwise men, for the most part, do not wish
+to get rid of, and never do throw off by any other
+method.</p>
+
+<p>We have pointed out that in our text to walk in the
+Spirit means to regulate the practical life by the Spirit
+of God, and that the 'desires of the flesh' mean the
+desires of the whole human nature apart from God. But
+even if we take the contrasted terms in their lower and
+commonly adopted sense, the text is true and useful.
+A cultivated mind habituated to lofty ideas, and quick
+to feel the nobility of 'spiritual' pursuits and possessions,
+will have no taste for the gross delights of sense,
+and will recoil with disgust from the indulgences in
+which more animal natures wallow. But while this is
+true, it by no means exhausts the great principle laid
+down here. We must take the contrasted terms in
+their fullest meaning if we would arrive at it. The
+spiritual life derived from Jesus Christ and lodged in
+the human spirit has to be guarded, cherished and
+made dominant, and then it will drive out the old. If
+the Spirit which is life because of righteousness is
+allowed free course in a human spirit, it will send forth
+its powers into the body which is 'dead because of sin,'
+will regulate its desires, and if needful will suppress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+them. And it is wiser and more blessed to rely on this
+overflowing influence than to attempt the hopeless
+task of coercing these desires by our own efforts.</p>
+
+<p>If we walk in the Spirit, we shall thereby acquire
+new tastes and desires of a higher kind which will
+destroy the lower. They to whom manna is sweet as
+angel's food find that they have lost their relish for the
+strong-smelling and rank-flavoured Egyptian leeks and
+garlic. A guest at a king's table will not care to
+enter a smoky hovel and will not be hungry for the
+food to be found there. If we are still dependent on
+the desires of the flesh we are still but children, and if
+we are walking in the Spirit we have outgrown our
+childish toys. The enjoyment of the gifts which the
+Spirit gives deadens temptation and robs many things
+that were very precious of their lustre.</p>
+
+<p>We may also illustrate the great principle of our
+text by considering that when we have found our
+supreme object there is no inducement to wander
+further in the search after delights. Desires are confessions
+of discontent, and though the absolute satisfaction
+of all our nature is not granted to us here,
+there is so much of blessedness given and so many of
+our most clamant desires fully met in the gift of life in
+Christ, that we may well be free from the prickings of
+desires which sting men into earnest seeking after
+often unreal good. 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
+peace,' and surely if we have these we may well leave
+the world its troubled delights and felicities. Christ's
+joy remains in us and our joy is full. The world desires
+because it does not possess. When a deeper well is
+sunk, a shallower one is pretty sure to give out. If we
+walk in the Spirit we go down to the deepest water-holding
+stratum, and all the surface wells will run dry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Further, we may note, that this walking in the Spirit
+brings into our lives the mightiest motives of holy
+living and so puts a bridle on the necks and a bit in
+the mouths of our untamed desires. Holding fellowship
+with the divine Indweller and giving the reins into
+His strong hand, we receive from Him the spirit of
+adoption and learn that if we are children then are
+we heirs. Is there any motive that will so surely still
+the desires of the flesh and of the mind as the blessed
+thought that God is ours and we His? Surely their
+feet should never stumble or stray, who are aware of
+the Spirit of the Son bearing witness with their spirit
+that they are the children of God. Surely the measure
+in which we realise this will be the measure in which
+the desires of the flesh will be whipped back to their
+kennels, and cease to disturb us with their barks.</p>
+
+<p>The whole question here as between Paul and his
+opponents just comes to this; if a field is covered with
+filth, whether is it better to set to work on it with wheel-barrows
+and shovels, or to turn a river on it which will
+bear away all the foulness? The true way to change
+the fauna and flora of a country is to change the
+level, and as the height increases they change themselves.
+If we desire to have the noxious creatures
+expelled from ourselves, we must not so much labour
+at their expulsion as see to the elevation of our own
+personal being and then we shall succeed. That is
+what Paul says, 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not
+fulfil the lusts of the flesh.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Such a life is not freed from the necessity of
+struggle.</p>
+
+<p>The highest condition, of course, would be that we
+had only to grow, not to fight. It will come some day
+that all evil shall drop away, and that to walk in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+Spirit will need no effort, but that time has not come
+yet. So in addition to all that we have been saying in
+this sermon, we must further say that Paul's exhortation
+has always to be coupled with the other to fight
+the good fight. The highest word for our earthly lives
+is not 'victory' but 'contest.' We shall not walk in
+the Spirit without many a struggle to keep ourselves
+within that charmed atmosphere. The promise of our
+text is not that we shall not feel, but that we shall not
+fulfil, the desires of the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>Now this is very commonplace and threadbare
+teaching, but it is none the less important, and is
+especially needful to be strongly emphasised when
+we have been speaking as we have just been doing.
+It is a historical fact, illustrated over and over again
+since Paul wrote, and not without illustration to-day,
+that there is constant danger of lax morality infecting
+Christian life under pretence of lofty spirituality.
+So it must ever be insisted upon that the test of a
+true walking in the Spirit is that we are thereby
+fitted to fight against the desires of the flesh. When
+we have the life of the Spirit within us, it will
+show itself as Paul has said in another place by the
+righteousness of the law being fulfilled in us, and by
+our 'mortifying the deeds of the body.' The gift of the
+Spirit does not take us out of the ranks of the combatants,
+but teaches us to fight, and arms us with its
+own sword for the conflict. There will be abundant
+opportunities of courage in attacking the sin that doth
+so easily beset us, and in resisting temptations which
+come to us by reason of our own imperfect sanctification.
+But there is all the difference between fighting
+at our own hand and fighting with the help of God's
+Spirit, and there is all the difference between fighting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+with the help of an unseen ally in heaven and fighting
+with a Spirit within us who helpeth our infirmities and
+Himself makes us able to contend, and sure, if we keep
+true to Him, to be more than conquerers through Him
+that loveth us.</p>
+
+<p>Such a conflict is a gift and a joy. It is hard but it is
+blessed, because it is an expression of our truest love;
+it comes from our deepest will; it is full of hope and of
+assured victory. How different is the painful, often
+defeated and monotonous attempt to suppress our
+nature by main force, and to tread a mill-horse round!
+The joyous freedom and buoyant hope taught us in the
+gospel way of salvation have been cramped and confined
+and all their glories veiled as by a mass of cobwebs
+spun beneath a golden roof, but our text sweeps away
+the foul obstruction. Let us learn the one condition of
+victorious conflict, the one means of subduing our
+natural humanity and its distracting desires, and let
+nothing rob us of the conviction that this is God's way
+of making men like angels. 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye
+shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness,
+faith, 23. Meekness, temperance'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> v. 22, 23.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'The fruit of the Spirit,' says Paul, not the fruits, as
+we might more naturally have expected, and as the
+phrase is most often quoted; all this rich variety of
+graces, of conduct and character, is thought of as one.
+The individual members are not isolated graces, but
+all connected, springing from one root and constituting
+an organic whole. There is further to be noted that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+the Apostle designates the results of the Spirit as
+fruit, in strong and intentional contrast with the
+results of the flesh, the grim catalogue of which
+precedes the radiant list in our text. The works of
+the flesh have no such unity, and are not worthy of
+being called fruit. They are not what a man ought to
+bring forth, and when the great Husbandman comes,
+He finds no fruit there, however full of activity the
+life has been. We have then here an ideal of the
+noblest Christian character, and a distinct and profound
+teaching as to how to attain it. I venture to
+take the whole of this list for my text, because the
+very beauty of each element in it depends on its being
+but part of a whole, and because there are important
+lessons to be gathered from the grouping.</p>
+
+<p>I. The threefold elements of character here.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps not too artificial to point out that we
+have here three triads of which the first describes the
+life of the Spirit in its deepest secret; the second, the
+same life in its manifestations to men; and the third,
+that life in relation to the difficulties of the world, and
+of ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these three triads includes love, joy, and
+peace, and it is not putting too great a strain on the
+words to point out that the source of all three lies in
+the Christian relation to God. They regard nothing
+but God and our relation to Him; they would be all
+the same if there were no other men in the world, or
+if there were no world. We cannot call them duties
+or virtues; they are simply the results of communion
+with God&mdash;the certain manifestations of the better life
+of the Spirit. Love, of course, heads the list, as the
+foundation and moving principle of all the rest. It is
+the instinctive act of the higher life and is shed abroad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is the life sap
+which rises through the tree and given form to all the
+clusters. The remaining two members of this triad
+are plainly consequences of the first. Joy is not so
+much an act or a grace of character as an emotion
+poured into men's lives, because in their hearts abides
+love to God. Jesus Christ pledged Himself to impart
+His joy to remain in us, with the issue that our joy
+should be full. There is only one source of permanent
+joy which takes possession of and fills all the corners
+and crannies of the heart, and that is a love towards
+God equally abiding and all-pervasive. We have all
+known joys so perturbed, fragmentary and fleeting,
+that it is hard to distinguish them from sorrows, but
+there is no need that joys should be like green fruits
+hard and savourless and ready to drop from the tree.
+If God is 'the gladness of our joy,' and all our delights
+come from communion with Him, our joy will never
+pass and will fill the whole round of our spirits as the
+sea laves every shore.</p>
+
+<p>Peace will be built upon love and joy, if our hearts
+are ever turning to God and ever blessed with the
+inter-communion of love between Him and us. What
+can be strong enough to disturb the tranquillity that
+fills the soul independent of all externals? However
+long and close may be the siege, the well in the castle
+courtyard will be full. True peace comes not from
+the absence of trouble but from the presence of God,
+and will be deep and passing all understanding in
+the exact measure in which we live in, and partake
+of, the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>The second triad is long-suffering, kindness, goodness.
+All these three obviously refer to the spiritual
+life in its manifestations to men. The first of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>&mdash;long-suffering&mdash;describes
+the attitude of patient endurance
+towards inflictors of injury or enemies, if we
+come forth from the blessed fellowship with God,
+where love, joy, and peace reign unbroken, and are met
+with a cold gust of indifference or with an icy wind of
+hate. The reality of our happy communion and the
+depth of our love will be tested by the patience of our
+long-suffering. Love suffereth long, is not easily provoked,
+is not soon angry. He has little reason to
+suppose that the love of God is shed abroad in his
+heart, or that the Spirit of God is bringing forth fruit
+in him, who has not got beyond the stage of repaying
+hate with hate, and scorn with scorn. Any fool can
+answer a fool according to his folly, but it takes a wise
+and a good man to overcome evil with good, and to
+love them that hate; and yet how certainly the fires
+of mutual antagonism would go out if there were only
+one to pile on the fuel! It takes two to make a quarrel,
+and no man living under the influence of the Spirit of
+God can be one of such a pair.</p>
+
+<p>The second and third members of this triad&mdash;kindness,
+goodness, slide very naturally into one another.
+They do not only require the negative virtue of not
+retaliating, but express the Christian attitude towards
+all of meeting them, whatever their attitude, with
+good. It is possible that kindness here expresses the
+inward disposition and goodness, the habitual actions
+in which that disposition shows itself. If that be the
+distinction between them, the former would answer to
+benevolence and the latter to beneficence. These
+three graces include all that Paul presents as Christian
+duty to our fellows. The results of the life of the
+Spirit are to pass beyond ourselves and to influence
+our whole conduct. We are not to live only as mainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+for the spiritual enjoyments of fellowship with God.
+The true field of religion is in moving amongst men,
+and the true basis of all service of men is love and
+fellowship with God.</p>
+
+<p>The third triad&mdash;faithfulness, meekness, temperance&mdash;seems
+to point to the world in which the Christian life
+is to be lived as a scene of difficulties and oppositions.
+The rendering of the Revised Version is to be preferred
+to that of the Authorised in the first of the three, for it
+is not faith in its theological sense to which the Apostle
+is here referring. Possibly, however, the meaning may
+be trustfulness just as in 1 Corinthians xiii. it is given
+as a characteristic of love that it 'believeth all things.'
+More probably, however, the meaning is faithfulness,
+and Paul's thought is that the Christian life is to
+manifest itself in the faithful discharge of all duties
+and the honest handling of all things committed to it.
+Meekness even more distinctly contemplates a condition
+of things which is contrary to the Christian
+life, and points to a submissiveness of spirit which does
+not lift itself up against oppositions, but bends like a
+reed before the storm. Paul preached meekness and
+practised it, but Paul could flash into strong opposition
+and with a resonant ring in his voice could say 'To
+whom we gave place by subjection, No! not for an
+hour.' The last member of the triad&mdash;temperance&mdash;points
+to the difficulties which the spiritual life is apt
+to meet with in the natural passions and desires, and
+insists upon the fact that conflict and rigid and
+habitual self-control are sure to be marks of that
+life.</p>
+
+<p>II. The unity of the fruit.</p>
+
+<p>We have already pointed out the Apostles remarkable
+use of the word 'fruit' here, by which he indicates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+that all the results of the life of the Spirit in the human
+spirit are to be regarded as a whole that has a natural
+growth. The foundation of all is of course that love
+which is the fulfilling of the law. It scarcely needs to
+be pointed out how love brings forth both the other
+elements of the first triad, but it is no less important to
+note that it and its two companions naturally lead on
+to the relations to men which make up the second
+triad. It is, however, worth while to dwell on that
+fact because there are many temptations for Christian
+people to separate between them. The two tables of
+the law are not seldom written so far apart that their
+unity ceases to be noted. There are many good people
+whose notions of religious duties are shut up in
+churches or chapels and limited to singing and praying,
+reading the Bible and listening to sermons, and who,
+even while they are doing good service in common life,
+do not feel that it is as much a religious duty to
+suppress the wish to retaliate as it is to sit in the
+sunshine of God's love and to feel Christ's joy and
+peace filling the heart. On the other hand many loud
+voices, some of them with great force of words and
+influence on the popular mind, are never wearied of
+preaching that Christianity is worn out as a social
+impulse, and that the service of man has nothing to
+do with the love of God. As plainly Paul's first triad
+naturally leads to his third. When the spiritual life
+has realised its deepest secret it will be strong to manifest
+itself as vigorous in reference to the difficulties of
+life. When that heart is blessed in its own settled
+love, abounding joy and untroubled peace, faithfulness
+and submission will both be possible and self-control
+will not be hard.</p>
+
+<p>III. The culture of the tree which secures the fruit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Can we suppose that the Apostle here is going back
+in thought to our Lord's profound teaching that every
+good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but the corrupt
+tree bringeth forth evil fruit? The obvious felicity of
+that metaphor often conceals for us the drastic force
+of its teaching, it regards all a man's conduct as but
+the outcome of his character, and brushes aside as
+trifling all attempts at altering products, whilst the
+producer remains unaltered. Whether Paul was here
+alluding to a known saying of Jesus or no, he was
+insisting upon the very centre of Christian ethics, that
+a man must first be good in order to do good. Our
+Lord's words seemed to make an impossible demand&mdash;'Make
+the tree good'&mdash;as the only way of securing good
+fruit, and it was in accordance with the whole cast of the
+Sermon on the Mount that the means of realising that
+demand was left unexpressed. But Paul stood on this
+side of Pentecost, and what was necessarily veiled in
+Christ's earlier utterances stood forth a revealed and
+blessed certainty to him. He had not to say 'Make the
+tree good' and be silent as to how that process was to
+be effected; to him the message had been committed,
+'The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity.' There is but
+one way by which a corrupt tree can be made good,
+and that is by grafting into the wild briar stock a
+'layer' from the rose. The Apostle had a double message
+to proclaim, and the one part was built upon the other.
+He had first to preach&mdash;and this day has first to believe
+that God has sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful
+flesh and as an offering for sin&mdash;and then he had to
+proclaim that, through that mission, it became possible
+that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us
+who 'walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.' The
+beginning, then, of all true goodness is to be sought in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+receiving into our corrupt natures the uncorrupted
+germs of the higher life, and it is only in the measure
+in which that Spirit of God moves in our spirits and,
+like the sap in the vine, permeates every branch and
+tendril, that fruit to eternal life will grow. Christian
+graces are the products of the indwelling divine life,
+and nothing else will succeed in producing them. All
+the preachings of moralists and all the struggles
+after self-improvement are reduced to impotence and
+vanity by the stern, curt sentence&mdash;'a corrupt tree cannot
+bring forth good fruit.' Surely it should come
+to us all as a true gospel when we feel ourselves
+foiled by our own evil nature in our attempts to be
+better, that the first thing we have to do is not to
+labour at either of the two impossible tasks of the
+making our bad selves good, or of the getting good
+fruits from bad selves, but to open our spirits through
+faith in Jesus for the entrance into us of His Spirit
+which will change our corruption into incorruption,
+and cleanse us from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
+Shall we not seek to become recipient of that new life,
+and having received it, should we not give diligence
+that it may in us produce all its natural effects?</p>
+
+<p>These fruits, though they are the direct results of the
+indwelling Spirit and will never be produced without its
+presence, are none the less truly dependent upon our
+manner of receiving that Spirit and on our faithfulness
+and diligence in the use of its gifts. It is, alas! sadly
+too true, and matter of tragically common experience
+that instead of 'trees of righteousness, the planting of
+the Lord' heavy with ruddy clusters, there are but
+dwarfed and scrubby bushes which have scarcely life
+enough to keep up a little show of green leaves and
+'bring no fruit to perfection'. Would that so-called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+Christian people would more earnestly and searchingly
+ask themselves why it is that, with such possibilities
+offered to them, their actual attainments should be
+so small. They have a power which is able to do for
+them exceeding abundantly above all that they can
+ask or think, and its actual effects on them are well on
+this side of both their petitions and their conceptions.
+There need be no difficulty in answering the question
+why our Christian lives do not correspond more closely
+to the Spirit that inspires them. The plain answer is
+that we have not cultivated, used, and obeyed Him. The
+Lord of the vineyard would less often have to ask
+'Wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth
+grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?' if we listened
+more obediently to the pathetic command which surely
+should touch a grateful heart&mdash;'Grieve not the holy
+Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day
+of redemption.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. How this is the only worthy fruit.</p>
+
+<p>We have already pointed out that the Apostle in the
+preceding context varies his terms, and catalogues the
+actions that come from the godless self as works, whilst
+those which are the outcome of the Spirit are fruit.
+The distinction thus drawn is twofold. Multiplicity
+is contrasted with unity and fruit with works. The
+deeds of the flesh have no consistency except that of evil;
+they are at variance with themselves&mdash;a huddled mob
+without regularity or order; and they are works indeed,
+but so disproportionate to the nature of the doer and
+his obligations that they do not deserve to be called
+fruit. It is not to attach too much importance to an
+accidental form of speech to insist upon this distinction
+as intended to be drawn, and as suggesting to us very
+solemn thoughts about many apparently very active<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+lives. The man who lives to God truly lives; the busiest
+life which is not rooted in Him and directed towards
+Him has so far missed its aim as to have brought forth
+no good fruit, and therefore to have incurred the
+sentence that it is cut down and cast into the fire.
+There is a very remarkable expression in Scripture,
+'The unfruitful works of darkness,' which admits the
+busy occupation and energy of the doers and denies
+that all that struggling and striving comes to anything.
+Done in the dark, they seemed to have some significance,
+when the light comes in they vanish. It is for us
+to determine whether our lives shall be works of
+the flesh, full, perhaps, of a time of 'sound and fury,'
+but 'signifying nothing,' or whether they shall be
+fruits of the Spirit, which we 'who have gathered shall
+eat in the courts of His holiness.' They will be so if,
+living in the Spirit, we walk in the Spirit, but if we 'sow
+to the flesh' we shall have a harder husbandry and a
+bitterer harvest when 'of the flesh we reap corruption,'
+and hear the awful and unanswerable question, 'What
+fruit had ye then of those things whereof ye are now
+ashamed?'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>BURDEN-BEARING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. 5. For every
+man shall bear his own burden.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> vi. 25.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The injunction in the former of these verses appears,
+at first sight, to be inconsistent with the statement in
+the latter. But Paul has a way of setting side by side
+two superficially contradictory clauses, in order that
+attention may be awakened, and that we may make an
+effort to apprehend the point of reconciliation between
+them. So, for instance, you remember he puts in one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+sentence, and couples together by a 'for,' these two
+sayings: 'Work out your own salvation'; 'It is God
+that worketh in you.' So here he has been exhorting
+the Galatian Christians to restore a fallen brother.
+That is one case to which the general commandment,
+'Bear ye one another's burdens,' is applicable.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot here enter on the intervening verses by
+which he glides from the one to the other of these two
+thoughts which I have coupled together, but I may
+just point out in a word the outline of his course of
+thought. 'Bear ye one another's burden,' says he; and
+then he thinks, 'What is it that keeps men from bearing
+each other's burdens?' Being swallowed up with
+themselves, and especially being conceited about their
+own strength and goodness. And so he goes on: 'If
+a man think himself to be something when he is nothing,
+he deceives himself.' And what is the best cure for
+all these fancies inside us of how strong and good we
+are? To look at our work with an impartial and rigid
+judgment. It is easy for a man to plume himself on
+being good, and strong, and great; but let him look at
+what he has done, and try that by a high standard,
+and that will knock the conceit out of him. Or, if his
+work stands the test, then 'he shall have rejoicing in
+himself, and not' by comparing himself with other
+people. Two blacks do not make a white, and we are
+not to heighten the lustre of our own whiteness by
+comparing it with our neighbour's blackness. Take
+your act for what <i>it</i> is worth, apart altogether from
+what other people are. Do not say, 'God! I thank
+thee that I am not as other men are .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. or even
+as this publican'; but look to yourself. There is an
+occupation with self which is good, and is a help to
+brotherly sympathy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And so the Apostle has worked round, you see, to
+almost an opposite thought from the one with which
+he started. 'Bear ye one another's burdens.' Yes, but
+a man's work is his own and nobody else's, and a
+man's character is his own and nobody else's, so 'every
+man shall bear his own burden.' The statements are
+not contradictory. They complete each other. They
+are the north and the south poles, and between them
+is the rounded orb of the whole truth. So then, let me
+point out that:</p>
+
+<p>I. There are burdens which can be shared, and there
+are burdens which <i>cannot</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take the case from which the whole context
+has arisen. Paul was exhorting the Galatians, as I
+explained, in reference to their duty to a fallen brother;
+and he speaks of him&mdash;according to our version&mdash;as
+'overtaken in a fault.' Now, that is scarcely his idea,
+I think. The phrase, as it stands in our Bibles, suggests
+that Paul is trying to minimise the gravity of the
+man's offence; but just in proportion as he minimised
+its gravity would he weaken his exhortation to restore
+him. But what he is really doing is not to make
+as little as possible of the sin, but to make as much
+of it as is consistent with the truth. The word 'overtaken'
+suggests that some sin, like a tiger in a jungle,
+springs upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness
+of the assault. The word so rendered may perhaps
+be represented by some such phrase as 'discovered';
+or, if I may use a 'colloquialism,' if a man be caught
+'red-handed.' That is the idea. And Paul does not
+use the weak word 'fault,' but a very much stronger
+one, which means stark staring sin. He is supposing
+a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it
+at all. Here is a brother who has had an unblemished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+reputation; and all at once the curtain is thrown aside
+behind which he is working some wicked thing; and
+there the culprit stands, with the bull's-eye light flashed
+upon him, ashamed and trembling. Paul says, 'If you
+are a spiritual man'&mdash;there is irony there of the graver
+sort&mdash;'show your spirituality by going and lifting him
+up, and trying to help him.' When he says, 'Restore
+such an one,' he uses an expression which is employed
+in other connections in the New Testament, such as
+for mending the broken meshes of a net, for repairing
+any kind of damage, for setting the fractured bones
+of a limb. And that is what the 'spiritual' man has to
+do. He is to show the validity of his claim to live on
+high by stooping down to the man bemired and broken-legged
+in the dirt. We have come across people who
+chiefly show their own purity by their harsh condemnation
+of others' sins. One has heard of women
+so very virtuous that they would rather hound a fallen
+sister to death than try to restore her; and there are
+saints so extremely saintly that they will not touch
+the leper to heal him, for fear of their own hands
+being ceremonially defiled. Paul says, 'Bear ye one
+another's burdens'; and especially take a lift of each
+other's sin.</p>
+
+<p>I need not remind you how the same command
+applies in relation to pecuniary distress, narrow circumstances,
+heavy duties, sorrows, and all the 'ills
+that flesh is heir to.' These can be borne by sympathy,
+by true loving outgoing of the heart, and by the
+rendering of such practical help as the circumstances
+require.</p>
+
+<p>But there are burdens that cannot be borne by any
+but the man himself.</p>
+
+<p>There is the awful burden of personal existence. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+is a solemn thing to be able to say 'I.' And that carries
+with it this, that after all sympathy, after all nestling
+closeness of affection, after the tenderest exhibition of
+identity of feeling, and of swift godlike readiness to
+help, each of us lives alone. Like the inhabitants of
+the islands of the Greek Archipelago, we are able to
+wave signals to the next island, and sometimes to send
+a boat with provisions and succour, but we are parted,
+'with echoing straits between us thrown.' Every man,
+after all, lives alone, and society is like the material
+things round about us, which are all compressible,
+because the atoms that compose them are not in actual
+contact, but separated by slenderer or more substantial
+films of isolating air. Thus there is even in the
+sorrows which we can share with our brethren, and
+in all the burdens which we can help to bear, an
+element which cannot be imparted. 'The heart knoweth
+its own bitterness', and neither 'stranger' nor other
+'intermeddleth' with the deepest fountains of 'its
+joy.'</p>
+
+<p>Then again, there is the burden of responsibility
+which can be shared by none. A dozen soldiers may
+be turned out to make a firing party to shoot the
+mutineer, and no man knows who fired the shot, but
+one man did fire it. And however there may have
+been companions, it was his rifle that carried the
+bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say,
+'The woman that Thou gavest me tempted me, and
+I did eat.' Or we say, 'My natural appetites, for which
+I am not responsible, but Thou who madest me art,
+drew me aside, and I fell', or we may say, 'It was not
+I; it was the other boy.' And then there rises up in
+our hearts a veiled form, and from its majestic lips
+comes 'Thou art the man'; and our whole being echoes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+assent&mdash;<i>Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa</i>&mdash;'My fault, my
+exceeding great fault.' No man can bear that burden.</p>
+
+<p>And then, closely connected with responsibility there
+is another&mdash;the burden of the inevitable consequences
+of transgression, not only away yonder in the future,
+when all human bonds of companionship shall be
+broken, and each man shall 'give account of himself
+to God,' but here and now; as in the immediate context
+the Apostle tells us, 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that
+shall he also reap.' The effects of our evil deeds come
+back to roost; and they never make a mistake as to
+where they should alight. If I have sown, I, and no
+one else, will gather. No sympathy will prevent to-morrow's
+headache after to-night's debauch, and nothing
+that anybody can do will turn the sleuth-hounds off
+the scent. Though they may be slow-footed, they have
+sure noses and deep-mouthed fangs. 'If thou be wise
+thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest
+thou alone shalt bear it.' So there are burdens which
+can, and burdens which cannot, be borne.</p>
+
+<p>II. Jesus Christ is the Burden-bearer for both sorts
+of burdens.</p>
+
+<p>'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law
+of Christ,' not only as spoken by His lips, but as set
+forth in the pattern of His life. We have, then, to turn
+to Him, and think of Him as Burden-bearer in even
+a deeper sense than the psalmist had discerned, who
+magnified God as 'He who daily beareth our burdens.'</p>
+
+<p>Christ is the Burden-bearer of our sin. 'The Lord
+hath laid'&mdash;or made to meet&mdash;'upon Him the iniquity
+of us all.' The Baptist pointed his lean, ascetic finger
+at the young Jesus, and said, 'Behold the Lamb of
+God which beareth'&mdash;and beareth away&mdash;'the sin of
+the world.' How heavy the load, how real its pressure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+let Gethsemane witness, when He clung to human companionship
+with the unutterably solemn and plaintive
+words, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.
+Tarry ye here and watch with Me.' He bore the burden
+of the world's sin.</p>
+
+<p>Jesus Christ is the bearer of the burden of the consequences
+of sin, not only inasmuch as, in His sinless
+humanity, He knew by sympathy the weight of the
+world's sin, but because in that same humanity, by
+identification of Himself with us, deeper and more
+wonderful than our plummets have any line long
+enough to sound the abysses of, He took the cup of
+bitterness which our sins have mixed, and drank it all
+when He said, 'My God! My God! Why hast Thou
+forsaken Me?' Consequences still remain: thank God
+that they do! 'Thou wast a God that forgavest them,
+and Thou didst inflict retribution on their inventions.'
+So the outward, the present, the temporal consequences
+of transgression are left standing in all their power, in
+order that transgressors may thereby be scourged from
+their evil, and led to forsake the thing that has wrought
+them such havoc. But the ultimate consequence, the
+deepest of all, separation from God, has been borne by
+Christ, and need never be borne by us.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I need not dwell on the other aspects of
+this burden-bearing of our Lord, how that He, in a very
+deep and real sense, takes upon Himself the sorrows
+which we bear in union with, and faith on, Him. For
+then the griefs that still come to us, when so borne,
+are transmitted into 'light affliction which is but for
+a moment.' 'In all their afflictions He was afflicted.'
+Oh, brethren! you with sad hearts, you with lonely
+lives, you with carking cares, you with pressing, heavy
+duties, cast your burden on the Christ, and He 'will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+sustain you,' and sorrows borne in union with Him will
+change their character, and the very cross shall be
+wreathed in flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Jesus bears the burden of that solemn solitude which
+our personal being lays upon us all. The rest of us
+stand round, and, as I said, hoist signals of sympathy,
+and sometimes can stretch a brotherly hand out and
+grasp the sufferer's hand. But their help comes from
+without; Christ comes in, and dwells in our hearts, and
+makes us no longer alone in the depths of our being,
+which He fills with the effulgence and peace of His
+companionship. And so for sin, for guilt, for responsibility,
+for sorrow, for holiness, Christ bears
+our burdens.</p>
+
+<p>Yes! And when He takes ours on His shoulders, He
+puts His on ours. 'My yoke is easy, and My burden is
+light.' As the old mystics used to say, Christ's burden
+carries him that carries it. It may add a little weight,
+but it gives power to soar, and it gives power to progress.
+It is like the wings of a bird, it is like the sails
+of a ship.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, Christ's carrying our burdens binds us to
+carry our brother's!</p>
+
+<p>'So fulfil the law of Christ.' There is a very biting
+sarcasm, and, as I said about another matter, a grave
+irony in Paul's use of that word 'law' here. For the
+whole of this Epistle has been directed against the
+Judaising teachers who were desirous of cramming
+Jewish law down Galatian throats, and is addressed to
+their victims in the Galatian churches who had fallen
+into the trap. Paul turns round on them here, and
+says, 'You want law, do you? Well, if you <i>will</i> have
+it, here it is&mdash;the law of Christ.' Christ's life is our law.
+Practical Christianity is doing what Christ did. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+Cross is not only the ground of our hope, but the
+pattern of our conduct.</p>
+
+<p>And, says Paul in effect, the example of Jesus Christ,
+in all its sweep, and in all the depth of it, is the only
+motive by which this injunction that I am giving you
+will ever be fulfilled. 'Bear ye one another's burdens.'
+You will never do that unless you have Christ as the
+ground of your hope, and His great sacrifice as the
+example for your conduct. For the hindrance that
+prevents sympathy is self-absorption; and that natural
+selfishness which is in us all will never be exorcised
+and banished from us thoroughly, so as that we shall
+be awake to all the obligations to bear our brother's
+burdens, unless Christ has dethroned self, and is the
+Lord of our inmost spirits.</p>
+
+<p>I rejoice as much as any man in the largely increased
+sense of mutual responsibility and obligation of mutual
+aid, which is sweetening society by degrees amongst us
+to-day, but I believe that no Socialistic or other schemes
+for the regeneration of society which are not based on
+the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will live
+and grow. There is but one power that will cast out
+natural selfishness, and that is love to Christ, apprehending
+His Cross as the great example to which our
+lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing
+sense of brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not
+consciously connected with any faith in Christianity,
+is, to a very large extent, the result of the diffusion
+through society of the spirit of Christianity, even
+where its body is rejected. Thank God, the river
+of the water of life can percolate through many a mile
+of soil, and reach the roots of trees far away, in the
+pastures of the wilderness, that know not whence the
+refreshing moisture has come. But on the wide scale<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+be sure of this: it is the law of Christ that will fight
+and conquer the natural selfishness which makes bearing
+our brother's burdens an impossibility for men.
+Only, Christian people! let us take care that we are not
+robbed of our prerogative of being foremost in all such
+things, by men whose zeal has a less heavenly source
+than ours ought to have. Depend upon it, heresy has
+less power to arrest the progress of the Church than
+the selfish lives of Christian professors.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, let us see to it that we first of all
+cast our own burdens on the Christ who is able to bear
+them all, whatever they are. And then let us, with
+lightened hearts and shoulders, make our own the
+heavy burdens of sin, of sorrow, of care, of guilt,
+of consequences, of responsibility, which are crushing
+down many that are weary and heavy laden. For be
+sure of this, if we do not bear our brother's burdens,
+the load that we thought we had cast on Christ will
+roll back upon ourselves. He is able to bear both us
+and our burdens, if we will let Him, and if we will fulfil
+that law of Christ which was illustrated in all His life,
+'Who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became
+poor,' and was written large in letters of blood upon
+that Cross where there was 'laid on Him the iniquity
+of us all.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>DOING GOOD TO ALL</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto
+all.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> vi. 10.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'As we have therefore'&mdash;that points a finger backwards
+to what has gone before. The Apostle has been
+exhorting to unwearied well-doing, on the ground of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+the certain coming of the harvest season. Now, there
+is a double link of connection between the preceding
+words and our text; for 'do good' looks back to 'well-doing,'
+and the word rendered 'opportunity' is the
+same as that rendered 'season.' So, then, two thoughts
+arise&mdash;'well-doing' includes doing good to others, and
+is not complete unless it does. The future, on the
+whole, is the season of reaping; the present life on
+the whole is the season of sowing; and while life as
+a whole is the seed-time, in detail it is full of opportunities,
+openings which make certain good deeds
+possible, and which therefore impose upon us the obligation
+to do them. If we were in the habit of looking
+on life mainly as a series of opportunities for well-doing,
+how different it would be; and how different we
+should be!</p>
+
+<p>Now, this injunction is seen to be reasonable by
+every man, whether he obeys it or not. It is a
+commonplace of morality, which finds assent in all
+consciences, however little it may mould lives. But I
+wish to give it a particular application, and to try to
+enforce its bearing upon Christian missionary work.
+And the thought that I would suggest is just this, that
+no Christian man discharges that elementary obligation
+of plain morality, if he is indifferent to this great
+enterprise. 'As we have an opportunity, let us do good
+to all.' That is the broad principle, and one application
+is the duty of Christian men to diffuse the Gospel
+throughout the world.</p>
+
+<p>I. Let me ask you to look at the obligation that is
+thus suggested.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, well-doing is the wider, and doing
+good to others the narrower, expression. The one
+covers the whole ground of virtue, the other declares<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+that virtue which is self-regarding, the culture which
+is mainly occupied with self, is lame and imperfect,
+and there is a great gap in it, as if some cantle had
+been cut out of the silver disc of the moon. It is only
+full-orbed when in well-doing, and as a very large constituent
+element of it, there is included the doing good
+to others. That is too plain to need to be stated. We
+hear a great deal to-day about altruism. Well, Christianity
+preaches that more emphatically than any other
+system of thought, morals, or religion does. And
+Christianity brings the mightiest motives for it, and
+imparts the power by which obedience to that great
+law that every man's conscience responds to is made
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>But whilst thus we recognise as a dictate of elementary
+morality that well-doing must necessarily include
+doing good to others, and feel, as I suppose we all do
+feel, when we are true to our deepest convictions, that
+possessions of all sorts, material, mental, and all others,
+are given to us in stewardship, and not in absolute
+ownership, in order that God's grace in its various
+forms may fructify through us to all, my present point
+is that, if that is recognised as being what it is, an
+elementary dictate of morality enforced by men's
+relationships to one another, and sealed by their own
+consciences, there is no getting away from the obligation
+upon all Christian men which it draws after it, of
+each taking his share in the great work of imparting
+the gospel to the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>For that gospel is our highest good, the best thing
+that we can carry to anybody. We many of us
+recognise the obligation that is devolved upon us by
+the possession of wealth, to use it for others as well as
+for ourselves. We recognise, many of us, the obliga<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>tion
+that is devolved upon us by the possession of
+knowledge, to impart it to others as well as ourselves.
+We are willing to give of our substance, of our time,
+of our effort, to impart much that we have. But some
+of us seem to draw a line at the highest good that we
+have, and whilst responding to all sorts of charitable
+and beneficent appeals made to us, and using our
+faculties often for the good of other people, we take
+no share and no interest in communicating the highest
+of all goods, the good which comes to the man in
+whose heart Christ rests. It is our highest good,
+because it deals with our deepest needs, and lifts us to
+the loftiest position. The gospel brings our highest
+good, because it brings eternal good, whilst all other
+benefits fade and pass, and are left behind with life
+and the dead flesh. It is our highest good, because if
+that great message of salvation is received into a
+heart, or moulds the life of a nation, it will bring after
+it, as its ministers and results, all manner of material
+and lesser benefit. And so, giving Christ we give <i>our</i>
+best, and giving Christ we give the highest gift that a
+weary world can receive.</p>
+
+<p>Remember, too, that the impartation of this highest
+good is one of the main reasons why we ourselves
+possess it. Jesus Christ can redeem the world alone,
+but it cannot become a redeemed world without the
+help of His servants. He needs us in order to carry
+into all humanity the energies that He brought into
+the midst of mankind by His Incarnation and Sacrifice;
+and the cradle of Bethlehem and the Cross of Cavalry
+are not sufficient for the accomplishment of the purpose
+for which they respectively came to pass, without
+the intervention and ministry of Christian people. It
+was for this end amongst others, that each of us who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+have received that great gift into our hearts have been
+enriched by it. The river is fed from the fountains of
+the hills, in order that it may carry verdure and life
+whithersoever it goes. And you and I have been
+brought to the Cross of Christ, and made His disciples,
+not only in order that we ourselves might be blessed
+and quickened by the gift unspeakable, but in order
+that through us it may be communicated, just as each
+particle when leavened in the mass of the dough communicates
+its energy to its adjacent particle until the
+whole is leavened.</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid that indifference to the communication
+of the highest good, which marks sadly too many
+Christian professors in all ages, and in this age, is a
+suspicious indication of a very slight realisation of the
+good for themselves. Luther said that justification
+was the article of a standing or a falling church. That
+may be true in the region of theology, but in the region
+of practical life I do not know that you will find a test
+more reliable and more easy of application than this,
+Does a man care for spreading amongst his fellows the
+gospel that he himself has received? If he does not,
+let him ask himself whether, in any real sense, he has
+it. 'Well-doing' includes doing good to others, and
+the possession of Christ will make it certain that we
+shall impart Him.</p>
+
+<p>II. Notice the bearing of this elementary injunction
+upon the scope of the obligation.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us do good to all men.' It was Christianity that
+invented the word 'humanity'; either in its meaning
+of the aggregate of men or its meaning of a gracious
+attitude towards them. And it invented the word
+because it revealed the thing on which it rests.
+'Brotherhood' is the sequel of 'Fatherhood,' and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+conception of mankind, beneath all diversities of race
+and culture and the like, as being an organic whole,
+knit together by a thousand mystical bands, and each
+atom of which has connection with, and obligations to,
+every other&mdash;that is a product of Christianity, however
+it may have been in subsequent ages divorced
+from a recognition of its source. So, then, the gospel
+rises above all the narrow distinctions which call themselves
+patriotism and are parochial, and it says that
+there is 'neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, Jew
+nor Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,' but all
+are one. Get high enough up upon the hill, and the
+hedges between the fields are barely perceptible. Live
+on the elevation to which the Gospel of Jesus Christ
+lifts men, and you look down upon a great prairie,
+without a fence or a ditch or a division. So my text
+comes with profound significance, 'Let us do good to
+all,' because all are included in the sweep of that great
+purpose of love, and in the redeeming possibilities of
+that great death on the Cross. Christ has swept the
+compass, if I may say so, of His love and work all
+round humanity; and are we to extend our sympathies
+or our efforts less widely? The circle includes the
+world; our sympathies should be as wide as the circle
+that Christ has drawn.</p>
+
+<p>Let me remind you, too, that only such a world-wide
+communication of the highest good that has blessed
+ourselves will correspond to the proved power of that
+Gospel which treats as of no moment diversities that
+are superficial, and can grapple with and overcome,
+and bind to itself as a crown of glory, every variety of
+character, of culture, of circumstance, claiming for its
+own all races, and proving itself able to lift them all.
+'The Bread of God which came down from heaven' is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+an exotic everywhere, because it came down from
+heaven, but it can grow in all soils, and it can bring
+forth fruit unto eternal life everywhere amongst mankind.
+So 'let us do good to all.'</p>
+
+<p>And then we are met by the old objection, 'The eyes
+of a fool are in the ends of the earth. Keep your
+work for home, that wants it.' Well! I am perfectly
+ready to admit that in Christian work, as in all others
+there must be division of labour, and that one man's
+tastes and inclinations will lead him to one sphere and
+one form of it; and another man's to another; and I
+am quite ready, not to admit, but strongly to insist,
+that, whatever happens, home is not to be neglected.
+'All men' includes the slums in England as well as the
+savages in Africa, and it is no excuse for neglecting
+either of these departments that we are trying to do
+something in the other. But it is not uncharitable to
+say that the objection to which I am referring is most
+often made by one or other of two classes, either by
+people who do not care about the Gospel, nor recognise
+the 'good' of it at all, or by people who are ingenious
+in finding excuses for not doing the duty to which they
+are at the moment summoned. The people that do
+the one are the people that do the other. Where do
+you get your money from for home work? Mainly
+from the Christian Churches. Who is it that keeps
+up missionary work abroad? Mainly the Christian
+Churches. There is a vast deal of unreality in that
+objection. Just think of the disproportion between
+the embarrassment of riches in our Christian appliances
+here in England and the destitution in these
+distant lands. Here the ships are crammed into a
+dock, close up against one another, rubbing their yards
+upon each other; and away out yonder on the waters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+there are leagues of loneliness, where never a sail is
+seen. Here, at home, we are drenched with Christian
+teaching, and the Churches are competing with each
+other, often like rival tradespeople for their customers;
+and away out yonder a man to half a million is considered
+a fair allowance. 'Let us do good to all.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, note the bearing of this elementary precept
+on the occasions that rise for the discharge of the
+duty.</p>
+
+<p>'As we have opportunity.' As I have already said,
+the Christian way to look at our circumstances is to
+regard them as openings for the exercise of Christian
+virtue, and therefore summonses to its discharge. And
+if we regarded our own position individually, so we
+should find that there were many, many doors that
+had long been opened, into which we had been too
+blind or too lazy, or too selfishly absorbed in our own
+concerns, to enter. The neglected opportunities, the
+beckoning doors whose thresholds we have never
+crossed, the good that we might have done and have
+not done&mdash;these are as weighty to sink us as the
+positive sins, the opportunities for which have appealed
+to our worse selves.</p>
+
+<p>But I desire to say a word, not only about the opportunities
+offered to us individually, but about those
+offered to England for this great enterprise. The prophet
+of old represented the proud Assyrian conqueror
+as boasting, 'My hand hath gathered as a nest the
+riches of the peoples .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and there was none that
+moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.' It
+might be the motto of England to-day. It is not for
+nothing that we and our brethren across the Atlantic,
+the inheritors of the same faith and morals and
+literature, and speaking the same tongue, have had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+given to us the wide dominion that we possess, I
+know that England has not climbed to her place without
+many a crime, and that in her 'skirts is found the
+blood of poor innocents,' but yet we have that connection,
+for good or for evil, with subject races all
+over the earth. And I ask whether or not that is an
+opportunity that the Christian Church is bound to
+make use of. What have we been intrusted with it
+for? Commerce, dominion, the impartation of Western
+knowledge, literature, laws? Yes! Is that all? Are
+you to send shirting and not the Gospel? Are you to
+send muskets that will burst, and gin that is poison,
+and not Christianity? Are you to send Shakespeare,
+and Milton, and modern science, and Herbert Spencer,
+and not Evangelists and the Gospels? Are you to
+send the code of English law and not Christ's law of
+love? Are you to send godless Englishmen, 'through
+whom the name of God is blasphemed amongst the
+Gentiles,' and are you not to send missionaries of the
+Cross? A Brahmin once said to a missionary, 'Look
+here! Your Book is a good Book. If you were as
+good as your Book you would make India Christian in
+ten years.'</p>
+
+<p>Brethren! the European world to-day is fighting and
+scrambling over what it calls the unclaimed corners of
+the world; looking upon all lands that are uncivilised
+by Western civilisation either as markets, or as parts
+of their empire. Is there no other way of looking at
+the heathen world than that? How did Christ look at
+it? He was moved when He saw the multitudes as
+'sheep having no shepherd.' Oh! if Christian men, as
+members of this nation, would rise to the height of
+Christ's place of vision, and would look at the world
+with His eyes, what a difference it would make! I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+appeal to you, Christian men and women, as members
+of this nation, and therefore responsible, though it
+may be infinitesimally, for what this nation is doing
+in the distant corners of the world, and urge on you
+that you are bound, so far as your influence goes, to
+protest against the way of looking at these heathen
+lands as existing to be exploited for the material
+benefit of these Western Powers. You are bound to
+lend your voice, however weak it may be, to the
+protests against the savage treatment of native races&mdash;against
+the drenching of China with narcotics, and
+Africa with rum; to try to look at the world as Christ
+looked at it, to rise to the height of that great vision
+which regards all men as having been in His heart
+when He died on the Cross, and refuses to recognise
+in this great work 'Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free.'
+We have awful responsibilities; the world is open to
+us. We have the highest good. How shall we obey
+this elementary principle of our text, unless we help as
+we can in spreading Christ's reign? Blessed shall we
+be if, and only if, we fill the seed-time with delightful
+work, and remember that well-doing is imperfect unless
+it includes doing good to others, and that the best
+good we can do is to impart the Unspeakable Gift to
+the men that need it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE OWNER'S BRAND</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gal.</span> vi. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The reference in these words is probably to the cruel
+custom of branding slaves as we do cattle, with initials
+or signs, to show their ownership. It is true that in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+old times criminals, and certain classes of Temple servants,
+and sometimes soldiers, were also so marked,
+but it is most in accordance with the Apostle's way of
+thinking that he here has reference to the first class,
+and would represent himself as the <i>slave</i> of Jesus
+Christ, designated as His by the scars and weaknesses
+which were the consequences of his apostolic zeal.
+Imprisonment, beating by the Jewish rod, shipwrecks,
+fastings, weariness, perils, persecutions, all these he
+sums up in another place as being the tokens by which
+he was approved as an apostle of Jesus Christ. And
+here he, no doubt, has the same thought in his mind,
+that his bodily weakness, which was the direct issue
+of his apostolic work, showed that he was Christ's.
+The painful infirmity under which, as we learn, he
+was more especially suffering, about the time of writing
+this letter, may also have been in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>All through this Epistle he has been thundering and
+lightning against the disputers of this apostolic
+authority. And now at last he softens, and as it
+were, bares his thin arm, his scarred bosom, and bids
+these contumacious Galatians look upon them, and
+learn that he has a right to speak as the representative
+and messenger of the Lord Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>So we have here two or three points, I think, worth
+considering. First, think for a moment of the slave of
+Christ; then of the brands which mark the ownership;
+then of the glory in the servitude and the sign; and
+then of the immunity from human disturbances which
+that service gives. 'From henceforth let no man
+trouble me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
+Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, a word or two about that conception
+of the slave of Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is a pity that our Bible has not rendered the
+title which Paul ever gives himself at the beginning
+of his letters, by that simple word 'slave,' instead of
+the feebler one, 'servant.' For what he means when
+he calls himself the 'servant of Jesus Christ' is not
+that he bore to Christ the kind of relation which servants
+among us bear to those who have hired and paid
+them, and to whom they have come under obligations
+of their own will which they can terminate at any
+moment by their own caprice; but that he was in the
+roughest and simplest sense of the word, Christ's slave.</p>
+
+<p>What lies in that metaphor? Well, it is the most
+uncompromising assertion of the most absolute
+authority on the one hand, and claim of unconditional
+submission and subjection on the other.</p>
+
+<p>The slave belonged to his master; the master could
+do exactly as he liked with him. If he killed him
+nobody had anything to say. He could set him to
+any task; he could do what he liked with any little
+possession or property that the slave seemed to have.
+He could break all his relationships, and separate him
+from wife and kindred.</p>
+
+<p>All that is atrocious and blasphemous when it is
+applied to the relations between man and man, but it
+is a blessed and magnificent truth when it is applied to
+the relations between a man and Christ. For this
+Lord has absolute authority over us, and He can do
+what He likes with everything that belongs to us; and
+we, and our duties, and our circumstances, and our
+relationships, are all in His hands, and the one thing
+that we have to render to Him is utter, absolute,
+unquestioning, unhesitating, unintermittent and unreserved
+obedience and submission. That which is
+abject degradation when it is rendered to a man, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+which is blasphemous presumption when it is required
+by a man, that which is impossible, in its deepest
+reality, as between man and man, is possible, is blessed,
+is joyful and strong when it is required by, and
+rendered to, Jesus Christ. We are His slaves if we
+have any living relationship to Him at all. Where,
+then, in the Christian life, is there a place for self-will;
+where a place for self-indulgence; where for murmuring
+or reluctance; where for the assertion of any rights
+of my own as against that Master? We owe absolute
+obedience and submission to Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And what does the metaphor carry as to the basis
+on which this authority rests? How did men acquire
+slaves? Chiefly by purchase. The abominations of
+the slave market are a blessed metaphor for the deep
+realities of the Christian life. Christ has bought you
+for His own. The only thing that gives a human soul
+the right to have any true authority over another
+human soul is that it shall have yielded itself to the
+soul whom it would control. We must first of all give
+ourselves away before we have the right to possess,
+and the measure in which we give ourselves to another
+is the measure in which we possess another. And so
+Christ our Lord, according to the deep words of one of
+Paul's letters, 'gives Himself for us, that He might
+purchase unto Himself a people for His possession.'
+'Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a
+price.'</p>
+
+<p>Therefore the absolute authority, and unconditional
+surrender and submission which are the very essence
+of the Christian life, at bottom are but the corresponding
+and twofold effects of one thing, and that is
+love. For there is no possession of man by man except
+that which is based on love. And there is no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+submission of man to man worth calling so except that
+which is also based therein.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Thou hearts alone wouldst move">
+<tr><td align='left'>'Thou hearts alone wouldst move;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou only hearts dost love.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>The relation in both its parts, on the side of the Master
+and on the side of the captive bondsman, is the direct
+result and manifestation of that love which knits
+them together.</div>
+
+<p>Therefore the Christian slavery, with its abject submission,
+with its utter surrender and suppression of
+mine own will, with its complete yielding up of self to
+the control of Jesus, who died for me; because it is
+based upon His surrender of Himself to me, and in its
+inmost essence it is the operation of love, is therefore
+co-existent with the noblest freedom.</p>
+
+<p>This great Epistle to the Galatians is the trumpet
+call and clarion proclamation of Christian liberty. The
+breath of freedom blows inspiringly through it all.
+The very spirit of the letter is gathered up in one of
+its verses, 'I have been called unto liberty,' and in its
+great exhortation, 'Stand fast therefore in the liberty
+wherewith Christ hath made you free.' It is then
+sufficiently remarkable and profoundly significant that
+in this very letter, which thus is the protest of the
+free Christian consciousness against all limitations
+and outward restrictions, there should be this most
+emphatic declaration that the liberty of the Christian
+is slavery and the slavery of the Christian is freedom.
+He is free whose will coincides with his outward law.
+He is free who delights to do what he must do. He is
+free whose rule is love, and whose Master is Incarnate
+Love. 'If the Son make you free, ye shall be free
+indeed.' 'O Lord, truly I am Thy servant, Thou hast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+loosed my bands.' 'I bear in my body' the charter of
+my liberty, for I bear in my body the 'brand of the
+Lord Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>II. And so now a word in the next place about these
+marks of ownership.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, the Apostle evidently means thereby
+distinctly the bodily weaknesses, and possibly diseases,
+which were the direct consequences of his own apostolic
+faithfulness and zeal. He considered that he
+proved himself to be a minister of God by his stripes,
+imprisonments, fastings, by all the pains and sufferings
+and their permanent consequences in an enfeebled
+constitution, which he bore because he had preached
+the Cross of Christ. He knew that these things were
+the result of his faithful ministry. He believed that
+they had been sent by no blundering, blind fate; by
+no mere secondary causes; but by his Master Himself,
+whose hand had held the iron that branded into the
+hissing flesh the marks of His ownership. He felt
+that by means of these he had been drawn nearer to
+his Master, and the ownership had been made more
+perfect. And so in a rapture of contempt of pain, this
+heroic soul looks upon even bodily weakness and
+suffering as being the signs that he belonged to Christ,
+and the means of that possession being made more
+perfect.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what is all that to us Christian people who
+have no persecutions to endure, and none of whom I
+am afraid have ever worked hard enough for Christ to
+have damaged our health by it? Is there anything in
+this text that may be of general application to us all?
+Yes! I think so. Every Christian man or woman
+ought to bear, in his or her body, in a plain, literal
+sense, the tokens that he or she belongs to Jesus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+Christ. You ask me how? 'If thy foot or thine hand
+offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee.'</p>
+
+<p>There are things in your physical nature that you
+have to suppress; that you have always to regulate
+and coerce; that you have sometimes entirely to cast
+away and to do without, if you mean to be Jesus
+Christ's at all. The old law of self-denial, of subduing
+the animal nature, its passions, appetites, desires, is as
+true and as needful to-day as it ever was; and for us
+all it is essential to the loftiness and purity of our
+Christian life that our animal nature and our fleshly
+constitution should be well kept down under heel and
+subdued. As Paul himself said in another place, 'I
+bring under my body, and I keep it in subjection, lest
+by any means I should myself, having proclaimed to
+others the laws of the contest, be rejected from the
+prize.' Oh, you Christian men and women! if you are
+not living a life of self-denial, if you are not crucifying
+the flesh, with its affections and lusts, if you are not
+bearing 'about in the body the dying of the Lord
+Jesus, that the life also of Christ may be manifested
+in your mortal body,' what tokens are there that you
+are Christ's slaves at all?</p>
+
+<p>Then, besides this, we may expand the thought even
+further, and say that, in a very real sense, all the pains
+and sorrows and disappointments and afflictions that
+mainly touch our mortal part should be taken by us
+as, and made by us to be, the tokens that we belong
+to the Master.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only in limitations and restrictions and
+self-denials and pains that Christ's ownership of us
+ought to be manifested in our daily lives, and so by
+means of our mortal bodies, but if there be in our
+hearts a deep indwelling possession of the grace and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+sweetness of Christ, it will make itself visible, ay! even
+in our faces, and 'beauty born of' our communion
+with Him 'shall pass into' and glorify even rugged
+and care-lined countenances. There may be, and there
+ought to be, in all Christian people, manifestly visible
+the tokens of the indwelling serenity of the indwelling
+Christ. And it should not be left to some moment of
+rapture at the end of life, for men to look upon us, to
+behold our faces, 'as it had been the face of an angel,'
+but by our daily walk, by our countenances full of a
+removed tranquillity, and a joy that rises from within,
+men ought to take knowledge of us that we have been
+with Jesus, and it should be the truth&mdash;I bear in my
+body the tokens of His possession.</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, once more notice the glorying in the
+slavery and its signs.</p>
+
+<p>'I bear,' says Paul; and he uses, as many of you may
+know, a somewhat remarkable word, which does not
+express mere bearing in the sense of toleration and
+patient endurance, although that is much; nor mere
+bearing in the sense of carrying, but implies bearing
+with a certain triumph as men would do who, coming
+back victorious from conflict, and being received into
+the city, were proud to show their scars, the honourable
+signs of their courage and constancy. So, with a
+triumph that is legitimate, the Apostle solemnly and
+proudly bears before men the marks of the Lord
+Jesus. Just as he says in another place:&mdash;'Thanks be
+unto God, which always leadeth us about in triumph
+in Jesus Christ,' He was proud of being dragged at
+the conqueror's chariot wheels, chained to them by the
+cords of love; and so he was proud of being the slave
+of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>It is a degradation to a man to yield abject submis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>sion,
+unconditional service to another man. It is the
+highest honour of our natures so to bow before that
+dear Lord. To prostrate ourselves to Him is to lift
+ourselves high in the scale of being. The King's servant
+is every other person's master. And he that feels
+that he is Christ's, may well be, not proud but conscious,
+of the dignity of belonging to such a Lord.
+The monarch's livery is a sign of honour. In our old
+Saxon kingdom the king's menials were the first
+nobles. So it is with us. The aristocracy of humanity
+are the slaves of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And let us be proud of the marks of the branding
+iron, whether they come in the shape of sorrows and
+pains, or otherwise. It is well that we should have to
+carry these. It is blessed, and a special mark of the
+Master's favour that He should think it worth His
+while to mark us as His own, by any sorrow or by
+any pain. Howsoever hot may be the iron, and howsoever
+deeply it may be pressed by His firm, steady,
+gentle hand upon the quivering flesh and the shrinking
+heart, let us be thankful if He, even by it, impresses on
+us the manifest tokens of ownership. Oh, brethren!
+if we could come to look upon sorrows and losses with
+this clear recognition of their source, meaning and
+purpose, they change their nature, the paradox is
+fulfilled that we do 'gather grapes of thorns and figs
+of thistles.' 'I bear in my body,' with a solemn triumph
+and patient hope, 'the marks of the Lord Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. And now, lastly, the immunity from any disturbance
+which men can bring, which these marks, and
+the servitude they express, secure.</p>
+
+<p>'From henceforth let no man trouble me.' Paul
+claims that his apostolic authority, having been established
+by the fact of his sufferings for Christ, should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+give him a sacredness in their eyes; that henceforth
+there should be no rebellion against his teaching and
+his word. We may expand the thought to apply more
+to ourselves, and say that, in the measure in which we
+belong to Christ, and hear the marks of His possession
+of us, in that measure are we free from the disturbance
+of earthly influences and of human voices; and from
+all the other sources of care and trouble, of perturbation
+and annoyance, which harass and vex other men's
+spirits. 'Ye are bought with a price,' says Paul elsewhere.
+'Be not the servants of men.' Christ is your
+Master; do not let men trouble you. Take your
+orders from Him; let men rave as they like. Be
+content to be approved by Him; let men think of you
+as they please. The Master's smile is life, the Master's
+frown is death to the slave; what matters it what
+other people may say? 'He that judgeth me is the
+Lord.' So keep yourselves above the cackle of 'public
+opinion'; do not let your creed be crammed down
+your throats even by a consensus of however venerable
+and grave human teachers. Take your directions
+from your Master, and pay no heed to other voices if
+they would command. Live to please Him, and do
+not care what other people think. You are Christ's
+servant; 'let no man trouble' you.</p>
+
+<p>And so it should be about all the distractions and
+petty annoyances that disturb human life and harass
+our hearts. A very little breath of wind will ruffle all
+the surface of a shallow pond, though it would sweep
+across the deep sea and produce no effect. Deepen
+your natures by close union with Christ, and absolute
+submission to Him, and there will be a great calm in
+them, and cares and sorrows, and all the external
+sources of anxiety, far away, down there beneath your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+feet, will 'show scarce so gross as beetles,' whilst you
+stand upon the high cliff and look down upon them
+all. 'From henceforth no man shall trouble me.' 'I
+bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>My brother! Whose marks do you bear? There are
+only two masters. If an eye that could see things as
+they are, were to go through this congregation, whose
+initials would it discern in your faces? There are
+some of us, I have no doubt, who in a very horrid
+sense bear in our bodies the marks of the idol that we
+worship. Men who have ruined their health by
+dissipation and animal sensualism&mdash;are there any of
+them here this morning? Are there none of us whose
+faces, whose trembling hands, whose diseased frames,
+are the tokens that they belong to the flesh and the
+world and the devil? Whose do <i>you</i> bear?</p>
+
+<p>Oh! when one looks at all the faces that pass one
+upon the street&mdash;this all drawn with avarice and
+earthly-mindedness; that all bloated with self-indulgence
+and loose living&mdash;when one sees the mean faces,
+the passionate faces, the cruel faces, the vindictive
+faces, the lustful faces, the worldly faces, one sees how
+many of us bear in our bodies the marks of <i>another</i>
+lord. They have no rest day nor night who worship
+the beast; and whosoever receiveth the mark of his
+name.</p>
+
+<p>I pray you, yield yourselves to your true Lord, so on
+earth you may bear the beginnings of the likeness
+that stamps you His, and hereafter, as one of His
+happy slaves, shall do priestly service at His throne
+and see His face, and His name shall be in your
+foreheads.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PHILIPPIANS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LOVING GREETINGS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus
+which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: 2. Grace to you and
+peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3. I thank my God upon
+all my remembrance of you, 4. Always in every supplication of mine on behalf of
+you all making my supplication with joy, 5. For your fellowship in furtherance
+of the gospel from the first day until now; 6. Being confident of this very thing
+that He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus
+Christ: 7. Even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf of you all,
+because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence
+and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers with me of grace. 8. For God
+is my witness, how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span>
+i. 1-8 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The bond between Paul and the church at Philippi
+was peculiarly close. It had been founded by himself,
+as is narrated at unusual length in the book of Acts.
+It was the first church established in Europe. Ten
+years had elapsed since then, possibly more. Paul is
+now a prisoner in Rome, not suffering the extremest
+rigour of imprisonment, but still a prisoner in his own
+hired house, accessible to his friends and able to do
+work for God, but still in the custody of soldiers,
+chained and waiting till the tardy steps of Roman law
+should come up to him, or perhaps till the caprice of
+Nero should deign to hear his cause. In that imprisonment
+we have his letters to the Philippians, Ephesians,
+Colossians, and Philemon, which latter three are closely
+connected in time, the two former in subject, and the
+two latter in destination. This letter stands apart
+from those to the great Asiatic churches.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Its tone and general cast are unlike those of most of
+his letters. It contains no doctrinal discussions and
+no rebukes of evil, but is an outpouring of happy love
+and confidence. Like all Paul's epistles it begins with
+salutations, and like most of them with prayer, but
+from the very beginning is a long gush of love. These
+early verses seem to me very beautiful if we regard
+them either as a revelation of the personal character
+of the Apostle, or as a picture of the relation between
+teacher and taught in its most blessed and undisturbed
+form, or as a lovely ideal of friendship and love in any
+relation, hallowed and solemnised by Christian feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Verses one and two contain the apostolic greeting.
+In it we note the senders. Timothy is associated with
+Paul, according to his custom in all his letters even
+when he goes on immediately to speak in the singular.
+He ever sought to hide his own supremacy and to bring
+his friends into prominence. He was a great, lowly soul,
+who had no pride in the dignity of his position but felt
+the weight of its responsibility and would fain have
+had it shared. He calls Timothy and himself the slaves
+of Christ. He regarded it as his highest honour to be
+Christ's born servant, bound to absolute submission to
+the all-worthy Lord who had died to win him. It is to
+be noted that there is no reference here to apostolic
+authority, and the contrast is very remarkable in this
+respect with the Epistle to the Galatians, where with
+scornful emphasis he asserts it as bestowed 'not from
+men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ
+and God the Father.' In this designation of himself, we
+have already the first trace of the intimate and loving
+relationship in which Paul stood to the Philippians.
+There was no need for him to assert what was not
+denied, and he did not wish to deal with them officially,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+but rather personally. There is a similar omission in
+Philemon and a pathetic substitution there of the
+'prisoner of Jesus Christ' for the 'slave of Christ Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>The persons addressed are 'all the saints in Christ
+Jesus.' As he had not called himself an apostle, so he
+does not call them a church. He will not lose in
+an abstraction the personal bond which unites them.
+They are saints, which is not primarily a designation of
+moral purity, but of consecration to God, from whom
+indeed purity flows. The primitive meaning of the
+word is <i>separation;</i> the secondary meaning is <i>holiness</i>,
+and the connection between these two meanings contains
+a whole ethical philosophy. They are saints in
+Christ Jesus; union with Him is the condition both of
+consecration and of purity.</p>
+
+<p>The Philippian community had an organisation
+primitive but sufficient. We do not enter on the discussion
+of its two offices further than to note that the
+bishops are evidently identical with the elders, in the
+account in Acts xx. of Paul's parting with the Ephesian
+Christians, where the same persons are designated by
+both titles, as is also the case in Titus i. 5 and 7; the
+one name (elder) coming from the Hebrew and designating
+the office on the side of dignity, the other (bishop)
+being of Greek origin and representing it in terms of
+function. We note that there were several elders then
+in the Philippian church, and that their place in the salutation
+negatives the idea of hierarchical supremacy.</p>
+
+<p>The benediction or prayer for grace and peace is
+couched in the form which it assumes in all Paul's
+letters. It blends Eastern and Western forms of greeting.
+'Grace' being the Greek and 'Peace' the Hebrew
+form of salutation. So Christ fuses and fulfils the
+world's desires. The grace which He gives is the self-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>imparting
+love of God, the peace which He gives is its
+consequence, and the salutation is an unmistakable
+evidence of Paul's belief in Christ's divinity.</p>
+
+<p>This salutation is followed by a great burst of
+thankful love, for the full apprehension of which we
+must look briefly at the details of these verses. We
+have first Paul's thankfulness in all his remembrance
+of the Philippians, then he further defines the times of
+his thankfulness as 'always in every supplication of
+mind on behalf of you all making my supplication with
+joy.' His gratitude for them is expressed in all his
+prayers which are all thank-offerings. He never thinks
+of them nor prays for them without thanking God for
+them. Then comes the reason for his gratitude&mdash;their
+fellowship in furtherance of the gospel, from the first
+day when Lydia constrained him to come into her
+house, until this moment when now at the last their care
+of him had flourished again. The Revised Version's
+rendering 'fellowship in furtherance of' instead of
+'fellowship in' conveys the great lesson which the
+other rendering obscures&mdash;that the true fellowship is
+not in enjoyment but in service, and refers not so
+much to a common participation in the blessedness as
+in the toils and trials of Christian work. This is
+apparent in an immediately following verse where the
+Philippians' fellowship with Christ is again spoken of
+as consisting in sharing both in His bonds and in the
+double work of defending the gospel from gainsayers
+and in positively proclaiming it. Very beautifully in
+this connection does he designate that work and toil
+as 'my grace.'</p>
+
+<p>The fellowship which thus is the basis of his thanksgiving
+leads on to a confidence which he cherishes for
+them and which helps to make his prayers joyful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+thanksgivings. And such confidence becomes him
+because he has them in his heart, and 'love hopeth all
+things' and delights to believe in and anticipate all
+good concerning its object. He has them in his heart
+because they faithfully share with him his honourable,
+blessed burdens. But that is not all, it is 'in the
+tender mercies' of Christ that he loved them. His love
+is the love of Christ in him; his being is so united to
+Jesus that his heart beats with the same emotion as
+throbs in Christ's, and all that is merely natural and
+of self in his love is changed into a solemn participation
+in the great love which Christ has to them. This,
+then, being the general exposition of the words, let us
+now dwell for a little while on the broad principles
+suggested by them.</p>
+
+<p>I. Participation in the work of Christ is the noblest
+basis for love and friendship.</p>
+
+<p>Paul had tremendous courage and yet hungered for
+sympathy. He had no outlets for his love but his
+fellow Christians. There had, no doubt, been a wrenching
+of the ties of kindred when he became a Christian,
+and his love, dammed back and restrained, had to pour
+itself on his brethren.</p>
+
+<p>The Church is a workshop, not a dormitory, and
+every Christian man and woman is bound to help in
+the common cause. These Philippians help Paul by
+sympathy and gifts, indeed, but by their own direct work
+as well, and things are not right with us unless leaders
+can say, 'Ye all are partakers of my grace.' There are
+other real and sweet bonds of love and friendship, but
+the most real and sweetest is to be found in our
+common relation to Jesus Christ and in our co-operation
+in the work which is ours because it is His and
+we are His.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. Thankful, glad prayer flows from such co-operation.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner in his bonds in the alien city had the
+remembrance of his friends coming into his chamber
+like fresh, cool air, or fragrance from far-off gardens. A
+thrill of gladness was in his soul as often as he thought
+on them. It is blessed if in our experience teacher
+and taught are knit together thus; without some such
+bond of union no good will be done. The relation of
+pastor and people is so delicate and spiritual, the
+purpose of it so different from that of mere teaching,
+the laws of it so informal and elastic, the whole power
+of it, therefore, so dependent on sympathy and mutual
+kindliness that, unless there be something like the bond
+which united Paul and the Philippians, there will be
+no prosperity or blessing. The thinnest film of cloud
+prevents deposition of dew. If all men in pulpits could
+say what Paul said of the Philippians, and all men in
+pews could deserve to have it said of them, the world
+would feel the power of a quickened Church.</p>
+
+<p>III. Confidence is born of love and common service.</p>
+
+<p>Paul delights to think that God will go on because
+God has already begun a good work in them, and Paul
+delights to think of their perfection because he loves
+them. 'God is not a man that He should lie, or the
+son of man that He should repent.' His past is the
+guarantee for His future; what He begins He finishes.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Our love is hallowed and greatened in the love
+of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Paul lived, yet not he, but Christ lived in him. It is
+but one illustration of the principle of his being that
+Christ who was the life of his life, is the heart of his
+love. He longed after his Philippian friends in the
+tender mercies of Christ Jesus. This and this only is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+the true consecration of love when we live and love in
+the Lord; when we will as Christ does, think as He
+does, love as He does, when the mind that was in Christ
+Jesus was in us. It is needful to guard against the
+intrusion of mere human affection and regard into our
+sacred relations in the Church; it is needful to guard
+against it in our own personal love and friendship.
+Let us see that we ourselves know and believe the love
+wherewith Christ hath loved us, and then let us see
+that that love dwells in us informing and hallowing
+our hearts, making them tender with His great tenderness,
+and turning all the water of our earthly affections
+into the new wine of His kingdom. Let the law for
+our hearts, as well as for our minds and wills, be 'I live,
+yet not I but Christ liveth in me.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A COMPREHENSIVE PRAYER</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge
+and all discernment; 10. So that ye may approve the things that are excellent;
+that ye may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ; 11. Being
+filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, unto the
+glory and praise of God.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> i. 9-11 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>What a blessed friendship is that of which the natural
+language is prayer! We have many ways, thank God,
+of showing our love and of helping one another, but
+the best way is by praying for one another. All that
+is selfish and low is purged out of our hearts in the act,
+suspicions and doubts fade away when we pray for
+those whom we love. Many an alienation would have
+melted like morning mists if it had been prayed about,
+added tenderness and delicacy come to our friendships
+so like the bloom on ripening grapes. We may test
+our loves by this simple criterion&mdash;Can we pray about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+them? If not, should we have them? Are they
+blessings to us or to others?</p>
+
+<p>This prayer, like all those in Paul's epistles, is wonderfully
+full. His deep affection for, and joy in, the
+Philippian church breathes in every word of it. Even
+his jealous watchfulness saw nothing in them to
+desire but progress in what they possessed. Such a
+desire is the highest that love can frame. We can wish
+nothing better for one another than growth in the love
+of God. Paul's estimate of the highest good of those
+who were dearest to him was that they should be more
+and more completely filled with the love of God and
+with its fruits of holiness and purity, and what was his
+supreme desire for the Philippians is the highest purpose
+of the gospel for us all, and should be the aim of
+our effort and longing, dominating all others as some
+sovereign mountain peak towers above the valleys.
+Looking then at this prayer as containing an outline
+of true progress in the Christian life, we may note:</p>
+
+<p>I. The growth in keenness of conscience founded on
+growth in love.</p>
+
+<p>Paul does not merely desire that their love may
+abound, but that it may become more and more 'rich
+in knowledge and all discernment.' The former is perhaps
+accurate knowledge, and the latter the application
+of it. 'Discernment' literally means 'sense,' and here,
+of course, when employed about spiritual and moral
+things it means the power of apprehending good and
+bad as such. It is, I suppose, substantially equivalent
+to conscience, the moral tact or touch of the soul by
+which, in a manner analogous to bodily sense, it ascertains
+the moral character of things. This growth of
+love in the power of spiritual and moral discernment
+is desired in order to its exercise in 'proving things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+that differ.' It is a process of discrimination and testing
+that is meant, which is, I think, fairly represented
+by the more modern expression which I have used&mdash;keenness
+of conscience.</p>
+
+<p>I need spend little time in remarking on the absolute
+need of such a process of discrimination. We are surrounded
+by temptations to evil, and live in a world
+where maxims and principles not in accordance with
+the gospel abound. Our own natures are but partially
+sanctified. The shows of things must be tested.
+Apparent good must be proved. The Christian life is
+not merely to unfold itself in peace and order, but
+through conflict. We are not merely to follow impulses,
+or to live as angels do, who are above sin, or as animals
+do who are beneath it. When false coin is current it
+is folly to accept any without a test. All around us
+there is glamour, and so within us there is need for
+careful watchfulness and quick discrimination.</p>
+
+<p>This keenness of conscience follows on the growth of
+love. Nothing makes a man more sensitive to evil
+than a hearty love to God. Such a heart is keener to
+discern what is contrary to its love than any ethical
+maxims can make it. A man who lives in love will be
+delivered from the blinding influence of his own evil
+tastes, and a heart steadfast in love will not be swayed
+by lower temptations. Communion with God will,
+from its very familiarity with Him, instinctively discern
+the evil of evil, as a man coming out of pure air
+is conscious of vitiated atmosphere which those who
+dwell in it do not perceive. It used to be said that
+Venice glass would shiver into fragments if poison were
+poured into the cup. As evil spirits were supposed to
+be cast out by the presence of an innocent child or a
+pure virgin, so the ugly shapes that sometimes tempt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+us by assuming fair disguises will be shown in their
+native hideousness when confronted with a heart filled
+with the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>Such keenness of judgment is capable of indefinite
+increase. Our consciences should become more and
+more sensitive: we should always be advancing in our
+discovery of our own evils, and be more conscious of
+our sins, the fewer we have of them. Twilight in a
+chamber may reveal some foul things, and the growing
+light will disclose more. 'Secret faults' will cease to
+be secret when our love abounds more and more in
+knowledge, and in all discernment.</p>
+
+<p>II. The purity and completeness of character flowing
+from this keenness of conscience.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle desires that the knowledge which he
+asks for his Philippian friends may pass over into
+character, and he describes the sort of men which he
+desires them to be in two clauses, 'sincere and void of
+offence' being the one, 'filled with the fruits of righteousness'
+being the other. The former is perhaps predominantly
+negative, the latter positive. That which
+is sincere is so because when held up to the light it
+shows no flaws, and that which is without offence is so
+because the stones in the path have been cleared away
+by the power of discrimination, so that there is no
+stumbling. The life which discerns keenly will bring
+forth the fruit which consists of righteousness, and
+that fruit is to fill the whole nature so that no part
+shall be without it.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing lower than this is the lofty standard towards
+which each Christian life is to aim, and to which it can
+indefinitely approximate. It is not enough to aim at
+the negative virtue of sincerity so that the most
+searching scrutiny of the web of our lives shall detect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+no flaws in the weaving, and no threads dropped or
+broken. There must also be the actual presence of
+positive righteousness filling life in all its parts. That
+lofty standard is pressed upon us by a solemn motive,
+'unto the day of Christ.' We are ever to keep before
+us the thought that in that coming day all our works
+will be made manifest, and that all of them should be
+done, so that when we have to give account of them
+we shall not be ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle takes it for granted here that if the
+Philippian Christians know what is right and what is
+wrong, they will immediately choose and do the right.
+Is he forgetting the great gulf between knowledge and
+practice? Not so, but he is strong in the faith that love
+needs only to know in order to do. The love which
+abounds more and more in knowledge and in all discernment
+will be the soul of obedience, and will delight
+in fulfilling the law which it has delighted in beholding.
+Other knowledge has no tendency to lead to practice,
+but this knowledge which is the fruit of love has for its
+fruit righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>III. The great Name in which this completeness is
+secured.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle's prayer dwells not only on the way by
+which a Christian life may increase itself, but in its
+close reaches the yet deeper thought that all that
+growth comes 'through Jesus Christ.' He is the Giver
+of it all, so that we are not so much called to a painful
+toil as to a glad reception. Our love fills us with the
+fruits of righteousness, because it takes all these from
+His hands. It is from His gift that conscience derives
+its sensitiveness. It is by His inspiration that conscience
+becomes strong enough to determine action,
+and that even our dull hearts are quickened into a glow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+of desiring to have in our lives, the law of the spirit of
+life, that was in Christ Jesus, and to make our own all
+that we see in Him of 'things that are lovely and of
+good report.'</p>
+
+<p>The prayer closes with a reference to the highest
+end of all our perfecting&mdash;the glory and praise of God;
+the former referring rather to the transcendent
+majesty of God in itself, and the latter to the exaltation
+of it by men. The highest glory of God comes
+from the gradual increase in redeemed men's likeness
+to Him. They are 'the secretaries of His praise,' and
+some portion of that great honour and responsibility
+lies on each of us. If all Christian men were what
+they all might be and should be, swift and sure in their
+condemnation of evil and loyal fidelity to conscience,
+and if their lives were richly hung with ripened clusters
+of the fruits of righteousness, the glory of God would
+be more resplendent in the world, and new tongues
+would break into praise of Him who had made men so
+like Himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A PRISONER'S TRIUMPH</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now I would have you know, brethren, that the things which happened unto
+me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel; 13. So that my
+bonds became manifest in Christ throughout the whole pr&aelig;torian guard, and to
+all the rest; 14. And that most of the brethren in the Lord, being confident through
+my bonds, are more abundantly bold to speak the word of God without fear.
+15. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good
+will: 16. The one do it of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the
+gospel: 17. But the other proclaim Christ of faction, not sincerely, thinking to
+raise up affliction for me in my bonds. 18. What then? only that in every way,
+whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and therein I rejoice, yea,
+and will rejoice. 19. For I know that this shall turn to my salvation, through
+your supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. 20. According to
+my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing shall I be put to shame, but that
+with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body,
+whether by life or by death.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> i. 12-20 (R.V.)</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Paul's writings are full of autobiography, that is
+partly owing to temperament, partly to the profound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+interpenetration of his whole nature with his religion.
+His theology was but the generalisation of his experience.
+He has felt and verified all that he has to say.
+But the personal experiences of this sunny letter to his
+favourite church have a character all their own. In
+that atmosphere of untroubled love and sympathy a
+shyer heart than Paul's would have opened: his does so
+in tenderness, gladness, and trust. We have here the
+unveiling of his inmost self in response to what he
+knew would be an eager desire for news of his welfare.
+This whole section appears to me to be a wonderful
+revelation of his prison thoughts, an example of what
+we may call the ennobling power of a passionate
+enthusiasm for Christ. Remember that he is a
+prisoner, shut out from his life's work, waiting to be
+tried before Nero, whose reign had probably, by this
+time, passed from its delusive morning of dewy promise
+to its lurid noon. The present and the future were
+dark for him, and yet in spite of them all comes forth
+this burst of undaunted courage and noble gladness.
+We simply follow the course of the words as they lie,
+and we find in them,</p>
+
+<p>I. An absorbing purpose which bends all circumstances
+to its service and values them only as
+instruments.</p>
+
+<p>The things which happened unto me; that is Paul's
+minimising euphemism for the grim realities of imprisonment,
+or perhaps for some recent ominous turns in
+his circumstances. To him they are not worth dwelling
+on further, nor is their personal incidence worth
+taking into account; the only thing which is important
+is to say how these things have affected his life's work.
+It is enough for him, and he believes that it will be
+enough even for his loving friends at Philippi to know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+that, instead of their being as they might have feared,
+and as he sometimes when he was faithless expected,
+hindrances to his work, they have turned out rather to
+'the furtherance of the gospel.' Whether he has been
+comfortable or not is a matter of very small importance,
+the main thing is that Christ's work has been
+helped, and then he goes on to tell two ways in which
+his imprisonment had conduced to this end.</p>
+
+<p>'My bonds became manifest in Christ.' It has
+been clearly shown why I was a prisoner; all the
+Pr&aelig;torian guard had learned what Paul was there for.
+We know from Acts that he was 'suffered to abide by
+himself with the soldier that kept him.' He has no
+word to say of the torture of compulsory association,
+night and day, with the rude legionaries, or of the
+horrors of such a presence in his sweetest, sacredest
+moments of communion with his Lord. These are all
+swallowed up in the thought as they were in the fact,
+that each new guard as he came to sit there beside
+Paul was a new hearer, and that by this time he must
+have told the story of Christ and His love to nearly the
+whole corps. That is a grand and wonderful picture of
+passionate earnestness and absorbed concentration in
+one pursuit. Something of the same sort is in all
+pursuits, the condition of success and the sure result of
+real interest. We have all to be specialists if we would
+succeed in any calling. The river that spreads wide
+flows slow, and if it is to have a scour in its current it
+must be kept between high banks. We have to bring
+ourselves to a point and to see that the point is red-hot
+if we mean to bore with it. If our limitations
+are simply enforced by circumstances, they may be
+maiming, but if they come of clear insight and free
+choice of worthy ends, they are noble. The artist, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+scholar, the craftsman, all need to take for their motto
+'This one thing I do.' I suppose that a man would not
+be able to make a good button unless he confined himself
+to button-making. We see round us abundant
+examples of men who, for material aims and almost
+instinctively, use all circumstances for one end and
+appraise them according to their relations to that, and
+they are quoted as successful, and held up to young
+souls as patterns to be imitated. Yes! But what
+about the man who does the same in regard to Christ
+and His work? Is he thought of as an example to be
+imitated or as a warning to be avoided? Is not the
+very same concentration when applied to Christian
+work and living thought to be fanatical, which is
+welcomed with universal applause when it is directed
+to lower pursuits? The contrast of our eager absorption
+in worldly things and of the ease with which any
+fluttering butterfly can draw us away from the path
+which leads us to God, ought to bring a blush to all
+cheeks and penitence to all hearts. There was no more
+obligation on Paul to look at the circumstances of his
+life thus than there is on every Christian to do so. We
+do not desire that all should be apostles, but the
+Apostle's temper and way of looking at 'the things
+which happened unto' him should be our way of looking
+at the things which happen unto us. We shall
+estimate them rightly, and as God estimates them, only
+when we estimate them according to their power to
+serve our souls and to further Christ's kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>II. The magnetism or contagion of enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>The second way by which Paul's circumstances
+furthered the gospel was 'that most of the brethren,
+being confident through my bonds, are more abundantly
+bold to speak the word of God.' His constancy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+courage stirred them up. Moved by good-will and love,
+they were heartened to preach because they saw in
+him one 'appointed by God for the defence of the
+gospel.' A soul all on flame has power to kindle
+others. There is an old story of a Scottish martyr
+whose constancy at the stake touched so many hearts
+that 'a merry gentleman' said to Cardinal Beaton, 'If
+ye burn any more you should burn them in low cellars,
+for the reek (smoke) of Mr. Patrick Hamilton has
+infected as many as it blew upon.'</p>
+
+<p>It is not only in the case of martyrs that enthusiasm
+is contagious. However highly we may estimate the
+impersonal forces that operate for 'the furtherance of
+the gospel' we cannot but see that in all ages, from the
+time of Paul down to to-day, the main agents for the
+spread of the gospel have been individual souls all
+aflame with the love of God in Christ Jesus and filled
+with the life of His Spirit. The history of the Church
+has largely consisted in the biographies of its saints,
+and every great revival of religion has been the flame
+kindled round a flaming heart. Paul was impelled by
+his own love; the brethren in Rome were in a lower
+state as only reflecting his, and it ought to be the
+prerogative of every Christian to be a centre and source
+of kindling influence rather than a mere recipient of it.
+It is a question which may well be asked by each of
+us about ourselves&mdash;would anybody find quickening
+impulses to divine life and Christian service coming
+from us, or do we simply serve to keep others' coldness
+in countenance? It was said of old of Jesus Christ,
+'He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire,' and
+that promise remains effective to-day, however little
+one looking on the characters of the mass of so-called
+Christians would believe it. They seem rather to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+been plunged into ice-cold water than into fire, and
+their coldness is as contagious as Paul's radiant enthusiasm
+was. Let us try, for our parts, to radiate out
+the warmth of the love of God, that it may kindle in
+others the flame which it has lighted in ourselves, and
+not be like icebergs floating southwards and bringing
+down the temperature of even the very temperate seas
+in which we find ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>III. The wide tolerance of such enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>It is stigmatised as 'narrow,' which to-day is the sin
+of sins, but it is broad with the true breadth. Such
+enthusiasm lifts a man high enough to see over many
+hedges and to be tolerant even of intolerance, and of
+the indifference which tolerates everything but earnestness.
+Paul here deals with a class amongst the Roman
+Christians who were 'preaching of envy and strife,' with
+the malicious calculation that so they would annoy
+him and 'add affliction' to his bonds. It is generally
+supposed that these were Judaising Christians against
+whom Paul fulminates in all his letters, but I confess
+that, notwithstanding the arguments of authoritative
+commentators, I cannot believe that they are the same
+set of men preaching the same doctrines which in
+other places he treats as destructive of the whole
+gospel. The change of tone is so great as to require
+the supposition of a change of subjects, and the
+Judaisers with whom the Apostle waged a neverending
+warfare, never did evangelistic work amongst
+the heathen as these men seem to have done, but
+confined themselves to trying to pervert converts
+already made. It was not their message but their
+spirit that was faulty. With whatever purpose of
+annoyance they were animated, they did 'preach
+Christ,' and Paul superbly brushes aside all that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+antagonistic to him personally, in his triumphant
+recognition that the one thing needful <i>was</i> spoken,
+even from unworthy motives and with a malicious
+purpose. The situation here revealed, strange though
+it appears with our ignorance of the facts, is but too
+like much of what meets us still. Do we not know
+denominational rivalries which infuse a bitter taint of
+envy and strife into much evangelistic earnestness, and
+is the spectacle of a man preaching Christ with a taint
+of sidelong personal motives quite unknown to this
+day? We may press the question still more closely
+home and ask ourselves if we are entirely free from
+the influence of such a spirit. No man who knows
+himself and has learned how subtly lower motives
+blend themselves with the highest will be in haste to
+answer these questions with an unconditional 'No,' and
+no man who looks on the sad spectacle of competing
+Christian communities and knows anything of the
+methods of competition that are in force, will venture
+to deny that there are still those who preach Christ of
+envy and strife.</p>
+
+<p>It comes, then, to be a testing question for each of us,
+have we learned from Paul this lesson of tolerance,
+which is not the result of cold indifference, but the
+outcome of fiery enthusiasm and of a clear recognition
+of the one thing needful? Granted that there is
+preaching from unworthy motives and modes of work
+which offend our tastes and prejudices, and that there
+are types of evangelistic earnestness which have errors
+mixed up with them, are we inclined to say 'Nevertheless
+Christ is proclaimed, and therein I rejoice, Yea,
+and will rejoice'? Much chaff may be blended with the
+seeds sown; the chaff will lie inert and the seed will
+grow. Such tolerance is the very opposite of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+carelessness which comes from languid indifference.
+The one does not mind what a man preaches because it
+has no belief in any of the things preached, and to it
+one thing is as good as another, and none are of any
+real consequence. The other proceeds from a passionate
+belief that the one thing which sinful men need to hear
+is the great message that Christ has lived and died for
+them, and therefore, it puts all else on one side and
+cares nothing for jangling notes that may come in, if
+only above them the music of His name sounds out
+clear and full.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The calm fronting of life and death as equally
+magnifying Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle is sure that all the experiences of his
+prison will turn to his ultimate salvation, because he is
+sure that his dear friends in Philippi will pray for him,
+and that through their prayers he will receive a 'supply
+of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,' which shall be enough
+to secure his steadfastness. His expectation is not
+that he will escape from prison or from martyrdom,
+both of which stand only too clearly before him, but
+that whatever may be waiting for him in the future,
+'all boldness' will be granted him, so that whether he
+lives he will live to the Lord, or whether he dies, he
+will die to the Lord. He had so completely accepted it
+as his life's purpose to magnify Jesus, that the extremest
+possible changes of condition came to be insignificant
+to him. He had what we may have, the true an&aelig;sthetic
+which will give us a 'solemn scorn of ills' and
+make even the last and greatest change from life to
+death of little account. If we magnify Christ in our
+lives with the same passionate earnestness and concentrated
+absorption as Paul had, our lives like some
+train on well-laid rails will enter upon the bridge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+across the valley with scarce a jolt. With whatever
+differences&mdash;and the differences are to us tremendous&mdash;the
+same purpose will be pursued in life and in death,
+and they who, living, live to the praise of Christ, dying
+will magnify Him as their last act in the body which
+they leave. What was it that made possible such a
+passion of enthusiasm for a man whom Paul had never
+seen in the flesh? What changed the gloomy fuliginous
+fanaticism of the Pharisee, at whose feet were laid the
+clothes of the men who stoned Stephen, into this radiant
+light, all aflame with a divine splendour? The only
+answer is in Paul's own words, 'He loved me and gave
+Himself for me.' That answer is as true for each of us
+as it was for him. Does it produce in us anything like
+the effects which it produced in him?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A STRAIT BETWIXT TWO</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22. But if I live in the flesh, this is
+the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23. For I am in a strait
+betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
+24. Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. 25. And having this
+confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance
+and joy of faith.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> i. 21-25.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A preacher may well shrink from such a text. Its
+elevation of feeling and music of expression make all
+sermons on it sound feeble and harsh, like some poor
+shepherd's pipe after an organ. But, though this be
+true, it may not be useless to attempt, at least, to point
+out the course of thought in these grand words. They
+flow like a great river, which springs at first with a
+strong jet from some deep cave, then is torn and chafed
+among dividing rocks, and after a troubled middle
+course, moves at last with stately and equable current
+to the sea. The Apostle's thoughts and feelings have
+here, as it were, a threefold bent in their flow. First,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+we have the clear, unhesitating statement of the comparative
+advantages of life and death to a Christian
+man, when thought of as affecting himself alone. The
+one is Christ, the other gain. But we neither live nor
+die to ourselves; and no man has a right to think of
+life or death only from the point of view of his own
+advantage. So the problem is not so simple as it looked.
+Life here is the condition of fruitful labour here. There
+are his brethren and his work to think of. These bring
+him to a stand, and check the rising wish. He knows
+not which state to prefer. The stream is dammed back
+between rocks, and it chafes and foams and seems to
+lose its way among them. Then comes a third bend
+in the flow of thought and feeling, and he gladly
+apprehends it as his present duty to remain at his
+work. If his own joy is thereby less, his brethren's
+will be more. If he is not to depart and be with
+Christ, he will remain and be with Christ's friends,
+which is, in some sort, being with Him too. If he may
+not have the gain of death, he will have the fruit of
+work in life.</p>
+
+<p>Let us try to fill up, somewhat, this meagre outline of
+the warm stream that pours through these great words.</p>
+
+<p>I. The simplicity of the comparison between life and
+death to a Christian thinking of himself alone.</p>
+
+<p>'To me' is plainly emphatic. It means more than
+'in my judgment' or even 'in my case.' It is equal to
+'To me personally, if I stood alone, and had no one to
+consider but myself.' 'To live' refers mainly here to
+outward practical life of service, and 'to die' should,
+perhaps, rather be 'to be dead,' referring, not to the
+act of dissolution, but to the state after; not to the
+entrance chamber, but to the palace to which it admits.</p>
+
+<p>So we have here grandly set forth the simplicity and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+unity of the Christian life. While the words probably
+refer mainly to outward life, they presuppose an inward,
+of which that outward is the expression. In
+every possible phase of the word 'life,' Christ is the
+life of the Christian. To live is Christ, for He is the
+mystical source from whom all ours flows. 'With
+Thee is the fountain of life,' and all life, both of body
+and spirit, is from Him, by Him, and in Him. 'To live
+is Christ,' for He is the aim and object, as well as the
+Lord, of it all, and no other is worth calling life, but
+that which is <i>for</i> Him by willing consecration, as well
+as <i>from</i> Him by constant derivation. 'To live is Christ,'
+for He is the model of all our life, and the one all-sufficient
+law for us is to follow Him.</p>
+
+<p>Life is to be <i>as</i> Christ, <i>for</i> Christ, <i>by</i>, <i>in</i>, and <i>from</i>
+Christ. So shall there be strength, peace, and freedom
+in our days. The unity brought into life thereby will
+issue in calm blessedness, contrasted wondrously with
+the divided hearts and aims which fritter our days into
+fragments, and make our lives heaps of broken links
+instead of chains.</p>
+
+<p>Surely this is the charm which brings rest into the
+most troubled history, and nobleness into the lowliest
+duties. There is nothing so grand as the unity breathed
+into our else distracted days by the all-pervading
+reference to and presence of Christ. Without that,
+we are like the mariners of the old world, who crept
+timidly from headland to headland, making each their
+aim for a while, and leaving each inevitably behind,
+never losing sight of shore, nor ever knowing the
+wonders of the deep and all the majesty of mid-ocean,
+nor ever touching the happy shores beyond, which they
+reach who carry in their hearts a compass that ever
+points to the unseen pole.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then comes the other great thought, that where life
+is simply Christ, death will be simply gain.</p>
+
+<p>Paul, no doubt, shrank from the act of death, as we
+all do. It was not the narrow passage which attracted
+him, but the broad land beyond. Every other aspect
+of that was swallowed up in one great thought, which
+will occupy us more at length presently. But that
+word 'gain' suggests that to Paul's confident faith
+death was but an increase and progression in all that
+was good here. To him it was no loss to lose flesh and
+sense and all the fleeting joys with which they link us.
+To him death was no destruction of his being, and not
+even an interruption of its continuity. Everything that
+was of any real advantage to him was to be his after
+as before. The change was clear gain. Everything
+good was to be just as it had been, only better. Nothing
+was to be dropped but what it was progress to lose, and
+whatever was kept was to be heightened.</p>
+
+<p>How strongly does that view express the two thoughts
+of the <i>continuity</i> and <i>intensifying</i> of the Christian life
+beyond the grave! And what a contrast does that
+simple, sublime confidence present to many another
+thought of death! To how many men its blackness
+seems to be the sudden swallowing up of the light
+of their very being! To how many more does it seem
+to put an end to all their occupations, and to shear
+their lives in twain, as remorselessly as the fall of the
+guillotine severs the head from the body. How are
+the light butterfly wings of the trivialities in which
+many men and women spend their days to carry them
+across the awful gulf? What are the people to do on
+the other side whose lives have all been given to purposes
+and tasks that stop on this side? Are there shops
+and mills, or warehouses and drawing-rooms, or studies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+and lecture-halls, over there? Will the lives which
+have not struck their roots down through all the
+surface soil to the rock, bear transplanting? Alas!
+for the thousands landed in that new country, as unfit
+for it by the tenor of their past occupations, as some
+pale artisan, with delicate fingers and feeble muscles,
+set down as a colonist to clear the forest!</p>
+
+<p>This Paul had a work here which he could carry
+on hereafter. There would be no reversal of view, no
+change in the fundamental character of his occupations.
+True, the special forms of work which he had pursued
+here would be left behind, but the principle underlying
+them would continue. It matters very little to the
+servant whether he is out in the cold and wet 'ploughing
+and tending cattle,' or whether he is waiting on
+his master at table. It is service all the same, only it
+is warmer and lighter in the house than in the field,
+and it is promotion to be made an indoor servant.</p>
+
+<p>So the direction of the life, and the source of the
+life, and the fundamentals of the life continue unchanged.
+Everything is as it was, only in the superlative
+degree. To other men the narrow plain on
+which their low-lying lives are placed is rimmed by
+the jagged, forbidding white peaks. It is cold and
+dreary on these icy summits where no creature can
+live. Perhaps there is land on the other side; who
+knows? The pale barrier separates all here from all
+there; we know not what may be on the other side.
+Only we feel that the journey is long and chill, that
+the ice and the barren stone appal, and that we never
+can carry our household goods, our tools, or our wealth
+with us up to the black jaws of the pass.</p>
+
+<p>But for this man the Alps were tunnelled. There
+was no interruption in his progress. He would go, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+believed, without 'break of gauge,' and would pass
+through the darkness, scarcely knowing when it came,
+and certainly unchecked for even a moment, right on
+to the other side where he would come out, as travellers
+to Italy do, to fairer plains and bluer skies, to richer
+harvests and a warmer sun. No jolt, no pause, no
+momentary suspension of consciousness, no reversal,
+nor even interruption in his activity, did Paul expect
+death to bring him, but only continuance and increase
+of all that was essential to his life.</p>
+
+<p>He has calmness in his confidence. There is nothing
+hysterical or overwrought or morbid in these brief
+words, so peaceful in their trust, so moderate and
+restrained in their rapture. Are our anticipations of
+the future moulded on such a pattern? Do we think
+of it as quietly as this man did? Are we as tranquilly
+sure about it? Is there as little mist of uncertainty
+about the clearly defined image to our eye as there
+was to his? Is our confidence so profound that these
+brief monosyllables are enough to state it? Above all,
+do we know that to die will be gain, because we can
+honestly say that to live is Christ? If so, our hope is
+valid, and will not yield when we lean heavily upon it
+for support in the ford over the black stream. If our
+hope is built on anything besides, it will snap then like
+a rotten pole, and leave us to stumble helpless among
+the slippery stones and the icy torrent.</p>
+
+<p>II. The second movement of thought here, which
+troubles and complicates this simple decision, as to
+what is the best for Paul himself, is the hesitation
+springing from the wish to help his brethren.</p>
+
+<p>As we said, no man has a right to forget others in
+settling the question whether he would live or die.
+We see the Apostle here brought to a stand by two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+conflicting currents of feelings. For himself he would
+gladly go, for his friends' sake he is drawn to the
+opposite choice. He has 'fallen into a place where
+two seas meet,' and for a minute or two his will is
+buffeted from side to side by the 'violence of the
+waves.' The obscurity of his language, arising from
+its broken construction, corresponds to the struggle
+of his feelings. As the Revised Version has it, 'If to
+live in the flesh&mdash;if this is the fruit of my work, then
+what I shall choose, I wot not.' By which fragmentary
+sentence, rightly representing as it does the roughness
+of the Greek, we understand him to mean that if living
+on in this life is the condition of his gaining fruit from
+his toil, then he has to check the rising wish, and is
+hindered from decisive preference either way. Both
+motives act upon him, one drawing him deathward,
+the other holding him firmly here. He is in a dilemma,
+pinned in, as it were, between the two opposing pressures.
+On the one hand he has the desire (not 'a desire,'
+as the English Bible has it, as if it were but one among
+many) turned towards departing to be with Christ;
+but on the other, he knows that his remaining here is
+for the present all but indispensable for the immature
+faith of the churches which he has founded. So he
+stands in doubt for a moment, and the picture of his
+hesitation may well be studied by us.</p>
+
+<p>Such a reason for wishing to die in conflict with such
+a reason for wishing to live, is as noble as it is rare,
+and, thank God, as imitable as it is noble.</p>
+
+<p>Notice the aspect which death wore to his faith. He
+speaks of it as 'departing,' a metaphor which does not,
+like many of the flattering appellations which men
+give that last enemy, reveal a quaking dread which
+cannot bear to look him in his ashen, pale face. Paul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+calls him gentle names, because he fears him not at all.
+To him all the dreadfulness, the mystery, the pain and
+the solitude have melted away, and death has become
+a mere change of place. The word literally means <i>to
+unloose</i>, and is employed to express pulling up the tent-pegs
+of a shifting encampment, or drawing up the
+anchor of a ship. In either case the image is simply
+that of removal. It is but striking the earthly house
+of this tent; it is but one more day's march, of which
+we have had many already, though this is over Jordan.
+It is but the last day's journey, and to-morrow there
+will be no packing up in the morning and resuming
+our weary tramp, but we shall be at home, and go no
+more out. So has the awful thing at the end dwindled,
+and the brighter and greater the land behind it shines,
+the smaller does it appear.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle thinks little of dying because he thinks
+so much of what comes after. Who is afraid of a brief
+journey if a meeting with dear friends long lost is at
+the end of it? The narrow avenue seems short, and
+its roughness and darkness are nothing, because Jesus
+Christ stands with outstretched arms at the other
+end, beckoning us to Himself, as mothers teach their
+children to walk. Whosoever is sure that he will be
+with Christ can afford to smile at death, and call it but
+a shifting of place. And whosoever feels the desire to
+be with Christ will not shrink from the means by which
+that desire is fulfilled, with the agony of revulsion
+that it excites in many an imagination. It will always
+be solemn, and its physical accompaniments of pain
+and struggle will always be more or less of a terror,
+and the parting, even for a time, from our dear ones,
+will always be loss, but nevertheless if we see Christ
+across the gulf, and know that one struggle more and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+we shall clasp Him with 'inseparable hands with joy
+and bliss in over measure for ever,' we shall not dread
+the leap.</p>
+
+<p>One thought about the future should fill our minds,
+as it did Paul's, that it is to be with Christ. How
+different that nobly simple expectation, resolving all
+bliss into the one element, is from the morbid curiosity
+as to details, which vulgarises and weakens so much
+of even devout anticipation of the future. To us as to
+him Heaven should be Christ, and Christ should be
+Heaven. All the rest is but accident. Golden harps
+and crowns, and hidden manna and white robes and
+thrones, and all the other representations, are but
+symbols of the blessedness of union with Him, or consequences
+of it. Immortal life and growth in perfection,
+both of mind and heart, and the cessation of all that
+disturbs, and our investiture with glory and honour,
+flung around our poor natures like a royal robe over
+a naked body, are all but the many-sided brightnesses
+that pour out from Him, and bathe in their rainbowed
+light those who are with Him.</p>
+
+<p>To be with Christ is all we need. For the loving
+heart to be near Him is enough.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="I shall clasp thee again">
+<tr><td align='left'>'I shall clasp thee again, O soul of my soul,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And with God be the rest.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Let us not fritter away our imaginations and our hopes
+on the subordinate and non-essential accompaniments,
+but concentrate all their energy on the one central
+thought. Let us not lose this gracious image in a
+maze of symbols, that, though precious, are secondary.
+Let us not inquire, with curiosity that will find no
+answer, about the unrevealed wonders and staggering
+mysteries of that transcendent thought, life everlast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>ing.
+Let us not acquire the habit of thinking of the
+future as the perfecting of our humanity, without
+connecting all our speculations with Him, whose
+presence will be all of heaven to us all. But let us
+keep His serene figure ever clear before our imaginations
+in all the blaze of the light, and try to feed our
+hopes and stay our hearts on this aspect of heavenly
+blessedness as the all-embracing one, that all, each for
+himself, shall be for ever conscious of Christ's loving
+presence, and of the closest union with Him, a union
+in comparison with which the dearest and sacredest
+blendings of heart with heart and life with life are
+cold and distant. For the clearness of our hope the
+fewer the details the better: for the willingness with
+which we turn from life and face the inevitable end,
+it is very important that we should have that one
+thought disengaged from all others. The one full
+moon, which dims all the stars, draws the tides after
+it. These lesser lights may gem the darkness, and
+dart down white shafts of brilliance in quivering
+reflections on the waves, but they have no power to
+move their mass. It is Christ and Christ only who
+draws us across the gulf to be with Him, and reduces
+death to a mere shifting of our encampment.</div>
+
+<p>This is a noble and worthy reason for wishing to
+die; not because Paul is disappointed and sick of life,
+not because he is weighed down with sorrow, or pain,
+or loss, or toil, but because he would like to be with
+his Master. He is no morbid sentimentalist, he is
+cherishing no unwholesome longing, he is not weary
+of work, he indulges in no hysterical raptures of
+desire. What an eloquent simplicity is in that quiet
+'very far better!' It goes straight to one's heart, and
+says more than paragraphs of falsetto yearnings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+There is nothing in such a wish to die, based on such
+a reason, that the most manly and wholesome piety
+need be ashamed of. It is a pattern for us all.</p>
+
+<p>The attraction of life contends with the attraction
+of heaven in these verses. That is a conflict which
+many good men know something of, but which does
+not take the shape with many of us which it assumed
+with Paul. Drawn, as he is, by the supreme desire of
+close union with his Master, for the sake of which he
+is ready to depart, he is tugged back even more strongly
+by the thought that, if he stays here, he can go on
+working and gaining results from his labour. It does
+not follow that he did not expect service if he were
+with Christ. We may be very sure that Paul's heaven
+was no idle heaven, but one of happy activity and
+larger service. But he will not be able to help these
+dear friends at Philippi and elsewhere who need him,
+as he knows. So love to them drags at his skirts, and
+ties him here.</p>
+
+<p>One can scarcely miss the remarkable contrast between
+Paul's 'To abide in the flesh is more needful for you,'
+and the saying of Paul's Master to people who assuredly
+needed His presence more than Philippi needed Paul's,
+'It is expedient for you that I go away.' This is not
+the place to work out the profound significance of
+the contrast, and the questions which it raises as to
+whether Christ expected His work to be finished and
+His helpfulness ended by His death, as Paul did by his.
+It must suffice to have suggested the comparison.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to our text, such a reason for wishing to
+die, held in check and overcome by such a reason for
+wishing to live, is great and noble. There are few of
+us who would not own to the mightier attraction of
+life; but how few of us who feel that, for ourselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+personally, if we were free to think only of ourselves,
+we should be glad to go, because we should be closer
+to Christ, but that we hesitate for the sake of others
+whom we think we can help! Many of us cling to life
+with a desperate clutch, like some poor wretch pushed
+over a precipice and trying to dig his nails into the
+rock as he falls. Some of us cling to it because we
+dread what is beyond, and our longing to live is the
+measure of our dread to die. But Paul did not look
+forward to a thick darkness of judgment, or to nothingness.
+He saw in the darkness a great light, the light
+in the windows of his Father's house, and yet he
+turned willingly away to his toil in the field, and was
+more than content to drudge on as long as he could
+do anything by his work. Blessed are they who share
+his desire to depart, and his victorious willingness to
+stay here and labour! They shall find that such a life
+in the flesh, too, is being with Christ.</p>
+
+<p>III. Thus the stream of thought passes the rapids
+and flows on smoothly to its final phase of peaceful
+acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>That is expressed very beautifully in the closing
+verse, 'Having this confidence, I know that I shall
+abide and continue with you all, for your furtherance
+and joy in faith.' Self is so entirely overcome that he
+puts away his own desire to enter into their joy, and
+rejoices with them. He cannot yet have for himself
+the blessedness which his spirit seeks. Well, be it so;
+he will stop here and find a blessedness in seeing them
+growing in confidence and knowledge of Christ and in
+the gladness that comes from it. He gives up the hope
+of that higher companionship with Jesus which drew
+him so mightily. Well, be it so; he will have companionship
+with his brethren, and 'abiding with you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+all' may haply find, even before the day of final
+account, that to 'visit' Christ's little ones is to visit
+Christ. Therefore he fuses his opposing wishes into
+one. He is no more in a strait betwixt two, or unwitting
+what he shall choose. He chooses nothing, but accepts
+the appointment of a higher wisdom. There is rest
+for him, as for us, in ceasing from our own wishes, and
+laying our wills silent and passive at His feet.</p>
+
+<p>The true attitude for us in which to face the unknown
+future, with its dim possibilities, and especially the
+supreme alternative of life or death, is neither desire
+nor reluctance, nor a hesitation compounded of both,
+but trustful acquiescence. Such a temper is far from
+indifference, and as far from agitation. In all things,
+and most of all in regard to these matters, it is best
+to hold desire in equilibrium till God shall speak.
+Torture not yourself with hopes or fears. They make
+us their slaves. Put your hand in God's hand, and
+let Him guide you as He will. Wishes are bad steersmen.
+We are only at peace when desires and dreads
+are, if not extinct, at all events held tightly in. Rest,
+and wisdom, and strength come with acquiescence.
+Let us say with Richard Baxter, in his simple, noble
+words:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Lord, it belongs not to my care">
+<tr><td align='left'>'Lord, it belongs not to my care</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Whether I die or live;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To love and serve Thee is my share,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And that Thy grace must give.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>We may learn, too, that we may be quite sure that
+we shall be left here as long as we are needed. Paul
+knew that his stay was needful, so he could say, 'I
+know that I shall abide with you.' We do not, but
+we may be sure that if our stay is needful we shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+abide. We are always tempted to think ourselves
+indispensable, but, thank God, nobody is necessary.
+There are no irreparable losses, hard as it is to believe
+it. We look at our work, at our families, our business,
+our congregations, our subjects of study, and we say to
+ourselves, 'What will become of them when I am gone?
+Everything would fall to pieces if I were withdrawn.'
+Do not be afraid. Depend on it, you will be left here
+as long as you are wanted. There are no incomplete
+lives and no premature removals. To the eye of faith
+the broken column in our cemeteries is a sentimental
+falsehood. No Christian life is broken short off so, but
+rises in a symmetrical shaft, and its capital is garlanded
+with amaranthine flowers in heaven. In one sense all
+our lives are incomplete, for they and their issues are
+above, out of our sight here. In another none are, for
+we are 'immortal till our work is done.'</p>
+
+<p>The true attitude, then, for us is patient service till
+He withdraws us from the field. We do not count him
+a diligent servant who is always wearying for the hour
+of leaving off to strike. Be it ours to labour where He
+puts us, patiently waiting till 'death's mild curfew' sets
+us free from the long day's work, and sends us home.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren! there are but two theories of life; two
+corresponding aspects of death. The one says, 'To me
+to live is Christ, and to die gain'; the other, 'To me to
+live is self, and to die is loss and despair.' One or other
+must be your choice. Which?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CITIZENS OF HEAVEN</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that
+whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye
+stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the
+gospel; 28. And in nothing terrified by your adversaries.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> i. 27, 28.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We read in the Acts of the Apostles that Philippi was
+the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a 'colony.'
+Now, the connection between a Roman colony and
+Rome was a great deal closer than that between an
+English colony and England. It was, in fact, a bit of
+Rome on foreign soil.</p>
+
+<p>The colonists and their children were Roman citizens.
+Their names were enrolled on the lists of Roman
+tribes. They were governed not by the provincial
+authorities, but by their own magistrates, and the law
+to which they owed obedience was not that of the
+locality, but the law of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt some of the Philippian Christians possessed
+these privileges. They knew what it was to live in a
+community to which they were less closely bound than
+to the great city beyond the sea. They were members
+of a mighty polity, though they had never seen its
+temples nor trod its streets. They lived in Philippi,
+but they belonged to Rome. Hence there is a peculiar
+significance in the first words of our text. The rendering,
+'conversation,' was inadequate even when it was
+made. It has become more so now. The word then
+meant 'conduct.' It now means little more than words.
+But though the phrase may express loosely the
+Apostle's general idea, it loses entirely the striking
+metaphor under which it is couched. The Revised
+Version gives the literal rendering in its margin&mdash;'Behave
+as citizens'&mdash;though it adopts in its text a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+rendering which disregards the figure in the word, and
+contents itself with the less picturesque and vivid
+phrase&mdash;'let your manner of life be worthy.' But there
+seems no reason for leaving out the metaphor; it
+entirely fits in with the purpose of the Apostle and
+with the context.</p>
+
+<p>The meaning is, Play the citizen in a manner worthy
+of the Gospel. Paul does not, of course, mean, Discharge
+your civic duties as Christian men, though
+some Christian Englishmen need that reminder; but
+the city of which these Philippians were citizens was
+the heavenly Jerusalem, the metropolis, the mother
+city of us all. He would kindle in them the consciousness
+of belonging to another order of things than that
+around them. He would stimulate their loyalty to
+obedience to the city's laws. As the outlying colonies
+of Rome had sometimes entrusted to them the task of
+keeping the frontiers and extending the power of the
+imperial city, so he stirs them up to aggressive warfare;
+and as in all their conflicts the little colony felt
+that the Empire was at its back, and therefore looked
+undaunted on shoals of barbarian foes, so he would
+have his friends at Philippi animated by lofty courage,
+and ever confident of final victory.</p>
+
+<p>Such seems to be a general outline of these eager
+exhortations to the citizens of heaven in this outlying
+colony of earth. Let us think of them briefly in order
+now.</p>
+
+<p>I. Keep fresh the sense of belonging to the mother city.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was not only writing <i>to</i> Philippi, but <i>from</i>
+Rome, where he might see how, even in degenerate
+days, the consciousness of being a Roman gave dignity
+to a man, and how the idea became almost a religion.
+He would kindle a similar feeling in Christians.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We do belong to another polity or order of things
+than that with which we are connected by the bonds of
+flesh and sense. Our true affinities are with the mother
+city. True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the
+blue waters is another community, of which we are
+really members, and sometimes in calm weather we can
+see, if we climb to a height above the smoke of the
+valley where we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains
+of that other land, lying bathed in sunlight and
+dreamlike on the opal waves.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it is a great part of Christian discipline to
+keep a vivid consciousness that there is such an unseen
+order of things at present in existence. We speak
+popularly of 'the future life,' and are apt to forget that
+it is also the <i>present</i> life to an innumerable company.
+In fact, this film of an earthly life floats in that greater
+sphere which is all around it, above, beneath, touching
+it at every point.</p>
+
+<p>It is, as Peter says, 'ready to be unveiled.' Yes,
+behind the thin curtain, through which stray beams of
+the brightness sometimes shoot, that other order
+stands, close to us, parted from us by a most slender
+division, only a woven veil, no great gulf or iron
+barrier. And before long His hand will draw it back,
+rattling with its rings as it is put aside, and <i>there</i> will
+blaze out what has always been, though we saw it not.
+It is so close, so real, so bright, so solemn, that it is
+worth while to try to feel its nearness; and we are so
+purblind, and such foolish slaves of mere sense, shaping
+our lives on the legal maxim that things which are non-apparent
+must be treated as non-existent, that it needs
+a constant effort not to lose the feeling altogether.</p>
+
+<p>There is a present connection between all Christian
+men and that heavenly City. It not merely exists, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+we belong to it in the measure in which we are
+Christians. All these figurative expressions about our
+citizenship being in heaven and the like, rest on the
+simple fact that the life of Christian men on earth and
+in heaven is fundamentally the same. The principles
+which guide, the motives which sway, the tastes and
+desires, affections and impulses, the objects and aims,
+are substantially one. A Christian man's true affinities
+are with the things not seen, and with the persons
+there, however his surface relationship knit him to the
+earth. In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is
+a stranger here and a native of the heavens. That
+great City is, like some of the capitals of Europe, built
+on a broad river, with the mass of the metropolis on
+the one bank, but a wide-spreading suburb on the
+other. As the Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to
+London, so is earth to heaven, the bit of the city on
+the other side the bridge. As Philippi was to Rome,
+so is earth to heaven, the colony on the outskirts of
+the empire, ringed round by barbarians, and separated
+by sounding seas, but keeping open its communications,
+and one in citizenship.</p>
+
+<p>Be it our care, then, to keep the sense of that city
+beyond the river vivid and constant. Amid the shows
+and shams of earth look ever onward to the realities
+'the things which <i>are</i>,' while all else only seems to be.
+The things which are seen are but smoke wreaths,
+floating for a moment across space, and melting into
+nothingness while we look. We do not belong to them
+or to the order of things to which they belong. There
+is no kindred between us and them. Our true relationships
+are elsewhere. In this present visible world all
+other creatures find their sufficient and homelike
+abode. 'Foxes have holes, and birds their roosting-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>places';
+but man alone has not where to lay his head,
+nor can he find in all the width of the created universe
+a place in which and with which he can be satisfied.
+Our true <i>habitat</i> is elsewhere. So let us set our
+thoughts and affections on things above. The descendants
+of the original settlers in our colonies talk still of
+coming to England as going 'home,' though they were
+born in Australia, and have lived there all their lives.
+In like manner we Christian people should keep
+vigorous in our minds the thought that our true home
+is there where we have never been, and that here we
+are foreigners and wanderers.</p>
+
+<p>Nor need that feeling of detachment from the present
+sadden our spirits, or weaken our interest in the
+things around us. To recognise our separation from
+the order of things in which we 'move,' because we
+belong to that majestic unseen order in which we really
+'have our being,' makes life great and not small. It
+clothes the present with dignity beyond what is possible
+to it if it be not looked at in the light of its connection
+with 'the regions beyond.' From that connection life
+derives all its meaning. Surely nothing can be conceived
+more unmeaning, more wearisome in its
+monotony, more tragic in its joy, more purposeless in
+its efforts, than man's life, if the life of sense and time
+be all. Truly it is 'like a tale told by an idiot, full
+of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' 'The white
+radiance of eternity,' streaming through it from above,
+gives all its beauty to the 'dome of many-coloured
+glass' which men call life. They who feel most their
+connection with the city which hath foundations should
+be best able to wring the last drop of pure sweetness
+out of all earthly joys, to understand the meaning of
+all events, and to be interested most keenly, because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+most intelligently and most nobly, in the homeliest and
+smallest of the tasks and concerns of the present.</p>
+
+<p>So, in all things, act as citizens of the great Mother
+of heroes and saints beyond the sea. Ever feel that
+you belong to another order, and let the thought,
+'Here we have no continuing city,' be to you not merely
+the bitter lesson taught by the transiency of earthly
+joys and treasures and loves, but the happy result of
+'seeking for the city which hath the foundations.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Another exhortation which our text gives is, Live
+by the laws of the city.</p>
+
+<p>The Philippian colonists were governed by the code
+of Rome. Whatever might be the law of the province
+of Macedonia, they owed no obedience to it. So
+Christian men are not to be governed by the maxims
+and rules of conduct which prevail in the province,
+but to be governed from the capital. We ought to get
+from on-lookers the same character that was given to
+the Jews, that we are 'a people whose laws are
+different from all people that be on earth,' and we
+ought to reckon such a character our highest praise.
+Paul would have these Philippian Christians act
+'worthy of <i>the gospel</i>.' That is our law.</p>
+
+<p>The great good news of God manifest in the flesh,
+and of our salvation through Christ Jesus, is not
+merely to be believed, but to be obeyed. The gospel is
+not merely a message of deliverance, it is also a rule
+of conduct. It is not merely theology, it is also
+ethics. Like some of the ancient municipal charters,
+the grant of privileges and proclamation of freedom
+is also the sovereign code which imposes duties and
+shapes life. A gospel of laziness and mere exemption
+from hell was not Paul's gospel. A gospel of doctrines,
+to be investigated, spun into a system of theology, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+accepted by the understanding, and there an end, was
+not Paul's gospel. He believed that the great facts
+which he proclaimed concerning the self-revelation of
+God in Christ would unfold into a sovereign law of life
+for every true believer, and so his one all-sufficient precept
+and standard of conduct are in these simple words,
+'worthy of the gospel.'</p>
+
+<p>That law is all-sufficient. In the truths which constituted
+Paul's gospel, that is to say, in the truths of
+the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, lies all
+that men need for conduct and character. In Him we
+have the 'realised ideal,' the flawless example, and
+instead of a thousand precepts, for us all duty is
+resolved into one&mdash;be like Christ. In Him we have the
+mighty motive, powerful enough to overcome all forces
+that would draw us away, and like some strong spring
+to keep us in closest contact with right and goodness.
+Instead of a confusing variety of appeals to manifold
+motives of interest and conscience, and one knows not
+what beside, we have the one all-powerful appeal, 'If ye
+love Me, keep My commandments,' and that draws all
+the agitations and fluctuations of the soul after it, as the
+rounded fulness of the moon does the heaped waters
+in the tidal wave that girdles the world. In Him we
+have all the helps that weakness needs, for He Himself
+will come and dwell with us and in us, and be our
+righteousness and our strength.</p>
+
+<p>Live 'worthy of the gospel,' then. How grand the
+unity and simplicity thus breathed into our duties and
+through our lives! All duties are capable of reduction
+to this one, and though we shall still need detailed
+instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free
+from the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry,
+which fetters men's limbs with microscopic bands, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+shall joyfully learn how much mightier and happier is
+the life which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than
+that which is hampered by a thousand regulations.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is such an all-comprehensive precept a mere
+toothless generality. Let a man try honestly to shape
+his life by it; and he will find soon enough how close
+it grips him, and how wide it stretches, and how deep
+it goes. The greatest principles of the gospel are to
+be fitted to the smallest duties. Indeed that combination&mdash;great
+principles and small duties&mdash;is the secret
+of all noble and calm life, and nowhere should it be so
+beautifully exemplified as in the life of a Christian
+man. The tiny round of the dew-drop is shaped by the
+same laws that mould the giant sphere of the largest
+planet. You cannot make a map of the poorest grass-field
+without celestial observations. The star is not
+too high nor too brilliant to move before us and guide
+simple men's feet along their pilgrimage. 'Worthy of
+the gospel' is a most practical and stringent law.</p>
+
+<p>And it is an exclusive commandment too, shutting
+out obedience to other codes, however common and
+fashionable they may be. We are governed from
+home, and we give no submission to provincial
+authorities. Never mind what people say about you,
+nor what may be the maxims and ways of men around
+you. These are no guides for you. Public opinion
+(which only means for most of us the hasty judgments
+of the half-dozen people who happen to be
+nearest us), use and wont, the customs of our set, the
+notions of the world about duty, with all these we
+have nothing to do. The censures or the praise of
+men need not move us. We report to headquarters,
+and subordinates' estimate need be nothing to us.
+Let us then say, 'With me it is a very small matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+that I should be judged of men's judgment. He that
+judgeth me is the Lord.' When we may be misunderstood
+or harshly dealt with, let us lift our eyes
+to the lofty seat where the Emperor sits, and remove
+ourselves from men's sentences by our 'appeal unto
+C&aelig;sar'; and, in all varieties of circumstances and duty,
+let us take the Gospel which is the record of Christ's
+life, death, and character, for our only law, and labour
+that, whatever others may think of us, we 'may be
+well pleasing to Him.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Further, our text bids the colonists fight for
+the advance of the dominions of the City.</p>
+
+<p>Like the armed colonists whom Russia and other
+empires had on their frontier, who received their bits
+of land on condition of holding the border against the
+enemy, and pushing it forward a league or two when
+possible, Christian men are set down in their places to
+be 'wardens of the marches,' citizen soldiers who hold
+their homesteads on a military tenure, and are to 'strive
+together for the faith of the gospel.'</p>
+
+<p>There is no space here and now to go into details of
+the exposition of this part of our text. Enough to
+say in brief that we are here exhorted to 'stand fast';
+that is, as it were, the defensive side of our warfare,
+maintaining our ground and repelling all assaults; that
+this successful resistance is to be 'in one spirit,' inasmuch
+as all resistance depends on our poor feeble
+spirits being ingrafted and rooted in God's Spirit, in
+vital union with whom we may be knit together into a
+unity which shall oppose a granite breakwater to the
+onrushing tide of opposition; that in addition to the
+unmoved resistance which will not yield an inch of the
+sacred soil to the enemy, we are to carry the war
+onwards, and, not content with holding our own, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+with one mind to strive together for the faith of the
+gospel. There is to be discipline, then, and compact
+organisation, like that of the legions whom Paul, from
+his prison among the Pr&aelig;torian guards, had often seen
+shining in steel, moving like a machine, grim, irresistible.
+The cause for which we are to fight is the
+faith of the gospel, an expression which almost seems
+to justify the opinion that 'the faith' here means, as
+it does in later usage, the sum and substance of that
+which is believed. But even here the word may have
+its usual meaning of the subjective act of trust in the
+gospel, and the thought may be that we are unitedly
+to fight for its growing power in our own hearts and in
+the hearts of others. In any case, the idea is plainly
+here that Christian men are set down in the world,
+like the frontier guard, to push the conquests of the
+empire, and to win more ground for their King.</p>
+
+<p>Such work is ever needed, never more needed than
+now. In this day when a wave of unbelief seems
+passing over society, when material comfort and
+worldly prosperity are so dazzlingly attractive to so
+many, the solemn duty is laid upon us with even more
+than usual emphasis, and we are called upon to feel
+more than ever the oneness of all true Christians, and
+to close up our ranks for the fight. All this can only
+be done after we have obeyed the other injunctions of
+this text. The degree in which we feel that we belong
+to another order of things than this around us, and the
+degree in which we live by the Imperial laws, will
+determine the degree in which we can fight with vigour
+for the growth of the dominion of the City. Be it
+ours to cherish the vivid consciousness that we are here
+dwelling not in the cities of the Canaanites, but, like
+the father of the faithful, in tents pitched at their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+gates, nomads in the midst of a civic life to which we
+do not belong, in order that we may breathe a hallowing
+influence through it, and win hearts to the love of
+Him whom to imitate is perfection, whom to serve is
+freedom.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The last exhortation to the colonists is, Be sure
+of victory.</p>
+
+<p>'In nothing terrified by your adversaries,' says Paul.
+He uses a very vivid, and some people might think,
+a very vulgar metaphor here. The word rendered
+<i>terrified</i> properly refers to a horse shying or plunging
+at some object. It is generally things half seen and
+mistaken for something more dreadful than themselves
+that make horses shy; and it is usually a half-look at
+adversaries, and a mistaken estimate of their strength,
+that make Christians afraid. Go up to your fears and
+speak to them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will
+generally fade away. So we may go into the battle,
+as the rash French minister said he did into the Franco-German
+war, 'with a light heart,' and that for good
+reasons. We have no reason to fear for ourselves.
+We have no reason to fear for the ark of God. We
+have no reason to fear for the growth of Christianity
+in the world. Many good men in this time seem to be
+getting half-ashamed of the gospel, and some preachers
+are preaching it in words which sound like an apology
+rather than a creed. Do not let us allow the enemy to
+overpower our imaginations in that fashion. Do not
+let us fight as if we expected to be beaten, always
+casting our eyes over our shoulders, even while we are
+advancing, to make sure of our retreat, but let us trust
+our gospel, and trust our King, and let us take to heart
+the old admonition, 'Lift up thy voice with strength;
+lift it up, be not afraid.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such courage is a prophecy of victory. Such courage
+is based upon a sure hope. 'Our citizenship is in
+heaven, from whence also we look for the Lord Jesus
+as Saviour.' The little outlying colony in this far-off
+edge of the empire is ringed about by wide-stretching
+hosts of dusky barbarians. Far as the eye can reach
+their myriads cover the land, and the watchers from
+the ramparts might well be dismayed if they had
+only their own resources to depend on. But they
+know that the Emperor in his progress will come to
+this sorely beset outpost, and their eyes are fixed on
+the pass in the hills where they expect to see the
+waving banners and the gleaming spears. Soon, like
+our countrymen in Lucknow, they will hear the
+music and the shouts that tell that He is at hand.
+Then when He comes, He will raise the siege and
+scatter all the enemies as the chaff of the threshing-floor,
+and the colonists who held the post will go with
+Him to the land which they have never seen, but which
+is their home, and will, with the Victor, sweep in
+triumph 'through the gates into the city.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A PLEA FOR UNITY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any
+fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, 2. Fulfil ye my
+joy, that ye be of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord,
+of one mind; 3. Doing nothing through faction or through vainglory, but in lowliness
+of mind each counting other better than himself; 4. Not looking each of you
+to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> ii. 1-4 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There was much in the state of the Philippian church
+which filled Paul's heart with thankfulness, and nothing
+which drew forth his censures, but these verses, with
+their extraordinary energy of pleading, seem to hint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+that there was some defect in the unity of heart and
+mind of members of the community. It did not
+amount to discord, but the concord was not as full as
+it might have been. There is another hint pointing
+in the same direction in the appeal to Paul's true yoke-fellow,
+in chapter iv., to help two good women who,
+though they had laboured much in the gospel, had not
+managed to keep 'of the same mind in the Lord,' and
+there is perhaps a still further indication that Paul's
+sensitive heart was conscious of the beginnings of
+strife in the air, in the remarkable emphasis with
+which, at the very outset of the letter, he over and
+over again pours out his confidence and affection on
+them 'all,' as if aware of some incipient rifts in their
+brotherhood. There are always forces at work which
+tend to part the most closely knit unities even when
+these are consecrated by Christian faith. Where there
+are no dogmatical grounds of discord, nor any open
+alienation, there may still be the beginnings of separation,
+and a chill breeze may be felt even when the sun
+is shining with summer warmth. Wasps are attracted
+by the ripest fruit.</p>
+
+<p>The words of our text present no special difficulty,
+and bring before us a well-worn subject, but it has at
+least this element of interest, that it grips very tightly
+the deepest things in Christian life, and that none of
+us can truly say that we do not need to listen to Paul's
+pleading voice. We may notice the general division
+of his thoughts in these words, in that he puts first the
+heart-touching motives for listening to his appeal,
+next describes with the exuberance of earnestness the
+fair ideal of unity to which he exhorts, and finally
+touches on the hindrances to its realisation, and the
+victorious powers which will overcome these.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I. The motives and bonds of Christian unity.</p>
+
+<p>It is not a pedantic dissection (and vivisection) of
+the Apostle's earnest words, if we point out that they
+fall into four clauses, of which the first and third
+('any comfort in Christ, any fellowship of the Spirit')
+urge the objective facts of Christian revelation, and
+the second and fourth ('any consolation of love, any
+tender mercies and compassions') put emphasis on the
+subjective emotions of Christian experience. We may
+lay the warmth of all of these on our own hearts, and
+shall find that these hearts will be drawn into the
+blessedness of Christian unity in the precise measure
+in which they are affected by them.</p>
+
+<p>As to the first of them, it may be suggested that
+here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, the true idea
+of the word rendered 'comfort' is rather 'exhortation.'
+The Apostle is probably not so much pointing to the
+consolations for trouble which come from Jesus, as to
+the stimulus to unity which flows from Him. It would
+rather weaken the force of Paul's appeal, if the two
+former grounds of it were so nearly identical as they
+are, if the one is based upon 'comfort' and the other on
+'consolation.' The Apostle is true to his dominant
+belief, that in Jesus Christ there lies, and from Him
+flows, the sovereign exhortation that rouses men to
+'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.'
+In Him we shall find in the measure in which we are
+in Him, the most persuasive of all exhortations to
+unity, and the most omnipotent of all powers to enforce
+it. Shall we not be glad to be in the flock of the
+Good Shepherd, and to preserve the oneness which He
+gave His life to establish? Can we live in Him, and
+not share His love for His sheep? Surely those who
+have felt the benediction of His breath on their fore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>heads
+when He prayed 'that they may all be one;
+even as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee,' cannot
+but do what is in them to fulfil that prayer, and to
+bring a little nearer the realisation of their Lord's
+purpose in it, 'that the world may believe that Thou
+didst send Me.' Surely if we lay to heart, and enter
+into sympathy with, the whole life and death of Jesus
+Christ, we shall not fail to feel the dynamic power
+fusing us together, nor fail to catch the exhortation to
+unity which comes from the lips that said, 'I am the
+vine, ye are the branches.'</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle next bases his appeal for unity on the
+experiences of the Philippian Christians, and on their
+memories of the comfort which they have tasted in the
+exercise of mutual love. Our hearts find it hard to
+answer the question whether they are more blessed
+when their love passes out from them in a warm
+stream to others, or when the love of others pours
+into them. To love and to be loved equally elevate
+courage, and brace the weakest for calm endurance
+and high deeds. The man who loves and knows that he
+is loved will be a hero. It must always seem strange
+and inexplicable that a heart which has known the
+enlargement and joy of love given and received,
+should ever fall so far beneath itself as to be narrowed
+and troubled by nourishing feelings of separation and
+alienation from those whom it might have gathered
+into its embrace, and thereby communicated, and in
+communicating acquired, courage and strength. We
+have all known the comfort of love; should it not impel
+us to live in 'the unity of the spirit and the bond of
+peace'? Men around us are meant to be our helpers,
+and to be helped by us, and the one way to secure both
+is to walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Paul has still further heart-melting motives to
+urge. He turns the Philippians' thoughts to their fellowship
+in the Spirit. All believers have been made
+to drink into one spirit, and in that common participation
+in the same supernatural life they partake of
+a oneness, which renders any clefts or divisions unnatural,
+and contradictory of the deepest truths of
+their experience. The branch can no more shiver
+itself off from the tree, or keep the life sap enclosed
+within itself, than one possessor of the common gift
+of the Spirit can separate himself from the others
+who share it. We are one in Him; let us be one in
+heart and mind. The final appeal is connected with
+the preceding, inasmuch as it lays emphasis on the
+emotions which flow from the one life common to all
+believers. That participation in the Spirit naturally
+leads in each participant to 'tender mercies and compassions'
+directed to all sharers in it. The very
+mark of truly possessing the Spirit's life is a nature
+full of tenderness and swift to pity, and they who
+have experienced the heaven on earth of such emotions
+should need no other motive than the memory of its
+blessedness, to send them out among their brethren,
+and even into a hostile world, as the apostles of love,
+the bearers of tender mercies, and the messengers
+of pity.</p>
+
+<p>II. The fair ideal which would complete the Apostle's
+joy.</p>
+
+<p>We may gather from the rich abundance of motives
+which the Apostle suggests before he comes to present
+his exhortation, that he suspected the existence of
+some tendencies in the opposite direction in Philippi,
+and possibly the same conclusion may be drawn from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+the exuberance of the exhortation itself, and from its
+preceding the dehortation which follows. He does
+not scold, he scarcely even rebukes, but he begins by
+trying to melt away any light frost that had crept
+over the warmth of the Philippians' love; and having
+made that preparation, he sets before them with a
+fulness which would be tautological but for the
+earnestness that throbs in it, the ideal of unity, and
+presses it upon them still more meltingly, by telling
+them that their realisation of it will be the completion
+of his joy. The main injunction is 'that ye be of the
+same mind,' and that is followed by three clauses which
+are all but exactly synonymous with it, 'having the
+same love, being of one accord, of one mind.' The
+resemblance of the latter clause to the main exhortation
+is still more complete, if we read with Revised
+Version (margin) 'of the same mind,' but in any case
+the exhortations are all practically the same. The
+unity which Paul would fain see, is far deeper and
+more vital than mere unanimity of opinion, or identity
+of polity, or co-operation in practice. The clauses
+which expand it guard us against the mistake of
+thinking that intellectual or practical oneness is all
+that is meant by Christian unity. They are 'of the
+same mind,' who have the same wishes, aims, outlooks,
+the same hopes and fears, and who are one in the
+depths of their being. They have 'the same love,' all
+similarly loving and being loved, the same emotion filling
+each heart. They are united in soul, or 'with accordant
+souls' having, and knowing that they have them,
+akin, allied to one another, moving to a common end,
+and aware of their oneness. The unity which Christian
+people have hitherto reached is at its best but a small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+are of the great circle which the Apostle drew, and
+none of us can read these fervid words without shame.
+His joy is not yet fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>That exhortation to be 'of the same mind,' not only
+points to a deep and vital unity, but suggests that the
+ground of the unity is to be found without us, in the
+common direction of our 'minds,' which means far
+more than popular phraseology means by it, to an
+external object. It is having our hearts directed to
+Christ that makes us one. He is the bond and centre
+of unity. We have just said that the object is external,
+but that has to be taken with a modification, for the
+true basis of unity is the common possession of 'Christ
+in us.' It is when we have this mind in us 'which was
+also in Christ Jesus,' that we have 'the same mind'
+one with another.</p>
+
+<p>The very keynote of the letter is joy, as may be seen
+by a glance over it. He joys and rejoices with them
+all, but his cup is not quite full. One more precious
+drop is needed to make it run over. Probably the
+coldness which he had heard of between Euodias and
+Syntyche had troubled him, and if he could be sure of
+the Philippians' mutual love he would rejoice in his
+prison. We cannot tell whether that loving and careful
+heart is still aware of the fortunes of the Church,
+but we know of a more loving and careful heart
+which is, and we cannot but believe that the alienations
+and discords of His professed followers bring
+some shadow over the joy of Christ. Do we not hear
+His voice again asking, 'what was it that you disputed
+among yourselves by the way?' and must we not, like
+the disciples, 'hold our peace' when that question is
+asked? May we not hear a voice sweeter in its
+cadence, and more melting in its tenderness than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+Paul's, saying to us 'Fulfil ye My joy that ye be of the
+same mind.'</p>
+
+<p>III. The hindrances and helps to being of the same
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>The original has no verb in front of 'nothing' in
+verse 3, and it seems better to supply the one which
+has been so frequently used in the preceding exhortation
+than 'doing,' which carries us too abruptly into
+the outer region of action. Paul indicates two main
+hindrances to being of the same mind, namely, faction
+and vainglory on the one hand, and self-absorption
+on the other, and opposed to each the tone of mind
+which is its best conqueror. Faction and vainglory
+are best defeated by humility and unselfishness. As
+to the former, the love of making or heading little
+cliques in religion or politics or society, has oftenest its
+roots in nothing loftier than vanity or pride. Many a
+man who poses as guided by staunch adherence to
+conviction is really impelled only by a wish to make
+himself notorious as a leader, and loves to talk of
+'those with whom I act.' There is a strong admixture
+of a too lofty estimate of self in most of the disagreements
+of Christian people. They expect more deference
+than they get, or their judgment is not taken as law,
+or their place is not so high as they think is their due,
+or in a hundred different ways self-love is wounded,
+and self-esteem is inflamed. All this is true in reference
+to the smaller communities of congregations, and with
+the necessary modifications it is quite as true in
+reference to the larger aggregations which we call
+churches or denominations. If all in their work that
+is directly due to faction and vainglory were struck
+out there would be great gaps in their activities, and
+many a flourishing scheme would fall dead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The cure for all these evils is lowliness of mind. That
+is a Christian word. Used by Greek thinkers, it meant
+abjectness; and it is one conspicuous instance of the
+change effected in morals by Christian teaching that it
+has become the name of a virtue. We are to dwell
+not on our gifts but on our imperfections, and if we
+judge ourselves with constant reference to the standard
+in Christ's life, we shall need little more to bring us to
+our knees in true lowliness of mind. The man who
+has been forgiven so many talents will not be in a
+hurry to take his brother by the throat and leave the
+marks of his fingers for tenpence.</p>
+
+<p>Christian unity is further broken by selfishness. To
+be absorbed in self is of course to have the heart shut
+to others. Our own interests, inclinations, possessions,
+when they assert themselves in our lives, build up
+impassable barriers between us and our fellows. To
+live to self is the real root of every sin as it is of all
+loveless life. The Apostle uses careful language: he
+admits the necessity for attention to our 'own things,'
+and only requires that we should look 'also' on the
+things of others. His cure for the hindrances to Christian
+unity is very complete, very practical, and very
+simple. Each counting other better than himself, and
+each 'looking also to the things of others' seem very
+homely and pedestrian virtues, but homely as they are
+we shall find that they grip us tight, if we honestly try
+to practise them in our daily lives, and we shall find
+also that the ladder which has its foot on earth has its
+top in the heavens, and that the practice of humility
+and unselfishness leads straight to having 'the mind
+which was also in Christ Jesus.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE DESCENT OF THE WORD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus: 6. Who, being in the
+form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, 7. But emptied
+Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; 8. And
+being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even
+unto death, yea, the death of the cross.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> ii. 5-8 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The purpose of the Apostle in this great passage must
+ever be kept clearly in view. Our Lord's example
+is set forth as the pattern of that unselfish disregard
+of one's own things, and devotion to the things of
+others, which has just been urged on the Philippians,
+and the mind which was in Him is presented as the
+model on which they are to fashion their minds. This
+purpose in some measure explains some of the peculiarities
+of the language here, and may help to guide us
+through some of the intricacies and doubtful points in
+the interpretation of the words. It explains why Christ's
+death is looked at in them only in its bearing upon
+Himself, as an act of obedience and of condescension,
+and why even that death in which Jesus stands most
+inimitable and unique is presented as capable of being
+imitated by us. The general drift of these verses is
+clear, but there are few Scripture passages which have
+evoked more difference of opinion as to the precise
+meaning of nearly every phrase. To enter on the
+subtle discussions involved in the adequate exposition
+of the words would far exceed our limits, and we must
+perforce content ourselves with a slight treatment of
+them, and aim chiefly at bringing out their practical
+side.</p>
+
+<p>The broad truth which stands sun-clear amid all
+diverse interpretations is&mdash;that the Incarnation, Life,
+and Death are the great examples of living humility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+and self-sacrifice. To be born was His supreme act of
+condescension. It was love which made Him assume
+the vesture of human flesh. To die was the climax of
+His voluntary obedience, and of His devotion to us.</p>
+
+<p>I. The height from which Jesus descended.</p>
+
+<p>The whole strange conception of birth as being the
+voluntary act of the Person born, and as being the
+most stupendous instance of condescension in the
+world's history, necessarily reposes on the clear conviction
+that He had a prior existence so lofty that it
+was an all but infinite descent to become man. Hence
+Paul begins with the most emphatic assertion that he
+who bore the name of Jesus lived a divine life before
+He was born. He uses a very strong word which is
+given in the margin of the Revised Version, and might
+well have been in its text. 'Being originally' as the
+word accurately means, carries our thoughts back not
+only to a state which preceded Bethlehem and the
+cradle, but to that same timeless eternity from which
+the prologue of the Gospel of John partially draws
+the veil when it says, 'In the beginning was the
+Word,' and to which Jesus Himself more obscurely
+pointed when He said, 'Before Abraham was I am.'</p>
+
+<p>Equally emphatic in another direction is Paul's next
+expression, 'In the form of God,' for 'form' means
+much more than 'shape.' I would point out the
+careful selection in this passage of three words to
+express three ideas which are often by hasty thought
+regarded as identical. We read of 'the <i>form</i> of God'
+(verse 6), 'the <i>likeness</i> of men' (verse 7), and 'in <i>fashion</i>
+as a man.' Careful investigation of these two words
+'form' and 'fashion' has established a broad distinction
+between them, the former being more fixed, the latter
+referring to that which is accidental and outward,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+which may be fleeting and unsubstantial. The possession
+of the form involves participation in the essence
+also. Here it implies no corporeal idea as if God had
+a material form, but it implies also much more than a
+mere apparent resemblance. He who is in the form
+of God possesses the essential divine attributes. Only
+God can be 'in the form of God': man is made in the
+likeness of God, but man is not 'in the form of God.'
+Light is thrown on this lofty phrase by its antithesis
+with the succeeding expression in the next verse,
+'the form of a servant,' and as that is immediately
+explained to refer to Christ's assumption of human
+nature, there is no room for candid doubt that 'being
+originally in the form of God' is a deliberately asserted
+claim of the divinity of Christ in His pre-existent
+state.</p>
+
+<p>As we have already pointed out, Paul soars here to
+the same lofty height to which the prologue of John's
+Gospel rises, and he echoes our Lord's own words
+about 'the glory which I had with Thee before the
+foundation of the world.' Our thoughts are carried
+back before creatures were, and we become dimly
+aware of an eternal distinction in the divine nature
+which only perfects its eternal oneness. Such an
+eternal participation in the divine nature before all
+creation and before time is the necessary pre-supposition
+of the worth of Christ's life as the pattern of
+humility and self-sacrifice. That pre-supposition gives
+all its meaning, its pathos, and its power, to His gentleness,
+and love, and death. The facts are different in
+their significance, and different in their power to bless
+and gladden, to purge and sway the soul, according as
+we contemplate them with or without the background
+of His pre-existent divinity. The view which regards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+Him as simply a man, like all the rest of us, beginning
+to be when He was born, takes away from His example
+its mightiest constraining force. Only when we with
+all our hearts believe 'that the Word became flesh,' do
+we discern the overwhelming depths of condescension
+manifested in the Birth. If it was not the incarnation
+of God, it has no claim on the hearts of men.</p>
+
+<p>II. The wondrous act of descent.</p>
+
+<p>The stages in that long descent are marked out with
+a precision and definiteness which would be intolerable
+presumption, if Paul were speaking only his own
+thoughts, or telling what he had seen with his own eyes.
+They begin with what was in the mind of the eternal
+Word before He began His descent, and whilst yet He
+is 'in the form of God.' He stands on the lofty level
+before the descent begins, and in spirit makes the surrender,
+which, stage by stage, is afterwards to be
+wrought out in act. Before any of these acts there
+must have been the disposition of mind and will which
+Paul describes as 'counting it not a thing to be grasped
+to be on an equality with God.' He did not regard the
+being equal to God as a prey or treasure to be clutched
+and retained at all hazards. That sweeps our thoughts
+into the dim regions far beyond Calvary or Bethlehem,
+and is a more overwhelming manifestation of love than
+are the acts of lowly gentleness and patient endurance
+which followed in time. It included and transcended
+them all.</p>
+
+<p>It was the supreme example of not 'looking on one's
+own things.' And what made Him so count? What
+but infinite love. To rescue men, and win them to Himself
+and goodness, and finally to lift them to the place
+from which He came down for them, seemed to Him to
+be worth the temporary surrender of that glory and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+majesty. We can but bow and adore the perfect love.
+We look more deeply into the depths of Deity than
+unaided eyes could ever penetrate, and what we see is
+the movement in that abyss of Godhead of purest
+surrender which, by beholding, we are to assimilate.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes the wonder of wonders, 'He emptied
+Himself.' We cannot enter here on the questions which
+gather round that phrase, and which give it a factitious
+importance in regard to present controversies. All
+that we would point out now is that while the Apostle
+distinctly treats the Incarnation as being a laying
+aside of what made the Word to be equal with God,
+he says nothing, on which an exact determination can
+be based, of the degree or particulars in which the
+divine nature of our Lord was limited by His
+humanity. The fact he asserts, and that is all. The
+scene in the Upper Chamber was but a feeble picture
+of what had already been done behind the veil. Unless
+He had laid aside His garments of divine glory
+and majesty, He would have had no human flesh from
+which to strip the robes. Unless He had willed to
+take the 'form of a servant,' He would not have had a
+body to gird with the slave's towel. The Incarnation,
+which made all His acts of lowly love possible, was a
+greater act of lowly love than those which flowed
+from it. Looking at it from earth, men say, 'Jesus
+was born.' Looking at it from heaven, Angels say,
+'He emptied Himself.'</p>
+
+<p>But how did He empty Himself? By taking the
+form of a slave, that is to God. And how did He take
+the form of a slave? By 'becoming in the likeness of
+men.' Here we are specially to note the remarkable
+language implying that what is true of none other in
+all the generations of men is true of Him. That just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+as 'emptying Himself' was His own act, also the
+taking the form of a slave by His being born was His
+own act, and was more truly described as a 'becoming.'
+We note, too, the strong contrast between that most
+remarkable word and the 'being originally' which is
+used to express the mystery of divine pre-existence.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst His becoming in the likeness of men stands
+in strong contrast with 'being originally' and energetically
+expresses the voluntariness of our Lord's birth,
+the 'likeness of men' does not cast any doubt on the
+reality of His manhood, but points to the fact that
+'though certainly perfect man, He was by reason of
+the divine nature present in Him not simply and
+merely man.'</p>
+
+<p>Here then the beginning of Christ's manhood is
+spoken of in terms which are only explicable, if it was
+a second form of being, preceded by a pre-existent
+form, and was assumed by His own act. The language,
+too, demands that that humanity should have been
+true essential manhood. It was in 'the form' of man
+and possessed of all essential attributes. It was in
+'the likeness' of man possessed of all external characteristics,
+and yet was something more. It summed up
+human nature, and was its representative.</p>
+
+<p>III. The obedience which attended the descent.</p>
+
+<p>It was not merely an act of humiliation and condescension
+to become man, but all His life was one
+long act of lowliness. Just as He 'emptied Himself' in
+the act of becoming in the 'likeness of men,' so He
+'humbled Himself,' and all along the course of His
+earthly life He chose constant lowliness and to be
+'despised and rejected of men.' It was the result
+moment by moment of His own will that to the eyes
+of men He presented 'no form nor comeliness,' and that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+will was moment by moment steadied in its unmoved
+humility, because He perpetually looked 'not on His
+own things, but on the things of others.' The guise
+He presented to the eyes of men was 'the <i>fashion</i> of a
+man.' That word corresponds exactly to Paul's carefully
+selected term, and makes emphatic both its superficial
+and its transitory character.</p>
+
+<p>The lifelong humbling of Himself was further manifested
+in His becoming 'obedient.' That obedience
+was, of course, to God. And here we cannot but pause
+to ask the question, How comes it that to the man
+Jesus obedience to God was an act of humiliation?
+Surely there is but one explanation of such a statement.
+For all men but this one to be God's slaves is
+their highest honour, and to speak of obedience as
+humiliation is a sheer absurdity.</p>
+
+<p>Not only was the life of Jesus so perfect an example
+of unbroken obedience that He could safely front His
+adversaries with the question, 'Which of you convinceth
+Me of sin?' and with the claim to 'do always
+the things that pleased Him,' but the obedience to the
+Father was perfected in His death. Consider the extraordinary
+fact that a man's death is the crowning instance
+of his humility, and ask yourselves the question,
+Who then is this who chose to be born, and stooped in
+the act of dying? His death was obedience to God,
+because by it He carried out the Father's will for the
+salvation of the world, His death is the greatest instance
+of unselfish self-sacrifice, and the loftiest
+example of looking on the 'things of others' that the
+world has ever seen. It dwindles in significance, in
+pathos, and in power to move us to imitation unless
+we clearly see the divine glory of the eternal Lord as
+the background of the gentle lowliness of the Man of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+Sorrows, and the Cross. No theory of Christ's life
+and death but that He was born for us, and died for
+us, either explains the facts and the apostolic language
+concerning them, or leaves them invested with their
+full power to melt our hearts and mould our lives.
+There is a possibility of imitating Him in the most
+transcendent of His acts. The mind may be in us
+which was in Christ Jesus. That it may, His death
+must first be the ground of our hope, and then we
+must make it the pattern of our lives, and draw from
+it the power to shape them after His blessed Example.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE ASCENT OF JESUS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Wherefore also God highly exalted Him and gave unto Him the name which
+is above every name; 10. That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
+things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth; 11. And that
+every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
+Father.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> ii. 9-11 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'He that humbleth himself shall be exalted,' said Jesus.
+He is Himself the great example of that law. The
+Apostle here goes on to complete his picture of the
+Lord Jesus as our pattern. In previous verses we had
+the solemn steps of His descent, and the lifelong
+humility and obedience of the incarnate Son, the man
+Christ Jesus. Here we have the wondrous ascent
+which reverses all the former process. Our text describes
+the reflex motion by which Jesus is borne back
+to the same level as that from which the descent
+began.</p>
+
+<p>We have</p>
+
+<p>I. The act of exaltation which forms the contrast and
+the parallel to the descent.</p>
+
+<p>'God highly exalted Him.' The Apostle coins an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+emphatic word which doubly expresses elevation, and
+in its grammatical form shows that it indicates a
+historical fact. That elevation was a thing once
+accomplished on this green earth; that is to say it
+came to pass in the fact of our Lord's ascension when
+from some fold of the Mount of Olives He was borne
+upwards and, with blessing hands, was received into
+the Shechinah cloud, the glory of which hid Him from
+the upward-gazing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It is plain that the 'Him' of whom this tremendous
+assertion is made, must be the same as the 'He' of
+whom the previous verses spoke, that is, the Incarnate
+Jesus. It is the manhood which is exalted. His
+humiliation consisted in His becoming man, but His
+exaltation does not consist in His laying aside His
+humanity. It is not a transient but an eternal union
+into which in the Incarnation it entered with divinity.
+Henceforward we have to think of Him in all the
+glory of His heavenly state as man, and as truly and
+completely in the 'likeness of men' as when He walked
+with bleeding feet on the flinty road of earthly life.
+He now bears for ever the 'form of God' and 'the
+fashion of a man.'</p>
+
+<p>Here I would pause for a moment to point out that
+the calm tone of this reference to the ascension indicates
+that it was part of the recognised Christian
+beliefs, and implies that it had been familiar long
+before the date of this Epistle, which itself dates from
+not more than at the most thirty years from the death
+of Christ. Surely that lapse of time is far too narrow
+to allow of such a belief having sprung up, and been
+universally accepted about a dead man, who all the
+while was lying in a nameless grave.</p>
+
+<p>The descent is presented as <i>His</i> act, but decorum and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+truth required that the exaltation should be God's act.
+'He humbled Himself,' but 'God exalted Him.' True,
+He sometimes represented Himself as the Agent of
+His own Resurrection and Ascension, and established a
+complete parallel between His descent and His ascent,
+as when He said, 'I came out from the Father, and am
+come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go
+unto the Father.' He was no less obedient to the
+Father's will when He ascended up on high, than He
+was when He came down to earth, and whilst, from
+one point of view, His Resurrection and Ascension were
+as truly His own acts as were His birth and His death,
+from another, He had to pray, 'And now, O Father,
+glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory
+which I had with Thee before the world was.' The
+Titans presumptuously scaled the heavens, according
+to the old legend, but the Incarnate Lord returned to
+'His own calm home, His habitation from eternity,'
+was exalted thither by God, in token to the universe
+that the Father approved the Son's descent, and that
+the work which the Son had done was indeed, as He
+declared it to be, 'finished.' By exalting Him, the
+Father not merely reinstated the divine Word in its
+eternal union with God, but received into the cloud of
+glory the manhood which the Word had assumed.</p>
+
+<p>II. The glory of the name of Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>What is the name 'which is above every name'? It is
+the name Jesus. It is to be noted that Paul scarcely
+ever uses that simple appellative. There are, roughly
+speaking, about two hundred instances in which he
+names our Lord in his Epistles, and there are only four
+places, besides this, in which he uses this as his own, and
+two in which he, as it were, puts it into the mouth of
+an enemy. Probably then, some special reason led to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+its occurrence here, and it is not difficult, I think, to
+see what that reason is. The simple personal name
+was given indeed with reference to His work, but had
+been borne by many a Jewish child before Mary called
+her child Jesus, and the fact that it is this common
+name which is exalted above every name, brings out
+still more strongly the thought already dwelt upon,
+that what is thus exalted is the manhood of our Lord.
+The name which expressed His true humanity, which
+showed His full identification with us, which was
+written over His Cross, which perhaps shaped the
+taunt 'He <i>saved</i> others, Himself He cannot save,'&mdash;that
+name God has lifted high above all names of council
+and valour, of wisdom and might, of authority and
+rule. It is shrined in the hearts of millions who
+render to it perfect trust, unconditional obedience, absolute
+loyalty. Its growing power, and the warmth
+of personal love which it evokes, in centuries and
+lands so far removed from the theatre of His life,
+is a unique thing in the world's history. It reigns in
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul is not content with simply asserting the
+sovereign glory of the name of Jesus. He goes on to
+set it forth as being what no other name borne by man
+can be, the ground and object of worship, when he
+declares, that 'in the name of Jesus every knee shall
+bow.' The words are quoted from the second Isaiah,
+and occur in one of the most solemn and majestic
+utterances of the monotheism of the Old Testament.
+And Paul takes these words, undeterred by the declaration
+which precede them, 'I Am am God and there is
+none else,' applies them to Jesus, to the manhood of
+our Lord. Bowing the knee is of course prayer, and in
+these great words the issue of the work of Jesus is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+unmistakably set forth, as not only being that He has
+declared God to men, who through Him are drawn to
+worship the Father, but that their emotions of love,
+reverence, worship, are turned to <i>Him</i>, though as the
+Apostle is careful immediately to note, they are not
+thereby intercepted from, but directed to, the glory of
+God the Father. In the eternities before His descent,
+there was equality with God, and when He returns, it
+is to the Father, who in Him has become the object of
+adoration, and round whose throne gather with bended
+knees all those who in Jesus see the Father.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle still further dwells on the glory of the
+name as that of the acknowledged Lord. And here we
+have with significant variation in strong contrast to
+the previous name of Jesus, the full title 'Jesus Christ
+Lord.' That is almost as unusual in its completeness
+as the other in its simplicity, and it comes in here with
+tremendous energy, reminding us of the great act to
+which we owe our redemption, and of all the prophecies
+and hopes which, from of old, had gathered round the
+persistent hope of the coming Messiah, while the name
+of Lord proclaims His absolute dominion. The knee is
+bowed in reverence, the tongue is vocal in confession.
+That confession is incomplete if either of these three
+names is falteringly uttered, and still more so, if
+either of them is wanting. The Jesus whom Christians
+confess is not merely the man who was born in
+Bethlehem and known among men as 'Jesus the
+carpenter.' In these modern days, His manhood has
+been so emphasised as to obscure His Messiahship and
+to obliterate His dominion, and alas! there are many
+who exalt Him by the name that Mary gave Him, who
+turn away from the name of Jesus as 'Hebrew old
+clothes,' and from the name of Lord as antiquated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+superstition. But in all the lowliness and gentleness of
+Jesus there were not wanting lofty claims to be the
+Christ of whom prophets and righteous men of old
+spake, and whose coming many a generation desired
+to see and died without the sight, and still loftier and
+more absolute claims to be invested with 'all power in
+heaven and earth,' and to sit down with the Father on
+His throne. It is dangerous work to venture to toss
+aside two of these three names, and to hope that if we
+pronounce the third of them, Jesus, with appreciation,
+it will not matter if we do not name Him either Christ
+or Lord.</p>
+
+<p>If it is true that the manhood of Jesus is thus
+exalted, how wondrous must be the kindred between
+the human and the divine, that it should be capable of
+this, that it should dwell in the everlasting burnings of
+the Divine Glory and not be consumed! How blessed
+for us the belief that our Brother wields all the forces
+of the universe, that the human love which Jesus
+had when He bent over the sick and comforted the
+sorrowful, is at the centre. Jesus is Lord, the Lord
+is Jesus!</p>
+
+<p>The Psalmist was moved to a rapture of thanksgiving
+when he thought of man as 'made a little lower
+than the angels, and crowned with glory and honour,'
+but when we think of the Man Jesus 'sitting at the
+right hand of God,' the Psalmist's words seem pale and
+poor, and we can repeat them with a deeper meaning
+and a fuller emphasis, 'Thou madest Him to have
+dominion over the works of Thy hands, Thou hast put
+all things under His feet.'</p>
+
+<p>III. The universal glory of the name.</p>
+
+<p>By the three classes into which the Apostle divides
+creation, 'things in heaven, and things on earth, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+things under the earth,' he simply intends to declare,
+that Jesus is the object of all worship, and the words
+are not to be pressed as containing dogmatic assertions
+as to the different classes mentioned. But guided by
+other words of Scripture, we may permissibly think
+that the 'things in heaven' tell us that the angels who
+do not need His mediation learn more of God by His
+work and bow before His throne. We cannot be
+wrong in believing that the glory of His work stretches
+far beyond the limits of humanity, and that His kingdom
+numbers other subjects than those who draw
+human breath. Other lips than ours say with a great
+voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to
+receive power and riches and wisdom and might and
+honour and glory and blessing.'</p>
+
+<p>The things on earth are of course men, and the
+words encourage us to dim hopes about which we cannot
+dogmatise of a time when all the wayward self-seeking
+and self-tormenting children of men shall have
+learned to know and love their best friend, and 'there
+shall be one flock and one shepherd.'</p>
+
+<p>'Things under the earth' seems to point to the old
+thought of 'Sheol' or 'Hades' or a separate state of
+the dead. The words certainly suggest that those who
+have gone from us are not unconscious nor cut off
+from the true life, but are capable of adoration and
+confession. We cannot but remember the old belief
+that Jesus in His death 'descended into Hell,' and
+some of us will not forget Fra Angelico's picture of the
+open doorway with a demon crushed beneath the fallen
+portal, and the crowd of eager faces and outstretched
+hands swarming up the dark passage, to welcome the
+entering Christ. Whatever we may think of that
+ancient representation, we may at least be sure that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+wherever they are, the dead in Christ praise and
+reverence and love.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The glory of the Father in the glory of the name
+of Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>Knees bent and tongues confessing the absolute
+dominion of Jesus Christ could only be offence and
+sin if He were not one with the Father. But the
+experience of all the thousands since Paul wrote, whose
+hearts have been drawn in reverent and worshipping
+trust to the Son, has verified the assertion, that to
+confess that Jesus Christ is Lord diverts no worship
+from God, but swells and deepens the ocean of praise
+that breaks round the throne. If it is true, and only
+if it is true, that in the life and death of Jesus all
+previous revelations of the Father's heart are surpassed,
+if it is true and only if it is true, as He Himself
+said, that 'I and the Father are one,' can Paul's words
+here be anything but an incredible paradox. But
+unless these great words close and crown the Apostle's
+glowing vision, it is maimed and imperfect, and Jesus
+interposes between loving hearts and God. One could
+almost venture to believe that at the back of Paul's
+mind, when he wrote these words, was some remembrance
+of the great prayer, 'I glorified Thee on the
+earth, having accomplished the work which Thou
+gavest Me to do.' When the Son is glorified we
+glorify the Father, and the words of our text may well
+be remembered and laid to heart by any who will not
+recognise the deity of the Son, because it seems to
+them to dishonour the Father. Their honour is inseparable
+and their glory one.</p>
+
+<p>There is a sense in which Jesus is our example even
+in His ascent and exaltation, just as He was in His
+descent and humiliation. The mind which was in Him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+is for us the pattern for earthly life, though the deeds
+in which that mind was expressed, and especially His
+'obedience to the death of the Cross,' are so far beyond
+any self-sacrifice of ours, and are inimitable, unique,
+and needing no repetition while the world lasts. And
+as we can imitate His unexampled sacrifice, so we may
+share His divine glory, and, resting on His own faithful
+word, may follow the calm motion of His Ascension,
+assured that where He is there we shall be also, and
+that the manhood which is exalted in Him is the
+prophecy that all who love Him will share His glory.
+The question for us all is, have we in us 'the mind that
+was in Christ'? and the other question is, what is that
+name to us? Can we say, 'Thy mighty name salvation
+is'? If in our deepest hearts we grasp that name, and
+with unfaltering lips can say that 'there is none other
+name under heaven given amongst men whereby we
+must be saved but the name of Jesus,' then we shall
+know that</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="To us with Thy dear name are given">
+<tr><td align='left'>'To us with Thy dear name are given,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Pardon, and holiness, and heaven.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13. For it is God which
+worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil</span>. ii. 12, 13.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'What God hath joined together, let no man put
+asunder!' Here are, joined together, in the compass
+of one practical exhortation, the truths which, put
+asunder, have been the war-cries and shibboleths of
+contending sects ever since. <i>Faith</i> in a finished salvation,
+and yet <i>work;</i> God working all <i>in</i> me, and yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+I able and bound to work likewise; God upholding and
+sustaining His child to the very end; 'perfecting that
+which concerns him,' making his salvation certain and
+sure, and yet the Christian working 'with fear and
+trembling,' lest he should be a castaway and come
+short of the grace of God;&mdash;who does not recognise in
+these phrases the mottoes that have been written on
+the opposing banners in many a fierce theological
+battle, waged with much harm to both sides, and
+ending in no clear victory for either? Yet here they
+are blended in the words of one who was no less
+profound a thinker than any that have come after, and
+who had the gift of a divine inspiration to boot.</p>
+
+<p>Not less remarkable than the fusion here of
+apparent antagonisms, the harmonising of apparent
+opposites, is the intensely practical character of the
+purpose for which they are adduced at all. Paul has
+no idea of giving his disciples a lesson in abstract
+theology, or laying for them a foundation of a
+philosophy of free will and divine sovereignty; he is
+not merely communicating to these Philippians truths
+for their creed, but precepts for their deeds. The
+Bible knows nothing of an unpractical theology, but,
+on the other hand, the Bible knows still less of an
+untheological morality. It digs deep, bottoming the
+simplest right action upon right thinking, and going
+down to the mountain bases on which the very pillars
+of the universe rest, in order to lay there, firm and
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'immoveable'">immovable</ins>, the courses of the temple of a holy life.
+Just as little as Scripture gives countenance to the
+error that makes religion theology rather than life,
+just so little does it give countenance to the far more
+contemptible and shallower error common in our day,
+which <i>says</i>, Religion is not theology, but life; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+<i>means</i>, 'Therefore, it does not matter what theology
+you have, you can work a good life out with any
+creed!' The Bible never teaches unpractical speculations,
+and the Bible never gives precepts which do not
+rest on the profoundest truths. Would God, brethren,
+that we all had souls as wide as would take in the
+whole of the many-sided scriptural representation of
+the truths of the Gospel, and so avoid the narrowness
+of petty, partial views of God's infinite counsel; and
+that we had as close, direct, and as free communication
+between head, and heart, and hand, as the Scripture
+has between precept and practice!</p>
+
+<p>But in reference more especially to my text. Keeping
+in view these two points I have already suggested,
+namely,&mdash;that it is the reconciling of apparent opposites,
+and that it is intensely practical, I find in it these
+three thoughts;&mdash;First, a Christian has his whole
+salvation accomplished for him, and yet he is to work
+it out. Secondly, a Christian has everything done in
+him by God, and yet he is to work. Lastly, a Christian
+has his salvation certainly secured, and yet he is to
+fear and tremble.</p>
+
+<p>I. In the first place, A Christian man has his whole
+salvation already accomplished for him in Christ, and
+yet he is to work it out.</p>
+
+<p>There are two points absolutely necessary to be kept
+in view in order to a right understanding of the words
+before us, for the want of noticing which it has become
+the occasion of terrible mistakes. These are&mdash;the persons
+to whom it is addressed, and the force of the
+scriptural expression 'salvation.' As to the first, this
+exhortation has been misapplied by being addressed to
+those who have no claim to be Christians, and by having
+such teaching deduced from it as, You do your part, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+God will do His; You work, and God will certainly
+help you; You co-operate in the great work of
+your salvation, and you will get grace and pardon
+through Jesus Christ. Now let us remember the very
+simple thing, but very important to the right understanding
+of these words, that none but Christian
+people have anything to do with them. To all others,
+to all who are not already resting on the finished
+salvation of Jesus Christ, this injunction is utterly
+inapplicable. It is addressed to the 'beloved, who
+have always obeyed'; to the 'saints in Christ Jesus,
+which are at Philippi.' The whole Epistle is addressed,
+and this injunction with the rest, to Christian men.
+That is the first thing to be remembered. If there be
+any of you, who have thought that these words of
+Paul's to those who had believed on Christ contained a
+rule of action for you, though you have not rested
+your souls on Him, and exhorted you to try to win
+salvation by your own doings, let me remind you of
+what Christ said when the Jews came to Him in a
+similar spirit and asked Him, 'What shall we do that
+we may work the works of God?' His answer to
+them was, and His answer to you, my brother, is, '<i>This</i>
+is the work of God, that ye should <i>believe</i> in Him whom
+He hath sent.' That is the first lesson: Not <i>work</i>, but
+<i>faith;</i> unless there be faith, no work. Unless you are
+a Christian, the passage has nothing to do with you.</p>
+
+<p>But now, if this injunction be addressed to those
+who are looking for their salvation only to the perfect
+work of Christ, how can they be exhorted to work it
+out themselves? Is not the oft-recurring burden of
+Paul's teaching 'not by works of righteousness, which
+we have done, but by His mercy He saved us'? How
+does this text harmonise with these constantly re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>peated
+assertions that Christ has done all for us, and
+that we have nothing to do, and can do nothing? To
+answer this question, we have to remember that that
+scriptural expression, 'salvation,' is used with considerable
+width and complexity of signification. It sometimes
+means the whole of the process, from the beginning
+to the end, by which we are delivered from
+sin in all its aspects, and are set safe and stable at
+the right hand of God. It sometimes means one or
+other of three different parts of that process&mdash;either
+deliverance from the guilt, punishment, condemnation
+of sin; or secondly, the gradual process of deliverance
+from its power in our own hearts; or thirdly, the
+completion of that process by the final and perfect
+deliverance from sin and sorrow, from death and the
+body, from earth and all its weariness and troubles,
+which is achieved when we are landed on the other
+side of the river. Salvation, in one aspect, is a thing
+<i>past</i> to the Christian; in another, it is a thing <i>present;</i>
+in a third, it is a thing <i>future</i>. But all these three are
+one; all are elements of the one deliverance&mdash;the one
+mighty and perfect act which includes them all.</p>
+
+<p>These three all come equally from Christ Himself.
+These three all depend equally on His work and His
+power. These three are all given to a Christian man
+in the first act of faith. But the attitude in which he
+stands in reference to that <i>accomplished</i> salvation
+which means deliverance from sin as a penalty and a
+curse, and that in which he stands to the continuing
+and progressive salvation which means deliverance
+from the power of evil in his own heart, are somewhat
+different. In regard to the one, he has only to take
+the finished blessing. He has to exercise faith and
+faith alone. He has nothing to do, nothing to add,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+in order to fit himself for it, but simply to receive the
+gift of God, and to believe on Him whom He hath
+sent. But then, though that reception involves what
+shall come after it, and though every one who has
+and holds the first thing, the pardon of his transgression,
+has and holds thereby and therein his growing
+sanctifying and his final glory, yet the salvation
+which means our being delivered from the evil that is
+in our hearts, and having our souls made like unto
+Christ, is one which&mdash;free gift though it be&mdash;is not
+ours on the sole condition of an initial act of faith,
+but is ours on the condition of continuous faithful
+reception and daily effort, not in our own strength,
+but in God's strength, to become like Him, and to
+make our own that which God has given us, and which
+Christ is continually bestowing upon us.</p>
+
+<p>The two things, then, are not inconsistent&mdash;an
+accomplished salvation, a full, free, perfect redemption,
+with which a man has nothing to do at all, but
+to take it;&mdash;and, on the other hand, the injunction to
+them who have received this divine gift: 'Work out
+your own salvation.' Work, as well as believe, and in
+the daily practice of faithful obedience, in the daily
+subjugation of your own spirits to His divine power,
+in the daily crucifixion of your flesh with its affections
+and lusts, in the daily straining after loftier heights of
+godliness and purer atmospheres of devotion and love&mdash;make
+more thoroughly your own that which you
+possess. Work into the substance of your souls that
+which you <i>have</i>. Apprehend that for which you are
+apprehended of Christ. 'Give all diligence to make
+your calling and election sure'; and remember that
+not a past act of faith, but a present and continuous
+life of loving, faithful work in Christ, which is His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+and yet yours, is the 'holding fast the beginning of
+your confidence firm unto the end.'</p>
+
+<p>II. In the second place, God works all in us, and yet
+we have to work.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no mistake about the good faith
+and firm emphasis&mdash;as of a man who knows his own
+mind, and <i>knows</i> that his word is true&mdash;with which
+the Apostle holds up here the two sides of what I
+venture to call the one truth; 'Work out your own
+salvation&mdash;for God works in you.' Command implies
+power. Command and power involve duty. The
+freedom of the Christian's action, the responsibility of
+the believer for his Christian growth in grace, the
+committal to the Christian man's own hands of the
+means of sanctifying, lie in that injunction, 'Work
+out your own salvation.' Is there any faltering, any
+paring down or cautious guarding of the words, in
+order that they may not seem to clash with the other
+side of the truth? No: Paul does not say, 'Work it
+out; <i>yet</i> it is God that worketh in you'; not 'Work it
+out <i>although</i> it is God that worketh in you'; not 'Work
+it out, but then it must always be remembered and
+taken as a caution that it is God that worketh in
+you!' He blends the two things together in an
+altogether different connection, and sees&mdash;strangely to
+some people, no contradiction, nor limitation, nor
+puzzle, but a ground of encouragement to cheerful
+obedience. Do you work, '<i>for</i> it is God that worketh
+in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.'
+And does the Apostle limit the divine operation?
+Notice how his words seem picked out on purpose to
+express most emphatically its all-pervading energy.
+Look how his words seem picked out on purpose to
+express with the utmost possible emphasis that all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+which a good man is, and does, is its fruit. It is God
+that <i>worketh in</i> you. That expresses more than bringing
+outward means to bear upon heart and will. It
+speaks of an inward, real, and efficacious operation of
+the Indwelling Spirit of all energy on the spirit in
+which He dwells. 'Worketh in you <i>to will</i>'; this
+expresses more than the presentation of motives from
+without, it points to a direct action on the will, by
+which impulses are originated within. God puts in
+you the first faint motions of a better will. 'Worketh
+in you, doing as well as willing'; this points to all
+practical obedience, to all external acts as flowing
+from His grace in us, no less than all inward good
+thoughts and holy desires.</p>
+
+<p>It is not that God gives men the power, and then
+leaves them to make the use of it. It is not that the
+desire and purpose come forth from Him, and that
+then we are left to ourselves to be faithful or unfaithful
+stewards in carrying it out. The whole process,
+from the first sowing of the seed until its last blossoming
+and fruiting, in the shape of an accomplished act,
+of which God shall bless the springing&mdash;it is all God's
+together! There is a thorough-going, absolute attribution
+of every power, every action, all the thoughts
+words, and deeds of a Christian soul, to God. No words
+could be selected which would more thoroughly cut
+away the ground from every half-and-half system
+which attempts to deal them out in two portions, part
+God's and part mine. With all emphasis Paul attributes
+all to God.</p>
+
+<p>And none the less strongly does he teach, by the
+implication contained in his earnest injunction, that
+human responsibility, that human control over the
+human will, and that reality of human agency which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+are often thought to be annihilated by these broad
+views of God as originating all good in the soul and life.
+The Apostle thought that this doctrine did not absorb
+all our individuality in one great divine Cause which
+made men mere tools and puppets. He did not believe
+that the inference from it was, 'Therefore do you sit
+still, and feel yourselves the cyphers that you are.'
+His practical conclusion is the very opposite. It is&mdash;God
+does all, therefore do you work. His belief in
+the power of God's grace was the foundation of the
+most intense conviction of the reality and indispensableness
+of his own power, and was the motive which
+stimulated him to vigorous action. Work, for God
+works in you.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these truths rests firmly on its own appropriate
+evidence. My own consciousness tells me that
+I am free, that I have power, that I am therefore
+responsible and exposed to punishment for neglect of
+duty. I know what I mean when I speak of the will
+of God, because I myself am conscious of a will. The
+power of God is an object of intelligent thought to
+me, because I myself am conscious of power. And on
+the other hand, that belief in a God which is one of
+the deep and universal beliefs of men contains in it,
+when it comes to be thought about, the belief in Him
+as the source of all power, as the great cause of all.
+If I believe in a God at all, I must believe that He
+whom I so call, worketh all things after the counsel of
+His own will. These two convictions are both given
+to us in the primitive beliefs which belong to us all.
+The one rests on consciousness, and underlies all our
+moral judgments. The other rests on an original
+belief, which belongs to man as such. These two
+mighty pillars on which all morality and all religion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+repose have their foundations down deep in our nature,
+and tower up beyond our sight. They seem to stand
+opposite to each other, but it is only as the strong
+piers of some tall arch are opposed. Beneath they
+repose on one foundation, above they join together
+in the completing keystone and bear the whole steady
+structure.</p>
+
+<p>Wise and good men have toiled to harmonise them,
+in vain. The task transcends the limits of human
+faculties, as exercised here, at all events. Perhaps the
+time may come when we shall be lifted high enough
+to see the binding arch, but here on earth we can only
+behold the shafts on either side. The history of controversy
+on the matter surely proves abundantly what
+a hopeless task they undertake who attempt to reconcile
+these truths. The attempt has usually consisted
+in speaking the one loudly and the other in a whisper,
+and then the opposite side has thundered what had
+been whispered, and has whispered very softly what
+had been shouted very loudly. One party lays hold of
+the one pole of the ark, and the other lays hold of
+that on the other side. The fancied reconciliation
+consists in paring down one half of the full-orbed
+truth to nothing, or in admitting it in words while
+every principle of the reconciler's system demands its
+denial. Each antagonist is strong in his assertions,
+and weak in his denials, victorious when he establishes
+his half of the whole, easily defeated when he tries to
+overthrow his opponent's.</p>
+
+<p>This apparent incompatibility is no reason for rejecting
+truths each commended to our acceptance on
+its own proper grounds. It may be a reason for not
+attempting to dogmatise about them. It may be a
+warning to us that we are on ground where our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+limited understandings have no firm footing, but it is
+no ground for suspecting the evidence which certifies
+the truths. The Bible admits and enforces them both.
+It never tones down the emphasis of its statement of
+the one for fear of clashing against the other, but
+points to us the true path for thought, in a firm
+grasp of both, in the abandonment of all attempts to
+reconcile them, and for practical conduct, in the peaceful
+trust in God who hath wrought all our works in
+us, and in strenuous working out of our own salvation.
+Let us, as we look back on that battlefield where
+much wiser men than we have fought in vain, doing
+little but raising up 'a little dust that is lightly laid
+again,' and building trophies that are soon struck
+down, learn the lesson it teaches, and be contented to
+say, The short cord of my plummet does not quite go
+down to the bottom of the bottomless, and I do not
+profess either to understand God or to understand
+man, both of which I should want to do before I understood
+the mystery of their conjoint action. Enough
+for me to believe that,</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="If any force we have, it is to ill">
+<tr><td align='left'>'If any force we have, it is to ill,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And all the power is God's, to do and eke to will.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Enough for me to know that I have solemn duties
+laid upon me, a life's task to be done, my deliverance
+from mine own evil to work out, and that I shall only
+accomplish that work when I can say with the Apostle,
+'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'</div>
+
+<p>God is all, but <i>thou</i> canst work! My brother, take
+this belief, that God worketh all in you, for the
+ground of your confidence, and feel that unless He do
+all, you can do nothing. Take this conviction, that
+thou canst work, for the spur and stimulus of thy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+life, and think, These desires in my soul come from a
+far deeper source than the little cistern of my own
+individual life. They are God's gift. Let me cherish
+them with the awful carefulness which their origin
+requires, lest I should seem to have received the grace
+of God in vain. These two streams of truth are like
+the rain-shower that falls upon the watershed of a
+country. The one half flows down the one side of the
+everlasting hills, and the other down the other.
+Falling into rivers that water different continents,
+they at length find the sea, separated by the distance
+of half the globe. But the sea into which they fall
+is one, in every creek and channel. And so, the truth
+into which these two apparent opposites converge, is
+'the depth of the wisdom and the knowledge of God,'
+whose ways are past finding out&mdash;the Author of all
+goodness, who, if we have any holy thought, has
+given it us; if we have any true desire, has implanted
+it; has given us the strength to do the right and to
+live in His fear; and who yet, doing all the willing and
+the doing, says to us, 'Because I do everything, therefore
+let not <i>thy</i> will be paralysed, or <i>thy</i> hand palsied;
+but because I do everything, therefore will <i>thou</i>
+according to My will, and do <i>thou</i> according to My
+commandments!'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly: The Christian has his salvation secured,
+and yet he is to fear and tremble.</p>
+
+<p>'Fear and trembling.' 'But,' you may say, 'perfect
+love casts out fear.' So it does. The fear which has
+torment it casts out. But there is another fear
+in which there is no torment, brethren; a fear and
+trembling which is but another shape of confidence
+and calm hope! Scripture does tell us that the believing
+man's salvation is certain. Scripture tells<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+us it is certain since he believes. And your faith
+can be worth nothing unless it have, bedded deep
+in it, that trembling distrust of your own power
+which is the pre-requisite and the companion of all
+thankful and faithful reception of God's infinite
+mercy. Your horizon ought to be full of fear, if your
+gaze be limited to yourself; but oh! above our earthly
+horizon with its fogs, God's infinite blue stretches
+untroubled by the mist and cloud which are earth-born.
+I, as working, have need to tremble and to
+fear, but I, as wrought upon, have a right to confidence
+and hope, a hope that is full of immortality, and an
+assurance which is the pledge of its own fulfilment.
+The worker is nothing, the Worker in him is all.
+Fear and trembling, when the thoughts turn to mine
+own sins and weaknesses, hope and confidence when
+they turn to the happier vision of God! 'Not I'&mdash;there
+is the tremulous self-distrust; 'the grace of God
+in me'&mdash;there is the calm assurance of victory. Forasmuch,
+then, as God worketh all things, be <i>you</i>
+diligent, faithful, prayerful, confident. Forasmuch as
+Christ has perfected the work for you, do <i>you</i> 'go on
+unto perfection.' Let all fear and trembling be yours,
+as a man; let all confidence and calm trust be yours
+as a child of God. Turn your confidence and your
+fears alike into prayer. 'Perfect, O Lord, that which
+concerneth me; forsake not the work of Thine own
+hands!'&mdash;and the prayer will evoke the merciful
+answer, 'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee
+God is faithful, who hath called you unto the Gospel
+of His Son; and <i>will</i> keep you unto His everlasting
+kingdom of glory.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>COPIES OF JESUS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Do all things without murmurings and disputings; 15. That ye may be blameless
+and harmless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and
+perverse generation, among whom ye are seen as lights in the world, 16. Holding
+forth the word of life.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> ii. 14-16 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We are told by some superfine modern moralists, that
+to regard one's own salvation as the great work of our
+lives is a kind of selfishness, and no doubt there may
+be a colour of truth in the charge. At least the
+meaning of the injunction to work out our own salvation
+may have been sometimes so misunderstood, and
+there have been types of Christian character, such as
+the ascetic and monastic, which have made the representation
+plausible. I do not think that there is much
+danger of anybody so misunderstanding the precept
+now. But it is worthy of notice that there stand here
+side by side two paragraphs, in the former of which
+the effort to work out one's own salvation is urged in
+the strongest terms, and in the other of which the
+regard for others is predominant. We shall see that
+the connection between these two is not accidental, but
+that one great reason for working out our salvation is
+here set forth as being the good we may thereby do to
+others.</p>
+
+<p>I. We note the one great duty of cheerful yielding
+to God's will.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear, I think, that the precept to do 'all things
+without murmurings and disputings' stands in the
+closest connection with what goes before. It is, in
+fact, the explanation of how salvation is to be wrought
+out. It presents the human side which corresponds to
+the divine activity, which has just been so earnestly
+insisted on. God works in us 'willing and doing,' let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+us on our parts do with ready submission all the things
+which He so inspires to will and to do.</p>
+
+<p>The 'murmurings' are not against men but against
+God. The 'disputings' are not wrangling with others
+but the division of mind in one's self-questionings,
+hesitations, and the like. So the one are more moral,
+the other more intellectual, and together they represent
+the ways in which Christian men may resist the action
+on their spirits of God's Spirit, 'willing,' or the action
+of God's providence on their circumstances, 'doing.'
+Have we never known what it was to have some course
+manifestly prescribed to us as right, from which we
+have shrunk with reluctance of will? If some course
+has all at once struck us as wrong which we had
+been long accustomed to do without hesitation, has
+there been no 'murmuring' before we yielded? A
+voice has said to us, 'Give up such and such a habit,' or
+'such and such a pursuit is becoming too engrossing':
+do we not all know what it is not only to feel obedience
+an effort, but even to cherish reluctance, and to let it
+stifle the voice?</p>
+
+<p>There are often 'disputings' which do not get the
+length of 'murmurings.' The old word which tried to
+weaken the plain imperative of the first command by
+the subtle suggestion, 'Yea, hath God said?' still is
+whispered into our ears. We know what it is to answer
+God's commands with a 'But, Lord.' A reluctant will is
+clever to drape itself with more or less honest excuses,
+and the only safety is in cheerful obedience and glad
+submission. The will of God ought not only to receive
+obedience, but prompt obedience, and such instantaneous
+and whole-souled submission is indispensable if
+we are to 'work out our own salvation,' and to present
+an attitude of true, receptive correspondence to that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+God, who 'works in us both to will and to do of His
+own good pleasure.' Our surrender of ourselves into
+the hands of God, in respect both to inward and outward
+things, should be complete. As has been profoundly
+said, that surrender consists 'in a continual
+forsaking and losing all self in the will of God, willing
+only what God from eternity has willed, forgetting
+what is past, giving up the time present to God, and
+leaving to His providence that which is to come,
+making ourselves content in the actual moment seeing
+it brings along with it the eternal order of God concerning
+us' (Madame Guyon).</p>
+
+<p>II. The conscious aim in all our activity.</p>
+
+<p>What God works in us for is that for which we too
+are to yield ourselves to His working, 'without murmurings
+and disputings,' and to co-operate with glad submission
+and cheerful obedience. We are to have as
+our distinct aim the building up of a character 'blameless
+and harmless, children of God without rebuke.'
+The blamelessness is probably in reference to men's
+judgment rather than to God's, and the difficulty of
+coming untarnished from contact with the actions and
+criticisms of a crooked and perverse generation is
+emphasised by the very fact that such blamelessness is
+the first requirement for Christian conduct. It was a
+feather in Daniel's cap that the president and princes
+were foiled in their attempt to pick holes in his conduct,
+and had to confess that they would not 'find any
+occasion against him, except we find it concerning the
+laws of his God.' God is working in us in order that
+our lives should be such that malice is dumb in their
+presence. Are we co-operating with Him? We are
+bound to satisfy the world's requirements of Christian
+character. They are sharp critics and sometimes un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>reasonable,
+but on the whole it would not be a bad rule
+for Christian people, 'Do what irreligious men expect
+you to do.' The worst man knows more than the best
+man practises, and his conscience is quick to decide the
+course for other people. Our weaknesses and compromises,
+and love of the world, might receive a salutary
+rebuke if we would try to meet the expectations which
+'the man in the street' forms of us.</p>
+
+<p>'Harmless' is more correctly pure, all of a piece,
+homogeneous and entire. It expresses what the
+Christian life should be in itself, whilst the former
+designation describes it more as it appears. The piece
+of cloth is to be so evenly and carefully woven that if
+held up against the light it will show no flaws nor
+knots. Many a professing Christian life has a veneer of
+godliness nailed thinly over a solid bulk of selfishness.
+There are many goods in the market finely dressed so
+as to hide that the warp is cotton and only the weft
+silk. No Christian man who has memory and self-knowledge
+can for a moment claim to have reached
+the height of his ideal; the best of us, at the best, are
+like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were iron and
+clay, but we ought to strain after it and to remember
+that a stain shows most on the whitest robe. What
+made David's sin glaring and memorable was its contradiction
+of his habitual nobler self. One spot more
+matters little on a robe already covered with many.
+The world is fully warranted in pointing gleefully or
+contemptuously at Christians' inconsistencies, and we
+have no right to find fault with their most pointed
+sarcasms, or their severest judgments. It is those
+'that bear the vessels of the Lord' whose burden
+imposes on them the duty 'be ye clean,' and makes any
+uncleanness more foul in them than in any other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Apostle sets forth the place and function of
+Christians in the world, by bringing together in the
+sharpest contrast the 'children of God' and a 'crooked
+and perverse generation.' He is thinking of the old
+description in Deuteronomy, where the ancient Israel
+is charged with forgetting 'Thy Father that hath
+bought thee,' and as showing by their corruption that
+they are a 'perverse and crooked generation.' The
+ancient Israel had been the Son of God, and yet had
+corrupted itself; the Christian Israel are 'sons of God'
+set among a world all deformed, twisted, perverted.
+'Perverse' is a stronger word than 'crooked,' which
+latter may be a metaphor for moral obliquity, like our
+own right and wrong, or perhaps points to personal
+deformity. Be that as it may, the position which the
+Apostle takes is plain enough. He regards the two
+classes as broadly separated in antagonism in the
+very roots of their being. Because the 'sons of God'
+are set in the midst of that 'crooked and perverse
+generation' constant watchfulness is needed lest they
+should conform, constant resort to their Father lest
+they should lose the sense of sonship, and constant
+effort that they may witness of Him.</p>
+
+<p>III. The solemn reason for this aim.</p>
+
+<p>That is drawn from a consideration of the office and
+function of Christian men. Their position in the midst
+of a 'crooked and perverse generation' devolves on
+them a duty in relation to that generation. They are
+to 'appear as lights in the world.' The relation between
+them and it is not merely one of contrast, but on their
+parts one of witness and example. The metaphor of
+light needs no explanation. We need only note that
+the word, 'are seen' or 'appear,' is indicative, a statement
+of fact, not imperative, a command. As the stars<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+lighten the darkness with their myriad lucid points, so
+in the divine ideal Christian men are to be as twinkling
+lights in the abyss of darkness. Their light rays forth
+without effort, being an involuntary efflux. Possibly
+the old paradox of the Psalmist was in the Apostle's
+mind, which speaks of the eloquent silence, in which
+'there is no speech nor language, and their voice is not
+heard,' but yet 'their line has gone out through all the
+earth, and their words unto the end of the world.'</p>
+
+<p>Christian men appear as lights by 'holding forth the
+word of life.' In themselves they have no brightness
+but that which comes from raying out the light that is
+in them. The word of life must live, giving life in us,
+if we are ever to be seen as 'lights in the world.' As
+surely as the electric light dies out of a lamp when the
+current is switched off, so surely shall we be light only
+when we are 'in the Lord.' There are many so-called
+Christians in this day who stand tragically unaware
+that their 'lamps are gone out.' When the sun rises
+and smites the mountain tops they burn, when its light
+falls on Memnon's stony lips they breathe out music,
+'Arise, shine, for thy light has come.'</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly one way of 'holding forth the word
+of life' must be to speak the word, but silent living
+'blameless and harmless' and leaving the secret of the
+life very much to tell itself is perhaps the best way for
+most Christian people to bear witness. Such a witness
+is constant, diffused wherever the witness-bearer is
+seen, and free from the difficulties that beset speech,
+and especially from the assumption of superiority
+which often gives offence. It was the sight of 'your
+good deeds' to which Jesus pointed as the strongest
+reason for men's 'glorifying your Father.' If we lived
+such lives there would be less need for preachers. 'If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+any will not hear the word they may without the word
+be won.' And reasonably so, for Christianity is a life
+and cannot be all told in words, and the Gospel is the
+proclamation of freedom from sin, and is best preached
+and proved by showing that we are free. The Gospel
+was lived as well as spoken. Christ's life was Christ's
+mightiest preaching.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="The word was flesh and wrought">
+<tr><td align='left'>'The word was flesh and wrought</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With human hands the creed of creeds.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>If we keep near to Him we too shall witness, and if
+our faces shine like Moses' as he came down from the
+mountain, or like Stephen's in the council chamber,
+men will 'take knowledge of us that we have been
+with Jesus.'</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A WILLING SACRIFICE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That I may have whereof to glory in the day of Christ, that I did not run in
+vain neither labour in vain. 17. Yea, and if I am offered upon the sacrifice and
+service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all. 18. And in the same manner
+do ye also joy, and rejoice with me.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> ii. 16-18 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We come here to another of the passages in which the
+Apostle pours out all his heart to his beloved Church.
+Perhaps there never was a Christian teacher (always
+excepting Christ) who spoke more about himself than
+Paul. His own experience was always at hand for
+illustration. His preaching was but the generalisation
+of his life. He had felt it all first, before he threw it
+into the form of doctrine. It is very hard to keep such
+a style from becoming egotism.</p>
+
+<p>This paragraph is remarkable, especially if we consider
+that this is introduced as a motive to their faithfulness,
+that thereby they will contribute to his joy at
+the last great testing. There must have been a very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+deep love between Paul and the Philippians to make
+such words as these true and appropriate. They open
+the very depths of his heart in a way from which a less
+noble and fervid nature would have shrunk, and express
+his absolute consecration in his work, and his eager
+desire for their spiritual good, with such force as would
+have been exaggeration in most men.</p>
+
+<p>We have here a wonderful picture of the relation
+between him and the church at Philippi which may well
+stand as a pattern for us all. I do not mean to parallel
+our relations with that between him and them, but it
+is sufficiently analogous to make these words very
+weighty and solemn for us.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Philippians' faithfulness Paul's glory in the
+day of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle strikes a solemn note, which was always
+sounding through his life, when he points to that great
+Day of Christ as the time when his work was to be
+tested. The thought of that gave earnestness to all
+his service, and in conjunction with the joyful thought
+that, however his work might be marred by failures
+and flaws, he himself was 'accepted in the beloved,'
+was the impulse which carried him on through a life
+than which none of Christ's servants have dared, and
+done, and suffered more for Him. Paul believed that,
+according to the results of that test, his position would
+in some sort be determined. Of course he does not
+here contradict the foundation principle of his whole
+Gospel, that salvation is not the result of our own
+works, or virtues, but is the free unmerited gift of
+Christ's grace. But while that is true, it is none the
+less true, that the degree in which believers receive
+that gift depends on their Christian character, both in
+their life on earth and in the day of Christ. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+element in that character is faithful work for Jesus.
+Faithful work indeed is not necessarily successful work,
+and many who are welcomed by Jesus, the judge, will
+have the memory of many disappointments and few
+harvested grains. It was not a reaper, 'bringing his
+sheaves with him,' who stayed himself against the
+experience of failure, by the assurance, 'Though Israel
+be not gathered yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of
+the Lord.' If our want of success, and others' lapse, and
+apostasy or coldness has not been occasioned by any
+fault of ours, there will be no diminution of our reward.
+But we can so seldom be sure of that, and even then
+there will be an absence of what might have added to
+gladness.</p>
+
+<p>We need not do more than note that the text plainly
+implies, that at that testing time men's knowledge
+of all that they did, and the results of it, will be
+complete. Marvellous as it seems to us, with our
+fragmentary memories, and the great tracts of our
+lives through which we have passed mechanically, and
+which seem to have left no trace on the mirror of our
+consciousness, we still, all of us, have experiences which
+make that all-recovering memory credible. Some passing
+association, a look, a touch, an odour, a sun-set
+sky, a chord of music will bring before us some trivial
+long-forgotten incident or emotion, as the chance
+thrust of a boat-hook will draw to the surface by its
+hair, a long-drowned corpse. If we are, as assuredly
+we are, writing with invisible ink our whole life's
+history on the pages of our own minds, and if we
+shall have to read them all over again one day, is it not
+tragic that most of us scribble the pages so hastily and
+carelessly, and forget that, 'what I have written I
+have written,' and what I have written I must read.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But there is another way of looking at Paul's words
+as being an indication of his warm love for the
+Philippians. Even among the glories, he would feel
+his heart filled with new gladness when he found them
+there. The hunger for the good of others which
+cannot bear to think even of heaven without their
+presence has been a master note of all true Christian
+teachers, and without it there will be little of the toil,
+of which Paul speaks in the context, 'running and
+labouring.' He that would win men's hearts for any
+great cause must give his heart to them.</p>
+
+<p>That Paul should have felt warranted in using such
+a motive with the Philippians tells how surely he
+reckoned on their true and deep love. He believes
+that they care enough for him to feel the power as a
+motive with them, that their faithfulness will make
+Paul more blessed amidst the blessings of heaven. Oh!
+if such love knit together all Christian teachers and
+their hearers in this time, and if the 'Day of Christ'
+burned before them, as it did before him, and if the
+vision stirred to such running and labouring as his,
+teachers and taught would oftener have to say, 'We
+are your rejoicing, even as ye are also ours in the Day
+of our Lord Jesus.' The voice of the man who is in the
+true 'Apostolic Succession' will dare to make the
+appeal, knowing that it will call forth an abundant
+answer, 'Look to yourselves that we lose not the
+things which we have wrought, but that we receive a
+full reward.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Paul's death an aid to the Philippians' faith.</p>
+
+<p>The general meaning of the Apostle's words is, 'If I
+have not only to run and labour, but to die in the
+discharge of my Apostolic Mission, I joy and rejoice,
+and I bid you rejoice with me.' We need only note<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+that the Apostle here casts his language into the forms
+consecrated for sacrifice. He will not speak of death
+by its own ugly and threadbare name, but thinks of
+himself as a devoted victim, and of his death as making
+the sacrifice complete. In the figure there is a solemn
+scorn of death, and at the same time a joyful recognition
+that it is the means of bringing him more nearly
+to God, with whom he would fain be. It is interesting,
+as showing the persistence of these thoughts in the
+Apostle's mind, that the word rendered in our text
+'offered,' which fully means 'poured out as a drink
+offering,' occurs again in the same connection in the
+great words of the swan song in <span class="smcap">ii.</span> Timothy, 'I am
+already being offered, and the time of my departure is
+come.' Death looked to him, when he looked it in the
+eyes, and the block was close by him, as it had done
+when he spoke of it to his Philippian friends.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be noted, in order to bring out more vividly
+the force of the figure, that Paul here speaks of
+the libation being poured '<i>on</i>' the sacrifice, as was the
+practice in heathen ritual. The sacrifice is the victim,
+'service' is the technical word for priestly ministration,
+and the general meaning is, 'If my blood is
+poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice ministered
+by you, which is your faith, I joy with you all.'
+This man had no fear of death, and no shrinking from
+'leaving the warm precincts of the cheerful day.' He
+was equally ready to live or to die as might best serve
+the name of Jesus, for to him 'to live was Christ,' and
+therefore to him it could be nothing but 'gain' to die.
+Here he seems to be treating his death as a possibility,
+but as a possibility only, for almost immediately afterwards
+he says, that he 'trusts in the Lord that I
+myself will come shortly.' It is interesting to notice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+the contrast between his mood of mind here and that
+in the previous chapter (i. 25) where the 'desire to
+depart and to be with Christ' is deliberately suppressed,
+because his continuous life is regarded as essential for
+the Philippians' 'progress and joy in faith.' Here he
+discerns that perhaps his death would do more for their
+faith than would his life, and being ready for either alternative
+he welcomes the possibility. May we not see
+in the calm heart, which is at leisure to think of death
+in such a fashion, a pattern for us all? Remember how
+near and real his danger was. Nero was not in the
+habit of letting a man, whose head had been in the
+mouth of the lion, take it out unhurt. Paul is no
+eloquent writer or poet playing with the idea of death,
+and trying to say pretty things about it, but a man
+who did not know when the blow would come, but <i>did</i>
+know that it would come before long.</p>
+
+<p>We may point here to the two great thoughts in
+Paul's words, and notice the priesthood and sacrifice
+of life, and the sacrifice and libation of death. The
+Philippians offered as their sacrifice their faith, and all
+the works which flow therefrom. Is that our idea of
+life? Is it our idea of faith? We have no gifts to
+bring, we come empty-handed unless we carry in our
+hands the offering of our faith, which includes the
+surrender of our will, and the giving away of our
+hearts, and is essentially laying hold of Christ's sacrifice.
+When we come empty, needy, sinful, but cleaving
+wholly to that perfect sacrifice of the Great Priest, we
+too become priests and our poor gift is accepted.</p>
+
+<p>But another possibility than that of a life of running
+and labour presented itself to Paul, and it is a revelation
+of the tranquillity of his heart in the midst of impending
+danger, all the more pathetic because it is entirely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+unconscious, that he should be free to cast his anticipations
+into that calm metaphor of being, 'offered
+upon the sacrifice and service of your faith.' His heart
+beats no faster, nor does the faintest shadow of reluctance
+cross his will, when he thinks of his death. All
+the repulsive accompaniments of a Roman execution
+fade away from his imagination. These are but
+negligible accidents; the substantial reality which
+obscures them all is that his blood will be poured out
+as a libation, and that by it his brethren's faith will be
+strengthened. To this man death had finally and
+completely ceased to be a terror, and had become what
+it should be to all Christians, a voluntary surrender
+to God, an offering to Him, an act of worship, of trust,
+and of thankful praise. Seneca, in his death, poured
+out a libation to Jupiter the Liberator, and if we could
+only know beforehand what death delivers us from,
+and admits us to, we should not be so prone to call it
+'the last enemy.' What Paul's death was for himself
+in the process of his perfecting called forth, and
+warranted, the 'joy' with which he anticipated it. It
+did no more for him than it will do for each of us, and
+if our vision were as clear, and our faith as firm as his,
+we should be more ready than, alas! we too often are,
+to catch up the exulting note with which he hails the
+possibility of its coming.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not the personal bearing only of his death
+that gives him joy. He thinks of it mainly as contributing
+to the furtherance of the faith of others. For
+that end he was spending the effort and toil of an
+effortful and toilsome life, and was equally ready to
+meet a violent and shameful death. He knew that 'the
+blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,' and
+rejoiced, and called upon his brethren also to 'joy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+rejoice' with him in his shedding of his martyr's
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>The Philippians might well have thought, as we all
+are tempted to think, that the withdrawal of those
+round whom our hearts desperately cling, and who
+seem to us to bring love and trust nearer to us, can
+only be loss, but surely the example in our text may
+well speak to our hearts of the way in which we should
+look at death for ourselves, and for our dearest. Their
+very withdrawal may send us nearer to Christ. The
+holy memories which linger in the sky, like the radiance
+of a sunken sun, may clothe familiar truths with unfamiliar
+power and loveliness. The thought of where
+the departed have gone may lift our thoughts wistfully
+thither with a new feeling of home. The path that
+they have trodden may become less strange to us, and
+the victory that they have won may prophesy that we
+too shall be 'more than conquerors through Him that
+loveth us.' So the mirror broken may turn us to the
+sun, and the passing of the dearest that can die may
+draw us to the Dearer who lives.</p>
+
+<p>Paul, living, rejoiced in the prospect of death. We
+may be sure that he rejoiced in it no less dead than
+living. And we may permissibly think of this text as
+suggesting how</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="The saints on earth and all the dead">
+<tr><td align='left'>'The saints on earth and all the dead</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">But one communion make,'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'>and are to be united in one joy. They rejoice for their
+own sakes, but their joy is not self-absorbed, and so
+putting them farther away from us. They look back
+upon earth, the runnings and labourings of the unforgotten
+life here; and are glad to bear in their hearts
+the indubitable token that they have 'not run in vain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+neither laboured in vain.' But surely the depth of
+their own repose will not make them indifferent to
+those who are still in the midst of struggle and toil,
+nor the fulness of their own felicity make them forget
+those whom they loved of old, and love now with the
+perfect love of Heaven. It is hard for us to rise to
+complete sympathy with these serenely blessed spirits,
+but yet we too should rejoice. Not indeed to the exclusion
+of sorrow, nor to the neglect of the great
+purpose to be effected in us by the withdrawal, as by
+the presence of dear ones, the furtherance of our faith,
+but having made sure that that purpose has been
+effected in us, we should then give solemn thanksgivings
+if it has. It is sad and strange to think of how
+opposite are the feelings about their departure, of those
+who have gone and of those who are left. Would it
+not be better that we should try to share theirs and
+so bring about a true union? We may be sure that
+their deepest desire is that we should. If some lips
+that we shall never hear any more, till we come where
+they are, could speak, would not they bring to us as
+their message from Heaven, Do 'ye also joy and rejoice
+with me'?</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PAUL AND TIMOTHY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy shortly unto you, that I also may
+be of good comfort, when I know your state. 20. For I have no man like-minded,
+who will care truly for your state. 21. For they all seek their own, not the things
+of Jesus Christ. 22. But ye know the proof of him, that, as a child serveth a
+father, so he served with me in furtherance of the gospel. 23. Him therefore I
+hope to send forthwith, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me: 24. But I
+trust in the Lord that I myself also shall come shortly.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> ii. 19-24 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Like all great men Paul had a wonderful power of
+attaching followers to himself. The mass of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+planet draws in small aerolites which catch fire as
+they pass through its atmosphere. There is no more
+beautiful page in the history of the early Church than
+the story of Paul and his companions. They gathered
+round him with such devotion, and followed him with
+such love. They were not small men. Luke and
+Aquila were among them, and they would have been
+prominent in most companies, but gladly took a place
+second to Paul. He impressed his own personality and
+his type of teaching on his followers as Luther did on
+his, and as many another great teacher has done.</p>
+
+<p>Among all these Timothy seems to have held a
+special place. Paul first found him on his second
+journey either at Derbe or Lystra. His mother, Eunice,
+was already a believer, his father a Greek. Timothy
+seems to have been converted on Paul's first visit, for
+on his second he was already a disciple well reported
+of, and Paul more than once calls him his 'son in the
+faith.' He seems to have come in to take John Mark's
+place as the Apostle's 'minister,' and from that time to
+have been usually Paul's trusted attendant. We hear
+of him as with the Apostle on his first visit to Philippi,
+and to have gone with him to Thessalonica and Ber&oelig;a,
+but then to have been parted until Corinth. Thence
+Paul went quickly up to Jerusalem and back to
+Antioch, from which he set out again to visit the
+churches, and made a special stay in Ephesus. While
+there he planned a visit to Macedonia and Achaia, in
+preparation for one to Jerusalem, and finally to Rome.
+So he sent Timothy and Erastus on ahead to Macedonia,
+which would of course include Philippi. After that
+visit to Macedonia and Greece Paul returned to
+Philippi, from which he sailed with Timothy in his
+company. He was probably with him all the way to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+Rome, and we find him mentioned as sharer in the
+imprisonment both here and in Colossians.</p>
+
+<p>The references made to him point to a very sweet,
+good, pure and gracious character without much
+strength, needing to be stayed and stiffened by the
+stronger character, but full of sympathy, unselfish
+disregard of self, and consecrated love to Christ. He
+had been surrounded with a hallowed atmosphere from
+his youth, and 'from a child had known the holy
+Scriptures,' and 'prophecies' like fluttering doves had
+gone before on him. He had 'often infirmities' and
+'tears.' He needed to be roused to 'stir up the gift
+that was in him,' and braced up 'not to be ashamed,'
+but to fight against the disabling 'spirit of fear,' and
+to be 'strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>The bond between these two was evidently very
+close, and the Apostle felt something of a paternal
+interest in the very weakness of character which was
+in such contrast to his own strength, and which obviously
+dreaded the discouragement which was likely to
+be produced by his own martyrdom. This favourite
+companion he will now send to his favourite church.
+The verses of our text express that intention, and give
+us a glimpse into the Apostle's thoughts and feelings
+in his imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>I. The prisoner's longing and hope.</p>
+
+<p>The first point which strikes us in this self-revelation
+of Paul's is his conscious uncertainty as to his future.
+In the previous chapter (ver. 25) he is confident that
+he will live. In the verses immediately preceding our
+text he faces the possibility of death. Here he recognises
+the uncertainty but still 'trusts' that he will be
+liberated, but yet he does not know 'how it may go
+with' him. We think of him in his lodging sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+hoping and sometimes doubting. He had a tyrant's
+caprice to depend on, and knew how a moment's whim
+might end all. Surely his way of bearing that suspense
+was very noteworthy and noble. It is difficult to keep
+a calm heart, and still more difficult to keep on steadily
+at work, when any moment might bring the victor's
+axe. Suspense almost enforces idleness, but Paul
+crowded these moments of his prison time with letters,
+and Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon
+are the fruits for which we are indebted to a period
+which would have been to many men a reason for
+throwing aside all work.</p>
+
+<p>How calmly too he speaks of the uncertain issue!
+Surely never was the possibility of death more quietly
+spoken of than in 'so soon as I shall see how it will go
+with me.' That means&mdash;'as soon as my fate is decided,
+be it what it may, I will send Timothy to tell you.'
+What a calm pulse he must have had! There is no
+attitudinising here, all is perfectly simple and natural.
+Can we look, do we habitually look, into the uncertain
+future with such a temper&mdash;accepting all that may be
+in its grey mists, and feeling that our task is to fill the
+present with strenuous loving service, leaving tomorrow
+with all its alternatives, even that tremendous
+one of life and death, to Him who will shape it to a
+perfect end?</p>
+
+<p>We note, further, the purpose of Paul's love. It is
+beautiful to see how he yearns over these Philippians
+and feels that his joy will be increased when he hears
+from them. He is sure, as he believes, to hear good,
+and news which will be a comfort. Among the souls
+whom he bore on his heart were many in the Macedonian
+city, and a word from them would be like 'cold
+water to a thirsty soul.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What a noble suppression of self; how deep and
+strong the tie that bound him to them must have been!
+Is there not a lesson here for all Christian workers, for
+all teachers, preachers, parents, that no good is to be
+done without loving sympathy? Unless our hearts go
+out to people we shall never reach their hearts. We may
+talk to them for ever, but unless we have this loving
+sympathy we might as well be silent. It is possible to
+pelt people with the Gospel, and to produce the effect
+of flinging stones at them. Much Christian work comes
+to nothing mainly for that reason.</p>
+
+<p>And how deep a love does he show in his depriving
+himself of Timothy for their sakes, and in his reason
+for sending him! Those reasons would have been for
+most of us the strongest reason for keeping him. It is
+not everybody who will denude himself of the help of
+one who serves him 'as a child serveth a father,' and
+will part with the only like-minded friend he has,
+because his loving eye will clearly see the state of
+others.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's expression of his purpose to send Timothy is
+very much more than a piece of emotional piety. He
+'hopes in the Lord' to accomplish his design, and that
+hope so rooted and conditioned is but one instance of
+the all-comprehending law of his life, that, to him, to
+'live is Christ.' His whole being was so interpenetrated
+with Christ's that all his thoughts and feelings were
+'in the Lord Jesus.' So should our purposes be. Our
+hopes should be derived from union with Him. They
+should not be the play of our own fancy or imagination.
+They should be held in submission to him, and ever with
+the limitation, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' We
+should be trusting to Him to fulfil them. If thus we
+hope, our hopes may lead us nearer to Jesus instead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+tempting us away from Him by delusive brightnesses.
+There is a religious use of hope not only when it is
+directed to heavenly certainties, and 'enters within the
+veil,' but even when occupied about earthly things.
+Spenser twice paints for us the figure of Hope, one has
+always something of dread in her blue eyes, the other,
+and the other only, leans on the anchor, and 'maketh
+not ashamed'; and her name is 'Hope in the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>II. The prisoner solitary among self-seeking men.</p>
+
+<p>With wonderful self-surrender the Apostle thinks of
+his lack of like-minded companions as being a reason
+for depriving himself of the only like-minded one who
+was left with him. He felt that Timothy's sympathetic
+soul would truly care for the Philippians' condition,
+and would minister to it lovingly. He could rely that
+Timothy would have no selfish by-ends to serve, but
+would seek the things of Jesus Christ. We know too
+little of the circumstances of Paul's imprisonment to
+know how he came to be thus lonely. In the other
+Epistles of the Captivity we have mention of a considerable
+group of friends, many of whom would
+certainly have been included in a list of the 'like-minded.'
+We hear, for example, of Tychicus, Onesimus,
+Aristarchus, John Mark, Epaphras, and Luke. What
+had become of them all we do not know. They were
+evidently away on Christian service, somewhere or
+other, or some of them perhaps had not yet arrived.
+At all events for some reason Paul was for the time
+left alone but for Timothy. Not that there were no
+Christian men in Rome, but of those who could have
+been sent on such an errand there were none in whom
+love to Christ and care for His cause and flock were
+strong enough to mark them as fit for it.</p>
+
+<p>So then we have to take account of Paul's loneliness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+in addition to his other sorrows, and we may well mark
+how calmly and uncomplainingly he bears it. We are
+perpetually hearing complaints of isolation and the
+difficulty of finding sympathy, or 'people who understand
+me.' That is often the complaint of a morbid
+nature, or of one which has never given itself the
+trouble of trying to 'understand' others, or of showing
+the sympathy for which it says that it thirsts. And
+many of these complaining spirits might take a lesson
+from the lonely Apostle. There never was a man,
+except Paul's Master and ours, who cared more for
+human sympathy, had his own heart fuller of it, and
+received less of it from others than Paul. But he had
+discovered what it would be blessedness for us all to
+lay to heart, that a man who has Christ for his companion
+can do without others, and that a heart in
+which there whispers, 'Lo, I am with you always,' can
+never be utterly solitary.</p>
+
+<p>May we not take the further lesson that the sympathy
+which we should chiefly desire is sympathy and fellow-service
+in Christian work? Paul did not want like-minded
+people in order that he might have the luxury
+of enjoying their sympathy, but what he wanted was
+allies in his work for Christ. It was sympathy in his
+care for the Philippians that he sought for in his
+messenger. And that is the noblest form of like-mindedness
+that we can desire&mdash;some one to hold the
+ropes for us.</p>
+
+<p>Note, too, that Paul does not weakly complain because
+he had no helpers. Good and earnest men are very
+apt to say much about the half-hearted way in which
+their brethren take up some cause in which they are
+eagerly interested, and sometimes to abandon it altogether
+for that reason. May not such faint hearts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+learn a lesson from him who had 'no man like-minded,'
+and yet never dreamt of whimpering because of it, or
+of flinging down his tools because of the indolence of
+his fellow-workers?</p>
+
+<p>There is another point to be observed in the Apostle's
+words here. He felt that their attitude to Christ determined
+his affinities with men. He could have no deep
+and true fellowship with others, whatever their name
+to live, who were daily 'seeking their own,' and at the
+same time leaving unsought 'the things of Jesus Christ.'
+They who are not alike in their deepest aims can have
+no real kindred. Must we not say that hosts of so-called
+Christian people do not seem to feel, if one can
+judge by the company they affect, that the deepest
+bond uniting men is that which binds them to Jesus
+Christ? I would press the question, Do we feel that
+nothing draws us so close to men as common love to
+Jesus, and that if we are not alike on that cardinal
+point there is a deep gulf of separation beneath a
+deceptive surface of union, an unfathomable gorge
+marked by a quaking film of earth?</p>
+
+<p>It is a solemn estimate of some professing Christians
+which the Apostle gives here, if he is including the
+members of the Roman Church in his judgment that
+they are not 'like-minded' with him, and are 'seeking
+their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.' We may
+rather hope that he is speaking of others around him,
+and that for some reason unknown to us he was at the
+time secluded from the Roman Christians. He brings
+out with unflinching precision the choice which determines
+a life. There is always that terrible 'either&mdash;or.'
+To live for Christ is the antagonist, and only antagonist
+of life for self. To live for self is death. To live
+for Jesus is the only life. There are two centres,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+heliocentric and geocentric as the scientists say. We
+can choose round which we shall draw our orbit, and
+everything depends on the choice which we make. To
+seek 'the things of Jesus Christ' is sure to lead to, and
+is the only basis of, care for men. Religion is the parent
+of compassion, and if we are looking for a man who
+will care truly for the state of others, we must do as
+Paul did, look for him among those who 'seek the
+things of Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>III. The prisoner's joy in loving co-operation.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle's eulogium on Timothy points to his
+long and intimate association with Paul and to the
+Philippians' knowledge of him as well as to the
+Apostle's clinging to him. There is a piece of delicate
+beauty in the words which we may pause for a moment
+to point out. Paul writes as 'a child serveth a father,'
+and the natural sequence would have been 'so he served
+me,' but he remembers that the service was not to him,
+Paul, but to another, and so he changes the words and
+says he 'served <i>with</i> me in furtherance of the Gospel.'
+We are both servants alike&mdash;Christ's servants for the
+Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's joy in Timothy's loving co-operation was so
+deep because Paul's whole heart was set on 'the furtherance
+of the Gospel.' Help towards that end was help
+indeed. We may measure the ardour and intensity of
+Paul's devotion to his apostolic work by the warmth
+of gratitude which he shows to his helper. They who
+contribute to our reaching our chief desire win our
+warmest love, and the catalogue of our helpers follows
+the order of the list of our aims. Timothy brought to
+Paul no assistance to procure any of the common
+objects of human desires. Wealth, reputation, success
+in any of the pursuits which attract most men might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+have been held out to the Apostle and not been thought
+worth stooping to take, nor would the offerer have
+been thanked, but any proffered service that had the
+smallest bearing on that great work to which Paul's
+life was given, and which his conscience told him there
+would be a curse on himself if he did not fulfil, was
+welcomed as a priceless gift. Do we arrange the lists
+of our helpers on the same fashion, and count that they
+serve us best who help us to serve Christ? It should be
+as much the purpose of every Christian life as it was
+that of Paul to spread the salvation and glory of the
+'name that is above every name.' If we lived as continually
+under the influence of that truth as he did,
+we should construe the circumstances of our lives,
+whether helpful or hindering, very differently, and we
+could shake the world.</p>
+
+<p>Christian unity is very good and infinitely to be
+desired, but the true field on which it should display
+itself is that of united work for the common Lord.
+The men who have marched side by side through a
+campaign are knit together as nothing else would bind
+them. Even two horses drawing one carriage will
+have ways and feelings and a common understanding,
+which they would never have attained in any other
+way. There is nothing like common work for clearing
+away mists. Much so-called Christian sympathy and
+like-mindedness are something like the penal cranks
+that used to be in jails, which generated immense
+power on this side of the wall but ground out nothing
+on the other.</p>
+
+<p>Let us not forget that in the field of Christian service
+there is room for all manner of workers, and that they
+are associated, however different their work. Paul
+often calls Timothy his 'fellow-labourer,' and once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
+gives him the eulogium, 'he worketh the work of the
+Lord as I also do.' Think of the difference between the
+two men in age, endowment, and sphere! Apparently
+Timothy at first had very subordinate work taking
+John Mark's place, and is described as being one of
+those who 'ministered' to Paul. It is the cup of cold
+water over again. All work done for the same Lord,
+and with the same motive is the same; 'he that receiveth
+a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive
+a prophet's reward.' When Paul associates Timothy
+with himself he is copying from afar off his Lord, who
+lets us think of even our poor deeds as done by those
+whom He does not disdain to call His fellow-workers.
+It would be worth living for if, at the last, He should
+acknowledge us, and say even of us, 'he hath served
+with Me in the Gospel.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PAUL AND EPAPHRODITUS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But I counted it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow-worker
+and fellow-soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need. 26.
+Since he longed after you all, and was sore troubled, because ye had heard that he
+was sick. 27. For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on
+him; and not on him only, but on me also, that I might not have sorrow upon
+sorrow. 28. I have sent him therefore the more diligently, that, when ye see him
+again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. 29. Receive him
+therefore in the Lord with all joy; and hold such in honour: 30. Because for the
+work of Christ he came nigh unto death, hazarding his life to supply that which
+was lacking in your service toward me.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> ii. 25-30 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Epaphroditus is one of the less known of Paul's
+friends. All our information about him is contained
+in this context, and in a brief reference in Chapter iv.
+His was a singular fate&mdash;to cross Paul's path, and for
+one short period of his life to be known to all the
+world, and for all the rest before and after to be
+utterly unknown. The ship sails across the track of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+the moonlight, and then vanishes ghost-like into
+darkness. Of all the inhabitants of Philippi at that
+time we know the names of but three, Euodias,
+Syntiche, and Epaphroditus, and we owe them all to
+Paul. The context gives us an interesting miniature
+of the last, and pathetic glimpses into the private life
+of the Apostle in his imprisonment, and it is worth our
+while to try to bring our historic imagination to bear
+on Epaphroditus, and to make him a living man.</p>
+
+<p>The first fact about him is, that he was one of the
+Philippian Christians, and sent by them to Rome,
+with some pecuniary or material help, such as comforts
+for Paul's prison-house, food, clothing, or money.
+There was no reliable way of getting these to Paul
+but to take them, and so Epaphroditus faced the long
+journey across Greece to Brindisi and Rome, and when
+arrived there threw himself with ardour into serving
+Paul. The Apostle's heartfelt eulogium upon him
+shows two phases of his work. He was in the first
+place Paul's helper in the Gospel, and his faithfulness
+there is set forth in a glowing climax, 'My brother
+and fellow-worker and fellow-soldier.' He was in the
+second place the minister to Paul's needs. There would
+be many ways of serving the captive, looking after his
+comfort, doing his errands, procuring daily necessaries,
+managing affairs, perhaps writing his letters, easing
+his chain, chafing his aching wrists, and ministering in
+a thousand ways which we cannot and need not
+specify. At all events he gladly undertook even
+servile work for love of Paul.</p>
+
+<p>He had an illness which was probably the consequence
+of his toil. Perhaps over-exertion in travel, or
+perhaps his Macedonian constitution could not bear
+the enervating air of Rome, or perhaps Paul's prison<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+was unhealthy. At any rate he worked till he made
+himself ill. The news reached Philippi in some round-about
+way, and, as it appears, the news of his illness
+only, not of his recovery. The difficulty of communication
+would sufficiently account for the partial
+intelligence. Then the report found its way back to
+Rome, and Epaphroditus got home-sick and was restless,
+uneasy, 'sore troubled,' as the Apostle says,
+because they had heard he had been sick. In his low,
+nervous state, barely convalescent, the thought of
+home and of his brethren's anxiety about him was too
+much for him. It is a pathetic little picture of the
+Macedonian stranger in the great city&mdash;pallid looks,
+recent illness, and pining for home and a breath of
+pure mountain air, and for the friends he had left. So
+Paul with rare abnegation sent him away at once,
+though Timothy was to follow shortly, and accompanied
+him with this outpouring of love and praise in
+his long homeward journey. Let us hope he got safe
+back to his friends, and as Paul bade them, they
+received him in the Lord with all joy, the echoes of
+which we almost hear as he passes out of our
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>In the remainder of this sermon we shall simply deal
+with the two figures which the text sets before us,
+and we may look first at the glimpses of Paul's character
+which we get here.</p>
+
+<p>We may note the generous heartiness of his praise
+in his associating Epaphroditus with himself as on full
+terms of equality, as worker and soldier, and the warm
+generosity of the recognition of all that he had done
+for the Apostle's comfort. Paul's first burst of gratitude
+and praise does not exhaust all that he has to say
+about Epaphroditus. He comes back to the theme in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+the last words of the context, where he says that the
+Philippian messenger had 'hazarded' his life, or, as we
+might put it with equal accuracy and more force, had
+'gambled' his life, or 'staked it on the die' for Paul's
+sake. No wonder that men were eager to risk their
+lives for a leader who lavished such praise and such
+love upon them. A man who never opens his lips
+but to censure or criticise, who fastens on faults as
+wasps do on blemished fruit, will never be surrounded
+by loyal love. Faithful service is most surely bought
+by hearty praise. A caressing hand on a horse's neck
+is better than a whip.</p>
+
+<p>We may further note the intensity of Paul's sympathy.
+He speaks of Epaphroditus' recovery as a
+mercy to himself 'lest he should have the sorrow of
+imprisonment increased by the sorrow of his friend's
+death.' That attitude of mind stands in striking contrast
+to the heroism which said, 'To me, to live is Christ
+and to die is gain,' but the two are perfectly consistent,
+and it was a great soul which had room for
+them both.</p>
+
+<p>We must not leave unnoticed the beautiful self-abnegation
+which sends off Epaphroditus as soon as
+he was well enough to travel, as a gift of the Apostle's
+love, in order to repay them for what they had done
+for him. He says nothing of his own loss or of how
+much more lonely he would be when the brother whom
+he had praised so warmly had left him alone. But he
+suns himself in the thought of the Philippians' joy,
+and in the hope that some reflection of it will travel
+across the seas to him, and make him, if not wholly
+glad, at any rate 'the less sorrowful.'</p>
+
+<p>We have also to notice Paul's delicate recognition of
+all friendly help. He says that Epaphroditus risked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+his life to 'supply that which was lacking in your
+service toward me.' That implies that all which the
+Philippians' ministration lacked was their personal
+presence, and that Epaphroditus, in supplying that,
+made his work in a real sense theirs. All the loving
+thoughts, and all the material expressions of them
+which Epaphroditus brought to Paul were fragrant
+with the perfume of the Philippians' love, 'an odour of
+a sweet smell, acceptable' to Paul as to Paul's Lord.</p>
+
+<p>We briefly note some general lessons which may be
+suggested by the picture of Epaphroditus as he stands
+by the side of Paul.</p>
+
+<p>The first one suggested is the very familiar one of
+the great uniting principle which a common faith in
+Christ brought into action. Think of the profound clefts
+of separation between the Macedonian and the Jew,
+the antipathies of race, the differences of language,
+the dissimilarities of manner, and then think of what
+an unheard-of new thing it must have been that a
+Macedonian should 'serve' a Jew! We but feebly
+echo Paul's rapture when he thought that there was
+'neither Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, but all
+were one in Christ Jesus,' and for all our talk about
+the unity of humanity and the like, we permit the old
+gulfs of separation to gape as deeply as ever. Dreadnoughts
+are a peculiar expression of the brotherhood
+of men after nineteen centuries of so-called
+Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>The terms in which the work of Epaphroditus is
+spoken of by Paul are very significant. He has no
+hesitation in describing the work done for himself as
+'the work of Christ,' nor in using, as the name for it,
+the word ('service'), which properly refers to the
+service rendered by priestly hands. Work done for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+Paul was done for Jesus, and that, not because of any
+special apostolic closeness of relation of Paul to Jesus,
+but because, like all other Christians, he was one with
+his Lord. 'The cup of cold water' given 'in the name
+of a disciple' is grateful to the lips of the Master. We
+have no reason to suppose that Epaphroditus took part
+with Paul in his more properly apostolic work, and
+the fact that the purely material help, and pecuniary
+service which most probably comprised all his 'ministering,'
+is honoured by Paul with these lofty designations,
+carries with it large lessons as to the sanctity of
+common life. All deeds done from the same motive
+are the same, however different they may be in regard
+to the material on which they are wrought. If our
+hearts are set to 'hallow all we find,' the most secular
+duties will be acts of worship. It is possible for us in
+the ordering of our own lives to fulfil the great
+prophecy with which Zechariah crowned his vision of
+the Future, 'In that day shall there be on the bells of
+the horses Holiness unto the Lord'; and the 'pots in
+the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the
+altar.'</p>
+
+<p>May we not further draw from Paul's words here a
+lesson as to the honour due to Christian workers? It
+was his brethren who were exhorted to receive their
+own messenger back again 'in the Lord with all joy,
+and to hold him in honour.' Possibly there were in
+Philippi some sharp tongues and envious spirits, who
+needed the exhortation. Whether there were so or no,
+the exhortation itself traces lightly but surely the
+lines on which Christians should render, and their
+fellow-Christians can rightly receive, even praise from
+men. If Epaphroditus were 'received in the Lord,'
+there would be no foolish and hurtful adulation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+him, nor prostration before him, but he would be
+recognised as but the instrument through which the
+true Helper worked, and not he, but the Grace of
+Christ in him would finally receive the praise. There
+are very many Christian workers who never get their
+due of recognition and welcome from their brethren,
+and there are many who get far more of both than
+belongs to them, and both they and the crowds who
+bring them adulation would be freed from dangers,
+which can scarcely be over-stated, if the spirit of Paul's
+warm-hearted praise of Epaphroditus were kept in
+view.</p>
+
+<p>Epaphroditus but passes across the illuminated disc
+of the lantern for a moment, and we have scarcely
+time to catch a glimpse of his face before it is lost to
+us. He and all his brethren are gone, but his name
+lives for ever, and Paul's praise of him and of his work
+outshines all else remembered of the city, where conquerors
+once reigned, and outside whose walls was
+fought a battle that decided for a time the fate of the
+world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREPARING TO END</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to
+me indeed is not irksome, but for you it is safe. 2. Beware of the dogs, beware
+of the evil workers, beware of the concision: 3. For we are the circumcision,
+who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence
+in the flesh.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 1-3 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The first words of the text show that Paul was beginning
+to think of winding up his letter, and the
+preceding context also suggests that. The personal
+references to Timothy and Epaphroditus would
+be in their appropriate place near the close,
+and the exhortation with which our text begins is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+also most fitting there, for it is really the key-note of
+the letter. How then does he come to desert his
+purpose? The answer is to be found in his next
+advice, the warning against the Judaising teachers
+who were his great antagonists all his life. A reference
+to them always roused him, and here the
+vehement exhortation to mark them well and avoid
+them opens the flood-gates. Forgetting all about his
+purpose to come to an end, he pours out his soul in the
+long and precious passage which follows. Not till the
+next chapter does he get back to his theme in the
+reiterated exhortation (iv. 4), 'Rejoice in the Lord
+alway; again I will say, rejoice.' This outburst is very
+remarkable, for its vehemence is so unlike the tone of
+the rest of the letter. That is calm, joyous, bright, but
+this is stormy and impassioned, full of flashing and
+scathing words, the sudden thunder-storm breaks in
+on a mellow, autumn day, but it hurtles past and the
+sun shines out again, and the air is clearer.</p>
+
+<p>Another question suggested is the reference of the
+second half of verse 1. What are 'the same things'
+to write which is 'safe' for the Philippians? Are
+they the injunctions preceding to 'rejoice in the
+Lord,' or that following, the warning against the
+Judaisers? The former explanation may be recommended
+by the fact that 'Rejoice' is in a sense the
+key-note of the Epistle, but on the other hand, the
+things where repetition would be 'safe' would most
+probably be warnings against some evil that
+threatened the Philippians' Christian standing.</p>
+
+<p>There is no attempt at unity in the words before us,
+and I shall not try to force them into apparent oneness,
+but follow the Apostle's thoughts as they lie.
+We note<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. The crowning injunction as to the duty of Christian
+gladness.</p>
+
+<p>A very slight glance over the Epistle will show how
+continually the note of gladness is struck in it. Whatever
+in Paul's circumstances was 'at enmity with joy'
+could not darken his sunny outlook. This bird could
+sing in a darkened cage. If we brought together the
+expressions of his joy in this letter, they would yield
+us some precious lessons as to what were the sources
+of his, and what may be the sources of ours. There
+runs through all the instances in the Epistle the
+implication which comes out most emphatically in his
+earnest exhortation, 'Rejoice in the Lord always, and
+again I say rejoice.' The true source of true joy lies
+in our union with Jesus. To be in Him is the condition
+of every good, and, just as in the former verses
+'trust <i>in the Lord</i>' is set forth, so the joy which comes
+from trust is traced to the same source. The joy that
+is worthy, real, permanent, and the ally of lofty
+endeavour and noble thoughts has its root in union
+with Jesus, is realised in communion with Him, has
+Him for its reason or motive, and Him for its safeguard
+or measure. As the passages in question in this
+Epistle show, such joy does not shut out but hallows
+other sources of satisfaction. In our weakness
+creatural love and kindness but too often draw us
+away from our joy in Him. But with Paul the
+sources which we too often find antagonistic were
+harmoniously blended, and flowed side by side in the
+same channel, so that he could express them both in
+the one utterance, 'I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that
+now at the last your care of me hath flourished
+again.'</p>
+
+<p>We do not sufficiently realise the Christian duty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+Christian joy, some of us even take mortified countenances
+and voices in a minor key as marks of grace,
+and there is but little in any of us of 'the joy in the
+Lord' which a saint of the Old Testament had learned
+was our 'strength.' There is plenty of gladness amongst
+professing Christians, but a good many of them would
+resent the question, is your gladness 'in the Lord'?
+No doubt any deep experience in the Christian life
+makes us aware of much in ourselves that saddens,
+and may depress, and our joy in Him must always be
+shaded by penitent sorrow for ourselves. But that
+necessary element of sadness in the Christian life
+is not the cause why so many Christian lives have
+little of the buoyancy and hope and spontaneity
+which should mark them. The reason rather lies in
+the lack of true union with Christ, and habitual
+keeping of ourselves 'in the love of God.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Paul's apology for reiteration.</p>
+
+<p>He is going to give once more old and well-worn precepts
+which are often very tedious to the hearer, and
+not much less so to the speaker. He can only say that
+to him the repetition of familiar injunctions is not
+'irksome,' and that to them it is 'safe.' The diseased
+craving for 'originality' in the present day tempts us
+all, hearers and speakers alike, and we ever need to
+be reminded that the staple of Christian teaching
+must be old truths reiterated, and that it is not time
+to stop proclaiming them until all men have begun
+to practise them. But a speaker must try to make
+the thousandth repetition of a truth fresh to himself,
+and not a wearisome form, or a dead commonplace,
+by freshening it to his own mind and by living on it
+in his own practice, and the hearers must remember
+that it is only the completeness of their obedience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+that antiquates the commandment. The most threadbare
+commonplace becomes a novelty when occasions
+for its application arise in our own lives, just as a
+prescription may lie long unnoticed in a drawer, but
+when a fever attacks its possessor it will be quickly
+drawn out and worth its weight in gold.</p>
+
+<p>III. Paul's warning against teachers of a ceremonial
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>It scarcely seems congruous with the tone of the
+rest of this letter that the preachers whom Paul so
+scathingly points out here had obtained any firm
+footing in the Philippian Church, but no doubt there,
+as everywhere, they had dogged Paul's footsteps, and
+had tried as they always did to mar his work. They
+had not missionary fervour or Christian energy
+enough to initiate efforts amongst the Gentiles so as
+to make them proselytes, but when Paul and his companions
+had made them Christians, they did their
+best, or their worst, to insist that they could not be
+truly Christians, unless they submitted to the outward
+sign of being Jews. Paul points a scathing
+finger at them when he bids the Philippians 'beware,'
+and he permits himself a bitter retort when he lays
+hold of the Jewish contemptuous word for Gentiles
+which stigmatised them as 'dogs,' that is profane and
+unclean, and hurls it back at the givers. But he is
+not indulging in mere bitter retorts when he brings
+against these teachers the definite charge that they
+are 'evil workers.' People who believed that an outward
+observance was the condition of salvation would
+naturally be less careful to insist upon holy living.
+A religion of ceremonies is not a religion of morality.
+Then the Apostle lets himself go in a contemptuous
+play of words, and refuses to recognise that these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+sticklers for circumcision had themselves been circumcised.
+'I will not call them the circumcision,
+they have not been circumcised, they have only been
+gashed and mutilated, it has been a mere fleshly
+maiming.' His reason for denying the name to them
+is his profound belief that it belonged to true
+Christians. His contemptuous reference puts in a
+word, the principle which he definitely states in
+another place, 'He is not a Jew who is one outwardly;
+neither is that circumcision which is outward
+in the flesh.'</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle here is not only telling us who are
+the truly circumcised, but at the same time he is
+telling us what makes a Christian, and he states three
+points in which, as I take it, he begins at the end and
+works backwards to the beginning. 'We are the
+circumcision who worship in the Spirit of God'&mdash;that
+is the final result&mdash;'and glory in Christ Jesus'&mdash;'and
+have no confidence in the flesh'&mdash;that is the starting-point.
+The beginning of all true Christianity is distrust
+of self. What does Paul mean by 'flesh'?
+Body? Certainly not. Animal nature, or the passions
+rooted in it? Not only these, as may be seen by noting
+the catalogue which follows of the things in the flesh,
+in which he might have trusted. What are these?
+'Circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Israel,
+of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews'&mdash;these
+belong to ritual and race; 'as touching the
+law a Pharisee'&mdash;that belongs to ecclesiastical
+standing; 'concerning zeal persecuting the church'&mdash;that
+has nothing to do with the animal nature: 'touching
+the righteousness which is in the law blameless'&mdash;that
+concerns the moral nature. All these come
+under the category of the 'flesh,' which, therefore,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+plainly includes all that belongs to humanity apart
+from God. Paul's old-fashioned language translated
+into modern English just comes to this&mdash;it is vain to
+trust in external connection with the sacred community
+of the Church, or in participation in any of its
+ordinances and rites. To Paul, Christian rites and
+Jewish rites were equally rites and equally insufficient
+as bases of confidence. Do not let us fancy that
+dependence on these is peculiar to certain forms of
+Christian belief. It is a very subtle all-pervasive
+tendency, and there is no need to lift up Nonconformist
+hands in holy horror at the corruptions of
+Romanism and the like. Their origin is not solely
+priestly ambition, but also the desires of the so-called
+laity. Demand creates a supply, and if there were
+not people to think, 'Now it shall be well with me
+because I have a Levite for my priest,' there would be
+no Levites to meet their wishes.</p>
+
+<p>Notice that Paul includes amongst the things belonging
+to the flesh this 'touching the righteousness
+which is in the law blameless.' Many of us can say
+the same. We do our duties so far as we know them,
+and are respectable law-abiding people, but if we are
+trusting to that, we are of the 'flesh.' Have we estimated
+what God is, and what the real worth of our
+conduct is? Have we looked not at our actions but at
+our motives, and seen them as they are seen from
+above or from the inside? How many 'blameless'
+lives are like the scenes in a theatre, effective and
+picturesque, when seen with the artificial glory of the
+footlights? But go behind the scenes and what do we
+find? Dirty canvas and cobwebs. If we know ourselves
+we know that a life may have a fair outside,
+and yet not be a thing to trust to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The beginning of our Christianity is the consciousness
+that we are 'naked and poor, and blind, and in
+need of all things.' Men come to Jesus Christ by many
+ways, thank God, and I care little by what road they
+come so long as they get there, nor do I insist upon
+any stereotyped order of religious experience. But
+of this I am very sure: that unless we abandon confidence
+in ourselves, because we have seen ourselves in
+the light of God's law, we have not learned all that
+we need nor laid hold of all that Christ gives. Let
+us measure ourselves in the light of God, and we shall
+learn that we have to take our places beside Job,
+when the vision of God silenced his protestations of
+innocence. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of
+the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I
+abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.'</p>
+
+<p>That self-distrust should pass into glorying in Christ
+Jesus. If a man has learned his emptiness he will
+look about for something to fill it. Unless I know
+myself to be under condemnation because of my sin,
+and fevered, disturbed, and made wretched, by
+its inward consequences which forbid repose, the
+sweetest words of Gospel invitation will pass by me
+like wind whistling through an archway. But if once
+I have been driven from self-confidence, then like
+music from heaven will come the word, 'Trust in
+Jesus.' The seed dropped into the ground puts out a
+downward-going shoot, which is the root, and an
+upward-growing one, which is the stalk. The downward-going
+shoot is 'no confidence in the flesh,' the
+upward-going is 'glorying in Christ Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>But that word suggests the blessed experience of
+triumph in the possession of the Person known and
+felt to be all, and to give all that life needs. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+true Christian should ever be triumphant in a felt
+experience, in a Name proved to be sufficient, in a
+power which infuses strength into his weakness, and
+enables him to do the will of God. It is for want of
+utter self-distrust and absolute faith in Christ that
+'glorying' in Him is so far beyond the ordinary mood
+of the average Christian. You say, 'I hope, sometimes
+I doubt, sometimes I fear, sometimes I tremblingly
+trust.' Is that the kind of experience that these
+words shadow? Why do we continue amidst the mist
+when we might rise into the clear blue above the
+obscuring pall? Only because we are still in some
+measure clinging to self, and still in some measure
+distrusting our Lord. If our faith were firm and full
+our 'glorying' would be constant. Do not be contented
+with the prevailing sombre type of Christian
+life which is always endeavouring, and always foiled,
+which is often doubting and often indifferent, but
+seek to live in the sunshine, and expatiate in the
+light, and 'rejoice in the Lord always.'</p>
+
+<p>'Glorying' not only describes an attitude of mind,
+but an activity of life. Many things to-day tempt
+Christian people to speak of their religion and of
+their Lord in an apologetic tone, in the face of strong
+and educated unbelief; but if we have within us, as we
+all may have, and ought to have, the triumphant
+assurance of His sufficiency, nearness, and power, it
+will not be with bated breath that we shall speak of
+our Master, or apologise for our Christianity, but we
+shall obey the commandment, 'Lift up thy voice with
+strength; lift it up, be not afraid.' Ring out the
+name and be proud that you can ring it out, as the
+Name of <i>your</i> Lord, and <i>your</i> Saviour, and <i>your</i> all-sufficient
+Friend. Whatever other people say, you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+have the experience, if you are a Christian, which more
+than answers all that they can say.</p>
+
+<p>We have said that the final result set forth here
+by Paul is, 'We worship by the Spirit of God.' The
+expression translated worship is the technical word for
+rendering priestly service. Just as Paul has asserted
+that uncircumcised Christians, not circumcised Jews,
+are the true circumcision, so he asserts that they are the
+true priests, and that these officials in the outward
+temple at Jerusalem have forfeited the title, and that
+it has passed over to the despised followers of the
+despised Nazarene. If we have 'no confidence in
+the flesh,' and are 'glorying in Christ Jesus,' we are
+all priests of the most high God. 'Worship in the
+Spirit' is our function and privilege. The externals
+of ceremonial worship dwindle into insignificance.
+They may be means of helping, or they may be means
+of hindering, the 'worship in the Spirit,' which I
+venture to think all experience shows is the more
+likely to be pure and real, the less it invokes the aid of
+flesh and sense. To make the senses the ladder for
+the soul by which to climb to God is quite as likely to
+end in the soul's going down the ladder as up it.
+Aesthetic aids to worship are crutches which keep a
+lame soul lame all its days.</p>
+
+<p>Such worship is the obligation as well as the prerogative
+of the Christian. We have no right to say
+that we have truly forsaken confidence in ourselves,
+and are truly 'glorying' in Christ Jesus, unless our
+daily life is communion with God, and all your work
+'worshipping by the Spirit of God.' Such communion
+and worship are possible for those, and for those only,
+who have 'no confidence in the flesh' and who 'glory
+in Christ Jesus.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE LOSS OF ALL</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh: if any other man
+thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised the eighth day
+of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching
+the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the
+righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. Howbeit what things were
+gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count all
+things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for
+whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span>
+iii. 4-8 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have already noted that in the previous verses the
+Apostle is beginning to prepare for closing his letter,
+but is carried away into the long digression of which
+our text forms the beginning. The last words of the
+former verse open a thought of which his mind is
+always full. It is as when an excavator strikes his
+pickaxe unwittingly into a hidden reservoir and the
+blow is followed by a rush of water, which carries
+away workmen and tools. Paul has struck into the
+very deepest thoughts which he has of the Gospel and
+out they pour. That one antithesis, 'the loss of all, the
+gain of Christ,' carried in it to him the whole truth of
+the Christian message. We may well ask ourselves
+what are the subjects which lie so near our hearts,
+and so fill our thoughts, that a chance word sets us off
+on them, and we cannot help talking of them when
+once we begin.</p>
+
+<p>The text exemplifies another characteristic of Paul's,
+his constant habit of quoting his own experience as
+illustrating the truth. His theology is the generalisation
+of his own experience, and yet that continual
+autobiographical reference is not egotism, for the light
+in which he delights to present himself is as the
+recipient of the great grace of God in pardoning
+sinners. It is a result of the complete saturation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+himself with the Gospel. It was to him no mere body of
+principles or thoughts, it was the very food and life
+of his life. And so this characteristic reveals not only
+his natural fervour of character, but the profound and
+penetrating hold which the Gospel had on his whole
+being.</p>
+
+<p>In our text he presents his own experience as the
+type to which ours must on the whole be conformed.
+He had gone through an earthquake which had
+shattered the very foundations of his life. He had
+come to despise all that he had counted most precious,
+and to clasp as the only true treasures all that he had
+despised. With him the revolution had turned his
+whole life upside down. Though the change cannot be
+so subversive and violent with us, the forsaking of
+self-confidence must be as real, and the clinging to
+Jesus must be as close, if our Christianity is to be
+fervid and dominant in our lives.</p>
+
+<p>I. The treasures that were discovered to be worthless.</p>
+
+<p>We have already had occasion in the previous sermon
+to refer to Paul's catalogue of 'things that were gain'
+to him, but we must consider it a little more closely
+here. We may repeat that it is important for understanding
+Paul's point of view to note that by 'flesh'
+he means the whole self considered as independent of
+God. The antithesis to it is 'spirit,' that is humanity
+regenerated and vitalised by Divine influence. 'Flesh,'
+then, is humanity not so vitalised. That is to say, it is
+'self,' including both body and emotions, affections,
+thoughts, and will.</p>
+
+<p>As to the points enumerated, they are those which
+made the ideal to a Jew, including purity of race,
+punctilious orthodoxy, flaming zeal, pugnacious an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>tagonism,
+and blameless morality. With reference
+to race, the Jewish pride was in 'circumcision on the
+eighth day,' which was the exclusive privilege of one
+of pure blood. Proselytes might be circumcised in
+later life, but one of the 'stock of Israel' only on
+the 'eighth day.' Saul of Tarsus had in earlier
+days been proud of his tribal genealogy, which had
+apparently been carefully preserved in the Gentile
+home, and had shared ancestral pride in belonging to
+the once royal tribe, and perhaps in thinking that the
+blood of the king after whom he was named flowed in
+his veins. He was a 'Hebrew of the Hebrews,' which
+does not mean, as it is usually taken to do, intensely,
+superlatively Hebrew, but simply is equivalent to 'myself
+a Hebrew, and come from pure Hebrew ancestors
+on both sides.' Possibly also the phrase may have
+reference to purity of language and customs as well
+as blood. These four items make the first group.
+Paul still remembers the time when, in the blindness
+which he shared with his race, he believed that these
+wholly irrelevant points had to do with a man's
+acceptance before God. He had once agreed with
+the Judaisers that 'circumcision' admitted Gentiles
+into the Jewish community, and so gave them a right
+to participate in the blessings of the Covenant.</p>
+
+<p>Then follow the items of his more properly religious
+character, which seem in their three clauses to make a
+climax. 'As touching the law a Pharisee,' he was of
+the 'straitest sect,' the champions and representatives
+of the law. 'As touching zeal persecuting the Church,'
+it was not only in Judaism that the mark of zeal for
+a cause has been harassing its opponents. We can
+almost hear a tone of sad irony as Paul recalls that
+past, remembering how eagerly he had taken charge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+of the clothes trusted to his care by the witnesses who
+stoned Stephen, and how he had 'breathed threatening
+and slaughter' against the disciples. 'As touching the
+righteousness which is in the law found blameless,' he
+is evidently speaking of the obedience of outward
+actions and of blamelessness in the judgment of men.</p>
+
+<p>So we get a living picture of Paul and of his confidence
+before he was a Christian. All these grounds
+for pride and self-satisfaction were like triple armour
+round the heart of the young Pharisee, who rode out
+of Jerusalem on the road to Damascus. How little he
+thought that they would all have been pierced and
+have dropped from him before he got there! The
+grounds of his confidence are antiquated in form, but
+in substance are modern. At bottom the things in
+which Paul's 'flesh' trusted are exactly the same as
+those in which many of us trust. Even his pride of
+race continues to influence some of us. We have got
+the length of separating between our nationality and
+our acceptance with God, but we have still a kind of
+feeling that 'God's Englishmen,' as Milton called them,
+have a place of their own, which is, if not a ground of
+confidence before God, at any rate a ground for carrying
+ourselves with very considerable complacency
+before men. It is not unheard of that people should
+rely, if not on 'circumcision on the eighth day,' on
+an outward rite which seems to connect them with a
+visible Church. Strict orthodoxy takes the place
+among us which Pharisaism held in Paul's mind before
+he was a Christian, and it is easier to prove our zeal
+by pugnacity against heretics, than by fervour of
+devotion. The modern analogue of Paul's, 'touching
+the righteousness which is in the law blameless,' is 'I
+have done my best, I have lived a decent life. My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+religion is to do good to other people.' All such talk,
+which used to be a vague sentiment or excuse, is now
+put forward in definite theoretical substitution for
+the Christian Truth, and finds numerous teachers and
+acceptors. But how short a way all such grounds of
+confidence go to satisfy a soul that has once seen the
+vision that blazed in on Paul's mind on the road to
+Damascus!</p>
+
+<p>II. The discovery of their worthlessness.</p>
+
+<p>'These have I counted loss for Christ.' There is a
+possibility of exaggeration in interpreting Paul's
+words. The things that were 'gain' to him were in
+themselves better than their opposites. It is better to
+to be 'blameless' than to have a life all stained with
+foulness and reeking with sins. But these 'gains'
+were 'losses,' disadvantages, in so far as they led him
+to build upon them, and trust in them as solid wealth.
+The earthquake that shattered his life had two shocks:
+the first turned upside down his estimate of the value
+of his gains, the second robbed him of them. He first
+saw them to be worthless, and then, so far as others'
+judgment went, he was stripped of them. Actively he
+'counted them loss,' passively he 'suffered the loss of
+all things.' His estimate came, and was followed by
+the practical outcome of his brethren's excommunication.</p>
+
+<p>What changed his estimate? In our text he answers
+the question in two forms: first he gives the simple,
+all-sufficient monosyllabic reason for his whole life&mdash;'for
+Christ,' and then he enlarges that motive into
+'the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
+Lord.' The former carries us back straight to the
+vision which revolutionised Paul's life, and made him
+abjure all which he had trusted, and adore what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+had abhorred. The latter dwells a little more upon
+the subjective process which followed on the vision,
+but the two are substantially the same, and we need
+only note the solemn fulness of the name of 'Jesus
+Christ,' and the intense motion of submission and of
+personal appropriation contained in the designation,
+'my Lord.' It was not when he found his way blinded
+into Damascus that he had learned that knowledge,
+or could apprehend its 'excellency.' The words are
+enriched and enlarged by later experiences. The
+sacrifice of his earlier 'gains' had been made before
+the 'excellency of the knowledge' had been discerned.
+It was no mere intellectual perception which could be
+imparted in words, or by eyesight, but here as always
+Paul by 'knowledge' means experience which comes
+from possession and acquaintance, and which therefore
+gleams ever before us as we move, and is capable of
+endless increase, in the measure in which we are true
+to the estimate of 'gains' and 'losses' to which our
+initial vision of Him has led us. At first we may not
+know that that knowledge excels all others, but as we
+grow in acquaintance with Jesus, and in experience of
+Him, we shall be sure that it transcends all others,
+because He does and we possess Him.</p>
+
+<p>The revolutionising motive may be conceived of in
+two ways. We have to abandon the lower 'gains' in
+order to gain Christ, or to abandon these because we
+have gained Him. Both are true. The discernment
+of Christ as the one ground of confidence is ever
+followed by the casting away of all others. Self-distrust
+is a part of faith. When we feel our feet upon
+the rock, the crumbling sands on which we stood are
+left to be broken up by the sea. They who have seen
+the Apollo Belvedere will set little store by plaster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+of Paris casts. In all our lives there come times
+when the glimpse of some loftier ideal shows up our
+ordinary as hollow and poor and low. And when
+once Christ is seen, as Scripture shows Him, our former
+self appears poor and crumbles away.</p>
+
+<p>We are not to suppose that the act of renunciation
+must be completed before a second act of possession
+is begun. That is the error of many ascetic books.
+The two go together, and abandonment in order to
+win merges into abandonment because we have won.
+The strongest power to make renunciation possible is
+'the expulsive power of a new affection.' When the
+heart is filled with love to Christ there is no sense of
+'loss,' but only of 'exceeding gain,' in casting away all
+things for Him.</p>
+
+<p>III. The continuous repetition of the discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Paul compares his present self with his former
+Christian self, and with a vehement 'Yea, verily,'
+affirms his former judgment, and reiterates it in still
+more emphatic terms. It is often easy to depreciate
+the treasures which we possess. They sometimes grow
+in value as they slip from our hands. It is not usual
+for a man who has 'suffered the loss of all things' to
+follow their disappearance by counting them 'but
+dung.' The constant repetition through the whole
+Christian course of the depreciatory estimate of
+grounds of confidence is plainly necessary. There are
+subtle temptations to the opposite course. It is hard
+to keep perfectly clear of all building on our own
+blamelessness or on our connection with the Christian
+Church, and we have need ever to renew the estimate
+which was once so epoch-making, and which 'cast
+down all our imaginations and high things.' If we do
+not carefully watch ourselves, the whispering tempter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+that was silenced will recover his breath again, and be
+once more ready to drop into our ears his poisonous
+suggestions. We have to take pains and 'give earnest
+heed' to the initial, revolutionary estimate, and to see
+that it is worked out habitually in our daily lives. It
+is a good exchange when we count 'all but loss for
+the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our
+Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE GAIN OF CHRIST</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my
+own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the
+righteousness which is of God by faith.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 8, 9 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is not everybody who <i>can</i> say what is his aim in life.
+Many of us have never thought enough about it to
+have one beyond keeping alive. We lose life in seeking
+for the means of living. Many of us have such a multitude
+of aims, each in its turn drawing us, that no one
+of them is predominant and rules the crowd. There is
+no strong hand at the tiller, and so the ship washes
+about in the trough of the waves.</p>
+
+<p>It is not everybody who <i>dares</i> to say what is his aim
+in life. We are ashamed to acknowledge even to ourselves
+what we are not at all ashamed to do. Paul
+knew his aim, and was not afraid to speak it. It was
+high and noble, and was passionately and persistently
+pursued. He tells us it here, and we can see his soul
+kindling as he speaks. We may note how there is here
+the same double reference as we found in the previous
+verses, gaining Christ corresponding to the previous
+loss for Christ, and the later words of our text being
+an expansion of the 'excellency of the knowledge of
+Christ Jesus.' No man will ever succeed in any life's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+purpose, unless like Paul he is enthusiastic about it.
+If his aim does not rouse his fervour when he speaks
+of it, he will never accomplish it. We may just remark
+that Paul does not suppose his aim to be wholly unattained,
+even although he does not count himself to
+'have apprehended.' He knows that he has gained
+Christ, and is 'found in Him,' but he knows also that
+there stretch before him the possibilities of infinite
+increase.</p>
+
+<p>I. His life's aim was to have the closest possession of,
+and incorporation in, Christ.</p>
+
+<p>His two expressions, 'that I may gain Christ and be
+found in Him,' are substantially identical in meaning,
+though they put the same truth from different sides,
+and with some variety of metaphor. We may deal
+with them separately.</p>
+
+<p>The 'gain' is of course the opposite of the 'loss.' His
+balance-sheet has on one side 'all things lost,' on the
+other 'Christ gained,' and that is profitable trading.
+But we have to go deeper than such a metaphor, and
+to give full scope to the Scriptural truth, that Christ
+really imparts Himself to the believing soul. There is
+a real communication of His own life to us, and thereby
+we live, as He Himself declared, 'He that hath the Son
+hath life.' The true deep sense in which we possess
+Christ is not to be weakened down, as it, alas! so often
+is in our shallow Christianity, which is but the echo of
+a shallow experience, and a feeble hold of that possession
+of the Son to which Jesus called us, as the condition
+of our possession of life. Christ is thus Himself
+possessed by all our faculties, each after its kind; head
+and heart, passions and desires, hopes and longings,
+may each have Him abiding in them, guiding them
+with His strong and gentle hand, animating them into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+nobler life, restraining and controlling, gradually transforming
+and ultimately conforming them to His own
+likeness. Till that Divine Indweller enters in, the
+shrine is empty, and unclean things lurk in its hidden
+corners. To be a man full summed in all his powers,
+each of us must 'gain Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>The other expression in the text, 'be found in Him,'
+presents the same truth from the completing point of
+view. We gain Christ in us when we are 'found in Him.'
+We are to be incorporated as members are in the body,
+or imbedded as a stone in the foundation, or to go
+back to the sweetest words, which are the source of all
+these representations, included as 'a branch in the
+vine.' We are to be in Him for safety and shelter, as
+fugitives take refuge in a strong tower when an enemy
+swarms over the land.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="And lo! from sin and grief and shame">
+<tr><td align='left'>'And lo! from sin and grief and shame,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I hide me, Jesus, in Thy name.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>We are to be in Him that the life sap may freely flow
+through us. We are to be in Him that the Divine
+Love may fall on us, and that in Jesus we may receive
+our portion of all which is His heritage.</div>
+
+<p>This mutual possession and indwelling is possible if
+Jesus be the Son of God, but the language is absurd in
+any other interpretation of His person. It is clearly in
+its very nature capable of indefinite increase, and as
+containing in itself the supply of all which we need for
+life and blessedness, is fitted to be what nothing else
+can pretend to be, without wrecking the lives that are
+unwise enough to pursue it&mdash;the sovereign aim of a
+human life. In following it, and only in following it,
+the highest wisdom says Amen to the aspiration of the
+lowliest faith. 'This one thing I do.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. Paul's life's aim was righteousness to be received.</p>
+
+<p>He goes on to present some of the consequences
+which follow on his gaining Christ and being 'found in
+Him,' and before all others he names as his aim the
+possession of 'righteousness.' We must remember that
+Paul believed that righteousness in the sense of 'justification'
+had been his from the moment when Ananias
+came to where he was sitting in darkness, and bid him
+be baptized and wash away his sins. The word here
+must be taken in its full sense of moral perfectness;
+even if we included only this in our thoughts of his
+life's aim, how high above most men would he tower!
+But his statement carries him still higher above, and
+farther away from, the common ideas of moral perfection,
+and what he means by righteousness is widely separated
+from the world's conception, not only in regard
+to its elements, but still more in regard to its source.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to lose oneself in a dreamy mysticism
+which has had much to say of 'gaining Christ and being
+found in Him,' and has had too little to say about
+'having righteousness,' and so has turned out to be an
+ally of indifference and sometimes of unrighteousness.
+Buddhism and some forms of mystical Christianity
+have fallen into a pit of immorality from which Paul's
+sane combination here would have saved them. There
+is no danger in the most mystical interpretation of the
+former statement of his aim, when it is as closely
+connected as it is here with the second form in which
+he states it. I have just said that Paul differed from
+men who were seeking for righteousness, not only
+because his conceptions of what constituted it were not
+the same as theirs, though he in this very letter
+endorses the Greek ideals of 'virtue and praise,' but
+also and more emphatically because he looked for it as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+a gift, and not as the result of his own efforts. To him
+the only righteousness which availed was one which
+was not 'my own,' but had its source in, and was
+imparted by, God. The world thought of righteousness
+as the general designation under which were summed
+up a man's specific acts of conformity to law, the sum
+total reached by the addition of many specific instances
+of conformity to a standard of duty. Paul had learned
+to think of it as preceding and producing the specific
+acts. The world therefore said, and says, Do the deeds
+and win the character; Paul says, Receive the character
+and do the deeds. The result of the one conception of
+righteousness is in the average man spasmodic efforts
+after isolated achievements, with long periods between
+in which effort subsides into torpor. The result in
+Paul's case was what we know: a continuous effort to
+keep his mind and heart open for the influx of the
+power which, entering into him, would make him able
+to do the specific acts which constitute righteousness.
+The one road is a weary path, hard to tread, and, as a
+matter of fact, not often trodden. To pile up a righteousness
+by the accumulation of individual righteous acts
+is an endeavour less hopeful than that of the coral
+polypes slowly building up their reef out of the depths
+of the Pacific, till it rises above the waves. He who
+assumes to be righteous on the strength of a succession
+of righteous acts, not only needs a profounder idea of
+what makes his acts righteous, but should also make a
+catalogue of his unrighteous ones and call himself
+wicked. The other course is the final deliverance of a
+man from dependence upon his own struggles, and substitutes
+for the dreary alternations of effort and torpor,
+and for the imperfect harvest of imperfectly righteous
+acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes painful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness
+which is 'my own,' is to seek what we shall never
+find, and what, if found, would crumble beneath us.
+To seek the righteousness which is from God, is to seek
+what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed
+receivers blessedly know is more than they dreamed of.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul looked for this great gift as a gift in Christ.
+It was when he was 'found in Him' that it became his,
+and he was found 'blameless.' That gift of an imparted
+life, which has a bias towards all goodness, and the
+natural operation of which is to incline all our faculties
+towards conformity with the will of God, is bestowed
+when we 'win Christ.' Possessing Him, we possess it.
+It is not only 'imputed,' as our fathers delighted to say,
+but it is 'imparted.' And because it is the gift of God
+in Christ, it was in Paul's view received by faith. He
+expresses that conviction in a double form in our text.
+It is 'through faith' as the channel by which it passes
+into our happy hands. It is 'by faith,' or, more
+accurately, 'upon faith,' as the foundation on which
+it rests, or the condition on which it depends. Our
+trust in Christ does bring His life to us to sanctify us,
+and the plain English of all this blessed teaching is&mdash;if
+we wish to be better let us trust Christ and get Him
+into the depths of our lives, and righteousness will be
+ours. That transforming Presence laid up in 'the hidden
+man of the heart,' will be like some pungent scent in
+a wardrobe which keeps away moths, and gives out a
+fragrance that perfumes all that hangs near it.</p>
+
+<p>But all which we have been saying is not to be understood
+as if there was no effort to be made, in order
+to receive, and to live manifesting, the 'righteousness
+which is of God.' There must be the constant
+abandonment of self, and the constant utilising of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+grace given. The righteousness is bestowed whenever
+faith is exercised. The hand is never stretched out
+and the gift not lodged in it. But it is a life's aim to
+possess the 'righteousness which is of God by faith,'
+because that gift is capable of indefinite increase, and
+will reward the most strenuous efforts of a believing
+soul as long as life continues.</p>
+
+<p>III. Paul's life's aim stretches beyond this life.</p>
+
+<p>Shall we be chargeable with crowding too much
+meaning into his words, if we fix on his remarkable
+expression, 'be found in Him,' as containing a clear
+reference to that great day of final judgment? We
+recall other instances of the use of the same expression
+in connections which unmistakably point to that time.
+Such as 'being clothed we shall not be found naked,' or
+'the proof of your faith .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. might be found unto
+praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus
+Christ,' or 'found of Him in peace without spot, blameless.'
+In the light of these and similar passages, it
+does not seem unreasonable to suppose that this 'being
+found' does include a reference to the Apostle's place
+after death, though it is not confined to that. He
+thinks of the searching eye of the Judge taking keen
+account, piercing through all disguises, and wistfully
+as well as penetratingly scrutinising characters,
+till it finds that for which it seeks. They who are
+'found in Him' in that day, are there and thus for
+ever. There is no further fear of falling out of union
+with Him, or of being, by either gradual and unconscious
+stages, or by sudden and overmastering assaults,
+carried out of the sacred enclosure of the City of
+Refuge in which they dwell henceforth for ever. A
+dangerous presumptuousness has sometimes led to the
+over-confident assertion, 'Once in Christ always in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+Christ.' But Paul teaches us that that security of
+permanent dwelling in Him is to be for ever in this
+life the aim of our efforts, rather than an accomplished
+fact. So long as we are here, the possibility of falling
+away cannot be shut out, and there must always rise
+before us the question, Am I in Christ? Hence there
+is need for continual watchfulness, self-control, and
+self-distrust, and the life's aim has to be perpetual, not
+only because it is capable of indefinite expansion, but
+because our weakness is capable of deserting it. It is
+only when at the last we are found by Him, in Him,
+that we are there for ever, with all dangers of departure
+from Him at an end. In that City of Refuge,
+and there only, 'the gates shall not be shut at all,' not
+solely because no enemies shall attempt to come in,
+but also because no citizens shall desire to go out.</p>
+
+<p>We should ever have before us that hour, and our
+life's aim should ever definitely include the final
+scrutiny in which many a hidden thing will come to
+light, many a long-lost thing be found, and each man's
+ultimate place in relation to Jesus Christ will be freed
+from uncertainties, ambiguities, hypocrisies, and disguises,
+and made plain to all beholders. In that great
+day of 'finding,' some of us will have to ask with sinking
+hearts, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' and
+others will break forth into the glad acclaim, 'I have
+found Him,' or rather 'been found of Him.'</p>
+
+<p>So we have before us the one reasonable aim for a
+man to have Christ, to be found in Him, to have His
+righteousness. It is reasonable, it is great enough to
+absorb all our energies, and to reward them. It will
+last a lifetime, and run on undisturbed beyond life.
+Following it, all other aims will fall into their places.
+Is this my aim?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SAVING KNOWLEDGE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship
+of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death; if by any means I may
+attain unto the resurrection from the dead.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 10-11 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have seen how the Apostle was prepared to close
+his letter at the beginning of this chapter, and how
+that intention was swept away by the rush of new
+thoughts. His fervid faith caught fire when he turned
+to think of what he had lost, and how infinitely more
+he had gained in Christ. His wealth is so great that
+it cannot be crowded into the narrow space of one
+brief sentence, and after all the glowing words which
+precede our text, he feels that he has not yet adequately
+set forth either his present possessions or his
+ultimate aims. So here he continues the theme which
+might have seemed most fully dealt with in the great
+thoughts that occupied us in the former sermon, but
+which still wait to be completed here. They are most
+closely connected with the former, and the unity of the
+sentence is but a parallel to the oneness of the idea.
+The elements of our present text constitute a part of
+the Apostle's aim in life, and may be dealt with as
+such.</p>
+
+<p>I. Paul's life's aim was the knowledge of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>That sounds an anti-climax after 'Gain' and 'Be in
+Him.' These phrases seem to express a much more
+intimate relation than this, but we must note that it
+is no mere theoretical or intellectual knowledge which
+is intended. Such knowledge would need no surrender
+or suffering 'the loss of all things.' We can only buy
+the knowledge of Christ at such a rate, but we can buy
+knowledge about Him very much cheaper. Such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>
+knowledge would not be worth the price; it lies on the
+surface of the soul, and does nothing. Many a man
+amongst us has it, and it is of no use to him. If Paul
+had undergone all that he had undergone and sacrificed
+all that he had given up, and for his reward had
+only gained accurate knowledge about Christ, he had
+certainly wasted his life and made a bad bargain.
+But as always, so here, to know means knowledge
+based upon experience. Did Christ mean that a correct
+creed was eternal life when He said, 'This is life
+eternal to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus
+Christ whom Thou has sent?' Did Paul mean the dry
+light of the understanding when he prayed that the
+Ephesians might know the love of Christ which passeth
+knowledge, in order to be filled with all the fulness of
+God? Clearly we have to go much deeper down than
+that superficial interpretation in order to reach the
+reality of the New Testament conception of knowledge.
+It is co-extensive with life, and is built upon inward
+experience. In a word, it is one aspect of winning
+Jesus. It is consciousness contemplating its riches,
+counting its gains. As a man knows the bliss of
+parental or wedded love only by having it, or as he
+knows the taste of wine only by drinking it, or the
+glory of music only by hearing it, and the brightness
+of the day only by seeing it, so we know Christ only by
+winning Him. There must first be the perception and
+possession by sense or emotion, and then the reflection
+on the possession by understanding. This applies to
+all religious truth. It must be possessed ere it be
+fully known. Like the new name written upon the
+Apocalyptic stone, 'No one knoweth but he that
+receiveth it.'</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge which was Paul's life's aim was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+knowledge of a Person: the object determines the
+nature of the knowledge. The mental act of knowing
+a proposition or a science or even of knowing about a
+person by hearing of him is different from that of
+knowing people when we have lived beside them. We
+need not be afraid of attaching too familiar a meaning
+to this word of our text, if we say that it implies personal
+acquaintance with the Christ whom we know.
+Of course we come to know Him in the first instance
+through the medium of statements about Him, and we
+cannot too strongly insist, in these days of destructive
+criticism, on the absolute necessity of accepting the
+Gospel statements as to the life of Jesus as the only
+possible method of knowing Him. But then, beyond
+that acceptance of the record must come the application
+and appropriation of it, and the transmutation of
+a historical fact into a personal experience. We may
+take an illustration from any of the Scriptural truths
+about Jesus:&mdash;For instance, Scripture declares Him to
+be our Redeemer. One man believes Him to be so,
+welcomes Him into his life as such, and finds Him to
+be such. Another man believes Him to be so, but never
+puts His redeeming power to the proof. Is the knowledge
+of these two rightly called by the same name?
+That which comes after experience is surely not
+rightly designated by the same title as that which has
+no vivification nor verification of such a sort to build
+on, and is the mere product of the understanding.
+There is nothing which the great mass of so-called
+Christians need more than to have forced into their
+thoughts the difference between these two kinds of
+knowledge of Christ. There are thousands of them
+who, if asked, are ready to profess that they know
+Jesus, but to whom He has never been anything more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span>
+than a partially understood article of an uncared for
+creed, and has never been in living contact with their
+needs, nor known for their strength in weakness, their
+comforter in sorrow, 'their life in death,' their all in all.</p>
+
+<p>To deepen that experimental knowledge of Jesus is a
+worthy aim for the whole life, and is a process that
+may go on indefinitely through it all. To know Him
+more and more is to have more of heaven in us. To be
+penetrating ever deeper into His fulness, and finding
+every day new depths to penetrate is to have a fountain
+of freshness in our dusty days that will never fail
+or run dry. There is only one inexhaustible person,
+and that is Jesus Christ. We have all fulness in our
+Lord: we have already received all when we received
+Him. Are we advancing in the experience that is the
+parent of knowing Him? Do new discoveries meet us
+every day as if we were explorers in a virgin land?
+To have this for our aim is enough for satisfaction, for
+blessedness, and for growth. To know Him is a liberal
+education.</p>
+
+<p>II. That knowledge involves knowing the power of
+His Resurrection.</p>
+
+<p>The power of His Resurrection is an expression which
+covers a wide ground. There are several distinct and
+well-marked powers ascribed to it in Paul's writings.
+It has a demonstrative force in reference to our Lord's
+person and work. For He is by it 'declared to be the
+Son of God with power.' That rising again from the
+dead, taken in conjunction with the fact that He dieth
+no more, but is ascended up on high, and in conjunction
+with His own words concerning Himself and His
+Resurrection, sets Him forth before the world as the
+Son of God, and is the solemn divine approval and
+acceptance of His work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It has a revealing power in regard to the condition
+of humanity in death. It is the one fact which
+establishes immortality, and which not only establishes
+it, but casts some light on the manner of it. The
+possibility of personal life after, and therefore, in
+death, the unbroken continuity of being, the possibility
+of a resurrection, and a glorifying of this corporeal
+frame, with all the far-reaching consequences of these
+truths in the triumph they give over death, in the support
+and substance they afford to the else-shadowy
+idea of immortality, in the lofty place which they assign
+to the bodily frame, and the conception which they
+give of man's perfection as consisting of body, soul,
+and spirit&mdash;these thoughts have flashed light into all
+the darkness of the grave, have narrowed to a mere
+strip of coast-line the boundaries of the kingdom of
+death, have proclaimed love as the victor in her contest
+with that shrouded horror. The basis of them all
+is Christ's Resurrection; its power in this respect is the
+power to illuminate, to console, to certify, to wrench
+the sceptre from the hands of death, and to put it in
+the pierced hands of the Living One that was dead,
+and is Lord both of the dead and the living.</p>
+
+<p>Further, the Resurrection is treated by Paul as having
+a power for our justification, in so far as the risen Lord
+bestows upon us by His risen life the blessings of His
+righteousness. Paul also represents the Resurrection
+of Christ as having the power of quickening our
+Spiritual life. I need not spend time in quoting the
+many passages where His rising from the dead, and
+His life after the Resurrection, are treated as the type
+and pattern of our lives: and are not only regarded
+as pattern, but are also regarded as the power by
+which that new life of ours is brought about. It has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+the power of raising us from the death of sin, and
+bringing us into a new life of the Spirit. And finally,
+the Resurrection of Christ is regarded as having the
+power of raising His servants from the grave to the
+full possession of His own glorious life, and so it is the
+power of our final victory over death.</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not know that we are entitled to exclude
+any of these powers from view. The broad words of
+the text include them all, but perhaps the two last are
+mainly meant, and of these chiefly the former.</p>
+
+<p>The risen life of Christ quickens and raises us, and
+that not merely as a pattern, but as a power. It is
+only if we are in Him that there is so real a unity of
+life between Him and us that there enters into us some
+breath of His own life.</p>
+
+<p>That risen life of the Saviour which we share if we
+have Him, enters into our nature as leaven into the
+three measures of meal; transforming and quickening
+it, gives new directions, tastes, motives, impulses, and
+power. It bids and inclines us to seek the things that
+are above, and its great exhortation to the hearts in
+which it dwells, to fix themselves there, and to forsake
+the things that are on the earth, is based upon the fact
+that they have died, and 'their life is hid with Christ
+in God.' Without that leaven the life that we live is a
+death, because it is lived in the 'lusts of the flesh,'
+doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind. There
+is no real union with Jesus Christ, of which the direct
+issue is not a living experience of the power of His
+Resurrection in bringing us to the likeness of itself in
+regard to our freedom from the bondage to sin, and to
+our presenting ourselves unto God as alive from the
+dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness
+unto God. It is a solemn thought which we all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
+need to press upon our consciences, that the only infallible
+sign that we have been in any measure
+quickened together with Christ and raised up with
+Him is that we have ceased to live in the lusts of our
+flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind.
+The risen life of Jesus may indefinitely increase, and
+will do so in the measure in which we honestly make
+it our life's aim to know Him and the power of His
+Resurrection.</p>
+
+<p>III. The experience of the power of Christ's Resurrection
+is inseparable from the fellowship of His
+sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>We must not suppose that Paul's solemn and awful
+words here trench in the smallest degree on the solitary
+unapproachableness of Christ's death. He would
+have answered, as in fact he does answer, the appeal
+of the prophetic sufferer, 'Behold and see if there be
+any sorrow like unto my sorrow' with the strongest
+negative. No other human lips have ever tasted, or
+can ever taste, a cup of such bitterness as He drained
+for us all, and no other human lips have ever been so
+exquisitely sensitive to the bitterness which they have
+drunk. The identification of Himself with a sinful
+world, the depth and closeness of His community of
+feeling with all sorrow, the consciousness of the glory
+which He had left, and the perpetual sense of the
+hostility into which He had come, set Christ's sufferings
+by themselves as surely as the effects that flow
+from them declare that they need no repetition, and
+cannot be degraded by any parallel whilst the world
+lasts.</p>
+
+<p>But yet His Death, like His Resurrection, is set forth
+in Scripture as being a type and power of ours. We
+have to die to the world by the power of the Cross. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+we truly trust in His sacrifice there will operate upon
+us motives which separate and detach us from our old
+selves and the old world. A fundamental, ethical, and
+spiritual change is effected on us through faith. We
+were dead in sin, we are dead to sin. We have to
+blend the two thoughts of the Christian life as being a
+daily dying and a continual resurrection in order to get
+the whole truth of the double aspect of it.</p>
+
+<p>It may be a question whether the Apostle is here referring
+to outward or inward and ethical sorrows, but
+perhaps we should not do justice to the thought unless
+we extend it to cover both of these. Certainly if his
+theology was but the generalising of his experience, he
+had ample material in his daily life for knowing the
+fellowship of Christ's sufferings. One of his most
+frequently recurring and most cherished thoughts is,
+that to suffer for Christ is to suffer with Christ, and
+in it he found and teaches us to find strength to
+endure, and patience to outlast any sorrows that may
+swoop upon us like birds of prey because we are
+Christians. Happy shall we be if Christ's sufferings
+are ours, because it is our union with Him and our
+likeness to Him, not to ourselves, our sins, or our worldliness,
+that is their occasion. There is an old legend
+that Peter was crucified head downwards, because he
+felt himself unworthy to be as his Master. We may
+well feel that nothing which we can ever bear for
+Him is worthy to be compared with what He has
+borne for us, and be the more overwhelmed with the
+greatness of the condescension, and the humility of
+the love which reckon our light affliction, which is but
+for a moment, along with the heavy weight which He
+bore, and the blessed issue of which outlasts time and
+enriches eternity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But there is another sense in which it is a worthy
+aim of our lives that our sufferings may be felt to be
+fellowship with His. That is a blessed sorrow which
+brings us closer to our Lord. That is a wholesome
+sorrow of which the issue is an intenser faith in Him,
+a fuller experience of His sufficiency. The storm blows
+us well when it blows us to His breast, and sorrow
+enriches us, whatever it may take away, which gives us
+fuller and more assured possession of Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>But when we are living in fellowship with Jesus, that
+union works in two directions, and while on the one
+hand we may then humbly venture to feel that our
+sufferings for Him are sufferings with Him, we may
+thankfully feel, too, that in all our affliction He is
+afflicted. If His sufferings are ours we may be sure
+that ours are His. And how different they all become
+when we are certain of His sympathy! It is possible
+that we may have a kind of common consciousness
+with our Lord, if our whole hearts and wills are kept
+in close touch with Him, so that in our experience there
+may be a repetition in a higher form of that strange
+experience alleged to be familiar in hypnotism, where
+the bitter in one mouth is tasted in another.</p>
+
+<p>So, what we ought to make our aim is that in our
+lives our growing knowledge of Christ should lead to
+the two results, so inexorably intertwined, of daily
+death and daily resurrection, and that we may be kept
+faithful to Him so that our outward sufferings may be
+caused by our union with Him, and not by our own
+faithlessness, and may be discerned by us to be fellowship
+with His. Then we shall also feel that He bears
+ours with us, and sorrow itself will be calmed and
+beautified into a silent bliss, as the chill peaks when the
+morning strikes them glow with tender pink, and seem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
+soft and warm, though they are grim rock and ice-cold
+snow. Then some faint echo of His history
+'who was acquainted with grief' may be audible in our
+outward lives and we, too, may have our Gethsemane
+and our Calvary. It may not be presumption in us to
+say 'We are able' when He asks 'Can ye drink of the
+cup that I drink of'? nor terror to hear Him prophesy
+'Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of,' for
+we shall remember 'joint-heirs in Christ, if so be that
+we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified
+together.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. The end attained.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian life as here manifested is even in its
+highest forms manifestly incomplete. It is a reflected
+light, and like the reflected light in the heavens,
+advances by imperceptible degrees to fill the whole
+silver round. It may be 'e'en in its imperfections
+beautiful,' but it assuredly has 'a ragged edge.' The
+hypothetical form of the last words of our text does
+not so much imply a doubt of the possibility of attaining
+the result as the recognition of the indispensable
+condition of effort on the part of him who attains it.
+That effort forthcoming, the attainment is certain.</p>
+
+<p>The Revised Version makes a slight correction which
+involves a great matter, in reading 'the resurrection
+<i>from</i> the dead.' It is necessary to insist on this change
+in rendering, not because it implies that only saints
+are raised, but because Paul is thinking of that first
+resurrection of which the New Testament habitually
+speaks. 'The dead in Christ shall rise first' as he
+himself declared in his earliest epistle, and the seer in
+the Apocalypse shed a benediction on 'him that hath
+part in the first resurrection.' Our knowledge of that
+solemn future is so fragmentary that we cannot ven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>ture
+to draw dogmatic inferences from the little that
+has been declared to us, but we cannot forget the
+distinct words of Jesus in which He not only plainly
+declares a universal resurrection, but as plainly proclaims
+that it falls into two parts, one a 'resurrection
+of life,' and one a 'resurrection of judgment.' The
+former may well be the final aim of a Christian life:
+the latter is a fate which one would think no sane man
+would deliberately provoke. Each carries in its name
+its dominant characteristic, the one full of attractiveness,
+the other partially unveiling depths of shame
+and punitive retributions which might appal the
+stoutest heart.</p>
+
+<p>This resurrection of life is the last result of the
+power of Christ's Resurrection received into and working
+on the human spirit. It is plain enough that if the
+Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead
+dwell in us there is no term to its operations until our
+mortal bodies also are quickened by His Spirit that
+dwelleth in us. The ethical and spiritual resurrection
+in the present life finds its completion in the bodily
+resurrection in the future. It cannot be that the
+transformation wrought in a human life shall be
+complete until it has flowed outwards into and permeated
+the whole of manhood, body, soul, and spirit.
+The three measures of meal have each to be influenced
+before 'the whole is leavened.' If we duly consider
+the elements necessary to a perfect realisation of the
+divine ideal of humanity, we shall discern that redemption
+must have a gospel to bring to the body as
+well as to the spirit. Whatever has been devastated
+by sin must be healed by Jesus. It is not necessary to
+suppose that the body which dies is the body which
+rises again, rather the Apostle's far-reaching series of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span>
+antitheses between that which is sown and that which
+is raised leads us to think that the natural body, which
+has passed through corruption, and the particles of
+which have been gathered into many different combinations,
+does not become the spiritual body. The person
+who dies is the person who lives through death, and
+who assumes the body of the resurrection, and it is the
+person, not the elements which make up the personality,
+who is spoken of as risen from the dead. The vesture
+may be different, but the wearer is the same.</p>
+
+<p>So that resurrection from the dead is the end of a
+supernatural life begun here and destined to culminate
+hereafter. It is the last step in the manifestation of
+our being in Christ, and so is being prepared for here
+by every step in advance in gaining Jesus. It should
+ever be before every Christian soul that participation
+in Christ hereafter is conditioned by its progress in
+likeness to Him here. The Resurrection from the dead
+is not a gift which can be bestowed apart from a man's
+moral state. If he dies having had no knowledge by
+experience of the power of Christ's Resurrection, there
+is nothing in the fact of death to give him that knowledge,
+and it is impossible to bring 'any means' to bear
+on him by which he will attain unto the 'resurrection
+from the dead.' If God could give that gift irrespective
+of a man's relations to Jesus, He would give it to
+all. Let us ask ourselves, then, is it not worth making
+the dominant aim of our lives the same as that of
+Paul's? How stands our account then? Are we not
+wise traders presenting a good balance-sheet when we
+show entered on the one side the loss of all things, and
+on the other the gaining of Christ, and the attaining
+the resurrection from the dead, the perfect transformation
+of body, soul, and spirit, into the perfect likeness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>
+of the perfect Lord? Does the other balance-sheet
+show the man as equally solvent who enters on one
+side the gain of a world, and on the other a Christless
+life, to be followed by a resurrection in which is no
+joy, no advance, no life, but which is a resurrection of
+judgment? May we all be found in Him, and attain to
+the resurrection from the dead!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LAID HOLD OF AND LAYING HOLD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I follow after if that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended
+of Christ Jesus.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 12.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'I was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.' That is how Paul
+thinks of what we call his conversion. He would
+never have 'turned' unless a hand had been laid upon
+him. A strong loving grasp had gripped him in the
+midst of his career of persecution, and all that he
+had done was to yield to the grip, and not to
+wriggle out of it. The strong expression suggests,
+as it seems to me, the suddenness of the incident.
+Possibly impressions may have been working underground,
+ever since the martyrdom of Stephen, which
+were undermining his convictions, and the very insanity
+of his zeal may have been due to an uneasy
+consciousness that the ground was yielding beneath
+his feet. That may have been so, but, whether it were
+so or not, the crisis came like a bolt out of the blue,
+and he was checked in full career, as if a voice had
+spoken to the sea in its wildest storm, and frozen its
+waves into immobility.</p>
+
+<p>There is suggested in the word, too, distinctly, our
+Lord's personal action in the matter. No doubt, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>
+fact of His supernatural appearance gives emphasis
+to the phrase here. But every Christian man and
+woman has been, as truly as ever Paul was, laid hold
+of by the personal action of Jesus Christ. He is
+present in His Word, and, by multitudes of inward
+impulses and outward providences, He is putting out a
+gentle and a firm hand, and laying it upon the
+shoulders of all of us. Have we yielded? Have we
+resisted, when we were laid hold of? Did we try to
+get away? Did we plant our feet and say, 'I will not
+be drawn,' or did we simply neglect the pressure? If
+we have yielded, my text tells us what we have to do
+next. For that hand is laid upon a man for a purpose,
+and that purpose is not secured by the hand being laid
+upon him, unless he, in his turn, will put out a hand
+and grasp. Our activity is needed; that activity will
+not be put forth without very distinct effort, and that
+effort has to be life-long, because our grasp at the best
+is incomplete. So then, we have here, first of all, to
+consider&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. What Christ has laid His grip on us for.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the immediate result of that grasp, when it is
+yielded to, is the sense of the removal of guilt, forgiveness
+of sins, acceptance with God. But these, the
+immediate results, are by no means the whole results,
+although a great many of us live as if we thought that
+the only thing that Christianity is meant to do to us
+is that it bars the gates of some future hell, and brings
+to us the message of forgiveness. We cannot think
+too nobly or too loftily of that gift of forgiveness, the
+initial gift that is laid in every Christian man's hands,
+but we may think too exclusively of it, and a great
+many of us do think of it as if it were all that was
+to be given. A painter has to clear away the old paint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
+off a door, or a wall, before he lays on the new. The
+initial gift that comes from being laid hold of by Jesus
+Christ is the burning off of the old coat of paint. But
+that is only the preliminary to the laying on of the
+new. A man away in the backwoods will spend a
+couple of years after he has got his bit of land in felling
+and burning the trees, and rooting out and destroying
+the weeds. But is that what he got the clearing
+for? That is only a preliminary to sowing the seed.
+My friend! If Jesus Christ has laid hold of you, and
+you have let Him keep hold of you, it is not only that
+you may be forgiven, not only that you may sun yourself
+in the light of God's countenance, and feel that a
+new blessed relation is set up between you and Him,
+but there are great purposes lying at the back of that,
+of which all that is only the preliminary and the
+preparation.</p>
+
+<p>Conversion. Yes; but what is the good of turning
+a man round unless he goes in the direction in which
+his face is turned? And so here the Apostle having
+for years lived in the light of that great thought, that
+God was reconciled in Jesus Christ, and that he was
+God's friend, discerns far beyond that, in dim perspective,
+towering high above the land in the front,
+the snowy sunlit summits of a great range to which
+he has yet to climb, and says, 'I press on to lay hold
+of that for which I was laid hold of by Jesus
+Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>And what was that? On the road to Damascus
+Paul was only told one thing, that Christ had grasped
+him and drawn him to Himself in order that He
+might make him a chosen vessel to bear the Word far
+hence amongst the Gentiles. The bearing of His conversion
+upon Paul himself was never mentioned. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>
+bearing of His conversion on the world was the only
+subject that Jesus spoke of at first. But here Paul
+has nothing to say about his world-wide mission. He
+does not think of himself as being called to be an
+Apostle, but as being summoned to be a Christian.
+And so, forgetting for the time all the glorious and
+yet burdensome obligations which were laid upon him,
+and the discharge of which was the very life of his
+life, he thinks only of what affects his own character,
+the perfecting of which he regards as being the one
+thing for which he was 'laid hold of by Christ Jesus.'
+The purpose is twofold. No Christian man is made a
+Christian only in order that he may secure his own
+salvation; there is the world to think of. No Christian
+man is made a Christian only in order that he
+may be Christ's instrument for carrying the Word to
+other people; there is himself to think of. And these
+two phases of the purpose for which Jesus Christ lays
+hold upon us are very hard to unite in practice, giving
+to each its due place and prominence, and they are
+often separated, to the detriment of both the one that
+is attended to, and the one that is neglected. The
+monastic life has not produced the noblest Christians;
+and there are pitfalls lying in the path of every man
+who, like me, has for his profession to preach the
+Gospel, which, if they are fallen into, the inward life is
+utterly wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>The two sides of Christ's purpose have, in our
+practice, to be held together, but for the present I only
+wish to say a word or two about that which, as I have
+indicated, is but one hemisphere of the completed orb,
+and that is our personal culture and growth in the
+divine life. What did Christ lay hold of me for?
+Paul answers the question very strikingly and beauti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>fully
+in a previous verse. Here is his conception of the
+purpose, 'that I may know Him, and the power of His
+resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being
+made conformable unto His death, if by any means I
+might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.' That
+is what you were forgiven for; that is what you have
+'passed from death unto life' for; that is what you
+have come into the sweet fellowship of God, and can
+think of Him as your Friend and Helper for.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take the clauses <i>seriatim</i>, and say a word
+about each of them. 'That I may know Him.' Ah!
+there is a great deal more in Jesus Christ than a man
+sees when he first sees Him through his tears and his
+fears, and apprehends Him as the Saviour of his soul,
+and the sacrifice on whom the burden and the guilt of
+his sins were laid. We must begin there, as I believe.
+But woe to us if we stop there. There is far more in
+Christ than that; although all that is in Him is included
+in that, yet you have to dig deep before you
+find all that is included in it. You have to live with
+Him day by day, and year by year, and to learn to
+know Him as we learn to know husbands and wives,
+by continual intercourse, by continual experience of a
+sweet and unfailing love, by many a sacred hour of
+interchange of affection and reception of gifts and
+counsels. It is only thus that we learn to know what
+Jesus Christ is. When He lays hold of us, He comes
+like the angel that came to Peter in the prison in the
+dark and awoke him out of his sleep and said 'Rise!
+and follow me.' It is only when we get out into the
+street, and have been with Him for awhile, and the
+daylight begins to stream in, that we see clearly the
+face of our Deliverer, and know Him for all that He
+is. This knowledge is not the sort of knowledge that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span>
+you can get by thinking, or out of a book. It is the
+knowledge of experience. It is the knowledge of love,
+it is the knowledge of union, and it is in order that
+we may know Christ that He lays his hand upon us.</p>
+
+<p>'The power of His Resurrection.' Now, by that I
+understand a similar knowledge, by experience, of the
+risen life of Jesus Christ flowing into us, and filling
+our hearts and minds with its own power. The risen
+life of Jesus is the nourishment and strengthening
+and blessing and life of a Christian. Our daily experience
+ought to be that there comes, wavelet by
+wavelet, that silent, gentle, and yet omnipotent influx
+into our empty hearts, the very life of Christ Himself.</p>
+
+<p>I know that this generation says that that is mysticism.
+I do not know whether it is mysticism or not.
+I am sure it is truth; and I do not understand Christianity
+at all, unless there is that kind of mysticism,
+perfectly wholesome and good, in it. You will never
+know Jesus Christ until you know Him as pouring into
+your hearts the power of an endless life, His own life.
+Christ for us by all means,&mdash;Christ's death the basis of
+our hope, but Christ in us, and Christ's life as the true
+gift to His Church. Have you got that? Do you
+know the power of His Resurrection?</p>
+
+<p>'The fellowship of His sufferings.' Has Paul made
+a mistake, and deserted the chronological order?
+Why does he put the 'fellowship of the sufferings'
+after the 'power of the Resurrection'? For this plain
+reason, that if we get Christ's life into our hearts, in
+the measure in which we get it we shall bear a similar
+relation to the world which He bore to it, and in our
+measure will 'fill up that which is behind in the sufferings
+of Christ,' and will understand how true it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span>
+that 'if they hate Me they will hate you also.'
+Brethren, the test of us who have the life of Christ in
+our hearts is that we shall, in some measure, suffer
+with Him, because 'as He is, so are we, in this world,'
+and because we must in that case look upon the world,
+its sins and its sorrows, with something of the sad
+gaze with which He looked across the valley to the
+Temple sparkling in the morning light, and wept over
+it. So if we know the power of His Resurrection we
+shall know the fellowship of His sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>And then Paul goes on, in his definition of the purpose
+for which Christ lays hold upon men, apparently
+to say the same thing over again, only in the opposite
+order, 'that I may be conformable to His death, if by
+any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the
+dead.' Both of these clauses, I think, refer to the
+future, to the actual dying of the body, and the actual
+future resurrection of the same. And the thought is
+this, that if here, through our earthly lives, we have
+been recipients of the risen life of Jesus Christ, and
+so have stood to the world in our degree as He stood
+to it, then when the moment of death comes to us,
+we shall, in so far, have our departure shaped after
+His as that we shall be able to say, 'Into Thy hands I
+commit my spirit,' and die willingly, and at last shall
+be partakers of that blessed Resurrection unto life
+eternal which closes the vista of our earthly history.
+Stephen's death was conformed to Christ's in outward
+fashion, in so far as it echoed the Master's prayer,
+'Father forgive them, for they know not what they
+do,' and in so far as it echoed the Master's last words,
+with the significant alteration that, whilst Jesus commended
+His spirit to the Father, the first martyr
+commended his to Jesus Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These, then, are the purposes for which Christ laid
+His hand upon us, that we might know Him, the
+power of His Resurrection, the fellowship of His
+sufferings, being made conformable to His death yet
+by attaining the resurrection of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>II. Notice, again, our laying hold because we have
+been laid hold of.</p>
+
+<p>Christ's laying hold of me, blessed and powerful as
+it is, does not of itself secure that I shall reach the
+end which He had in view in His arresting of me.
+What more is wanted? My effort. 'I follow after if
+I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended.'
+Now, notice, in the one case, the Apostle
+speaks of himself, not as passive, but certainly not as
+active. 'I was laid hold of.' What did he do? As I
+have said, he simply yielded to the grasp. But 'I may
+lay hold of' conveys the idea of personal effort; and
+so these two expressions, 'I was apprehended,' and 'I
+apprehend,' suggest this consideration, that, for the
+initial blessings of the Christian life, forgiveness,
+acceptance, the sense of God's favour, and of reconciliation
+with him, nothing is needed but the simple
+faith that yields itself altogether to the grasp of
+Christ's hand, but that for my possessing what Christ
+means that I should possess when He lays His hand on
+me, there is needed not only faith but effort. I have to
+put out <i>my</i> hand and tighten my fingers round the
+thing, if I would make it my own, and keep it.</p>
+
+<p>So&mdash;faith, to begin with, and work based on faith,
+to go on with. It is because a man is sure that Jesus
+Christ has laid His hand upon him, and meant something
+when He did it, that he fights on with all his
+might to realise Christ's purpose, and to get and keep
+the thing which Christ meant him to have. There is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
+stimulus in the thought, I was laid hold of by Him
+for a purpose. There is all the difference between
+striving, however eagerly, however nobly, however
+strenuously, however constantly, after self-improvement,
+by one's own effort only, and striving after it
+because one knows that he is therein fulfilling the
+purpose for which Jesus Christ drew him to Himself.</p>
+
+<p>And if that be so, then the nature of the thing to
+be laid hold of determines what we are to do to lay
+hold of it. And since to know Christ, and the power
+of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings,
+is the aim and end of our conversion, the way to
+secure it must be keeping in continual touch with
+Jesus by meditating upon Him, by holding many a
+moment of still, sacred, sweet communion with Him,
+by carefully avoiding whatever might come between
+us and our knowledge of Him, and the influx of His
+life into us, and by yielding ourselves, day by day, to
+the continual influence of His divine grace upon us
+and by the discipline which shall make our inward
+natures more and more capable of receiving more and
+more of that dear Lord. These being the things to
+do, in regard to the inward life, there must be effort
+too, in regard to the outward; for we must, if we are
+to lay hold of that for which we are laid hold of by
+Jesus Christ, bring all the outward life under the
+dominion of this inward impulse, and when the flood
+pours into our hearts we must, by many a sluice and
+trench, guide it into every corner of the field, that all
+may be irrigated. The first thing they do when they
+are going to sow rice in an Eastern field is to flood it,
+and then they cast in the seed, and it germinates.
+Flood your lives with Christ, and then sow the seed
+and you will get a crop.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, the text suggests the incompleteness of
+our grasp.</p>
+
+<p>'I follow that,' says Paul, 'if that I may apprehend.'
+This letter was written far on in his career, in the
+time of his imprisonment in Rome, which all but
+ended his ministerial activity; and was many years
+after that day on the road to Damascus. And yet,
+matured Christian and exercised Apostle as he was,
+with all that past behind him, he says, 'I follow after,
+that I may apprehend.' Ah, brother, our experience
+must be incomplete, for we have an infinite aim set
+before us, and there is no end to the possibilities of
+plunging deeper and deeper and deeper into the
+knowledge of Christ, and having larger and larger
+and larger draughts of the fulness of His life. We
+have only been like goldseekers, who have contented
+themselves as yet with washing the precious grains out
+of the gravel of the river. There are great reefs filled
+with the ore that we have not touched. Thank God
+for the necessary incompleteness of our 'apprehending.'
+It is the very salt of life. To have realised our
+aims, to have fulfilled our ideals, to have sucked dry
+the cluster of the grapes is the death of aspiration,
+of hope, of blessedness; and to have the distance beckoning,
+and all experience 'an arch, wherethro' gleams
+the untravelled world to which we move,' is the secret
+of perpetual youth and energy.</p>
+
+<p>Because incomplete, our experience should be progressive;
+and that is a truth that needs hammering
+into Christian people to-day. About how many of us
+can it be said that our light 'shineth more and more
+unto the noonday.' Alas! about an enormous number
+of us it must be said, 'When for the time ye ought to
+be teachers, ye have need that one teach you.' All our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span>
+churches have many grown babies, and cases of
+arrested development&mdash;people that ought to be living
+on strong meat, and are unable to masticate or digest
+it, and by their own fault have still need of the milk
+of infancy. There is an old fable about a strange
+animal that fastened itself to the keel of sailing ships,
+and by some uncanny power was able to arrest them
+in mid-ocean, though the winds were filling all their
+sails. There is a remora, as they called it, of that sort
+adhering to a great many Christian people, and keeping
+them fixed on one spot, instead of 'following after,
+if that they may apprehend.'</p>
+
+<p>Dear friends&mdash;and especially you younger Christians&mdash;Christ
+has laid hold of you. Well and good! that is
+the beginning. He has laid hold of you for an end.
+That end will not be reached without your effort, and
+that effort must be perpetual. It is a life-long task.
+Ay! and even up yonder the apprehending will be
+incomplete. Like those mathematical lines that ever
+approximate to a point which they never reach, we
+shall through Eternity be, as it were, rising, in ascending
+and ever-closer drawing spirals, to that great
+Throne, and to Him that sits upon it. So that, striking
+out the humble 'may' from our text, the rest of it
+describes the progressive blessedness of the endless
+life in the heavens, as truly as it does the progressive
+duty of the Christian life here, and the glorified flock
+that follows the Lamb in the heavenly pastures may
+each say: I follow after in order to apprehend that
+'for which,' long ago and down amidst the dim
+shadows of earth, 'I was apprehended of Christ
+Jesus.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE RACE AND THE GOAL</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching
+forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 13, 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This buoyant energy and onward looking are marvellous
+in 'Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of
+Jesus Christ.' Forgetfulness of the past and eager
+anticipation for the future are, we sometimes think,
+the child's prerogatives. They may be ignoble and
+puerile, or they may be worthy and great. All depends
+on the future to which we look. If it be the creation
+of our fancies, we are babies for trusting it. If it be,
+as Paul's was, the revelation of God's purposes, we
+cannot do a wiser thing than look.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle here is letting us see the secret of his
+own life, and telling us what made him the sort of
+Christian that he was. He counsels wise obliviousness,
+wise anticipation, strenuous concentration, and these
+are the things that contribute to success in any field of
+life. Christianity is the perfection of common sense.
+Men become mature Christians by no other means than
+those by which they become good artisans, ripe scholars,
+or the like. But the misery is that, though people
+know well enough that they cannot be good carpenters,
+or doctors, or fiddlers without certain habits and
+practices, they seem to fancy that they can be good
+Christians without them.</p>
+
+<p>So the words of my text may suggest appropriate
+thoughts on this first Sunday of a new year. Let us
+listen, then, to Paul telling us how he came to be the
+sort of Christian man he was.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, I would say, make God's aim your aim.</p>
+
+<p>Paul distinguishes here between the 'mark' and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span>
+'prize.' He aims at the one for the sake of the other.
+The one is the object of effort; the other is the sure
+result of successful effort. If I may so say, the crown
+hangs on the winning post; and he who touches the
+goal clutches the garland.</p>
+
+<p>Then, mark that he regards the aim towards which
+he strains as being the aim which Christ had in view in
+his conversion. For he says in the preceding context,
+'I labour if that I may lay hold of that for which also
+I have been laid hold of by Jesus Christ.' In the words
+that follow the text he speaks of the prize as being the
+result and purpose of the high calling of God 'in Christ
+Jesus.' So then he took God's purpose in calling, and
+Christ's purpose in redeeming him, as being his great
+object in life. God's aims and Paul's were identical.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the aim of God in all that He has done
+for us? The production in us of God-like and God-pleasing
+character. For this suns rise and set; for this
+seasons and times come and go; for this sorrows and
+joys are experienced; for this hopes and fears and
+loves are kindled. For this all the discipline of life is
+set in motion. For this we were created; for this we
+have been redeemed. For this Jesus Christ lived and
+suffered and died. For this God's Spirit is poured out
+upon the world. All else is scaffolding; this is the
+building which it contemplates, and when the building
+is reared the scaffolding may be cleared away. God
+means to make us like Himself, and so pleasing to
+Himself, and has no other end in all the varieties of
+His gifts and bestowments but only this, the production
+of character.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the aim that we should set before us. The
+acceptance of that aim as ours will give nobleness and
+blessedness to our lives as nothing else will. How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span>
+different all our estimates of the meaning and true
+nature of events would be, if we kept clearly before us
+that their intention was not merely to make us blessed
+and glad, or to make us sorrowful, but that, through
+the blessedness, through the sorrow, through the gift,
+through the withdrawal, through all the variety of
+dealings, the intention was one and the same, to mould
+us to the likeness of our Lord and Saviour! There
+would be fewer mysteries in our lives, we should
+seldomer have to stand in astonishment, in vain regret,
+in miserable and weakening looking back upon vanished
+gifts, and saying to ourselves, 'Why has this darkness
+stooped upon my path?' if we looked beyond the darkness
+and the light to that for which both were sent.
+Some plants require frost to bring out their savour,
+and men need sorrow to test and to produce their
+highest qualities. There would be fewer knots in the
+thread of our lives, and fewer mysteries in our experience,
+if we made God's aim ours, and strove through
+all variations of condition to realise it.</p>
+
+<p>How different all our estimate of nearer objects and
+aims would be, if once we clearly recognised what we
+are here for! The prostitution of powers to obviously
+unworthy aims and ends is the saddest thing in
+humanity. It is like elephants being set to pick up
+pins; it is like the lightning being harnessed to carry
+all the gossip and filth of one capital of the world to
+the prurient readers in another. Men take these great
+powers which God has given them, and use them to
+make money, to cultivate their intellects, to secure
+the gratification of earthly desires, to make a home
+for themselves here amidst the illusions of time; and
+all the while the great aim which ought to stand out
+clear and supreme is forgotten by them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is nothing that needs more careful examination
+by us than our accepted schemes of life for ourselves;
+the roots of our errors mostly lie in these
+things that we take to be axioms, and that we never
+examine into. Let us begin this new year by an honest
+dealing with ourselves, asking ourselves this question,
+'What am I living for?' And if the answer, first of
+all, be, as, of course, it will be, the accomplishment of
+the nearer and necessary aims, such as the conduct of
+our business, the cultivating of our understandings,
+the love and peace of our homes, then let us press the
+investigation a little further, and say, What then?
+Suppose I make a fortune, what then? Suppose I get
+the position I am striving for, what then? Suppose I
+cultivate my understanding and win the knowledge
+that I am nobly striving after, what then? Let us not
+cease to ask the question until we can say, 'Thy aim, O
+Lord, is my aim, and I press toward the mark,' the only
+mark which will make life noble, elastic, stable, and
+blessed, that I 'may be found in Christ, not having
+mine own righteousness, but that which is of God by
+faith.' For this we have all been made, guided, redeemed.
+If we carry this treasure out of life we
+shall carry all that is worth carrying. If we fail
+in this we fail altogether, whatever be our so-called
+success. There is one mark, one only, and every
+arrow that does not hit that target is wasted and
+spent in vain.</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, let me say, concentrate all effort on
+this one aim.</p>
+
+<p>'This one thing I do,' says the Apostle, 'I press
+toward the mark.' That aim is the one which God has
+in view in all circumstances and arrangements. Therefore,
+obviously, it is one which may be pursued in all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span>
+of these, and may be sought whatsoever we are doing.
+All occupations of life except only sin are consistent
+with this highest aim. It needs not that we should
+seek any remote or cloistered form of life, nor sheer off
+any legitimate and common interests and occupations,
+but in them all we may be seeking for the one thing,
+the moulding of our characters into the shapes that are
+pleasing to Him. 'One thing have I desired of the
+Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the
+house of the Lord all the days of my life'; wheresoever
+the outward days of my life may be passed. Whatsoever
+we are doing in business, in shop, at a study
+table, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the road, in the
+house, we may still have the supreme aim in view,
+that from all occupations there may come growth in
+character and in likeness to Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Only, to keep this supreme aim clear there will
+require far more frequent and resolute effort of what
+the old mystics used to call 'recollection' than we are
+accustomed to put forth. It is hard, amidst the din of
+business, and whilst yielding to other lower, legitimate
+impulses and motives, to set this supreme one high
+above them all. But it is possible if only we will do
+two things: keep ourselves close to God, and be prepared
+to surrender much, laying our own wills, our own
+fancies, purposes, eager hopes and plans in His hands,
+and asking Him to help us, that we may never lose
+sight of the harbour light because of any tossing waves
+that rise between us and it, nor may ever be so
+swallowed up in ends, which are only means after all,
+as to lose sight of the only end which is an end in itself.
+But for the attainment of this aim in any measure, the
+concentration of all our powers upon it is absolutely
+needful. If you want to bore a hole you take a sharp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span>
+point; you can do nothing with a blunt one. Every
+flight of wild ducks in the sky will tell you the form
+that is most likely to secure the maximum of motion
+with the minimum of effort. The wedge is that which
+pierces through all the loosely-compacted textures
+against which it is pressed. The Roman strategy
+forced the way of the legion through the loose-ordered
+ranks of barbarian foes by arraying it in that wedge-like
+form. So we, if we are to advance, must gather
+ourselves together and put a point upon our lives by
+compaction and concentration of effort and energy on
+the one purpose. The conquering word is, 'This one
+thing I do.' The difference between the amateur and
+the artist is that the one pursues an art at intervals by
+spurts, as a <i>parergon</i>&mdash;a thing that is done in the
+intervals of other occupations&mdash;and that the other
+makes it his life's business. There are a great many
+amateur Christians amongst us, who pursue the Christian
+life by spurts and starts. If you want to be a
+Christian after God's pattern&mdash;and unless you are you
+are scarcely a Christian at all&mdash;you have to make it your
+business, to give the same attention, the same concentration,
+the same unwavering energy to it which
+you do to your trade. The man of one book, the man
+of one idea, the man of one aim is the formidable and
+the successful man. People will call you a fanatic;
+never mind. Better be a fanatic and get what you aim
+at, which is the highest thing, than be so broad that,
+like a stream spreading itself out over miles of mud,
+there is no scour in it anywhere, no current, and therefore
+stagnation and death. Gather yourselves together,
+and amidst all the side issues and nearer aims keep
+this in view as the aim to which all are to be subservient&mdash;that,
+'whether I eat or drink, or whatsoever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span>
+I do, I may do all to the glory of God.' Let sorrow and
+joy, and trade and profession, and study and business,
+and house and wife and children, and all home joys, be
+the means by which you may become like the Master
+who has died for this end, that we may become
+partakers of His holiness.</p>
+
+<p>III. Pursue this end with a wise forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>'Forgetting the things that are behind.' The art of
+forgetting has much to do with the blessedness and
+power of every life. Of course, when the Apostle says
+'Forgetting the things that are behind,' he is thinking
+of the runner, who has no time to cast his eye over his
+shoulder to mark the steps already trod. He does not
+mean, of course, either, to tell us that we are so to
+cultivate obliviousness as to let God's mercies to us
+'lie forgotten in unthankfulness, or without praises
+die.' Nor does he mean to tell us that we are to deny
+ourselves the solace of remembering the mercies which
+may, perhaps, have gone from us. Memory may be
+like the calm radiance that fills the western sky from
+a sun that has set, sad and yet sweet, melancholy and
+lovely. But he means that we should so forget as, by
+the oblivion, to strengthen our concentration.</p>
+
+<p>So I would say, let us remember, and yet forget, our
+past failures and faults. Let us remember them in
+order that the remembrance may cultivate in us a wise
+chastening of our self-confidence. Let us remember
+where we were foiled, in order that we may be the
+more careful of that place hereafter. If we know that
+upon any road we fell into ambushes, 'not once nor
+twice,' like the old king of Israel, we should guard ourselves
+against passing by that road again. He who
+has not learned, by the memory of his past failures,
+humility and wise government of his life, and wise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span>
+avoidance of places where he is weak, is an incurable
+fool.</p>
+
+<p>But let us forget our failures in so far as these might
+paralyse our hopes, or make us fancy that future
+success is impossible where past failures frown.
+Ebenezer was a field of defeat before it rang with the
+hymns of victory. And there is no place in your past
+life where you have been shamefully baffled and beaten,
+but there, and in that, you may yet be victorious.
+Never let the past limit your hopes of the possibilities
+and your confidence in the certainties and victories of
+the future. And if ever you are tempted to say to
+yourselves, 'I have tried it so often, and so often failed,
+that it is no use trying it any more. I am beaten and
+I throw up the sponge,' remember Paul's wise exhortation,
+and 'forgetting the things that are behind .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. press
+toward the mark.'</p>
+
+<p>In like manner I would say, remember and yet forget
+past successes and achievements. Remember them for
+thankfulness, remember them for hope, remember
+them for counsel and instruction, but forget them
+when they tend, as all that we accomplish does tend,
+to make us fancy that little more remains to be done;
+and forget them when they tend, as all that we
+accomplish ever does tend, to make us think that such
+and such things are our line, and of other virtues and
+graces and achievements of culture and of character,
+that these are not our line, and not to be won by us.</p>
+
+<p>'Our line!' Astronomers take a thin thread from a
+spider's web and stretch it across their object glasses
+to measure stellar magnitudes. Just as is the spider's
+line in comparison with the whole shining surface of
+the sun across which it is stretched, so is what we have
+already attained to the boundless might and glory of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span>
+that to which we may come. Nothing short of the full
+measure of the likeness of Jesus Christ is the measure
+of our possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>There is a mannerism in Christian life, as there is in
+everything else, which is to be avoided if we would
+grow into perfection. There was a great artist in the
+last century who never could paint a picture without
+sticking a brown tree in the foreground. We have all
+got our 'brown trees,' which we think we can do well,
+and these limit our ambition to secure other gifts
+which God is ready to bestow upon us. So 'forget the
+things that are behind.' Cultivate a wise obliviousness
+of past sorrows, past joys, past failures, past gifts, past
+achievements, in so far as these might limit the audacity
+of our hopes and the energy of our efforts.</p>
+
+<p>IV. So, lastly, pursue the aim with a wise, eager
+reaching forward.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle employs a very graphic word here, which
+is only very partially expressed by that 'reaching forth.'
+It contains a condensed picture which it is scarcely
+possible to put into any one expression. 'Reaching
+out over' is the full though clumsy rendering of the
+word, and it gives us the picture of the runner with
+his whole body thrown forward, his hand extended,
+and his eye reaching even further than his hand, in
+eager anticipation of the mark and the prize. So we
+are to live, with continual reaching out of confidence,
+clear recognition, and eager desire to make our own
+the unattained.</p>
+
+<p>What is that which gives an element of nobleness to
+the lives of great idealists, whether they be poets,
+artists, students, thinkers, or what not? Only this,
+that they see the unattained burning ever so clearly
+before them that all the attained seems as nothing in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span>
+their eyes. And so life is saved from commonplace,
+is happily stung into fresh effort, is redeemed from
+flagging, monotony, and weariness.</p>
+
+<p>The measure of our attainments may be fairly estimated
+by the extent to which the unattained is clear
+in our sight. A man down in the valley sees the nearer
+shoulder of the hill, and he thinks it the top. The man
+up on the shoulder sees all the heights that lie beyond
+rising above him. Endeavour is better than success.
+It is more to see the Alpine heights unscaled than it is
+to have risen so far as we have done. They who thus
+have a boundless future before them have an endless
+source of inspiration, of energy, of buoyancy granted
+to them.</p>
+
+<p>No man has such an absolutely boundless vision of
+the future which may be his as we have, if we are
+Christian people, as we ought to be. We only can thus
+look forward. For all others a blank wall stretches at
+the end of life, against which hopes, when they strike,
+fall back stunned and dead. But for us the wall may
+be overleaped, and, living by the energy of a boundless
+hope, we, and only we, can lay ourselves down to die,
+and say then, 'Reaching forth unto the things that
+are before.'</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, make God's aim your aim; concentrate
+your life's efforts upon it; pursue it with a wise
+forgetfulness; pursue it with an eager confidence of
+anticipation that shall not be put to shame. Remember
+that God reaches His aim for you by giving to you
+Jesus Christ, and that you can only reach it by accepting
+the Christ who is given and being found in Him.
+Then the years will take away nothing from us which
+it is not gain to lose. They will neither weaken our
+energy nor flatten our hopes, nor dim our confidence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span>
+and, at the last we shall reach the mark, and, as we
+touch it, we shall find dropping on our surprised and
+humble heads the crown of life which they receive who
+have so run, not as uncertainly, but doing this one
+thing, pressing towards the mark for the prize.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE SOUL'S PERFECTION</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye
+be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'As many as be perfect'; and how many may they be?
+Surely a very short bede-roll would contain their names;
+or would there be any other but the Name which is
+above every name upon it? Part of the answer to
+such a question may be found in observing that the
+New Testament very frequently uses the word to
+express not so much the idea of moral completeness
+as that of physical maturity. For instance, when Paul
+says that he would have his converts to be '<i>men</i> in
+understanding,' and when the Epistle to the Hebrews
+speaks of 'them that are of full age,' the same word is
+used as this 'perfect' in our text. Clearly in such cases
+it means 'full grown,' as in contrast with 'babes,' and
+expresses not absolute completeness, but what we
+may term a relative perfection, a certain maturity of
+character and advanced stage of Christian attainment,
+far removed from the infantile epoch of the
+Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>Another contribution to the answer may be found
+in observing that in this very context these 'perfect'
+people are exhorted to cultivate the sense of not having
+'already attained,' and to be constantly reaching forth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span>
+to unattained heights, so that a sense of imperfection
+and a continual effort after higher life are parts of
+Paul's 'perfect man.' And it is to be still further
+noticed that on the same testimony 'perfect' people
+may probably be 'otherwise minded'; by which we
+understand not divergently minded from one another,
+but 'otherwise' than the true norm or law of life
+would prescribe, and so may stand in need of the hope
+that God will by degrees bring them into conformity
+with His will, and show them 'this,' namely, their
+divergence from His Pattern for them.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth our while to look at these large thoughts
+thus involved in the words before us.</p>
+
+<p>I. Then there are people whom without exaggeration
+the judgment of truth calls <i>perfect</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The language of the New Testament has no scruple
+in calling men 'saints' who had many sins, and none in
+calling men perfect who had many imperfections; and
+it does so, not because it has any fantastic theory about
+religious emotions being the measure of moral purity,
+but partly for the reasons already referred to, and
+partly because it wisely considers the main thing about
+a character to be not the degree to which it has attained
+completeness in its ideal, but what that ideal is. The
+distance a man has got on his journey is of less consequence
+than the direction in which his face is turned.
+The arrow may fall short, but to what mark was it
+shot? In all regions of life a wise classification of men
+arranges them according to their aims rather than
+their achievements. The visionary who attempts something
+high and accomplishes scarcely anything of it,
+is often a far nobler man, and his poor, broken, foiled,
+resultless life far more perfect than his who aims at
+marks on the low levels and hits them full. Such lives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span>
+as these, full of yearning and aspiration, though it be
+for the most part vain, are</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Like the young moon with a ragged edge">
+<tr><td align='left'>'Like the young moon with a ragged edge</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">E'en in its imperfection beautiful.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>If then it be wise to rank men and their pursuits
+according to their aims rather than their accomplishments,
+is there one class of aims so absolutely corresponding
+to man's nature and relations that to take
+them for one's own, and to reach some measure of
+approximation to them, may fairly be called the perfection
+of human nature? Is there one way of living
+concerning which we may say that whosoever adopts
+it has, in so far as he does adopt it, discerned and
+attained the purpose of his being? The literal force
+of the word in our text gives pertinence to that
+question, for it distinctly means 'having reached the
+end.' And if that be taken as the meaning, there need
+be no doubt about the answer. Grand old words have
+taught us long ago 'Man's chief end is to glorify God
+and to enjoy Him for ever.' Yes, he who lives for God
+has taken that for his aim which all his nature and all
+his relations prescribe, he is doing what he was made
+and meant to do; and however incomplete may be its
+attainments, the lowest form of a God-fearing, God-obeying
+life is higher and more nearly 'perfect' than
+the fairest career or character against which, as a
+blight on all its beauty, the damning accusation may
+be brought, 'The God in whose hand thy breath is, and
+whose are all thy ways, thou hast not glorified.'</p>
+
+<p>People sneer at 'saints' and point at their failings.
+They remind us of the foul stains in David's career, for
+instance, and mock as they ask, 'Is this your man after
+God's own heart?' Yes, he is; not because religion has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>
+a morality of its own different from that of the world
+(except as being higher), nor because 'saints' make up
+for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms,
+but because the main set and current of the life was
+evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous
+sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters,
+as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and
+conquered by strenuous effort. Better a life of Godward
+aspiration and straining after purity, even if
+broken by such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual
+earthward grubbing, undisturbed by gross sin.</p>
+
+<p>And another reason warrants the application of the
+word to men whose present is full of incompleteness,
+namely, the fact that such men have in them the
+germ of a life which has no natural end but absolute
+completeness. The small seed may grow very slowly
+in the climate and soil which it finds here, and be only
+a poor little bit of ragged green, very shabby and inconspicuous
+by the side of the native flowers of earth
+flaunting around it, but it has a divine germinant virtue
+within, and waits but being carried to its own clime
+and 'planted in the house of the Lord' above, to
+'flourish in the courts of our God,' when these others
+with their glorious beauty have faded away and are
+flung out to rot.</p>
+
+<p>II. We have set forth here very distinctly two of the
+characteristics of this perfection.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle in our text exhorts the perfect to be '<i>thus</i>
+minded.' How is that? Evidently the word points
+back to the previous clauses, in which he has been
+describing his own temper and feeling in the Christian
+race. He sets that before the Philippians as their
+pattern, or rather invites them to fellowship with him
+in the estimate of themselves and in their efforts after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>
+higher attainments. 'Be thus minded' means, Think
+as I do of yourselves, and do as I do in your daily life.</p>
+
+<p>How did he think of himself? He tells us in the
+sentence before, 'Not as though I were already perfect.
+I count not myself to have apprehended.' So then a
+leading characteristic of this true Christian perfection
+is a constant consciousness of imperfection. In all fields
+of effort, whether intellectual, moral, or mechanical, as
+faculty grows, consciousness of insufficiency grows with
+it. The farther we get up the hill, the more we see how
+far it is to the horizon. The more we know, the more
+we know our ignorance. The better we can do, the
+more we discern how much we cannot do. Only people
+who never have done and never will do anything, or
+else raw apprentices with the mercifully granted self-confidence
+of youth, which gets beaten out of most of
+us soon enough, think that they can do everything.</p>
+
+<p>In morals and in Christian life the same thing is true.
+The measure of our perfection will be the consciousness
+of our imperfection&mdash;a paradox, but a great truth. It
+is plain enough that it will be so. Conscience becomes
+more sensitive as we get nearer right. The worse a man
+is the less it speaks to him, and the less he hears it.
+When it ought to thunder it whispers; when we need it
+most it is least active. The thick skin of a savage will
+not be disturbed by lying on sharp stones, while a
+crumpled rose-leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So
+the practice of evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and
+the practice of goodness restores tenderness and sensibility;
+and many a man laden with crime knows less of
+its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost spotless
+to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be
+conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all
+dirty and dull, a dozen more or fewer will make little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span>
+difference. As men grow better they become like that
+glycerine barometer recently introduced, on which a fall
+or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to
+record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous.
+Good people sometimes wonder, and sometimes are
+made doubtful and sad about themselves, by this abiding
+and even increased consciousness of sin. There is
+no need to be so. The higher the temperature the more
+chilling would it be to pass into an ice-house, and the
+more our lives are brought into fellowship with the
+perfect life, the more shall we feel our own shortcomings.
+Let us be thankful if our consciences speak
+to us more loudly than they used to do. It is a sign of
+growing holiness, as the tingling in a frost-bitten limb
+is of returning life. Let us seek to cultivate and increase
+the sense of our own imperfection, and be sure
+that the diminution of a consciousness of sin means
+not diminished power of sin, but lessened horror of it,
+lessened perception of right, lessened love of goodness,
+and is an omen of death, not a symptom of life. Painter,
+scholar, craftsman all know that the condition of advance
+is the recognition of an ideal not attained.
+Whoever has not before him a standard to which he
+has not reached will grow no more. If we see no
+faults in our work we shall never do any better. The
+condition of all Christian, as of all other progress, is
+to be drawn by that fair vision before us, and to be
+stung into renewed effort to reach it, by the consciousness
+of present imperfection.</p>
+
+<p>Another characteristic to which these perfect men
+are exhorted is a constant striving after a further
+advance. How vigorously, almost vehemently, that
+temper is put in the context&mdash;'I follow after'; 'I press
+toward the mark'; and that picturesque 'reaching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span>
+forth,' or, as the Revised Version gives it, 'stretching
+forward.' The full force of the latter word cannot be
+given in any one English equivalent, but may be clumsily
+hinted by some such phrase as 'stretching oneself out
+over,' as a runner might do with body thrown forward
+and arms extended in front, and eagerness in every
+strained muscle, and eye outrunning foot, and hope
+clutching the goal already. So yearning forward, and
+setting all the current of his being, both faculty and
+desire, to the yet unreached mark, the Christian man
+is to live. His glances are not to be bent backwards,
+but forwards. He is not to be a 'praiser of the past,'
+but a herald and expectant of a nobler future. He is
+the child of the day and of the morning, forgetting the
+things which are behind, and ever yearning towards
+the things which are before, and drawing them to himself.
+To look back is to be stiffened into a living death;
+only with faces set forward are we safe and well.</p>
+
+<p>This buoyant energy of hope and effort is to be the
+result of the consciousness of imperfection of which we
+have spoken. Strange to many of us, in some moods,
+that a thing so bright should spring up from a thing so
+dark, and that the more we feel our own shortcomings,
+the more hopeful should we be of a future unlike the
+past, and the more earnest in our effort to make that
+future the present! There is a type of Christian experience
+not uncommon among devout people, in which
+the consciousness of imperfection paralyses effort instead
+of quickening it; men lament their evil, their
+slow progress and so on, and remain the same year
+after year. They are stirred to no effort. There is no
+straining onwards. They almost seem to lose the faith
+that they can ever be any better. How different this
+from the grand, wholesome completeness of Paul's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span>
+view here, which embraces both elements, and even
+draws the undying brightness of his forward-looking
+confidence from the very darkness of his sense of
+present imperfection!</p>
+
+<p>So should it be with us, 'as many as be perfect.'
+Before us stretch indefinite possibilities of approximating
+to the unattainable fulness of the divine life.
+We may grow in knowledge and in holiness through
+endless ages and grades of advance. In a most blessed
+sense we may have that for our highest joy which in
+another meaning is a punishment of unfaithfulness
+and indocility, that we shall be 'ever learning, and
+never coming to the full knowledge of the truth.' No
+limit can be put to what we may receive of God, nor to
+the closeness, the fulness of our communion with Him,
+nor to the beauty of holiness which may pass from
+Him into our poor characters, and irradiate our homely
+faces. Then, brethren, let us cherish a noble discontent
+with all that we at present are. Let our
+spirits stretch out all their powers to the better things
+beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send out
+pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the
+seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the
+bare stone for the earth by which it must be fed. Let
+the sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant
+confidence in what we, even we, may become if we will
+only take the grace we have. To this touchstone let
+us bring all claims to higher holiness&mdash;they who are
+perfect are most conscious of imperfection, and most
+eager in their efforts after a further progress in the
+knowledge, love, and likeness of God in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>III. We have here also distinctly brought out the co-existence
+with these characteristics of their opposites.</p>
+
+<p>'If in anything ye are otherwise minded,' says Paul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span>
+I have already suggested that this expression evidently
+refers not to difference of opinion among themselves,
+but to a divergence of character from the pattern of
+feeling and life which he has been proposing to them.
+If in any respects ye are unconscious of your imperfections,
+if there be any 'witch's mark' of insensibility
+in some spot of your conscience to some plain transgressions
+of law, if in any of you there be some complacent
+illusion of your own stainlessness, if to any
+of you the bright vision before you seem faint and
+unsubstantial, God will show you what you do not
+see. Plainly then he considers that there will be found
+among these perfect men states of feeling and estimates
+of themselves opposed to those which he has been
+exhorting them to cherish. Plainly he supposes that
+a good man may pass for a time under the dominion
+of impulses and theories which are of another kind
+from those that rule his life.</p>
+
+<p>He does not expect the complete and uninterrupted
+dominion of these higher powers. He recognises the
+plain facts that the true self, the central life of the
+soul, the higher nature, 'the new man,' abides in a self
+which is but gradually renewed, and that there is
+a long distance, so to speak, from the centre to the
+circumference. That higher life is planted, but its
+germination is a work of time. The leaven does not
+leaven the whole mass in a moment, but creeps on
+from particle to particle. 'Make the tree good' and in
+due time its fruit will be good. But the conditions of
+our human life are conflict, and these peaceful images
+of growth and unimpeded natural development, 'first
+the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in
+the ear,' are not meant to tell all the truth. Interruptions
+from external circumstances, struggles of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>
+flesh with spirit, and of imagination and heart and
+will against the better life implanted in the spirit, are
+the lot of all, even the most advanced here, and however
+a man may be perfect, there will always be the
+possibility that in something he may be 'otherwise
+minded.'</p>
+
+<p>Such an admission does not make such interruptions
+less blameworthy when they occur. The doctrine of
+averages does not do away with the voluntary character
+of each single act. The same number of letters are
+yearly posted without addresses. Does anybody dream
+of not scolding the errand boy who posted them, or the
+servant who did not address them, because he knows
+that? We are quite sure that we could have resisted
+each time that we fell. That piece of sharp practice in
+business, or that burst of bad temper in the household
+which we were last guilty of&mdash;could we have helped it
+or not? Conscience must answer that question, which
+does not depend at all on the law of averages. Guilt
+is not taken away by asserting that sin cleaves to men,
+'perfect men.'</p>
+
+<p>But the feelings with which we should regard sin
+and contradictions of men's truest selves in ourselves
+and others should be so far altered by such thoughts
+that we should be very slow to pronounce that a man
+cannot be a Christian because he has done so and so.
+Are there any sins which are clearly <i>incompatible</i> with
+a Christian character? All sins are <i>inconsistent</i> with
+it, but that is a very different matter. The uniform
+direction of a man's life being godless, selfish, devoted
+to the objects and pursuits of time and sense, is incompatible
+with his being a Christian&mdash;but, thank God, no
+single act, however dark, is so, if it be in contradiction
+to the main tendency impressed upon the character<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span>
+and conduct. It is not for us to say that any single
+deed shows a man cannot be Christ's, nor to fling ourselves
+down in despair saying, 'If I were a Christian,
+I could not have done that.' Let us remember that
+'all unrighteousness is sin,' and the least sin is in
+flagrant opposition to our Christian profession; but
+let us also remember, and that not to blunt our consciences
+or weaken our efforts, that Paul thought it
+possible for perfect men to be 'otherwise minded' from
+their deepest selves and their highest pattern.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The crowning hope that lies in these words is
+the certainty of a gradual but complete attainment of
+all the Christian aspirations after God and goodness.</p>
+
+<p>The ground of that confidence lies in no natural
+tendencies in us, in no effort of ours, but solely in that
+great name which is the anchor of all our confidence,
+the name of God. Why is Paul certain that 'God will
+reveal even this unto you'? Because He is God. The
+Apostle has learned the infinite depth of meaning that
+lies in that name. He has learned that God is not in
+the way of leaving off His work before He has done
+His work, and that none can say of Him, that 'He
+began to build, and was not able to finish.' The assurances
+of an unchangeable purpose in redemption,
+and of inexhaustible resources to effect it; of a love
+that can never fade, and of a grace that can never be
+exhausted&mdash;are all treasured for us in that mighty
+name. And such confidence is confirmed by the manifest
+tendency of the principles and motives brought
+to bear on us in Christianity to lead on to a condition
+of absolute perfection, as well as by the experience
+which we may have, if we will, of the sanctifying and
+renewing power of His Spirit in our Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>By the discipline of daily life, by the ministry of sorrow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span>
+and joy, by merciful chastisements dogging our steps
+when we stray, by duties and cares, by the teaching
+of His word coming even closer to our hearts and
+quickening our consciences to discern evil where we
+had seen none, as well as kindling in us desires after
+higher and rarer goodness, by the reward of enlarged
+perceptions of duty and greater love towards it, with
+which He recompenses lowly obedience to the duty as
+yet seen, by the secret influences of His Spirit of Power
+and of Love and of a sound Mind breathed into our
+waiting spirits, by the touch of His own sustaining
+hand and glance of His own guiding eye, He will reveal
+to the lowly soul all that is yet wanting in its knowledge,
+and communicate all that is lacking in character.</p>
+
+<p>So for us, the true temper is confidence in His power
+and will, an earnest waiting on Him, a brave forward
+yearning hope blended with a lowly consciousness of
+imperfection, which is a spur not a clog, and vigorous
+increasing efforts to bring into life and character the
+fulness and beauty of God. Presumption should be as
+far from us as despair&mdash;the one because we have not
+already attained, the other because 'God will reveal
+even this unto us.' Only let us keep in mind the caution
+which the Apostle, knowing the possible abuses which
+might gather round His teaching, has here attached
+to it, 'Nevertheless'&mdash;though all which I have been
+saying is true, it is only on this understanding&mdash;'Whereto
+we have already attained, by the same let
+us walk.' God will perfect that which concerneth you
+if&mdash;and only if&mdash;you go on as you have begun, if you
+make your creed a life, if you show what you are. If
+so, then all the rest is a question of time. A has been
+said, and Z will come in its proper place. Begin with
+humble trust in Christ, and a process is commenced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span>
+which has no natural end short of that great hope
+with which this chapter closes, that the change which
+begins in the deepest recesses of our being, and struggles
+slowly and with many interruptions, into partial
+visibility in our character, shall one day triumphantly
+irradiate our whole nature out to the very finger-tips,
+and 'even the body of our humiliation shall be fashioned
+like unto the body of Christ's glory, according to the
+working whereby He is able even to subdue all things
+to Himself.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE RULE OF THE ROAD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same
+rule.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 16.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Paul has just been laying down a great principle&mdash;viz.
+that if the main direction of a life be right, God
+will reveal to a man the points in which he is wrong.
+But that principle is untrue and dangerous, unless
+carefully guarded. It may lead to a lazy tolerance of
+evil, and to drawing such inferences as, 'Well! it does
+not much matter about strenuous effort, if we are
+right at bottom it will all come right by-and-by,' and
+so it may become a pillow for indolence and a clog on
+effort. This possible abuse of a great truth seems to
+strike the Apostle, and so he enters here, with this
+'Nevertheless,' a <i>caveat</i> against that twist of his meaning.
+It is as if he said, 'Now mind! while all that is
+perfectly true, it is true on conditions; and if they be
+not attended to, it is not true.' God will reveal to a
+man the things in which he is wrong if, and only if, he
+steadfastly continues in the course which he knows
+and sees to be right. Present attainments, then, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span>
+in some sense a standard of duty, and if we honestly
+and conscientiously observe that standard we shall
+get light as we journey. In this exhortation of the
+Apostle's there are many exhortations wrapped up;
+and in trying to draw them out I venture to adhere to
+the form of exhortation for the sake of impressiveness
+and point.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, I would say the Apostle means, 'Live
+up to your faith and your convictions.'</p>
+
+<p>It may be a question whether 'that to which we
+have already attained' means the amount of knowledge
+which we have won or the amount of practical
+righteousness which we have made our own. But I
+think that, instead of sharply dividing between these
+two, we shall follow more in the course of the Apostle's
+thought if we unite them together, and remember that
+the Bible does not make the distinct separation which
+we sometimes incline to make between knowledge on
+the one side and practice on the other, but regards the
+man as a living unity. And thus, both aspects of our
+attainments come into consideration here.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, there are two main thoughts&mdash;first, live out
+your creed, and second, live up to your convictions.</p>
+
+<p>Live out your creed. Men are meant to live, not by
+impulse, by accident, by inclination, but by principle.
+We are not intended to live by rule, but we <i>are</i> intended
+to live by law. And unless we know <i>why</i> we do
+as well as <i>what</i> we do, and give a rational account of
+our conduct, we fall beneath the height on which God
+intends us to walk. Impulse is all very well, but
+impulse is blind and needs a guide. The imitation of
+those around us, or the acceptance of the apparent
+necessities of circumstances, are, to some extent, inevitable
+and right. But to be driven merely by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span>
+force of externals is to surrender the highest prerogative
+of manhood. The highest part of human nature
+is the reason guided by conscience, and a man's conscience
+is only then rightly illuminated when it is
+illuminated by his creed, which is founded on the acceptance
+of the revelation that God has made of Himself.</p>
+
+<p>And whilst we are clearly meant to be guided by the
+intelligent appropriation of God's truth, that truth is
+evidently all meant for guidance. We are not told
+anything in the Bible in order that we may know as
+an ultimate object, but we are told it all in order that,
+knowing, we may be, and, being, we may do, according
+to His will.</p>
+
+<p>Just think of the intensely practical tendency of all
+the greatest truths of Christianity. The Cross is the
+law of life. The revelation that was made there was
+made, not merely that we might cling to it as a refuge
+from our sins, but that we might accept it as the rule
+of our conduct. All our duties to mankind are summed
+up in the word 'Love one another as I have loved you.'
+We say that we believe in the divinity of Christ; we
+say that we believe in the great incarnation and sacrificial
+death and eternal priesthood of the loving Son of
+God. We say that we believe in a judgment to come
+and a future life. Well, then, do these truths produce
+any effect upon my life? have they shaped me in any
+measure into conformity with their great principles?
+Does there issue from them constraining power which
+grasps me and moulds me as a sculptor would a bit of
+clay in his hands? Am I subject to the Gospel's
+authority, and is the word in which God has revealed
+Himself to me the word which dominates and impels
+all my life? 'Whereunto we have already attained,
+by the same let us walk.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But we shall not do that without a distinct effort.
+For it is a great deal easier to live from hand to mouth
+than to live by principle. It is a great deal easier to
+accept what seems forced upon us by circumstances
+than to exercise control over the circumstances, and
+make them bend to God's holy will. It is a great deal
+easier to take counsel of inclination, and to put the
+reins in the hands of impulses, passions, desires, tastes,
+or even habits, than it is, at each fresh moment, to
+seek for fresh impulses from a fresh illumination from
+the ancient and yet ever fresh truth. The old kings
+of France used to be kept with all royal state in the
+palace, but they were not allowed to do anything.
+And there was a rough, unworshipped man that stood
+by their side, and who was the real ruler of the realm.
+That is what a great many professing Christians do
+with their creeds. They instal them in some inner
+chamber that they very seldom visit, and leave them
+there, in dignified idleness, and the real working ruler
+of their lives is found elsewhere. Let us see to it,
+brethren, that all our thoughts are incarnated in our
+deeds, and that all our deeds are brought into immediate
+connection with the great principles of God's
+word. Live by that law, and we live at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>And, then, remember that this translating of creed
+into conduct is the only condition of growing illumination.
+When we act upon a belief, the belief grows.
+That is the source of a great deal of stupid obstinacy in
+this world, because men have been so long accustomed
+to go upon certain principles that it seems incredible
+to them but that these principles should be true. But
+that, too, is at the bottom of a great deal of intelligent
+and noble firmness of adherence to the true. A
+man who has tested a principle because he has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span>
+lived upon it has confidence in it that nobody else
+can have.</p>
+
+<p>Projectors may have beautiful specifications with
+attractive pictures of their new inventions; they look
+very well upon paper, but we must see them working
+before we are sure of their worth. And so, here is this
+great body of Divine truth, which assumes to be sufficient
+for guidance, for conduct, for comfort, for life.
+Live upon it, and thereby your grasp of it and your
+confidence in it will be immensely increased. And no
+man has a right to say 'I have rejected Christianity
+as untrue,' unless he has put it to the test by living
+upon it; and if he has, he will never say it. A Swiss
+traveller goes into a shop and buys a brand-new alpenstock.
+Does he lean upon it with as much confidence
+as another man does, who has one with the names of
+all the mountains that it has helped him up branded
+on it from top to bottom? Take <i>this</i> staff and lean on
+it. Live your creed, and you will believe your creed as
+you never will until you do. Obedience takes a man
+up to an elevation from which he sees further into the
+deep harmonies of truth. In all regions of life the
+principle holds good: 'To him that hath shall be
+given.' And it holds eminently in reference to our
+grasp of Christian principles. Use them and they
+grow; neglect them and they perish. Sometimes a
+man dies in a workhouse who has a store of guineas
+and notes wrapped up in rags somewhere about him;
+and so they have been of no use to him. If you want
+your capital to increase, trade with it. As the Lord
+said when He gave the servants their talents: 'Trade
+with them till I come.' The creed that is utilised is the
+creed that grows. And that is why so many of you
+Christian people have so little real intellectual grasp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span>
+of the principles of Christianity, because you have not
+lived upon them, nor tried to do it.</p>
+
+<p>And, in like manner, another side of this thought is,
+be true to your convictions. There is no such barrier
+to a larger and wholesomer view of our duty as the
+neglect of anything that plainly is our duty. It stands
+there, an impassable cliff between us and all progress.
+Let us live and be what we know we ought to be, and
+we shall know better what we ought to be at the next
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, let me put the Apostle's meaning in
+another exhortation, Go on as you have begun.</p>
+
+<p>'Whereunto we have already attained, by the same
+let us walk.' The various points to which the men
+have reached are all points in one straight line; and
+the injunction of my text is 'Keep the road.' There
+are a great many temptations to stray from it. There
+are nice smooth grassy bits by the side of it where it
+is a great deal easier walking. There are attractive
+things just a footstep or two out of the path&mdash;such a
+little deviation that it can easily be recovered. And
+so, like children gathering daisies in the field, we stray
+away from the path; and, like men on a moor, we
+then look round for it, and it is gone. The angle of
+divergence may be the acutest possible; the deviation
+when we begin may be scarcely visible, but if you draw
+a line at the sharpest angle and the least deviation
+from a straight line, and carry it out far enough, there
+will be space between it and the line from which it
+started ample to hold a universe. Then, let us take
+care of small deviations from the plain straight path,
+and give no heed to the seductions that lie on either
+side, but 'whereunto we have already attained, by <i>the
+same</i> let us walk.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are temptations, too, to slacken our speed.
+The river runs far more slowly in its latter course than
+when it came babbling and leaping down the hillside.
+And sometimes a Christian life seems as if it crept
+rather than ran, like those sluggish streams in the Fen
+country, which move so slowly that you cannot tell
+which way the water is flowing. Are not there all
+round us, are there not amongst ourselves instances
+of checked growth, of arrested development? There
+are people listening to me now, calling themselves&mdash;and
+I do not say that they have not a right to do
+so&mdash;Christians, who have not grown a bit for years,
+but stand at the very same point of attainment, both
+in knowledge and in purity and Christlikeness, as they
+were many, many days ago. I beseech you, listen to
+this exhortation of my text, 'Whereunto we have
+already attained, by the same let us walk,' and continue
+patient and persistent in the course that is set
+before us.</p>
+
+<p>III. The Apostle's injunction may be cast into this
+form, Be yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The representation which underlies my text, and
+precedes it in the context, is that of the Christian community
+as a great body of travellers all upon one road,
+all with their faces turned in one direction, but at very
+different points on the path. The difference of position
+necessarily involves a difference in outlook. They see
+their duties, and they see the Word of God, in some
+respects diversely. And the Apostle's exhortation is:
+'Let each man follow his own insight, and whereunto
+he has attained, by that, and not by his brother's
+attainment, by that let him walk.' From the very
+fact of the diversity of advancement there follows the
+plain duty for each of us to use our own eyesight, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span>
+of independent faithfulness to our own measure of
+light, as the guide which we are bound to follow.</p>
+
+<p>There is a dreadful want, in the ordinary Christian
+life, of any appearance of first-hand communication
+with Jesus Christ, and daring to be myself, and to act
+on the insight into His will which Christ has given <i>me</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Conventional Godliness, Christian people cut after
+one pattern, a little narrow round of certain statutory
+duties and obligations, a parrot-like repetition of certain
+words, a mechanical copying of certain methods
+of life, an oppressive sameness, mark so much of
+modern religion. What a freshening up there would
+come into all Christian communities if every man
+lived by his own perception of truth and duty! If a
+musician in an orchestra is listening to his neighbour's
+note and time, he will lose many an indication from
+the conductor that would have kept him far more
+right, if he had attended to it. And if, instead of
+taking our beliefs and our conduct from one another,
+or from the average of Christian men round us, we
+went straight to Jesus Christ and said to Him, 'What
+wouldst <i>Thou</i> have <i>me</i> to do?' there would be a
+different aspect over Christendom from what there is
+to-day. The fact of individual responsibility, according
+to the measure of our individual light, and faithful
+following of that, wheresoever it may lead us, are the
+grand and stirring principles that come from these
+words. 'Whereunto we have already attained,' by that&mdash;and
+by no other man's attainment or rule&mdash;let us walk.</p>
+
+<p>But do not let us forget that that same faithful
+independence and independent faithfulness because
+Christ speaks to us, and we will not let any other
+voice blend with His, are quite consistent with, and,
+indeed, demand, the frank recognition of our brother's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span>
+equal right. If we more often thought of all the great
+body of Christian people as an army, united in its
+diversity, its line of march stretching for leagues, and
+some in the van, and some in the main body, and some
+in the rear, but all one, we should be more tolerant of
+divergences, more charitable in our judgment of the
+laggards, more patient in waiting for them to come up
+with us, and more wise and considerate in moderating
+our pace sometimes to meet theirs. All who love Jesus
+Christ are on the same road and bound for the same
+home. Let us be contented that they shall be at
+different stages on the path, seeing that we know that
+they will all reach the Temple above.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, cherish the consciousness of imperfection
+and the confidence of success.</p>
+
+<p>'Whereunto we have attained' implies that that is
+only a partial possession of a far greater whole. The
+road is not finished at the stage where we stand. And,
+on the other hand, 'by the same let us walk,' implies
+that beyond the present point the road runs on equally
+patent and pervious to our feet. These two convictions,
+of my own imperfection and of the certainty of
+my reaching the great perfectness beyond, are indispensable
+to all Christian progress. As soon as a man
+begins to think that he has realised his ideal, Good-bye!
+to all advance. The artist, the student, the man
+of business, all must have gleaming before them an
+unattained object, if they are ever to be stirred to
+energy and to run with patience the race that is set
+before them.</p>
+
+<p>The more distinctly that a man is conscious of his
+own imperfection in the Christian life, the more he
+will be stung and stirred into earnestness and energy
+of effort, if only, side by side with the consciousness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span>
+imperfection, there springs triumphant the confidence
+of success. That will give strength to the feeble
+knees; that will lift a man buoyant over difficulties;
+that will fire desire; that will stimulate and solidify
+effort; that will make the long, monotonous stretches
+of the road easy, the rough places plain, the crooked
+things straight. Over all reluctant, repellent duties it
+will bear us, in all weariness it will re-invigorate us.
+We are saved by hope, and the more brightly there
+burns before us, not as a tremulous hope, but as a
+future certainty, the thought, 'I shall be like Him, for
+I shall see Him as He is,' the more shall I set my face
+to the loved goal and my feet to the dusty road, and
+'press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling
+of God.' Christian progress comes out of the clash and
+collision of these two things, like that of flint and steel&mdash;the
+consciousness of imperfection and the confidence
+of success. And they who thus are driven by the one
+and drawn by the other, in all their consciousness of
+failure are yet blessed, and are crowned at last with
+that which they believed before it came.</p>
+
+<p>'Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house'&mdash;the
+prize won is heaven. But 'blessed are they in whose
+hearts are the ways'&mdash;the prize desired and strained
+after is heaven upon earth. We may all live a life of
+continual advancement, each step leading upwards, for
+the road always climbs, to purer air, grander scenery,
+and a wider view. And yonder, progress will still be
+the law, for they who here have followed the Lamb, and
+sought to make Him their pattern and Commander,
+will there 'follow Him whithersoever He goeth.' If
+here we walk according to that 'whereunto we have
+attained,' there He shall say, 'They will walk with Me
+in white, for they are worthy.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WARNINGS AND HOPES</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Brethren, be ye imitators together of me, and mark them which so walk even as
+ye have us for an ensample. For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now
+tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose
+end is perdition, whose God is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who
+mind earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we
+wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of
+our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to
+the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto Himself.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span>
+iii. 17-21 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There is a remarkable contrast in tone between the
+sad warnings which begin this section and the glowing
+hopes with which it closes, and that contrast is made
+the more striking when we notice that the Apostle
+binds the gloom of the one and the radiance of the
+other by 'For,' which makes the latter the cause of the
+former.</p>
+
+<p>The exhortation in which the Apostle begins by proposing
+himself as an example sounds strange on any
+lips, and, most of all, on his, but we have to note that
+the points in which he sets himself up as a pattern are
+obviously those on which he touched in the preceding
+outpouring of his heart, and which he has already
+commended to the Philippians in pleading with them
+to be 'thus minded.' What he desires them to copy is
+his self-distrust, his willingness to sacrifice all things
+to win Christ, his clear sense of his own shortcomings,
+and his eager straining towards as yet unreached perfection.
+His humility is not disproved by such words,
+but what is remarkable in them is the clear consciousness
+of the main direction and set of his life. We may
+well hesitate to take them for ours, but every Christian
+man and woman ought to be able to say this much.
+If we cannot in some degree declare that we are so
+walking, we have need to look to our foundations.
+Such words are really in sharp contrast to those in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span>
+which Jesus is held forth as an example. Notice, too,
+how quickly he passes to associate others with him,
+and to merge the 'Me' into 'Us.' We need not ask
+who his companions were, since Timothy is associated
+with him at the beginning of the letter.</p>
+
+<p>The exhortation is enforced by pointing to others
+who had gone far astray, and of whom he had warned
+the Philippians often, possibly by letter. Who these
+unworthy disciples were remains obscure. They
+were clearly not the Judaisers branded in verse 2,
+who were teachers seeking to draw away the Philippians,
+while these others seem to have been 'enemies
+of the Cross of Christ,' not by open hostility nor by
+theoretical errors, but by practical worldliness, and
+that in these ways; they make sense their God, they
+are proud of what is really their disgrace, namely, they
+are shaking off the restraints of morality; and, most
+black though it may seem least so, they 'mind earthly
+things' on which thought, feeling, and interest are concentrated.
+Let us lay to heart the lesson that such
+direction of the current of a life to the things of earth
+makes men 'enemies of the Cross of Christ,' whatever
+their professions, and will surely make their end perdition,
+whatever their apparent prosperity. Paul's life
+seemed loss and was gain; these men's lives seemed
+gain and was loss.</p>
+
+<p>From this dark picture charged with gloom, and in
+one corner showing white waves breaking far out
+against an inky sky, and a vessel with torn sails
+driving on the rocks, the Apostle turns with relief to
+the brighter words in which he sets forth the true
+affinities and hopes of a Christian. They all stand or
+fall with the belief in the Resurrection of Christ and
+His present life in His glorified corporeal manhood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I. Our true metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>The Revised Version puts in the margin as an alternative
+rendering for 'citizenship' commonwealth, and
+there appears to be a renewed allusion here to the fact
+already noted that Philippi was a 'colony,' and that its
+inhabitants were Roman citizens. Paul uses a very
+emphatic word for 'is' here which it is difficult to
+reproduce in English, but which suggests essential
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>The reason why that heavenly citizenship is ours in
+no mere play of the imagination but in most solid substance,
+is because He is there for whom we look.
+Where Christ is, is our Mother-country, our Fatherland,
+according to His own promise, 'I go to prepare
+a place for you.' His being there draws our thoughts
+and sets our affections on Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>II. The colonists looking for the King.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperors sometimes made a tour of the provinces.
+Paul here thinks of Christians as waiting for
+their Emperor to come across the seas to this outlying
+corner of His dominions. The whole grand name is
+given here, all the royal titles to express solemnity
+and dignity, and the character in which we look
+for Him is that of Saviour. We still need salvation,
+and though in one sense it is past, in another it will
+not be ours until He comes the second time without sin
+unto salvation. The eagerness of the waiting which
+should characterise the expectant citizens is wonderfully
+described by the Apostle's expression for it, which
+literally means to look away out&mdash;with emphasis on
+both prepositions&mdash;like a sentry on the walls of a
+besieged city whose eyes are ever fixed on the pass
+amongst the hills through which the relieving forces
+are to come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It may be said that Paul is here expressing an
+expectation which was disappointed. No doubt the
+early Church looked for the speedy return of our Lord
+and were mistaken. We are distinctly told that in
+that point there was no revelation of the future, and
+no doubt they, like the prophets of old, 'searched what
+manner of time the spirit of Christ which was in them
+did signify.' In this very letter Paul speaks of death
+as very probable for himself, so that he had precisely
+the same double attitude which has been the Church's
+ever since, in that he looked for Christ's coming as
+possible in his own time, and yet anticipated the other
+alternative. It is difficult, no doubt, to cherish the
+vivid anticipation of any future event, and not to have
+any certainty as to its date. But if we are sure that
+a given event will come sometime and do not know
+when it may come, surely the wise man is he who
+thinks to himself it may come any time, and not he
+who treats it as if it would come at no time. The two
+possible alternatives which Paul had before him have
+in common the same certainty as to the fact and uncertainty
+as to the date, and Paul had them both
+before his mind with the same vivid anticipation.</p>
+
+<p>The practical effect of this hope of the returning
+Lord on our 'walk' will be all to bring it nearer Paul's.
+It will not suffer us to make sense our God, nor to fix
+our affections on things above; it will stimulate all
+energies in pressing towards the goal, and will turn
+away our eyes from the trivialities and transiencies
+that press upon us, away out toward the distance where
+'far off His coming shone.'</p>
+
+<p>III. The Christian sharing in Christ's glory.</p>
+
+<p>The same precise distinction between 'fashion' and
+'form,' which we have had occasion to notice in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span>
+Chapter <span class="smcap">ii.</span>, recurs here. The 'fashion' of the body of
+our humiliation is external and transient; the 'form'
+of the body of His glory to which we are to be assimilated
+consists of essential characteristics or properties,
+and may be regarded as being almost synonymous with
+'Nature.' Observing the distinction which the Apostle
+draws by the use of these two words, and remembering
+their force in the former instance of their occurrence,
+we shall not fail to give force to the representation that
+in the Resurrection the fleeting fashion of the bodily
+frame will be altered, and the glorified bodies of the
+saints made participant of the essential qualities of His.</p>
+
+<p>We further note that there is no trace of false
+asceticism or of gnostic contempt for the body in its
+designation as 'of our humiliation.' Its weaknesses,
+its limitations, its necessities, its corruption and its
+death, sufficiently manifest our lowliness, while, on the
+other hand, the body in which Christ's glory is manifested,
+and which is the instrument for His glory, is
+presented in fullest contrast to it.</p>
+
+<p>The great truth of Christ's continual glorified manhood
+is the first which we draw from these words.
+The story of our Lord's Resurrection suggests indeed
+that He brought the same body from the tomb as
+loving hands had laid there. The invitation to Thomas
+to thrust his hands into the prints of the nails, the
+similar invitation to the assembled disciples, and His
+partaking of food in their presence, seemed to forbid
+the idea of His rising changed. Nor can we suppose
+that the body of His glory would be congruous with
+His presence on earth. But we have to think of His
+ascension as gradual, and of Himself as 'changed by
+still degrees' as He ascended, and so as returned to
+where the 'glory which He had with the Father before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span>
+the world was,' as the Shechinah cloud received Him
+out of the sight of the gazers below. If this be the
+true reading of His last moments on earth, He united
+in His own experience both the ways of leaving it
+which His followers experience&mdash;the way of sleep
+which is death, and the way of 'being changed.'</p>
+
+<p>But at whatever point the change came, He now
+wears, and for ever will wear, the body of a man. That
+is the dominant fact on which is built the Christian
+belief in a future life, and which gives to that belief
+all its solidity and force, and separates it from vague
+dreams of immortality which are but a wish
+tremblingly turned into a hope, or a dread shudderingly
+turned into an expectation. The man Christ
+Jesus is the pattern and realised ideal of human life
+on earth, the revelation of the divine life through
+a human life, and in His glorified humanity is no less
+the pattern and realised ideal of what human nature
+may become. The present state of the departed is incomplete
+in that they have not a body by which they
+can act on, and be acted on by, an external universe.
+We cannot indeed suppose them lapped in age-long
+unconsciousness, and it may be that the 'dead in
+Christ' are through Him brought into some knowledge
+of externals, but for the full-summed perfection
+of their being, the souls under the altar have to wait
+for the resurrection of the body. If resurrection is
+needful for completion of manhood, then completed
+manhood must necessarily be set in a locality, and
+the glorified manhood of Jesus must also now be in a
+place. To think thus of it and of Him is not to
+vulgarise the Christian conception of Heaven, but to
+give it a definiteness and force which it sorely lacks in
+popular thinking. Nor is the continual manhood of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span>
+our Lord less precious in its influence in helping our
+familiar approach to Him. It tells us that He is still
+and for ever the same as when on earth, glad to
+welcome all who came and to help and heal all who
+need Him. It is one of ourselves who 'sitteth at the
+right hand of God.' His manhood brings Him memories
+which bind Him to us sorrowing and struggling, and
+His glory clothes Him with power to meet all our
+needs, to stanch all our wounds, to satisfy all our
+desires.</p>
+
+<p>Our text leads us to think of the wondrous transformation
+into Christ's likeness. We know not what are
+the differences between the body of our humiliation
+and the body of His glory, but we must not be led
+away by the word Resurrection to fall into the mistake
+of supposing that in death we 'sow that body which
+shall be.' Paul's great chapter in I. Corinthians should
+have destroyed that error for ever, and it is a
+singular instance of the persistency of the most unsupported
+mistakes that there are still thousands of
+people who in spite of all that they know of what befalls
+our mortal bodies, and of how their parts pass
+into other forms, still hold by that crude idea. We
+have no material by which to construct any, even the
+vaguest, outline of that body that shall be. We can
+only run out the contrasts as suggested by Paul in
+1st Corinthians, and let the dazzling greatness of the
+positive thought which he gives in the text lift our
+expectations. Weakness will become power, corruption
+incorruption, liability to death immortality, dishonour
+glory, and the frame which belonged and corresponded
+to 'that which was natural,' shall be transformed
+into a body which is the organ of that which
+is spiritual. These things tell us little, but they may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span>
+all fused into the great light of likeness to the body of
+His glory; and though that tells us even less, it feeds
+hope more and satisfies our hearts even whilst it does
+not feed our curiosity. We may well be contented to
+acknowledge that 'it doth not yet appear what we
+shall be,' when we can go on to say, 'We know that
+when He shall appear we shall be like Him.' It is
+enough for the disciple that he be as his Master.</p>
+
+<p>But we must not forget that the Apostle regards
+even this overwhelming change as but part of a
+mightier process, even the universal subjection of all
+things unto Christ Himself. The Emperor reduces the
+whole world to subjection, and the glorifying of the
+body as the climax of the universal subjugation represents
+it as the end of the process of assimilation begun
+in this mortal life. There is no possibility of a resurrection
+unto life unless that life has been begun before
+death. That ultimate glorious body is needed to bring
+men into correspondence with the external universe.
+As is the locality so is the body. Flesh and blood
+cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. This whole series
+of thoughts makes our glorious resurrection the result
+not of death, but of Christ's living power on His people.
+It is only in the measure in which He lives in us and
+we in Him, and are partaking by daily participation in
+the power of His Resurrection, that we shall be made
+subjects of the working whereby He is able even to
+subject all things unto Himself, and finally be conformed
+to the body of His glory.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>EXPOSITIONS OF<br />
+HOLY SCRIPTURE</i></h2>
+
+<h3>ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.</h3>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h3>
+PHILIPPIANS, COLOSSIANS, FIRST<br />
+AND SECOND THESSALONIANS<br />
+AND FIRST TIMOTHY<br /></h3>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_va" id="Page_va">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents: Part 2">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>PHILIPPIANS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Tender Exhortation</span> (Phil. iv. 1)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_1a'>1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Names in the Book of Life</span> (Phil. iv. 3)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_11a'>11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Rejoice Evermore</span> (Phil. iv. 4)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_21a'>21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">How to Obey an Impossible Injunction</span> (Phil. iv. 6)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_31a'>31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Warrior Peace</span> (Phil. iv. 7)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_39a'>39</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Think on these Things</span> (Phil. iv. 8)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_48a'>48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">How to say 'Thank You'</span> (Phil. iv. 10-14, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_58a'>58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gifts Given, Seed Sown</span> (Phil. iv. 15-19, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_66a'>66</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Farewell Words</span> (Phil. iv. 20-23, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_74a'>74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />COLOSSIANS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Saints, Believers, Brethren</span> (Col. i. 2)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_82a'>82</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_via" id="Page_via">[vi]</a></span><span class="smcap">The Gospel-Hope</span> (Col. i. 5)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_92a'>92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">'All Power'</span> (Col. i. 11, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_99a'>99</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Thankful for Inheritance</span> (Col. i. 12, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_106a'>106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christian Endeavour</span> (Col. i. 29)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_114a'>114</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christian Progress</span> (Col. ii. 6, 7, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_124a'>124</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Risen with Christ</span> (Col. iii. 1-15)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_127a'>127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Risen with Christ</span> (Col. iii. 1, 2)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_134a'>134</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Without and Within</span> (Col. iv. 5)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_143a'>143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />I. THESSALONIANS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Faith, Love, Hope, and their Fruits</span> (1 Thess. i. 3)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_155a'>155</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">God's Trumpet</span> (1 Thess. i. 8)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_164a'>164</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Walking Worthily</span> (1 Thess. ii. 12)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_170a'>170</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Small Duties and the Great Hope</span> (1 Thess. iv. 9-18; v. 1, 2)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_183a'>183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sleeping through Jesus</span> (1 Thess. iv. 14)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_190a'>190</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viia" id="Page_viia">[vii]</a></span><span class="smcap">The Work and Armour of the Children of the Day</span> (1 Thess. v. 8)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_198a'>198</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Waking and Sleeping</span> (1 Thess. v. 10)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_210a'>210</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Edification</span> (1 Thess. v. 11)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_220a'>220</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Continual Prayer and Its Effects</span> (1 Thess. v. 16-18)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_229a'>229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Paul's Earliest Teaching</span> (1 Thess. v. 27)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_237a'>237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />II. THESSALONIANS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christ Glorified in Glorified Men</span> (2 Thess. i. 10)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_248a'>248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Worthy of Your Calling</span> (2 Thess. i. 11, 12)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_256a'>256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Everlasting Consolation and Good Hope</span> (2 Thess. ii. 16, 17)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_267a'>267</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Heart's Home and Guide</span> (2 Thess. iii. 5)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_277a'>277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Lord of Peace and the Peace of the Lord</span> (2 Thess. iii. 16)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_288a'>288</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />I. TIMOTHY</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The End of the Commandment</span> (1 Tim. i. 5)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_298a'>298</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viiia" id="Page_viiia">[viii]</a></span>'<span class="smcap">The Gospel of the Glory of the Happy God</span>' (1 Tim. i. 11)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_308a'>308</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Gospel in Small</span> (1 Tim. i. 15)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_316a'>316</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Chief of Sinners</span> (1 Tim. i. 15)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_326a'>326</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Test Case</span> (1 Tim. i. 16)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_335a'>335</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Glory of the King</span> (1 Tim. i. 17)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_344a'>344</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Where and How To Pray</span> (1 Tim. ii. 8)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_353a'>353</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Spiritual Athletics</span> (1 Tim. iv. 7)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_361a'>361</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The One Witness, the Many Confessors</span> (1 Tim. vi. 12-14)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_370a'>370</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Conduct that Secures the Real Life</span> (1 Tim. vi. 19)</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_379a'>379</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1a" id="Page_1a">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A TENDER EXHORTATION</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so
+stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The words I have chosen set forth very simply and
+beautifully the bond which knit Paul and these
+Philippian Christians together, and the chief desire
+which his Apostolic love had for them. I venture to
+apply them to ourselves, and I speak now especially to
+the members of my own church and congregation.</p>
+
+<p>I. Let us note, then, first, the personal bond which
+gives force to the teacher's words.</p>
+
+<p>That Church at Philippi was, if Paul had any
+favourites amongst his children, his favourite child.
+The circumstances of its formation may have had
+something to do with that. It was planted by himself;
+it was the first Church in Europe; perhaps the
+Philippian gaoler and Lydia were amongst the 'beloved'
+and 'longed for' ones who were 'his joy and crown.'
+But be that as it may, all through the letter we can
+feel the throbbing of a very loving heart, and the
+tenderness of a strong man, which is the most tender
+of all things.</p>
+
+<p>Note how he addresses them. There is no assumption
+of Apostolic authority, but he puts himself on
+their level, and speaks to them as brethren. Then
+he lets his heart out, and tells them how they
+lived in his love, and how, of course, when he was
+parted from them, he had desired to be with them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2a" id="Page_2a">[2]</a></span>
+And then he touches a deeper and a sacreder chord
+when he contemplates the results of the relation
+between them, if he on his side, and they on theirs,
+were faithful to it. It says much for the teacher, and
+for the taught, if he can truly say 'My joy,'&mdash;'I have
+no greater joy than to know that my children walk
+in the truth.' And not only were they his joy, but they
+who, by their faithfulness, have become his joy, will
+on that one day in the far future, be his 'crown.' That
+metaphor carries on the thoughts to the great Judgment
+Day, and introduces a solemn element, which is
+as truly present, dear friends, in our relation to one
+another, little of an Apostle as I am, as it was in the
+relation between Paul and the Philippians. They who
+'turn many to righteousness shine as the brightness of
+the firmament,' because those whom they have turned,
+'shine as lights in the world.' And at that last august
+and awful tribunal, where you will have to give an
+account for your listening, as I for my speaking, the
+crown of victory laid on the locks of a faithful teacher
+is the characters of those whom he has taught. 'Who
+is my joy and hope, and crown of rejoicing?' Are not
+even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his
+coming?</p>
+
+<p>Now, notice, further, how such mutual affection is
+needed to give force to the teacher's exhortation.
+Preaching from unloved lips never does any good. It
+irritates, or leaves untouched. Affection melts and
+opens the heart to the entrance of the word. And
+preaching from unloving lips does very little good
+either. So speaking, I condemn myself. There are men
+who handle God's great, throbbing message of love so
+coldly as that they ice even the Gospel. There are men
+who have a strange gift of taking all the sap and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3a" id="Page_3a">[3]</a></span>
+fervour out of the word that they proclaim, making
+the very grapes of Eshcol into dried raisins. And I
+feel for myself that my ministry may well have failed
+in this respect. For who is there that can modulate
+his voice so as to reproduce the music of that great
+message, or who can soften and open his heart so as
+that it shall be a worthy vehicle of the infinite love of
+God?</p>
+
+<p>But, dear brethren, though conscious of many
+failures in this respect, I yet thank God that here, at
+the end of nearly forty years of a ministry, I can look
+you in the face and believe that your look responds to
+mine, and that I can take these words as the feathers
+for my arrow, as that which will make words otherwise
+weak go further, and may help to write the precepts
+upon hearts, and to bring them to bear in practice&mdash;'My
+beloved and longed for'; 'my joy and my crown.'</p>
+
+<p>Such feelings do not need to be always spoken.
+There is very little chance of us Northerners erring on
+the side of letting our hearts speak too fully and
+frequently. Perhaps we should be all the better if we
+were a little less reticent, but at any rate you and I can
+surely trust each other after so many years, and now
+and then, as to-day, let our hearts speak.</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, notice the all-sufficient precept which
+such love gives. 'So stand fast in the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>That is a very favourite figure of Paul's, as those of
+you who have any reasonable degree of familiarity
+with his letters will know. Here it carries with it, as
+it generally does, the idea of resistance against antagonistic
+force. But the main thought of it is that of
+continuous steadfastness in our union with Jesus
+Christ. It applies, of course, to the intellect, but not
+mainly, and certainly not exclusively to intellectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4a" id="Page_4a">[4]</a></span>
+adherence to the truths spoken in the Gospel. It
+covers the whole ground of the whole man; will,
+conscience, heart, practical effort, as well as understanding.
+And it is really Paul's version, with a
+characteristic dash of pugnacity in it, of our Lord's yet
+deeper and calmer words, 'Abide in Me and I in you.'
+It is the same exhortation as Barnabas gave to the
+infantile church at Antioch, when, to these men just
+rescued from heathenism and profoundly ignorant of
+much which we suppose it absolutely necessary that
+Christians should know, he had only one thing to say,
+exhorting them all, that 'with purpose of heart they
+should cleave to the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Steadfast continuance of personal union with Jesus
+Christ, extending through all the faculties of our
+nature, and into every corner of our lives, is the
+kernel of this great exhortation. And he who fulfils
+it has little left unfulfilled. Of course, as I said, there
+is a very strong suggestion that such 'standing' is by
+no means an easy thing, or accomplished without much
+antagonism; and it may help us if, just for a moment,
+we run over the various forms of resistance which they
+have to overcome who stand fast. Nothing stands
+where it is without effort. That is true in the moral
+world, although in the physical world the law of
+motion is that nothing moves without force being
+applied to it.</p>
+
+<p>What are the things that would shake our steadfastness,
+and sweep us away? Well, there are, first, the
+tiny, continuously acting, and therefore all but omnipotent
+forces of daily life&mdash;duties, occupations, distractions
+of various kinds&mdash;which tend to move us imperceptibly
+away, as by the slow sliding of a glacier, from
+the hope of the Gospel. There is nothing so strong as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5a" id="Page_5a">[5]</a></span>
+gentle pressure, equably and unintermittently applied.
+It is far mightier than thrusts and hammerings and
+sudden assaults. I stood some time ago looking at the
+Sphinx. The hard stone&mdash;so hard that it turns the
+edge of a sculptor's chisel&mdash;has been worn away, and
+the solemn features all but obliterated. What by?
+The continual attrition of multitudinous grains of sand
+from the desert. The little things that are always at
+work upon us are the things that have most power to
+sweep us away from our steadfastness in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are, besides, the sudden assaults of strong
+temptations, of sense and flesh, or of a more subtle and
+refined character. If a man is standing loosely, in some
+careless <i>d&eacute;gag&eacute;</i> attitude, and a sudden impact comes upon
+him, over he goes. The boat upon a mountain-locked
+lake encounters a sudden gust when opposite the opening
+of a glen, and unless there be a very strong hand and
+a watchful eye at the helm, is sure to be upset. Upon
+us there come, in addition to that silent continuity of
+imperceptible but most real pressure, sudden gusts of
+temptation which are sure to throw us over, unless we
+are well and always on our guard against them.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to all these, there are ups and downs of
+our own nature, the fluctuations which are sure to
+occur in any human heart, when faith seems to ebb
+and falter, and love to die down almost into cold ashes.
+But, dear brethren, whilst we shall always be liable to
+these fluctuations of feeling, it is possible for us to
+have, deep down below these, a central core of our
+personality, in which unchanging continuity may
+abide. The depths of the ocean know nothing of the
+tides on the surface that are due to the mutable moon.
+We can have in our inmost hearts steadfastness, immovableness,
+even though the surface may be ruffled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6a" id="Page_6a">[6]</a></span>
+Make your spirits like one of those great cathedrals
+whose thick walls keep out the noises of the world,
+and in whose still equability there is neither excessive
+heat nor excessive cold, but an approximately uniform
+temperature, at midsummer and at midwinter. 'Stand
+fast in the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, my text not only gives an exhortation, but, in
+the very act of giving it, suggests how it is to be fulfilled.
+For that phrase 'in the Lord' not only indicates
+<i>where</i> we are to stand, but also <i>how</i>. That is to say&mdash;it
+is only in proportion as we keep ourselves in union
+with Christ, in heart and mind, and will, and work,
+that we shall stand steadfast. The lightest substances
+may be made stable, if they are glued on to something
+stable. You can mortice a bit of thin stone into the
+living rock, and then it will stand 'four-square to every
+wind that blows.' So it is only on condition of our
+keeping ourselves in Jesus Christ, that we are able
+to keep ourselves steadfast, and to present a front of
+resistance that does not yield one foot, either to imperceptible
+continuous pressure, to sudden assaults, or to
+the fluctuations of our own changeful dispositions and
+tempers. The ground on which a man stands has a
+great deal to do with the firmness of his footing. You
+cannot stand fast upon a bed of slime, or upon a sand-bank
+which is being undermined by the tides. And
+if we, changeful creatures, are to be steadfast in any
+region, our surest way of being so is to knit ourselves
+to Him 'who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and
+for ever,' and from whose immortality will flow some
+copy and reflection of itself into our else changeful
+natures.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, in regard to this commandment, I
+would pray you to notice that very eloquent little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7a" id="Page_7a">[7]</a></span>
+word which stands at the beginning of it. '<i>So</i> stand
+fast in the Lord.' 'So.' How? That throws us back
+to what the Apostle has been saying in the previous
+context. And what has he been saying there? The
+keynote of the previous chapter is progress&mdash;'I follow
+after; I press toward the mark, forgetting the things
+that are behind, and reaching forth to the things that
+are before.' To these exhortations to progress he
+appends this remarkable exhortation: 'So'&mdash;that is, by
+progress&mdash;'stand fast in the Lord,' which being turned
+into other words is just this&mdash;if you stand still, you will
+not stand fast. There can be no steadfastness without
+advancement. If a man is not going forward, he is
+going backward. The only way to ensure stability is
+'pressing toward the mark.' Why, a child's top only
+stands straight up as long as it is revolving. If a man
+on a bicycle stops, he tumbles. And so, in the depths
+of a Christian life, as in all science, and all walks of
+human activity, the condition of steadfastness is
+advance. Therefore, dear brethren, let no man deceive
+himself with the notion that he can keep at the same
+point of religious experience and of Christian character.
+You are either more of a Christian, or less of one, than
+you were at a past time. '<i>So</i>, stand fast,' and remember
+that to stand <i>still</i> is <i>not</i> to stand <i>fast</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, whilst all these things that I have been trying
+to say have reference to Christian people at all stages
+of their spiritual history, they have a very especial
+reference to those in the earlier part of Christian
+life.</p>
+
+<p>And I want to say to those who have only just
+begun to run the Christian life, very lovingly and very
+earnestly, that this is a text for them. For, alas! there
+is nothing more frequent than that, after the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8a" id="Page_8a">[8]</a></span>
+dawnings of a Christian life in a heart, there should come
+a period of overclouding; or that, as John Bunyan
+has taught us, when Christian has gone through the
+wicket-gate, he should fall very soon into the Slough
+of Despond. One looks round, and sees how many
+professing Christians there are who, perhaps, were
+nearer Jesus Christ on the day of their conversion
+than they have ever been since, and how many cases
+of arrested development there are amongst professing
+and real Christians; so that when for the 'time they
+ought to be teachers, they have need' to be taught
+again; and when, after the number of years that have
+passed, they ought to be full-grown men, they are but
+babes yet. And so I say to you, dear young friends,
+stand fast. Do not let the world attract you again.
+Keep near to Jesus. 'Hold fast that thou hast; let no
+man take thy crown.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, we have here a great motive which
+encourages obedience to this command.</p>
+
+<p>People generally pass over that 'Therefore' which
+begins my text, but it is full of significance and of
+importance. It links the precept which we have been
+considering with the immediately preceding hope
+which the Apostle has so triumphantly proclaimed,
+when he says that 'we look for the Saviour from
+heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change the
+body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like
+unto the body of His glory, according to the working
+whereby He is able even to subdue all things to
+Himself.'</p>
+
+<p>So there rises before us that twofold great hope;
+that the Master Himself is coming to the succour of
+His servants, and that when He comes, He will perfect
+the incomplete work which has been begun in them by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9a" id="Page_9a">[9]</a></span>
+their faith and steadfastness, and will change their
+whole humanity so that it shall become participant of,
+and conformed to, the glory of His own triumphant
+manhood.</p>
+
+<p>That hope is presented by the Apostle as having its
+natural sequel in the 'steadfastness' of my text, and
+that 'steadfastness' is regarded by the Apostle as
+drawing its most animating motives from the contemplation
+of that great hope. Blessed be God! The
+effort of the Christian life is not one which is extorted
+by fear, or by the cold sense of duty. There are no
+taskmasters with whips to stand over the heart that
+responds to Christ and to His love. But hope and joy,
+as well as love, are the animating motives which make
+sacrifices easy, soften the yoke that is laid upon our
+shoulders, and turn labour into joy and delight.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, we have to set before us this great
+hope, that Jesus Christ is coming, and that, therefore,
+our labour on ourselves is sure not to be in vain.
+Work that is done hopelessly is not done long, and
+there is no heart in it whilst it is being done. But if
+we know that Christ will appear, 'and that when He
+who is our life shall appear, we also shall appear with
+Him in glory,' then we may go to work in keeping
+ourselves steadfast in Him, with cheery hearts, and
+with full assurance that what we have been doing will
+have a great result.</p>
+
+<p>You have read, no doubt, about some little force in
+North-West India, hemmed in by enemies. They may
+well hold out resolutely and hopefully when they
+know that three relieving armies are converging upon
+their stronghold. And we, too, know that our Emperor
+is coming to raise the siege. We may well stand fast
+with such a prospect. We may well work at our own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10a" id="Page_10a">[10]</a></span>
+sanctifying when we know that our Lord Himself&mdash;like
+some master-sculptor who comes to his pupil's
+imperfectly blocked-out work, and takes his chisel in
+his hand, and with a touch or two completes it&mdash;will
+come and finish what we, by His grace, imperfectly
+began. 'So stand fast in the Lord,' because you have
+hope that the Lord is about to come, and that when
+He comes you will be like Him.</p>
+
+<p>One last word. That steadfastness is the condition
+without which we have no right to entertain that
+hope.</p>
+
+<p>If we keep ourselves near Christ, and if by keeping
+ourselves near Him, we are becoming day by day liker
+Him, then we may have calm confidence that He will
+perfect that which concerns us. But I, for my part,
+can find nothing, either in Scripture or in the analogy
+of God's moral dealings with us in the world, to
+warrant the holding out of the expectation to a man
+that, if he has kept himself apart from Jesus Christ
+and his quickening and cleansing power all his life
+long, Jesus Christ will take him in hand after he dies,
+and change him into His likeness. Don't you risk it!
+Begin by 'standing fast in the Lord.' He will do the
+rest then, not else. The cloth must be dipped into the
+dyer's vat, and lie there, if it is to be tinged with the
+colour. The sensitive plate must be patiently kept in
+position for many hours, if invisible stars are to photograph
+themselves upon it. The vase must be held
+with a steady hand beneath the fountain, if it is to be
+filled. Keep yourselves in Jesus Christ. Then here
+you will begin to be changed into the same image, and
+when He comes He will come as your Saviour, and
+complete your uncompleted work, and make you altogether
+like Himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11a" id="Page_11a">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed
+for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, dearly
+beloved.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>NAMES IN THE BOOK OF LIFE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Other my fellow-labourers whose names are in the book of life.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 3.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Paul was as gentle as he was strong. Winsome
+courtesy and delicate considerateness lay in his character,
+in beautiful union with fiery impetuosity and
+undaunted tenacity of conviction. We have here a
+remarkable instance of his quick apprehension of the
+possible effects of his words, and of his nervous anxiety
+not to wound even unreasonable susceptibilities.</p>
+
+<p>He had had occasion to mention three of his fellow-workers,
+and he wishes to associate with them others
+whom he does not purpose to name. Lest any of these
+should be offended by the omission, he soothes them
+with this graceful, half-apologetic reminder that their
+names are inscribed on a better page than his. It is as
+if he had said, 'Do not mind though I do not mention
+you individually. You can well afford to be anonymous
+in my letter since your names are inscribed in the Book
+of Life.'</p>
+
+<p><i>There</i> is a consolation for obscure good people, who
+need not expect to live except in two or three loving
+hearts; and whose names will only be preserved on
+mouldering tombstones that will convey no idea to the
+reader. We may well dispense with other commemoration
+if we have this.</p>
+
+<p>Now, this figure of the Book of Life appears in Scripture
+at intervals, almost from the beginning to the
+very end. The first instance of its occurrence is in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12a" id="Page_12a">[12]</a></span>
+self-sacrificing, intercessory prayer of Moses, when he
+expressed his willingness to be 'blotted out of Thy
+book' as an atonement for the sin of Israel. Its last
+appearance is when the Apocalyptic Seer is told that
+none enter into the City of God come down from
+Heaven 'save those whose names are written in the
+Lamb's Book of Life.' Of course in plain English the
+expression is just equivalent to being a real disciple of
+Jesus Christ. But then it presents that general notion
+under a metaphor which, in its various aspects, has a
+very distinct and stringent bearing upon our duties as
+well as upon our blessings and our hopes. I, therefore,
+wish to work out, as well as I can, the various thoughts
+suggested by this emblem.</p>
+
+<p>I. The first of them is Citizenship.</p>
+
+<p>The figure is, of course, originally drawn from the
+registers of the tribes of Israel. In that use, though
+not without a glance at some higher meaning, it
+appears in the Old Testament, where we read of 'those
+who are written among them living in Jerusalem'; or
+'are written in the writing of the house of Israel.'
+The suggestion of being inscribed on the burgess-rolls
+of a city is the first idea connected with the word. In
+the New Testament, for instance, we find in the great
+passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews the two notions
+of the city and the census brought into immediate connection,
+where the writer says, 'Ye are come unto the
+city of the living God .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and to the church of the
+first-born whose names are written in heaven.' In this
+very letter we have, only a verse or two before my
+text, the same idea of citizenship cropping up. 'Our
+<i>citizenship</i> is in Heaven, from whence also we look for
+the Saviour.' That, no doubt, helped to suggest to the
+Apostle the words of my text. And there is another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13a" id="Page_13a">[13]</a></span>
+verse in the same letter where the same idea comes
+out. 'Only act the citizen as becometh the Gospel of
+Christ.' Now, you will remember, possibly, that
+Philippi was, as the Acts of the Apostles tells us, a
+Roman colony. And the reference is exquisitely close-fitting
+to the circumstances of the people of that city.
+For a Roman colony was a bit of Rome in another
+land, and the citizens of Philippi had their names
+inscribed on the registers of the tribes of Rome. The
+writer himself was another illustration of the same
+thing, of living in a community to which he did not
+belong and of belonging to a community in which he
+did not live. For Paul was a native of Tarsus; and
+Paul, the native of the Asiatic Tarsus, was a Roman.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, the first thought that comes out of this
+great metaphor is that all of us, if we are Christian
+people, belong to another polity, another order of
+things than that in which our outward lives are spent.
+And the plain, practical conclusion that comes from it
+is, cultivate the sense of belonging to another order.
+Just as it swelled the heart of a Macedonian Philippian
+with pride, when he thought that he did not belong to
+the semi-barbarous people round about him, but that
+his name was written in the books that lay in the
+Capitol of Rome, so should we cultivate that sense of
+belonging to another order. It will make our work
+here none the worse, but it will fill our lives with the
+sense of nobler affinities, and point our efforts to
+grander work than any that belongs to 'the things
+that are seen and temporal.' Just as the little groups
+of Englishmen in treaty-ports own no allegiance to the
+laws of the country in which they live, but are
+governed by English statutes, so we have to take our
+orders from headquarters to which we have to report.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14a" id="Page_14a">[14]</a></span>
+Men in our colonies get their instructions from Downing
+Street. The officials there, appointed by the Home
+Government, think more of what they will say about
+them at Westminster than of what they say about
+them at Melbourne. So we are citizens of another
+country, and have to obey the laws of our own kingdom,
+and not those of the soil on which we dwell.
+Never mind about the opinions of men, the babblements
+of the people in the land you live in. To us, the main
+thing is that we be acceptable, well-pleasing unto Him.
+Are you solitary? Cultivate the sense of, in your
+solitude, being a member of a great community that
+stretches through all the ages, and binds into one the
+inhabitants of eternity and of time.</p>
+
+<p>Remember that this citizenship in the heavens is the
+highest honour that can be conferred upon a man. The
+patricians of Venice used to have their names inscribed
+upon what was called the 'golden book' that was kept
+in the Doge's Palace. If our names are written in the
+book of gold in the heavens, then we have higher
+dignities than any that belong to the fleeting chronicles
+of this passing, vain world. So we can accept with
+equanimity evil report or good report, and can
+acquiesce in a wholesome obscurity, and be careless
+though our names appear on no human records, and
+fill no trumpet of fame blown by earthly cheeks.
+Intellectual power, wealth, gratified ambition, and all
+the other things that men set before them, are small
+indeed compared with the honour, with the blessedness,
+with the repose and satisfaction that attend the conscious
+possession of citizenship in the heavens. Let us
+lay to heart the great words of the Master which put a
+cooling hand on all the feverish ambitions of earth.
+'In this rejoice, not that the spirits are subject unto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15a" id="Page_15a">[15]</a></span>
+you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in
+heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Then the second idea suggested by these words is
+the possession of the life which is life indeed.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Book of Life,' it is called in the New Testament.
+Its designation in the Old might as well be translated
+'the book of living' as 'the book of life.' It is a register
+of the men who are truly alive.</p>
+
+<p>Now, that is but an imaginative way of putting the
+commonplace of the New Testament, that anything
+which is worth calling life comes to us, not by creation
+or physical generation, but by being born again through
+faith in Jesus Christ, and by receiving into our else
+dead spirits the life which He bestows upon all them
+that trust Him.</p>
+
+<p>In the New Testament 'life' is far more than
+'being'; far more than physical existence; removed by
+a whole world from these lower conceptions, and finding
+its complete explanation only in the fact that the
+soul which is knit to God by conscious surrender, love,
+aspiration, and obedience, is the only soul that really
+lives. All else is death&mdash;death! He 'that liveth in
+pleasure is dead while he liveth.' The ghastly imagination
+of one of our poets, of the dead man standing on
+the deck pulling at the ropes by the side of the living,
+is true in a very deep sense. In spite of all the feverish
+activities, the manifold vitalities of practical and
+intellectual life in the world, the deepest, truest, life of
+every man who is parted from God by alienation of
+will, by indifference, and neglect of love, lies sheeted
+and sepulchred in the depths of his own heart.
+Brethren, there is no life worth calling life, none to
+which that august name can without degradation be
+applied, except the complete life of body, soul, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16a" id="Page_16a">[16]</a></span>
+spirit, in lowly obedience to God in Christ. The
+deepest meaning of the work of the Saviour is that He
+comes into a dead world, and breathes into the bones&mdash;very
+many and very dry&mdash;the breath of His own life.
+Christ has died for us; Christ will live in us if we will;
+and, unless He does, we are twice dead.</p>
+
+<p>Do not put away that thought as if it were a mere
+pulpit metaphor. It is a metaphor, but yet in the
+metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which concerns
+us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the
+highest, best, and noblest life that is possible for him,
+who is united to Jesus Christ, and drawing from Christ
+his own life. 'He that hath the Son hath life; he that
+hath not the Son hath not life.' Either my name and
+yours are written in the Book of Life, or they are
+written in the register of a cemetery. We have to make
+our choice which.</p>
+
+<p>III. Another idea suggested by this emblem is
+experience of divine individualising knowledge and
+care.</p>
+
+<p>In the Old Testament the book is called 'Thy book,'
+in the New it is called 'the Lamb's book.' That is of a
+piece with the whole relation of the New to the Old,
+and of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word and Manifestor
+of God, to the Jehovah revealed in former ages.
+For, unconditionally, and without thought of irreverence
+or idolatry, the New Testament lifts over and
+confers upon Jesus Christ the attributes which the
+Old jealously preserved as belonging only to Jehovah.
+And thus Christ the Manifestor of God, and the
+Mediator to us of all divine powers and blessings,
+takes the Book and makes the entries in it. Each man
+of us, as in your ledgers, has a page to himself. His
+account is opened, and is not confused with other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17a" id="Page_17a">[17]</a></span>
+entries. There is individualising love and care, and as
+the basis of both, individualising knowledge. My
+name, the expression of my individual being, stands
+there. Christ does not deal with me as one of a crowd,
+nor fling out blessings broadcast, that I may grasp
+them in the midst of a multitude, if I choose to put out
+a hand, but He deals with each of us singly, as if there
+were not any beings in the world but He and I, our two
+selves, all alone.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to realise the essentially individualising
+and isolating character of our relation to Jesus Christ.
+But we shall never come to the heart of the blessedness
+and the power of His Gospel unless we translate all
+'us'-es and 'every ones' and 'worlds' in Scripture into
+'I' and 'me,' and can say not only He gives Himself to
+be 'the propitiation for the sins of the whole world,'
+but 'He loved <i>me</i> and gave Himself for <i>me</i>.' The same
+individualising love which is manifested in that mighty
+universal Atonement, if we rightly understand it, is
+manifested in all His dealings with us. One by one we
+come under His notice; the Shepherd tells His sheep
+singly as they pass out through the gate or into the
+fold. He knows them all by name. 'I have called thee
+by thy name; thou art Mine.'</p>
+
+<p>Lift up your eyes and behold who made all these; the
+countless host of the nightly stars. What are nebul&aelig;
+to our eyes are blazing suns to His. 'He telleth the
+number of the stars; He calleth them all <i>by name</i>
+by the greatness of His power, for that He is strong
+in might not one faileth.' So we may nestle in the
+protection of His hand, sure of a separate place in His
+knowledge and His heart.</p>
+
+<p>Deliverance and security are the results of that
+individualising care. In one of the Old Testament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18a" id="Page_18a">[18]</a></span>
+instances of the use of this metaphor, we read that in
+the great day of calamity and sorrow 'Thy people shall
+be delivered, even every one that is written in Thy
+Book.' So we need not dread anything if our names
+are there. The sleepless King will read the Book, and
+will never forget, nor forget to help and succour His
+poor servants.</p>
+
+<p>But there are two other variations of this thought in
+the Old Testament even more tenderly suggestive of
+that individualising care and strong sufficient love
+than the emblem of my text. We read that when, in
+the exercise of his official functions, the high priest
+passed into the Tabernacle he wore, upon his <i>breast</i>,
+near the seat of personality, and the home of love&mdash;the
+names of the tribes graven, and that the same names
+were written on his shoulders, as if guiding the
+exercise of his power. So we may think of ourselves
+as lying near the beatings of His heart, and as
+individually the objects of the work of His almighty
+arm. Nor is this all. For there is yet another, and
+still tenderer, application of the figure, when we read
+of the Divine voice as saying to Israel, 'I have graven
+thee on the palms of My hands.' The name of each
+who loves and trusts and serves is written there;
+printed deep in the flesh of the Sovereign Christ. We
+bear in our bodies the marks, the <i>stigmata</i> that tell
+whose slaves we are&mdash;'the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
+And He bears in His body the marks that tell who His
+servants are.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, there is suggested by this text the idea of
+future entrance into the land of the living.</p>
+
+<p>The metaphor occurs three times in the final book of
+Scripture, the book which deals with the future and
+with the last things. And it occurs in all these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19a" id="Page_19a">[19]</a></span>
+instances in very remarkable connection. First we
+read, in the highly imaginative picture of the final
+judgment, that when the thrones are set two books
+are opened, one the Book of Life, the other the book in
+which are written the deeds of men, and that by these
+two books men are judged. There is a judgment by
+conduct. There is also a judgment by the Book of
+Life. That is to say, the question at last comes to be,
+'Is this man's name written in that book?' Is he a
+citizen of the kingdom, and therefore capable of
+entering into it? Has he the life from Christ in his
+heart? Or, in other words, the question is, first, has
+the man who stands at the bar faith in Jesus Christ;
+and, second, has he proved that his faith is genuine
+and real by the course of his earthly conduct?
+These are the books from which the judgment is made.</p>
+
+<p>Further, we read, in that blessed vision which stands
+at the far-off end of all the knowledge of the future
+which is given to humanity, the vision of the City of
+God 'that came down from heaven as a bride adorned
+for her husband,' that only they enter in there who are
+'written in the Lamb's Book of Life.' Only citizens
+are capable of entrance into the city. Aliens are
+necessarily shut out. The Lord, when He writeth up
+His people, shall count that this man was born there,
+though he never trod its streets while on earth, and,
+therefore, can enter into his native home.</p>
+
+<p>Further, in one of the letters to the seven churches
+our Lord gives as a promise to him that overcometh,
+'I will not blot his name out of the Book of Life, but I
+will confess his name.'</p>
+
+<p>What need we care what other people may think
+about us, or whether the 'hollow wraith of dying
+fame' that comes like a nimbus round some men may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20a" id="Page_20a">[20]</a></span>
+fade wholly or no, so long as we may be sure of
+acknowledgment and praise from Him from whom
+acknowledgment and praise are precious indeed.</p>
+
+<p>I have but one or two more words to add. Remember
+that Paul had no hesitation in taking upon himself to
+declare that the names of these anonymous saints in
+Philippi were written in the Book of Life. What
+business had he to do that? Had he looked over the
+pages, and marked the entries? He had simply the
+right of estimating their state by their conduct. He
+saw their works; he knew that these works were the
+fruit of their faith; and he knew that, therefore, their
+faith had united them to Jesus Christ. So, Christian
+men and women, two things: show your faith by your
+works, and make it impossible for anybody that looks
+at you to doubt what King you serve, and to what city
+you belong. Again, do not ask, 'Is my name there?'
+Ask, 'Have I faith, and does my faith work the works
+that belong to the Kingdom of Heaven?'</p>
+
+<p>Remember that names can be blotted out of the
+book. The metaphor has often been pressed into the
+service of a doctrine of unconditional and irreversible
+predestination. But rightly looked at, it points in
+the opposite direction. Remember Moses's agonised cry,
+'Blot me out of Thy book'; and the Divine answer,
+'Him that sinneth against Me, his name will I blot out
+of My book.' And remember that it is only to 'him that
+overcometh' that the promise is made, 'I will not blot
+him out.' We are made partakers of Christ if we 'hold
+fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.'</p>
+
+<p>Remember that it depends upon ourselves whether
+our names are there or not. John Bunyan describes
+the armed man who came up to the table, where the man
+with the book and the inkhorn was seated, and said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21a" id="Page_21a">[21]</a></span>
+'Set down my name.' And you and I may do that. If
+we cast ourselves on Jesus Christ and yield our wills to
+be guided by Him, and give our lives for His service,
+then He will write our names in His book. If we trust
+Him we shall be citizens of the City of God; shall be
+filled with the life of Christ; shall be objects of an
+individualising love and care; shall be accepted in that
+Day; and shall enter in through the gates into the
+city. 'They that forsake me shall be written on the
+earth'; and there wiped out as are the children's
+scribbles on the sand when the ocean come up. They
+that trust in Jesus Christ shall have their names
+written in the Book of Life; graven on the High
+Priest's breastplate, and inscribed on His mighty hand
+and His faithful heart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>REJOICE EVERMORE</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, rejoice!'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 4.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It has been well said that this whole epistle may be
+summed up in two short sentences: 'I rejoice'; 'Rejoice
+ye!' The word and the thing crop up in every
+chapter, like some hidden brook, ever and anon sparkling
+out into the sunshine from beneath the shadows.
+This continual refrain of gladness is all the more
+remarkable if we remember the Apostle's circumstances.
+The letter shows him to us as a prisoner,
+dependent on Christian charity for a living, having no
+man like-minded to cheer his solitude; uncertain as to
+'how it shall be with me,' and obliged to contemplate
+the possibility of being 'offered,' or poured out as a
+libation, 'on the sacrifice and service of your faith.'
+Yet out of all the darkness his clear notes ring jubi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22a" id="Page_22a">[22]</a></span>lant;
+and this sunny epistle comes from the pen of a
+prisoner who did not know but that to-morrow he
+might be a martyr.</p>
+
+<p>The exhortation of my text, with its urgent reiteration,
+picks up again a dropped thread which the
+Apostle had first introduced in the commencement of
+the previous chapter. He had there evidently been
+intending to close his letter, for he says: 'Finally, my
+brethren, rejoice in the Lord'; but he is drawn away
+into that precious personal digression which we could
+so ill spare, in which he speaks of his continual aspiration
+and effort towards things not yet attained. And
+now he comes back again, picks up the thread once
+more, and addresses himself to his parting counsels.
+The reiteration in the text becomes the more impressive
+if we remember that it is a repetition of a former
+injunction. 'Rejoice in the Lord alway'; and then he
+seems to hear one of his Philippian readers saying:
+'Why! you told us that once before!' 'Yes,' he says,
+'and you shall hear it once again; so important is my
+commandment that it shall be repeated a third time. So
+I again say, "rejoice!"' Christian gladness is an important
+element in Christian duty; and the difficulty
+and necessity of it are indicated by the urgent repetition
+of the injunction.</p>
+
+<p>I. So, then, the first thought that suggests itself to
+me from these words is this, that close union with
+Jesus Christ is the foundation of real gladness.</p>
+
+<p>Pray note that 'the Lord' here, as is usually the
+case in Paul's Epistles, means, not the Divine Father,
+but Jesus Christ. And then observe, again, that the
+phrase 'Rejoice in the Lord' has a deeper meaning
+than we sometimes attach to it. We are accustomed
+to speak of rejoicing in a thing or a person, which, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23a" id="Page_23a">[23]</a></span>
+who, is thereby represented as being the occasion or
+the object of our gladness. And though that is true,
+in reference to our Lord, it is not the whole sweep and
+depth of the Apostle's meaning here. He is employing
+that phrase, 'in the Lord,' in the profound and comprehensive
+sense in which it generally appears in his
+letters, and especially in those almost contemporaneous
+with this Epistle to the Philippians. I need only refer
+you, in passing, without quoting passages, to the continual
+use of that phrase in the nearly contemporaneous
+letter to the Ephesians, in which you will find that 'in
+Christ Jesus' is the signature stamped upon all the
+gifts of God, and upon all the possible blessings of the
+Christian life. 'In Him' we have the inheritance; in
+Him we obtain redemption through His blood, even the
+forgiveness of sins; in Him we are 'blessed with all
+spiritual blessings.' And the deepest description of the
+essential characteristic of a Christian life is, to Paul,
+that it is a life in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>It is this close union which the Apostle here indicates
+as being the foundation and the source of all that gladness
+which he desires to see spreading its light over the
+Christian life. 'Rejoice in the Lord'&mdash;being in Him be
+glad.</p>
+
+<p>Now that great thought has two aspects, one deep
+and mysterious, one very plain and practical. As to
+the former, I need not spend much time upon it. We
+believe, I suppose, in the superhuman character and
+nature of Jesus Christ. We believe in His divinity.
+We can therefore believe reasonably in the possibility
+of a union between Him and us, transcending all the
+forms of human association, and being really like that
+which the creature holds to its Creator in regard to its
+physical being. 'In him we live, and move, and have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24a" id="Page_24a">[24]</a></span>
+our being' is the very foundation truth in regard to
+the constitution of the universe. 'In Him we live, and
+move, and have our being' is the very foundation
+truth in regard to the relation of the Christian soul to
+Jesus Christ. All earthly unions are but poor adumbrations
+from afar of that deep, transcendent, mysterious,
+but most real union, by which the Christian soul is in
+Christ, as the branch is in the vine, the member in the
+body, the planet in its atmosphere, and by which Christ
+is in the Christian soul as the life sap is in every twig,
+as the mysterious vital power is in every member.
+Thus abiding in Him, in a manner which admits of no
+parallel nor of any doubt, we may, and we shall, be glad.</p>
+
+<p>But then, passing from the mysterious, we come to
+the plain. To be 'in Christ' which is commended to us
+here as the basis of all true blessedness, means that
+the whole of our nature shall be occupied with, and
+fastened upon, Him; thought turning to Him, the
+tendrils of the heart clinging and creeping around
+Him, the will submitting itself in glad obedience to
+His beloved and supreme commandments, the aspirations,
+and desires feeling out after Him as the sufficient
+and eternal good, and all the current of our being
+setting towards Him in earnestness of desire, and
+resting in Him in tranquillity of possession. Thus 'in
+Christ' we may all be.</p>
+
+<p>And, says Paul, in the great words of my text, such
+a union, reciprocal and close, is the secret of all blessedness.
+If thus we are wedded to that Lord, and His
+life is in us and ours enclosed in Him, then there is
+such correspondence between our necessities and our
+supplies as that there is no room for aching emptiness;
+no gnawing of unsatisfied longings, but the blessedness
+that comes from having found that which we seek, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25a" id="Page_25a">[25]</a></span>
+in the finding being stimulated to a still closer, happier,
+and not restless search after fuller possession. The
+man that knows where to get anything and everything
+that he needs, and to whom desires are but the
+prophets of instantaneous fruition; surely that man
+has in his possession the talismanic secret of perpetual
+gladness. They who thus dwell in Christ by faith, love,
+obedience, imitation, aspiration, and enjoyment, are
+like men housed in some strong fortress, who can look
+out over all the fields alive with enemies, and feel that
+they are safe. They who thus dwell in Christ gain
+command over themselves; and because they can
+bridle passions, and subdue hot and impossible desires,
+and keep themselves well in hand, have stanched one
+chief source of unrest and sadness, and have opened
+one pure and sparkling fountain of unfailing gladness.
+To rule myself because Christ rules me is no small part
+of the secret of blessedness. And they who thus dwell
+in Christ have the purest joy, the joy of self-forgetfulness.
+He that is absorbed in a great cause; he whose
+pitiful, personal individuality has passed out of his
+sight; he who is swallowed up by devotion to another,
+by aspiration after 'something afar from the sphere of
+our sorrow,' has found the secret of gladness. And the
+man who thus can say, 'I live: yet not I, but Christ
+liveth in me,' this is the man who will ever rejoice.
+The world may not call such a temper gladness. It is
+as unlike the sputtering, flaring, foul-smelling joys
+which it prizes&mdash;like those filthy but bright 'Lucigens'
+that they do night work by in great factories&mdash;it is as
+unlike the joy of the world as these are to the calm,
+pure moonlight which they insult. The one is of
+heaven, and the other is the foul product of earth, and
+smokes to extinction swiftly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26a" id="Page_26a">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. So, secondly, notice that this joy is capable of
+being continuous.</p>
+
+<p>'Rejoice in the Lord <i>always</i>,' says Paul. That is a
+hard nut to crack. I can fancy a man saying, 'What
+is the use of giving me such exhortations as this? My
+gladness is largely a matter of temperament, and I
+cannot rule my moods. My gladness is largely a matter
+of circumstances, and I do not determine these. How
+vain it is to tell me, when my heart is bleeding, or
+beating like a sledge-hammer, to be glad!' Yes!
+Temperament has a great deal to do with joy; and
+circumstances have a great deal to do with it; but is
+not the mission of the Gospel to make us masters of
+temperament, and independent of circumstances? Is
+not the possibility of living a life that has no dependence
+upon externals, and that may persist permanently
+through all varieties of mood, the very gift that Christ
+Himself has come to bestow upon us&mdash;bringing us into
+communion with Himself, and so making us lords of
+our own inward nature and of externals: so that
+'though the fig-tree shall not blossom, and there be no
+fruit in the vine,' yet we may 'rejoice in the Lord, and
+be glad in the God of our salvation.' If a ship has
+plenty of water in its casks or tanks in its hold, it does
+not matter whether it is sailing through fresh water
+or salt. And if you and I have that union with Jesus
+Christ of which my text speaks, then we shall be, not
+wholly, but with indefinite increase of approximation
+towards the ideal, independent of circumstances and
+masters of our temperaments. And so it is possible, if
+not absolutely to reach this fair achievement of an
+unbroken continuity of gladness, at least to bring the
+lucent points so close to one another as that the
+intervals of darkness between shall be scarcely visible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27a" id="Page_27a">[27]</a></span>
+and the whole will seem to form one continuous ring
+of light.</p>
+
+<p>Brother, if you and I can keep near Jesus Christ
+always&mdash;and I suppose we can do that in sorrow as in
+joy&mdash;He will take care that our keeping near Him will
+not want its reward in that blessed continuity of felt
+repose which is very near the sunniness of gladness.
+For, if we in the Lord sorrow, we may, then, simultaneously,
+in the Lord rejoice. The two things may go
+together, if in the one mood and the other we are in
+union with Him. The bitterness of the bitterest calamity
+is taken away from it when it does not separate
+us from Jesus Christ. And just as the mother is
+specially tender with her sick child, and just as we
+have often found that the sympathy of friends comes
+to us, when need and grief are upon us, in a fashion
+that would have been incredible beforehand, so it is
+surely true that Jesus Christ can, and does, soften His
+tone, and select the tokens of His presence with especial
+tenderness for a wounded heart; so as that sorrow
+in the Lord passes into joy in the Lord. And if
+that be so, then the pillar which was cloud in the
+sunshine brightens into fire as night falls on the
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only that this divine gladness is consistent
+with the sorrow that is often necessary for us,
+but also that the continuity of such gladness is secured,
+because in Christ there are open for us sources of
+blessedness in what is else a dry and thirsty land. If
+you would take this epistle at your leisure, and run
+over it in order to note the various occasions of joy
+which the Apostle expresses for himself, and commends
+to his brethren, you would see how beautifully
+they reveal to us the power of communion with Jesus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28a" id="Page_28a">[28]</a></span>
+Christ, to find honey in the rock, good in everything,
+and a reason for thankful gladness in all events.</p>
+
+<p>I have not time, at this stage of my sermon, to do
+more than just glance at these. We find, for instance,
+that a very large portion of the joy which he declares
+fills his own heart, and which he commends to these
+Philippians, arises from the recognition of good in
+others. He speaks to them of being his 'joy and
+crown.' He tells them that in his sorrows and imprisonment,
+their 'fellowship in the Gospel, from the
+first day until now,' had brought a whiff of gladness
+into the close air of the prison cell. He begs them to
+be Christlike in order that they may 'fulfil his joy';
+and he may lose himself in others' blessings, and therein
+find gladness. A large portion of his joy came from
+very common things. A large portion of the joy that
+he commends to them he contemplates as coming to
+them from small matters. They were to be glad
+because Timothy came with a message from the
+Apostle. He is glad because he hears of their well-being,
+and receives a little contribution from them for
+his daily necessities. A large portion of his gladness
+came from the spread of Christ's kingdom. 'Christ is
+preached,' says he, with a flash of triumph, 'and I
+therein do rejoice; yea, and will rejoice.' And, most
+beautiful of all, no small portion of his gladness came
+from the prospect of martyrdom. 'If I be offered
+upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and
+rejoice with you all; and do ye joy and rejoice with
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, put all these things together and they just
+come to this, that a heart in union with Jesus Christ
+can find streams in the desert, joys blossoming as the
+rose, in places that to the un-Christlike eye are wilder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29a" id="Page_29a">[29]</a></span>ness
+and solitary, and out of common things it can
+bring the purest gladness and draw a tribute and
+revenue of blessedness even from the prospect of God-sent
+sorrows. Dear brethren, if you and I have not
+learned the secret of modest and unselfish delights, we
+shall vainly seek for joy in the vulgar excitements and
+coarse titillations of appetites and desires which the
+world offers. 'Calm pleasures there abide' in Christ.
+The northern lights are weird and bright, but they
+belong to midwinter, and they come from electric
+disturbances, and portend rough weather afterwards.
+Sunshine is silent, steadfast, pure. Better to walk in
+that light than to be led astray by fantastic and perishable
+splendours. 'Rejoice in the Lord always.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, such gladness is an important part of
+Christian duty.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, the urgency of the command indicates
+both its importance and its difficulty. It is important
+that professing Christians should be glad Christians
+(with the joy that is drawn from Jesus Christ, of
+course, I mean), because they thereby become walking
+advertisements and living witnesses for Him. A gloomy,
+melancholy, professing Christian is a poor recommendation
+of his faith. If you want to 'adorn the doctrine
+of Christ' you will do it a great deal more by a bright
+face, that speaks of a calm heart, calm because filled
+with Christ, than by many more ambitious efforts. This
+gladness is important because, without it, there will be
+little good work done, and little progress made. It is
+important, surely, for ourselves, for it can be no small
+matter that we should be able to have travelling with
+us all through the desert that mystical rock which
+follows with its streams of water, and ever provides
+for us the joys that we need. In every aspect, whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30a" id="Page_30a">[30]</a></span>
+as regards men who take their notions of Christ and
+of Christianity, a great deal more from the concrete
+examples of both in human lives than from books and
+sermons, or from the Bible itself&mdash;or as regards the
+work which we have to do, or as regards our own
+inward life, it is all-important that we should have
+that close union with Jesus Christ which cannot but
+result in pure and holy gladness.</p>
+
+<p>But the difficulty, as well as the importance, of the
+obligation, are expressed by the stringent repetition of
+the commandment, 'And again I say, Rejoice.' When
+objections arise, when difficulties present themselves, I
+repeat the commandment again, in the teeth of them
+all; and I know what I mean when I am saying it.
+Thus, thought Paul, we need to make a definite effort
+to keep ourselves in touch with Jesus Christ, or else
+gladness, and a great deal besides, will fade away from
+our grasp.</p>
+
+<p>And there are two things that you have to do if you
+would obey the commandment. The one is the direct
+effort at fostering and making continuous your fellowship
+with Jesus Christ, through your life; and the
+other is looking out for the bright bits in your life,
+and making sure that you do not sullenly and foolishly,
+perhaps with vain regrets after vanished blessings, or
+perhaps with vain murmurings about unattained good,
+obscure to your sight the mercies that you have, and so
+cheat yourselves of the occasions for thankfulness and
+joy. There are people who, if there be ever such a
+little bit of a fleecy film of cloud low down on their
+horizon, can see nothing of the sparkling blue arch
+above them for looking at that, and who behave as if
+the whole sky was one roof of doleful grey. Do not
+you do that! There is always enough to be thankful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31a" id="Page_31a">[31]</a></span>
+for. Lay hold of Christ, and be sure that you open
+your eyes to His gifts.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, dear friends, if there be offered to us, as there
+is, a gladness which is perfect in the two points in
+which all other gladness fails, it is wise for us to take
+it. The commonplace which all men believe, and most
+men neglect, is that nothing short of an infinite Person
+can fill a finite soul. And if we look for our joys anywhere
+but to Jesus Christ, there will always be some
+bit of our nature which, like the sulky elder brother in
+the parable, will scowl at the music and dancing, and
+refuse to come in. All earthly joys are transient as
+well as partial. Is it not better that we should have
+gladness that will last as long as we do, that we can
+hold in our dying hands, like a flower clasped in some
+cold palm laid in the coffin, that we shall find again
+when we have crossed the bar, that will grow and
+brighten and broaden for evermore? My joy shall
+remain .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. full.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>HOW TO OBEY AN IMPOSSIBLE INJUNCTION</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with
+thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 6.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is easy for prosperous people, who have nothing to
+trouble them, to give good advices to suffering hearts;
+and these are generally as futile as they are easy.
+But who was he who here said to the Church at
+Philippi, 'Be careful for nothing?' A prisoner in a
+Roman prison; and when Rome fixed its claws it did
+not usually let go without drawing blood. He was
+expecting his trial, which might, so far as he knew,
+very probably end in death. Everything in the future
+was entirely dark and uncertain. It was this man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32a" id="Page_32a">[32]</a></span>
+with all the pressure of personal sorrows weighing
+upon him, who, in the very crisis of his life, turned to
+his brethren in Philippi, who had far fewer causes of
+anxiety than he had, and cheerfully bade them 'be
+careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and
+supplication, with thanksgiving, make their requests
+known unto God.' Had not that bird learned to sing
+when his cage was darkened? And do you not think
+that advice of that sort, coming not from some one
+perched up on a safe hillock to the strugglers in the
+field below, but from a man in the thick of the fight,
+would be like a trumpet-call to them who heard it?</p>
+
+<p>Now, here are two things. There is an apparently
+perfectly impossible advice, and there is the only
+course that will make it possible.</p>
+
+<p>I. An apparently impossible advice.</p>
+
+<p>'Be careful for nothing.' I do not need to remind
+you&mdash;for I suppose that we all know it&mdash;that that
+word 'careful,' in a great many places in the New
+Testament, does not mean what, by the slow progress
+of change in the significance of words, it has come to
+mean to-day; but it means what it <i>should</i> still mean,
+'full of care,' and 'care' meant, not prudent provision,
+forethought, the occupation of a man's common-sense
+with his duty and his work and his circumstances,
+but it meant the thing which of all others
+unfits a man most for such prudent provision, and that
+is, the nervous irritation of a gnawing anxiety which,
+as the word in the original means, tears the heart
+apart and makes a man quite incapable of doing the
+wise thing, or seeing the wise thing to do, in the
+circumstances. We all know that; so that I do not
+need to dwell upon it. 'Careful' here means neither
+more nor less than 'anxious.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33a" id="Page_33a">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But I may just remind you how harm has been
+done, and good has been lost and missed, by people
+reading that modern meaning into the word. It is
+the same word which Christ employed in the exhortation
+'Take no thought for to-morrow.' It is a great
+pity that Christian people sometimes get it into their
+heads that Christ prohibited what common-sense
+demands, and what everybody practises. 'Taking
+thought for the morrow' is not only our duty, but it
+is one of the distinctions which make us 'much better
+than' the fowls of the air, that have no barns in which
+to store against a day of need. But when our Lord
+said, 'Take no thought for the morrow,' he did not
+mean 'Do not lay yourselves out to provide for common
+necessities and duties,' but 'Do not fling yourselves into
+a fever of anxiety, nor be too anxious to anticipate the
+"fashion of uncertain evils."'</p>
+
+<p>But even with that explanation, is it not like an
+unreachable ideal that Paul puts forward here? 'Be
+anxious about nothing'&mdash;how can a man who has to
+face the possibilities that we all have to face, and who
+knows himself to be as weak to deal with them as we
+all are: how can he help being anxious? There is
+no more complete waste of breath than those sage
+and reverend advices which people give us, not to do
+the things, nor to feel the emotions, which our position
+make absolutely inevitable and almost involuntary.
+Here, for instance, is a man surrounded by all manner
+of calamity and misfortune; and some well-meaning
+but foolish friend comes to him, and, without giving
+him a single reason for the advice, says, 'Cheer up!
+my friend.' Why should he cheer up? What is there
+in his circumstances to induce him to fall into any
+other mood? Or some unquestionable peril is staring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34a" id="Page_34a">[34]</a></span>
+him full in the face, coming nearer and nearer to him,
+and some well-meaning, loose-tongued friend, says to
+him, 'Do not be afraid!'&mdash;but he <i>ought</i> to be afraid.
+That is about all that worldly wisdom and morality
+have to say to us, when we are in trouble and anxiety.
+'Shut your eyes very hard, and make believe very
+much, and you will not fear.' An impossible exhortation!
+Just as well bid a ship in the Bay of Biscay not
+to rise and fall upon the wave, but to keep an even
+keel. Just as well tell the willows in the river-bed
+that they are not to bend when the wind blows, as
+come to me, and say to me, 'Be careful about nothing.'
+Unless you have a great deal more than that to say,
+I must be, and I ought to be, anxious, about a great
+many things. Instead of anxiety being folly, it will
+be wisdom; and the folly will consist in not opening
+our eyes to facts, and in not feeling emotions that
+are appropriate to the facts which force themselves
+against our eyeballs. Threadbare maxims, stale, musty
+old commonplaces of unavailing consolation and impotent
+encouragement say to us, 'Do not be anxious.'
+We try to stiffen our nerves and muscles in order to
+bear the blow; or some of us, more basely still, get
+into a habit of feather-headed levity, making no
+forecasts, nor seeing even what is plainest before our
+eyes. But all that is of no use when once the hot
+pincers of real trouble, impending or arrived, lay hold
+of our hearts. Then of all idle expenditures of breath
+in the world there is none to the wrung heart more
+idle and more painful than the one that says, Be
+anxious about nothing.</p>
+
+<p>II. So we turn to the only course that makes the
+apparent impossibility possible.</p>
+
+<p>Paul goes on to direct to the mode of feeling and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35a" id="Page_35a">[35]</a></span>
+action which will give exemption from the else inevitable
+gnawing of anxious forethought. He introduces
+his positive counsel with an eloquent 'But,' which
+implies that what follows is the sure preservative
+against the temper which he deprecates; 'But in
+everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,
+let your requests be made known unto God.'</p>
+
+<p>There are, then, these alternatives. If you do not
+like to take the one, you are sure to have to take the
+other. There is only one way out of the wood, and it
+is this which Paul expands in these last words of my
+text. If a man does not pray about everything, he
+will be worried about most things. If he does pray
+about everything, he will not be troubled beyond what
+is good for him, about anything. So there are these
+alternatives; and we have to make up our minds
+which of the two we are going to take. The heart is
+never empty. If not full of God, it will be full of the
+world, and of worldly care. Luther says somewhere
+that a man's heart is like a couple of millstones; if you
+don't put something between them to grind, they will
+grind each other. It is because God is not in our hearts
+that the two stones rub the surface off one another. So
+the victorious antagonist of anxiety is trust, and the only
+way to turn gnawing care out of my heart and life is to
+usher God into it, and to keep him resolutely in it.</p>
+
+<p>'In everything.' If a thing is great enough to
+threaten to make me anxious, it is great enough for
+me to talk to God about. If He and I are on a friendly
+footing, the instinct of friendship will make me speak.
+If so, how irrelevant and superficial seem to be discussions
+whether we ought to pray about worldly
+things, or confine our prayers entirely to spiritual and
+religious matters. Why! if God and I are on terms of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36a" id="Page_36a">[36]</a></span>
+friendship and intimacy of communication, there will
+be no question as to what I am to talk about to Him;
+I shall not be able to keep silent as to anything that
+interests me. And we are not right with God unless
+we have come to the point that entire openness of
+speech marks our communications with Him, and that,
+as naturally as men, when they come home from
+business, like to tell their wives and children what has
+happened to them since they left home in the morning,
+so naturally we talk to our Friend about everything
+that concerns us. 'In <i>everything</i> let your requests be
+made known unto God.' That is the wise course,
+because a multitude of little pimples may be quite as
+painful and dangerous as a large ulcer. A cloud of
+gnats may put as much poison into a man with their
+many stings as will a snake with its one bite. And if
+we are not to get help from God by telling Him about
+little things, there will be very little of our lives that
+we shall tell Him about at all. For life is a mountain
+made up of minute flakes. The years are only a
+collection of seconds. Every man's life is an aggregate
+of trifles. 'In <i>everything</i> make your requests known.'</p>
+
+<p>'By prayer'&mdash;that does not mean, as a superficial
+experience of religion is apt to suppose it to mean,
+actual petition that follows. For a great many of us,
+the only notion that we have of prayer is asking God
+to give us something that we want. But there is a far
+higher region of communion than that, in which the
+soul seeks and finds, and sits and gazes, and aspiring
+possesses, and possessing aspires. Where there is no
+spoken petition for anything affecting outward life,
+there may be the prayer of contemplation such as the
+burning seraphs before the Throne do ever glow with.
+The prayer of silent submission, in which the will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37a" id="Page_37a">[37]</a></span>
+bows itself before God; the prayer of quiet trust, in
+which we do not so much seek as cleave; the prayer
+of still fruition&mdash;these, in Paul's conception of the true
+order, precede 'supplication.' And if we have such
+union with God, by realising His presence, by aspiration
+after Himself, by trusting Him and submission to
+Him, then we have the victorious antagonist of all
+our anxieties, and the 'cares that infest the day shall
+fold their tents' and 'silently steal away.' For if a
+man has that union with God which is effected by such
+prayer as I have been speaking about, it gives him a
+fixed point on which to rest amidst all perturbations.
+It is like bringing a light into a chamber when thunder
+is growling outside, which prevents the flashing of the
+lightning from being seen.</p>
+
+<p>Years ago an ingenious inventor tried to build a
+vessel in such a fashion as that the saloon for
+passengers should remain upon one level, howsoever
+the hull might be tossed by waves. It was a failure,
+if I remember rightly. But if we are thus joined to
+God, He will do for our inmost hearts what the inventor
+tried to do with the chamber within his ship.
+The hull may be buffeted, but the inmost chamber
+where the true self sits will be kept level and
+unmoved. Brethren! prayer in the highest sense, by
+which I mean the exercise of aspiration, trust, submission&mdash;prayer
+will fight against and overcome all
+anxieties.</p>
+
+<p>'By prayer and supplication.' Actual petition for
+the supply of present wants is meant by 'supplication.'
+To ask for that supply will very often be to get it.
+To tell God what I think I need goes a long way
+always to bringing me the gift that I do need. If I
+have an anxiety which I am ashamed to speak to Him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38a" id="Page_38a">[38]</a></span>
+that silence is a sign that I ought not to have it; and
+if I have a desire that I do not feel I can put into a
+prayer, that feeling is a warning to me not to cherish
+such a desire.</p>
+
+<p>There are many vague and oppressive anxieties that
+come and cast a shadow over our hearts, that if we
+could once define, and put into plain words, we should
+find that we vaguely fancied them a great deal larger
+than they were, and that the shadow they flung was
+immensely longer than the thing that flung it. Put
+your anxieties into definite speech. It will reduce their
+proportions to your own apprehension very often.
+Speaking them, even to a man who may be able to do
+little to help, eases them wonderfully. Put them into
+definite speech to God; and there are very few of them
+that will survive.</p>
+
+<p>'By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.'
+That thanksgiving is always in place. If one only
+considers what he has from God, and realises that
+whatever he has he has received from the hands of
+divine love, thanksgiving is appropriate in any circumstances.
+Do you remember when Paul was in
+gaol at the very city to which this letter went, with
+his back bloody with the rod, and his feet fast in the
+stocks, how then he and Silas 'prayed and sang praises
+to God.' Therefore the obedient earthquake came and
+set them loose. Perhaps it was some reminiscence of
+that night which moved him to say to the Church that
+knew the story&mdash;of which perhaps the gaoler was still
+a member&mdash;'By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
+make your requests known unto God.'</p>
+
+<p>One aching nerve can monopolise our attention and
+make us unconscious of the health of all the rest of
+the body. So, a single sorrow or loss obscures many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39a" id="Page_39a">[39]</a></span>
+mercies. We are like men who live in a narrow alley
+in some city, with great buildings on either side,
+towering high above their heads, and only a strip of
+sky visible. If we see up in that strip a cloud, we
+complain and behave as if the whole heavens, right
+away round the three hundred and sixty degrees of
+the horizon, were black with tempest. But we see
+only a little strip, and there is a great deal of blue in
+the sky; however, there may be a cloud in the patch
+that we see above our heads, from the alley where we
+live. Everything, rightly understood, that God sends
+to men is a cause of thanksgiving; therefore, 'in
+everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,
+let your requests be made known unto God.'</p>
+
+<p>'Casting all your <i>anxieties</i> upon him,' says Peter,
+'for He'&mdash;not <i>is anxious;</i> that dark cloud does not
+rise much above the earth&mdash;but, 'He careth for you.'
+And that loving guardianship and tender care is the
+one shield, armed with which we can smile at the
+poisoned darts of anxiety which would else fester in
+our hearts and, perhaps, kill. 'Be careful for nothing'&mdash;an
+impossibility unless 'in everything' we make
+'our requests known unto God.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE WARRIOR PEACE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and
+minds through Christ Jesus.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The great Mosque of Constantinople was once a
+Christian church, dedicated to the Holy Wisdom. Over
+its western portal may still be read, graven on a brazen
+plate, the words, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour
+and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.' For<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40a" id="Page_40a">[40]</a></span>
+four hundred years noisy crowds have fought, and
+sorrowed, and fretted, beneath the dim inscription in
+an unknown tongue; and no eye has looked at it, nor
+any heart responded. It is but too sad a symbol of
+the reception which Christ's offers meet amongst
+men, and&mdash;blessed be His name!&mdash;its prominence there,
+though unread and unbelieved, is a symbol of the
+patient forbearance with which rejected blessings are
+once and again pressed upon us, and He stretches out
+His hand though no man regards, and calls though
+none do hear. My text is Christ's offer of peace. The
+world offers excitement, Christ promises repose.</p>
+
+<p>I. Mark, then, first, this peace of God.</p>
+
+<p>What is it? What are its elements? Whence does
+it come? It is of God, as being its Source, or Origin,
+or Author, or Giver, but it belongs to Him in a yet
+deeper sense, for Himself is Peace. And in some
+humble but yet real fashion our restless and anxious
+hearts may partake in the divine tranquillity, and
+with a calm repose, kindred with that rest from which
+it is derived, may enter into His rest.</p>
+
+<p>If that be too high a flight, at all events the peace
+that may be ours was Christ's, in the perfect and unbroken
+tranquillity of His perfect Manhood. What,
+then, are its elements? The peace of God must,
+first of all, be peace with God. Conscious friendship
+with Him is indispensable to all true tranquillity.
+Where that is absent there may be the ignoring
+of the disturbed relationship; but there will be no
+peace of heart. The indispensable requisite is 'a
+conscience like a sea at rest.' Unless we have made
+sure work of our relationship with God, and know that
+He and we are friends, there is no real repose possible
+for us. In the whirl of excitement we may forget,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41a" id="Page_41a">[41]</a></span>
+and for a time turn away from, the realities of our
+relation to Him, and so get such gladness as is possible
+to a life not rooted in conscious friendship with Him.
+But such lives will be like some of those sunny islands
+in the Eastern Pacific, extinct volcanoes, where nature
+smiles and all things are prodigal and life is easy and
+luxuriant; but some day the clouds gather, and the
+earth shakes, and fire pours forth, and the sea boils,
+and every living thing dies, and darkness and desolation
+come. You are living, brother, upon a volcano's
+side, unless the roots of your being are fixed in a God
+who is your friend.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the peace of God is peace within ourselves.
+The unrest of human life comes largely from our being
+torn asunder by contending impulses. Conscience pulls
+this way, passion that. Desire says, 'Do this'; reason,
+judgment, prudence say, 'It is at your peril if you
+do!' One desire fights against another, and so the man
+is rent asunder. There must be the harmonising of
+all the Being if there is to be real rest of spirit. No
+longer must it be like the chaos ere the creative word
+was spoken, where, in gloom, contending elements
+strove.</p>
+
+<p>Again, men have not peace, because in most of them
+everything is topmost that ought to be undermost,
+and everything undermost that ought to be uppermost.
+'Beggars are on horseback' (and we know where they
+ride), 'and princes walking.' The more regal part of
+the man's nature is suppressed, and trodden under
+foot; and the servile parts, which ought to be under firm
+restraint, and guided by a wise hand, are too often
+supreme, and wild work comes of that. When you put
+the captain and the officers, and everybody on board
+that knows anything about navigation, into irons, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42a" id="Page_42a">[42]</a></span>
+fasten down the hatches on them, and let the crew and
+the cabin boys take the helm and direct the ship, it is
+not likely that the voyage will end anywhere but on
+the rocks. Multitudes are living lives of unrestfulness,
+simply because they have set the lowest parts of their
+nature upon the throne, and subordinated the highest
+to these.</p>
+
+<p>Our unrest comes from yet another source. We
+have not peace, because we have not found and grasped
+the true objects for any of our faculties. God is the
+only possession that brings quiet. The heart hungers
+until it feeds upon Him. The mind is satisfied with
+no truth until behind truth it finds a Person who is
+true. The will is enslaved and wretched until in God
+it recognises legitimate and absolute authority, which
+it is blessing to obey. Love puts out its yearnings,
+like the filaments that gossamer spiders send out into
+the air, seeking in vain for something to fasten upon,
+until it touches God, and clings there. There is no
+rest for a man until he rests in God. The reason why
+this world is so full of excitement is because it is so
+empty of peace, and the reason why it is so empty of
+peace is because it is so void of God. The peace of
+God brings peace with Him, and peace within. It
+unites our hearts to fear His name, and draws all the
+else turbulent and confusedly flowing impulses of the
+great deep of the spirit after itself, in a tidal wave,
+as the moon draws the waters of the gathered ocean.
+The peace of God is peace with Him, and peace within.</p>
+
+<p>I need not, I suppose, do more than say one word
+about that descriptive clause in my text, It 'passeth
+understanding.' The understanding is not the faculty
+by which men lay hold of the peace of God any more
+than you can see a picture with your ears or hear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43a" id="Page_43a">[43]</a></span>
+music with your eyes. To everything its own organ;
+you cannot weigh truth in a tradesman's scales or
+measure thought with a yard-stick. Love is not the
+instrument for apprehending Euclid, nor the brain the
+instrument for grasping these divine and spiritual gifts.
+The peace of God transcends the understanding, as
+well as belongs to another order of things than that
+about which the understanding is concerned. You
+must experience it to know it; you must have it in
+order that you may feel its sweetness. It eludes the
+grasp of the wisest, though it yields itself to the
+patient and loving heart.</p>
+
+<p>II. So notice, in the next place, what the peace of
+God does.</p>
+
+<p>It 'shall keep your hearts and minds.' The Apostle
+here blends together, in a very remarkable manner,
+the conceptions of peace and of war, for he employs
+a purely military word to express the office of this
+Divine peace. That word, 'shall keep,' is the same as
+is translated in another of his letters <i>kept with a
+garrison</i>&mdash;and, though, perhaps, it might be going too
+far to insist that the military idea is prominent in his
+mind, it will certainly not be unsafe to recognise its
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, this Divine peace takes upon itself warlike
+functions, and garrisons the heart and mind. What
+does he mean by 'the heart and mind'? Not, as the
+English reader might suppose, two different faculties,
+the emotional and the intellectual&mdash;which is what we
+usually roughly mean by our distinction between
+heart and mind&mdash;but, as is always the case in the
+Bible, the 'heart' means the whole inner man, whether
+considered as thinking, willing, purposing, or doing
+any other inward act; and the word rendered 'mind'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44a" id="Page_44a">[44]</a></span>
+does not mean another part of human nature, but the
+whole products of the operations of the heart. The
+Revised Version renders it by 'thoughts,' and that is
+correct if it be given a wide enough application, so as
+to include emotions, affections, purposes, as well as
+'thoughts' in the narrower sense. The whole inner
+man, in all the extent of its manifold operations,
+that indwelling peace of God will garrison and guard.</p>
+
+<p>So note, however profound and real that Divine
+peace is, it is to be enjoyed in the midst of warfare.
+Quiet is not quiescence. God's peace is not torpor.
+The man that has it has still to wage continual
+conflict, and day by day to brace himself anew for the
+fight. The highest energy of action is the result of
+the deepest calm of heart; just as the motion of this
+solid, and, as we feel it to be, immovable world, is far
+more rapid through the abysses of space, and on its
+own axis, than any of the motions of the things on its
+surface. So the quiet heart, 'which moveth altogether
+if it move at all,' rests whilst it moves, and moves the
+more swiftly because of its unbroken repose. That
+peace of God, which is peace militant, is unbroken
+amidst all conflicts. The wise old Greeks chose for
+the protectress of Athens the goddess of Wisdom, and
+whilst they consecrated to her the olive branch, which
+is the symbol of peace, they set her image on the
+Parthenon, helmed and spear-bearing, to defend the
+peace, which she brought to earth. So this heavenly
+Virgin, whom the Apostle personifies here, is the
+'winged sentry, all skilful in the wars,' who enters
+into our hearts and fights for us to keep us in unbroken
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible day by day to go out to toil and care
+and anxiety and change and suffering and conflict, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45a" id="Page_45a">[45]</a></span>
+yet to bear within our hearts the unalterable rest of
+God. Deep in the bosom of the ocean, beneath the
+region where winds howl and billows break, there
+is calm, but the calm is not stagnation. Each drop
+from these fathomless abysses may be raised to the
+surface by the power of the sunbeams, expanded
+there by their heat, and sent on some beneficent
+message across the world. So, deep in our hearts,
+beneath the storm, beneath the raving winds and the
+curling waves, there may be a central repose, as unlike
+stagnation as it is unlike tumult; and the peace of
+God may, as a warrior, keep our hearts and minds in
+Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>What is the plain English of that metaphor? Just
+this, that a man who has that peace as his conscious
+possession is lifted above the temptations that otherwise
+would drag him away. The full cup, filled
+with precious wine, has no room in it for the poison
+that otherwise might be poured in. As Jesus Christ
+has taught us, there is such a thing as cleansing a
+heart in some measure, and yet because it is 'empty,'
+though it is 'swept and garnished,' the demons come
+back again. The best way to be made strong to resist
+temptation, is to be lifted above feeling it to be a
+temptation, by reason of the sweetness of the peace
+possessed. Oh! if our hearts were filled, as they might
+be filled, with that divine repose, do you think that
+the vulgar, coarse-tasting baits which make our
+mouths water now would have any power over us?
+Will a man who bears in his hands jewels of priceless
+value, and knows them to be such, find much temptation
+when some imitation stone, made of coloured
+glass and a tinfoil backing, is presented to him? Will
+the world draw us away if we are rooted and grounded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46a" id="Page_46a">[46]</a></span>
+in the peace of God? Geologists tell us that climates are
+changed and creatures are killed by the slow variation
+of level in the earth. If you and I can only heave our
+lives up high enough, the foul things that live down
+below will find the air too pure and keen for them, and
+will die and disappear; and all the vermin that stung
+and nestled down in the flats will be gone when we get
+up to the heights. The peace of God will keep our
+hearts and thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, lastly, notice how we get the peace of God.</p>
+
+<p>My text is an exuberant promise, but it is knit on to
+something before, by that 'and' at the beginning of
+the verse. It is a promise, as all God's promises are, on
+conditions. And here are the conditions. 'Be careful
+for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication,
+with thanksgiving, let your requests be made
+known unto God.' That defines the conditions in part;
+and the last words of the text itself complete the
+definition. 'In Christ Jesus' describes, not so much
+where we are to be kept, as a condition under which
+we shall be kept. How, then, can I get this peace into
+my turbulent, changeful life?</p>
+
+<p>I answer, first, trust is peace. It is always so; even
+when it is misplaced we are at rest. The condition of
+repose for the human heart is that we shall be 'in
+Christ,' who has said, 'In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but in Me ye shall have peace.' And how
+may I be 'in Him'? Simply by trusting myself to Him.
+That brings peace with God.</p>
+
+<p>The sinless Son of God has died on the Cross, a
+sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, for yours and
+for mine. Let us trust to that, and we shall have peace
+with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. And 'in
+Him' we have, by trust, inward peace, for He, through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47a" id="Page_47a">[47]</a></span>
+our faith, controls our whole natures, and Faith leads
+the lion in a silken leash, like Spenser's Una. Trust
+in Christ brings peace amid outward sorrows and
+conflicts. When the pilot comes on board the captain
+does not leave the bridge, but stands by the pilot's
+side. His responsibility is past, but his duties are not
+over. And when Christ comes into my heart, my
+effort, my judgment, are not made unnecessary, or put
+on one side. Let Him take the command, and stand
+beside Him, and carry out His orders, and you will find
+rest to your souls.</p>
+
+<p>Again, submission is peace. What makes our
+troubles is not outward circumstances, howsoever
+afflictive they may be, but the resistance of our spirits
+to the circumstances. And where a man's will bends
+and says, 'Not mine but Thine be done,' there is calm.
+Submission is like the lotion that is applied to
+mosquito bites&mdash;it takes away the irritation, though
+the puncture be left. Submission is peace, both as
+resignation and as obedience.</p>
+
+<p>Communion is peace. You will get no quiet until
+you live with God. Until He is at your side you will
+always be moved.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friend, fix this in your minds: a life without
+Christ is a life without peace. Without Him you may
+have excitement, pleasure, gratified passions, success,
+accomplished hopes, but peace never! You never have
+had it, have you? If you live without Him, you may
+forget that you have not Him, and you can plunge
+into the world, and so lose the consciousness of the
+aching void, but it is there all the same. You never will
+have peace until you go to Him. There is only one
+way to get it. The Christless heart is like the troubled
+sea that cannot rest. There is no peace for it. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48a" id="Page_48a">[48]</a></span>
+in Him you can get it for the asking. 'The chastisement
+of our peace was laid upon Him.' For our
+sakes He died on the Cross, so making peace. Trust
+Him as your only hope, Saviour and friend, and the
+God of peace will 'fill you with all joy and peace in
+believing.' Then bow your wills to Him in acceptance
+of His providence, and in obedience to His commands,
+and so, 'your peace shall be as a river, and your
+righteousness as the waves of the sea.' Then keep
+your hearts in union and communion with Him, and
+so His presence will keep you in perfect peace whilst
+conflicts last, and, with Him at your side, you will pass
+through the valley of the shadow of death undisturbed,
+and come to the true Salem, the city of peace, where
+they beat their swords into ploughshares, and learn
+and fear war no more.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THINK ON THESE THINGS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>' .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever
+things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
+lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there
+be any praise, think on these things.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I am half afraid that some of you may think, as I
+have at times thought, that I am too old to preach to
+the young. You would probably listen with more attention
+to one less remote from you in years, and may be
+disposed to discount my advices as quite natural for
+an old man to give, and quite unnatural for a young
+man to take. But, dear friends, the message which
+I have to bring to you is meant for all ages, and for all
+sorts of people. And, if I may venture a personal
+word, I proved it, when I stood where you stand, and
+it is fresher and mightier to me to-day than it ever
+was.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49a" id="Page_49a">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>You are in the plastic period of your lives, with the
+world before you, and the mightier world within to
+mould as you will; and you can be almost anything
+you like, I do not mean in regard to externals, or
+intellectual capacities, for these are only partially in
+our control, but in regard to the far more important
+and real things&mdash;viz. elevation and purity of heart
+and mind. You are in the period of life to which fair
+dreams of the future are natural. It is, as the prophet
+tells us, for 'the young man' to 'see visions,' and to
+ennoble his life thereafter by turning them into
+realities. Generous and noble ideas ought to belong
+to youth. But you are also in the period when there
+is a keen joy in mere living, and when some desires,
+which get weaker as years go on, are very strong, and
+may mar youthful purity. So, taking all these into
+account, I have thought that I could not do better
+than press home upon you the counsels of this magnificent
+text, however inadequately my time may permit
+of my dealing with them; for there are dozens of
+sermons in it, if one could expand it worthily.</p>
+
+<p>But my purpose is distinctly practical, and so I wish
+just to cast what I have to say to you into the answer
+to three questions, the three questions that may be
+asked about everything. What? Why? How?</p>
+
+<p>I. <i>What</i>, then, is the counsel here?</p>
+
+<p>'Think on these things.' To begin with, that advice
+implies that we can, and, therefore, that we should,
+exercise a very rigid control over that part of our lives
+which a great many of us never think of controlling
+at all. There are hosts of people whose thoughts
+are just hooked on to one another by the slightest
+links of accidental connection, and who scarcely ever
+have put a strong hand upon them, or coerced them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50a" id="Page_50a">[50]</a></span>
+into order, or decided what they are going to let come
+into their minds, and what to keep out. Circumstances,
+the necessities of our daily occupations, the
+duties that we owe to one another, all these make
+certain streams of thought very necessary, and to
+some of us very absorbing. And for the rest&mdash;well!
+'He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city
+broken down, without walls'; anybody can go in, and
+anybody can come out. I am sure that amongst young
+men and women there are multitudes who have never
+realised how responsible they are for the flow of the
+waves of that great river that is always coming from
+the depths of their being, and have never asked
+whether the current is bringing down sand or gold.
+Exercise control, as becomes you, over the run and
+drift of your thoughts. I said that many of us had
+minds like cities broken down. Put a guard at the
+gate, as they do in some Continental countries, and let
+in no vagrant that cannot show his passport, and
+a clear bill of health. Now, that is a lesson that some
+of you very much want.</p>
+
+<p>But, further, notice that company of fair guests that
+you may welcome into the hospitalities of your heart
+and mind. 'Think on these things'&mdash;and what are
+they? It would be absurd of me to try to exhaust the
+great catalogue which the Apostle gives here, but let
+me say a word or two about it.</p>
+
+<p>'Whatsoever things are true .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. think on these
+things.' Let your minds be exercised, breathed,
+braced, lifted, filled by bringing them into contact
+with truth, especially with the highest of all truths,
+the truths affecting God and your relations to Him.
+Why should you, like so many of us, be living amidst
+the small things of daily life, the trifles that are here,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51a" id="Page_51a">[51]</a></span>
+and never coming into vital contact with the greatest
+things of all, the truths about God and Christ, and
+what you have to do with them, and what they have
+to do with you? 'Whatsoever things are true .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. think
+on these things.'</p>
+
+<p>'Whatsoever things are honest,' or, as the word more
+properly and nobly means, 'Whatsoever things are
+<i>reverent</i>, or <i>venerable</i>'&mdash;let grave, serious, solemn
+thought be familiar to your minds, not frivolities, not
+mean things. There is an old story in Roman history
+about the barbarians breaking into the Capitol, and
+their fury being awed into silence, and struck into
+immobility, as they saw, round and round in the hall,
+the august Senators, each in his seat. Let your minds
+be like that, with reverent thoughts clustering on
+every side; and when wild passions, and animal
+desires, and low, mean contemplations dare to cross
+the threshold, they will be awed into silence and stillness.
+'Whatsoever things are august .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. think on
+these things.'</p>
+
+<p>'Whatsoever things are just'&mdash;let the great, solemn
+thought of duty, obligation, what I ought to be and
+do, be very familiar to your consideration and meditation.
+'Whatsoever things are just .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. think on these
+things.'</p>
+
+<p>'Whatsoever things are pure'&mdash;let white-robed
+angels haunt the place. Let there be in you a shuddering
+recoil from all the opposite; and entertain
+angels <i>not</i> unawares. 'Whatsoever things are pure .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. think
+on these things.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, these characteristics of thoughts which I have
+already touched upon all belong to a lofty region, but
+the Apostle is not contented with speaking austere
+things. He goes now into a region tinged with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52a" id="Page_52a">[52]</a></span>
+emotion, and he says, '<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'whatsover'">whatsoever</ins> things are lovely'; for
+goodness is beautiful, and, in effect, is the only beautiful.
+'Whatsoever things are lovely .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. think on these
+things.' And 'whatsoever things are of good report'&mdash;all
+the things that men speak well of, and speak good in the
+very naming of, let thoughts of them be in your minds.</p>
+
+<p>And then he gathers all up into two words. 'If
+there be any virtue'&mdash;which covers the ground of the
+first four, that he has already spoken about&mdash;viz. true,
+venerable, just, pure; and 'if there be any praise'&mdash;which
+resumes and sums up the two last: 'lovely and
+of good report,' 'think on these things.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, if my purpose allowed it, one would like to
+point out here how the Apostle accepts the non-Christian
+notions of the people in whose tongue he
+was speaking; and here, for the only time in his
+letters, uses the great Pagan word 'virtue,' which was
+a spell amongst the Greeks, and says, 'I accept the
+world's notion of what is virtuous and praiseworthy,
+and I bid you take it to your hearts.'</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, Christianity covers all the ground that
+the noblest morality has ever attempted to mark out
+and possess, and it covers a great deal more. 'If there
+be any virtue, as you Greeks are fond of talking about,
+and if there be any praise, if there is anything in men
+which commends noble actions, think on these things.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, you will not obey this commandment unless
+you obey also the negative side of it. That is to say,
+you will not think on these fair forms, and bring them
+into your hearts, unless you turn away, by resolute
+effort, from their opposites. There are some, and
+I am afraid that in a congregation as large as this
+there must be some representatives of the class, who
+seem to turn this apostolic precept right round about,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53a" id="Page_53a">[53]</a></span>
+and whatsoever things are illusory and vain, whatsoever
+things are mean, and frivolous, and contemptible,
+whatsoever things are unjust, and whatsoever things
+are impure, and whatsoever things are ugly, and whatsoever
+things are branded with a stigma by all men
+they think on <i>these</i> things. Like the flies that are attracted
+to a piece of putrid meat, there are young men
+who are drawn by all the lustful, the lewd, the impure
+thoughts; and there are young women who are too
+idle and uncultivated to have any pleasure in anything
+higher than gossip and trivial fiction. 'Whatsoever
+things are noble and lovely, think on these things,'
+and get rid of all the others.</p>
+
+<p>There are plenty of occasions round about you to
+force the opposite upon your notice; and, unless you
+shut your door fast, and double-lock it, they will be
+sure to come in:&mdash;Popular literature, the scrappy
+trivialities that are put into some periodicals, what
+they call 'realistic fiction'; modern Art, which has
+come to be largely the servant of sense; the Stage,
+which has come&mdash;and more is the pity! for there are
+enormous possibilities of good in it&mdash;to be largely
+a minister of corruption, or if not of corruption at
+least of frivolity&mdash;all these things are appealing to
+you. And some of you young men, away from the
+restraints of home, and in a city, where you think
+nobody could see you sowing your wild oats, have got
+entangled with them. I beseech you, cast out all this
+filth, and all this meanness and pettiness from your
+habitual thinkings, and let the august and the lovely
+and the pure and the true come in instead. You have
+the cup in your hand, you can either press into it
+clusters of ripe grapes, and make mellow wine, or you
+can squeeze into it wormwood and gall and hemlock and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54a" id="Page_54a">[54]</a></span>
+poison-berries; and, as you brew, you have to drink.
+You have the canvas, and you are to cover it with the
+figures that you like best. You can either do as Fra
+Angelico did, who painted the white walls of every
+cell in his quiet convent with Madonnas and angels
+and risen Christs, or you can do like some of those
+low-toned Dutch painters, who never can get above
+a brass pan and a carrot, and ugly boors and women,
+and fill the canvas with vulgarities and deformities.
+Choose which you will have to keep you company.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, let me ask you to think for a moment <i>why</i>
+this counsel is pressed upon you.</p>
+
+<p>Let me put the reasons very briefly. They are, first,
+because thought moulds action. 'As a man thinketh
+in his heart so is he.' One looks round the world, and
+all these solid-seeming realities of institutions, buildings,
+governments, inventions and machines, steamships
+and electric telegrams, laws and governments,
+palaces and fortresses, they are all but embodied
+thoughts. There was a thought at the back of each of
+them which took shape. So, in another sense than the
+one in which the saying was originally meant, but yet
+an august and solemn sense, 'the word is made flesh,'
+and our thoughts became visible, and stand round us,
+a ghastly company. Sooner or later what has been
+the drift and trend of a man's life comes out, flashes
+out sometimes, and dribbles out at other times, into
+visibility in his actions; and, just as the thunder follows
+on the swift passage of the lightning, so my acts
+are neither more nor less than the reverberation and
+after-clap of my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>So if you are entertaining in your hearts and minds
+this august company of which my text speaks, your
+lives will be fair and beautiful. For what does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55a" id="Page_55a">[55]</a></span>
+the Apostle immediately go on to add to our text?
+'These things do'&mdash;as you certainly will if you think
+about them, and as you certainly will not unless you do.</p>
+
+<p>Again, thought and work make character. We come
+into the world with certain dispositions and bias. But
+that is not character, it is only the raw material of
+character. It is all plastic, like the lava when it comes
+out of the volcano. But it hardens, and whatever else
+my thought may do, and whatever effects may follow
+upon any of my actions, the recoil of them on myself
+is the most important effect to me. And there is not a
+thought that comes into, and is entertained by a man,
+or rolled as a sweet morsel under his tongue, but contributes
+its own little but appreciable something to
+the making of the man's character. I wonder if there
+is anybody in this chapel now who has been so long
+accustomed to entertain these angels of whom my
+text speaks as that to entertain their opposites would
+be an impossibility. I hope there is. I wonder if there
+is anybody in this chapel to-night who has been so
+long accustomed to live amidst the thoughts that are
+small and trivial and frivolous, if not amongst those
+that are impure and abominable, as that to entertain
+their opposites seems almost an impossibility. I am
+afraid there are some. I remember hearing about a
+Maori woman who had come to live in one of the cities
+in New Zealand, in a respectable station, and after a
+year or two of it she left husband and children, and
+civilisation, and hurried back to her tribe, flung off the
+European garb, and donned the blanket, and was
+happy crouching over the embers on the clay hearth.
+Some of you have become so accustomed to the low,
+the wicked, the lustful, the impure, the frivolous, the
+contemptible, that you cannot, or, at any rate, have lost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56a" id="Page_56a">[56]</a></span>
+all disposition to rise to the lofty, the pure, and the
+true.</p>
+
+<p>Once more; as thought makes deeds, and thought
+and deeds make character, so character makes destiny,
+here and hereafter. If you have these blessed thoughts
+in your hearts and minds, as your continual companions
+and your habitual guests, then, my friend, you
+will have a light within that will burn all independent
+of externals; and whether the world smiles or frowns
+on you, you will have the true wealth in yourselves; 'a
+better and enduring substance.' You will have peace,
+you will be lords of the world, and having nothing yet
+may have all. No harm can come to the man who has
+laid up in his youth, as the best treasure of old age,
+this possession of these thoughts enjoined in my text.</p>
+
+<p>And character makes destiny hereafter. What is a
+man whose whole life has been one long thought about
+money-making, or about other objects of earthly ambition,
+or about the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of
+the eye, and the pride of life, to do in heaven? What
+would one of those fishes in the sunless caverns of
+America, which, by long living in the dark, have lost
+their eyes, do, if it were brought out into the sunshine?
+A man will go to his own place, the place for which he
+is fitted, the place for which he has fitted himself by
+his daily life, and especially by the trend and the
+direction of his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>So do not be led away by talk about 'seeing both
+sides,' about 'seeing life,' about 'knowing what is going
+on.' 'I would have you simple concerning evil, and
+wise concerning good.' Do not be led away by talk
+about having your fling, and sowing your wild oats. You
+may make an indelible stain on your conscience, which
+even forgiveness will not wipe out; and you may sow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57a" id="Page_57a">[57]</a></span>
+your wild oats, but what will the harvest be? 'Whatsoever
+a man soweth that'&mdash;<i>that</i>&mdash;'shall he also reap.'
+Would you like all your low thoughts, all your foul
+thoughts, to return and sit down beside you, and say,
+'We have come to keep you company for ever'? 'If
+there be any virtue .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. think on these things.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, lastly, <i>how</i> is this precept best obeyed?</p>
+
+<p>I have been speaking to some extent about that, and
+saying that there must be real, honest, continuous
+effort to keep out the opposite, as well as to bring in
+the 'things that are lovely and of good report.' But
+there is one more word that I must say in answer to
+the question how this precept can be observed, and it
+is just this. All these things, true, venerable, just, pure,
+lovely, and of good report, are not things only; they
+are embodied in a Person. For whatever things are fair
+meet in Jesus Christ, and He, in His living self, is the
+sum of all virtue and of all praise. So that if we link
+ourselves to Him by faith and love, and take Him into
+our hearts and minds, and abide in Him, we have them
+all gathered together into that One. Thinking on
+these things is not merely a meditating upon abstractions,
+but it is clutching and living in and with and by
+the living, loving Lord and Saviour of us all. If Christ
+is in my thoughts, all good things are there.</p>
+
+<p>If you trust Him, and make him your Companion, He
+will help you, He will give you His own life, and in it
+will give you tastes and desires which will make all
+these fair thoughts congenial to you, and will deliver
+you from the else hopeless bondage of subjection to
+their very opposites.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, our souls cleave to the dust, and all our
+efforts will be foiled, partially or entirely, to obey this
+precept, unless we remember that it was spoken to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58a" id="Page_58a">[58]</a></span>
+people who had previously obeyed a previous commandment,
+and had taken Christ for their Saviour.
+We gravitate earthwards, alas! after all our efforts,
+but if we will put ourselves in His hands, then
+He will be as a Magnet drawing us upwards, or
+rather He will give us wings of love and contemplation
+by which we can soar above that dim spot that men
+call Earth, and walk in the heavenly places. The
+way by which this commandment can be obeyed is by
+obeying the other precept of the same Apostle, 'Set
+your minds on things which are above, where Christ
+is, sitting at the right hand of God.'</p>
+
+<p>I beseech you, take Christ and enthrone Him in the
+very sanctuary of your minds. Then you will have all
+these venerable, pure, blessed thoughts as the very
+atmosphere in which you move. 'Think on these
+things .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. these things do!&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and the God of Peace
+shall be with you.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>HOW TO SAY 'THANK YOU'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length ye have revived your
+thought for me; wherein ye did indeed take thought, but ye lacked opportunity.
+Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,
+therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound:
+in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to
+be hungry, both to abound and to be in want. I can do all things in Him that
+strengtheneth me. Howbeit ye did well, that ye had fellowship with my affliction.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span>
+iv. 10-14 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is very difficult to give money without hurting the
+recipient. It is as difficult to receive it without embarrassment
+and sense of inferiority. Paul here shows
+us how he could handle a delicate subject with a
+feminine fineness of instinct and a noble self-respect
+joined with warmest gratitude. He carries the weight
+of obligation, is profuse in his thanks, and yet never
+crosses the thin line which separates the expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59a" id="Page_59a">[59]</a></span>
+of gratitude from self-abasing exaggeration, nor that
+other which distinguishes self-respect in the receiver
+of benefits from proud unwillingness to be obliged to
+anybody. Few words are more difficult to say rightly
+than 'Thank you.' Some people speak them reluctantly
+and some too fluently: some givers are too exacting
+in the acknowledgments they expect, and do not so
+much give as barter so much help for so much recognition
+of superiority.</p>
+
+<p>The Philippians had sent to Paul some money help
+by Epaphroditus as we heard before in Chapter <span class="smcap">ii.</span>, and
+this gift he now acknowledges in a paragraph full of
+autobiographical interest which may be taken as a
+very model of the money relations between teachers
+and taught in the church. It is besides an exquisite
+illustration of the fineness and delicacy of Paul's
+nature, and it includes large spiritual lessons.</p>
+
+<p>The stream of the Apostle's thoughts takes three
+turns here. There is first the exuberant and delicate
+expression of his thanks, then, as fearing that they
+might misunderstand his joy in their affection as if it
+were only selfish gladness that his wants had been
+met, he gives utterance to his triumphant and yet
+humble consciousness of his Christ-given independence
+in, and of, all circumstances, and then feeling in a
+moment that such words, if they stood alone, might
+sound ungrateful, he again returns to thanks, but not
+for their gift so much as for the sympathy expressed
+in it. We may follow these movements of feeling now.</p>
+
+<p>I. The exuberant expression of thanks, 'I rejoice in
+the Lord greatly.'</p>
+
+<p>There is an instance of his following his own twice-given
+precept, 'Rejoice in the Lord always.' The
+Philippians' care of him was the source of the joy, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60a" id="Page_60a">[60]</a></span>
+yet it was joy in the Lord. So we learn the perfect
+consistency of that joy in Christ with the full enjoyment
+of all other sources of joy, and especially of the
+joy that arises from Christian love and friendship.
+Union with Christ heightens and purifies all earthly
+relations. Nobody should be so tender and so sweet
+in these as a Christian. His faith should be like the
+sunshine blazing out over the meadows making them
+greener. It should, and does in the measure of its
+power, destroy selfishness and guard us against the
+evils which sap love and the anxieties which torment
+it, against the dread that it may end, and our hopeless
+desolation when it does. There is a false ascetic idea of
+Christian devotion as if it were a regard to Christ
+which made our hearts cold to others, which is clean
+against Paul's experience here. His joy went out in
+fuller stream towards the Philippians because it was
+'joy in the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>We may just note in passing the tender metaphor by
+which the Philippians' renewed thought of him is
+likened to a tree's putting forth its buds in a gracious
+springtide, and may link with it the pretty fancy of
+an old commentator whom some people call prosaic
+and puritanical (Bengel), that the stormy winter had
+hindered communication, and that Epaphroditus and
+the gifts came with the opening spring.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's inborn delicacy and quick considerateness
+comes beautifully forward in his addition, to remove
+any suspicion of his thinking that his friends in Philippi
+had been negligent or cold. Therefore he adds that he
+knew that they had always had the will. What had
+hindered them we do not know. Perhaps they had no
+one to send. Perhaps they had not heard that such
+help would be welcome, but whatever frost had kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61a" id="Page_61a">[61]</a></span>
+the tree from budding, he knew that the sap was in it
+all the same.</p>
+
+<p>We may note that trait of true friendship, confidence
+in a love that did not express itself. Many
+of us are too exacting in always wanting manifestations
+of our friend's affection. What cries out for
+these is not love so much as self-importance which has
+not had the attention which it thinks its due. How
+often there have been breaches of intimacy which have
+no better reason than 'He didn't come to see me often
+enough'; 'He hasn't written to me for ever so long';
+'He does not pay me the attention I expect.' It is a
+poor love which is always needing to be assured of
+another's. It is better to err in believing that there is
+a store of goodwill in our friends' hearts to us which
+only needs occasion to be unfolded. One often hears
+people say that they were quite surprised at the proofs
+of affection which came to them when they were in
+trouble. They would have been happier and more
+nearly right if they had believed in them when there
+was no need to show them.</p>
+
+<p>II. Consciousness of Christ-given independence and
+of 'content' is scarcely Paul's whole idea here, though
+that, no doubt, is included. We have no word which
+exactly expresses the meaning. 'Self-sufficient' is a
+translation, but then it has acquired a bad meaning
+as connoting a false estimate of one's own worth and
+wisdom. What Paul means is that whatever be his
+condition he has in himself enough to meet it. He does
+not depend on circumstances, and he does not depend
+on other people for strength to face them. Many words
+are not needed to insist that only the man of whom
+these things are true is worth calling a man at all.
+It is a miserable thing to be hanging on externals and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62a" id="Page_62a">[62]</a></span>
+so to be always exposed to the possibility of having
+to say, 'They have taken away my Gods.' It is as
+wretched to be hanging on people. 'The good man
+shall be satisfied for himself.' The fortress that has
+a deep well in the yard and plenty of provisions
+within, is the only one that can hold out.</p>
+
+<p>This independence teaches the true use of all changing
+circumstances. The consequence of 'learning'
+therewith to be content is further stated by the Apostle
+in terms which perhaps bear some reference to the
+mysteries of Greek religion, since the word rendered
+'I have learned the secret' means I have been initiated.
+He can bear either of the two extremes of human experience,
+and can keep a calm and untroubled mind
+whichever of them he has to front. He has the same
+equable spirit when abased and when abounding. He
+is like a compensation pendulum which corrects expansions
+and contractions and keeps time anywhere.
+I remember hearing of a captain in an Arctic expedition
+who had been recalled from the Tropics and
+sent straight away to the North Pole. Sometimes God
+gives His children a similar experience.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible for us not only to bear with equal minds
+both extremes, but to get the good out of both. It is
+a hard lesson and takes much conning, to learn to bear
+sorrow or suffering or want. They have great lessons
+to teach us all, and a character that has not been
+schooled by one of these dwellers in the dark is
+imperfect as celery is not in season till frost has
+touched it. But it is not less difficult to learn how to
+bear prosperity and abundance, though we think it a
+pleasanter lesson. To carry a full cup without spilling
+is proverbially difficult, and one sees instances enough
+of men who were far better men when they were poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63a" id="Page_63a">[63]</a></span>
+than they have ever been since they were rich, to give
+a terrible significance to the assertion that it is still
+more difficult to live a Christian life in prosperity
+than in sorrow. But while both threaten, both may
+minister to our growth. Sorrow will drive, and joy
+will draw, us nearer to God. If we are not tempted
+by abundance to plunge our desires into it, nor tempted
+by sorrow to think ourselves hopelessly harmed by it,
+both will knit us more closely to our true and changeless
+good. The <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'centifugal'">centrifugal</ins> and centripetal forces both
+keep the earth in its orbit.</p>
+
+<p>It is only when we are independent of circumstances
+that we are able to get the full good of them. When
+there is a strong hand at the helm, the wind, though it
+be almost blowing directly against us, helps us forward,
+but otherwise the ship drifts and washes about in the
+trough. We all need the exhortation to be their
+master, for we can do without them and they serve us.</p>
+
+<p>Paul here lets us catch a glimpse of the inmost secret of
+his power without which all exhortations to independence
+are but waste words. He is conscious of a living
+power flowing through him and making him fit for
+anything, and he is not afraid that any one who studies
+him will accuse him of exaggeration even when he
+makes the tremendous claim 'I can do all things in
+Him that strengtheneth me.' That great word is even
+more emphatic in the original, not only because, as the
+Revised Version shows, it literally is <i>in</i> and not <i>through</i>,
+and so suggests again his familiar thought of a vital
+union with Jesus, but also because he uses a compound
+word which literally means 'strengthening within,' so
+then the power communicated is breathed into the
+man, and in the most literal sense he is 'strong in the
+Lord and in the power of His might.' This inward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64a" id="Page_64a">[64]</a></span>
+impartation of strength is the true and only condition
+of that self-sufficingness which Paul has just been
+claiming. Stoicism breaks down because it tries to
+make men apart from God sufficient for themselves,
+which no man is. To stand alone without Him is to be
+weak. Circumstances will always be too strong for
+me, and sins will be too strong. A Godless life has a
+weakness at the heart of its loneliness, but Christ and
+I are always in the majority, and in the face of all
+foes, be they ever so many and strong, we can confidently
+say, 'They that be with us are more than they
+that be with them.' The old experience will prove true
+in our lives, and though 'they compass us about like
+bees,' the worst that they can do is only to buzz angrily
+round our heads, and their end is in the name of the
+Lord to be destroyed. In ourselves we are weak, but
+if we are 'rooted, grounded, built' on Jesus, we partake
+of the security of the rock of ages to which we are
+united, and cannot be swept away by the storm, so
+long as it stands unmoved. I have seen a thin hair-stemmed
+flower growing on the edge of a cataract and
+resisting the force of its plunge, and of the wind that
+always lives in its depths, because its roots are in a
+cleft of the cliff. The secret of strength for all men
+is to hold fast by the 'strong Son of God,' and they
+only are sufficient in whatsoever state they are, to
+whom this loving and quickening voice has spoken
+the charter 'My grace is sufficient for thee.'</p>
+
+<p>III. The renewed thanks for the loving sympathy
+expressed in the gift.</p>
+
+<p>We have here again an eager anxiety not to be misunderstood
+as undervaluing the Philippians' gift. How
+beautifully the sublimity of the previous words lies
+side by side with the lowliness and gentleness of these.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65a" id="Page_65a">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We note here the combination of that grand independence
+with loving thankfulness for brotherly help.
+The self-sufficingness of Stoicism is essentially inhuman
+and isolating. It is contrary to God's plan and
+to the fellowship which is meant to knit men together.
+So we have always to take heed to blend with it a
+loving welcome to sympathy, and not to fancy that
+human help and human kindness is useless. We should
+be able to do without it, but that need not make it the
+less sweet when it comes. We may be carrying water
+for the march, but shall not the less prize a brook by the
+way. Our firm souls should be like the rocking stones in
+Cornwall, poised so truly that tempests cannot shake
+them, and yet vibrating at the touch of a little child's
+soft hand. That lofty independence needs to be humanised
+by grateful acceptance of the refreshment of
+human sympathy even though we can do without it.</p>
+
+<p>Paul shows us here what is the true thing in a
+brother's help for which to be thankful. The reason
+why he was glad of their help was because it spoke to
+his heart and told him that they were making themselves
+sharers with him in his troubles. As he tells
+us in the beginning of the letter, their fellowship in
+his labours had been from the beginning a joy to
+him. It was not so much their material help as their
+true sympathy that he valued. The high level to which
+he lifts what was possibly a very modest contribution,
+if measured by money standards, carries with it a great
+lesson for all receivers and for all givers of such gifts,
+teaching the one that they are purely selfish if they
+are glad of what they get, and bidding the other remember
+that they may give so as to hurt by a gift
+more than by a blow, that they may give infinitely
+more by loving sympathy than by much gold, and that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66a" id="Page_66a">[66]</a></span>
+a &pound;5 note does not discharge all their obligations. We
+have to give after His pattern who does not toss us
+our alms from a height, but Himself comes to bestow
+them, and whose gift, though it be the unspeakable
+gift of eternal life, is less than the love it speaks, in that
+He Himself has in wondrous manner become partaker
+of our weakness. The pattern of all sympathy, the
+giver of all our possessions, is God. Let us hold to Him
+in faith and love, and all earthly love will be sweeter
+and sympathy more precious. Our own hearts will be
+refined and purified to a delicacy of consideration and
+a tenderness beyond their own. Our souls will be
+made lords of all circumstances and strengthened
+according to our need. He will say to us 'My grace is
+sufficient for thee,' and we, as we feel His strength
+being made perfect in our weakness, shall be able to
+say with humble confidence, 'I can do all things in
+Christ who strengtheneth me within.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GIFTS GIVEN, SEED SOWN</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And ye yourselves also know, ye Philippians, that in the beginning of the
+Gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church had fellowship with me in
+the matter of giving and receiving, but ye only; for even in Thessalonica ye
+sent once and again unto my need. Not that I seek for the gift; but I seek for
+the fruit that increaseth to your account. But I have all things, and abound:
+I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things that came from you,
+an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. And my
+God shall fulfil every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ
+Jesus.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 15-19 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Paul loved the Philippians too well and was too sure
+of their love to be conscious of any embarrassment in
+expressing his thanks for money help. His thanks are
+profuse and long drawn out. Our present text still
+strikes the note of grateful acknowledgment. It
+gives us a little glimpse into earlier instances of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67a" id="Page_67a">[67]</a></span>
+liberality, and beautifully suggests that as they had
+done to him so God would do to them, and that their
+liberality was in a fashion a prophecy, because it was
+in some measure an imitation, of God's liberality. He
+had just said 'I am full, having received the things
+which were sent from you,' and now he says, 'My God
+shall fill full all your needs.' The use of the same
+word in these two connections is a piece of what one
+would call the very ingenuity of graceful courtesy, if it
+were not something far deeper, even the utterance of
+a loving and self-forgetting heart.</p>
+
+<p>I. We may note here Paul's money relations with
+the churches.</p>
+
+<p>We know that he habitually lived by his own
+labour. He could call to witness the assembled elders
+at Ephesus, when he declared that 'these hands
+ministered unto my necessities,' and could propose
+himself as an illustration of the words of the Lord
+Jesus, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' He
+firmly holds the right of Christian teachers to be
+supported by the churches, and vehemently insists
+upon it in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. But he
+waives the right in his own case, and passionately
+insists that it were better for him rather to die than
+that any man should make his glorying void. He will
+not use to the full his right in the Gospel 'that he may
+make a Gospel without charge,' but when needed he
+gladly accepted money gifts, as he did from the
+Philippians. In our text he points back to an earlier
+instance of this. The history of that instance we may
+briefly recall. After his indignities and imprisonment
+in Philippi he went straight to Thessalonica, stayed
+there a short time till a riot drove him to take refuge
+in Berea, whence again he had to flee, and guided by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68a" id="Page_68a">[68]</a></span>
+brethren reached Athens. There he was left alone, and
+his guides went back to Macedonia to send on Silas and
+Timothy. From Athens he went to Corinth, and there
+was rejoined by them. According to our text, 'in the
+beginning of the Gospel,' that is, of course, its beginning
+in Philippi, they relieved him twice in Thessalonica,
+and if the words in our text which date the
+Philippians' gift may be read 'when I had departed
+from Macedonia,' we should have here another reference
+to the same incident mentioned in 2 Corinthians,
+chap. xi. 8-9, where he speaks of being in want there,
+and having 'the measure of my want' supplied by the
+brethren who came from Macedonia. The coincidence
+of these two incidental references hid away, as it were,
+confirms the historical truthfulness of both Epistles.
+And if we take into view the circumstances in which
+he was placed in Thessalonica and at the beginning of
+his stay in Corinth, his needing and receiving such aid
+is amply accounted for. Once again, after a long
+interval, when he was a prisoner in Rome, and probably
+unable to work for his maintenance, their care
+of him flourished again.</p>
+
+<p>In the present circumstances of our churches, it
+seems necessary that the right which Paul so strongly
+asserted should, for the most part, not be waived, but
+the only true way of giving and receiving as between
+minister and people is when it is a matter not of payment
+but a gift. When it is an expression of sympathy
+and affection on both sides, the relationship is pleasant
+and may be blessed. When it comes to be a business
+transaction, and is to be measured by the rules applicable
+to such, it goes far to destroy some of the sweetest
+bonds, and to endanger a preacher's best influence.</p>
+
+<p>II. The lofty view here taken of such service.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69a" id="Page_69a">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is 'the fruit that increaseth to your account.'
+Fruit, which as it were is put to their credit in the
+account-book of heaven, but it is called by Paul by a
+sacreder name as being an odour of a sweet smell, a
+sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God, in which
+metaphor all the sacred ideas of yielding up precious
+things to God and of the sacred fire that consumed the
+offering or brought to bear on the prosaic material
+gift.</p>
+
+<p>The principle which the Apostle here lays down in
+reference to a money gift has, of course, a much wider
+application, and is as true about all Christian acts.
+We need not be staggered at the emphasis with which
+Paul states the truths of their acceptableness and
+rewardableness, but in order fully to understand the
+ground of his assurance we must remember that in
+his view the root of all such fruit increasing to our
+account, and of everything which can claim to be an
+odour of a sweet smell well pleasing to God, is love to
+Christ, and the renewal of our nature by the spirit of
+God dwelling in us. In us there dwells no good thing.
+It is only as we abide in Him and His words abide in
+us that we bear much fruit. Separate from Him we
+can do nothing. If our works are ever to smell sweet
+to God, they must be done for Christ, and in a very
+profound and real sense, done by Him.</p>
+
+<p>The essential character of all work which has the
+right to be called good, and which is acceptable to God,
+is sacrifice. The one exhortation which takes the
+place and more than fills the place of all other commandments,
+and is enforced by the motive which takes
+the place, and more than takes the place of all other
+motives, is, 'I beseech you by the mercies of God to
+present your bodies a living sacrifice.' It is works<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70a" id="Page_70a">[70]</a></span>
+which in the intention of the doer are offered to Him,
+and in which therefore there is a surrender of our own
+wills, or tastes, or inclinations, or passions, or possessions,
+that yield to Him an odour of a sweet smell.
+The old condition which touched the chivalrous heart
+of David has to be repeated by us in regard to any
+work which we can ever hope to make well pleasing to
+God; 'I will not offer burnt offerings unto the Lord
+my God which cost me nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>There is a spurious humility which treats all the
+works of good men as filthy rags, but such a false
+depreciation is contradicted by Christ's 'Well done,
+good and faithful servant.' It is true that all our
+deeds are stained and imperfect, but if they are offered
+on the altar which He provides, it will sanctify the
+giver and the gift. He is the great Aaron who makes
+atonement for the iniquity of our holy things. And
+whilst we are stricken silent with thankfulness for the
+wonderful mercy of His gracious allowance, we may
+humbly hope that His 'Well done' will be spoken of
+us, and may labour, not without a foretaste that we do
+not labour in vain, that 'whether present or absent we
+may be well pleasing to Him.'</p>
+
+<p>The fruit is here supposed to be growing, that is, of
+course, in another life. We need not insist that the
+service and sacrifice and work of earth, if the motive
+be right, tell in a man's condition after death. It is
+not all the same how Christian men live; some gain
+ten talents, some five, and some two, and the difference
+between them is not always as the parable represents
+it, a difference in the original endowment. An entrance
+may be given into the eternal kingdom, and yet it may
+not be an abundant entrance.</p>
+
+<p>III. The gift that supplies the givers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71a" id="Page_71a">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Paul has nothing to bestow, but he serves a great
+God who will see to it that no man is the poorer by
+helping His servants. The king's honour is concerned
+in not letting a poor man suffer by lodging and feeding
+his retainers. The words here suggest to us the
+source from which our need may be filled full, as an
+empty vessel might be charged to the brim with some
+precious liquid, the measure or limit of the fulness, and
+the channel by which we receive it.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was so sure that the Philippians' needs would
+all be satisfied, because he knew that his own had
+been; he is generalising from his own case, and that, I
+think, is at all events part of the reason why he says
+with much emphasis, '<i>My</i> God. As He has done to me
+He will do to you,' but even without the 'my,' the
+great name contains in itself a promise and its seal.
+'God will supply just because He is God'; that is
+what His name means&mdash;infinite fulness and infinite
+self-communicativeness and delight in giving. But is
+not so absolutely unlimited a promise as this convicted
+of complete unreality when contrasted with the facts
+of any life, even of the most truly Christian or the
+most outwardly happy? Its contradiction of the
+grim facts of experience is not to be slurred over by
+restricting it to religious needs only. The promise
+needs the eye of Faith to interpret the facts of experience,
+and to let nothing darken the clear vision that if
+any seeming need is left by God unfilled, it is not an
+indispensable need. If we do not get what we want
+we may be quite sure that we do not need it. The
+axiom of Christian faith is that whatever we do not
+obtain we do not require. Very desirable things may
+still not be necessary. Let us limit our notions of
+necessity by the facts of God's giving, and then we,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72a" id="Page_72a">[72]</a></span>
+too, shall have learned, in whatsoever state we are,
+therein to be content. When the Apostle says that
+God shall fill all our need full up to the brim, was he
+contemplating only such necessities as God could supply
+through outward gifts? Surely not. God Himself is
+the filler and the only filler of a human heart, and it is
+by this impartation of Himself and by nothing else
+that He bestows upon us the supply of our needs.</p>
+
+<p>Unless we have been initiated into this deepest and
+yet simplest secret of life, it will be full of gnawing
+pain and unfulfilled longings. Unless we have learned
+that our needs are like the cracks in the parched
+ground, cups to hold the rain from heaven, doors by
+which God Himself can come to us, we shall dwell for
+ever in a dry and thirsty land. God Himself is the only
+satisfier of the soul. 'Whom have I in heaven but
+Thee, and there is none upon earth that'&mdash;if I am not
+a fool&mdash;'I desire side by side with Thee?'</p>
+
+<p>But Paul here sets forth in very bold words the
+measure or limits of the divine supply of our need. It
+is 'according to His riches in glory.' Then, all of God
+belongs to me, and the whole wealth of His aggregated
+perfections is available for stopping the crannies of
+my heart and filling its emptiness. My emptiness corresponds
+with His fulness as some concavity does with
+the convexity that fits into it, and the whole that He
+is waits to fill and to satisfy me. There is no limit
+really to what a man may have of God except the
+limitless limit of the infinite divine nature, but on the
+other hand this great promise is not fulfilled all at
+once, and whilst the actual limit is the boundlessness
+of God, there is a working limit, so to speak, a variable
+one, but a very real one. The whole riches of God's
+glory are available for us, but only so much of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73a" id="Page_73a">[73]</a></span>
+boundless store as we desire and are at present capable
+of taking in will belong to us now. What is the use of
+owning half a continent if the owner lives on an acre
+of it and grows what he wants there, and has never
+seen the broad lands that yet belong to him? Nothing
+hinders a man from indefinitely increased possession
+of a growing measure of God, except his own arbitrarily
+narrowed measure of desire and capacity.
+Therefore it becomes a solemn question for each of
+us, Am I day by day becoming more and more fit to
+possess more of God, and enjoy more of the God whom
+I possess? In Him we have each 'a potentiality of
+wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.' Do we growingly
+realise that boundless possibility?</p>
+
+<p>The channel by which that boundless supply is to
+reach us is distinctly set forth here. All these riches
+are stored up 'in Christ Jesus.' A deep lake may be
+hidden away in the bosom of the hills that would pour
+blessing and fertility over a barren land if it could
+find a channel down into the plains, but unless there
+be a river flowing out of it, its land-locked waters
+might as well be dried up. When Paul says 'riches in
+glory,' he puts them up high above our reach, but
+when he adds 'in Christ Jesus,' he brings them all
+down amongst us. In Him is 'infinite riches in a
+narrow room.' If we are in Him then we are beside
+our treasure, and have only to put out our hands and
+take the wealth that is lying there. All that we need
+is 'in Christ,' and if we are in Christ it is all close at
+our sides.</p>
+
+<p>Then the question comes to be, 'Am I thus near my
+wealth, and can I get at it whenever I want it, as I
+want it, and as much as I want of it?' We can if we
+will. The path is easy to define, though our slothful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74a" id="Page_74a">[74]</a></span>ness
+find it hard to tread. That man is in Christ who
+dwells with Him by faith, whose heart is by love
+plunged in His love, who daily seeks to hold communion
+with Him amid the distractions of life, and
+who in practical submission obeys His will. If thus we
+trust, if thus we love, if thus we hold fast to Him, and
+if thus we link Him with all our activities in the
+world, need will cease to grow, and will only be an
+occasion for God's gift. 'Delight thyself in the Lord,'
+and then the heart's desires being set upon Him, 'He
+will give thee the desire of thy heart.'</p>
+
+<p>Paul says to us 'My God shall supply all your need.'
+Let us answer, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not
+want.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>FAREWELL WORDS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now unto our God and Father be the glory for ever and ever, Amen. Salute
+every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren which are with me salute you. All the
+saints salute you, especially they that are of C&aelig;sar's household. The grace of
+the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iv. 20-23 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>These closing words fall into three unconnected parts,
+a doxology, greetings, and a benediction. As in all his
+letters, the Apostle follows the natural instinct of
+making his last words loving words. Even when he
+had to administer a bitter draught, the last drops in
+the cup were sweetened, and to the Philippians whom
+he loved so well, and in whose loyal love he confided so
+utterly, his parting was tender as an embrace. Taking
+together the three elements of this farewell, they present
+to us a soul filled with desire for the glory of God
+and with loving yearning for all His brethren. We shall
+best deal with them by simply taking them in order.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Doxology.</p>
+
+<p>It is possibly evoked by the immediately pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75a" id="Page_75a">[75]</a></span>ceding
+thought of God's infinite supply of all human
+need 'according to his riches in <i>glory</i>'; but the glory
+which is so richly stored in Christ, and is the full
+storehouse from which our emptiness is to be filled,
+is not the same as the glory here ascribed to Him.
+The former is the sum of His divine perfections, the
+light of His own infinite being: the latter is the praise
+rendered to Him when we know Him for what He is,
+and exalt Him in our thankful thoughts and adoration.
+As this doxology is the last word of this whole letter,
+we may say that it gathers into one all that precedes
+it. Our ascription of glory to God is the highest object
+of all His self-manifestation, and should be the end of
+all our contemplations of Him and of His acts. The
+faith that God does 'all for His glory' may be and often
+has been so interpreted as to make his character
+repellent and hideous, but in reality it is another way
+of saying that God is love. He desires that all men
+should be gladdened and elevated by knowing Him as
+He is. His glory is to give. That to which He has
+committed the charge of interpreting Him to our dim
+eyes and disordered natures is not the attributes of
+sovereign power, or creative wisdom, or administrative
+providence, or any other elements which men lay hold
+of in their conceptions of deity. When men make
+gods they make them in their own image: when God
+reveals God, the emphasis is put on an altogether
+different aspect of His nature. It is His self-communicating
+and paternal love revealed to the heart of a son
+which will kindle the highest aspiration of praise, and
+that fatherhood is not found in the fact that God has
+made us, but in the higher fact that He has redeemed
+us and has sent the spirit of His Son into our hearts.
+The doxology of our text is a distinctively Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76a" id="Page_76a">[76]</a></span>
+doxology which Paul conceives can only be uttered by
+lips which have learned to say 'Abba, Father,' 'and have
+received the adoption of sons' through the eternal
+Son.</p>
+
+<p>Mark, too, that this glad ascription of glory to God is
+conceived of as sounded forth for ever and ever, or
+literally through 'ages and ages, as long as successive
+epochs shall unfold.' It is not as if the revelation
+of the divine character were in the past, and the light of
+it continued to touch stony lips to music, but it fills in
+continuous forthcoming every age, and in every age
+men receive the fulness of God, and in every age
+redeemed hearts bring back their tribute of praise and
+love to Him.</p>
+
+<p>II. The Greetings.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle's habit of closing all his letters with
+kindly messages is, of course, more than a habit.
+It is the natural instinct to which all true hearts
+have a hundred times yielded. It is remarkable
+that in this letter there are no individual greetings,
+but that instead of such there is the emphatic greeting
+to every saint in Christ Jesus. He will not single out
+any where all are so near His heart, and He will have no
+jealousies to be fed by His selection of more favoured
+persons. It may be too, that the omission of individual
+messages is partly occasioned by some incipient
+tendencies to alienation and faction of which we see
+some traces in His earnest exhortations to stand fast in
+one spirit, and to be of the same mind, having the same
+love, and being of one accord, as well as in his exhortation
+to two Philippian women to be of the same mind
+in the Lord. The all-embracing word at parting
+singularly links the end of the letter with its beginning,
+where we find a remarkable sequence of similar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77a" id="Page_77a">[77]</a></span>
+allusions to 'all' the Philippian Christians. He has
+them all in His heart; they are all partakers with
+Him of grace; He longs after them all.</p>
+
+<p>The designation by which Paul describes the
+recipients of his greeting carries in it a summons as
+well as a promise. They are saints, and they are so as
+being 'in Christ.' That name is often used as a clumsy
+sarcasm, but it goes to the very root of Christian
+character. The central idea contained in it is that
+of consecration to God, and that which is often taken
+to be its whole meaning is but a secondary one, a
+result of that consecration. The true basis of all real
+purity of conduct lies in devotion of heart and life to
+God, and for want of discerning the connection of these
+two elements the world's ethics fail in theory and in
+practice. A 'saint' is not a faultless monster, and the
+persistence of failures and inconsistencies, whilst affording
+only too sad an occasion for penitence and
+struggle, afford no occasion for a man's shrinking
+from taking to himself the humble claim to be a saint.
+Both the elements of consecration to God and of real
+and progressive, though never complete perfection of
+personal character, are realised only in Christ; in and
+only in fellowship with Him whose life was unbroken
+fellowship with the Father, and whose will was completely
+accordant with the Father's, do we rise to the
+height of belonging to God. And only in Him who
+could challenge a world to convict Him of sin shall
+we make even a beginning of personal righteousness.
+If we are in Christ we should be saints to-day however
+imperfect our holiness, and shall be 'as the angels of
+God' in the day that is coming&mdash;nay, rather as the
+Lord of the Angels, 'not having spot or blemish or
+any such thing.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78a" id="Page_78a">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The New Testament has other names for believers,
+each of which expresses some great truth in regard to
+them; for example, the earliest name by which they
+knew themselves was the simple one of 'brethren,'
+which spoke of their common relation to a Father and
+pledged them to the sweetness and blessedness of a
+family. The sarcastic wits of Antioch called them
+Christians as seeing nothing in them other than what
+they had many a time seen in the adherents of some
+founder of a school or a party. They called themselves
+disciples or believers, revealing by both names their
+humble attitude and their Lord's authority, and by
+the latter disclosing to seeing eyes the central bond
+which bound them to Him. But the name of Saint
+declares something more than these in that it speaks of
+their relation to God, the fulfilment of the Old Testament
+ideal, and carries in it a prophecy of personal
+character.</p>
+
+<p>The sharers in Paul's salutation call for some
+notice. We do not know who 'the brethren that are
+with me' were. We might have supposed from Paul's
+pathetic words that he had no man like-minded with
+him, that the faithful band whom we find named in
+the other epistles of the captivity were dispersed. But
+though there were none 'like-minded who will care
+truly for your state,' there were some recognised as
+brethren who were closely associated with him, and
+who, though they had no such warm interest in the
+Philippians as he had, still had a real affection for them,
+drawn no doubt from him. Distinct from these was
+the whole body of the Roman Christians, from the
+mention of whom we may gather that his imprisonment
+did not prevent his intercourse with them.
+Again, distinct from these, though a part of them, were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79a" id="Page_79a">[79]</a></span>
+the saints of C&aelig;sar's household. He had apparently
+special opportunities for intercourse with them, and
+probably his imprisonment brought him through the
+pr&aelig;torian guards into association with them, as
+C&aelig;sar's household included all the servants and retainers
+of Nero.</p>
+
+<p>May we not see in this union of members of the
+most alien races a striking illustration of the new
+bond which the Gospel had woven among men? There
+was a Jew standing in the midst between Macedonian
+Greeks and proud Roman citizens, including members
+of that usually most heartless and arrogant of all
+classes, the lackeys of a profligate court, and they are
+all clasping one another's hands in true brotherly love.
+Society was falling to pieces. We know the tragic spectacle
+that the empire presented then. Amidst universal
+decay of all that held men together, here was a new
+uniting principle; everywhere else dissolution was at
+work; here was again crystallising. A flower was
+opening its petals though it grew on a dunghill.
+What was it that drew slaves and patricians, the
+Pharisee of Tarsus, rude Lycaonians, the 'barbarous'
+people of Melita, the Areopagite of Athens, the citizens
+of Rome into one loving family? How came Lydia
+and her slave girl, Onesimus and his master, the pr&aelig;torian
+guard and his prisoner, the courtier in Nero's
+golden house and the jailer at Philippi into one great
+fellowship of love? They were all one in Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>And what lessons the saints in C&aelig;sar's household
+may teach us! Think of the abyss of lust and murder
+there, of the Emperor by turns a buffoon, a sensualist,
+and a murderer. A strange place to find saints in that
+sty of filth! Let no man say that it is impossible for
+a pure life to be lived in any circumstances, or try to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80a" id="Page_80a">[80]</a></span>
+bribe his conscience by insisting on the difficulties of
+his environment. It may be our duty to stand at our
+post however foul may be our surroundings and however
+uncongenial our company, and if we are sure that
+He has set us there, we may be sure that He is with us
+there, and that there we can live the life and witness
+to His name.</p>
+
+<p>III. The Parting Benediction.</p>
+
+<p>The form of the benediction seems to be more correctly
+given in the Revised Version, which reads 'with
+your spirit' instead of 'with you all.' That form reappears
+in Galatians and in Philemon. What Paul
+especially desires of his favourite church is that they
+may possess 'the grace.' Grace is love exercising itself
+to inferiors, and to those who deserve something
+sadder and darker. The gifts of that one grace are
+manifold. They comprise all blessings that man can
+need or receive. This angel comes with her hands and
+her lap full of good. Her name is shorthand for all
+that God can bestow or man can ask or think.</p>
+
+<p>And it needs all the names by which Christ is known
+among men to describe the encyclop&aelig;diacal Person
+who can bestow the encyclop&aelig;diacal gift. Here we
+have them all gathered, as it were, into one great
+diadem, set on His head where once the crown of thorns
+was twined. He is Lord, the name which implies at
+least absolute authority, and is most probably the New
+Testament translation of the Old Testament name of
+Jehovah. He is our Lord as supreme over us, and
+wonderful as it is, as belonging to us. He holds the
+keys of the storehouse of grace. The river of the water
+of life flows where He turns it on. He is Jesus&mdash;the
+personal name which He bore in the days of His flesh,
+and by which men who knew Him only as one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81a" id="Page_81a">[81]</a></span>
+themselves called Him. It is the token of His brotherhood
+and the guarantee of the sympathy which will
+ever bestow 'grace for grace.' He is the Christ, the
+Messiah, the name which points back to the Old Testament
+ideas and declares His office, realising all the
+rapturous anticipations of prophets, and the longings
+of psalmists, and more than fulfilling them all by
+giving Himself to men.</p>
+
+<p>That great gift is to be the companion of every spirit
+which looks to that Jesus in the reality of His humanity,
+in the greatness of His office, in the loftiness of
+His divinity, and finds in each of His names an anchor
+for its faith and an authoritative claim for its obedience.</p>
+
+<p>Such a wish as this benediction is the truest expression
+of human friendship; it is the highest desire any
+of us can form for ourselves or for those dearest to us.
+Do we keep it clear before us in our intercourse with
+them so that the end of that intercourse will naturally
+be such a prayer?</p>
+
+<p>Our human love has its limitations. We can but
+wish for others the grace which Christ can give, but
+neither our wishes nor His giving can make the grace
+ours unless for ourselves we take the great gift that
+is freely given to us of God. It is no accident that all
+his letters close thus. This benediction is the last
+word of God's revelation to man, the brightness in the
+clear west, the last strain of the great oratorio. The
+last word or last book of Scripture is 'the grace of our
+Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' Let us take up the
+solemn Amen in our lips and in our hearts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82a" id="Page_82a">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>COLOSSIANS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SAINTS, BELIEVERS, BRETHREN</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>' .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The saints and faithful brethren in Christ.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> i. 2.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,'
+says the Acts of the Apostles. It was a name given by
+outsiders, and like most of the instances where a sect,
+or school, or party is labelled with the name of its
+founder, it was given in scorn. It hit and yet missed
+its mark. The early believers were Christians, that is,
+Christ's men, but they were not merely a group of
+followers of a man, like many other groups of whom
+the Empire at that time was full. So they never
+used that name themselves. It occurs twice only in
+Scripture, once when King Agrippa was immensely
+amused at the audacity of Paul in thinking that he
+would easily make 'a Christian' of him; and once
+when Peter speaks of 'suffering as a Christian,' where
+he is evidently quoting, as it were, the indictment on
+which the early believers were tried and punished.
+What did they call themselves then?</p>
+
+<p>I have chosen this text not for the purpose of speaking
+about it only, but because it gathers together in
+brief compass the three principal designations by
+which the early believers knew themselves. 'Saints'&mdash;that
+tells their relation to God, as well as their
+character, for it means 'consecrated,' set apart for
+Him, and therefore pure; 'faithful'&mdash;that means 'full
+of faith' and is substantially equivalent to the usual
+'believers,' which defines their relation to Jesus Christ
+as the Revealer of God; 'brethren'&mdash;that defines their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83a" id="Page_83a">[83]</a></span>
+relation and sentiment towards their fellows. These
+terms go a great deal deeper than the nickname which
+the wits of Antioch invented. The members of the
+Church were not content with the vague 'Christian,' but
+they called themselves 'saints,' 'believers,' 'brethren.'
+One designation does not appear here, which we must
+take into account for completeness: the earliest of all&mdash;disciples.
+Now, I purpose to bring together these
+four names, by which the early believers thought and
+spoke of themselves, in order to point the lessons as to
+our position and our duty, which are wrapped up in
+them. And I may just say that, perhaps, it is no sign
+of advance that the Church, as years rolled on, accepted
+the world's name for itself, and that people found it
+easier to call themselves 'Christians'&mdash;which did not
+mean very much&mdash;than to call themselves 'saints' or
+'believers.'</p>
+
+<p>Now then, to begin with,</p>
+
+<p>I. They were 'Disciples' first of all.</p>
+
+<p>The facts as to the use of that name are very plain,
+and as instructive as they are plain. It is a standing
+designation in the Gospels, both in the mouths of
+friends and of outsiders; it is sometimes, though very
+sparingly, employed by Jesus Christ Himself. It persists
+on through the book of the Acts of the Apostles,
+and then it stops dead, and we never hear it again.</p>
+
+<p>Now its existence at first, and its entire abandonment
+afterwards, both seem to me to carry very valuable
+lessons. Let me try to work them out. Of course,
+'disciple' or 'scholar' has for its correlative&mdash;as the
+logicians call it&mdash;'teacher.' And so we find that as the
+original adherents of Jesus called themselves 'disciples,'
+they addressed Him as 'Master,' which is the
+equivalent of 'Rabbi.' That at once suggests the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84a" id="Page_84a">[84]</a></span>
+thought that to themselves, and to the people who saw
+the origination of the little Christian community, the
+Lord and His handful of followers seemed just to be
+like John and his disciples, the Pharisees and their
+disciples, and many another Rabbi and his knot of
+admiring adherents. Therefore whilst the name was
+in one view fitting, it was conspicuously inadequate,
+and as time went on, and the Church became more conscious
+of the uniqueness of the bond that knit it to Jesus
+Christ, it instinctively dropped the name 'disciple,' and
+substituted others more intimate and worthy.</p>
+
+<p>But yet it remains permanently true, that Christ's
+followers are Christ's scholars, and that He is their
+Rabbi and Teacher. Only the peculiarity, the absolute
+uniqueness, of His attitude and action as a Teacher
+lies in two things: one, that His main subject was
+Himself, as He said, 'I am the Truth,' and consequently
+His characteristic demand from His scholars was not,
+as with other teachers, 'Accept this, that, or the other
+doctrine which I propound,' but 'Believe in Me'; and
+the other, that He seldom if ever argues, or draws
+conclusions from previous premises, that He never
+speaks as if He Himself had learnt and fought His
+way to what He is saying, or betrays uncertainty,
+limitation, or growth in His opinions, and that for all
+confirmation of His declarations, He appeals only to
+the light within and to His own authority: 'Verily,
+verily, I say unto you.' No wonder that the common
+people were astonished at His teaching, and felt that
+here was an authority in which the wearisome citations
+of what Rabbi So-and-So had said, altogether lacked.</p>
+
+<p>That teaching abides still, and, as I believe, opens
+out into, and is our source of, all that we know&mdash;in
+distinction and contrast from, 'imagine,' 'hope,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85a" id="Page_85a">[85]</a></span>
+'fear'&mdash;of God, and of ourselves, and of the future.
+It casts the clearest light on morals for the individual
+and on politics for the community. Whatever men
+may say about Christianity being effete, it will not
+be effete till the world has learnt and absorbed the
+teaching of Jesus Christ; and we are a good long way
+from that yet!</p>
+
+<p>If He is thus the Teacher, the perpetual Teacher, and
+the only Teacher, of mankind in regard to all these
+high things about God and man and the relation between
+them, about life and death and the world, and
+about the practice and conduct of the individual and
+of the community, then we, if we are His disciples,
+build houses on the rock, in the degree in which we
+not only hear but do the things that He commands.
+For this Teacher is no theoretical handler of abstract
+propositions, but the authoritative imposer of the law
+of life, and all His words have a direct bearing upon
+conduct. Therefore it is vain for us to say: 'Lord,
+Lord, Thou hast taught in our streets and we have
+accepted Thy teaching.' He looks down upon us from
+the Throne, as He looked upon the disciples in that
+upper room, and He says to each of us: 'If ye know
+these things, happy are ye if ye do them.'</p>
+
+<p>But the complete disappearance of the name as the
+development of the Church advanced, brings with it
+another lesson, and that is, that precious and great as
+are the gifts which Jesus Christ bestows as a Teacher,
+and unique as His act and attitude in that respect are,
+the name either of teacher or of disciple fails altogether
+to penetrate to the essence of the relation which knits
+us together. It is not enough for our needs that we
+shall be taught. The worst man in the world knows a
+far nobler morality than the best man practises. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86a" id="Page_86a">[86]</a></span>
+if it were true, as some people superficially say is the
+case, that evil-doing is the result of ignorance, there
+would be far less evil-doing in the world than, alas!
+there is. It is not for the want of knowing, that we
+go wrong, as our consciences tell us; but it is for want
+of something that can conquer the evil tendencies
+within, and lift off the burden of a sinful past which
+weighs on us. As in the carboniferous strata what
+was pliant vegetation has become heavy mineral, our
+evil deeds lie heavy on our souls. What we need is
+not to be told what we ought to be, but to be enabled
+to be it. Electricity can light the road, and it can drive
+the car along it; and that is what we want, a dynamic
+as well as an illuminant, something that will make us
+able to do and to be what conscience has told us we
+ought to be and do.</p>
+
+<p>Teacher? Yes. But if <i>only</i> teacher, then He is
+nothing more than one of a multitude who in all
+generations have vainly witnessed to sinful men of the
+better path. There is no reformation for the individual,
+and little hope for humanity, in a Christ whom
+you degrade to the level of a Rabbi, or in a Church which
+has not pressed nearer to Him than to feel itself His
+disciples.</p>
+
+<p>There was a man who came to Jesus by night, and
+was in the dark about the Jesus to whom he came,
+and he said, 'We know that Thou art a Teacher come
+from God.' But Jesus did not accept the witness,
+though a young teacher fighting for recognition might
+have been glad to get it from an authoritative member
+of the Sanhedrim. But He answered, 'Except a man
+be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' If
+we need to be born again before we see it, it is not
+teachers of it that will serve our turn, but One who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87a" id="Page_87a">[87]</a></span>
+takes us by the hand, and translates us out of the
+tyranny of the darkness into the Kingdom of the Son
+of God's love. So much, then, for the first of these
+names and lessons.</p>
+
+<p>Now turn to the second&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>II. The Disciples must be Believers.</p>
+
+<p>That name begins to appear almost immediately
+after Pentecost, and continues throughout. It comes
+in two forms, one which is in my text, 'the faithful,'
+meaning thereby not the reliable, but the people that
+are full of faith; the other, meaning the same thing,
+they who believe, the 'believers.' The Church found
+that 'disciple' was not enough. It went deeper; and,
+with a true instinct, laid hold of the unique bond
+which knits men to their Lord and Saviour. That
+name indicates that Jesus Christ appears to the man
+who has faith in a new character. He is not any
+longer the Teacher who is to be listened to, but He is
+the Object of trust. And that implies the recognition,
+first, of His Divinity, which alone is strong enough
+to bear up the weight of millions of souls leaning hard
+upon it; and, second, of what He has done and not
+merely of what He has said. We accept the Teacher's
+word; we trust the Saviour's Cross. And in the
+measure in which men learned that the centre of the
+work of the Rabbi Jesus was the death of the Incarnate
+Son of God, their docility was sublimed into faith.</p>
+
+<p>That faith is the real bond that knits men to Jesus
+Christ. We are united to Him, and become recipient
+of the gifts that He has to bestow, by no sacraments,
+by no externals, by no reverential admiration of His
+supreme wisdom and perfect beauty of character, not
+by assuming the attitude of the disciple, but by flinging
+our whole selves upon Him, because He is our Saviour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88a" id="Page_88a">[88]</a></span>
+That unites us to Jesus Christ; nothing else does.
+Faith is the opening of the heart, by which all His
+power can be poured into us. It is the grasping of His
+hand, by which, even though the cold waters be above
+our knees and be rising to our hearts, we are lifted
+above them and they are made a solid pavement for
+our feet. Faith is the door opened by ourselves,
+and through which will come all the Glory that dwelt
+between the cherubim, and will fill the secret place in
+our hearts. To be the disciple of a Rabbi is something;
+to be the 'faithful' dependent on the Saviour is to be
+His indeed.</p>
+
+<p>And then there is to be remembered, further, that
+this bond, which is the only vital link between a man
+and Christ, is therefore the basis of all virtue, of all
+nobility, of all beauty of conduct, and that 'whatsoever
+things are lovely and of good report' are its
+natural efflorescence and fruit. And so that leads us
+to the third point&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>III. The believing Disciple is a 'Saint.'</p>
+
+<p>That name does not appear in the Gospels, but it
+begins to show in the Acts of the Apostles, and it
+becomes extremely common throughout the Epistles
+of Paul. He had no hesitation in calling the very
+imperfect disciples in Corinth by this great name. He
+was going to rebuke them for some very great offences,
+not only against Christian elevation of conduct, but
+against common pagan morality; but he began by
+calling them 'saints.'</p>
+
+<p>What is a saint? First and foremost, a man who
+has given himself to God, and is consecrated thereby.
+Whoever has cast himself on Christ, and has taken
+Christ for his, therein and in the same degree as he is
+exercising faith, has thus yielded himself to God. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89a" id="Page_89a">[89]</a></span>
+your faith has not led you to such a consecration of
+will and heart and self, you had better look out and
+see whether it is faith at all. But then, because faith
+involves the consecration of a man to God, and consecration
+necessarily implies purity, since nothing can
+be laid on God's altar which is not sanctified thereby,
+the name of saint comes to imply purity of character.
+Sanctity is the Christian word which means the very
+flower and fragrant aroma of what the world calls
+virtue.</p>
+
+<p>But sanctity is not emotion, A man may luxuriate
+in devout feeling, and sing and praise and pray, and
+be very far from being a saint; and there is a great
+deal of the emotional Christianity of this day which
+has a strange affinity for the opposite of saintship.
+Sanctity is not aloofness. 'There were saints in
+C&aelig;sar's household'&mdash;a very unlikely place; they were
+flowers on a dunghill, and perhaps their blossoms were
+all the brighter because of what they grew on, and
+which they could transmute from corruption into
+beauty. So sanctity is no blue ribbon of the Christian
+profession, to be given to a few select (and mostly
+ascetic) specimens of consecration, but it is the designation
+of each of us, if we are disciples who are more
+than disciples, that is, 'believers.' And thus, brethren,
+we have to see to it that, in our own cases, our faith
+leads to surrender, and our self-surrender to purity of
+life and conduct. Faith, if real, brings sanctity;
+sanctity, if real, is progressive. Sanctity, though imperfect,
+may be real.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The believing Saints are 'Brethren.'</p>
+
+<p>That is the name that predominates over all others
+in the latter portions of the New Testament, and it is
+very natural that it should do so. It reposes upon and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90a" id="Page_90a">[90]</a></span>
+implies the three preceding. Its rapid adoption and
+universal use express touchingly the wonder of the
+early Church at its own unity. The then world was
+rent asunder by deep clefts of misunderstanding,
+alienation, animosity, racial divisions of Jew and
+Greek, Parthian, Scythian; by sexual divisions which
+flung men and women, who ought to have been linked
+hand in hand, and united heart to heart, to opposite
+sides of a great gulf; by divisions of culture which
+made wise men look down on the unlearned, and the
+unlearned hate the wise men; by clefts of social position,
+and mainly that diabolical one of slave and free.
+All these divisive and disintegrating forces were in
+active operation. The only thing except Christianity,
+which produced even a semblance of union, was the
+iron ring of the Roman power which compressed them
+all into one indeed, but crushed the life out of them in
+the process. Into that disintegrating world, full of
+mutual repulsion, came One who drew men to Himself
+and said, 'One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye
+are brethren.' And to their own astonishment, male
+and female, Greek and Jew, bond and free, philosopher
+and fool, found themselves sitting at the same table as
+members of one family; and they looked in each
+other's eyes and said, 'Brother!' There had never
+been anything like it in the world. The name is a
+memorial of the unifying power of the Christian faith.</p>
+
+<p>And it is a reminder to us of our own shortcomings.
+Of course, in the early days, the little band were driven
+together, as sheep that stray over a pasture in the sunshine
+will huddle into a corner in a storm, or when the
+wolves are threatening. There are many reasons to-day
+which make less criminal the alienation from one
+another of Christian communities and Christian indi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91a" id="Page_91a">[91]</a></span>viduals.
+I am not going to dwell on the evident signs
+in this day, for which God be thanked, that Christian
+men are beginning, more than they once did, to realise
+their unity in Jesus Christ, and to be content to think
+less of the things that separate than of the far greater
+things that unite. But I would lay upon your hearts,
+as individual parts of that great whole, this, that whatever
+may be the differences in culture, outlook, social
+position, or the like, between two Christian men, they
+each, the rich man and the poor, the educated man and
+the unlettered one, the master and the servant, ought
+to feel that deep down in their true selves they are
+nearer one another than they are to the men who,
+differing from them in regard to their faith in Jesus
+Christ, are like them in all these superficial respects.
+Regulate your conduct by that thought.</p>
+
+<p>That name, too, speaks to us of the source from which
+Christian brotherhood has come. We are brethren of
+each other because we have one Father, even God, and
+the Fatherhood which makes us brethren is not that
+which communicates the common life of humanity, but
+that which imparts the new life of sonship through
+Jesus Christ. So the name points to the only way by
+which the world's dream of a universal brotherhood
+can ever be fulfilled. If there is to be fraternity there
+must be fatherhood, and the life which, possessed by
+each, makes a family of all, is the life which He gives,
+who is 'the first-born among many brethren,' and
+who, to them who believe on Him, gives power to
+become the sons of God, and the brethren of all the
+other sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, take these names, ponder their
+significance and the duties they impose. Let us make
+sure that they are true of us. Do not be content with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92a" id="Page_92a">[92]</a></span>
+the vague, often unmeaning name of Christian, but fill
+it with meaning by being a believer on Christ, a saint
+devoted to God, and a brother of all who, 'by like
+precious faith,' have become Sons of God.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE GOSPEL-HOPE</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'The hope of the Gospel.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> i. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'God never sends mouths but He sends meat to feed
+them,' says the old proverb. And yet it seems as if
+that were scarcely true in regard to that strange
+faculty called Hope. It may well be a question
+whether on the whole it has given us more pleasure
+than pain. How seldom it has been a true prophet!
+How perpetually its pictures have been too highly
+coloured! It has cast illusions over the future, colouring
+the far-off hills with glorious purple which, reached,
+are barren rocks and cold snow. It has held out prizes
+never won. It has made us toil and struggle and
+aspire and fed us on empty husks. Either we have
+not got what we expected or have found it to be less
+good than it appeared from afar.</p>
+
+<p>If we think of all the lies that hope has told us,
+of all the vain expenditure of effort to which it has
+tempted us, of the little that any of us have of
+what we began by thinking we should surely attain,
+hope seems a questionable good, and yet how obstinate
+it is, living on after all disappointments and drawing
+the oldest amongst us onwards. Surely somewhere
+there must be a reason for this great and in some
+respects awful faculty, a vindication of its existence
+in an adequate object for its grasp.</p>
+
+<p>The New Testament has much to say about hope.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93a" id="Page_93a">[93]</a></span>
+Christianity lays hold of it and professes to supply it
+with its true nourishment and support. Let us look
+at the characteristics of Christian hope, or, as our text
+calls it, the hope of the Gospel, that is, the hope which
+the Gospel creates and feeds in our souls.</p>
+
+<p>I. What does it hope for?</p>
+
+<p>The weakness of our earthly hopes is that they are
+fixed on things which are contingent and are inadequate
+to make us blessed. Even when tinted with the
+rainbow hues, which it lends them, they are poor and
+small. How much more so when seen in the plain
+colourless light of common day. In contrast with
+these the objects of the Christian hope are certain and
+sufficient for all blessedness. In the most general
+terms they may be stated as 'That blessed hope, even
+the appearing of the Great God and our Saviour.'
+That is the specific Christian hope, precise and definite,
+a real historical event, filling the future with a certain
+steadfast light. Much is lost in the daily experience
+of all believers by the failure to set that great and
+precise hope in its true place of prominence. It is
+often discredited by millenarian dreams, but altogether
+apart from these it has solidity and substance
+enough to bear the whole weight of a world
+rested upon it.</p>
+
+<p>That appearance of God brings with it the fulfilment
+of our highest hopes in the 'grace that is to be brought
+to us at His appearing.' All our blessedness of every
+kind is to be the result of the manifestation of God
+in His unobscured glory. The mirrors that are set
+round the fountain of light flash into hitherto
+undreamed-of brightness. It is but a variation in
+terms when we describe the blessedness which is to
+be the result of God's appearing as being the Hope of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94a" id="Page_94a">[94]</a></span>
+Salvation in its fullest sense, or, in still other words,
+as being the Hope of Eternal Life. Nothing short of
+the great word of the Apostle John, that when He
+shall appear we shall be like Him, exhausts the
+greatness of the hope which the humblest and weakest
+Christian is not only allowed but commanded to
+cherish. And that great future is certainly capable
+of, and in Scripture receives, a still more detailed
+specification. We hear, for example, of the hope of
+Resurrection, and it is most natural that the bodily
+redemption which Paul calls the adoption of the body
+should first emerge into distinct consciousness as the
+principal object of hope in the earliest Christian
+experience, and that the mighty working whereby
+Jesus is able to subdue all things unto Himself, should
+first of all be discerned to operate in changing the
+body of our humiliation into the body of His glory.</p>
+
+<p>But equally natural was it that no merely corporeal
+transformation should suffice to meet the deep longings
+of Christian souls which had learned to entertain
+the wondrous thought of likeness to God as the certain
+result of the vision of Him, and so believers 'wait for
+the hope of righteousness by faith.' The moral likeness
+to God, the perfecting of our nature into His
+image, will not always be the issue of struggle and
+restraint, but in its highest form will follow on sight,
+even as here and now it is to be won by faith, and is
+more surely attained by waiting than by effort.</p>
+
+<p>The highest form which the object of our hope takes
+is, the Hope of the Glory of God. This goes furthest;
+there is nothing beyond this. The eyes that have been
+wearied by looking at many fading gleams and seen
+them die away, may look undazzled into the central
+brightness, and we may be sure that even we shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95a" id="Page_95a">[95]</a></span>
+walk there like the men in the furnace, unconsumed,
+purging our sight at the fountain of radiance, and
+being ourselves glorious with the image of God. This
+is the crown of glory which He has promised to them
+that love Him. Nothing less than this is what our
+hope has to entertain, and that not as a possibility, but
+as a certainty. The language of Christian hope is not
+perhaps this may be, but verily it shall be. To embrace
+its transcendent certainties with a tremulous faith
+broken by much unbelief, is sin.</p>
+
+<p>II. The grounds on which the hope of the Gospel
+rests.</p>
+
+<p>The grounds of our earthly hopes are for the most
+part possibilities, or, at the best, probabilities turned by
+our wishes into certainties. We moor our ships to
+floating islands which we resolve to think continents.
+So our earthly hopes vary indefinitely in firmness and
+substance. They are sometimes but wishes turned
+confident, and can never rise higher than their source,
+or be more certain than it is. At the best they are
+building on sand. At the surest there is an element of
+risk in them. One singer indeed may take for his
+theme 'The pleasures of Hope,' but another answers
+by singing of 'The fallacies of Hope.' Earth-born hopes
+carry no anchor and have always a latent dread looking
+out of their blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But it is possible for us to dig down to and build on
+rock, to have a future as certain as our past, to escape
+in our anticipations from the region of the Contingent,
+and this we assuredly do when we take the hope of
+the Gospel for ours, and listen to Paul proclaiming to us
+'Christ which is our Hope,' or 'Christ in you the Hope
+of glory.' If our faith grasps Jesus Christ risen from
+the dead and for us entered into the heavenly state as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96a" id="Page_96a">[96]</a></span>
+our forerunner, our hope will see in Him the pattern
+and the pledge of our manhood, and will begin to
+experience even here and now the first real though
+faint accomplishments of itself. The Gospel sets forth
+the facts concerning Christ which fully warrant and
+imperatively require our regarding Him as the perfect
+realised ideal of manhood as God meant it to be, and
+as bearing in Himself the power to make all men
+even as He is. He has entered into the fellowship
+of our humiliation and become bone of our bone and
+flesh of our flesh that we might become life of His
+Life and spirit of His Spirit. As certain as it is that
+'we have borne the image of the earthy,' so certain
+is it that 'we shall also bear the image of the
+heavenly.'</p>
+
+<p>What cruel waste of a divine faculty it is, then, of
+which we are all guilty when we allow our hopes to be
+frittered away and dissipated on uncertain and transient
+goods which they may never secure, and which,
+even if secured, would be ludicrously or rather tragically
+insufficient to make us blessed, instead of withdrawing
+them from all these and fixing them on Him
+who alone is able to satisfy our hungry souls in all
+their faculties for ever!</p>
+
+<p>The hope of the Gospel is firm enough to rest our all
+upon because in it, by 'two immutable things in which
+it is impossible that God should lie,' His counsel and
+His oath, He has given strong encouragement to them
+who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set
+before them. Well may the hope for which God's own
+eternal character is the guarantee be called 'sure and
+steadfast.' The hope of the Gospel rests at last on the
+Being and Heart of God. It is that which God 'who
+cannot lie hath promised before the world was' is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97a" id="Page_97a">[97]</a></span>
+working towards whilst the world lasts, and will
+accomplish when the world is no more. He has made
+known His purpose and has pledged all the energies
+and tendernesses of His Being to its realisation. Surely
+on this rock-foundation we may rest secure. The
+hopes that grow on other soils creep along the surface.
+The hope of the Gospel strikes its roots deep into the
+heart of God.</p>
+
+<p>III. What the hope of the Gospel is and does for us.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot do better than to lay hold of some of the
+New Testament descriptions of it. We recall first that
+great designation 'A good hope through grace.' This
+hope is no illusion; it does not come from fumes of
+fancy or the play of imagination. The wish is not
+father to the thought. We do not make bricks without
+straw nor spin ropes of sand on the shore of the
+great waste sea that waits to swallow us up. The cup
+of Tantalus has had its leaks stopped; the sieve carries
+the treasure unspilled. The rock can be rolled to the
+hill-top. All the disappointments, fallacies, and torments
+of hope pass away. It never makes ashamed.
+We have a solid certainty as solid as memory. The
+hope which is through grace is the full assurance of
+hope, and that full assurance is just what every other
+hope lacks. In that region and in that region only we
+can either say I hope or I know.</p>
+
+<p>Another designation is 'A lively hope.' It is no poor
+pale ghost brightening and fading, fading and brightening,
+through which one can see the stars shine, and of
+little power in practical life, but strong and vigorous
+and not the least active amongst the many forces that
+make up the sum of our lives.</p>
+
+<p>It is most significantly designated as 'The blessed
+hope.' All others quickly pass into sorrows. This alone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98a" id="Page_98a">[98]</a></span>
+gives lasting joys, for this alone is blessed whilst it is
+only anticipation, and still more blessed when its
+blossoms ripen into full fruition. In all earthly hopes
+there is an element of unrest, but the hope of the
+Gospel is so remote, so certain, and so satisfying, that it
+works stillness, and they who most firmly grasp it
+'do with patience wait for it.' Earthly hopes have
+little moral effect and often loosen the sinews of the
+soul, and are distinctly unfavourable to all strenuous
+effort. But 'every man that hath this hope in Jesus
+purifieth himself even as He is pure,' and the Apostle,
+whose keen insight most surely discerns the character-building
+value of the fundamental facts of Christian
+experience, was not wrong when he bid us find in the
+hope of the Gospel deeply rooted within us the driving
+force of the most strenuous efforts after purity like
+His whom it is our deepest desire and humble hope to
+become like.</p>
+
+<p>Let us remember the double account which Scripture
+gives of the discipline by which the hope of the Gospel
+is won for our very own. On the one hand, we have
+'joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in
+hope.' Our faith breeds hope because it grasps the
+divine facts concerning Jesus from which hope springs.
+And faith further breeds hope because it kindles joy
+and peace, which are the foretastes and earnests of the
+future blessedness. On the other hand, the very opposite
+experiences work to the same end, for 'tribulation
+worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience
+hope.' Sorrow rightly borne tests for us the
+power of the Gospel and the reality of our faith, and
+so gives us a firmer grip of hope and of Him on whom
+in the last result it all depends. Out of this collision
+of flint and steel the spark springs. The water churned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99a" id="Page_99a">[99]</a></span>
+into foam and tortured in the cataract has the fair
+bow bending above it.</p>
+
+<p>But this discipline will not achieve its result, therefore
+comes the exhortation to us all, 'Gird up the loins
+of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end.' The hope
+of the Gospel is the one thing that we need. Without
+it all else is futile and frail. God alone is worthy to
+have the whole weight and burden of a creature's hope
+fixed on Him, and it is an everlasting truth that they
+who are 'without God in the world' also 'have no
+hope.' Saints of old held fast by an assurance, which
+they must often have felt left many questions still to
+be asked, and because they were sure that they were
+continually with Him, were also sure of His guidance
+through life and of His afterwards receiving them to
+glory. But for us the twilight has broadened into day,
+and we shall be wise if, knowing our defencelessness,
+and forsaking all the lies and illusions of this vain
+present, we flee for refuge to lay hold on the hope set
+before us in the Gospel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>'ALL POWER'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all
+patience and longsuffering with joy.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> i. 11 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There is a wonderful rush and fervour in the prayers
+of Paul. No parts of his letters are so lofty, so impassioned,
+so full of his soul, as when he rises from speaking
+of God to men to speaking to God for men. We
+have him here setting forth his loving desires for the
+Colossian Christians in a prayer of remarkable fulness
+and sweep. Broadly taken, it is for their perfecting in
+religious and moral excellence, and it is very instructive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100a" id="Page_100a">[100]</a></span>
+to note the idea of what a good man is which is put
+forth here.</p>
+
+<p>The main petition is for wisdom and spiritual understanding
+applied chiefly, as is to be carefully noted, to
+the knowledge of God's <i>will</i>. The thought is that what
+it most imports us to know is the Will of God, a knowledge
+not of merely speculative points in the mysteries
+of the divine nature, but of that Will which it concerns
+us to know because it is our life to do it. The next
+element in Paul's desires, as set forth in the ideal here,
+is a worthy walk, a practical life, or course of conduct
+which is worthy of Jesus Christ, and in every respect
+pleases Him. The highest purpose of knowledge is a
+good life. The surest foundation for a good life is a full
+and clear knowledge of the Will of God.</p>
+
+<p>Then follow a series of clauses which seem to expand
+the idea of the worthy walk and to be co-ordinate or
+perhaps slightly causal, and to express the continuous
+condition of the soul which is walking worthily. Let
+us endeavour to gather from these words some hints as
+to what it is God's purpose that we should become.</p>
+
+<p>I. The many-sided strength which may be ours.</p>
+
+<p>The form of the word 'strengthened' here would be
+more fully represented by 'being strengthened,' and
+suggests an unintermitted process of bestowal and
+reception of God's might rendered necessary by our
+continuous human weakness, and by the tear and wear
+of life. As in the physical life there must be constant
+renewal because there is constant waste, and as every
+bodily action involves destruction of tissue so that
+living is a continual dying, so is it in the mental and
+still more in the spiritual life. Just as there must be a
+perpetual oxygenation of blood in the lungs, so there
+must be an uninterrupted renewal of spiritual strength<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101a" id="Page_101a">[101]</a></span>
+for the highest life. It is demanded by the conditions
+of our human weakness. It is no less rendered
+necessary by the nature of the divine strength
+imparted, which is ever communicating itself, and
+like the ocean cannot but pour so much of its fulness
+as can be received into every creek and crack on its
+shore.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle not merely emphasises the continuousness
+of this communicated strength, but its many-sided
+variety, by designating it 'all power.' In this whole
+context that word 'all' seems to have a charm for him.
+We read in this prayer of '<i>all</i> spiritual wisdom,' of
+'walking worthily of the Lord unto <i>all</i> pleasing,' of
+'fruit in <i>every</i> good work,' and now of '<i>all</i> power,' and
+lastly of '<i>all</i> patience and longsuffering.' These are
+not instances of being obsessed with a word, but each
+of them has its own appropriate force, and here the
+comprehensive completeness of the strength available
+for our many-sided weakness is marvellously revealed.
+There is 'infinite riches in a narrow room.' All power
+means every kind of power, be it bodily or mental, for
+all variety of circumstances, and, Protean, to take the
+shape of all exigencies. Most of us are strong only
+at points, and weak in others. In all human experience
+there is a vulnerable spot on the heel. The most
+glorious image, though it has a head of gold, ends in
+feet, 'part of iron and part of clay.'</p>
+
+<p>And if this ideal of many-sided power stands in contrast
+with the limitations of human strength, how does
+it rebuke and condemn the very partial manifestations
+of a very narrow and one-sided power which we who
+profess to have received it set forth! We have access
+to a source which can fill our whole nature, can
+flower into all gracious forms, can cope with all our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102a" id="Page_102a">[102]</a></span>
+exigencies, and make us all-round men, complete in
+Jesus Christ, and, having this, what do we make of it,
+what do we show for it? Does not God say to us, 'Ye
+are not straitened in me, ye are straitened in yourselves;
+I beseech you be ye enlarged.'</p>
+
+<p>The conditions on our part requisite for possessing
+'all might' are plain enough. The earlier portion of
+the prayer plainly points to them. The knowledge of
+God's Will and the 'walk worthy of the Lord' are the
+means whereby the power which is ever eager to make
+its dwelling in us, can reach its end. If <i>we</i> keep the
+channel unchoked, no doubt 'the river of the
+water of life which proceedeth from the throne of
+God and the Lamb' will rejoice to fill it to the brim
+with its flashing waters. If we do not wrench away
+ourselves from contact with Him, He will 'strengthen
+us with all might.' If we keep near Him we may have
+calm confidence that power will be ours that shall equal
+our need and outstrip our desires.</p>
+
+<p>II. The measure of the strength.</p>
+
+<p>It is 'according to the power of His glory.' The
+Authorised Version but poorly represents the fulness of
+the Apostle's thought, which is more adequately and accurately
+expressed in the Revised Version. 'His glory'
+is the flashing brightness of the divine self-manifestation,
+and in that Light resides the strength which is the
+standard or measure of the gift to us. The tremendous
+force of the sunbeam which still falls so gently on a
+sleeper's face as not to disturb the closed eyes is but a
+parable of the strength which characterises the divine
+glory. And wonderful and condemnatory as the thought
+is, that power is the unlimited limit of the possibilities
+of our possession. His gifts are proportioned to His
+resources. While He is rich, can I be poor? The only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103a" id="Page_103a">[103]</a></span>
+real limit to His bestowal is His own fulness. Of course,
+at each moment, our capacity of receiving is for the
+time being the practical limit of our possession, but that
+capacity varies indefinitely, and may be, and should
+be, indefinitely and continuously increasing. It is an
+elastic boundary, and hence we may go on making our
+own as much as we will, and progressively more and
+more, of God's strength. He gives it all, but there is a
+tragical difference between the full cup put into our
+hands and the few drops carried to our lips. The key
+of the treasure-chamber is in our possession, and on each
+of us His gracious face smiles the permission which His
+gracious lips utter in words, 'Be it unto thee even as
+thou wilt.' If we are conscious of defect, if our weakness
+is beaten by the assaults of temptation, or crushed
+by sorrows that ride it down in a fierce attack, the
+fault is our own. We have, if we choose to make it our
+own and to use it as ours, more than enough to make
+us 'more than conquerors' over all sins and all sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>But when we contrast what we have by God's gift
+and what we have in our personal experience and
+use in our daily life, the contrast may well bring
+shame, even though the contrast brings to us hope
+to lighten the shame. The average experience of
+present-day Christians reminds one of the great tanks
+that may be seen in India, that have been suffered to
+go to ruin, and so an elaborate system of irrigation
+comes to nothing, and the great river that should have
+been drawn off into them runs past them, all but
+unused. Repair them and keep the sluices open, and
+all will blossom again.</p>
+
+<p>III. The great purpose of this strength.</p>
+
+<p>'Patience and longsuffering with joyfulness' seems
+at first but a poor result of such a force, but it comes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104a" id="Page_104a">[104]</a></span>
+from a heart that was under no illusions as to the
+facts of human life, and it finds a response in us all.
+It may be difficult to discriminate 'patience' from
+'longsuffering,' but the general notion here is that
+one of the highest uses for which divine strength is
+given to us, is to make us able to meet the antagonism
+of evil without its shaking our souls. He who
+patiently endures without despondency or the desire
+to 'recompense evil for evil,' and to whom by faith
+even 'the night is light about him,' is far on the way
+to perfection. God is always near us, but never nearer
+than when our hearts are heavy and our way rough
+and dark. Our sorrows make rents through which
+His strength flows. We can see more of heaven when
+the leaves are off the trees. It is a law of the Divine
+dealings that His strength is 'made perfect in weakness.'
+God leads us in to a darkened room to show us
+His wonders.</p>
+
+<p>That strength is to be manifested by us in 'patience
+and longsuffering,' both of which are to have blended
+with them a real though apparently antagonistic joy.
+True and profound grief is not opposed to such patience,
+but the excess of it, the hopeless and hysterical outbursts
+certainly are. We are all like the figures in
+some old Greek temples which stand upright with
+their burdens on their heads. God's strength is given
+that we may bear ours calmly, and upright like these
+fair forms that hold up the heavy architecture as if
+it were a feather, or like women with water-jars on
+their heads, which only make their carriage more
+graceful and their step more firm.</p>
+
+<p>How different the patience which God gives by His
+own imparted strength, from the sullen submission or
+hysterical abandonment to sorrow, or the angry rebel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105a" id="Page_105a">[105]</a></span>lion
+characterising Godless grief! Many of us think
+that we can get on very well in prosperity and fine
+weather without Him. We had better ask ourselves
+what we are going to do when the storm comes, which
+comes to all some time or other.</p>
+
+<p>The word here rendered 'patience' is more properly
+'perseverance.' It is not merely a passive but an
+active virtue. We do not receive that great gift of
+divine strength to bear only, but also to work, and
+such work is one of the best ways of bearing and one
+of the best helps to doing so. So in our sorrows and
+trials let us feel that God's strength is not all given us
+to be expended in our own consolation, but also to be
+used in our plain duties. These remain as imperative
+though our hearts are beating like hammers, and
+there is no more unwise and cowardly surrender to
+trouble than to fling away our tools and fold our hands
+idly on our laps.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul lays a harder duty on us even in promising
+a great gift to us, when he puts before us an ideal of
+joy mingling with patience and longsuffering. The
+command would be an impossible one if there were
+not the assurance that we should be 'strengthened
+with all might.' We plainly need an infusion of diviner
+strength than our own, if that strange marriage of joy
+and sorrow should take place, and they should at once
+occupy our hearts. Yet if His strength be ours we
+shall be strong to submit and acquiesce, strong to look
+deep enough to see His will as the foundation of all
+and as ever busy for our good, strong to hope, strong
+to discern the love at work, strong to trust the Father
+even when He chastens. And all this will make it
+possible to have the paradox practically realised
+in our own experience, 'As sorrowful yet always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106a" id="Page_106a">[106]</a></span>
+rejoicing.' One has seen potassium burning underwater.
+Our joy may burn under waves of sorrow. Let us
+bring our weakness to Jesus Christ and grasp Him as
+did the sinking Peter. He will breathe His own grace
+into us, and speak to our feeble and perchance sorrowful
+hearts, as He had done long before Paul's words to
+the Colossians, 'My grace is sufficient for thee, and my
+strength is made perfect in weakness.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THANKFUL FOR INHERITANCE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the
+inheritance of the saints in light.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> i. 12 (R.V.)</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is interesting to notice how much the thought of
+inheritance seems to have been filling the Apostle's
+mind during his writing of Ephesians and Colossians.
+Its recurrence is one of the points of contact between
+them. For example, in Ephesians, we read, 'In whom
+also were made a heritage' (i. 11); 'An earnest of our
+inheritance' (i. 14); 'His inheritance in the saints'
+(i. 18); 'Inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ' (v. 5).
+We notice too that in the address to the Elders of
+the Church at Ephesus, we read of 'the inheritance
+among all them that are sanctified' (Acts 20-32).</p>
+
+<p>In the text the climax of the Apostle's prayer is
+presented as thankfulness, the perpetual recognition
+of the Divine hand in all that befalls us, the perpetual
+confidence that all which befalls us is good, and the
+perpetual gushing out towards Him of love and praise.
+The highest diligence, the most strenuous fruit-bearing,
+and the most submissive patience and longsuffering
+would be incomplete without the consecration of a
+grateful heart, and the noblest beauty of a Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107a" id="Page_107a">[107]</a></span>
+character would lack its rarest lustre. This crown of
+Christian perfectness the Apostle regards as being
+called into action mainly by the contemplation of that
+great act and continuous work of God's Fatherly love
+by which he makes us fit for our portion of the inheritance
+which the same love has prepared for us.
+That inheritance is the great cause for Christian thankfulness;
+the more immediate cause is His preparation
+of us for it. So we have three points here to consider;
+the inheritance; God's Fatherly preparation of His
+children for it; the continual temper of thankfulness
+which these should evoke.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>The frequent recurrence of this idea in the Old
+Testament supplies Paul with a thought which he uses
+to set forth the most characteristic blessings of the
+New. The promised land belonged to Israel, and each
+member of each tribe had his own little holding in
+the tribal territory. Christians have in common the
+higher spiritual blessings which Christ brings, and
+Himself is, and each individual has his own portion of,
+the general good.</p>
+
+<p>We must begin by dismissing from our minds the
+common idea, which a shallow experience tends to
+find confirmed by the associations ordinarily attached
+to the word 'inheritance,' that it is entered upon by
+death. No doubt, that great change does effect an
+unspeakable change in our fitness for, and consequently
+in our possession of, the gifts which we receive from
+Christ's pierced hands, and, as the Apostle has told us,
+the highest of these possessed on earth is but the
+'earnest of the inheritance'; but we must ever bear in
+mind that the distinction between a Christian life on
+earth and one in heaven is by no means so sharply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108a" id="Page_108a">[108]</a></span>
+drawn in Scripture as it generally is by us, and that
+death has by no means so great importance as we
+faithlessly attribute to it. The life here and hereafter
+is like a road which passes the frontiers of two kingdoms
+divided by a bridged river, but runs on in the
+same direction on both sides of the stream. The flood
+had to be forded until Jesus bridged it. The elements
+of the future and the present are the same, as the
+apostolic metaphor of the 'earnest of the inheritance'
+teaches us. The handful of soil which constitutes
+the 'arles' is part of the broad acres made over
+by it.</p>
+
+<p>We should be saved from many unworthy conceptions
+of the future life, if we held more steadfastly to the great
+truth that God Himself is the portion of the inheritance.
+The human spirit is too great and too exacting
+to be satisfied with anything less than Him, and the
+possession of Him opens out into every blessedness,
+and includes all the minor joys and privileges that
+can gladden and enrich the soul. We degrade the
+future if we think of it only, or even chiefly, as a state
+in which faculties are enlarged, and sorrows and sins
+are for ever ended. Neither such negatives as 'no night
+there,' 'neither sorrow nor crime,' 'no more pain,' nor
+such metaphors as 'white robes' and 'golden crowns'
+and 'seats on thrones' are enough. We are 'heirs of
+God,' and only as we possess Him, and know that we
+are His, and He is ours, are we 'rich to all intents of
+bliss.' That inheritance is here set forth as being 'in
+light' and as belonging to saints. Light is the element
+and atmosphere of God. He is in light. He is the
+fountain of all light. He is light; perfect in wisdom,
+perfect in purity. The sun has its spots, but in Him
+is no darkness at all. Moons wax and wane, shadows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109a" id="Page_109a">[109]</a></span>
+of eclipse fall, stars have their time to set, but 'He
+is the Father of lights with whom can be no
+variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.'
+All that light is focussed in Jesus the Light of the
+world. That Light fills the earth, but here it shineth
+in darkness that obstructs its rays. But there must
+be a place and a time where the manifestation of
+God corresponds with the reality of God, where His
+beams pour out and there is nothing hid from
+the heat thereof, nothing which they do not bless,
+nothing which does not flash them back rejoicing.
+There is a land whereof the Lord God is the Light.
+In it is the inheritance of the 'saints,' and in its light
+live the nations of the saved, and have God for their
+companion. All darkness of ignorance, of sorrow, and
+of sin will fade away as the night flees and ceases to
+be, before the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>The phrase 'to be partakers' is accurately rendered
+'for the portion,' and carries a distinct allusion to the
+partition of the promised land to Israel by which each
+man had his lot or share in the common inheritance.
+So the one word inheritance brings with it blessed
+thoughts of a common possession of a happy society in
+which no man's gain is another's loss, and all envyings,
+rivalries, and jealousies have ceased to be, and the other
+word, 'the portion,' suggests the individual possession
+by each of his own vision and experience. Each man's
+'portion' is capable of growth; each has as much of
+God as he can hold. The measure of his desire is the
+measure of his capacity. There are infinite differences
+in the 'portions' of the saints on earth, and heaven is
+robbed of one of its chief charms unless we recognise
+that there are infinite differences among the saints
+there. For both states the charter by which the portion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110a" id="Page_110a">[110]</a></span>
+is held is 'Be it unto thee even as thou wilt,' and in
+both the law holds 'To him that hath shall be given.'</p>
+
+<p>II. The Fatherly preparation for the Inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious from all which we have been saying that
+without holiness no man shall see the Lord. The
+inheritance being what it is, the possession, the enjoyment
+of communion with a Holy God, it is absolutely
+incapable of being entered upon by any who are unholy.
+That is true about both the partial possession of the
+earnest of it here and of its fulness hereafter. In the
+present life all tolerated sin bars us out from enjoying
+God, and in the future nothing can enter that defileth
+nor whatsoever worketh or maketh a lie. There are
+many people who think that they would like 'to go to
+heaven,' but who would find it difficult to answer such
+questions as these: Do you like to think of God? Do
+you find any joy in holy thoughts? What do you feel
+about prayer? Does the name of Christ make your
+heart leap? Is righteousness your passion? If you
+have to answer these questions with a silence which is
+the saddest negative, what do you think you would do
+in heaven? I remember that the Greenlanders told
+the Moravian missionaries who were trying to move
+them by conventional pictures of its delights, that the
+heaven which these pious souls had painted would not
+do for them, for there were no seals there. There
+are thousands of us who, if we spoke the truth,
+would say the same thing, with the necessary variations
+arising from our environment. There is not a spinning-mill
+in it all. How would some of us like that? There is
+not a ledger, nor a theatre, no novels, no amusements.
+Would it not be intolerable ennui to be put down in
+such an order of things? You would be like the Israelites,
+loathing 'this light bread' and hungering for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111a" id="Page_111a">[111]</a></span>
+strong-smelling and savoury-tasting leeks and garlic,
+even if in order to taste them you had to be slaves again.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven would be no heaven to you if you could go
+there and be thus minded. But you could not. God
+Himself cannot carry men thither but by fitting them
+for it. It is not a place so much as a state, and the
+mighty hand that works on one side of the thick curtain
+preparing the inheritance in light for the saints,
+is equally busy on this side making the saints meet
+for the inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>I do not wish to enter here on grammatical niceties,
+but I must point out that the form of the word which
+the Apostle employs to express it points to an act in
+the past which still runs on.</p>
+
+<p>The Revised Version's rendering, 'made us meet,' is
+preferable to the Authorised Version's, because of its
+omission of the 'hath' which relegates the whole process
+of preparation to the past. And it is of importance to
+recognise that the difference between these two representations
+of the divine preparation is not a piece of
+pedantry, for that preparation has indeed its beginnings
+in the past of every Christian soul, but is continuous
+throughout its whole earthly experience. There is the
+great act of forgiveness and justifying which is cotemporaneous
+with the earliest and most imperfect faith,
+and there is the being born again, the implanting of a
+new life which is the life of Christ Himself, and has no
+spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing. That new life is
+infantile, but it is there, the real man, and it will grow
+and conquer. Take an extreme case and suppose a man
+who has just received forgiveness for his past and the
+endowment of a new nature. Though he were to die
+at that moment he would still in the basis of his being
+and real self be meet for the inheritance. He who truly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112a" id="Page_112a">[112]</a></span>
+trusts in Jesus is passed from death unto life, though
+the habits of sins which are forgiven still cling to him,
+and his new life has not yet exercised a controlling
+power or begun to build up character. So Christians
+ought not to think that, because they are conscious of
+much unholiness, they are not ready for the inheritance.
+The wild brigand through whose glazing eyeballs faith
+looked out to his fellow-sufferer on the central cross
+was adjudged meet to be with him in Paradise, and if
+all his deeds of violence and wild outrages on the laws
+of God and man did not make him unmeet, who amongst
+us need write bitter things against himself? The preparation
+is further effected through all the future
+earthly life. The only true way to regard everything
+that befalls us here is to see in it the Fatherly discipline
+preparing us for a fuller possession of a richer inheritance.
+Gains and losses, joys and sorrows, and all the
+endless variety of experiences through which we all
+have to pass, are an unintelligible mystery unless we
+apply to them this solution, 'He for our profit that we
+might be partakers of His holiness.' It is not a blind
+Fate or a still blinder Chance that hurtles sorrows and
+changes at us, but a loving Father; and we do not grasp
+the meaning of our lives unless we feel, even about
+their darkest moments, that the end of them all is to
+make us more capable of possessing more of Himself.</p>
+
+<p>III. The thankfulness which these thoughts should
+evoke.</p>
+
+<p>Thankfulness ought to be a sweet duty. It is a joy
+to cherish gratitude. Generous hearts do not need to
+be told to be thankful, and they who are only thankful
+to order are not thankful at all. In nothing is the
+ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian more
+defective, and significant of the deficiencies of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113a" id="Page_113a">[113]</a></span>
+faith, than in the tepidness and interruptedness of their
+gratitude. The blessings bestowed are continuous and
+unspeakable. The thanks returned are grudging and
+scanty. The river that flows from God is 'full of
+water' and pours out unceasingly, and all that we
+return is a tiny trickle, often choked and sometimes
+lost in the sands.</p>
+
+<p>Our thankfulness ought to be constant. The fire on
+the altar should never be quenched. The odour of the
+sweet-smelling incense should ever ascend. Why is it
+that we have so little of this grace which the Apostle
+in our text regards as the precious stone that binds all
+Christian graces together, the sparkling crest of the
+wave of a Christian life? Mainly because we have so
+little of the habit of regarding all things as God's
+Fatherly discipline and meditating on that for which
+they are making us meet. We need a far more habitual
+contemplation of our inheritance, of our experience as
+lovingly given by God to fit us for it and of the darkest
+hours which would otherwise try our faith and silence
+our praise as necessary parts of that preparation. If
+this be our habitual attitude of mind, and these be ever
+present to us, our song will be always of His mercy and
+our whole lives a thank-offering.</p>
+
+<p>The text is a prophecy describing the inheritance in
+its perfect form. Earthly life must be ended before it
+is fully understood. Down in the valleys we praised
+God, but tears and mysteries sometimes saddened our
+songs; but now on the summit surveying all behind, and
+knowing by a blessed eternity of experience to what it
+has led, even an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled
+and that fadeth not away, we shall praise Him with a
+new song for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Thankfulness is the one element of worship common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114a" id="Page_114a">[114]</a></span>
+to earth and heaven, to angels and to us. Whilst they
+sing, 'Bless the Lord all ye His hosts,' redeemed men
+have still better reason to join in the chorus and
+answer, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I also labour, striving according to His working, which worketh in me
+mightily.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> i. 29.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I have chosen this text principally because it brings
+together the two subjects which are naturally before
+us to-day. All 'Western Christendom,' as it is called, is
+to-day commemorating the Pentecostal gift. My text
+speaks about that power that 'worketh in us mightily.'
+True, the Apostle is speaking in reference to the fiery
+energy and persistent toil which characterised him in
+proclaiming Christ, that he might present men perfect
+before Him. But the same energy which he expended
+on his apostolic office he expended on his individual
+personality. And he would not have discharged the
+one unless he had first laboured on the other. And
+although in a letter contemporary with this one from
+which my text is taken he speaks of himself as no
+longer young, but 'such an one as Paul the aged, and
+likewise, also a prisoner of Jesus Christ,' the young
+spirit was in him, and the continual pressing forward
+to unattained heights. And that is the spirit, not only
+of a section of the Church divided from the rest by
+youth and by special effort, but of the whole Church
+if it is worth calling a Church, and unless it is thus
+instinct, it is a mere dead organisation.</p>
+
+<p>So I hope that what few things I have to say may
+apply to, and be felt to be suitable by all of us, whether
+we are nominally Christian Endeavourers or not. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115a" id="Page_115a">[115]</a></span>
+we are Christian people, we are such. If we are not
+endeavouring, shall I venture to say we are not Christians?
+At any rate, we are very poor ones.</p>
+
+<p>Now here, then, are two plain things, a great universal
+Christian duty and a sufficient universal
+Christian endowment. 'I work striving'; that is the
+description of every true Christian. 'I work striving,
+according to His working, who worketh in me
+mightily': there is the great gift which makes the
+work and the striving possible. Let me briefly deal,
+then, with these two.</p>
+
+<p>I. The solemn universal Christian obligation.</p>
+
+<p>Now the two words which the Apostle employs here
+are both of them very emphatic. 'His words were
+half battles,' was said about Luther. It may be as
+truly said about Paul. And that word 'work' which he
+employs, means, not work with one hand, or with a
+delicate forefinger, but it means toil up to the verge of
+weariness. The notion of fatigue is almost, I might
+say, uppermost in the word as it is used in the New
+Testament. Some people like to 'labour' so as never to
+turn a hair, or bring a sweat-drop on to their foreheads.
+That is not Christian Endeavour. Work that does not
+'take it out of you' is not worth doing. The other
+word 'striving' brings up the picture of the arena
+with the combatants' strain of muscle, their set teeth,
+their quick, short breathing, their deadly struggle.
+That is Paul's notion of Endeavour. Now 'Endeavour,'
+like a great many other words, has a baser and a
+nobler side to it. Some people, when they say, 'I will
+endeavour,' mean that they are going to try in a half-hearted
+way, with no prospect of succeeding. That is
+not Christian Endeavour. The meaning of the word&mdash;for
+the expression in my text might just as well be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116a" id="Page_116a">[116]</a></span>
+rendered 'endeavouring' as 'striving'&mdash;is that of a
+buoyant confident effort of all the concentrated powers,
+with the certainty of success. That is the endeavour
+that we have to cultivate as Christian men. And there
+is only one field of human effort in which that absolute
+confidence that it shall not be in vain is anything
+but presumptuous arrogance; namely, in the effort
+after making ourselves what God means us to be,
+what Jesus Christ longs for us to be, what the Spirit
+of God is given to us in order that we should be. 'We
+shall <i>not</i> fail,' ought to be the word of every man and
+woman when they set themselves to the great task of
+working out, in their own characters and personalities,
+the Divine intention which is made a Divine
+possibility by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the gift
+of the Divine Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>So then what we come to is just this, dear brethren,
+if we are Christians at all, we have to make a business
+of our religion; to go about it as if we meant work. Ah!
+what a contrast there is between the languid way in
+which Christian men pursue what the Bible designates
+their 'calling' and that in which men with far paltrier
+aims pursue theirs! And what a still sadder contrast
+there is between the way in which we Christians go
+about our daily business, and the way in which we go
+about our Christian life! Why, a man will take more
+pains to learn some ornamental art, or some game,
+than he will ever take to make himself a better
+Christian. The one is work. What is the other? To
+a very large extent dawdling and make-believe.</p>
+
+<p>You remember the old story,&mdash;it may raise a smile,
+but there should be a deep thought below the smile,&mdash;of
+the little child that said as to his father that 'he was a
+Christian, but he had not been working much at it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117a" id="Page_117a">[117]</a></span>
+lately.' Do not laugh. It is a great deal too true of&mdash;I
+will not venture to say what percentage of&mdash;the
+professing Christians of this day. Work at your religion.
+That is the great lesson of my text. Endeavour
+with confidence of success. The Book of Proverbs
+says: 'He that is slothful in his work is brother to him
+that is a great waster,' and that is true. A man that
+does 'the work of the Lord negligently' is scarcely to
+be credited with doing it at all. Dear friends, young
+or old, if you name the name of Christ, be in earnest,
+and make earnest work of your Christian character.</p>
+
+<p>And now may I venture two or three very plain
+exhortations? First, I would say&mdash;if you mean to
+make your Christian life a piece of genuine work and
+striving, the first thing that you have to do is to
+endeavour in the direction of keeping its aim very
+clear before you. There are many ways in which we
+may state the goal of the Christian life, but let us put
+it now into the all-comprehensive form of likeness to
+Jesus Christ, by entire conformity to His Example and
+full interpretation of His life. I do not say 'Heaven';
+I say 'Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>That is our aim, the loftiest idea of development
+that any human spirit can grasp, and rising high above
+a great many others which are noble but incomplete.
+The Christian ideal is the greatest in the universe.
+There is no other system of thought that paints man
+as he is, so darkly; there is none that paints man as he
+is meant to be, in such radiant colours. The blacks upon
+the palette of Christianity are blacker, and the whites
+are whiter, and the golden is more radiant, than any
+other painter has ever mixed. And so just because the
+aim which lies before the least and lowest of us, possessing
+the most imperfect and rudimentary Christianity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118a" id="Page_118a">[118]</a></span>
+is so transcendent and lofty, it is hard to keep it clear
+before our eyes, especially when all the shabby little
+necessities of daily life come in to clutter up the foreground,
+and hide the great distance. Men may live up
+at Darjeeling there on the heights for weeks, and
+never see the Himalayas towering opposite. The lower
+hills are clear; the peaks are wreathed in cloud. So
+the little aims, the nearer purposes, stand out distinct
+and obtrusive, and force themselves, as it were, upon
+our eyeballs, and the solemn white Throne of the
+Eternal away across the marshy levels, is often hid,
+and it needs an effort for us to keep it clear before us.
+One of the main reasons for much that is unsatisfactory
+in the spiritual condition of the average
+Christian of this day is precisely that he has not
+burning ever before him there, the great aim to which
+he ought to be tending. So he gets loose and diffused,
+and vague and uncertain. That is what Paul tells you
+when he proposes himself as an example: 'So run I,
+not as uncertainly,' The man who knows where he is
+running makes a bee-line for the goal. If he is not
+sure of his destination, of course he zigzags. 'So fight
+I, not as one that beateth the air'&mdash;if I see my
+antagonist I can hit him. If I do not see him clearly
+I strike like a swordsman in the dark, at random, and
+my sword comes back unstained. If you want to make
+the harbour, keep the harbour lights always <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'clea'">clear</ins>
+before you, or you will go yawing about, and washing
+here and there, in the trough of the wave, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'an'">and</ins>
+the tempest will be your master. If you do not <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'kno'">know</ins>
+where you are going you will have to say, like the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'me'">men</ins>
+in the old story in the Old Book, 'Thy servant went
+no whither.' If you are going to endeavour, endeavour
+first to keep the goal clear before you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119a" id="Page_119a">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And endeavour next to keep up communion with
+Jesus Christ, which is the secret of all peaceful and of
+all noble living. And endeavour next after concentration.
+And what does that mean? It means that
+you have to detach yourself from hindrances. It
+means that you have to prosecute the Christian aim
+all through the common things of Christian life. If it
+were not possible to be pursuing the great aim of likeness
+to Jesus Christ, in the veriest secularities of
+the most insignificant and trivial occupations, then it
+would be no use talking about that being our aim. If
+we are not making ourselves more like Jesus Christ by
+the way in which we handle our books, or our pen, or our
+loom, or our scalpel, or our kitchen utensils, then there
+is little chance of our ever making ourselves like Jesus
+Christ. For it is these trifles that make life, and to
+concentrate ourselves on the pursuit of the Christian
+aim is, in other words, to carry that Christian aim
+into every triviality of our daily lives.</p>
+
+<p>There are three Scripture passages which set forth
+various aspects of the aim that we have before us, and
+from each of these aspects deduce the one same lesson.
+The Apostle says 'giving all diligence, add to your
+faith virtue,' etc., 'for if ye do these things ye shall
+never fail.' He also exhorts: 'Give diligence to make
+your calling and election sure.' And finally he says:
+'Be diligent, that ye may be found of Him in peace,
+without spot, blameless.' <i>There</i> are three aspects of the
+Christian course, and the Christian aim, the addition
+to our faith of all the clustering graces and virtues and
+powers that can be hung upon it, like jewels on the
+neck of a queen; the making our calling and election
+sure, and the being found at last tranquil, spotless,
+stainless, and being found so by Him. These great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120a" id="Page_120a">[120]</a></span>
+aims are incumbent on all Christians, they require
+diligence, and ennoble the diligence which they
+require.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, we have all to be Endeavourers if we
+are Christians, and that to the very end of our lives.
+For our path is the only path on which men tread that
+has for its goal an object so far off that it never can
+be attained, so near that it can ever be approached.
+This infinite goal of the Christian Endeavour means
+inspiration for youth, and freshness for old age, and
+that man is happy who can say: 'Not as though I had
+already attained' at the end of a long life, and can say
+it, not because he has failed, but because in a measure
+he has succeeded. Other courses of life are like the
+voyages of the old mariners which were confined within
+the narrow limits of the Mediterranean, and steered
+from headland to headland. But the Christian passes
+through the jaws of the straits, and comes out on a
+boundless sunlit ocean where, though he sees no land
+ahead, he knows there is a peaceful shore, beyond the
+western waves. 'I work striving.'</p>
+
+<p>Now one word as to the other thought that is here,
+and that is</p>
+
+<p>II. The all-sufficient Christian gift.</p>
+
+<p>'According to His working, which worketh in me
+mightily.' I need not discuss whether 'His' in my text
+refers to God or to Christ. The thing meant is the
+operation upon the Christian spirit, of that Divine
+Spirit whose descent the Church to-day commemorates.
+At this stage of my sermon I can only remind
+you in a word, first of all, that the Apostle here is
+arrogating to himself no special or peculiar gift, is not
+egotistically setting forth something which he possessed
+and other Christian people did not&mdash;that power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121a" id="Page_121a">[121]</a></span>
+which, 'working in him mightily,' worked in all his
+brethren as well. It was his conviction and his teaching&mdash;would
+that it were more operatively and vitally the
+conviction of all professing Christians to-day, and
+would that it were more conspicuously, and in due
+proportion to the rest of Christian truth, the teaching
+of all Christian teachers to-day!&mdash;that that Divine
+power is in the very act of faith received and implanted
+in every believing soul. 'Know ye not,' the Apostle
+could say to his hearers, 'that ye have the Spirit of
+God, except ye be reprobates.' I doubt whether the
+affirmative response would spring to the lips of all
+professing or real Christians to-day as swiftly as it
+would have done then. And I cannot help feeling, and
+feeling with increasing gravity of pressure as the days
+go on, that the thing that our churches, and we as
+individuals, perhaps need most to-day, is the replacing
+of that great truth&mdash;I do not call it a 'doctrine,' that
+is cold, it is experience&mdash;in its proper place. They who
+believe on Him do receive a new life, a supernatural
+communication of the new Spirit, to be the very power
+that rules in their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It is an inward gift. It is not like the help that
+men can render us, given from without and apprehended
+and incorporated with ourselves through the
+medium of the understanding or of the heart. There
+is an old story in the history of Israel about a young
+king that was bid by the prophet to bend his bow
+against the enemies of Israel, as a symbol; and the
+old prophet put his withered, skinny brown hand on
+the young man's fleshy one, and then said to him,
+'Shoot.' But this Divine Spirit comes to strengthen us
+in a more intimate and blessed fashion than that, for
+it glides into our hearts and dwells in our spirits, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122a" id="Page_122a">[122]</a></span>
+our work, as my text says, is His working. This
+'working within' is stated in the original of my text
+most emphatically, for it is literally 'the inworking
+which inworketh in me mightily.'</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, the first direct aim of all our
+endeavour ought to be to receive and to keep and to
+increase our gift of that Divine Spirit. The work and
+the striving of which my text speaks would be sheer
+slavery unless we had that help. It would be impossible
+of accomplishment unless we had it.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="If any power we have, it is to ill">
+<tr><td align='left'>'If any power we have, it is to ill,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And all the power is Thine, to do and eke to will.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Let us, then, begin our endeavour, not by working,
+but by receiving. Is not that the very meaning of the
+doctrine that we are always talking about, that men
+are saved, not by works but by faith? Does not that
+mean that the first step is reception, and the first
+requisite is receptiveness, and that then, and after
+that, second and not first, come working and striving?
+To keep our hearts open by desire, to keep them open
+by purity, are the essentials. The dove will not come
+into a fouled nest. It is said that they forsake polluted
+places. But also we have to use the power which is
+inwrought. Use is the way to increase all gifts, from
+the muscle in your arm to the Christian life in your
+spirit. Use it, and it grows. Neglect it, and it vanishes,
+and like the old Jewish heroes, a man may go forth to
+exercise himself as of old time, and know not that the
+Spirit of God hath departed from him. Dear friends,
+do not bind yourselves to the slavery of Endeavour,
+until you come into the liberty and wealth of receiving.
+He gives first, and then says to you, 'Now go to work,
+and keep that good thing which is committed unto
+thee.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123a" id="Page_123a">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is but one thought more in this last part of
+my text, which I must not leave untouched, and that
+is that this sufficient and universal gift is not only the
+means by which the great universal duty can be discharged,
+but it ought to be the measure in which it is
+discharged. 'I work according to the working in me.'
+That is, all the force that came into Paul by that
+Divine Spirit, came out of Paul in his Christian
+conduct, and the gift was not only the source, but
+also the measure, of this man's Christian Endeavour.
+Is that true about us? They say that the steam-engine
+is a most wasteful application of power, that a great
+deal of the energy which is generated goes without
+ever doing any work. They tell us that one of the
+great difficulties in the way of economic application of
+electricity is the loss which comes through using
+accumulators. Is not that like a great many of us?
+So much power poured into us; so little coming out
+from us and translated into actual work! Such a
+'rushing mighty wind,' and the air about us so heavy
+and stagnant and corrupt! Such a blaze of fire, and
+we so cold! Such a cataract of the river of the water
+of life, and our lips parched and our crops seared and
+worthless! Ah, brethren! when we look at ourselves,
+and when we think of the condition of so many of the
+churches to which we belong, the old rebuke of the
+prophet comes back to us in this generation, 'Thou
+that art named the House of Israel, is the Spirit of the
+Lord straitened? Are these His doings?' We have an
+all-sufficient power. May our working and striving be
+according to it, and may we work mightily, being
+'strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124a" id="Page_124a">[124]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHRISTIAN PROGRESS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and
+builded up in Him.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> ii. 6, 7 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is characteristic of Paul that he should here use
+three figures incongruous with each other to express
+the same idea, the figures of walking, being rooted, and
+built up. They, however, have in common that they
+all suggest an initial act by which we are brought into
+connection with Christ, and a subsequent process flowing
+from and following on it. Receiving Christ, being
+rooted in Him, being founded on Him, stand for the
+first; walking in Him, growing up from the root in
+Him, being built up on Him as foundation, stand for
+the second. Fully expressed then, the text would run,
+'As ye have received Christ, so walk in Him; as ye
+have been rooted in Him, so grow up in Him; as ye
+have been founded on Him, so be builded up.' These
+three clauses present the one idea in slightly different
+forms. The first expresses Christian progress as the
+manifestation before the world of an inward possession,
+the exhibition in the outward life of a treasure
+hid in the heart. The second expresses the same progress
+as the development by its own vital energy of
+the life of Christ in the soul. The third expresses the
+progress as the addition, by conscious efforts, of portion
+after portion to the character, which is manifestly
+incomplete until the headstone crowns the structure.
+We may then take the passage before us as exhibiting
+the principles of Christian progress.</p>
+
+<p>I. The origin of all, or how Christian progress
+begins.</p>
+
+<p>These three figures, receiving, rooted, founded, all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125a" id="Page_125a">[125]</a></span>
+express a great deal more than merely accepting
+certain truths about Him. The acceptance of truths
+is the means by which we come to what is more than
+any belief of truths. We possess Christ when we
+believe with a true faith in Him. We are rooted in
+Him. His life flows into us. We draw nourishment
+from that soil. We are built on Him, and in our
+compact union find a real support to a life which is
+otherwise baseless and blown about like thistledown
+by every breath. The union which all these metaphors
+presupposes is a vital connection; the possession
+which is the first step in the Christian life is a real
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>There is no progress without that initial step. Our
+own experience tells us but too plainly and loudly that
+we need the impartation of a new life, and to be set on
+a new foundation, if we are ever to be anything else
+than failures and blots.</p>
+
+<p>There is sure to be progress if the initial step has
+been taken. If Christ has been received, the life possessed
+will certainly manifest itself. It will go on to
+perfection. The union effected will work on through
+the whole character and nature. It is the beginning
+of all; it is only the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>II. The manner of Christian progress or in what it
+consists.</p>
+
+<p>It consists in a more complete possession of Him,
+in a more constant approximation to Him, and a more
+entire appropriation of Him. Christian progress is
+not a growing up from Christ as starting-point,
+but into Christ as goal. All is contained in the first
+act by which He is first received; the remainder is
+but the working out of that. All our growth in
+knowledge and wisdom consists in our knowing what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126a" id="Page_126a">[126]</a></span>
+we have when we receive Christ. We grow in proportion
+as we learn to see in Him the centre of all
+truth, as the Revealer of God, as the Teacher of man,
+as the Interpreter of nature, as the meaning and end
+of history, as the Lord of life and death. Morals,
+politics, and philosophy flow from Him. His lips and
+His life and death proclaim all truth, human and
+divine.</p>
+
+<p>As in wisdom so in character, all progress consists in
+coming closer to Jesus and receiving more and more
+of His many-sided grace. He is the pattern of all excellence,
+the living ideal of whatsoever things are pure,
+whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of
+good report, virtue incarnate, praise embodied. He
+is the power by which we become gradually and
+growingly moulded into His likeness. Every part of
+our nature finds its best stimulus in Jesus for individuals
+and for societies. Christ and growth into Him
+is progress, and the only way by which men can be
+presented perfect, is that they shall be presented 'perfect
+in Christ,' whereunto every man must labour who
+would that his labour should not be in vain. That
+progress must follow the threefold direction in the
+text. There must first be the progressive manifestation
+in act and life of the Christ already possessed, 'As
+ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.'
+There must also be the completer growth in the soul
+of the new life already received. As the leaf grows
+green and broad, so a Christlike character must grow
+not altogether by effort. And there must be a continual
+being builded up in Him by constant additions
+to the fabric of graces set on that foundation.</p>
+
+<p>III. The means, or how it is accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>The first words of our text tell us that 'Ye have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127a" id="Page_127a">[127]</a></span>
+received Christ Jesus as Lord,' and all depends on
+keeping the channels of communication open so that
+the reception may be continuous and progressive. We
+must live near and ever nearer to the Lord, and seek
+that our communion with Him may be strengthened.
+On the other hand, it is not only by the spontaneous
+development of the implanted life, but by conscious and
+continuous efforts which sometimes involve vigorous
+repression of the old self that progress is realised. The
+two metaphors of our text have to be united in our
+experience. Neither the effortless growth of the tree
+nor the toilsome work of the builder suffice to represent
+the whole truth. The two sides of deep and still
+communion, and of strenuous effort based on that
+communion, must be found in the experience of every
+Christian who has received Christ, and is advancing
+through the imperfect manifestations of earth to the
+perfect union with, and perfect assimilation to, the
+Lord.</p>
+
+<p>To all men who are ready to despair of themselves,
+here is the way to realise the grandest hopes. Nothing
+is too great to be attained by one who, having received
+Christ Jesus as Lord, walks in Him, rooted and builded
+up in Him, 'a holy temple to the Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>RISEN WITH CHRIST</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where
+Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2. Set your affection on things above, not
+on things on the earth. 3. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
+God. 4. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with
+Him in glory. 5. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth;
+fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness,
+which is idolatry: 6. For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the
+children of disobedience. 7. In the which ye also walked sometime, when ye lived
+in them. 8. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy,
+filthy communication out of your mouth. 9. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye
+have put off the old man with his deeds; 10. And have put on the new man, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128a" id="Page_128a">[128]</a></span>
+is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him: 11. Where there
+is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian,
+bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. 12. Put on therefore, as the elect of
+God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness,
+longsuffering; 13. Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any
+man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. 14. And
+above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. 15. And
+let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one
+body; and be ye thankful.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> iii. 1-15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The resurrection is regarded in Scripture in three
+aspects&mdash;as a fact establishing our Lord's Messiahship,
+as a prophecy of our rising from the dead, and as a
+symbol of the Christian life even now. The last is the
+aspect under which Paul deals with it here.</p>
+
+<p>I. Verses 1-4 set forth the wonderful but most real
+union of the believer with the risen Christ. We have
+said that the Lord's resurrection is regarded as a
+symbol, but that is an incomplete representation of
+the truth here taught, for Paul believed that the
+Christian is so joined to Jesus as that he has, not in
+symbol only, but in truth, risen with him. Mark the
+emphasis and depth of the expressions setting forth
+the believer's unity with his Lord: 'Ye were raised
+together with Christ'; 'Ye died, and your life is hid
+with Christ.' And these wonderful statements do not
+go to the bottom of the fact, for Paul goes beyond even
+them, and does not scruple to say that Christ '<i>is</i>
+our life.'</p>
+
+<p>The ground of these great declarations is found in
+the fact that faith joins us in most real and close union
+to Jesus Christ, so that in His death we die to sin and
+the world, and that, even while we live the bodily life
+of men here, we have in us another life, derived from
+Jesus. Unless our Christianity has grasped that great
+truth, it has not risen to the height of New Testament
+teaching and Christian privilege. We cannot make
+too much of 'Christ our sacrifice,' but some of us make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129a" id="Page_129a">[129]</a></span>
+too little of 'Christ our life,' and thereby fail to understand
+in all its fulness that other truth on which they
+fasten so exclusively. Union with Christ in the possession
+of His life in us, and the consequent rooting of our
+lives in Him, is a truth which much of the evangelical
+Christianity of this day needs to see more clearly.</p>
+
+<p>The life is 'hid,' as being united with Jesus, and consequently
+withdrawn from the world, which neither
+comprehends nor sustains it. A Christian man is bound
+to manifest to the utmost of his power what is the
+motive and aim of his life; but the devout life is,
+like the divine life, a mystery, unrevealed after all
+revelation.</p>
+
+<p>The practical conclusion from this blessed union with
+Jesus is that we are, as Christians, bound to be true in
+our conduct to the facts of our spiritual life, and to
+turn away from the world, which is now not our home,
+and set our mind (not only our 'affections') on things
+above. Surely the Christ, 'seated on the right hand of
+God,' will be as a magnet to draw our conscious being
+upwards to Himself. Surely union with Him in His
+death will lead us to die to the world which is alien to
+us, and to live in aspiration, thought, desire, love, and
+obedience with Him in His calm abode, whence He
+rules and blesses the souls whom, through their faith,
+He has made to live the new life of heaven on earth.</p>
+
+<p>II. The first consequence of the risen life is negative,
+the death or 'putting off' of the old nature, the life
+which belongs to and is ruled by earth. Verses 5-9
+solemnly lay on the Christian the obligation to put this
+to death. The 'therefore' in verse 5 teaches a great
+lesson, for it implies that the union with Jesus by faith
+must precede all self-denial which is true to the spirit
+of the Gospel. Asceticism of any sort which is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130a" id="Page_130a">[130]</a></span>
+built on the evangelical foundation is thereby condemned,
+whether it is practised by Buddhist, or monk,
+or Protestant. First be partaker of the new life, and
+then put off the old man with his deeds. The withered
+fronds of last year are pushed off the fern by the new
+ones as they uncurl. That doctrine of life in Christ
+is set down as mystical; but it is mysticism of the
+wholesome sort, which is intensely practical, and comes
+down to the level of the lowest duties,&mdash;for observe what
+homely virtues are enjoined, and how the things prohibited
+are no fantastic classifications of vices, but the
+things which all the world owns to be ugly and
+wrong.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot here enlarge on Paul's grim catalogue,
+but only point out that it is in two parts, the former
+(verses 5, 6) being principally sins of impurity and
+unregulated passion, to which is added 'covetousness,'
+as the other great vice to which the old nature is
+exposed. Lust and greed between them are the
+occasions of most of the sins of men. Stop these
+fountains, and the streams of evil would shrink to very
+small trickles. These twin vices attract the lightning
+of God's wrath, which 'cometh' on their perpetrators,
+not only in some final future judgment, but here and
+now. If we were not blind, we should see that thundercloud
+steadily drawing nearer, and ready to launch its
+terrors on impure and greedy men. They have set it
+in motion, and they are right in the path of the
+avalanche which they have loosened.</p>
+
+<p>The possessors of the risen life are exhorted to put
+off these things, not only because of the coming wrath,
+but because continuance in them is inconsistent with
+their present standing and life (v. 7). They do not
+now 'live in them,' but in the heavenly places with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131a" id="Page_131a">[131]</a></span>
+risen Lord, therefore to walk in them is a contradiction.
+Our conduct should correspond to our real affinities,
+and the surface of our lives should be true to their
+depths and roots.</p>
+
+<p>The second class of vices are those which mar our
+intercourse with our fellows,&mdash;the more passionate
+anger and wrath and the more cold-blooded and deadly
+malice, with the many sins of speech.</p>
+
+<p>III. In verse 9 Paul appends the great reason for all
+the preceding injunctions; namely, the fact, already
+enlarged on in verses 1-4, of the Christian's death and
+new life by union with Jesus. He need only have
+stated the one-half of the fact here, but he never can
+touch one member of the antithesis without catching
+fire, as it were, and so he goes on to dwell on the new
+life in Christ, and thus to prepare for the transition to
+the exhortation to 'put on' its characteristic excellences.
+We note how true to fact, though apparently
+illogical, his representation is. He bases the
+command to put off the old man on the fact that
+Christians have put it off. They are to be what they
+are, to work out in daily acts what they did in its full
+ideal completeness when by faith they died to self and
+were made alive in and to Christ. A strong motive
+for a continuous Christian life is the recollection of
+the initial Christian act.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul's fervent spirit blazes up as he thinks of
+that new nature which union with Jesus has brought,
+and he turns aside from his exhortations to gaze on
+that great sight. He condenses volumes into a sentence.
+That new man is not only new, but is perpetually
+being renewed with a renovation penetrating
+more and more deeply, and extending more and more
+widely, in the Christian's nature. It is continually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132a" id="Page_132a">[132]</a></span>
+advancing in knowledge, and tending towards perfect
+knowledge of Christ. It is being fashioned, by a better
+creation than that of Adam, into a more perfect
+likeness of God than our first father bore in his sinless
+freshness. The possession of it gathers all Christians
+into a unity in which all distinctions of nationality,
+religious privilege, culture, or social condition, are
+lost. Paul the Pharisee and the Colossian brethren,
+Onesimus the slave and Philemon his master, are one
+in Jesus. The new life is one in all its recipients, and
+makes them one. The phenomena of the lowest forms
+of life are almost repeated in the highest, and, just as
+in a coral reef the myriads of workers are not individuals
+so much as parts of one living whole, 'so also
+is Christ.' The union is the closest possible without
+destruction of our individuality.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The final, positive consequence of the risen life
+follows in verses 12-15. Again the Apostle reminds
+Christians of what they are, as the great motive for
+putting on the new man. The contemplation of
+privileges may tend to proud isolation and neglect of
+duty to our fellows, but the true effect of knowing
+that we are 'God's elect, holy and beloved,' is to soften
+our hearts, and to lead us to walk among men as
+mirrors and embodiments of God's mercy to us. The
+only virtues touched on here are the various manifestations
+of love, such as quick susceptibility to
+others' sorrows; readiness to help by act as well as to
+pity in word; lowliness in estimating one's own claims,
+which will lead to bearing evils without resentment
+or recompensing the like; and patient forgiveness,
+after the pattern and measure of the forgiveness we
+have received. All these graces, which would make
+earth an Eden, and our hearts temples, and our lives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133a" id="Page_133a">[133]</a></span>
+calm, are outcomes of love, and must never be divorced
+from it. Paul uses a striking image to express this
+thought of their dependence on it. He likens them to
+the various articles of dress, and bids us hold them all
+in place with love as a girdle, which keeps together all
+the various graces that make up 'perfectness.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus living in love, we shall be free from the tumult
+of spirit which ever attends a selfish life; for nothing
+is more certain to stuff a man's pillow with thorns,
+and to wreck his tranquillity, than to live in hate and
+suspicion, or self-absorbed. 'The peace of Christ' is
+ours in the measure in which we live the risen life and
+put on the new man, and that peace in our hearts will
+rule, that is, will sit there as umpire; for it will instinctively
+draw itself into itself, as it were, like the
+leaves of a sensitive plant, at the approach of evil, and,
+if we will give heed to its warnings, and have nothing
+to do with what disturbs it, we shall be saved from
+falling into many a sin. That peace gathers all the
+possessors of the new life into blessed harmony. It is
+peace with God, with ourselves, and with all our
+brethren; and the fact that all Christians are, by their
+common life, members of the one body, lays on them
+all the obligation to keep the unity in the bond of
+peace. And for all these great blessings, especially
+for that union with Jesus which gives us a share in
+his risen life, thankfulness should ever fill our hearts
+and make all our days and deeds the sacrifice of praise
+unto him continually.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134a" id="Page_134a">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>RISEN WITH CHRIST</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where
+Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not
+on things on the earth.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> iii. 1, 2.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There are three aspects in which the New Testament
+treats the Resurrection, and these three seem to have
+successively come into the consciousness of the Church.
+First, as is natural, it was considered mainly in its
+bearing on the person and work of our Lord. We may
+point for illustration to the way in which the Resurrection
+is treated in the earliest of the apostolic discourses,
+as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Then it came,
+with further reflection and experience, to be discerned
+that it had a bearing on the hope of the immortality of
+man. And last of all, as the Christian life deepened,
+it came to be discerned that the Resurrection was
+the pattern of the life of the Christian disciples. It
+was regarded first as a witness, then as a prophecy,
+then as a symbol. Three fragments of Scripture
+express these three phases: for the first, 'Declared
+to be the Son of God with power by the Resurrection
+from the dead'; for the second, 'Now is Christ risen
+from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them
+that slept'; for the third, 'God hath raised us up
+together with Him, and made us sit together in the
+heavenly places.' I have considered incidentally
+the two former aspects in the course of previous
+sermons; I wish to turn at present to that final third
+one.</p>
+
+<p>One more observation I must make by way of
+introduction, and that is, that the way in which the
+Apostle here glides from 'being risen with Christ'
+to where 'Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135a" id="Page_135a">[135]</a></span>
+confirms what I have pointed out in former discourses,
+that the Ascension of Jesus Christ is always considered
+in Scripture as being nothing more than the necessary
+outcome and issue of the process which began in the
+Resurrection. They are not separate facts, but they
+are two ends of one process. And so with these
+thoughts, that Resurrection develops into Ascension,
+and that in both Jesus Christ is the pattern for His
+followers, let us turn to the words before us.</p>
+
+<p>Then we have here</p>
+
+<p>I. The Christian life considered as a risen life.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we are all familiar with the great evangelical
+point of view from which the death and Resurrection
+of Jesus Christ are usually contemplated. To many
+of us Christ's sacrifice is nothing more or less than
+the means by which the world is reconciled to God,
+and Christ's Resurrection nothing more than the seal
+which was set by Divinity upon that work. 'Crucified
+for our offences, and raised again for our justification,'
+as Paul has it&mdash;that is the point of view from which
+most evangelical or orthodox Christian people are
+contented to regard the solemn fact of the Death and
+the radiant fact of the Resurrection. You cannot be
+too emphatic about these truths, but you may be too
+exclusive in your contemplation of them. You do well
+when you say that they are the Gospel; you do not
+well when you say, as some of you do, that they are
+the whole Gospel. For there is another stream of
+teaching in the New Testament, of which my text is
+an example, and a multitude of other passages that I
+cannot refer to now are equally conspicuous instances,
+in which that death and that Resurrection are regarded,
+not so much in respect to the power which
+they exercise in the reconciliation of the world to God,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136a" id="Page_136a">[136]</a></span>
+as in their aspect as the type of all noble and true
+Christian life. You remember how, when our Lord
+Himself touched upon the fruitful issues of His death,
+and said: 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
+and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth
+forth much fruit,' He at once went on to say that
+a man that loved his life would lose it; and that
+a man that lost his life would find it, and proceeded
+to point, even then, and in that connection, to His
+Cross as our pattern, declaring: 'If any man serve Me,
+let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also
+My servant be.'</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Made like Him">
+<tr><td align='left'>'Made like Him, like Him we rise;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>So, then, a risen life is the type of all noble life, and
+before there can be a risen life there must have been
+a death. True, we may say that the spiritual facts in
+a man's experience, which are represented by these
+two great symbols of a death and a rising, are but
+like the segment of a circle which, seen from the one
+side is convex and from the other is concave. But
+however loosely we may feel that the metaphors represent
+the facts, this is plain, that unless a man dies
+to flesh, to self-will, to the world, he never will live
+a life that is worth calling life. The condition of all
+nobleness and all growth upwards is that we shall
+die daily, and live a life that has sprung victorious
+from the death of self. All lofty ethics teach that;
+and Christianity teaches it, with redoubled emphasis,
+because it says to us, that the Cross and the Resurrection
+are not merely imaginative emblems of the
+noble and the Christian life, but are a great deal
+more than that. For, brethren, do not forget&mdash;if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137a" id="Page_137a">[137]</a></span>
+you do, you will be hopelessly at sea as to large tracts
+of blessed Christian truth&mdash;that by faith in Jesus
+Christ we are brought into such a true deep union
+with Him as that, in no mere metaphorical or
+analogous sense, but in most blessed reality, there
+comes into the believing heart a spark of the life
+that is Christ's own, so that with Him we do live,
+and from Him we do live a life cognate with His,
+who, having risen from the dead, dieth no more, and
+over whom death hath no dominion. So it is not
+a metaphor only, but a spiritual truth, when we
+speak of being risen with Christ, seeing that our
+faith, in the measure of its genuineness, its depth and
+its operative power upon our characters, will be the
+gate through which there shall pass into our deadness
+the life that truly is, the life that has nought to do
+with death or sin. And this unity with Jesus, brought
+about by faith, brings about that the depths of the
+Christian life are hid with Christ in God, and that we,
+risen with Him, do even now sit 'at the right hand in
+heavenly places,' whilst our feet, dusty and sometimes
+blood-stained, are journeying along the paths of life.
+This is the great teaching of my text, and of a multitude
+of other places; and this is the teaching which modern
+Christianity, in its exclusive, or all but exclusive, contemplation
+of the Cross as the sacrifice for sin, has far
+too much forgotten. 'Ye are risen with Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>Let me remind you that this veritable death and
+rising again, which marks the Christian life, is set
+forth before us in the initial rite of the Christian
+Church. Some of you do not agree with me in my
+view, either of what is the mode or of who are the
+subjects of that ordinance, but if you know anything
+about the question, you know that everybody that has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138a" id="Page_138a">[138]</a></span>
+a right to give a judgment agrees with us Baptists in
+saying&mdash;although they may not think that it carries
+anything obligatory upon the practice of to-day&mdash;that
+the primitive Church baptized by immersion. Now,
+the meaning of baptism is to symbolise these two
+inseparable moments, dying to sin, to self, to the
+world, to the old past, and rising again to newness of
+life. Our sacramentarian friends say that, in my
+text, it was in baptism that these Colossian Christians
+rose again with Christ. I, for my part, do not believe
+that, but that baptism was the speaking sign of
+what lies at the gate of a true Christian life I have
+no manner of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>So the first thought of our text is not only taught
+us in words, but it stands manifest in the ritual of
+the Church as it was from the beginning. We die,
+and we rise again, through faith and by union through
+faith, with Christ 'that died, yea, rather that is risen
+again, who is even at the right hand of God.'</p>
+
+<p>Let me turn, secondly, to</p>
+
+<p>II. The consequent aims of the Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things
+which are above.' 'To seek' implies the direction of
+the external life toward certain objects. It is not
+to seek as if perhaps we might not find; it is not even
+to seek in the sense of searching for, but it is to seek
+in the sense of aiming at. And now do you not think
+that if we had burning in our hearts, and conscious
+to our experiences, the sense of union with Jesus
+Christ the risen Saviour, that would shape the direction
+and dictate the aims of our earthly life? As
+surely as the elevation of the rocket tube determines
+the flight of the projectile that comes from it, so surely
+would the inward consciousness, if it were vivid as it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139a" id="Page_139a">[139]</a></span>
+ought to be in all Christian people, of that risen life
+throbbing within the heart, shape all the external
+conduct. It would give us wings and make us soar.
+It would make us buoyant, and lift us above the
+creeping aims that constitute the objects of life for so
+many men.</p>
+
+<p>But you say, 'Things above: that is an indefinite
+phrase. What do you mean by it?' I will tell you
+what the Bible means by it. It means Jesus Christ.
+All the nebulous splendours of that firmament are
+gathered together into one blazing sun. It is a vague
+direction to tell a man to shoot up, into an empty
+heaven. It is not a vague direction to tell him to seek
+the 'things above'; for they are all gathered into
+a person. 'Where Christ is, sitting at the right hand
+of God,'&mdash;that is the meaning of 'things above,' which
+are to be the continual aim of the man who is conscious
+of a risen life. And of course they will be, for if we
+feel, as we ought to feel habitually, though with varying
+clearness, that we do carry within us a spark, if
+I might use that phrase, of the very life of Jesus
+Christ, so surely as fire will spring upwards, so surely
+as water will rise to the height of its source, so surely
+will our outward lives be directed towards Him, who
+is the life of our inward lives, and the goal therefore
+of our outward actions?</p>
+
+<p>Jesus Christ is the summing up of 'the things that
+are above'; therefore there stands out clear this one
+great truth, that the only aim for a Christian soul,
+consistent with the facts of its Christian life, is to be
+like Christ, to be with Christ, to please Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how does that aim&mdash;'whether present or
+absent we labour that we may be well pleasing to
+Him'&mdash;how does that aim bear upon the multitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140a" id="Page_140a">[140]</a></span>
+of inferior and nearer aims which men pursue, and
+which Christians have to pursue along with other
+men? How does it bear upon them?&mdash;Why thus&mdash;as
+the culminating peak of a mountain-chain bears
+on the lower hills that for miles and miles buttress
+it, and hold it up, and aspire towards it, and find
+their perfection in its calm summit that touches the
+skies. The more we have in view, as our aim in life,
+Christ who is 'at the right hand of God,' and assimilation,
+communion with Him, approbation from Him,
+the more will all immediate aims be ennobled and
+delivered from the evils that else cleave to them.
+They are more when they are second than when they
+are first. 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,' and all
+your other aims&mdash;as students, as thinkers, as scientists,
+as men of business, as parents, as lovers, or anything
+else&mdash;will be greatened by being subordinated to the
+conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should
+persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden-down,
+diapason note, through all our lives. Perfume can be
+diffused into the air, and dislodge no atom of that
+which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can be
+pursued through, and by means of, all nearer ones,
+and is inconsistent with nothing but sin. 'Seek the
+things that are above.'</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, we have here&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>III. The discipline which is needed to secure the
+right direction of the life.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle does not content himself with pointing
+out the aims. He adds practical advice as to how
+these aims can be made dominant in our individual
+cases, when he says, 'Set your affections on things
+above.' Now, many of you will know that 'affections'
+is not the full sense of the word that is here employed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141a" id="Page_141a">[141]</a></span>
+and that the Revised Version gives a more adequate
+rendering when it says, 'Set your <i>minds</i> on the things
+that are above.' A man cannot do with his love
+according to his will. He cannot say: '<i>Resolved</i>, that
+I love So-and-So'; and then set himself to do it. But
+though you cannot act on the emotions directly by
+the will, you <i>can</i> act directly on your understandings,
+on your thoughts, and your thoughts will act on your
+affections. If a man wants to love Jesus Christ he
+must think about Him. That is plain English. It is
+vain for a man to try to coerce his wandering affections
+by any other course than by concentrating his
+thoughts. Set your minds on the things that are
+above, and that will consolidate and direct the emotions;
+and the thoughts and the emotions together
+will shape the outward efforts. Seeking the things
+that are above will come, and will only come, when
+mind and heart and inward life are occupied with Him.
+There is no other way by which the externals can be
+made right than by setting a watch on the door of
+our hearts and minds, and this inward discipline must
+be put in force before there will be any continuity or
+sureness in the outward aim. We want, for that
+direction of the life of which I have been speaking,
+a clear perception and a concentrated purpose, and we
+shall not get either of these unless we fall back, by
+thought and meditation, upon the truths which will
+provide them both.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, there is another aspect of the connection
+between these two parts of our text, which I can
+only touch. Not only is the setting of our thoughts
+on the things above, the way by which we can make
+these the aim of our lives. They are not only aims
+to be reached at some future stage of our progress,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142a" id="Page_142a">[142]</a></span>
+but they are possessions to be enjoyed at the present.
+We may have a present Christ and a present Heaven.
+The Christian life is not all aspiration; it is fruition
+as well. We have to seek, but even whilst we seek,
+we should be conscious that we possess what we are
+seeking, even whilst we seek it. Do you know anything
+of that double experience of having the things
+that are above, here and now, as well as reaching
+out towards them?</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid that the Christian life of this generation
+suffers at a thousand points, because it is more
+concerned with the ordering of the outward life, and
+the manifold activities which this busy generation
+has struck out for itself, than it is with the quiet
+setting of the mind, in silent sunken depths of contemplation,
+on the things that are above. Oh, if we
+would think more about them we should aim more
+at them; and if we were sure that we possessed them
+to-day we should be more eager for a larger possession
+to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, we may all have the risen life for
+ours, if we will knit ourselves, in humble dependence
+and utter self-surrender, to the Christ who died for
+us that we might be dead to sin, and rose again that
+we might rise to righteousness. And if we have Him,
+in any deep and real sense, as the life of our lives,
+then we shall be blessed, amid all the divergent and
+sometimes conflicting nearer aims, which we have
+to pursue, by seeing clear above them that to which
+they all may tend, the one aim which corresponds to
+a man's nature, which meets his condition, which
+satisfies his needs, which can always be attained if it is
+followed, and which, when secured, never disappoints.
+God help us all to say, 'This one thing I do, and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143a" id="Page_143a">[143]</a></span>
+else I count but dung, that I may know Him, and the
+power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His
+sufferings, being made conformable unto His death,
+if by any means I may attain unto the Resurrection
+from the dead!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WITHOUT AND WITHIN</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Them that are without.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Col.</span> iv. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That is, of course, an expression for the non-Christian
+world; the outsiders who are beyond the pale of the
+Church. There was a very broad line of distinction
+between it and the surrounding world in the early
+Christian days, and the handful of Christians in a
+heathen country felt a great gulf between them and
+the society in which they lived. That distinction
+varies in form, and varies somewhat in apparent
+magnitude according as Christianity has been rooted
+in a country for a longer or a shorter time, but it
+remains, and is as real to-day as it ever was, and
+there is neither wisdom nor kindness in ignoring the
+distinction.</p>
+
+<p>The phrase of our text may sound harsh, and might
+be used, as it was by the Jews, from whom it was
+borrowed, in a very narrow and bitter spirit. Close
+corporations of any sort are apt to generate, not only
+a wholesome <i>esprit de corps</i>, but a hostile contempt for
+outsiders, and Christianity has too often been misrepresented
+by its professors, who have looked down
+upon those that are without with supercilious and unchristian
+self-complacency.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing of that sort in the words themselves;
+the very opposite is in them. They sound to
+me like the expression of a man conscious of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144a" id="Page_144a">[144]</a></span>
+security and comfort and blessedness of the home
+where he sat, and with his heart yearning for all the
+houseless wanderers that were abiding the pelting of
+the pitiless storm out in the darkness there. The spirit
+and attitude of Christianity to such is one of yearning
+pity and urgent entreaty to come in and share in the
+blessings. There is deep pathos in the words, as well
+as solemn earnestness, and in such a spirit I wish to
+dwell upon them now for a short time.</p>
+
+<p>I. I begin with the question: Who are they that are
+outside? And what is it of which they are outside?</p>
+
+<p>As I have already remarked, the phrase was
+apparently borrowed from Judaism, where it meant,
+'outside the Jewish congregation,' and its primary
+application, as used here, is no doubt to those who are
+outside the Christian Church. But do not let us
+suppose that that explanation gets to the bottom of
+the meaning of the words. It may stand as a partial
+answer, but only as partial. The evil tendency which
+attends all externalising of truth in the concrete form
+of institutions works in full force on the Church, and
+ever tempts us to substitute outward connection with
+the institution for real possession of the truth of which
+the institution is the outgrowth. Therefore I urge
+upon you very emphatically&mdash;and all the more
+earnestly because of the superstitious overestimate
+of outward connection with the outward institution of
+the Church which is eagerly proclaimed all around us
+to-day&mdash;that connection with any organised body of
+believing men is not 'being within,' and that isolation
+from all these is not necessarily 'being without.' Many
+a man who is within the organisation is not 'in the
+truth,' and, blessed be God, a man may be outside all
+churches, and yet be one of God's hidden ones, and may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145a" id="Page_145a">[145]</a></span>
+dwell safe and instructed in the very innermost shrine
+of the secret place of the Most High. We hear from
+priestly lips, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, that
+there is 'no safety outside the Church.' The saying is
+true when rightly understood. If by the Church be
+meant the whole company of those who are trusting
+to Jesus Christ, of course there is no safety outside,
+because to trust in Jesus is the one condition of safety,
+and unless we belong to those who so trust we shall
+not possess the blessing. So understood, the phrase
+may pass, and is only objectionable as a round-about
+and easily misunderstood way of saying what is much
+better expressed by 'Whosoever shall call on the
+name of the Lord shall be saved.'</p>
+
+<p>But that is not the meaning of the phrase in the
+mouths of those who use it most frequently. To them
+the Church is a visible corporation, and not only so, but
+as one of the many organisations into which believers
+are moulded, it is distinguished from the others by
+certain offices and rites, bishops, priests, and sacraments,
+through whom and which certain grace is
+supposed to flow, no drop of which can reach a community
+otherwise shaped and officered!</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it only Roman Catholics and Anglicans who
+are in danger of externalising personal Christianity
+into a connection with a church. The tendency has its
+roots deep in human nature, and may be found
+flourishing quite as rankly in the least sacerdotal of
+the 'sects' as in the Vatican itself. There is very
+special need at present for those who understand that
+Christianity is an immensely deeper thing than connection
+with any organised body of Christians, to speak
+out the truth that is in them, and to protest against
+the vulgar and fleshly notion which is forcing itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146a" id="Page_146a">[146]</a></span>
+into prominence in this day when societies of all sorts
+are gaining such undue power, and religion, like much
+else, is being smothered under forms, as was the maiden
+in the old story, under the weight of her ornaments.
+External relationships and rites cannot determine
+spiritual conditions. It does not follow because you
+have passed through certain forms, and stand in
+visible connection with any visible community, that
+you are therefore within the pale and safe. Churches
+are appointed by Christ. Men who believe and love
+naturally draw together. The life of Christ is in them.
+Many spiritual blessings are received through believing
+association with His people. Illumination and
+stimulus, succour and sympathy pass from one to
+another, each in turn experiencing the blessedness of
+receiving, and the greater blessedness of giving. No
+wise man who has learned of Christ will undervalue
+the blessings which come through union with the
+outward body which is a consequence of union with
+the unseen Head. But men may be in the Church
+and out of Christ. Not connection with it, but connection
+with Him, brings us 'within.' 'Those that are
+without' may be either in or out of the pale of any
+church.</p>
+
+<p>We may put the answer to this question in another
+form, and going deeper than the idea of being within a
+visible church, we may say, 'those that are without'
+are they who are outside the Kingdom of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The Kingdom of Christ is not a visible external community.
+The Kingdom of Christ, or of God, or of
+Heaven, is found wherever human wills obey the Law
+of Christ, which is the will of God, the decrees of
+Heaven; as Christ himself put it, in profound words&mdash;profound
+in all their simplicity&mdash;when He said, 'Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147a" id="Page_147a">[147]</a></span>
+every man that saith unto Me Lord! Lord! shall enter
+into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the
+will of My Father, which is in Heaven.' 'Them that
+are without' are they whose wills are not bent in
+loving obedience to the Lord of their spirit.</p>
+
+<p>But we must go deeper than that. In the Church?
+Yes! In the Kingdom? Yes! But I venture to take
+another Scripture phrase as being the one satisfactory
+fundamental answer to the question: What is it that
+these people are outside of? and I say Christ, Christ.
+If you will take your New Testament as your guide,
+you will find that the one question upon which all is
+suspended is the, Am I, or Am I not, in Jesus Christ?
+Am I in Him, or Am I outside of Him? And the
+answer to that question is the answer to this other:
+Who are they that are without?</p>
+
+<p>They that are outside are not the 'non-Christian
+world' who are not church members; they that are inside
+are not the 'Christian world' who make an outward
+profession of being in the Kingdom. It is not going down
+to the foundation to explain the antithesis so; but 'those
+that are within' are those who have simple trust upon
+Jesus Christ as the sole and all-sufficient Saviour of
+their sinful spirits and the life of their life, and having
+entered into that great love, have plunged themselves,
+as it were, into the very heart of Jesus; have found in
+Him righteousness and peace, forgiveness and love, joy
+and salvation. Are you in Christ because you love
+Him and trust your soul to Him? If not, if not, you
+are amongst those 'that are without,' though you be
+ever so much joined to the visible Church of the living
+God.</p>
+
+<p>And then there is one more remark that I must drop
+in here before I go on, namely, that whilst I thankfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148a" id="Page_148a">[148]</a></span>
+admit, and joyfully preach, that the most imperfect,
+rudimentary faith knits a man to Jesus Christ, even if
+in this life it may be found covered over with a great
+deal that is contradictory and inconsistent; on the
+other hand there are some people who stand like the
+angel in the Apocalypse, with one foot on the solid
+land and one upon the restless sea, half in and half out,
+undecided, halting&mdash;that is, 'limping'&mdash;between two
+opinions. Some people of that sort are listening to me
+now, who have been like that for years. Now I want
+them to remember this plain piece of common-sense&mdash;half
+in is altogether out! So that is my answer to the
+first question: Who are they that are outside, and
+what is it that they are outside of?</p>
+
+<p>I cannot carry round these principles and lay them
+upon the conscience of each hearer, but I pray you
+to listen to your own inmost voice speaking, and
+I am mistaken if many will not hear it saying:
+'Thou art the man!' Do not stop your ears to that
+voice!</p>
+
+<p>II. Notice next the force of this phrase as implying
+the woeful condition of those without.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that it is full of pathos. It is the language
+of a man whose heart yearns as, in the midst of his
+own security, he thinks of the houseless wanderers in
+the dark and the storm. He thinks pityingly of what
+they lose, and of that to which they are exposed.</p>
+
+<p>There are two or three ways in which I may illustrate
+that condition, but perhaps the most graphic and impressive
+may be just to recall for a moment three or four
+of the Scripture metaphors that fit into this representation:
+'Those that are without'; and thus to gain some
+different pictures of what the inside and the outside
+means in these varying figures.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149a" id="Page_149a">[149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>First, then, there is a figure drawn from the Old
+Testament which is often applied, and correctly
+applied, to this subject&mdash;Noah's Ark.</p>
+
+<p>Think of that safe abode floating across the waters,
+whilst all without it was a dreary waste. Without
+were death and despair, but those that were within sat
+warm and dry and safe and fed and living. The men
+that were without, high as they might climb upon
+rocks and hills, strong as they might be&mdash;when the
+dreary rainstorm wept itself dry, 'they were all dead
+corpses.' To be in was life, to be out was death.</p>
+
+<p>That is the first metaphor. Take another. That
+singular institution of the old Mosaic system, in which
+the man who inadvertently, and therefore without any
+guilt or crime of his own, had been the cause of death
+to his brother, had provided for him, half on one side
+Jordan and half on the other, and dotted over the land,
+so that it should not be too far to run to one of them,
+Cities of Refuge. And when the wild vendetta of
+those days stirred up the next of kin to pursue at his
+heels, if he could get inside the nearest of these he was
+secure. They that were within could stand at the city
+gates and look out upon the plain, and see the pursuer
+with his hate glaring from his eyes, and almost feel
+his hot breath on their cheeks, and know that though
+but a yard from him, his arm durst not touch them.
+To be inside was to be safe, to be outside was certain
+bloody death.</p>
+
+<p>That is the second figure; take a third; one which
+our Lord Himself has given us. Here is the picture&mdash;a
+palace, a table abundantly spread, lights and music,
+delight and banqueting, gladness and fulness, society
+and sustenance. The guests sit close and all partake.
+To be within means food, shelter, warmth, festivity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150a" id="Page_150a">[150]</a></span>
+society; to be without, like Lear on the moor, is to
+stand the pelting of the storm, weary, stumbling in the
+dark, starving, solitary, and sad. Within is brightness
+and good cheer; without is darkness, hunger, death.</p>
+
+<p>That is the third figure. Take a fourth, another
+of our Master's. Picture a little rude, stone-built enclosure
+with the rough walls piled high, and a narrow
+aperture at one point, big enough for one creature to
+pass through at a time. Within, huddled together, are
+the innocent sheep; without, the lion and the bear.
+Above, the vault of night with all its stars, and watching
+all, the shepherd, with unslumbering eye. In the
+fold is rest for the weary limbs that have been plodding
+through valleys of the shadow of death, and dusty
+ways; peace for the panting hearts that are trembling
+at every danger, real and imaginary. Inside the fold
+is tranquillity, repose for the wearied frame, safety,
+and the companionship of the Shepherd; and without,
+ravening foes and a dreary wilderness, and flinty paths
+and sparse herbage and muddy pools. Inside is life;
+without is death. That is the fourth figure.</p>
+
+<p>In the Ark no Deluge can touch; in the City of
+Refuge no avenger can smite; in the banqueting-hall
+no thirst nor hunger but can be satisfied; in the fold
+no enemy can come and no terror can live.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren! are you amongst 'them that are without,'
+or are you within?</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly&mdash;why is anybody outside? Why? It is
+no one's fault but their own. It is not God's. He can
+appeal with clean hands and ask us to judge what
+more could have been done for His vineyard that He
+has not done for it. The great parable which represents
+Him as sending out His summons to the feast
+in His palace puts the wonderful words in the mouth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151a" id="Page_151a">[151]</a></span>
+of the master of the house, after his call by his servants
+had been refused. 'Go out into the highways and
+hedges,' beneath which the beggars squat, 'and compel
+them to come in, that my house may be full.' 'Nature
+abhors a vacuum,' the old natural philosophers used
+to say. So does grace; so does God's love. It hates to
+have His house empty and His provisions unconsumed.
+And so He has done all that He could do to bring you
+and me inside. He has sent His Son, He beckons us,
+He draws us by countless mercies day by day. He
+appeals to our hearts, and would have us gathered into
+the fold. And if we are outside it is not because He
+has neglected to do anything which He can do in order
+to bring us in.</p>
+
+<p>But why is it that any of us resist such drawing, and
+make the wretched choice of perishing without, rather
+than find safety within? The deepest reason is an
+alienated heart, a rebellious will. But the reason for
+alienation and rebellion lie among the inscrutable
+mysteries of our awful being. All sin is irrational.
+The fact is plain, the temptations are obvious; excuses
+there are in plenty, but reasons there are none. Still we
+may touch for a moment on some of the causes which
+operate with many hearers of God's merciful call to
+enter in, and keep them without.</p>
+
+<p>Many remain outside because they do not really
+believe in the danger. No doubt there was a great deal
+of brilliant sarcasm launched at Noah for his folly in
+thinking that there was anything coming that needed
+an ark. It seemed, no doubt, food for much laughter,
+and altogether impossible to think of gravely, that
+this flood which he talked about should ever come. So
+they had their laughter out as they saw him working
+away at his ludicrous task 'until the day when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152a" id="Page_152a">[152]</a></span>
+flood came and swept them all away,' and the laughter
+ended in gurgling sobs of despair.</p>
+
+<p>If a manslayer does not believe that the next of kin
+is on his track, he will not flee to the City of Refuge.
+If the sheep has no fear of wolves, it will choose to
+be outside the fold among the succulent herbage. Did
+you ever see how, in a Welsh slate-quarry, before a
+blast, a horn is blown, and at its sound all along the
+face of the quarry the miners run to their shelters,
+where they stay until the explosion is over? What
+do you suppose would become of one of them who
+stood there after the horn had blown, and said:
+'Nonsense! There is nothing coming! I will take my
+chance where I am!' Very likely a bit of slate would
+end him before he had finished his speech. At any
+rate, do not you, dear friend, trifle with the warning
+that says: 'Flee for refuge to Christ and shelter
+yourself in Him.'</p>
+
+<p>There are some people, too, who stop outside because
+they do not much care for the entertainment that they
+will get within. It does not strike them as being very
+desirable. They have no appetite for it. We preachers
+seek to draw hearts to Jesus by many motives&mdash;and
+among others by setting forth the blessings which he
+bestows. But if a man does not care about pardon,
+does not fear judgment, does not want to be good,
+has no taste for righteousness, is not attracted by the
+pure and calm pleasures which Christ offers, the invitation
+falls flat upon his ear. Wisdom cries aloud
+and invites the sons of men to her feast, but the fare
+she provides is not coarse and high spiced enough, and
+her table is left unfilled, while the crowd runs to the
+strong-flavoured meats and foaming drinks which her
+rival, Folly, offers. Many of us say, like the Israelites<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153a" id="Page_153a">[153]</a></span>
+'Our souls loathe this light bread,' this manna, white
+and sweet, and Heaven-descended, and angels' food
+though it be, and we hanker after the reeking garlic
+and leeks and onions of Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Some of us again, would like well enough to be
+inside, if that would keep us from dangers which we
+believe to be real, but we do not like the doorway.
+You may see in some remote parts of the country
+strange, half-subterranean structures which are supposed
+to have been the houses of a vanished race.
+They have a long, narrow, low passage, through which
+a man has to creep with his face very near the
+ground. He has to go low and take to his knees to get
+through; and at the end the passage opens out into
+ampler, loftier space, where the dwellers could sit safe
+from wild weather and wilder beasts and wildest men.
+That is like the way into the fortress home which we
+have in Jesus Christ. We must stoop very low to enter
+there. And some of us do not like that. We do not
+like to fall on our knees and say, I am a sinful man, O
+Lord. We do not like to bow ourselves in penitence.
+And the passage is narrow as well as low. It is broad
+enough for you, but not for what some of you would
+fain carry in on your back. The pack which you bear,
+of earthly vanities and loves, and sinful habits, will be
+brushed off your shoulders in that narrow entrance,
+like the hay off a cart in a country lane bordered by
+high hedges. And some of us do not like that. So,
+because the way is narrow, and we have to stoop, our
+pride kicks at the idea of having to confess ourselves
+sinners, and of having to owe all our hope and salvation
+to God's undeserved mercy, therefore we stay outside.
+And because the way is narrow, and we have to put off
+some of our treasures, our earthward-looking desires<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154a" id="Page_154a">[154]</a></span>
+shrink from laying these aside, and therefore we stop
+outside. There was room in the boat for the last man
+who stood on the deck, but he could not make up his
+mind to leave a bag of gold. There was no room for
+that. Therefore he would not leap, and went down
+with the ship.</p>
+
+<p>The door is open. The Master calls. The feast is
+spread. Dangers threaten. The flood comes. The
+avenger of blood makes haste. 'Why standest thou
+without?' Enter in, before the door is shut. And if
+you ask, How shall I pass within?&mdash;the answer is
+plain: 'They could not enter in because of unbelief.
+We which have believed do enter into rest.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155a" id="Page_155a">[155]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>I. THESSALONIANS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>FAITH, LOVE, HOPE, AND THEIR FRUITS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> i. 3.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This Epistle, as I suppose we all know, is Paul's first
+letter. He had been hunted out of Thessalonica by
+the mob, made the best of his way to Athens, stayed
+there for a very short time, then betook himself to
+Corinth, and at some point of his somewhat protracted
+residence there, this letter was written. So that we
+have in it his first attempt, so far as we know, to
+preach the Gospel by the pen. It is interesting to
+notice how, whatever changes and developments there
+may have been in him thereafter, all the substantial
+elements of his latest faith beam out in this earliest
+letter, and how even in regard to trifles we see the
+germs of much that came afterwards. This same
+triad, you remember, 'faith, hope, charity,' recurs in
+the First Epistle to the Corinthians, though with a
+very significant difference in the order, which I shall
+have to dwell upon presently.</p>
+
+<p>The letter is interesting on another account. Remembering
+that it was only a very short time since
+these Thessalonians had turned from idols to serve the
+living God, there is something very beautiful in the
+overflowing generosity of commendation, which never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156a" id="Page_156a">[156]</a></span>
+goes beyond veracity, with which he salutes them.
+Their Christian character, like seeds sown in some
+favoured tropical land, had sprung up swiftly; yet not
+with the dangerous kind of swiftness which presages
+decay of the growth. It was only a few days since
+they had been grovelling before idols, but now he can
+speak of 'your work of faith, and labour of love, and
+patience of hope' .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and declare that the Gospel
+'sounded out' from them&mdash;the word which he employs
+is that which is technically used for the blast of a
+trumpet&mdash;'so that we need not to speak anything.'
+Rapid growth is possible for us all, and is not always
+superficial.</p>
+
+<p>I desire now to consider that pair of triads&mdash;the
+three foundation-stones, and the three views of the
+fair building that is reared upon them.</p>
+
+<p>I. The three foundation-stones.</p>
+
+<p>That is a natural metaphor to use, but it is not
+quite correct, for these three&mdash;faith, love, hope&mdash;are
+not to be conceived of as lying side by side. Rather
+than three foundations we have three courses of the
+building here; the lowest one, faith; the next one,
+love; and the top one, hope. The order in 1 Corinthians
+is different, 'faith, hope, charity,' and the alteration
+in the sequence is suggested by the difference of purpose.
+The Apostle intended in 1 Corinthians to dwell
+at some length thereafter on 'charity,' or 'love.' So
+he puts it last to make the link of connection with
+what he is going to say. But here he is dealing with
+the order of production, the natural order in which
+these three evolve themselves. And his thought is
+that they are like the shoots that successive springs
+bring upon the bough of a tree, where each year has
+its own growth, and the summit of last year's becomes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157a" id="Page_157a">[157]</a></span>
+the basis of next. Thus we have, first, faith; then,
+shooting from that, love; and then, sustained by both,
+hope. Now let us look at that order.</p>
+
+<p>It is a well-worn commonplace, which you may think
+it not needful for me to dwell upon here, that in the
+Christian theory, both of salvation and of morals, the
+basis of everything is trust. And that is no arbitrary
+theological arrangement, but it is the only means by
+which the life that is the basis both of salvation and
+of righteousness can be implanted in men. There is
+no other way by which Jesus Christ can come into our
+hearts than by what the New Testament calls 'trust,'
+which we have turned into the hard, theological concept
+which too often glides over people's minds without
+leaving any dint at all&mdash;'faith.' Distrust is united with
+trust. There is no trust without, complementary to
+it, self-distrust. Just as the sprouting seed sends one
+little radicle downwards, and that becomes the root,
+and at the same time sends up another one, white till
+it reaches the light, and it becomes the stem, so the
+underside of faith is self-distrust, and you must empty
+yourselves before you can open your hearts to be filled
+by Jesus. That being so, this self-distrustful trust is
+the beginning of everything. That is the <i>alpha</i> of the
+whole alphabet, however glorious and manifold may
+be the words into which its letters are afterwards
+combined. Faith is the hand that grasps. It is the
+means of communication, it is the channel through
+which the grace which is the life, or, rather, I should
+say, the life which is the grace, comes to us. It is the
+open door by which the angel of God comes in with
+his gifts. It is like the petals of the flowers, opening
+when the sunshine kisses them, and, by opening, laying
+bare the depths of their calyxes to be illuminated and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158a" id="Page_158a">[158]</a></span>
+coloured, and made to grow by the sunshine which
+itself has opened them, and without the presence of
+which, within the cup, there would have been neither
+life nor beauty. So faith is the basis of everything;
+the first shoot from which all the others ascend.
+Brethren, have you that initial grace? I leave the
+question with you. If you have not that, you have
+nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>Then again, out of faith rises love. No man can
+love God unless he believes that God loves him. I, for
+my part, am old-fashioned and narrow enough not to
+believe that there is any deep, soul-cleansing or soul-satisfying
+love of God which is not the answer to the
+love that died on the Cross. But you must believe
+that, and more than believe it; you must have trusted
+and cast yourselves on it, in the utter abandonment of
+self-distrust and Christ-confidence, before there will
+well up in your heart the answering love to God.
+First faith, then love. My love is the reverberation
+of the primeval voice, the echo of God's. The angle
+at which the light falls on the mirror is the same as
+the angle at which it is reflected from it. And though
+my love at its highest is low, at its strongest is weak:
+yet, like the echo that is faint and far, feeble though
+it be, it is pitched on the same key, and is the prolongation
+of the same note as the mother-sound. So my
+love answers God's love, and it will never answer it
+unless faith has brought me within the auditorium,
+the circle wherein the voice that proclaims 'I love
+thee, my child,' can be heard.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we do not need to ask ourselves whether Paul
+is here speaking of love to God or love to man. He
+is speaking of both, because the New Testament deals
+with the latter as being a part of the former, and sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159a" id="Page_159a">[159]</a></span>
+to accompany it. But there is one lesson that I wish
+to draw. If it be true that love in us is thus the result
+of faith in the love of God, let us learn how we grow
+in love. You cannot say, 'Now I will make an effort
+to love.' The circulation of the blood, the pulsations
+of the heart, are not within the power of the will.
+But you can say, 'Now I will make an effort to trust.'
+For faith is in the power of the will, and when the
+Master said, 'Ye will not come unto me,' He taught us
+that unbelief is not a mere intellectual deficiency or
+perversity, but that it is the result, in the majority of
+cases&mdash;I might almost say in all-of an alienated will.
+Therefore, if you wish to love, do not try to work
+yourself into a hysteria of affection, but take into
+your hearts and minds the Christian facts, and mainly
+the fact of the Cross, which will set free the frozen
+and imprisoned fountains of your affections, and cause
+them to flow out abundantly in sweet water. First
+faith, then love; and get at love through faith. That
+is a piece of practical wisdom that it will do us all
+good to keep in mind.</p>
+
+<p>Then the third of the three, the topmost shoot, is
+hope. Hope is faith directed to the future. So it is
+clear enough that, unless I have that trust of which
+I have been speaking, I have none of the hope which
+the Apostle regards as flowing from it. But love has
+to do with hope quite as much, though in a different
+way, as faith has to do with it. For in the direct
+proportion in which we are taking into our hearts
+Christ and His truth, and letting our hearts go out in
+love towards Him and communion with Him, will the
+glories beyond brighten and consolidate and magnify
+themselves in our eyes. The hope of the Christian
+man is but the inference from his present faith, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160a" id="Page_160a">[160]</a></span>
+the joy and sweetness of his present love. For surely
+when we rise to the heights which are possible to us
+all, and on which I suppose most Christian people have
+been sometimes, though for far too brief seasons;
+when we rise to the heights of communion with God,
+anything seems more possible to us than that death,
+or anything that lies in the future, should have power
+over a tie so sweet, so strong, so independent of externals,
+and so all-sufficing in its sweetness. Thus we
+shall be sure that God is our portion for ever, in
+the precise degree in which, by faith and love, we
+feel that 'He is the strength of our hearts,' to-day
+and now. So, then, we have the three foundation-stones.</p>
+
+<p>And now a word or two, in the second place, about</p>
+
+<p>II. The fair building which rises on them.</p>
+
+<p>I have already half apologised for using the metaphor
+of a foundation and a building. I must repeat the confession
+that the symbol is an inadequate one. For the
+Apostle does not conceive of the work and labour and
+patience which are respectively allocated to these three
+graces as being superimposed upon them, as it were, by
+effort, so much as he thinks of them as growing out of
+them by their inherent nature. The work is 'the work
+of faith,' that which characterises faith, that which
+issues from it, that which is its garment, visible
+to the world, and the token of its reality and its
+presence. Faith works. It is the foundation of all
+true work; even in the lowest sense of the word we
+might almost say that. But in the Christian scheme
+it is eminently the underlying requisite for all work
+which God does not consider as busy idleness. I might
+here make a general remark, which, however, I need
+not dwell upon, that we have here the broad thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161a" id="Page_161a">[161]</a></span>
+which Christian people in all generations need to have
+drummed into their heads over and over again, and
+that is that inward experiences and emotions, and
+states of mind and heart, however good and precious,
+are so mainly as being the necessary foundations of
+conduct. What is the good of praying and feeling
+comfortable within, and having 'a blessed assurance,'
+a 'happy experience,' 'sweet communion,' and so on?
+What is the good of it all, if these things do not make
+us 'live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present
+world'? What is the good of the sails of a windmill
+going whirling round, if the machinery has been
+thrown out of gear, and the great stones which it
+ought to actuate are not revolving? What is the good
+of the screw of a steamer revolving, when she pitches,
+clean above the waves? It does nothing then to drive
+the vessel onwards, but will only damage the machinery.
+And Christian emotions and experiences which do not
+drive conduct are of as little use, often as perilous, and
+as injurious. If you want to keep your 'faith, love,
+hope,' sound and beneficial, set them to work. And
+do not be too sure that you have them, if they do not
+crave for work, whether you set them to it or not.</p>
+
+<p>'Your work of faith.' There is the whole of the
+thorny subject of the relation of faith and works
+packed into a nutshell. It is exactly what James said
+and it is exactly what a better than James said. When
+the Jews came to Him with their externalism, and
+thought that God was to be pleased by a whole rabble
+of separate good actions, and so said, 'What shall we
+do that we might work the works of God?' Jesus said,
+'Never mind about <i>works</i>. This is <i>the work</i> of God,
+that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent,' and out
+of that will come all the rest. That is the mother-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162a" id="Page_162a">[162]</a></span>tincture;
+everything will flow from that. So Paul
+says, 'Your work of faith.'</p>
+
+<p>Does your faith work? Perhaps I should ask other
+people rather than you. Do men see that your faith
+works; that its output is different from the output of
+men who are not possessors of a 'like precious faith'?
+Ask yourselves the question, and God help you to
+answer it.</p>
+
+<p>Love labours. Labour is more than work, for it
+includes the notion of toil, fatigue, difficulty, persistence,
+antagonism. Ah! the work of faith will never
+be done unless it is the toil of love. You remember
+how Milton talks about the immortal garland that is
+to be run for, 'not without dust and sweat.' The
+Christian life is not a leisurely promenade. The limit
+of our duty is not ease of work. There must be toil.
+And love is the only principle that will carry us
+through the fatigues, and the difficulties, and the
+oppositions which rise against us from ourselves and
+from without. Love delights to have a hard task set
+it by the beloved, and the harder the task the more
+poignant the satisfaction. Loss is gain when it brings
+us nearer the beloved. And whether our love be love
+to God, or its consequence, love to man, it is the only
+foundation on which toil for either God or man will
+ever permanently be rested. Do not believe in philanthropy
+which has not a bottom of faith, and do not
+believe in work for Christ which does not involve in toil.
+And be sure that you will do neither, unless you have
+both these things: the faith and the love.</p>
+
+<p>And then comes the last. Faith works, love toils,
+hope is patient. Is that all that 'hope' is? Not if you
+take the word in the narrow meaning which it has in
+modern English; but that was not what Paul meant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163a" id="Page_163a">[163]</a></span>
+He meant something a great deal more than passive
+endurance, great as that is. It is something to be able
+to say, in the pelting of a pitiless storm, 'Pour on! I
+will endure.' But it is a great deal more to be able, in
+spite of all, not to bate one jot of heart or hope, but
+'still bear up and steer right onward'; and that is
+involved in the true meaning of the word inadequately
+rendered 'patience' in the New Testament. For it is
+no passive virtue only, but it is a virtue which, in the
+face of the storm, holds its course; brave persistence,
+active perseverance, as well as meek endurance and
+submission.</p>
+
+<p>'Hope' helps us both to bear and to do. They tell us
+nowadays that it is selfish for a Christian man to
+animate himself, either for endurance or for activity,
+by the contemplation of those great glories that lie
+yonder. If that is selfishness, God grant we may all
+become a great deal more selfish than we are! No
+man labours in the Christian life, or submits to Christian
+difficulty, for the sake of going to heaven. At least,
+if he does, he has got on the wrong tack altogether.
+But if the motive for both endurance and activity be
+faith and love, then hope has a perfect right to come
+in as a subsidiary motive, and to give strength to the
+faith and rapture to the love. We cannot afford to
+throw away that hope, as so many of us do&mdash;not
+perhaps, intellectually, though I am afraid there is
+a very considerable dimming of the clearness, and a
+narrowing of the place in our thoughts, of the hope of
+a future blessedness, in the average Christian of this
+day&mdash;but practically we are all apt to lose sight of the
+recompense of the reward. And if we do, the faith and
+love, and the work and toil, and the patience will
+suffer. Faith will relax its grasp, love will cool down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164a" id="Page_164a">[164]</a></span>
+its fervour; and there will come a film over Hope's
+blue eye, and she will not see the land that is very far
+off. So, dear brethren, remember the sequence, 'faith,
+love, hope,' and remember the issues, 'work, toil,
+patience.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GOD'S TRUMPET</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'From you sounded out the word of God.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> i. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This is Paul's first letter. It was written very shortly
+after his first preaching of the Gospel in the great commercial
+city of Thessalonica. But though the period
+since the formation of the Thessalonian Church was
+so brief, their conversion had already become a matter
+of common notoriety; and the consistency of their
+lives, and the marvellous change that had taken place
+upon them, made them conspicuous in the midst of the
+corrupt heathen community in which they dwelt. And
+so says Paul, in the text, by reason of their work of
+faith and labour of love and patience of hope, they
+had become ensamples to all that believe, and loud
+proclaimers and witnesses of the Gospel which had
+produced this change.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle employs a word never used anywhere
+else in the New Testament to describe the conspicuous
+and widespread nature of this testimony of theirs. He
+says, 'The word of the Lord <i>sounded out</i>' from them.
+That phrase is one most naturally employed to describe
+the blast of a trumpet. So clear and ringing, so loud,
+penetrating, melodious, rousing, and full was their
+proclamation, by the silent eloquence of their lives, of
+the Gospel which impelled and enabled them to lead
+such lives. A grand ideal of a community of believers!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165a" id="Page_165a">[165]</a></span>
+If our churches to-day were nearer its realisation there
+would be less unbelief, and more attraction of wandering
+prodigals to the Father's house. Would that this
+saying were true of every body of professing believers!
+Would that from each there sounded out one clear
+accordant witness to Christ, in the purity and unworldliness
+of their Christlike lives!</p>
+
+<p>I. This metaphor suggests the great purpose of the
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>It is God's trumpet, His means of making His voice
+heard through all the uproar of the world. As the
+captain upon the deck in the gale will use his speaking-trumpet,
+so God's voice needs your voice. The Gospel
+needs to be passed through human lips in order that it
+may reach deaf ears. The purpose for which we
+have been apprehended of Christ is not merely our own
+personal salvation, whether we understand that in a
+narrow and more outward, or in a broader and more
+spiritual sense. No man is an end in himself, but every
+man, though he be partially and temporarily an end, is
+also a means. And just as, according to the other
+metaphor, the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, each
+particle of the dead dough, as soon as it is leavened and
+vitalised, becoming the medium for transmitting the
+strange, transforming, and living influence to the
+particle beyond, so all of us, if we are Christian people,
+have received that grace into our hearts, for our own
+sakes indeed, but also that through us might be manifested
+to the darkened eyes beyond, and through us
+might drop persuasively on the dull, cold ears that are
+further away from the Divine Voice, the great message
+of God's mercy. The Church is God's trumpet, and the
+purpose that He has in view in setting it in the world
+is to make all men know the fellowship of the mystery,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166a" id="Page_166a">[166]</a></span>
+and that through it there may ring out, as by some
+artificial means a poor human voice will be flung to a
+greater distance than it would otherwise reach, the
+gentle entreaties, and the glorious proclamation, and
+the solemn threatenings of the Word, the Incarnate as
+well as the written Word, of God.</p>
+
+<p>Of course all this is true, not only about communities,
+but it is true of a community, just because it is true of
+each individual member of it. The Church is worse than
+as 'sounding brass,' it is as <i>silent</i> brass and an <i>untinkling</i>
+cymbal, unless the individuals that belong to it recognise
+God's meaning in making them His children, and
+do their best to fulfil it. 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith
+the Lord. You are put into the witness-box; see that
+you speak out when you are there.</p>
+
+<p>II. Another point that this figure may suggest is,
+the <i>sort</i> of sound that should come from the trumpet.</p>
+
+<p>A trumpet note is, first of all, clear. There should be
+no hesitation in our witness; nothing uncertain in the
+sound that we give. There are plenty of so-called
+Christian people whose lives, if they bear any witness
+for the Master at all, are like the notes that some
+bungling learner will bring out of a musical instrument:
+hesitating, uncertain, so that you do not know
+exactly what note he wants to produce. How many of
+us, calling ourselves Christian people, testify on both
+sides; sometimes bearing witness for Christ; and alas!
+alas! oftener bearing witness against Him. Will the
+trumpet, the instrument of clear, ringing, unmistakable
+sounds, be the emblem of your Christian testimony?
+Would not some poor scrannel-pipe, ill-blown, be nearer
+the mark? The note should be clear.</p>
+
+<p>The note should be penetrating. There is no instrument,
+I suppose, that carries further than the ringing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167a" id="Page_167a">[167]</a></span>
+clarion that is often heard on the field of battle, above
+all the strife; and this little church at Thessalonica,
+a mere handful of people, just converted, in the very
+centre of a strong, compact, organised, self-confident,
+supercilious heathenism, insisted upon being heard,
+and got itself made audible, simply by the purity and
+the consistency of the lives of its members. So that
+Paul, a few weeks, or at most a few months, after the
+formation of the church, could say, 'From you sounded
+out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and
+Achaia,' your own province and the one next door to it,
+'but also in every place your faith to Godward is
+spread abroad.' No man knows how far his influence
+will go. No man can tell how far his example may
+penetrate. Thessalonica was a great commercial city.
+So is Manchester. Hosts of people of all sorts came
+into it as they come here. There were many different
+circles which would be intersected by the lives of this
+Christian church, and wherever its units went they
+carried along with them the conviction that they had
+turned from idols to serve the living God, and to wait
+for His Son from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear brethren, if our witness is to be worth
+anything it must have this penetrating quality. There
+is a difference in sounds as there is a difference in instruments.
+Some of them carry further than others. A
+clear voice will fling words to a distance that a thick,
+mumbling one never can attain. One note will travel
+much further than another. Do you see to it that your
+notes are of the penetrating sort.</p>
+
+<p>And then, again, the note should be a musical one.
+There is nothing to be done for God by harshness; nothing
+to be done by discords and gangling; nothing to be
+done by scolding and rebuke. The ordered sequence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168a" id="Page_168a">[168]</a></span>
+melodious sound will travel a great deal further than
+unmusical, plain speech. You can hear a song at a
+distance at which a saying would be inaudible. Which
+thing is an allegory, and this is its lesson,&mdash;Music goes
+further than discord; and the witness that a Christian
+man bears will travel in direct proportion as it is
+harmonious, and gracious and gentle and beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>And then, again, the note should be rousing. You do
+not play on a trumpet when you want to send people
+to sleep; dulcimers and the like are the things for that
+purpose. The trumpet means strung-up intensity,
+means a call to arms, or to rejoicing; means at any rate,
+vigour, and is intended to rouse. Let your witness
+have, for its utmost signification, 'Awake! thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead; and Christ shall give
+thee light.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Then, still further, take another thought that
+may be suggested from this metaphor, the silence of
+the loudest note.</p>
+
+<p>If you look at the context, you will see that all the
+ways in which the word of the Lord is represented as
+sounding out from the Thessalonian Church were
+deeds, not words. The context supplies a number of
+them. Such as the following are specified in it: their
+work; their toil, which is more than work; their
+patience; their assurance; their reception of the word,
+in much affliction with joy in the Holy Ghost; their
+faith to Godward; their turning to God from idols, to
+serve and to wait.</p>
+
+<p>That is all. So far as the context goes there might
+not have been a man amongst them who ever opened
+his mouth for Jesus Christ. We know not, of course,
+how far they were a congregation of silent witnesses,
+but this we know, that what Paul meant when he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169a" id="Page_169a">[169]</a></span>
+'The whole world is ringing with the voice of the word
+of God sounding from you,' was not their going up and
+down the world shouting about their Christianity, but
+their quiet living like Jesus Christ. That is a louder
+voice than any other.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! dear friends! it is with God's Church as it is
+with God's heavens; the 'stars in Christ's right hand'
+sparkle in the same fashion as the stars that He has
+set in the firmament. Of them we read: 'There is
+neither voice nor language, their speech is not heard';
+and yet, as man stands with bared head and hushed
+heart beneath the violet abysses of the heavens, 'their
+line' (or chord, the metaphor being that of a stringed
+instrument) 'is gone out through all the earth, and
+their words to the end of the world.' Silent as they
+shine, they declare the glory of God, and proclaim His
+handiwork. And so you may speak of Him without
+speaking, and though you have no gift of tongues the
+night may be filled with music, and your lives be
+eloquent of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>I do not mean to say that Christian men and women
+are at liberty to lock their lips from verbal proclamation
+of the Saviour they have found, but I do mean to
+say that if there was less talk and more living, the
+witness of God's Church would be louder and not
+lower; 'and men would take knowledge of us, that we
+had been with Jesus'; and of Jesus, that He had made
+us like Himself.</p>
+
+<p>IV. And so, lastly, let me draw one other thought
+from this metaphor, which I hope you will not think
+fanciful playing with a figure; and that is the breath
+that makes the music.</p>
+
+<p>If the Church is the trumpet, who blows it? God!
+It is by His Divine Spirit dwelling within us, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170a" id="Page_170a">[170]</a></span>
+breathing through us, that the harsh discords of our
+natural lives become changed into melody of praise
+and the music of witness for Him. Keep near Christ,
+live in communion with God, let Him breathe through
+you, and when His Spirit passes through your spirits
+their silence will become harmonious speech; and from
+you 'will sound out the word of the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>In a tropical country, when the sun goes behind a
+cloud, all the insect life that was cheerily chirping is
+hushed. In the Christian life, when the Son of Righteousness
+is obscured by the clouds born of our own
+carelessness and sin, all the music in our spirit ceases,
+and no more can we witness for Him. A scentless
+substance lying in a drawer, with a bit of musk, will
+become perfumed by contact, and will bring the
+fragrance wherever it is carried. Live near God, and
+let Him speak to you and in you; and then He will
+speak through you. And if He be the breath of your
+spiritual lives, and the soul of your souls, then, and
+only then, will your lives be music, the music witness,
+and the witness conviction. And only then will there
+be fulfilled what I pray there may be more and more
+fulfilled in us as a Christian community, this great word
+of our text, 'from you sounded out,' clear, rousing,
+penetrating, melodious, 'the word of the Lord,' so that
+we, with our poor preaching, need not to speak anything.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WALKING WORTHILY</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Walk worthy of God.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> ii. 12.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Here we have the whole law of Christian conduct in
+a nutshell. There may be many detailed commandments,
+but they can all be deduced from this one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171a" id="Page_171a">[171]</a></span>
+We are lifted up above the region of petty prescriptions,
+and breathe a bracing mountain air. Instead of
+regulations, very many and very dry, we have a
+principle which needs thought and sympathy in order
+to apply it, and is to be carried out by the free action
+of our own judgments.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is to be noticed that there are a good many
+other passages in the New Testament in which, in
+similar fashion, the whole sum of Christian conduct is
+reduced to a 'walking worthy' of some certain thing
+or other, and I have thought that it might aid in
+appreciating the many-sidedness and all-sufficiency of
+the great principles into which Christianity crystallises
+the law of our life, if we just gather these together
+and set them before you consecutively.</p>
+
+<p>They are these: we are told in our text to 'walk
+worthy of God.' Then again, we are enjoined, in other
+places, to 'walk worthy of the Lord,' who is Christ.
+Or again, 'of the Gospel of Christ.' Or again, 'of the
+calling wherewith we were called.' Or again, of the
+name of 'saints.' And if you put all these together,
+you will get many sides of one thought, the rule of
+Christian life as gathered into a single expression&mdash;correspondence
+with, and conformity to, a certain
+standard.</p>
+
+<p>I. And first of all, we have this passage of my text,
+and the other one to which I have referred, 'Walking
+worthy of the Lord,' by whom we are to understand
+Christ. We may put these together and say that the
+whole sum of Christian duty lies in conformity to the
+character of a Divine Person with whom we have
+loving relations.</p>
+
+<p>The Old Testament says: 'Be ye holy, for I the Lord
+your God am holy.' The New Testament says: 'Be ye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172a" id="Page_172a">[172]</a></span>
+imitators of God, and walk in love.' So then, whatever
+of flashing brightness and infinite profundity in
+that divine nature is far beyond our apprehension and
+grasp, there are in that divine nature elements&mdash;and
+those the best and divinest in it&mdash;which it is perfectly
+within the power of every man to copy.</p>
+
+<p>Is there anything in God that is more Godlike than
+righteousness and love? And is there any difference
+in essence between a man's righteousness and God's;&mdash;between
+a man's love and God's? The same gases
+make combustion in the sun and on the earth, and the
+spectroscope tells you that it is so. The same radiant
+brightness that flames burning in the love, and flashes
+white in the purity of God, even that may be reproduced
+in man.</p>
+
+<p>Love is one thing, all the universe over. Other
+elements of the bond that unites us to God are rather
+correspondent in us to what we find in Him. Our concavity,
+so to speak, answers to His convexity; our
+hollowness to His fulness; our emptiness to His all-sufficiency.
+So our faith, for instance, lays hold upon
+His faithfulness, and our obedience grasps, and bows
+before, His commanding will. But the love with
+which I lay hold of Him is like the love with which He
+lays hold on me; and righteousness and purity, howsoever
+different may be their accompaniments in an
+Infinite and uncreated Nature from what they have in
+our limited and bounded and progressive being, in
+essence are one. So, 'Be ye holy, for I am holy';
+'Walk in the light as He is in the light,' is the law
+available for all conduct; and the highest divine perfections,
+if I may speak of pre-eminence among them,
+are the imitable ones, whereby He becomes our
+Example and our Pattern.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173a" id="Page_173a">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Let no man say that such an injunction is vague or
+hopeless. You must have a perfect ideal if you are to
+live at all by an ideal. There cannot be any flaws in
+your pattern if the pattern is to be of any use. You
+aim at the stars, and if you do not hit them you may
+progressively approach them. We need absolute perfection
+to strain after, and one day&mdash;blessed be His
+name&mdash;we shall attain it. Try to walk worthy of God
+and you will find out how tight that precept grips, and
+how close it fits.</p>
+
+<p>The love and the righteousness which are to become
+the law of our lives, are revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
+Whatever may sound impracticable in the injunction
+to imitate God assumes a more homely and possible
+shape when it becomes an injunction to follow Jesus.
+And just as that form of the precept tends to make
+the law of conformity to the divine nature more
+blessed and less hopelessly above us, so it makes the
+law of conformity to the ideal of goodness less
+cold and unsympathetic. It makes all the difference
+to our joyfulness and freedom whether we are trying
+to obey a law of duty, seen only too clearly to be
+binding, but also above our reach, or whether we have
+the law in a living Person whom we have learned to
+love. In the one case there stands upon a pedestal
+above us a cold perfection, white, complete, marble;
+in the other case there stands beside us a living law in
+pattern, a Brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our
+flesh; whose hand we can grasp; whose heart we can
+trust, and of whose help we can be sure. To say to
+me: 'Follow the ideal of perfect righteousness,' is to
+relegate me to a dreary, endless struggling; to say to
+me, 'Follow your Brother, and be like your Father,' is
+to bring warmth and hope and liberty into all my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174a" id="Page_174a">[174]</a></span>
+effort. The word that says, 'Walk worthy of God,' is
+a royal law, the perfect law of perfect freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Again, when we say, 'Walk worthy of God,' we
+mean two things&mdash;one, 'Do after His example,' and the
+other, 'Render back to Him what He deserves for
+what He has done to you.' And so this law bids us
+measure, by the side of that great love that died on
+the Cross for us all, our poor imperfect returns of
+gratitude and of service. He has lavished all His
+treasure on you; what have you brought him back?
+He has given you the whole wealth of His tender pity,
+of His forgiving mercy, of His infinite goodness. Do
+you adequately repay such lavish love? Has He not
+'sown much and reaped little' in all our hearts?
+Has He not poured out the fulness of His affection,
+and have we not answered Him with a few grudging
+drops squeezed from our hearts? Oh! brethren!
+'Walk worthy of the Lord,' and neither dishonour Him
+by your conduct as professing children of His, nor
+affront Him by the wretched refuse and remnants of
+your devotion and service that you bring back to Him
+in response to His love to you.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now a word about the next form of this all-embracing
+precept. The whole law of our Christian
+life may be gathered up in another correspondence,
+'Walk worthy of the Gospel' (Phil. i. 27), in a manner
+conformed to that great message of God's love to us.</p>
+
+<p>That covers substantially the same ground as we have
+already been going over, but it presents the same ideas
+in a different light. It presents the Gospel as a rule of
+conduct. Now people have always been apt to think
+of it more as a message of deliverance than as a
+practical guide, as we all need to make an effort to
+prevent our natural indolence and selfishness from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175a" id="Page_175a">[175]</a></span>
+making us forget that the Gospel is quite as much
+a rule of conduct as a message of pardon.</p>
+
+<p>It is both by the same act. In the very facts on
+which our redemption depends lies the law of our
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>What was Paul's Gospel? According to Paul's own
+definition of it, it was this: 'How that Jesus Christ
+died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.' And
+the message that I desire now to bring to all you
+professing Christians is this: Do not always be
+looking at Christ's Cross only as your means of acceptance.
+Do not only be thinking of Christ's Passion as
+that which has barred for you the gates of punishment,
+and has opened for you the gates of the Kingdom
+of Heaven. It has done all that; but if you are going
+to stop there you have only got hold of a very maimed
+and imperfect edition of the Gospel. The Cross is your
+<i>pattern</i>, as well as the anchor of your hope and the
+ground of your salvation, if it is anything at all to
+you. And it is not the ground of your salvation and
+the anchor of your hope unless it is your pattern. It
+is the one in exactly the same degree in which it is the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>So all self-pleasing, all harsh insistence on your
+own claims, all neglect of suffering and sorrow and
+sin around you, comes under the lash of this condemnation:
+'They are not worthy of the Gospel.' And all
+unforgivingness of spirit and of temper in individuals
+and in nations, in public and in private matters, that,
+too, is in flagrant contradiction to the principles that are
+taught on the Cross to which you say you look for
+your salvation. Have you got forgiveness, and are
+you going out from the presence-chamber of the King
+to take your brother by the throat for the beggarly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176a" id="Page_176a">[176]</a></span>
+coppers that he owes you, and say: 'Pay me what
+thou owest!' when the Master has forgiven you all
+that great mountain of indebtedness which you owe
+Him? Oh, my brother! if Christian men and women
+would only learn to take away the scales from their
+eyes and souls; not looking at Christ's Cross with less
+absolute trustfulness, as that by which all their salvation
+comes, but also learning to look at it as closely
+and habitually as yielding the pattern to which their
+lives should be conformed, and would let the heart-melting
+thankfulness which it evokes when gazed at
+as the ground of our hope prove itself true by its leading
+them to an effort at imitating that great love, and
+so walking worthy of the Gospel, how their lives
+would be transformed! It is far easier to fetter your
+life with yards of red-tape prescriptions&mdash;do this, do
+not do that&mdash;far easier to out-pharisee the Pharisees
+in punctilious scrupulosities, than it is honestly, and
+for one hour, to take the Cross of Christ as the
+pattern of your lives, and to shape yourselves by
+that.</p>
+
+<p>One looks round upon a lethargic, a luxurious, a self-indulgent,
+a self-seeking, a world-besotted professing
+Church, and asks: 'Are these the people on whose
+hearts a cross is stamped?' Do these men&mdash;or rather
+let us say, do <i>we</i> live as becometh the Gospel which proclaims
+the divinity of self-sacrifice, and that the law
+of a perfect human life is perfect self-forgetfulness,
+even as the secret of the divine nature is perfect love?
+'Walk worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Then again, there is another form of this same
+general prescription which suggests to us a kindred
+and yet somewhat different standard. We are also
+bidden to bring our lives into conformity to, and cor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177a" id="Page_177a">[177]</a></span>respondence
+with, or, as the Bible has it, 'to walk
+worthy of the calling wherewith we are called'
+(Eph. iv. 1).</p>
+
+<p>God summons or invites us, and summons us to
+what? The words which follow our text answer,
+'Who calleth you into His own kingdom and glory.' All
+you Christian people have been invited, and if you are
+Christians you have accepted the invitation; and all
+you men and women, whether you are Christians or
+not, have been and are being invited and summoned
+into a state and a world (for the reference is to the
+future life), in which God's will is supreme, and all
+wills are moulded into conformity with that, and into
+a state and a world in which all shall&mdash;because they
+submit to His will&mdash;partake of His glory, the fulness
+of His uncreated light.</p>
+
+<p>That being the aim of the summons, that being the
+destiny that is held out before us all, ought not that
+destiny and the prospect of what we may be in the
+future, to fling some beams of guiding brightness on
+to the present?</p>
+
+<p>Men that are called to high functions prepare themselves
+therefor. If you knew that you were going away
+to Australia in six months, would you not be beginning
+to get your outfit ready? You Christian men profess
+to believe that you have been called to a condition in
+which you will absolutely obey God's will, and be the
+loyal subjects of His kingdom, and in which you will
+partake of God's glory. Well then, obey His will here,
+and let some scattered sparklets of that uncreated
+light that is one day going to flood your soul lie upon
+your face to-day. Do not go and cut your lives into
+two halves, one of them all contradictory to that
+which you expect in the other, but bring a harmony<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178a" id="Page_178a">[178]</a></span>
+between the present, in all its weakness and sinfulness,
+and that great hope and certain destiny that blazes on
+the horizon of your hope, as the joyful state to which
+you have been invited. 'Walk worthy of the calling
+to which you are called.'</p>
+
+<p>And again, that same thought of the destiny should
+feed our hope, and make us live under its continual
+inspiration. A walk worthy of such a calling and
+such a caller should know no despondency, nor any
+weary, heartless lingering, as with tired feet on a hard
+road. Brave good cheer, undimmed energy, a noble
+contempt of obstacles, a confidence in our final attainment
+of that purity and glory which is not depressed
+by consciousness of present failure&mdash;these are plainly
+the characteristics which ought to mark the advance
+of the men in whose ears such a summons from such
+lips rings as their marching orders.</p>
+
+<p>And a walk worthy of our calling will turn away
+from earthly things. If you believe that God has
+summoned you to His kingdom and glory, surely,
+surely, that should deaden in your heart the love and
+the care for the trifles that lie by the wayside. Surely,
+surely, if that great voice is inviting, and that merciful
+hand is beckoning you into the light, and showing you
+what you may possess there, it is not walking according
+to that summons if you go with your eyes fixed
+upon the trifles at your feet, and your whole heart
+absorbed in this present fleeting world. Unworldliness,
+in its best and purest fashion&mdash;by which I mean
+not only a contempt for material wealth and all that
+it brings, but the sitting loose by everything that is
+beneath the stars&mdash;unworldliness is the only walk
+that is 'worthy of the calling wherewith ye are
+called.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179a" id="Page_179a">[179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And if you hear that voice ringing like a trumpet
+call, or a commander's shout on the battlefield, into
+your ears, ever to stimulate you, to rebuke your
+lagging indifference; if you are ever conscious in your
+inmost hearts of the summons to His kingdom and
+glory, then, no doubt, by a walk worthy of it, you will
+make your calling sure; and there shall 'an entrance
+be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting
+kingdom.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. And the last of the phases of this prescription
+which I have to deal with is this. The whole Christian
+duty is further crystallised into the one command, to
+walk in a manner conformed to, and corresponding
+with, the character which is impressed upon us.</p>
+
+<p>In the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans
+(verse 2), we read about a very small matter, that it
+is to be done 'worthily of the saints.' It is only about
+the receiving of a good woman who was travelling
+from Corinth to Rome, and extending hospitality to
+her in such a manner as became professing Christians;
+but the very minuteness of the details to which the
+great principle is applied points a lesson. The biggest
+principle is not too big to be brought down to the
+narrowest details, and that is the beauty of principles
+as distinguished from regulations. Regulations try
+to be minute, and, however minute you make them,
+some case always starts up that is not exactly provided
+for in them, and so the regulations come to
+nothing. A principle does not try to be minute, but
+it casts its net wide and it gathers various cases into
+its meshes. Like the fabled tent in the old legend that
+could contract so as to have room for but one man, or
+expand wide enough to hold an army, so this great
+principle of Christian conduct can be brought down to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180a" id="Page_180a">[180]</a></span>
+giving 'Ph&oelig;be our sister, who is a servant of the
+church at Cenchrea,' good food and a comfortable
+lodging, and any other little kindnesses, when she
+comes to Rome. And the same principle may be
+widened out to embrace and direct us in the largest
+tasks and most difficult circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>'Worthily of saints'&mdash;the name is an omen, and
+carries in it rules of conduct. The root idea of 'saint'
+is 'one separated to God,' and the secondary idea
+which flows from that is 'one who is pure.'</p>
+
+<p>All Christians are 'saints.' They are consecrated
+and set apart for God's service, and in the degree in
+which they are conscious of and live out that consecration,
+they are pure.</p>
+
+<p>So their name, or rather the great fact which their
+name implies, should be ever before them, a stimulus
+and a law. We are bound to remember that we are
+consecrated, separated as God's possession, and that
+therefore purity is indispensable. The continual consciousness
+of this relation and its resulting obligations
+would make us recoil from impurity as instinctively
+as the sensitive plant shuts up its little green fingers
+when anything touches it; or as the wearer of a white
+robe will draw it up high above the mud on a filthy
+pavement. Walk 'worthily of saints' is another way
+of saying, Be true to your own best selves. Work up
+to the highest ideal of your character. That is far
+more wholesome than to be always looking at our
+faults and failures, which depress and tempt us to
+think that the actual is the measure of the possible,
+and the past or present of the future. There is no fear
+of self-conceit or of a mistaken estimate of ourselves.
+The more clearly we keep our best and deepest self
+before our consciousness, the more shall we learn a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181a" id="Page_181a">[181]</a></span>
+rigid judgment of the miserable contradictions to it in
+our daily outward life, and even in our thoughts and
+desires. It is a wholesome exhortation, when it
+follows these others of which we have been speaking
+(and not else), which bids Christians remember that
+they are saints and live up to their name.</p>
+
+<p>A Christian's inward and deepest self is better than
+his outward life. We have all convictions in our inmost
+hearts which we do not work out, and beliefs that do
+not influence us as we know they ought to do, and
+sometimes wish that they did. By our own fault our
+lives but imperfectly show their real inmost principle.
+Friction always wastes power before motion is produced.</p>
+
+<p>So then, we may well gather together all our duties
+in this final form of the all-comprehensive law, and
+say to ourselves, 'Walk worthily of saints.' Be true to
+your name, to your best selves, to your deepest selves.
+Be true to your separation for God's service, and to
+the purity which comes from it. Be true to the life
+which God has implanted in you. That life may be
+very feeble and covered by a great deal of rubbish, but
+it is divine. Let it work, let it out. Do not disgrace
+your name.</p>
+
+<p>These are the phases of the law of Christian conduct.
+They reach far, they fit close, they penetrate deeper
+than the needle points of minute regulations. If you
+will live in a manner corresponding to the character,
+and worthy of the love of God, as revealed in Christ,
+and in conformity with the principles that are enthroned
+upon His Cross, and in obedience to the destiny
+held forth in your high calling, and in faithfulness to
+the name that He Himself has impressed upon you,
+then your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182a" id="Page_182a">[182]</a></span>
+of the painful and punctilious pharisaical obedience to
+outward commands, and all things lovely and of good
+report will spring to life in your hearts and bear fruit
+in your lives.</p>
+
+<p>One last word&mdash;all these exhortations go on the
+understanding that you are a Christian, that you
+have taken Christ for your Saviour, and are resting
+upon Him, and recognising in Him the revelation of
+God, and in His Cross the foundation of your hope; that
+you have listened to, and yielded to, the divine summons,
+and that you have a right to be called a saint.
+Is that presumption true about you, my friend? If it
+is not, Christianity thinks that it is of no use wasting
+time talking to you about conduct.</p>
+
+<p>It has another word to speak to you first, and after
+you have heard and accepted it, there will be time
+enough to talk to you about rules for living. The
+first message which Christ sends to you by my lips is,
+Trust your sinful selves to Him as your only all-sufficient
+Saviour. When you have accepted Him, and are
+leaning on Him with all your weight of sin and suffering,
+and loving Him with your ransomed heart, then,
+and not till then, will you be in a position to hear His
+law for your life, and to obey it. Then, and not till
+then, will you appreciate the divine simplicity and
+breadth of the great command to walk worthy of God,
+and the divine tenderness and power of the motive
+which enforces it, and prints it on yielding and obedient
+hearts, even the dying love and Cross of His Son.
+Then, and not till then, will you know how the voice
+from heaven that calls you to His kingdom stirs the
+heart like the sound of a trumpet, and how the name
+which you bear is a perpetual spur to heroic service
+and priestly purity. Till then, the word which we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183a" id="Page_183a">[183]</a></span>
+would plead with you to listen to and accept is that
+great answer of our Lord's to those who came to Him
+for a rule of conduct, instead of for the gift of life:
+'This is the work of God, that ye should believe on
+Him whom He hath sent.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SMALL DUTIES AND THE GREAT HOPE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you; for ye
+yourselves are taught of God to love one another. 10. And indeed ye do it
+toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren,
+that ye increase more and more; 11. And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your
+own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12. That
+ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack
+of nothing. 13. But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning
+them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
+14. For if we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even so them also which sleep
+in Jesus will God bring with Him. 15. For this we say unto you by the word of
+the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall
+not prevent them which are asleep. 16. For the Lord Himself shall descend from
+heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:
+and the dead in Christ shall rise first; 17. Then we which are alive and remain
+shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:
+and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18. Wherefore comfort one another with
+these words.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> iv. 9-18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto
+you. 2. For yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord so cometh as a
+thief in the night.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> v. 1-2.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This letter was written immediately on the arrival of
+Silas and Timothy in Corinth (1 Thess. iii. 6, 'even now'),
+and is all flushed with the gladness of relieved anxiety,
+and throbs with love. It gains in pathetic interest
+when we remember that, while writing it, the Apostle
+was in the thick of his conflict with the Corinthian
+synagogue. The thought of his Thessalonian converts
+came to him like a waft of pure, cool air to a heated
+brow.</p>
+
+<p>The apparent want of connection in the counsels of
+the two last chapters is probably accounted for by
+supposing that he takes up, as they occurred to him,
+the points reported by the two messengers. But we
+may note that the plain, prosaic duties enjoined in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184a" id="Page_184a">[184]</a></span>
+verses 7-12 lead on to the lofty revelations of the rest
+of the context without any sense of a gap, just because
+to Paul the greatest truths had a bearing on the
+smallest duties, and the vision of future glory was
+meant to shape the homely details of present work.</p>
+
+<p>I. We need to make an effort to realise the startling
+novelty of 'love of the brethren' when this letter was
+written. The ancient world was honeycombed with
+rents and schisms, scarcely masked by political union.
+In the midst of a world of selfishness this new faith
+started up, and by some magic knit warring nationalities
+and hostile classes and wide diversities of culture
+and position into a strange whole, transcending all
+limits of race and language. The conception of brotherhood
+was new, and the realisation of it in Christian
+love was still more astonishing. The world wondered;
+but to the Christians the new affection was, we might
+almost say, instinctive, so naturally and spontaneously
+did it fill their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's graceful way of enjoining it here is no mere
+pretty compliment. The Thessalonians did not need to
+be bidden to love the brethren, for such love was a part
+of their new life, and breathed into their hearts by God
+Himself. They were drawn together by common
+relation to Jesus, and driven together by common
+alienation from the world. Occasions of divergence
+had not yet risen. The world had not yet taken on a
+varnish of Christianity. The new bond was still strong
+in its newness. So, short as had been the time since
+Paul landed at Neapolis, the golden chain of love bound
+all the Macedonian Christians together, and all that
+Paul had to exhort was the strengthening of its links
+and their tightening.</p>
+
+<p>That fair picture faded soon, but it still remains true<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185a" id="Page_185a">[185]</a></span>
+that the deeper our love to Jesus, the warmer will be
+our love to all His lovers. The morning glow may not
+come back to the prosaic noonday, but love to the
+brethren remains as an indispensable token of the
+Christian life. Let us try ourselves thereby.</p>
+
+<p>II. What have exhortations to steady work to do
+with exhortations to increasing love? Not much,
+apparently; but may not the link be, 'Do not suppose
+that your Christianity is to show itself only in emotions,
+however sweet; the plain humdrum tasks of a
+working man's life are quite as noble a field as the
+exalted heights of brotherly love.' A loving heart is
+good, but a pair of diligent hands are as good. The
+juxtaposition of these two commands preaches a lesson
+which we need quite as much as the Thessalonians did.
+Possibly, too, as we see more fully in the second Epistle,
+the new truths, which had cut them from their old
+anchorage, had set some of them afloat on a sea of unquiet
+expectation. So much of their old selves had been
+swept away, that it would be hard for some to settle
+down to the old routine. That is a common enough
+experience in all 'revivals,' and at Thessalonica it was
+intensified by speculations about Christ's coming.</p>
+
+<p>The 'quiet' which Paul would have us cultivate is not
+only external, but the inward tranquillity of a spirit
+calm because fixed on God and filled with love. The
+secret place of the Most High is ever still, and, if we dwell
+there, our hearts will not be disturbed by any tumults
+without. To 'do our own business' is quite a different
+thing from selfish 'looking on our own things,' for a
+great part of our business is to care for others, and
+nothing dries up sympathy and practical help more
+surely than a gossiping temper, which is perpetually
+buzzing about other people's concerns, and knows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186a" id="Page_186a">[186]</a></span>
+everybody's circumstances and duties better than its
+own. This restless generation, whose mental food is
+so largely the newspaper, with its floods of small-talk
+about people, be they politicians, ministers, or murderers,
+sorely needs these precepts. We are all so busy
+that we have no time for quiet meditation, and so much
+occupied with trivialities about others that we are
+strangers to ourselves. Therefore religious life is low
+in many hearts.</p>
+
+<p>The dignity of manual labour was a new doctrine to
+preach to Greeks, but Paul lays stress on it repeatedly
+in his letters to Thessalonica. Apparently most of the
+converts there were of the labouring class, and some of
+them needed the lesson of Paul's example as well as
+his precept. A Christian workman wielding chisel or
+trowel for Christ's sake will impress 'them that are
+without.' Dignity depends, not on the nature, but on
+the motive, of our work. 'A servant with this clause
+makes drudgery divine.' It is permissible to take the
+opinion of those who are not Christians into account,
+and to try to show them what good workmen Christ
+can turn out. It is right, too, to cultivate a spirit of
+independence, and to prefer a little earned to abundance
+given as a gift or alms. Perhaps some of the
+Thessalonians were trying to turn brotherly love to
+profit, and to live on their richer brethren. Such
+people infest the Church at all times.</p>
+
+<p>III. With what ease, like a soaring song-bird, the
+letter rises to the lofty height of the next verses, and
+how the note becomes more musical, and the style
+richer, more sonorous and majestic, with the changed
+subject! From the workshop to the descending Lord
+and the voice of the trumpet and the rising saints,
+what a leap, and yet how easily it is made! Happy we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187a" id="Page_187a">[187]</a></span>
+if we keep the future glory and the present duty thus
+side by side, and pass without jar from the one to the
+other!</p>
+
+<p>The special point which Paul has in view must be
+kept well in mind. Some of the Thessalonians seem
+to have been troubled, not by questions about the
+Resurrection, as the Corinthians afterwards were, but
+by a curious difficulty, namely, whether the dead saints
+would not be worse off at Christ's coming than the
+living, and to that one point Paul addresses himself.
+These verses are not a general revelation of the course
+of events at that coming, or of the final condition of
+the glorified saints, but an answer to the question,
+What is the relation between the two halves of the
+Church, the dead and the living, in regard to their
+participation in Christ's glory when He comes again?
+The question is answered negatively in verse 15,
+positively in verses 16 and 17.</p>
+
+<p>But, before considering them, note some other
+precious lessons taught here. That sweet and consoling
+designation for the dead, 'them who sleep in
+Jesus,' is Christ's gift to sorrowing hearts. No doubt,
+the idea is found in pagan thinkers, but always with
+the sad addition, 'an eternal sleep.' Men called death
+by that name in despair. The Christian calls it so
+because he knows that sleep implies continuous
+existence, repose, consciousness, and awaking. The
+sleepers are not dead, they will be roused to refreshed
+activity one day.</p>
+
+<p>We note how emphatically verse 14 brings out the
+thought that Jesus died, since He suffered all the
+bitterness of death, not only in physical torments, but
+in that awful sense of separation from God which is
+the true death in death, and that, because He did, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188a" id="Page_188a">[188]</a></span>
+ugly thing wears a softened aspect to believers, and is
+but sleep. He died that we might never know what
+the worst sting of death is.</p>
+
+<p>We note further that, in order to bring out the truth
+of the gracious change which has passed on death
+physical for His servants, the remarkable expression is
+used, in verse 14, 'fallen asleep through Jesus'; His
+mediatorial work being the reason for their death
+becoming sleep. Similarly, it is only in verse 16 that
+the bare word 'dead' is used about them, and there it
+is needed for emphasis and clearness. When we are
+thinking of Resurrection we can afford to look death
+in the face.</p>
+
+<p>We note that Paul here claims to be giving a new
+revelation made to him directly by Christ. 'By (or,
+"in") the word of the Lord' cannot mean less than
+that. The question arises, in regard to verse 15,
+whether Paul expected that the advent would come in
+his lifetime. It need not startle any if he were proved
+to have cherished such a mistaken expectation; for
+Christ Himself taught the disciples that the time of
+His second coming was a truth reserved, and not
+included in His gifts to them. But two things may be
+noted. First, that in the second Epistle, written very
+soon after this, Paul sets himself to damp down the
+expectation of the nearness of the advent, and points
+to a long course of historical development of incipient
+tendencies which must precede it; and, second, that
+his language here does not compel the conclusion that
+he expected to be alive at the second coming. For he
+is distinguishing between the two classes of the living
+and the dead, and he naturally puts himself in the
+class to which, at that time, he and his hearers
+belonged, without thereby necessarily deciding, or even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189a" id="Page_189a">[189]</a></span>
+thinking about, the question whether he and they
+would or would not belong to that class at the actual
+time of the advent.</p>
+
+<p>The revelation here reveals much, and leaves much
+unrevealed. It is perfectly clear on the main point.
+Negatively, it declares that the sleeping saints lose
+nothing, and are not anticipated or hindered in any
+blessedness by the living. Positively, it declares that
+they precede the living, inasmuch as they 'rise first';
+that is, before the living saints, who do not sleep, but
+are changed (1 Cor. xv. 51), are thus transfigured. Then
+the two great companies shall unitedly rise to meet the
+descending Lord; and their unity in Him, and, therefore,
+their fellowship with one another, shall be
+eternal.</p>
+
+<p>That great hope helps us to bridge the dark gorge of
+present separation. It leaves unanswered a host of
+questions which our lonely hearts would fain have
+cleared up; but it is enough for hope to hold by, and
+for sorrow to be changed into submission and anticipation.
+As to the many obscurities that still cling to the
+future, the meaning and the nature of the accompaniments,
+the shout, the trumpet, and the like, the way of
+harmonising the thought that the departed saints
+attend the descending Lord, with whom they dwell
+now, with the declaration here that they rise from the
+earth to meet Him, the question whether these who
+are thus caught up from earth to meet the Lord in the
+air come back again with Him to earth,&mdash;all these
+points of curious speculation we may leave. We know
+enough for comfort, for assurance of the perfect
+reunion of the saints who sleep in Jesus and of the
+living, and of the perfect blessedness of both wings of
+the great army. We may be content with what is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190a" id="Page_190a">[190]</a></span>
+clearly revealed, and be sure that, if what is unrevealed
+would have been helpful to us, He would have told us.
+We are to use the revelation for comfort and for
+stimulus, and we are to remember that 'times and
+seasons' are not told us, nor would the knowledge of
+them profit us.</p>
+
+<p>Paul took for granted that the Thessalonians remembered
+the Lord's word, which he had, no doubt, told
+them, that He would come 'as a thief in the night.' So
+he discourages a profitless curiosity, and exhorts to
+a continual vigilance. When He comes, it will be
+suddenly, and will wake some who live from a sinful
+sleep with a shock of terror, and the dead from a sweet
+sleep in Him with a rush of gladness, as in body and
+spirit they are filled with His life, and raised to share
+in His triumph.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SLEEPING THROUGH JESUS</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>' .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Them also which sleep in Jesus .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> iv. 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That expression is not unusual, in various forms, in
+the Apostle's writings. It suggests a very tender and
+wonderful thought of closeness and union between
+our Lord and the living dead, so close as that He is, as
+it were, the atmosphere in which they move, or the
+house in which they dwell. But, tender and wonderful
+as the thought is, it is not exactly the Apostle's
+idea here. For, accurately rendered&mdash;and accuracy in
+regard to Scripture language is not pedantry&mdash;the
+words run, 'Them which sleep <i>through</i> Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, that is a strange phrase, and, I suppose, its
+strangeness is the reason why our translators have
+softened it down to the more familiar and obvious 'in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191a" id="Page_191a">[191]</a></span>
+Jesus.' We can understand living through Christ, on
+being sacred through Christ, but what can <i>sleeping</i>
+through Christ mean? I shall hope to answer the
+question presently, but, in the meantime, I only wish
+to point out what the Apostle does say, and to plead
+for letting him say it, strange though it sounds. For
+the strange and the difficult phrases of Scripture are
+like the hard quartz reefs in which gold is, and if we
+slur them over we are likely to loose the treasure.
+Let us try if we can find what the gold here may
+be.</p>
+
+<p>Now, there are only two thoughts that I wish to
+dwell upon as suggested by these words. One is the
+softened aspect of death, and of the state of the
+Christian dead; and the other is the ground or cause
+of that softened aspect.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, the softened aspect of death, and of
+the state of the Christian dead.</p>
+
+<p>It is to Jesus primarily that the New Testament
+writers owe their use of this gracious emblem of sleep.
+For, as you remember, the word was twice upon our
+Lord's lips; once when, over the twelve-years-old maid
+from whom life had barely ebbed away, He said, 'She
+is not dead, but sleepeth'; and once when in regard of
+the man Lazarus, from whom life had removed further,
+He said, 'Our friend sleepeth, but I go that I may awake
+him out of sleep.' But Jesus was not the originator
+of the expression. You find it in the Old Testament,
+where the prophet Daniel, speaking of the end of the
+days and the bodily Resurrection, designates those who
+share in it as 'them that sleep in the dust of the earth.'
+And the Old Testament was not the sole origin of the
+phrase. For it is too natural, too much in accordance
+with the visibilities of death, not to have suggested itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192a" id="Page_192a">[192]</a></span>
+to many hearts, and been shrined in many languages.
+Many an inscription of Greek and Roman date speaks
+of death under this figure; but almost always it is
+with the added, deepened note of despair, that it is a
+sleep which knows no waking, but lasts through eternal
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the Christian thought associated with this
+emblem is the precise opposite of the pagan one. The
+pagan heart shrank from naming the ugly thing because
+it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled
+round the man, as he contemplated it, that he sought to
+drape the dreadfulness in some kind of thin, transparent
+veil, and to put the buffer of a word between him
+and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive
+for the use of the word is the precise opposite. He
+uses the gentler expression because the thing has
+become gentler.</p>
+
+<p>It is profoundly significant that throughout the
+whole of the New Testament the plain, naked word
+'death' is usually applied, not to the physical fact
+which we ordinarily designate by the name, but to
+the grim thing of which that physical fact is only the
+emblem and the parable, viz., the true death which
+lies in the separation of the soul from God; whilst
+predominately the New Testament usage calls the
+physical fact by some other gentler form of expression,
+because, as I say, the gentleness has enfolded the
+thing to be designated.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, you find one class of representations
+which speak of death as being a departing and a being
+with Christ; or which call it, as one of the apostles
+does, an 'exodus,' where it is softened down to be
+merely a change of environment, a change of locality.
+Then another class of representations speak of it as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193a" id="Page_193a">[193]</a></span>
+'putting off this my tabernacle,' or, the dissolution of
+the 'earthly house'&mdash;where there is a broad, firm line
+of demarcation drawn between the inhabitant and the
+habitation, and the thing is softened down to be a mere
+change of dwelling. Again, another class of expressions
+speak of it as being an 'offering,' where the main
+idea is that of a voluntary surrender, a sacrifice or
+libation of myself, and my life poured out upon the
+altar of God. But sweetest, deepest, most appealing
+to all our hearts, is that emblem of my text, 'them
+that sleep.' It is used, if I count rightly, some fourteen
+times in the New Testament, and it carries with
+it large and plain lessons, on which I touch but
+for a moment. What, then, does this metaphor say
+to us?</p>
+
+<p>Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether
+an attractive conception to some of us. If it be taken
+exclusively it is by no means wholesome. I suppose
+that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and the
+ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the
+notion of their activities being stiffened into slumber.
+But, dear friends, there are some of us like tired
+children in a fair, who would fain have done with the
+weariness, who have made experience of the distractions
+and bewildering changes, whose backs are
+stiffened with toil, whose hearts are heavy with loss.
+And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of
+shuffling off this weary coil of responsibilities and
+duties and tasks and sorrows, and of passing into
+indisturbance and repose, appeals. I believe, for my
+part, that, after all, the deepest longing of men&mdash;though
+they search for it through toil and effort&mdash;is
+for repose. As the poet has taught us, 'there is
+no joy but calm.' Every heart is weary enough, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194a" id="Page_194a">[194]</a></span>
+heavy laden, and labouring enough, to feel the sweetness
+of a promise of rest:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Sleep, full of rest from head to foot">
+<tr><td align='left'>'Sleep, full of rest from head to foot,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Yes! but the rest of which our emblem speaks is,
+as I believe, only applicable to the bodily frame. The
+word 'sleep' is a transcript of what sense enlightened
+by faith sees in that still form, with the folded hands
+and the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us
+remember that this repose, deep and blessed as it is,
+is not, as some would say, the repose of unconsciousness.
+I do not believe, and I would have you not
+believe, that this emblem refers to the vigorous,
+spiritual life, or that the passage from out of the
+toil and moil of earth into the calm of the darkness
+beyond has any power in limiting or suspending the
+vital force of the man.</p>
+
+<p>Why, the very metaphor itself tells us that the
+sleeper is not unconscious. He is parted from the
+outer world, he is unaware of externals. When
+Stephen knelt below the old wall, and was surrounded
+by howling fanatics that slew him, one moment he
+was gashed with stones and tortured, and the next 'he
+fell on sleep.' They might howl, and the stones fly as
+they would, and he was all unaware of it. Like Jonah
+sleeping in the hold, what mattered the roaring of the
+storm to him? But separation from externals does
+not mean suspense of life or of consciousness, and the
+slumberer often dreams, and is aware of himself persistently
+throughout his slumber. Nay! some of his
+faculties are set at liberty to work more energetically,
+because his connection with the outer world is for the
+time suspended.</p>
+
+<p>And so I say that what on the hither side is sleep,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195a" id="Page_195a">[195]</a></span>
+on the further side is awaking, and that the complex
+whole of the condition of the sainted dead may be
+described with equal truth by either metaphor; 'they
+sleep in Jesus'; or, 'when I awake I shall be satisfied
+with Thy likeness.'</p>
+
+<p>Scripture, as it seems to me, distinctly carries this
+limitation of the emblem. For what does it mean
+when the Apostle says that to depart and to be with
+Christ is far better? Surely he who thus spoke conceived
+that these two things were contemporaneous,
+the departing and the being with Him. And surely
+he who thus spoke could not have conceived that a
+millennium-long parenthesis of slumberous unconsciousness
+was to intervene between the moment of
+his decease and the moment of his fellowship with
+Jesus. How could a man prefer that dormant state
+to the state here, of working for and living with the
+Lord? Surely, being with Him must mean that we
+know where we are, and who is our companion.</p>
+
+<p>And what does that text mean: 'Ye are come unto
+the spirits of just men made perfect,' unless it means
+that of these two classes of persons who are thus
+regarded as brought into living fellowship, each is
+aware of the other? Does perfecting of the spirit
+mean the smiting of the spirit into unconsciousness?
+Surely not, and surely in view of such words as these,
+we must recognise the fact that, however limited and
+imperfect may be the present connection of the
+disembodied dead, who sleep in Christ, with external
+things, they know themselves, they know their home
+and their companion, and they know the blessedness
+in which they are lapped.</p>
+
+<p>But another thought which is suggested by this
+emblem is, as I have already said, most certainly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196a" id="Page_196a">[196]</a></span>
+idea of awaking. The pagans said, as indeed one of
+their poets has it, 'Suns can sink and return, but for
+us, when our brief light sinks, there is but one perpetual
+night of slumber.' The Christian idea of death
+is, that it is transitory as a sleep in the morning, and
+sure to end. As St. Augustine says somewhere, 'Wherefore
+are they called sleepers, but because in the day of
+the Lord they will be reawakened?'</p>
+
+<p>And so these are the thoughts, very imperfectly
+spoken, I know, which spring like flowers from this
+gracious metaphor 'them that sleep'&mdash;rest and awaking;
+rest and consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>II. Note the ground of this softened aspect.</p>
+
+<p>They 'sleep through Him.' It is by reason of Christ
+and His work, and by reason of that alone, that death's
+darkness is made beautiful, and death's grimness is
+softened down to this. Now, in order to grasp the
+full meaning of such words as these of the Apostle, we
+must draw a broad distinction between the physical
+fact of the ending of corporeal life and the mental
+condition which is associated with it by us. What we
+call death, if I may so say, is a complex thing&mdash;a bodily
+phenomenon <i>plus</i> conscience, the sense of sin, the
+certainty of retribution in the dim beyond. And you
+have to take these elements apart. The former remains,
+but if the others are removed, the whole has changed
+its character and is become another thing, and a very
+little thing.</p>
+
+<p>The mere physical fact is a trifle. Look at it as you
+see it in the animals; look at it as you see it in men
+when they actually come to it. In ninety-nine cases
+out of a hundred it is painless and easy, and men sink
+into slumber. Strange, is it not, that so small a reality
+should have power to cast over human life so immense<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197a" id="Page_197a">[197]</a></span>
+and obscuring a shadow! Why? Because, as the
+Apostle says, 'the sting of death is sin,' and if you can
+take the sting out of it, then there is very little to
+fear, and it comes down to be an insignificant and
+transient element in our experience.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the death of Jesus Christ takes away, if I
+may so say, the <i>nimbus</i> of apprehension and dread
+arising from conscience and sin, and the forecast of
+retribution. There is nothing left for us to face except
+the physical fact, and any rough soldier, with a coarse,
+red coat upon him, will face that for eighteenpence
+a day, and think himself well paid. Jesus Christ
+has abolished death, leaving the mere shell, but taking
+all the substance out of it. It has become a different
+thing to men, because in that death of His He has
+exhausted the bitterness, and has made it possible
+that we should pass into the shadow, and not fear
+either conscience or sin or judgment.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection I cannot but notice with what a
+profound meaning the Apostle, in this very verse, uses
+the bare, naked word in reference to Him, and the
+softened one in reference to us. 'If we believe that
+Jesus Christ <i>died</i> and rose again, even so them also
+which sleep.' Ah! yes! He died indeed, bearing all
+that terror with which men's consciences have invested
+death. He died indeed, bearing on Himself the sins of
+the world. He died that no man henceforward need
+ever die in that same fashion. His death makes our
+deaths sleep, and His Resurrection makes our sleep
+calmly certain of a waking.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear 'brethren, I would not have you ignorant
+concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not
+even as others which have no hope.' And I would
+have you to remember that, whilst Christ by His work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198a" id="Page_198a">[198]</a></span>
+has made it possible that the terror may pass away,
+and death may be softened and minimised into slumber,
+it will not be so with you&mdash;unless you are joined to
+Him, and by trust in the power of His death and the
+overflowing might of His Resurrection, have made sure
+that what He has passed through, you will pass
+through, and where He is, and what He is, you will
+be also.</p>
+
+<p>Two men die by one railway accident, sitting side by
+side upon one seat, smashed in one collision. But
+though the outward fact is the same about each, the
+reality of their deaths is infinitely different. The one
+falls asleep through Jesus, in Jesus; the other dies
+indeed, and the death of his body is only a feeble
+shadow of the death of his spirit. Do you knit yourself
+to the Life, which is Christ, and then 'he that
+believeth on Me shall never die.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE WORK AND ARMOUR OF THE CHILDREN OF THE DAY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and
+love; and for a helmet the hope of salvation.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> v. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This letter to the Thessalonians is the oldest book of
+the New Testament. It was probably written within
+something like twenty years of the Crucifixion; long,
+therefore, before any of the Gospels were in existence.
+It is, therefore, exceedingly interesting and instructive
+to notice how this whole context is saturated with
+allusions to our Lord's teaching, as it is preserved in
+these Gospels; and how it takes for granted that
+the Thessalonian Christians were familiar with the
+very words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199a" id="Page_199a">[199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For instance: 'Yourselves know perfectly that the
+day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night'
+(ver. 2). How did these people in Thessalonica know
+that? They had been Christians for a year or so only;
+they had been taught by Paul for a few weeks only,
+or a month or two at the most. How did they know
+it? Because they had been told what the Master had
+said: 'If the goodman of the house had known at
+what hour the thief would come, he would have
+watched, and would not have suffered his house to be
+broken up.'</p>
+
+<p>And there are other allusions in the context almost
+as obvious: 'The children of the light.' Who said
+that? Christ, in His words: 'The children of this
+world are wiser than the children of light.' 'They
+that sleep, sleep in the night, and if they be drunken,
+are drunken in the night.' Where does that metaphor
+come from? 'Take heed lest at any time ye be overcharged
+with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the
+cares of this life, and so that day come upon you
+unawares.' 'Watch, lest coming suddenly He find
+you sleeping!'</p>
+
+<p>So you see all the context reposes upon, and presupposes
+the very words, which you find in our present
+existing Gospels, as the words of the Lord Jesus. And
+this is all but contemporaneous, and quite independent,
+evidence of the existence in the Church, from the
+beginning, of a traditional teaching which is now preserved
+for us in that fourfold record of His life.</p>
+
+<p>Take that remark for what it is worth; and now
+turn to the text itself with which I have to deal in this
+sermon. The whole of the context may be said to be
+a little dissertation upon the moral and religious uses
+of the doctrine of our Lord's second coming. In my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200a" id="Page_200a">[200]</a></span>
+text these are summed up in one central injunction
+which has preceding it a motive that enforces it, and
+following it a method that ensures it. 'Let us be
+sober'; that is the centre thought; and it is buttressed
+upon either side by a motive and a means. 'Let us
+who are of the day,' or 'since we are of the day,&mdash;be
+sober.' And let us <i>be</i> it by 'putting on the breastplate
+and helmet of faith, love, and hope.' These, then, are
+the three points which we have to consider.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, this central injunction, into which all the
+moral teaching drawn from the second coming of
+Christ is gathered&mdash;'Let us be sober.' Now, I do not
+suppose we are altogether to omit any reference to the
+literal meaning of this word. The context seems to
+show that, by its reference to night as the season for
+drunken orgies. Temperance is moderation in regard
+not only to the evil and swinish sin of drunkenness,
+which is so manifestly contrary to all Christian integrity
+and nobility of character, but in regard to the far more
+subtle temptation of another form of sensual indulgence&mdash;gluttony.
+The Christian Church needed to be
+warned of that, and if these people in Thessalonica
+needed the warning I am quite sure that we need it.
+There is not a nation on earth which needs it more
+than Englishmen. I am no ascetic, I do not want to
+glorify any outward observance, but any doctor in
+England will tell you that the average Englishman eats
+and drinks a great deal more than is good for him.
+It is melancholy to think how many professing
+Christians have the edge and keenness of their intellectual
+and spiritual life blunted by the luxurious
+and senseless table-abundance in which they habitually
+indulge. I am quite sure that water from the spring
+and barley-bread would be a great deal better for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201a" id="Page_201a">[201]</a></span>
+their souls, and for their bodies too, in the case of many
+people who call themselves Christians. Suffer a word
+of exhortation, and do not let it be neglected because
+it is brief and general. Sparta, after all, is the best
+place for a man to live in, next to Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>But, passing from that, let us turn to the higher
+subject with which the Apostle is here evidently
+mainly concerned. What is the meaning of the exhortation
+'Be sober'? Well, first let me tell you
+what I think is not the meaning of it. It does not
+mean an unemotional absence of fervour in your
+Christian character.</p>
+
+<p>There is a kind of religious teachers who are always
+preaching down enthusiasm, and preaching up what
+they call a 'sober standard of feeling' in matters of
+religion. By which, in nine cases out of ten, they
+mean precisely such a tepid condition as is described
+in much less polite language, when the voice from
+heaven says, 'Because thou art neither cold nor hot
+I will spue thee out of My mouth.' That is the real
+meaning of the 'sobriety' that some people are always
+desiring you to cultivate. I should have thought that
+the last piece of furniture which any Christian Church
+in the twentieth century needed was a refrigerator!
+A poker and a pair of bellows would be very much
+more needful for them. For, dear brethren, the truths
+that you and I profess to believe are of such a nature,
+so tremendous either in their joyfulness and beauty,
+or in their solemnity and awfulness, that one would
+think that if they once got into a man's head and
+heart, nothing but the most fervid and continuous
+glow of a radiant enthusiasm would correspond to
+their majesty and overwhelming importance. I venture
+to say that the only consistent Christian is the enthu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202a" id="Page_202a">[202]</a></span>siastic
+Christian; and that the only man who will ever
+do anything in this world for God or man worth doing
+is the man who is not <i>sober</i>, according to that cold-blooded
+definition which I have been speaking about,
+but who is all ablaze with an enkindled earnestness
+that knows no diminution and no cessation.</p>
+
+<p>Paul, the very man that is exhorting here to sobriety,
+was the very type of an enthusiast all his life. So
+Festus thought him mad, and even in the Church at
+Corinth there were some to whom in his fervour, he
+seemed to be 'beside himself' (2 Cor. v. 13).</p>
+
+<p>Oh! for more of that insanity! You may make up
+your minds to this; that any men or women that are
+in thorough earnest, either about Christianity or about
+any other great, noble, lofty, self-forgetting purpose,
+will have to be content to have the old Pentecostal
+charge flung at them:&mdash;'These men are full of new
+wine!' Well for the Church, and well for the men who
+deserve the taunt; for it means that they have learned
+something of the emotion that corresponds to such
+magnificent and awful verities as Christian faith
+converses with.</p>
+
+<p>I did not intend to say so much about that; I turn
+now for a moment to the consideration of what this
+exhortation really means. It means, as I take it,
+mainly this: the prime Christian duty of self-restraint
+in the use and the love of all earthly treasures and
+pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>I need not do more than remind you how, in the
+very make of a man's soul, it is clear that unless there
+be exercised rigid self-control he will go all to pieces.
+The make of human nature, if I may say so, shows
+that it is not meant for a democracy but a monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>Here are within us many passions, tastes, desires,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203a" id="Page_203a">[203]</a></span>
+most of them rooted in the flesh, which are as blind
+as hunger and thirst are. If a man is hungry, the
+bread will satisfy him all the same whether he steals
+it or not; and it will not necessarily be distasteful
+even if it be poisoned. And there are other blind
+impulses and appetites in our nature which ask nothing
+except this:&mdash;'Give me my appropriate gratification,
+though all the laws of God and man be broken in order
+to get it!'</p>
+
+<p>And so there has to be something like an eye given
+to these blind beasts, and something like a directing
+hand laid upon these instinctive impulses. The true
+temple of the human spirit must be built in stages, the
+broad base laid in these animal instincts; above them,
+and controlling them, the directing and restraining
+will; above it the understanding which enlightens it
+and them; and supreme over all the conscience with
+nothing between it and heaven. Where that is not
+the order of the inner man you get wild work. You
+have set 'beggars on horseback,' and we all know
+where they go! The man who lets passion and inclination
+guide is like a steam-boat with all the furnaces
+banked up, with the engines going full speed, and
+nobody at the wheel. It will drive on to the rocks, or
+wherever the bow happens to point, no matter though
+death and destruction lie beyond the next turn of the
+screw. That is what you will come to unless you live
+in the habitual exercise of rigid self-control.</p>
+
+<p>And that self-control is to be exercised mainly, or
+at least as one very important form of it, in regard to
+our use and estimate of the pleasures of this present
+life. Yes! it is not only from the study of a man's
+make that the necessity for a very rigid self-government
+appears, but the observation of the conditions and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204a" id="Page_204a">[204]</a></span>
+circumstances in which he is placed points the same
+lesson. All round about him are hands reaching out
+to him drugged cups. The world with all its fading
+sweet comes tempting him, and the old fable fulfils
+itself&mdash;Whoever takes that Circe's cup and puts it to
+his lips and quaffs deep, turns into a swine, and sits
+there imprisoned at the feet of the sorceress for
+evermore!</p>
+
+<p>There is only one thing that will deliver you from
+that fate, my brother. 'Be sober,' and in regard to the
+world and all that it offers to us&mdash;all joy, possession,
+gratification&mdash;'set a knife to thy throat if thou be a
+man given to appetite.' There is no noble life possible
+on any other terms&mdash;not to say there is no Christian
+life possible on any other terms&mdash;but suppression and
+mortification of the desires of the flesh and of the
+spirit. You cannot look upwards and downwards at
+the same moment. Your heart is only a tiny room
+after all, and if you cram it full of the world, you
+relegate your Master to the stable outside. 'Ye cannot
+serve God and Mammon.' 'Be sober,' says Paul, then,
+and cultivate the habit of rigid self-control in regard
+to this present. Oh! what a melancholy, solemn
+thought it is that hundreds of professing Christians in
+England, like vultures after a full meal, have so gorged
+themselves with the garbage of this present life that
+they cannot fly, and have to be content with moving
+along the ground, heavy and languid. Christian men
+and women, are you keeping yourselves in spiritual
+health by a very sparing use of the dainties and delights
+of earth? Answer the question to your own souls and
+to your Judge.</p>
+
+<p>II. And now let me turn to the other thoughts that
+lie here. There is, secondly, a motive which backs up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205a" id="Page_205a">[205]</a></span>
+and buttresses this exhortation. 'Let us who are of
+the day'&mdash;or as the Revised Version has it a little more
+emphatically and correctly, 'Let us, since we are of the
+day, be sober.' 'The day'; what day? The temptation
+is to answer the question by saying&mdash;'of course the
+specific day which was spoken about in the beginning
+of the section, "the day of the Lord," that coming judgment
+by the coming Christ.' But I think that although,
+perhaps, there may be some allusion here to that specific
+day, still, if you will look at the verses which immediately
+precede my text, you will see that in them the
+Apostle has passed from the thought of 'the day of
+the Lord' to that of day in general. That is obvious,
+I think, from the contrast he draws between the 'day'
+and the 'night,' the darkness and the light. If so,
+then, when he says 'the children of the day' he does not
+so much mean&mdash;though that is quite true&mdash;that we are,
+as it were, akin to that day of judgment, and may
+therefore look forward to it without fear, and in
+quiet confidence, lifting up our heads because our
+redemption draws nigh; but rather he means that
+Christians are the children of that which expresses
+knowledge, and joy, and activity. Of these things the
+day is the emblem, in every language and in every
+poetry. The day is the time when men see and hear,
+the symbol of gladness and cheer all the world over.</p>
+
+<p>And so, says Paul, you Christian men and women
+belong to a joyous realm, a realm of light and knowledge,
+a realm of purity and righteousness. You are
+children of the light; a glad condition which involves
+many glad and noble issues. Children of the light
+should be brave, children of the light should not be
+afraid of the light, children of the light should be
+cheerful, children of the light should be buoyant,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206a" id="Page_206a">[206]</a></span>
+children of the light should be transparent, children of
+the light should be hopeful, children of the light should
+be pure, and children of the light should walk in this
+darkened world, bearing their radiance with them;
+and making things, else unseen, visible to many a dim
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>But while these emblems of cheerfulness, hope,
+purity, and illumination are gathered together in that
+grand name&mdash;'Ye are the children of the day,' there is
+one direction especially in which the Apostle thinks
+that that consideration ought to tell, and that is the
+direction of self-restraint. '<i>Noblesse oblige!</i>'&mdash;the
+aristocracy are bound to do nothing low or dishonourable.
+The children of the light are not to stain their
+hands with anything foul. Chambering and wantonness,
+slumber and drunkenness, the indulgence in the
+appetites of the flesh,&mdash;all that may be fitting for the
+night, it is clean incongruous with the day.</p>
+
+<p>Well, if you want that turned into pedestrian prose&mdash;which
+is no more clear, but a little less emotional&mdash;it
+is just this: You Christian men and women belong&mdash;if
+you are Christians&mdash;to another state of things from
+that which is lying round about you; and, therefore,
+you ought to live in rigid abstinence from these things
+that are round about you.</p>
+
+<p>That is plain enough surely, nor do I suppose that I
+need to dwell on that thought at any length. We
+belong to another order of things, says Paul; we carry
+a day with us in the midst of the night. What follows
+from that? Do not let us pursue the wandering
+lights and treacherous will-o'-the-wisps that lure men
+into bottomless bogs where they are lost. If we have
+light in our dwellings whilst Egypt lies in darkness,
+let it teach us to eat our meat with our loins girded,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207a" id="Page_207a">[207]</a></span>
+and our staves in our hands, not without bitter herbs,
+and ready to go forth into the wilderness. You do
+not belong to the world in which you live, if you
+are Christian men and women; you are only camped
+here. Your purposes, thoughts, hopes, aspirations,
+treasures, desires, delights, go up higher. And so, if
+you are children of the day, be self-restrained in your
+dealings with the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>III. And, last of all, my text points out for us a
+method by which this great precept may be fulfilled:&mdash;'Putting
+on the breastplate of faith and love, and for
+an helmet the hope of salvation.'</p>
+
+<p>That, of course, is the first rough draft occurring in
+Paul's earliest Epistle, of an image which recurs at
+intervals, and in more or less expanded form in other
+of his letters, and is so splendidly worked out in detail
+in the grand picture of the Christian armour in the
+Epistle to the Ephesians.</p>
+
+<p>I need not do more than just remind you of the
+difference between that finished picture and this outline
+sketch. Here we have only defensive and not
+offensive armour, here the Christian graces are somewhat
+differently allocated to the different parts of the
+armour. Here we have only the great triad of
+Christian graces, so familiar on our lips&mdash;faith, hope,
+charity. Here we have faith and love in the closest
+possible juxtaposition, and hope somewhat more
+apart. The breastplate, like some of the ancient
+hauberks, made of steel and gold, is framed and forged
+out of faith and love blended together, and faith and
+love are more closely identified in fact than faith and
+hope, or than love and hope. For faith and love have
+the same object&mdash;and are all but contemporaneous.
+Wherever a man lays hold of Jesus Christ by faith,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208a" id="Page_208a">[208]</a></span>
+there cannot but spring up in his heart love to Christ;
+and there is no love without faith. So that we may
+almost say that faith and love are but the two throws
+of the shuttle, the one in the one direction and the
+other in the other; whereas hope comes somewhat
+later in a somewhat remoter connection with faith,
+and has a somewhat different object from these other
+two. Therefore it is here slightly separated from its
+sister graces. Faith, love, hope&mdash;these three form the
+defensive armour that guard the soul; and these three
+make self-control possible. Like a diver in his dress,
+who is let down to the bottom of the wild, far-weltering
+ocean, a man whose heart is girt by faith and
+charity, and whose head is covered with the helmet of
+hope, may be dropped down into the wildest sea of
+temptation and of worldliness, and yet will walk dry
+and unharmed through the midst of its depths, and
+breathe air that comes from a world above the restless
+surges.</p>
+
+<p>And in like manner the cultivation of faith, charity,
+and hope is the best means for securing the exercise
+of sober self-control.</p>
+
+<p>It is an easy thing to say to a man, 'Govern yourself!'
+It is a very hard thing with the powers that any
+man has at his disposal to do it. As somebody said
+about an army joining the rebels, 'It's a bad job when
+the extinguisher catches fire!' And that is exactly the
+condition of things in regard to our power of self-government.
+The powers that should control are
+largely gone over to the enemy, and become traitors.</p>
+
+<p>'Who shall keep the very keepers?' is the old question,
+and here is the answer:&mdash;You cannot execute the
+gymnastic feat of 'erecting yourself above yourself'
+any more than a man can take himself by his own coat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209a" id="Page_209a">[209]</a></span>
+collar and lift himself up from the ground with his
+own arms. But you can cultivate faith, hope, and
+charity, and these three, well cultivated and brought
+to bear upon your daily life, will do the governing
+for you. Faith will bring you into communication
+with all the power of God. Love will lead you into a
+region where all the temptations round you will be
+touched as by an Ithuriel spear, and will show their
+foulness. And hope will turn away your eyes from
+looking at the tempting splendours around, and fix
+them upon the glories that are above.</p>
+
+<p>And so the reins will come into your hands in an
+altogether new manner, and you will be able to be king
+over your own nature in a fashion that you did not
+dream of before, if only you will trust in Christ, and
+love Him, and fix your desires on the things above.</p>
+
+<p>Then you will be able to govern yourself when you
+let Christ govern you. The glories that are to be done
+away, that gleam round you like foul, flaring tallow-candles,
+will lose all their fascination and brightness,
+by reason of the glory that excelleth, the pure starlike
+splendour of the white inextinguishable lights of
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>And when by faith, charity, and hope you have
+drunk of the new wine of the kingdom, the drugged
+and opiate cup which a sorceress world presents,
+jewelled though it be, will lose its charms, and it
+will not be hard to turn from it and dash it to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>God help you, brother, to be 'sober,' for unless you
+are 'you cannot see the kingdom of God!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210a" id="Page_210a">[210]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WAKING AND SLEEPING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live
+together with Him.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> v. 10.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In these words the Apostle concludes a section of this,
+his earliest letter, in which he has been dealing with
+the aspect of death in reference to the Christian.
+There are two very significant usages of language in
+the context which serve to elucidate the meaning of
+the words of our text, and to which I refer for a moment
+by way of introduction.</p>
+
+<p>The one is that throughout this portion of his letter
+the Apostle emphatically reserves the word 'died' for
+Jesus Christ, and applies to Christ's followers only the
+word 'sleep.' Christ's death makes the deaths of those
+who trust Him a quiet slumber. The other is that the
+antithesis of waking and sleep is employed in two
+different directions in this section, being first used to
+express, by the one term, simply physical life, and by
+the other, physical death; and secondly, to designate
+respectively the moral attitude of Christian watchfulness
+and that of worldly apathy to things unseen and
+drowsy engrossment with the present.</p>
+
+<p>So in the words immediately preceding my text, we
+read, 'let us not sleep, as do others, but let us watch
+and be sober.' The use of the antithesis in our text is
+chiefly the former, but there cannot be discharged
+from one of the expressions, 'wake,' the ideas which
+have just been associated with it, especially as the
+word which is translated 'wake' is the same as that
+just translated in the sixth verse, 'let us watch.' So
+that here there is meant by it, not merely the condition
+of life but that of Christian life&mdash;sober-minded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211a" id="Page_211a">[211]</a></span>
+vigilance and wide-awakeness to the realities of being.
+With this explanation of the meanings of the words
+before us, we may now proceed to consider them a little
+more minutely.</p>
+
+<p>I. Note the death which is the foundation of life.</p>
+
+<p>Recalling what I have said as to the precision and
+carefulness with which the Apostle varies his expressions
+in this context; speaking of Christ's death only
+by that grim name, and of the death of His servants
+as being merely a slumber, we have for the first
+thought suggested in reference to Christ's death, that
+it exhausted all the bitterness of death. Physically,
+the sufferings of our Lord were not greater, they
+were even less, than that of many a man. His voluntary
+acceptance of them was peculiar to Himself. But
+His death stands alone in this, that on His head was
+concentrated the whole awfulness of the thing. So
+far as the mere external facts go, there is nothing
+special about it. But I know not how the shrinking
+of Jesus Christ from the Cross can be explained without
+impugning His character, unless we see in His
+death something far more terrible than is the common
+lot of men. To me Gethsemane is altogether mysterious,
+and that scene beneath the olives shatters to
+pieces the perfectness of His character, unless we
+recognise that there it was the burden of the world's
+sin, beneath which, though His will never faltered, His
+human power tottered. Except we understand that, it
+seems to me that many who derived from Jesus Christ
+all their courage, bore their martyrdom better than
+He did; and that the servant has many a time been
+greater than his Lord. But if we take the Scripture
+point of view, and say, 'The Lord has made to meet
+upon Him the iniquity of us all,' then we can under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212a" id="Page_212a">[212]</a></span>stand
+the agony beneath the olives, and the cry from
+the Cross, 'Why hast Thou forsaken Me?'</p>
+
+<p>Further, I would notice that this death is by the
+Apostle set forth as being the main factor in man's
+redemption. This is the first of Paul's letters, dating
+long before the others with which we are familiar.
+Whatever may have been the spiritual development of
+St. Paul in certain directions after his conversion&mdash;and
+I do not for a moment deny that there was such&mdash;it
+is very important to notice that the fundamentals
+of his Christology and doctrine of salvation were the
+same from the beginning to the end, and that in this,
+his first utterance, he lays down, as emphatically and
+clearly as ever afterwards he did, the great truth that
+Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on the Cross,
+thereby secured man's redemption. Here he isolates
+the death from the rest of the history of Christ, and
+concentrates the whole light of his thought upon the
+Cross, and says, There! that is the power by which men
+have been redeemed. I beseech you to ask yourselves
+whether these representations of Christian truth adhere
+to the perspective of Scripture, which do not in
+like manner set forth in the foreground of the whole
+the atoning death of Jesus Christ our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>Then note, further, that this death, the fountain of
+life, is a death for us. Now I know, of course, that the
+language here does not necessarily involve the idea of
+one dying instead of, but only of one dying on behalf
+of, another. But then I come to this question, In what
+conceivable sense, except the sense of bearing the
+world's sins, and, therefore, mine, is the death of Jesus
+Christ of advantage to me? Take the Scripture narratives.
+He died by the condemnation of the Jewish
+courts as a blasphemer; by the condemnation of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213a" id="Page_213a">[213]</a></span>
+supercilious Roman court&mdash;cowardly in the midst of
+its superciliousness&mdash;as a possible rebel, though the
+sentencer did not believe in the reality of the charges.
+I want to know what good that is to me? He died,
+say some people, as the victim of a clearer insight and
+a more loving heart than the men around Him could
+understand. What advantage is that to me?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, brethren! there is no meaning in the words 'He
+died for us' unless we understand that the benefit of
+His death lies in the fact that it was the sacrifice and
+satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; and that,
+therefore, He died for us.</p>
+
+<p>But then remember, too, that in this expression is
+set forth, not only the objective fact of Christ's death
+for us, but much in reference to the subjective emotions
+and purposes of Him who died. Paul was
+writing to these Thessalonians, of whom none, I
+suppose, except possibly a few Jews who might be
+amongst them, had ever seen Jesus Christ in the flesh,
+or known anything about Him. And yet he says to
+them, 'Away across the ocean there, Jesus Christ died
+for you men, not one of whom had ever appealed to His
+heart through His eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>The principle involved is capable of the widest
+possible expansion. When Christ went to the Cross
+there was in His heart, in His purposes, in His desires,
+a separate place for every soul of man whom He
+embraced, not with the dim vision of some philanthropist,
+who looks upon the masses of unborn generations
+as possibly beneficially affected by some of his
+far-reaching plans, but with the individualising and
+separating knowledge of a divine eye, and the love of a
+divine heart. Jesus Christ bore the sins of the world
+because He bore in His sympathies and His purposes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214a" id="Page_214a">[214]</a></span>
+the sins of each single soul. Yours and mine and all
+our fellows' were there. Guilt and fear and loneliness,
+and all the other evils that beset men because
+they have departed from the living God, are floated
+away</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="By the water and the blood">
+<tr><td align='left'>'By the water and the blood</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">From Thy wounded side which flowed';</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and as the context teaches us, it is because He died for
+us that He is our Lord, and because He died for every
+man that He is every man's Master and King.</div>
+
+<p>II. Note, secondly, the transformation of our lives
+and deaths affected thereby.</p>
+
+<p>You may remember that, in my introductory remarks,
+I pointed out the double application of that antithesis
+of waking or sleeping in the context as referring in one
+case to the fact of physical life or death, and in the
+other to the fact of moral engrossment with the
+slumbering influences of the present, or of Christian
+vigilance. I carry some allusion to both of these ideas
+in the remarks that I have to make.</p>
+
+<p>Through Jesus Christ life may be quickened into
+watchfulness. It is not enough to take waking as
+meaning living, for you may turn the metaphor round
+and say about a great many men that living means
+dreamy sleeping. Paul speaks in the preceding verses
+of 'others' than Christians as being asleep, and their
+lives as one long debauch and slumber in the night.
+Whilst, in contrast with physical death, physical life
+may be called 'waking'; the condition of thousands of
+men, in regard to all the higher faculties, activities,
+and realities of being, is that of somnambulists&mdash;they
+are walking indeed, but they are walking in their
+sleep. Just as a man fast asleep knows nothing of the
+realities round him; just as he is swallowed up in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215a" id="Page_215a">[215]</a></span>
+own dreams, so many walk in a vain show. Their
+highest faculties are dormant; the only real things do
+not touch them, and their eyes are closed to these.
+They live in a region of illusions which will pass away
+at cock-crowing, and leave them desolate. For some
+of us here living is only a distempered sleep, troubled
+by dreams which, whether they be pleasant or bitter,
+equally lack roots in the permanent realities to which
+we shall wake some day. But if we hold by Jesus
+Christ, who died for us, and let His love constrain us,
+His Cross quicken us, and the might of His great
+sacrifice touch us, and the blood of sprinkling be
+applied to our eyeballs as an eye-salve, that we may
+see, we shall wake from our opiate sleep&mdash;though it
+may be as deep as if the sky rained soporifics upon us&mdash;and
+be conscious of the things that are, and have
+our dormant faculties roused, and be quickened into
+intense vigilance against our enemies, and brace ourselves
+for our tasks, and be ever looking forward to
+that joyful hope, to that coming which shall bring
+the fulness of waking and of life. So, you professing
+Christians, do you take the lessons of this text? A
+sleeping Christian is on the high road to cease to be a
+Christian at all. If there be one thing more comprehensively
+imperative upon us than another, it is this,
+that, belonging, as we do by our very profession, to
+the day, and being the children of the light, we shall
+neither sleep nor be drunken, but be sober, watching
+as they who expect their Lord. You walk amidst
+realities that will hide themselves unless you gaze for
+them; therefore, watch. You walk amidst enemies
+that will steal subtly upon you, like some gliding
+serpent through the grass, or some painted savage in
+the forest; therefore, watch. You expect a Lord to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216a" id="Page_216a">[216]</a></span>
+come from heaven with a relieving army that is to
+raise the siege and free the hard-beset garrison from
+its fears and its toilsome work; therefore, watch.
+'They that sleep, sleep in the night.' They who are
+Christ's should be like the living creatures in the
+Revelation, all eyes round about, and every eye gazing
+on things unseen and looking for the Master when He
+comes.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the death of Christ will soften
+our deaths into slumber. The Apostle will not call
+what the senses call death, by that dread name, which
+was warranted when applied to the facts of Christ's
+death. The physical fact remaining the same, all that
+is included under the complex whole called death
+which makes its terrors, goes, for a man who keeps
+fast hold of Christ who died and lives. For what
+makes the sting of death? Two or three things. It is
+like some poisonous insect's sting, it is a complex
+weapon. One side of it is the fear of retribution.
+Another side of it is the shrinking from loneliness.
+Another side of it is the dread of the dim darkness of
+an unknown future. And all these are taken clean
+away. Is it guilt, dread of retribution? 'Thou shalt
+answer, Lord, for me.' Is it loneliness? In the valley of
+darkness 'I will be with thee. My rod and My staff will
+comfort thee.' Is it a shrinking from the dim unknown
+and all the familiar habitudes and occupations of the
+warm corner where we have lived? 'Jesus Christ has
+brought immortality to light by the Gospel.' We do
+<i>not</i>, according to the sad words of one of the victims of
+modern advanced thought, pass by the common road
+into the great darkness, but by the Christ-made living
+Way into the everlasting light. And so it is a misnomer
+to apply the same term to the physical fact plus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217a" id="Page_217a">[217]</a></span>
+the accompaniment of dread and shrinking and fear of
+retribution and solitude and darkness, and to the
+physical fact invested with the direct and bright
+opposites of all these.</p>
+
+<p>Sleep is rest; sleep is consciousness; sleep is the
+prophecy of waking. We know not what the condition
+of those who sleep in Jesus may be, but we know
+that the child on its mother's breast, and conscious
+somehow, in its slumber, of the warm place where its
+head rests, is full of repose. And they that sleep in
+Jesus will be <i>so</i>. Then, whether we wake or sleep does
+not seem to matter so very much.</p>
+
+<p>III. The united life of all who live with Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Christ's gift to men is the gift of life in all senses of
+that word, from the lowest to the highest. That life,
+as our text tells us, is altogether unaffected by death.
+We cannot see round the sharp angle where the valley
+turns, but we know that the path runs straight on
+through the gorge up to the throat of the pass&mdash;and so
+on to the 'shining table-lands whereof our God Himself
+is Sun and Moon.' There are some rivers that run
+through stagnant lakes, keeping the tinge of their
+waters, and holding together the body of their stream
+undiverted from its course, and issuing undiminished
+and untarnished from the lower end of the lake. And
+so the stream of our lives may run through the Dead
+Sea, and come out below none the worse for the black
+waters through which it has forced its way. The life
+that Christ gives is unaffected by death. Our creed is
+a risen Saviour, and the corollary of that creed is, that
+death touches the circumference, but never gets
+near the man. It is hard to believe, in the face of
+the foolish senses; it is hard to believe, in the
+face of aching sorrow. It is hard to-day to believe, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218a" id="Page_218a">[218]</a></span>
+the face of passionate and ingenious denial, but it is
+true all the same. Death is sleep, and sleep is life.</p>
+
+<p>And so, further, my text tells us that this life is life
+with Christ. We know not details, we need not know
+them. Here we have the presence of Jesus Christ, if
+we love Him, as really as when He walked the earth.
+Ay! more really, for Jesus Christ is nearer to us who,
+having not seen Him, love Him, and somewhat know
+His divinity and His sacrifice, than He was to the men
+who companied with Him all the time that He went in
+and out amongst them, whilst they were ignorant of
+who dwelt with them, and entertained the Lord of
+angels and men unawares. He is with us, and it is the
+power and the privilege and the joy of our lives to
+realise His presence. That Lord who, whilst He was
+on earth, was the Son of Man which is in heaven, now
+that He is in heaven in His corporeal humanity is the
+Son of God who dwells with us. And as He dwells
+with us, if we love Him and trust Him, so, but in
+fashion incapable of being revealed to us, now does He
+dwell with those of whose condition this is the only
+and all-sufficing positive knowledge which we have,
+that they are 'absent from the body; present with the
+Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Further, that united life is a social life. The whole
+force of my text is often missed by English readers,
+who run into one idea the two words 'together with.'
+But if you would put a comma after 'together,' you
+would understand better what Paul meant. He refers
+to two forms of union. Whether we wake or sleep we
+shall live all aggregated together, and all aggregated
+'together' because each is 'with Him.' That is to say,
+union with Jesus Christ makes all who partake of that
+union, whether they belong to the one side of the river<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219a" id="Page_219a">[219]</a></span>
+or the other, into a mighty whole. They are together
+because they are with the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose a great city, and a stream flowing through
+its centre. The palace and all pertaining to the court
+are on one side of the water; there is an outlying
+suburb on the other, of meaner houses, inhabited by
+poor and humble people. But yet it is one city. 'Ye
+are come unto the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the
+living God, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.'
+We are knit together by one life, one love, one thought;
+and the more we fix our hearts on the things which
+those above live among and by, the more truly are we
+knit to them. As a quaint old English writer says,
+'They are gone but into another pew in the same
+church.'</p>
+
+<p>We are one in Him, and so there will be a perfecting
+of union in reunion; and the inference so craved for
+by our hearts seems to be warranted to our understandings,
+that that society above, which is the perfection
+of society, shall not be lacking in the elements of
+mutual recognition and companionship, without which
+we cannot conceive of society at all. 'And so we shall
+ever be with the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Dear friends, I beseech you to trust your sinful souls
+to that dear Lord who bore you in His heart and mind
+when He bore His cross to Calvary and completed the
+work of your redemption. If you will accept Him as
+your sacrifice and Saviour, when He cried 'It is
+finished,' united to Him your lives will be quickened
+into intense activity and joyful vigilance and expectation,
+and death will be smoothed into a quiet falling
+asleep. 'The shadow feared of man,' that strikes
+threateningly across every path, will change as we
+approach it, if our hearts are anchored on Him who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220a" id="Page_220a">[220]</a></span>
+died for us, into the Angel of Light to whom God has
+given charge concerning us to bear up our feet upon
+His hands, and land us in the presence of the Lord and
+in the perfect society of those who love Him. And so
+shall we live together, and all together, with Him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>EDIFICATION</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Edify one another.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> v. 11.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I do not intend to preach about that clause only, but I
+take it as containing, in the simplest form, one of the
+Apostle's favourite metaphors which runs through all
+his letters, and the significance of which, I think, is
+very little grasped by ordinary readers.</p>
+
+<p>'Edify one another.' All metaphorical words tend
+to lose their light and colour, and the figure to get faint,
+in popular understanding. We all know that 'edifice'
+means a building; we do not all realise that 'edify'
+means <i>to build up</i>. And it is a great misfortune that
+our Authorised Version, in accordance with the somewhat
+doubtful principle on which its translators proceeded,
+varies the rendering of the one Greek word so
+as to hide the frequent recurrence of it in the apostolic
+teaching. The metaphor that underlies it is the notion
+of building up a structure. The Christian idea of the
+structure to be built up is that it is a temple. I wish
+in this sermon to try to bring out some of the manifold
+lessons and truths that lie in this great figure, as
+applied to the Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>Now, glancing over the various uses of the phrase in
+the New Testament, I find that the figure of 'building,'
+as the great duty of the Christian life, is set forth
+under three aspects; self-edification, united edification,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221a" id="Page_221a">[221]</a></span>
+and divine edification. And I purpose to look at these
+in order.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, self-edification.</p>
+
+<p>According to the ideal of the Christian life that runs
+through the New Testament, each Christian man is a
+dwelling-place of God's, and his work is to build himself
+up into a temple worthy of the divine indwelling.
+Now, I suppose that the metaphor is such a natural
+and simple one that we do not need to look for any
+Scriptural basis of it. But if we did, I should be disposed
+to find it in the solemn antithesis with which the
+Sermon on the Mount is closed, where there are the two
+houses pictured, the one built upon the rock and standing
+firm, and the other built upon the sand. But that
+is perhaps unnecessary.</p>
+
+<p>We are all builders; building up&mdash;what? Character,
+ourselves. But what sort of a thing is it that we are
+building? Some of us pigsties, in which gross, swinish
+lusts wallow in filth; some of us shops; some of us
+laboratories, studies, museums; some of us amorphous
+structures that cannot be described. But the Christian
+man is to be building himself up into a temple of God.
+The aim which should ever burn clear before us, and
+preside over even our smallest actions, is that which
+lies in this misused old word, 'edify' yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing about a structure is the foundation.
+And Paul was narrow enough to believe that the one
+foundation upon which a human spirit could be built
+up into a hallowed character is Jesus Christ. He is the
+basis of all our certitude. He is the anchor for all our
+hopes. To Him should be referred all our actions; for
+Him and by Him our lives should be lived. On Him
+should rest, solid and inexpugnable, standing four-square
+to all the winds that blow, the fabric of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222a" id="Page_222a">[222]</a></span>
+characters. Jesus Christ is the pattern, the motive
+which impels, and the power which enables, me to rear
+myself into a habitation of God through the Spirit.
+Whilst I gladly acknowledge that very lovely structures
+may be reared upon another foundation than Him, I
+would beseech you all to lay this on your hearts and
+consciences, that for the loftiest, serenest beauty of
+character there is but one basis upon which it can be
+rested. 'Other foundation can no man lay than that
+which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another aspect of this same metaphor,
+not in Paul's writings but in another part of the New
+Testament, where we read: 'Ye, beloved, building up
+yourselves on your most holy faith.' So that, in a subordinate
+sense, a man's faith is the basis upon which
+he can build such a structure of character; or, to put it
+into other words&mdash;in regard to the man himself, the
+first requisite to the rearing of such a fabric as God
+will dwell in is that he, by his own personal act of
+faith, should have allied himself to Jesus Christ, who
+is the foundation; and should be in a position to draw
+from Him all the power, and to feel raying out from
+Him all the impulses, and lovingly to discern in Him
+all the characteristics, which make Him a pattern for
+all men in their building.</p>
+
+<p>The first course of stone that we lay is Faith; and
+that course is, as it were, mortised into the foundation,
+the living Rock. He that builds on Christ cannot
+build but by faith. The two representations are complementary
+to one another, the one, which represents
+Jesus Christ as the foundation, stating the ultimate
+fact, and the other, which represents faith as the
+foundation, stating the condition on which we come
+into vital contact with Christ Himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223a" id="Page_223a">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, further, in this great thought of the Christian
+life being substantially a building up of oneself on
+Jesus is implied the need for continuous labour. You
+cannot build up a house in half an hour. You cannot
+do it, as the old fable told us that Orpheus did, by
+music, or by wishing. There must be dogged, hard,
+continuous, life-long effort if there is to be this building
+up. No man becomes a saint <i>per saltum</i>. No man
+makes a character at a flash. The stones are actions;
+the mortar is that mystical, awful thing, habit; and
+deeds cemented together by custom rise into that
+stately dwelling-place in which God abides. So, there
+is to be a life-long work in character, gradually rearing
+it into His likeness.</p>
+
+<p>The metaphor also carries with it the idea of orderly
+progression. There are a number of other New Testament
+emblems which set forth this notion of the true
+Christian ideal as being continual growth. For instance,
+'first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn
+in the ear,' represents it as resembling vegetable
+growth, while elsewhere it is likened to the growth of
+the human body. Both of these are beautiful images,
+in that they suggest that such progressive advancement
+is the natural consequence of life; and is in one
+aspect effortless and instinctive.</p>
+
+<p>But then you have to supplement that emblem with
+others, and there comes in sharp contrast to it the
+metaphor which represents the Christian progress as
+being warfare. There the element of resistance is emphasised,
+and the thought is brought out that progress
+is to be made in spite of strong antagonisms, partly to
+be found in external circumstances, and partly to be
+found in our own treacherous selves. The growth of
+the corn or of the body does not cover the whole facts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224a" id="Page_224a">[224]</a></span>
+of the case, but there must be warfare in order to
+growth.</p>
+
+<p>There is also the other metaphor by which this
+Christian progress, which is indispensable to the
+Christian life, and is to be carried on, whatever may
+oppose it, is regarded as a race. There the idea of the
+great, attractive, but far-off future reward comes into
+view, as well as the strained muscles and the screwed-up
+energy with which the runner presses towards the
+mark. But we have not only to fling the result forward
+into the future, and to think of the Christian life
+as all tending towards an end, which end is not realised
+here; but we have to think of it, in accordance with
+this metaphor of my text, as being continuously progressive,
+so as that, though unfinished, the building is
+there; and much is done, though all is not accomplished,
+and the courses rise slowly, surely, partially
+realising the divine Architect's ideal, long before the
+headstone is brought out with shoutings and tumult
+of acclaim. A continuous progress and approximation
+towards the perfect ideal of the temple completed, consecrated,
+and inhabited by God, lies in this metaphor.</p>
+
+<p>Is that <i>you</i>, Christian man and woman? Is the
+notion of progress a part of <i>your</i> working belief? Are
+<i>you</i> growing, fighting, running, building up yourselves
+more and more in your holy faith? Alas! I cannot
+but believe that the very notion of progress has died
+out from a great many professing Christians.</p>
+
+<p>There is one more idea in this metaphor of self-edification,
+viz., that our characters should be being
+modelled by us on a definite plan, and into a harmonious
+whole. I wonder how many of us in this chapel this
+morning have ever spent a quiet hour in trying to set
+clearly before ourselves what we want to make of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225a" id="Page_225a">[225]</a></span>selves,
+and how we mean to go about it. Most of us
+live by haphazard very largely, even in regard to outward
+things, and still more entirely in regard to our
+characters. Most of us have not consciously before us,
+as you put a pattern-line before a child learning to
+write, any ideal of ourselves to which we are really
+seeking to approximate. Have you? And could you
+put it into words? And are you making any kind of
+intelligent and habitual effort to get at it? I am
+afraid a great many of us, if we were honest, would
+have to say, No! If a man goes to work as his own
+architect, and has a very hazy idea of what it is that he
+means to build, he will not build anything worth the
+trouble. If your way of building up yourselves is, as
+Aaron said his way of making the calf was, putting
+all into the fire, and letting chance settle what comes
+out, nothing will come out better than a calf. Brother!
+if you are going to build, have a plan, and let the plan
+be the likeness of Jesus Christ. And then, with continuous
+work, and the exercise of continuous faith,
+which knits you to the foundation, 'build up yourselves
+for an habitation of God.'</p>
+
+<p>II. We have to consider united edification.</p>
+
+<p>There are two streams of representation about this
+matter in the Pauline Epistles, the one with which I
+have already been dealing, which does not so often
+appear, and the other which is the habitual form of
+the representation, according to which the Christian
+community, as a whole, is a temple, and building up is
+a work to be done reciprocally and in common. We
+have that representation with special frequency and
+detail in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where perhaps
+we may not be fanciful in supposing that the great
+prominence given to it, and to the idea of the Church<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226a" id="Page_226a">[226]</a></span>
+as the temple of God, may have been in some degree
+due to the existence, in that city, of one of the seven
+wonders of the world, the Temple of Diana of the
+Ephesians.</p>
+
+<p>But, be that as it may, what I want to point out is
+that united building is inseparable from the individual
+building up of which I have been speaking.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is often very hard for good, conscientious
+people to determine how much of their efforts ought
+to be given to the perfecting of their own characters
+in any department, and how much ought to be given
+to trying to benefit and help other people. I wish you
+to notice that one of the most powerful ways of building
+up myself is to do my very best to build up others.
+Some, like men in my position, for instance, and others
+whose office requires them to spend a great deal of
+time and energy in the service of their fellows, are
+tempted to devote themselves too much to building up
+character in other people, and to neglect their own.
+It is a temptation that we need to fight against, and
+which can only be overcome by much solitary meditation.
+Some of us, on the other hand, may be tempted,
+for the sake of our own perfecting, intellectual cultivation,
+or improvement in other ways, to minimise the
+extent to which we are responsible for helping and
+blessing other people. But let us remember that the
+two things cannot be separated; and that there is
+nothing that will make a man more like Christ, which
+is the end of all our building, than casting himself
+into the service of his fellows with self-oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Peter said, 'Master! let us make here three tabernacles.'
+Ay! But there was a demoniac boy down
+below, and the disciples could not cast out the demon.
+The Apostle did not know what he said when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227a" id="Page_227a">[227]</a></span>
+preferred building up himself, by communion with
+God and His glorified servants, to hurrying down into
+the valley, where there were devils to fight and broken
+hearts to heal. Build up yourselves, by all means; if
+you do you will have to build up your brethren. 'The
+edifying of the body of Christ' is a plain duty which
+no Christian man can neglect without leaving a tremendous
+gap in the structure which he ought to rear.</p>
+
+<p>The building resulting from united edification is
+represented in Scripture, not as the agglomeration of a
+number of little shrines, the individuals, but as one
+great temple. That temple grows in two respects, both
+of which carry with them imperative duties to us
+Christian people. It grows by the addition of new
+stones. And so every Christian is bound to seek to
+gather into the fold those that are wandering far
+away, and to lay some stone upon that sure foundation.
+It grows, also, by the closer approximation of
+all the members one to another, and the individual
+increase of each in Christlike characteristics. And
+we are bound to help one another therein, and to
+labour earnestly for the advancement of our brethren,
+and for the unity of God's Church. Apart from such
+efforts our individual edifying of ourselves will become
+isolated, the results one-sided, and we ourselves shall
+lose much of what is essential to the rearing in ourselves
+of a holy character. 'What God hath joined
+together let not man put asunder.' Neither seek to
+build up yourselves apart from the community, nor
+seek to build up the community apart from yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, the Apostle, in his writings, sets forth
+another aspect of this general thought, viz., divine
+edification.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228a" id="Page_228a">[228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he spoke to the elders of the church of
+Ephesus he said that Christ was able 'to build them
+up.' When he wrote to the Corinthians he said, 'Ye
+are <i>God's</i> building.' To the Ephesians he wrote, 'Ye
+are built for an habitation of God <i>through the Spirit</i>.'
+And so high above all our individual and all our united
+effort he carries up our thoughts to the divine Master-builder,
+by whose work alone a Paul, when he lays the
+foundation, and an Apollos, when he builds thereupon,
+are of any use at all.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, dear brethren, we have to base all our efforts
+on this deeper truth, that it is God who builds us into
+a temple meet for Himself, and then comes to dwell in
+the temple that He has built.</p>
+
+<p>So let us keep our hearts and minds expectant of,
+and open for, that Spirit's influences. Let us be sure
+that we are using all the power that God does give us.
+His work does not supersede mine. My work is to
+avail myself of His. The two thoughts are not contradictory.
+They correspond to, and fill out, each
+other, though warring schools of one-eyed theologians
+and teachers have set them in antagonism. 'Work
+<i>out</i> .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. for it is God that worketh <i>in</i>.' That is the
+true reconciliation. 'Ye are God's building; build up
+yourselves in your most holy faith.'</p>
+
+<p>If God is the builder, then boundless, indomitable
+hope should be ours. No man can look at his own
+character, after all his efforts to mend it, without
+being smitten by a sense of despair, if he has only his
+own resources to fall back upon. Our experience is
+like that of the monkish builders, according to many
+an old legend, who found every morning that yesterday's
+work had been pulled down in the darkness by
+demon hands. There is no man whose character is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229a" id="Page_229a">[229]</a></span>
+anything more than a torso, an incomplete attempt to
+build up the structure that was in his mind&mdash;like the
+ruins of half-finished palaces and temples which
+travellers came across sometimes in lands now desolate,
+reared by a forgotten race who were swept away by
+some unknown calamity, and have left the stones half-lifted
+to their courses, half-hewed in their quarries, and
+the building gaunt and incomplete. But men will never
+have to say about any of God's architecture, He 'began
+to build and was not able to finish.' As the old prophecy
+has it, 'His hands have laid the foundation of the house,
+His hands shall also finish it.' Therefore, we are entitled
+to cherish endless hope and quiet confidence that we,
+even we, shall be reared up into an habitation of God
+through the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>What are you building? 'Behold, I lay in Zion for a
+foundation a stone.' Let every man take heed <i>what</i>
+and <i>how</i> and <i>that</i> he buildeth thereon.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTINUAL PRAYER AND ITS EFFECTS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> v. 16-18.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The peculiarity and the stringency of these three
+precepts is the unbroken continuity which they require.
+To rejoice, to pray, to give thanks, are easy
+when circumstances favour, as a taper burns steadily
+in a windless night; but to do these things always is
+as difficult as for the taper's flame to keep upright
+when all the winds are eddying round it. 'Evermore'&mdash;'without
+ceasing'&mdash;'in everything'&mdash;these qualifying
+words give the injunctions of this text their grip
+and urgency. The Apostle meets the objections which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230a" id="Page_230a">[230]</a></span>
+he anticipates would spring to the lips of the Thessalonians,
+to the effect that he was requiring impossibilities,
+by adding that, hard and impracticable as
+they might think such a constant attitude of mind
+and heart, 'This is the will of God in Christ Jesus
+concerning you.' So, then, a Christian life may be
+lived continuously on the high level; and more than
+that, it is our duty to try to live ours thus.</p>
+
+<p>We need not fight with other Christian people
+about whether absolute obedience to these precepts
+is possible. It will be soon enough for us to discuss
+whether a completely unbroken uniformity of Christian
+experience is attainable in this life, when we have
+come a good deal nearer to the attainable than we
+have yet reached. Let us mend our breaches of continuity
+a good deal more, and then we may begin to
+discuss the question whether an absolute absence of
+any cessation of the continuity is consistent with the
+conditions of Christian life here.</p>
+
+<p>Now it seems to me that these three exhortations
+hold together in a very striking way, and that Paul
+knew what he was about when he put in the middle,
+like the strong central pole that holds up a tent, that
+exhortation, 'Pray without ceasing.' For it is the
+primary precept, and on its being obeyed the possibility
+of the fulfilment of the other two depends. If
+we pray without ceasing, we shall rejoice evermore
+and in everything give thanks. So, then, the duty of
+continual prayer, and the promise, as well as the
+precept, that its results are to be continual joy and
+continual thanksgiving, are suggested by these words.</p>
+
+<p>I. The duty of continual prayer.</p>
+
+<p>Roman Catholics, with their fatal habit of turning
+the spiritual into material, think that they obey that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231a" id="Page_231a">[231]</a></span>
+commandment when they set a priest or a nun on the
+steps of the altar to repeat <i>Ave Marias</i> day and night.
+That is a way of praying without ceasing which we
+can all see to be mechanical and unworthy. But have
+we ever realised what this commandment necessarily
+reveals to us, as to what real prayer is? For if we
+are told to do a thing uninterruptedly, it must be
+something that can run unbroken through all the
+varieties of our legitimate duties and necessary
+occupations and absorptions with the things seen
+and temporal. Is that your notion of prayer? Or
+do you fancy that it simply means dropping down on
+your knees, and asking God to give you some things
+that you very much want? Petition is an element in
+prayer, and that it shall be crystallised into words is
+necessary sometimes; but there are prayers that
+never get themselves uttered, and I suppose that the
+deepest and truest communion with God is voiceless
+and wordless. 'Things which it was not possible for
+a man to utter,' was Paul's description of what he saw
+and felt, when he was most completely absorbed in,
+and saturated with, the divine glory. The more we
+understand what prayer is, the less we shall feel
+that it depends upon utterance. For the essence of it
+is to have heart and mind filled with the consciousness
+of God's presence, and to have the habit of referring
+everything to Him, in the moment when we are doing
+it, or when it meets us. That, as I take it, is prayer.
+The old mystics had a phrase, quaint, and in some
+sense unfortunate, but very striking, when they spoke
+about 'the practice of the presence of God.' God is
+here always, you will say; yes, He is, and to open the
+shutters, and to let the light always in, into every
+corner of my heart, and every detail of my life&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232a" id="Page_232a">[232]</a></span>
+is what Paul means by 'Praying without ceasing.'
+Petitions? Yes; but something higher than petitions&mdash;the
+consciousness of being in touch with the Father,
+feeling that He is all round us. It was said about one
+mystical thinker that he was a 'God-intoxicated man.'
+It is an ugly word, but it expresses a very deep thing;
+but let us rather say a <i>God-filled</i> man. He who is such
+'prays always.'</p>
+
+<p>But how may we maintain that state of continual
+devotion, even amidst the various and necessary
+occupations of our daily lives? As I said, we need
+not trouble ourselves about the possibility of complete
+attainment of that ideal. We know that we can each
+of us pray a great deal more than we do, and if there
+are regions in our lives into which we feel that God
+will not come, habits that we have dropped into which
+we feel to be a film between us and Him, the sooner
+we get rid of them the better. But into all our daily
+duties, dear friends, however absorbing, however secular,
+however small, however irritating they may be, however
+monotonous, into all our daily duties it is possible
+to bring Him.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="A servant with this clause">
+<tr><td align='left'>'A servant with this clause</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Makes drudgery divine,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who sweeps a room, as by Thy laws,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Makes that and the calling fine.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>But if that is our aim, our conscious aim, our honest
+aim, we shall recognise that a help to it is <i>words of</i>
+prayer. I do not believe in silent adoration, if there
+is nothing but silent; and I do not believe in a man
+going through life with the conscious presence of God
+with him, unless, often, in the midst of the stress of
+daily life, he shoots little arrows of two-worded
+prayers up into the heavens, 'Lord! be with me.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233a" id="Page_233a">[233]</a></span>
+'Lord! help me.' 'Lord! stand by me now'; and the
+like. 'They cried unto God in the battle,' when some
+people would have thought they would have been
+better occupied in trying to keep their heads with
+their swords. It was not a time for very elaborate
+supplications when the foemen's arrows were whizzing
+round them, but 'they cried unto the Lord, and
+He was entreated of them.' 'Pray without ceasing.'</p>
+
+<p>Further, if we honestly try to obey this precept we
+shall more and more find out, the more earnestly we
+do so, that set seasons of prayer are indispensable to
+realising it. I said that I do not believe in silent
+adoration unless it sometimes finds its tongue, nor do
+I believe in a diffused worship that does not flow from
+seasons of prayer. There must be, away up amongst
+the hills, a dam cast across the valley that the water
+may be gathered behind it, if the great city is to be
+supplied with the pure fluid. What would become of
+Manchester if it were not for the reservoirs at Woodhead
+away among the hills? Your pipes would be
+empty. And that is what will become of you
+Christian professors in regard to your habitual consciousness
+of God's presence, if you do not take care
+to have your hours of devotion sacred, never to be
+interfered with, be they long or short, as may have
+to be determined by family circumstances, domestic
+duties, daily avocations, and a thousand other causes.
+But, unless we pray at set seasons, there is little likelihood
+of our praying without ceasing.</p>
+
+<p>II. The duty of continual rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>If we begin with the central duty of continual
+prayer, then these other two which, as it were, flow
+from it on either side, will be possible to us; and of
+these two the Apostle sets first, 'Rejoice evermore.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234a" id="Page_234a">[234]</a></span>
+This precept was given to the Thessalonians, in Paul's
+first letter, when things were comparatively bright
+with him, and he was young and buoyant; and in one
+of his later letters, when he was a prisoner, and
+things were anything but rosy coloured, he struck the
+same note again, and in spite of his 'bonds in Christ'
+bade the Philippians 'Rejoice in the Lord always, and
+again I say, Rejoice.' Indeed, that whole prison-letter
+might be called the Epistle of Joy, so suffused with
+sunshine of Christian gladness is it. Now, no doubt, joy
+is largely a matter of temperament. Some of us are
+constitutionally more buoyant and cheerful than others.
+And it is also very largely a matter of circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>I admit all that, and yet I come back to Paul's
+command: 'Rejoice evermore.' For if we are Christian
+people, and have cultivated what I have called 'the
+practice of the presence of God' in our lives, then that
+will change the look of things, and events that otherwise
+would be 'at enmity with joy' will cease to have
+a hostile influence over it. There are two sources
+from which a man's gladness may come, the one his
+circumstances of a pleasant and gladdening character;
+the other his communion with God. It is like some
+river that is composed of two affluents, one of which
+rises away up in the mountains, and is fed by the
+eternal snows; the other springs on the plain somewhere,
+and is but the drainage of the surface-water,
+and when hot weather comes, and drought is over all the
+land, the one affluent is dry, and only a chaos of ghastly
+white stones litters the bed where the flashing water
+used to be. What then? Is the stream gone because
+one of its affluents is dried up, and has perished or
+been lost in the sands? The gushing fountains away
+up among the peaks near the stars are bubbling up all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235a" id="Page_235a">[235]</a></span>
+the same, and the heat that dried the surface stream
+has only loosened the treasures of the snows, and
+poured them more abundantly into the other's bed.
+So 'Rejoice in the Lord always'; and if earth grows
+dark, lift your eyes to the sky, that is light. To one
+walking in the woods at nightfall 'all the paths are
+dim,' but the strip of heaven above the trees is the
+brighter for the green gloom around. The organist's
+one hand may be keeping up one sustained note, while
+the other is wandering over the keys; and one part of
+a man's nature may be steadfastly rejoicing in the
+Lord, whilst the other is feeling the weight of sorrows
+that come from earth. The paradox of the Christian
+life may be realised as a blessed experience of every
+one of us: a surface troubled, a central calm; an ocean
+tossed with storm, and yet the crest of every wave
+flashing in the sunshine. 'Rejoice in the Lord always,
+and again I say, Rejoice.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, the duty of continual thankfulness.</p>
+
+<p>That, too, is possible only on condition of continual
+communion with God. As I said in reference to joy, so
+I say in reference to thankfulness; the look of things
+in this world depends very largely on the colour of
+the spectacles through which you behold them.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="There's nothing either good or bad">
+<tr><td align='left'>'There's nothing either good or bad</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">But thinking makes it so.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>And if a man in communion with God looks at the
+events of his life as he might put on a pair of coloured
+glasses to look at a landscape, it will be tinted with
+a glory and a glow as he looks. The obligation to
+gratitude, often neglected by us, is singularly, earnestly,
+and frequently enjoined in the New Testament. I
+am afraid that the average Christian man does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236a" id="Page_236a">[236]</a></span>
+recognise its importance as an element in his Christian
+experience. As directed to the past it means that we
+do not forget, but that, as we look back, we see the
+meaning of these old days, and their possible blessings,
+and the loving purposes which sent them, a great deal
+more clearly than we did whilst we were passing
+through them. The mountains that, when you are
+close to them, are barren rock and cold snow, glow
+in the distance with royal purples. And so if we,
+from our standing point in God, will look back on our
+lives, losses will disclose themselves as gains, sorrows
+as harbingers of joy, conflict as a means of peace, the
+crooked things will be straight, and the rough places
+plain; and we may for every thing in the past give
+thanks, if only we 'pray without ceasing.' The exhortation
+as applied to the present means that we bow
+our wills, that we believe that all things are working
+together for our good, and that, like Job in his best
+moments, we shall say, 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath
+taken away: blessed be the Name of the Lord.' Ah,
+that is hard. It is possible, but it is only possible if
+we 'pray without ceasing,' and dwell beside God all
+the days of our lives, and all the hours of every day.
+Then, and only then, shall we be able to thank Him for
+all the way by which He hath led us these many years
+in the wilderness, that has been brightened by the pillar
+of cloud by day, and the fire by night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237a" id="Page_237a">[237]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PAUL'S EARLIEST TEACHING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I charge you, by the Lord, that this epistle be read unto all the holy
+brethren,'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> v. 27.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>If the books of the New Testament were arranged
+according to the dates of their composition, this epistle
+would stand first. It was written somewhere about
+twenty years after the Crucifixion, and long before
+any of the existing Gospels. It is, therefore, of
+peculiar interest, as being the most venerable extant
+Christian document, and as being a witness to Christian
+truth quite independent of the Gospel narratives.</p>
+
+<p>The little community at Thessalonica had been
+gathered together as the result of a very brief period
+of ministration by Paul. He had spoken for three
+successive Sabbaths in the synagogue, and had drawn
+together a Christian society, mostly consisting of
+heathens, though with a sprinkling of Jews amongst
+them. Driven from the city by a riot, he had left it
+for Athens, with many anxious thoughts, of course, as
+to whether the infant community would be able to
+stand alone after so few weeks of his presence and instruction.
+Therefore he sent back one of his travelling
+companions, Timothy by name, to watch over the
+young plant for a little while. When Timothy returned
+with the intelligence of their steadfastness, it
+was good news indeed, and with a sense of relieved
+anxiety, he sits down to write this letter,
+which, all through, throbs with thankfulness, and
+reveals the strain which the news had taken off his
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>There are no such definite doctrinal statements in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238a" id="Page_238a">[238]</a></span>
+it as in the most of Paul's longer letters; it is simply
+an outburst of confidence and love and tenderness,
+and a series of practical instructions. It has been
+called the least doctrinal of the Pauline Epistles.
+And in one sense, and under certain limitations, that
+is perfectly true. But the very fact that it is so
+makes its indications and hints and allusions the more
+significant; and if this letter, not written for the purpose
+of enforcing any special doctrinal truth, be so
+saturated as it is with the facts and principles of the
+Gospel, the stronger is the attestation which it
+gives to the importance of these. I have, therefore,
+thought it might be worth our while now, and might,
+perhaps, set threadbare truth in something of a new
+light, if we put this&mdash;the most ancient Christian writing
+extant, which is quite independent of the four
+Gospels&mdash;into the witness-box, and see what it has
+to say about the great truths and principles which
+we call the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is my simple
+design, and I gather the phenomena into three or four
+divisions for the sake of accuracy and order.</p>
+
+<p>I. First of all, then, let us hear its witness to the
+divine Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Look how the letter begins. 'Paul, and Silvanus,
+and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians,
+which is in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus
+Christ.' What is the meaning of that collocation,
+putting these two names side by side, unless it means
+that the Lord Jesus Christ sits on the Father's throne,
+and is divine?</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another fact that I would have you
+notice, and that is that more than twenty times in
+this short letter that great name is applied to Jesus,
+'the Lord.' Now mark that that is something more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239a" id="Page_239a">[239]</a></span>
+than a mere title of human authority. It is in reality
+the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament
+Jehovah, and is the transference to Him of that incommunicable
+name.</p>
+
+<p>And then there is another fact which I would
+have you weigh, viz., that in this letter direct prayer
+is offered to our Lord Himself. In one place we
+read the petition, 'May our God and Father Himself
+and our Lord Jesus direct our way unto you,' where
+the petition is presented to both, and where both are
+supposed to be operative in the answer. And more
+than that, the word 'direct,' following upon this
+<i>plural</i> subject, is itself a <i>singular</i> verb. Could language
+more completely express than that grammatical
+solecism does, the deep truth of the true and proper
+divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?
+There is nothing in any part of Scripture more
+emphatic and more lofty in its unfaltering proclamation
+of that fundamental truth of the Gospel than this
+altogether undoctrinal Epistle.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle does not conceive himself to be telling
+these men, though they were such raw and recent
+Christians, anything new when he presupposes the
+truth that to Him desires and prayers may go. Thus
+the very loftiest apex of revealed religion had been
+imparted to that handful of heathens in the
+few weeks of the Apostle's stay amongst them.
+And nowhere upon the inspired pages of the fourth
+Evangelist, nor in that great Epistle to the Colossians,
+which is the very citadel and central fort of that
+doctrine in Scripture, is there more emphatically stated
+this truth than here, in these incidental allusions.</p>
+
+<p>This witness, at any rate, declares, apart altogether
+from any other part of Scripture, that so early in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240a" id="Page_240a">[240]</a></span>
+development of the Church's history, and to people so
+recently dragged from idolatry, and having received
+but such necessarily partial instruction in revealed
+truth, this had not been omitted, that the Christ in
+whom they trusted was the Everlasting Son of the
+Father. And it takes it for granted that, so deeply
+was that truth embedded in their new consciousness
+that an allusion to it was all that was needed for their
+understanding and their faith. That is the first part
+of the testimony.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, secondly, let us ask what this witness has
+to say about the dying Christ.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doctrinal theology in the Epistle to the
+Thessalonians, they tell us. Granted that there is no
+articulate argumentative setting forth of great doctrinal
+truths. But these are implied and involved in
+almost every word of it; and are definitely stated thus
+incidentally in more places than one. Let us hear
+the witness about the dying Christ.</p>
+
+<p>First, as to the fact, 'The Jews killed the Lord
+Jesus.' The historical fact is here set forth distinctly.
+And then, beyond the fact, there is as distinctly,
+though in the same incidental fashion, set forth the
+meaning of that fact&mdash;'God hath not appointed us to
+wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus
+Christ who died for us.'</p>
+
+<p>Here are at least two things&mdash;one, the allusion, as
+to a well-known and received truth, proclaimed before
+now to them, that Jesus Christ in His death had
+died for them; and the other, that Jesus Christ was the
+medium through whom the Father had appointed
+that men should obtain all the blessings which are
+wrapped up in that sovereign word 'salvation.' I
+need but mention in this connection another verse,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241a" id="Page_241a">[241]</a></span>
+from another part of the letter, which speaks of Jesus
+as 'He that delivereth us from the wrath to come.'
+Remark that there our Authorised Version fails to
+give the whole significance of the words, because it
+translates <i>delivered</i>, instead of, as the Revised Version
+correctly does, <i>delivereth</i>. It is a continuous deliverance,
+running all through the life of the Christian
+man, and not merely to be realised away yonder at
+the far end; because by the mighty providence of
+God, and by the automatic working of the consequences
+of every transgression and disobedience,
+that 'wrath' is ever coming, coming, coming towards
+men, and lighting on them, and a continual Deliverer,
+who delivers us by His death, is what the human
+heart needs. This witness is distinct that the death
+of Christ is a sacrifice, that the death of Christ is
+man's deliverance from wrath, that the death of Christ
+is a present deliverance from the consequences of
+transgression.</p>
+
+<p>And was that Paul's peculiar doctrine? Is it conceivable
+that, in a letter in which he refers&mdash;once, at
+all events&mdash;to the churches in Judea as their 'brethren,'
+he was proclaiming any individual or schismatic
+reading of the facts of the life of Jesus Christ? I
+believe that there has been a great deal too much
+made of the supposed divergencies of types of doctrine
+in the New Testament. There are such types, within
+certain limits. Nobody would mistake a word of
+John's calm, mystical, contemplative spirit for a word
+of Paul's fiery, dialectic spirit. And nobody would
+mistake either the one or the other for Peter's impulsive,
+warm-hearted exhortations. But whilst there
+are diversities in the way of apprehending, there are
+no diversities in the declaration of what is the central<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242a" id="Page_242a">[242]</a></span>
+truth to be apprehended. These varyings of the types
+of doctrine in the New Testament are one in this, that
+all point to the Cross as the world's salvation, and
+declare that the death there was the death for all
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Paul comes to it with his reasoning; John comes to
+it with his adoring contemplation; Peter comes to it
+with his mind saturated with Old Testament allusions.
+Paul declares that the 'Christ died for us'; John
+declares that He is 'the Lamb of God'; Peter
+declares that 'Christ bare our sins in His own body
+on the tree.' But all make one unbroken phalanx of
+witness in their proclamation, that the Cross, because
+it is a cross of sacrifice, is a cross of reconciliation
+and peace and hope. And this is the Gospel that
+they all proclaim, 'how that Jesus Christ died for our
+sins according to the Scriptures,' and Paul could
+venture to say, 'Whether it were they or I, so we
+preach, and so ye believed.'</p>
+
+<p>That was the Gospel that took these heathens,
+wallowing in the mire of sensuous idolatry, and lifted
+them up to the elevation and the blessedness of
+children of God.</p>
+
+<p>And if you will read this letter, and think that
+there had been only a few weeks of acquaintance
+with the Gospel on the part of its readers, and
+then mark how the early and imperfect glimpse of
+it had transformed them, you will see where the
+power lies in the proclamation of the Gospel. A short
+time before they had been heathens; and now says
+Paul, 'From you sounded out the word of the Lord,
+not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every
+place your faith to Godward is spread abroad; so that
+we need not to speak anything.' We do not need to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243a" id="Page_243a">[243]</a></span>
+talk to you about 'love of the brethren,' for 'yourselves
+are taught of God to love one another, and my
+heart is full of thankfulness when I think of your
+work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope.'
+The men had been transformed. What transformed
+them? The message of a divine and dying Christ,
+who had offered up Himself without spot unto God,
+and who was their peace and their righteousness and
+their power.</p>
+
+<p>III. Thirdly, notice what this witness has to say
+about the risen and ascended Christ. Here is what
+it has to say: 'Ye turned unto God .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. to
+wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from
+the dead.' And again: 'The Lord Himself shall
+descend from heaven with a shout.' The risen Christ,
+then, is in the heavens, and Paul assumes that these
+people, just brought out of heathenism, have received
+that truth into their hearts in the love of it, and know
+it so thoroughly that he can take for granted their
+entire acquiescence in and acceptance of it.</p>
+
+<p>Remember, we have nothing to do with the four
+Gospels here. Remember, not a line of them had yet
+been written. Remember, that we are dealing here
+with an entirely independent witness. And then tell
+us what importance is to be attached to this evidence
+of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Twenty years
+after His death here is this man speaking about that
+Resurrection as being not only something that he had
+to proclaim, and believed, but as being the recognised
+and notorious fact which all the churches accepted,
+and which underlay all their faith.</p>
+
+<p>I would have you remember that if, twenty years
+after this event, this witness was borne, that necessarily
+carries us back a great deal nearer to the event than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244a" id="Page_244a">[244]</a></span>
+the hour of its utterance, for there is no mark of its
+being new testimony at that instant, but every mark
+of its being the habitual and continuous witness that
+had been borne from the instant of the alleged
+Resurrection to the present time. It at least takes
+us back a good many years nearer the empty
+sepulchre than the twenty which mark its date.
+It at least takes us back to the conversion of the
+Apostle Paul; and that necessarily involves, as it
+seems to me, that if that man, believing in the
+Resurrection, went into the Church, there would
+have been an end of his association with them, unless
+he had found there the same faith. The fact of the
+matter is, there is not a place where you can stick a
+pin in, between the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and
+the date of this letter, wide enough to admit of the
+rise of the faith in a Resurrection. We are necessarily
+forced by the very fact of the existence of the Church
+to the admission that the belief in the Resurrection
+was contemporaneous with the alleged Resurrection
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>And so we are shut up&mdash;in spite of the wriggling
+of people that do not accept that great truth&mdash;we are
+shut up to the old alternative, as it seems to me, that
+either Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or the noblest
+lives that the world has ever seen, and the loftiest
+system of morality that has ever been proclaimed,
+were built upon a lie. And we are called to believe
+that at the bidding of a mere unsupported, bare,
+dogmatic assertion that miracles are impossible.
+Believe it who will, I decline to be coerced into
+believing a blank, staring psychological contradiction
+and impossibility, in order to be saved the necessity of
+admitting the existence of the supernatural. I would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245a" id="Page_245a">[245]</a></span>
+rather believe in the supernatural than the ridiculous.
+And to me it is unspeakably ridiculous to suppose
+that anything but the fact of the Resurrection
+accounts for the existence of the Church, and for the
+faith of this witness that we have before us.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear friends, we come back to this, the
+Christianity that flings away the risen Christ is a mere
+mass of tatters with nothing in it to cover a man's
+nakedness, an illusion with no vitality in it to quicken,
+to comfort, to ennoble, to raise, to teach aspiration or
+hope or effort. The human heart needs the 'Christ
+that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even
+at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession
+for us.' And this independent witness
+confirms the Gospel story: 'Now is Christ risen from
+the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that
+slept.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, let us hear what this witness has to
+say about the returning Christ.</p>
+
+<p>That is the characteristic doctrinal subject of the
+letter. We all know that wonderful passage of unsurpassed
+tenderness and majesty, which has soothed
+so many hearts and been like a gentle hand laid upon
+so many aching spirits, about the returning Jesus
+'coming in the clouds,' with the dear ones that are
+asleep along with Him, and the reunion of them that
+sleep and them that are alive and remain, in one
+indissoluble concord and concourse, when we shall
+ever be with the Lord, and 'clasp inseparable hands
+with joy and bliss in over-measure for ever.' The
+coming of the Master does not appear here with
+emphasis on its judicial aspect. It is rather intended
+to bring hope to the mourners, and the certainty that
+bands broken here may be re-knit in holier fashion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246a" id="Page_246a">[246]</a></span>
+hereafter. But the judicial aspect is not, as it could
+not be, left out, and the Apostle further tells us
+that 'that day cometh as a thief in the night.' That
+is a quotation of the Master's own words, which we
+find in the Gospels; and so again a confirmation,
+so far as it goes, from an independent witness, of
+the Gospel story. And then he goes on, in terrible
+language, to speak of 'sudden destruction, as of
+travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not
+escape.'</p>
+
+<p>These, then, are the points of this witness's testimony
+as to the returning Lord&mdash;a personal coming, a
+reunion of all believers in Him, in order to eternal
+felicity and mutual gladness, and the destruction that
+shall fall by His coming upon those who turn away
+from Him.</p>
+
+<p>What a revelation that would be to men who had
+known what it was to grope in the darkness of heathendom,
+and to have new light upon the future!</p>
+
+<p>I remember once walking in the long galleries of the
+Vatican, on the one side of which there are Christian
+inscriptions from the catacombs, and on the other
+heathen inscriptions from the tombs. One side is all
+dreamy and hopeless; one long sigh echoing along
+the line of white marbles&mdash;'Vale! vale! in aeternum
+vale!' (Farewell, farewell, for ever farewell.) On the
+other side&mdash;'In Christo, in pace, in spe.' (In Christ, in
+peace, in hope.) That is the witness that we have to lay
+to our hearts. And so death becomes a passage, and we
+let go the dear hands, believing that we shall clasp them
+again.</p>
+
+<p>My brother! this witness is to a gospel that is the
+gospel for Manchester as well as for Thessalonica.
+You and I want just the same as these old heathens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247a" id="Page_247a">[247]</a></span>
+there wanted. We, too, need the divine Christ, the
+dying Christ, the risen Christ, the ascended Christ, the
+returning Christ. And I beseech you to take Him for
+<i>your</i> Christ, in all the fulness of His offices, the manifoldness
+of His power, and the sweetness of His love, so
+that of you it may be said, as this Apostle says about
+these Thessalonians, 'Ye received it not as the word
+of man, but, as it is in truth, as the word of God.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248a" id="Page_248a">[248]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>II. THESSALONIANS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHRIST GLORIFIED IN GLORIFIED MEN</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'He shall come to be glorified in His saints; and to be admired in all them that
+believe.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> i. 10.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the
+Apostle's earliest letters, both give very great prominence
+to the thought of the second coming of our Lord
+to judgment. In the immediate context we have that
+coming described, with circumstances of majesty and
+of terror. He 'shall be revealed .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. with the angels
+of His power.' 'Flaming fire' shall herald His coming;
+vengeance shall be in His hands, punishment shall
+follow His sentence; everlasting destruction shall be
+the issue of evil confronted with 'the face of the Lord'&mdash;for
+so the words in the previous verse rendered 'the
+presence of the Lord' might more accurately be translated.</p>
+
+<p>And all these facts and images are, as it were, piled
+up in one half of the Apostle's sky, as in thunderous
+lurid masses; and on the other side there is the pure
+blue and the peaceful sunshine. For all this terror and
+destruction, and flashing fire, and punitive vengeance
+come to pass in the day when 'He shall come to be
+glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in all
+them that believe.'</p>
+
+<p>There be the two halves&mdash;the aspect of that day to
+those to whom it is the revelation of a stranger, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249a" id="Page_249a">[249]</a></span>
+the aspect of that day to those to whom it is the glorifying
+of Him who is their life.</p>
+
+<p>I. The remarkable words which I have taken for my
+text suggest to us, first of all, some thoughts about that
+striking expression that Christ is glorified in the men
+who are glorified in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>If you look on a couple of verses you will find that
+the Apostle returns to this thought, and expresses in
+the clearest fashion the reciprocal character of that
+'glorifying' of which he has been speaking. 'The
+name of our Lord Jesus Christ,' says he, 'may be glorified
+in you, and ye in Him.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, glorifying has a double meaning. There is
+a double process involved. It means either 'to make
+glorious' or 'to manifest as being glorious.' And men
+are glorified in the former sense in Christ, that Christ
+in them may, in the latter sense, be glorified. He
+makes them glorious by imparting to them of the
+lustrous light and flashing beauty of His own perfect
+character, in order that that light, received into their
+natures, and streaming out at last conspicuously manifest
+from their redeemed perfectness, may redound to
+the praise and the honour, before a whole universe, of
+Him who has thus endued their weakness with His own
+strength, and transmuted their corruptibility into His
+own immortality. We are glorified in Christ in some
+partial, and, alas! sinfully fragmentary, manner here;
+we shall be so perfectly in that day. And when we are
+thus glorified in Him, then&mdash;wondrous thought!&mdash;even
+we shall be able to manifest Him as glorious before
+some gazing eyes, which without us would have seen
+Him as less fair. Dim, and therefore great and blessed
+thoughts about what men may become are involved in
+such words. The highest end, the great purpose of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250a" id="Page_250a">[250]</a></span>
+Gospel and of all God's dealings with us in Christ Jesus
+is to make us like our Lord. As we have borne the
+image of the earthly we shall also bear the image of
+the heavenly. 'We, beholding the glory, are changed
+into the glory.'</p>
+
+<p>And that glorifying of men in Christ, which is the
+goal and highest end of Christ's Cross and passion and
+of all God's dealings, is accomplished only because
+Christ dwells in the men whom He glorifies. We read
+words applying to His relation to His Father which
+need but to be transferred to our relation to Him, in
+order to teach us high and blessed things about this
+glorifying. The Father dwelt in Christ, therefore
+Christ was glorified by the indwelling divinity, in the
+sense that His humanity was made partaker of the divine
+glory, and thereby He glorified the divinity that dwelt
+in Him, in the sense that He conspicuously displayed it
+before the world as worthy of all admiration and love.</p>
+
+<p>And, in like manner, as is the Son with the Father,
+participant of mutual and reciprocal glorification, so is
+the Christian with Christ, glorified in Him and therefore
+glorifying Him.</p>
+
+<p>What may be involved therein of perfect moral
+purity, of enlarged faculties and powers, of a bodily
+frame capable of manifesting all the finest issues of a
+perfect spirit, it is not for us to say. These things are
+great, being hidden; and are hidden because they
+are great. But whatever may be the lofty heights of
+Christlikeness to which we shall attain, all shall come
+from the indwelling Lord who fills us with His own
+Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>And, then, according to the great teaching here, this
+glorified humanity, perfected and separated from all
+imperfection, and helped into all symmetrical unfolding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251a" id="Page_251a">[251]</a></span>
+of dormant possibilities, shall be the highest glory of
+Christ even in that day when He comes in His glory and
+sits upon the throne of His glory with His holy angels
+with Him. One would have thought that, if the Apostle
+wanted to speak of the glorifying of Jesus Christ, he
+would have pointed to the great white throne, His
+majestic divinity, the solemnities of His judicial office;
+but he passes by all these, and says, 'Nay! the highest
+glory of the Christ lies here, in the men whom He has
+made to share His own nature.'</p>
+
+<p>The artist is known by his work. You stand in front
+of some great picture, or you listen to some great
+symphony, or you read some great book, and you
+say, 'This is the glory of Raphael, Beethoven, Shakespeare.'
+Christ points to His saints, and He says,
+'Behold My handiwork! Ye are my witnesses. This
+is what I can do.'</p>
+
+<p>But the relation between Christ and His saints is far
+deeper and more intimate than simply the relation
+between the artist and his work, for all the flashing
+light of moral beauty, of intellectual perfectness which
+Christian men can hope to receive in the future is
+but the light of the Christ that dwells in them, 'and of
+whose fulness all they have received.' Like some poor
+vapour, in itself white and colourless, which lies in the
+eastern sky there, and as the sun rises is flushed up
+into a miracle of rosy beauty, because it has caught the
+light amongst its flaming threads and vaporous substance,
+so we, in ourselves pale, ghostly, colourless as
+the mountains when the Alpine snow passes off them,
+being recipient of an indwelling Christ, shall blush and
+flame in beauty. 'Then shall the righteous blaze forth
+like the sun in my Father's kingdom.' Or, rather
+they are not suns shining by their own light, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252a" id="Page_252a">[252]</a></span>
+moons reflecting the light of Christ, who is their
+light.</p>
+
+<p>And perchance some eyes, incapable of beholding the
+sun, may be able to look undazzled upon the sunshine
+in the cloud, and some eyes that could not discern the
+glory of Christ as it shines in His face as the sun
+shineth in its strength, may not be too weak to behold
+and delight in the light as it is reflected from the face
+of His servants. At all events, He shall come to be
+glorified in the saints whom He has made glorious.</p>
+
+<p>II. And now, notice again, out of these full and pregnant
+words the other thought, that this transformation
+of men is the great miracle and marvel of Christ's
+power.</p>
+
+<p>'He shall come to be admired'&mdash;which word is employed
+in its old English signification, 'to be wondered
+at'&mdash;'in all them that believe.' So fair and lovely is
+He that He needs but to be recognised for what He is
+in order to be glorified. So great and stupendous are
+His operations in redeeming love that they need but
+to be beheld to be the object of wonder. 'His name
+shall be called Wonderful,' and wonderfully the
+energy of His redeeming and sanctifying grace shall
+then have wrought itself out to its legitimate end.
+There you get the crowning marvel of marvels, and
+the highest of miracles. He did wonderful works upon
+earth which we rightly call miraculous,&mdash;things to be
+wondered at&mdash;but the highest of all His wonders is the
+wonder that takes such material as you and me, and
+by such a process, and on such conditions, simply
+because we trust Him, evolves such marvellous forms
+of beauty and perfectness from us. 'He is to be wondered
+at in all them that believe.'</p>
+
+<p>Such results from such material! Chemists tell us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253a" id="Page_253a">[253]</a></span>
+that the black bit of coal in your grate and the diamond
+on your finger are varying forms of the one substance.
+What about a power that shall take all the black coals
+in the world and transmute them into flashing diamonds,
+prismatic with the reflected light that comes from His
+face, and made gems on His strong right hand? The
+universe will wonder at such results from such
+material.</p>
+
+<p>And it will wonder, too, at the process by which
+they were accomplished, wondering at the depth of
+His pity revealed all the more pathetically now from
+the great white throne which casts such a light on
+the Cross of Calvary; wondering at the long, weary
+path which He who is now declared to be the Judge
+humbled Himself to travel in the quest of these poor
+sinful souls whom He has redeemed and glorified. The
+miracle of miracles is redeeming love; and the high-water
+mark of Christ's wonders is touched in this fact,
+that out of men He makes saints; and out of saints He
+makes perfect likenesses of Himself.</p>
+
+<p>III. And now a word about what is <i>not</i> expressed,
+but is necessarily implied in this verse, viz., the spectators
+of this glory.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle does not tell us what eyes they are
+before which Christ is thus to be glorified. He does
+not summon the spectators to look upon this wonderful
+exhibition of divine judgment and divine glory; but
+we may dwell for a moment on the thought that to
+whomsoever in the whole universe Christ at that
+great day shall be manifested, to them, whoever they
+be, will His glory, in His glorified saints, be a revelation
+beyond what they have known before. 'Every eye
+shall see Him.' And whatsoever eyes look upon Him,
+then on His throne, they shall behold the attendant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254a" id="Page_254a">[254]</a></span>
+courtiers and the assessors of His judgment, and
+see in them the manifestation of His own lustrous
+light.</p>
+
+<p>We read that 'unto the principalities and powers in
+heavenly places shall be made known' in future days,
+'by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God.' We
+hear that, after the burst of praise which comes from
+redeemed men standing around the throne, every
+creature in the earth and in the heavens, and in the
+sea and all that are therein were heard saying, 'Blessing
+and honour and glory and power be unto Him that
+sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever
+and ever.'</p>
+
+<p>We need not speculate, it is better not to enter into
+details, but this, at least, is clear, that that solemn
+winding up of the long, mysterious, sad, blood and
+tear-stained history of man upon the earth is to be an
+object of interest and a higher revelation of God to
+other creatures than those that dwell upon the earth;
+and we may well believe that for that moment, at all
+events, the centre of the universe, which draws the
+thoughts of all thinking, and the eyes of all seeing,
+creatures to it, shall be that valley of judgment wherein
+sits the Man Christ and judges men, and round Him
+the flashing reflectors of His glory in the person of His
+saints.</p>
+
+<p>IV. And lastly, look at men's path to this glorifying.</p>
+
+<p>'He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be
+wondered at in all them that <i>believed</i>'; as that word
+ought to be rendered. That is to say, they who on
+earth were His, consecrated and devoted to Him, and
+in some humble measure partaking even here of His
+reflected beauty and imparted righteousness&mdash;these are
+they in whom He shall be glorified. They who 'believed';<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255a" id="Page_255a">[255]</a></span>
+poor, trembling, struggling, fainting souls, that here on
+earth, in the midst of many doubts and temptations,
+clasped His hand; and howsoever tremulously, yet
+truly put their trust in Him, these are they in whom
+He shall 'be wondered at.'</p>
+
+<p>The simple act of faith knits us to the Lord. If we
+trust Him He comes into our hearts here, and begins to
+purify us, and to make us like Himself; and, if that be
+so, and we keep hold of Him, we shall finally share in
+His glory.</p>
+
+<p>What a hope, what an encouragement, what a stimulus
+and exhortation to humble and timorous souls
+there is in that great word, 'In <i>all</i> them that believed'!
+Howsoever imperfect, still they shall be kept by the
+power of God unto that final salvation. And when He
+comes in His glory, not one shall be wanting that put
+their trust in Him.</p>
+
+<p>It will take them all, each in his several way reflecting
+it, to set forth adequately the glory. As many
+diamonds round a central light, which from each facet
+give off a several ray and a definite colour; so all
+that circle round Christ and partaking of His glory,
+will each receive it, transmit it, and so manifest it in
+a different fashion. And it needs the innumerable
+company of the redeemed, each a several perfectness,
+to set forth all the fulness of the Christ that
+dwells in us.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, beginning with simple faith in
+Him, partially receiving the beauty of His transforming
+spirit, seeking here on earth by assimilation to the
+Master in some humble measure to adorn the doctrine
+and to glorify the Christ, we may hope that each blackness
+will be changed into brightness, our limitations
+done away with, our weakness lifted into rejoicing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256a" id="Page_256a">[256]</a></span>
+strength; and that we shall be like Him, seeing Him as
+He is, and glorified in Him, shall glorify Him before
+the universe.</p>
+
+<p>You and I will be there. Choose which of the two
+halves of that sky that I was speaking about in my
+introductory remarks will be your sky; whether He
+shall be revealed, and the light of His face be to you
+like a sword whose flashing edge means destruction, or
+whether the light of His face shall fall upon your heart
+because you love Him and trust Him, like the sunshine
+on the Alpine snow, lifting it to a more lustrous whiteness,
+and tingeing it with an ethereal hue of more than
+earthly beauty, which no other power but an indwelling
+Christ can give. He shall come with 'everlasting
+destruction from the face'; and 'He shall come to be
+glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in all
+them that believed.' Do you choose which of the two
+shall be your portion in that day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'We pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling,
+and fulfil all the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with
+power; 12. That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and
+ye in Him.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> i. 11, 12.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In the former letter to the Church of Thessalonica,
+the Apostle had dwelt, in ever-memorable words&mdash;which
+sound like a prelude of the trump of God&mdash;on
+the coming of Christ at the end to judge the world, and
+to gather His servants into His rest. That great
+thought seems to have excited some of the hotter
+heads in Thessalonica, and to have led to a general
+feverishness of unwholesome expectancy of the near<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257a" id="Page_257a">[257]</a></span>
+approach or actual dawn of the day. This letter is
+intended as a supplement to the former Epistle, and to
+damp down the fire which had been kindled. It,
+therefore, dwells with emphasis on the necessary
+preliminaries to the dawning of that day of the Lord,
+and throughout seeks to lead the excited spirits to
+patience and persistent work, and to calm their
+feverish expectations. This purpose colours the whole
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>Another striking characteristic of it is the frequent
+gushes of short prayer for the Thessalonians with
+which the writer turns aside from the main current
+of his thoughts. In its brief compass there are four
+of these prayers, which, taken together, present many
+aspects of the Christian life, and hold out much for
+our hopes and much for our efforts. The prayer
+which I have read for our text is the first of these.
+The others, the consideration of which will follow on
+subsequent occasions, are these:&mdash;'Our Lord Jesus
+Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath
+loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation
+and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts
+and stablish you in every good word and work.'
+And, again, 'The Lord direct your hearts into the
+love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.'
+And, finally, summing up all, 'The Lord of peace
+Himself give you peace always, by all means.' So
+full, so tender, so directed to the highest blessings,
+and to those only, are the wishes of a true Christian
+teacher, and of a true Christian friend, for those to
+whom He ministers and whom He loves. It is a poor
+love that cannot express itself in prayer. It is an
+earthly love which desires for its objects anything
+less than the highest of blessings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258a" id="Page_258a">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I. Notice, first, here, the divine test for Christian
+lives: 'We pray for you, that God would count you
+worthy of your calling.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is to be observed that this 'counting
+worthy' refers mainly to a future estimate to be
+made by God of the completed career and permanent
+character brought out of earth into another state by
+Christian souls. That is obvious from the whole
+strain of the letter, which I have already pointed out
+as mainly being concerned with the future coming to
+judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is also, I
+think, made probable by the fact that the same
+expression, 'counting worthy,' occurs in an earlier
+verse of this chapter, where the reference is exclusively
+to the future judgment.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, we are brought face to face with this
+thought of an actual, stringent judgment which God
+will apply in the future to the lives and characters of
+professing Christians. Now, that is a great deal too
+much forgotten in our popular Christian teaching and
+in our average Christian faith. It is perfectly true
+that he who trusts in Jesus Christ will 'not come
+into condemnation, but has passed from death unto
+life.' But it is just as true that 'judgment shall
+begin at the house of God,' and that, 'the Lord will
+judge His people.' And therefore, it becomes us to
+lay to heart this truth, that we, just because, if we
+are Christians, we stand nearest to God, are surest to
+be searched through and through by the light that
+streams from Him, and to have every flaw and corrupt
+speck and black spot brought out into startling
+prominence. Let no Christian man fancy that he
+shall escape the righteous judgment of God. The
+great doctrine of forgiveness does not mean that He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259a" id="Page_259a">[259]</a></span>
+suffers our sin to remain upon us unjudged, ay! or
+unavenged. But just as, day by day, there is an
+actual estimate in the divine mind, according to
+truth, of what we really are, so, at the last,
+God's servants will be gathered before His throne.
+'They that have made a covenant with Him by
+sacrifice' shall be assembled there&mdash;as the Psalm has
+it&mdash;'that the Lord may judge His people.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, if the actual passing of a divine judgment
+day by day, and a future solemn act of judgment
+after we have done with earth, and our characters are
+completed, and our careers rounded into a whole, is to
+be looked for by Christians, what is the standard by
+which their worthiness is to be judged?</p>
+
+<p>'Your calling.' The 'this' of my text in the
+Authorised Version is a supplement, and a better
+supplement is that of the Revised Version, 'your
+calling.' Now <i>calling</i> does not mean 'avocation' or
+'employment,' as I perhaps need scarcely explain,
+but the divine fact of our having been summoned by
+Him to be His. Consider who calls. God Himself.
+Consider how He calls. By the Gospel, by Jesus
+Christ, or, as another apostle has it, 'by His own
+glory and virtue' manifested in the world. That
+great voice which is in Jesus Christ, so tender, so
+searching, so heart-melting, so vibrating with the invitation
+of love and the yearning of a longing heart,
+summons or calls us. Consider, also, what this calling
+is to. 'God hath not called us to uncleanness,
+but to holiness,' or, as this letter has it, in another
+part, 'unto salvation through sanctification of the
+Spirit and belief of the truth.' By all the subduing
+and animating and restraining and impelling tones in
+the sacrifice and life of Jesus Christ we are summoned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260a" id="Page_260a">[260]</a></span>
+to a life of self-crucifixion, of subjection of the flesh,
+of aspiration after God, of holy living according to the
+pattern that was showed us in Him. We are summoned
+here and now to a life of purity and righteousness
+and self-sacrifice. But also 'He hath called us
+to His everlasting kingdom and glory.' That voice
+sounds from above now. From the Cross it said to
+us, 'I die that ye may live'; from the throne it says
+to us, 'Live because I live, and come to live where I
+live.' The same invitation, which calls us to a life of
+righteousness and self-suppression and purity, also
+calls us, with the sweet promise that is firm as the
+throne of God, to the everlasting felicities of that
+perfect kingdom in which, because the obedience is
+entire, the glory shall be untremulous and unstained.
+Therefore, considering who summons, by what He
+summons, and to what He calls us, do there not lie
+in the fact of that divine call to which we Christians
+say that we have yielded, the solemnest motives, the
+loftiest standard, the most stringent obligations for
+life? What sort of a life will that be which is worthy
+of that voice? Is yours? Is mine? Are there not
+the most flagrant examples of professing Christians,
+whose lives are in the most outrageous discordance
+with the lofty obligations and mighty motives of
+the summons which they profess to have obeyed?
+'Worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called!'
+Have I made my own the things which I am invited
+to possess? Have I yielded to the obligations which
+are enwrapped in that invitation? Does my life
+correspond to the divine purpose in calling me to be
+His? Can I say, 'Lord, Thou art mine, and I am
+Thine, and here my life witnesses to it, because self
+is banished from it, and I am full of God, and the life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261a" id="Page_261a">[261]</a></span>
+which I live in the flesh I live not to myself, but to
+Him that died for me?'</p>
+
+<p>An absolute correspondence, a complete worthiness
+or perfect desert, is impossible for us all, but a worthiness
+which His merciful judgment who makes allowance
+for us all may accept, as not too flagrantly
+contradictory of what He meant us to be, is possible
+even for our poor attainments and our stained lives.
+If it were Paul's supreme prayer, should it not be our
+supreme aim, that we may be worthy of Him that hath
+called us, and 'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith
+we are called'?</p>
+
+<p>II. Note, here, the divine help to meet the test.</p>
+
+<p>If it were a matter of our own effort alone, who of
+us could pretend to reach to the height of conformity
+with the great design of the loving Father in summoning
+us, or with the mighty powers that are set in
+motion by the summons for the purifying of men's
+lives? But here is the great characteristic and blessing
+of God's Gospel, that it not only summons us to
+holiness and to heaven, but reaches out a hand to
+help us thither. Therein it contrasts with all other
+voices&mdash;and many of them are noble and pathetic in
+their insistence and vehemence&mdash;which call men to
+lofty lives. Whether it be the voice of conscience, or
+of human ethics, or of the great ones, the elect of the
+race, who, in every age, have been as voices crying in
+the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'&mdash;all
+these call us, but reach no hand out to draw us.
+They are all as voices from the heights and are of
+God, but they are voices only; they summon us to
+noble deeds, and leave us floundering in the mire.</p>
+
+<p>But we have not a God who tells us to be good, and
+then watches to see if we will obey, but we have a God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262a" id="Page_262a">[262]</a></span>
+who, with all His summonses, brings to us the help to
+keep His commandments. Our God has more than a
+voice to enjoin, He has a hand to lift, 'Give what
+Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt,'
+said Augustine. There is the blessing and glory of
+the Gospel, that its summons has in it an impelling
+power which makes men able to be what it enjoins
+them to become. My text, therefore, follows the prayer
+'that God would count you worthy,' which contemplates
+God simply as judging men's correspondence
+with the ideal revealed in their calling, and is the cry
+of faith to the giving God, who works in us, if we will
+let Him, that which He enjoins on us. There are two
+directions of that divine working specified in the text.
+Paul asks that God would fulfil 'every desire of goodness
+and every work of faith,' as the Revised Version
+renders the words. Two things, then, we may hope
+that God will do for us&mdash;He will fulfil every yearning
+after righteousness and purity in our hearts, and will
+perfect the active energy which faith puts forth in
+our lives.</p>
+
+<p>Paul says, in effect, first, that God will fulfil every
+desire that longs for goodness. He is scarcely deserving
+of being called good who does not desire to be
+better. Aspiration must always be ahead of performance
+in a growing life, such as every Christian life ought
+to be. To long for any righteousness and beauty of
+goodness is, in some imperfect and incipient measure,
+to possess the good for which we long. This is the very
+signature of a Christian life&mdash;yearning after unaccomplished
+perfection. If you know nothing of that
+desire that stings and impels you onwards; if you do
+not know what it is to say, 'Oh! wretched man that
+I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263a" id="Page_263a">[263]</a></span>
+death?' if you do not know what it is to follow the
+fair ideal realised in Jesus Christ with infinite longing,
+what right have you to call yourself a Christian?
+The very essence of the Christian life is yearning for
+completeness, and restlessness as long as sin has any
+power over us. We live not only by admiration, faith,
+and love, but we live by hope; and he who does not
+hunger and thirst after righteousness has yet to learn
+what are the first principles of the Gospel of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>If there be not the desire after goodness, the restlessness
+and dissatisfaction with every present good, the
+brave ambition that says, 'Forgetting the things that
+are behind, I reach forth unto the things that are
+before,' there is nothing in a man to which God's grace
+can attach itself. God cannot make you better if you
+do not wish to be better. There is no point upon which
+His hallowing and ennobling grace can lay hold in
+your hearts without such desire. 'Open thy mouth
+wide and I will fill it.' If, as is too often the case
+with hosts of professing Christians, you shut your
+mouths tight and lock your teeth, how can God put
+any food between your lips? There must, first of
+all, be the aspiration, and then there will be the
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>I look out upon my congregation, or, better still, I
+look into my own heart, and I say, If I, if you, dear
+brethren, are not worthy of the vocation wherewith
+we are called, we have not because we ask not. If
+there be no desire after goodness in our hearts, God
+cannot make us good. Our wishes are the mould into
+which the molten metal from the great furnace of His
+love will run. If we bring but a little vessel we cannot
+get a large supply. The manna lies round our tents;
+it is for us to determine how much we will gather.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264a" id="Page_264a">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And in like manner, says Paul, God will fulfil every
+work of faith. Our faith in Jesus Christ will naturally
+tend to influence our lives, and to manifest itself
+as a driving power which will set all the wheels of
+conduct in motion. Paul is quite sure that if we trust
+ourselves to God, all the beneficent and holy work
+that flows from such confidence will by Him be fully
+perfected.</p>
+
+<p>God's fulfilment is to be done <i>with power</i>. That is
+to say, He will fit us to be worthy of our calling, He
+will answer our desires, He will give energy to our
+faith, and complete in number and in quality its
+operations in our lives, by reason of His dwelling with
+us and in us by that spirit of power and of love and
+of a sound mind which works all righteousness in
+believing hearts, and sheds divine beauty and goodness
+over character and life.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, note the divine glory of the worthy.</p>
+
+<p>This fulfilment of every desire of goodness and
+work of faith is in order 'that the name of our
+Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and ye
+in Him.'</p>
+
+<p>Here, again, as in the first clause of our text, I
+take, in accordance with the prevailing tone of this
+letter, the reference to be mainly, though perhaps
+not exclusively, to a future transcendent glorifying of
+the name of Christ in perfected saints, and glorifying
+of perfected saints in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>We have, then, set forth, first, as the result of the
+fulfilling of Christian men's desires after goodness, and
+the work of their faith, the glory that accrues to
+Christ from perfected saints. They are His workmanship.
+You remember the old story of the artist
+who went into a fellow-artist's studio and left upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265a" id="Page_265a">[265]</a></span>
+easel one complete circle, swept with one master-whirl
+of the brush. Jesus Christ presents perfected men to
+an admiring universe as specimens of what He can do.
+His highest work is the redeeming of poor creatures
+like you and me, and the making of us perfect in
+goodness and worthy of our calling. We are His
+<i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i>, the master work of the great divine
+artist.</p>
+
+<p>Think, then, brethren, how, here and now, Christ's
+reputation is in our hands. Men judge of Him by us.
+The name of the Lord Jesus is glorified in you if you
+live 'worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,'
+and people will think better of the Master if His
+disciples are faithful. Depend upon it, if we of this
+church, for instance, and the Christian people within
+these walls now, lived the lives that they ought to do,
+and manifested the power of the Gospel as they might,
+there would be many who would say, 'They have
+been with Jesus, and the Jesus that has made them
+what they are must be mighty and great.' The best
+evidence of the power of the Gospel is your consistent
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>Think, too, of that strange dignity that in the
+future, in manners and in regions all undiscernible
+by us, Christians, who have been made out of stones
+into children of God, will make known 'unto
+principalities and powers in heavenly places' the
+wisdom and the love and the energy of the redeeming
+God. Who knows to what regions the commission of
+the perfected saints to make Christ known may carry
+them? Light travels far, and we cannot tell into
+what remote corners of the universe this may penetrate.
+This only we know, that they who shall be counted
+worthy to attain that life and the Resurrection from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266a" id="Page_266a">[266]</a></span>
+the dead shall bear the image of the heavenly, and
+perhaps to creations yet uncreated, and still to be
+evolved through the ages of eternity, it may be their
+part to carry the lustre of the light of the glory of
+God who redeemed and purified them.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, there is glory accruing to
+perfected saints in Christ. 'And ye in Him.'
+There will be a union so close as that nothing
+closer is possible, personality being preserved, between
+Christ and the saints above, who trust Him and
+love Him and serve Him there. And that union
+will lead to a participation in His glory which
+shall exalt their limited, stained, and fragmentary
+humanity into 'the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ.' Astronomers tell us that dead,
+cold matter falls from all corners of the system into
+the sun, drawn by its magic magnetism from farthest
+space, and, plunging into that great reservoir of fire,
+the deadest and coldest matter glows with fervid heat
+and dazzling light. So you and I, dead, cold, dull,
+opaque, heavy fragments, drawn into mysterious oneness
+with Christ, the Sun of our souls, shall be
+transformed into His own image, and like Him be
+light and heat which shall radiate through the
+universe.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, meditate on your calling, the fact, its
+method, its aim, its obligations, and its powers.
+Cherish hopes and desires after goodness, the only
+hopes and desires that are certain to be fulfilled.
+Cultivate the life of faith working by love, and let us
+all live in the light of that solemn expectation that
+the Lord will judge His people. Then we may hope
+that the voice which summoned us will welcome us,
+and proclaim even of us, stained and undeserving as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267a" id="Page_267a">[267]</a></span>
+we rightly feel ourselves to be: 'They have not
+defiled their garments, therefore they shall walk with
+Me in white, for they are worthy.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>EVERLASTING CONSOLATION AND
+GOOD HOPE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath
+loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation, and good hope through grace.
+17. Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.'&mdash;2
+<span class="smcap">Thess.</span> ii. 16, 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This is the second of the four brief prayers which, as I
+pointed out in my last sermon, break the current of
+Paul's teaching in this letter, and witness to the depth
+of his affection to his Thessalonian converts. We do
+not know the special circumstances under which these
+then were, but there are many allusions, both in the
+first and second epistles, which seem to indicate that
+they specially needed the gift of consolation.</p>
+
+<p>They were a young Church, just delivered from
+paganism. Like lambs in the midst of wolves, they
+stood amongst bitter enemies, their teacher had left
+them alone, and their raw convictions needed to be
+consolidated and matured in the face of much opposition.
+No wonder then that over and over again, in
+both letters, we have references to the persecutions and
+tribulations which they endured, and to the consolations
+which would much more abound.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may have been their specific circumstances,
+the prayer which puts special emphasis on
+comfort is as much needed by each of us as it could
+ever have been by any of them. For there are no eyes
+that have not wept, or will not weep; no breath that
+has not been, or will not be, drawn in sighs; and no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268a" id="Page_268a">[268]</a></span>
+hearts that have not bled, or will not bleed. So, dear
+friends, the prayer that went up for these long since
+comforted brothers, in their forgotten obscure sorrows,
+is as needful for each of us&mdash;that the God who has
+given everlasting consolation may apply the consolations
+which He has supplied, and 'comfort our hearts
+and stablish them in every good word and work.'</p>
+
+<p>The prayer naturally falls, as all true prayer will,
+into three sections&mdash;the contemplation of Him to whom
+it is addressed, the grasping of the great act on which
+it is based, and the specification of the desires which it
+includes. These three thoughts may guide us for a
+few moments now.</p>
+
+<p>I. First of all, then, note the divine hearers of the
+prayer.</p>
+
+<p>The first striking thing about this prayer is its
+emphatic recognition of the divinity of Jesus Christ
+as a truth familiar to these Thessalonian converts.
+Note the solemn accumulation of His august titles,
+'Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.' Note, further, that
+extraordinary association of His name with the
+Father's. Note, still further, the most remarkable
+order in which these two names occur&mdash;Jesus first,
+God second. If we were not so familiar with the
+words, and with their order, which reappears in Paul's
+well-known and frequently-used Benediction, we
+should be startled to find that Jesus Christ was put
+before God in such a solemn address. The association
+and the order of mention of the names are equally
+outrageous, profane, and inexplicable, except upon one
+hypothesis, and that is that Jesus Christ is divine.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for the order may be found partly in the
+context, which has just been naming Christ, but still
+more in the fact that whilst he writes, the Apostle is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269a" id="Page_269a">[269]</a></span>
+realising the mediation of Christ, and that the order
+of mention is the order of our approach. The Father
+comes to us in the Son; we come to the Father by
+the Son; and, therefore, it is no intercepting of our
+reverence, nor blasphemously lifting the creature
+to undue elevation, when in one act the Apostle
+appeals to 'our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God
+our Father.'</p>
+
+<p>Note, still further, the distinct address to Christ as
+the Hearer of Prayer. And, note, last of all, about
+this matter, the singular grammatical irregularity in
+my text, which is something much more than a mere
+blunder or slip of the pen. The words which follow,
+viz., 'comfort' and 'stablish,' are in the singular,
+whilst these two mighty and august names are their
+nominatives, and would therefore, by all regularity,
+require a plural to follow them. That this peculiarity
+is no mere accident, but intentional and deliberate, is
+made probable by the two instances in our text, and
+is made certain, as it seems to me, by the fact that the
+same anomalous and eloquent construction occurs in
+the previous epistle to the same church, where we
+have in exact parallelism with our text, 'God Himself,
+our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ,' with the
+singular verb, 'direct our way unto you.' The phraseology
+is the expression, in grammatical form, of the
+great truth, 'Whatsoever things the Father doeth,
+these also doth the Son likewise.' And from it there
+gleam out unmistakably the great principles of the
+unity of action and the distinction of person between
+Father and Son, in the depths of that infinite and
+mysterious Godhead.</p>
+
+<p>Now all this, which seems to me to be irrefragable,
+is made the more remarkable and the stronger as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270a" id="Page_270a">[270]</a></span>
+witness of the truth, from the fact that it occurs in
+this perfectly incidental fashion, and without a word
+of explanation or apology, as taking for granted that
+there was a background of teaching in the Thessalonian
+Church which had prepared the way for it, and
+rendered it intelligible, as well as a background of
+conviction which had previously accepted it.</p>
+
+<p>And, remember, these two letters, thus full-toned in
+their declaration, and taking for granted the previous
+acceptance of the great doctrine of the divinity of
+our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, are the earliest
+portions of the New Testament, and are often spoken
+about as being singularly undogmatic. So they are,
+and therefore all the more eloquent and all the more
+conclusive is such a testimony as this to the sort of
+teaching which from the beginning the Apostle
+addressed to his converts.</p>
+
+<p>Now is that your notion of Jesus Christ? Do you
+regard Him as the sharer in the divine attributes and
+in the divine throne? It was a living Christ that
+Paul was thinking about when he wrote these words,
+who could hear him praying in Corinth, and could
+reach a helping hand down to these poor men in
+Thessalonica. It was a divine Christ that Paul was
+thinking about when he dared to say, 'Our Lord Jesus
+Christ, and God our Father.' And I beseech you to
+ask yourself the question whether your faith accepts
+that great teaching, and whether to you He is far more
+than 'the Man Christ Jesus'; and just because He is
+<i>the</i> man, is therefore the Son of God. Brethren!
+either Jesus lies in an unknown grave, ignorant of all
+that is going on here, and the notion that He can help
+is a delusion and a dream, or else He is the ever-living
+because He is the divine Christ, to whom we poor men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271a" id="Page_271a">[271]</a></span>
+can speak with the certainty that He hears us, and
+who wields the energies of Deity, and works the same
+works as the Father, for the help and blessing of the
+souls that trust Him.</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, note the great fact on which this prayer
+builds itself.</p>
+
+<p>The form of words in the original, 'loved' and
+'given,' all but necessarily requires us to suppose that
+their reference is to some one definite historical act in
+which the love was manifested, and, as love always
+does, found voice in giving. Love is the infinite desire
+to bestow, and its language is always a gift. Then,
+according to the Apostle's thought, there is some one
+act in which all the fulness of the divine love manifests
+itself; some one act in which all the treasures which
+God can bestow upon men are conveyed and handed
+over to a world.</p>
+
+<p>The statement that there is such renders almost
+unnecessary the question what such an act is. For
+there can be but one in all the sweep of the magnificent
+and beneficent divine deeds, so correspondent to
+His love, and so inclusive of all His giving, as that it
+shall be the ground of our confidence and the warrant
+for our prayers. The gift of Jesus Christ is that in
+which everlasting consolation and good hope are
+bestowed upon men. When our desires are widened
+out to the widest they must be based upon the great
+sacrifice of Jesus Christ; and when we would think
+most confidently and most desiringly of the benefits
+that we seek, for ourselves or for our fellows, we must
+turn to the Cross. My prayer is then acceptable and
+prevalent when it foots itself on the past divine act,
+and looking to the life and death of Jesus Christ, is
+widened out to long for, ask for, and in the very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272a" id="Page_272a">[272]</a></span>
+longing and asking for to begin to possess, the fulness
+of the gifts which then were brought to men in Him.</p>
+
+<p>'Everlasting consolation and good hope.' I suppose
+the Apostle's emphasis is to be placed quite as much on
+the adjectives as on the nouns; for there are consolations
+enough in the world, only none of them are
+permanent; and there are hopes enough that amuse
+and draw men, but one of them only is 'good.' The
+gift of Christ, thinks Paul, is the gift of a comfort
+which will never fail amidst all the vicissitudes and
+accumulated and repeated and prolonged sorrows to
+which flesh is heir, and is likewise the gift of a hope
+which, in its basis and in its objects, is equally noble
+and good.</p>
+
+<p>Look at these two things briefly. Paul thinks that
+in Jesus Christ you and I, and all the world, if it will
+have it, has received the gift of an everlasting comfort.
+Ah! sorrow is more persistent than consolation. The
+bandaged wounds bleed again; the fire damped down
+for a moment smoulders, even when damped, and
+bursts out again. But there is one source of comfort
+which, because it comes from an unchangeable Christ,
+and because it communicates unfailing gifts of patience
+and insight, and because it leads forward to everlasting
+blessedness and recompenses, may well be called
+'eternal consolation.' Of course, consolation is not
+needed when sorrow has ceased; and when the wiping
+away of all tears from off all faces, and the plunging
+of grief into the nethermost fires, there to be consumed,
+have come about, there is no more need for comfort.
+Yet that which made the comfort while sorrow lasts,
+makes the triumph and the rapture when sorrow is
+dead, and is everlasting, though its office of consolation
+determines with earth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273a" id="Page_273a">[273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Good hope through grace.' This is the weakness of
+all the hopes which dance like fireflies in the dark
+before men, and are often like will-o'-the-wisps in the
+night tempting men into deep mire, where there is
+no standing&mdash;that they are uncertain in their basis
+and inadequate in their range. The prostitution of
+the great faculty of hope is one of the saddest
+characteristics of our feeble and fallen manhood; for
+the bulk of our hopes are doubtful and akin to fears,
+and are mean and low, and disproportioned to the
+possibilities, and therefore the obligations, of our
+spirits. But in that Cross which teaches us the
+meaning of sorrows, and in that Christ whose presence
+is light in darkness, and the very embodied consolation
+of all hearts, there lie at once the foundation and the
+object of a hope which, in consideration both of object
+and foundation, stands unique in its excellence and
+sufficient in its firmness. 'A good hope'; good because
+well founded; and good because grasping worthy
+objects; eternal consolation outlasting all sorrows&mdash;these
+things were given once for all, to the whole
+world when Jesus Christ came and lived and died. The
+materials for a comfort that shall never fail me, and
+for the foundation and the object of a hope that shall
+never be ashamed, are supplied in Jesus Christ our
+Lord. And so these gifts, already passed under the
+great seal of heaven, and confirmed to us all, if we
+choose to take them for ours, are the ground upon
+which the largest prayers may be rested, and the most
+ardent desires may be unblamably cherished, in the
+full confidence that no petitions of ours can reach to
+the greatness of the divine purpose, and that the
+widest and otherwise wildest of our hopes and wishes
+are sober under-estimates of what God has already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274a" id="Page_274a">[274]</a></span>
+given to us. For if He has given the material, He will
+apply what He has supplied. And if He has thus in
+the past bestowed the possibilities of comfort and
+hope upon the world, He will not slack His hand, if we
+desire the possibility to be in our hearts turned into
+the actuality.</p>
+
+<p>God has given, therefore God will give. That in
+heaven's logic, but it does not do for men. It presupposes
+inexhaustible resources, unchangeable purposes
+of kindness, patience that is not disgusted and
+cannot be turned away by our sin. These things being
+presupposed it is true; and the prayer of my text, that
+God would comfort, can have no firmer foundation
+than the confidence of my text, that God has given
+'everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.'
+'Thou hast helped us; leave us not, neither forsake us,
+O God of our salvation.'</p>
+
+<p>III. The last thing here is the petitions based upon
+the contemplation of the divine hearers of the prayer,
+and of the gift already bestowed by God.</p>
+
+<p>May He 'comfort your hearts, and stablish you in
+every good word and work.' I have already said all
+that perhaps is necessary in regard to the connection
+between the past gift of everlasting consolation and
+the present and future comforting of hearts which is
+here desired. It seems to me that the Apostle has in
+his mind the distinction between the great work of
+Christ, in which are supplied for us the materials for
+comfort and hope, and the present and continuous
+work of that Divine Spirit, by which God dwelling in
+our hearts in Jesus Christ makes real for each of us
+the universal gift of consolation and of hope. God
+has bestowed the materials for comfort; God will give
+the comfort for which He has supplied the materials.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275a" id="Page_275a">[275]</a></span>
+It were a poor thing if all that we could expect from
+our loving Father in the heavens were that He should
+contribute to us what might make us peaceful and
+glad and calm in sorrow, if we chose to use it. Men
+comfort from without; God steals into the heart, and
+there diffuses the aroma of His presence. Christ
+comes into the ship before He says, 'Peace! be still!'
+It is not enough for our poor troubled heart that
+there should be calmness and consolation twining
+round the Cross if we choose to pluck the fruit. We
+need, and therefore we have, an indwelling God who,
+by that Spirit which is the Comforter, will make for
+each of us the everlasting consolation which He has
+bestowed upon the world our individual possession.
+God's husbandry is not merely broadcast sowing of
+the seed, but the planting in each individual heart of
+the precious germ. And the God who has given everlasting
+consolation to a whole world will comfort <i>thy</i>
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, the comforted heart will be a stable
+heart. Our fixedness and stability are not natural
+immobility, but communicated steadfastness. There
+must be, first, the consolation of Christ before there
+can be the calmness of a settled heart. We all know
+how vacillating, how driven to and fro by gusts of
+passion and winds of doctrine and forces of earth our
+resolutions and spirits are. But thistledown glued to
+a firm surface will be firm, and any light thing lashed
+to a solid one will be solid; and reeds shaken with the
+wind may be turned into brazen pillars that cannot be
+moved. If we have Christ in our hearts, He will be
+our consolation first and our stability next. Why
+should it be that we are spasmodic and fluctuating, and
+the slaves of ups and downs, like some barometer in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276a" id="Page_276a">[276]</a></span>
+stormy weather; now at 'set fair,' and then away
+down where 'much rain' is written? There is no need
+for it. Get Christ into your heart, and your mercury
+will always stand at one height. Why should it be
+that at one hour the flashing waters fill the harbour,
+and that six hours afterwards there is a waste of ooze
+and filth? It need not be. Our hearts may be like
+some landlocked lake that knows no tide. 'His heart
+is fixed, trusting in the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>The comforted and stable heart will be a fruitful
+heart. 'In <i>every</i> good word and work.' Ah! how
+fragmentary is our goodness, like the broken torsos of
+the statues of fair gods dug up in some classic land.
+There is no reason why each of us should not appropriate
+and make our own the forms of goodness to
+which we are least naturally inclined, and cultivate
+and possess a symmetrical, fully-developed, all-round
+goodness, in some humble measure after the pattern
+of Jesus Christ our Lord. Practical righteousness, 'in
+every good word and work,' is the outcome of all the
+sacred and secret consolations and blessings that
+Jesus Christ imparts. There are many Christian
+people who are like those swallow-holes, as they call
+them, characteristic of limestone countries, where a
+great river plunges into a cave and is no more heard
+of. You do not get your comforts and your blessing
+for that, brother, but in order that all the joy and
+peace, all the calmness and the communion, which you
+realise in the secret place of the Most High, may be
+translated into goodness and manifest righteousness in
+the market-place and the street. We get our goodness
+where we get our consolation, from Jesus Christ and
+His Cross.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear friends, all your comforts will die, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277a" id="Page_277a">[277]</a></span>
+your sorrows will live, unless you have Christ for your
+own. The former will be like some application that is
+put on a poisoned bite, which will soothe it for a
+moment, but as soon as the anodyne dries off the skin,
+the poison will tingle and burn again, and will be
+working in the blood, whilst the remedy only touched
+the surface of the flesh. All your hopes will be like a
+child's castles on the sand, which the next tide will
+smooth out and obliterate, unless your hope is fixed on
+Him. You may have everlasting consolation, you may
+have a hope which will enable you to look serenely on
+the ills of life, and on the darkness of death, and on
+what darkly looms beyond death. You may have a
+calmed and steadied heart; you may have an all-round,
+stable, comprehensive goodness. But there is
+only one way to get these blessings, and that is to
+grasp and make our own, by simple faith and constant
+clinging, that great gift, given once for all in Jesus
+Christ, the gift of comfort that never dies, and of hope
+that never deceives, and then to apply that gift day by
+day, through God's good Spirit, to sorrows and trials
+and duties as they emerge.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE HEART'S HOME AND GUIDE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting
+for Christ.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> iii. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A word or two of explanation of terms may preface
+our remarks on this, the third of the Apostle's prayers
+for the Thessalonians in this letter. The first point to
+be noticed is that by 'the Lord' here is meant, as
+usually in the New Testament, Jesus Christ. So that
+here again we have the distinct recognition of His
+divinity, and the direct address of prayer to Him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278a" id="Page_278a">[278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The next thing to notice is that by 'the love of God'
+is here meant, not God's to us, but ours to Him; and
+that the petition, therefore, respects the emotions and
+sentiments of the Thessalonians towards the Father
+in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>And the last point is that the rendering of the
+Authorised Version, 'patient waiting for Christ,' is
+better exchanged for that of the Revised Version,
+'the patience of Christ,' meaning thereby the same
+patience as He exhibited in His earthly life, and
+which He is ready to bestow upon us.</p>
+
+<p>It is not usual in the New Testament to find Jesus
+Christ set forth as the great Example of patient
+endurance; but still there are one or two instances in
+which the same expression is applied to Him. For
+example, in two contiguous verses in the Epistle to
+the Hebrews, we read of His 'enduring contradiction
+of sinners against Himself,' and 'enduring the Cross,
+despising the shame,' in both of which cases we have
+the verb employed of which the noun is here used.
+Then in the Apocalypse we have such expressions as
+'the patience of Christ,' of which John says that he
+and his brethren whom he is addressing are 'participators,'
+and, again, 'thou hast kept the word of my
+patience.'</p>
+
+<p>So, though unusual, the thought of our text as
+presented in the amended version is by no means
+singular. These things, then, being premised, we may
+now look at this petition as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>I. The first thought that it suggests to me is, the
+home of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>'The Lord direct you <i>into</i> the love of God and the
+patience of Christ.' The prayers in this letter with
+which we have been occupied for some Sundays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279a" id="Page_279a">[279]</a></span>
+present to us Christian perfection under various
+aspects. But this we may, perhaps, say is the most
+comprehensive and condensed of them all. The
+Apostle gathers up the whole sum of his desires for
+his friends, and presents to us the whole aim of our
+efforts for ourselves, in these two things, a steadfast
+love to God, and a calm endurance of evil and persistence
+in duty, unaffected by suffering or by pain.
+If we have these two we shall not be far from being
+what God wishes to see us.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Apostle's thought here, of 'leading us into'
+these two seems to suggest the metaphor of a great
+home with two chambers in it, of which the inner was
+entered from the outer. The first room is 'the love of
+God,' and the second is 'the patience of Christ.' It
+comes to the same thing whether we speak of the
+heart as dwelling in love, or of love as dwelling in the
+heart. The metaphor varies, the substance of the
+thought is the same, and that thought is that the
+heart should be the sphere and subject of a steadfast,
+habitual, all-pleasing love, which issues in unbroken
+calmness of endurance and persistence of service, in
+the face of evil.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look, then, for a moment at these two points.
+I need not dwell upon the bare idea of love to God
+as being the characteristic of the Christian attitude
+towards Him, or remind you of how strange and unexampled
+a thing it is that all religion should be
+reduced to this one fruitful germ, love to the Father
+in heaven. But it is more to the purpose for me to
+point to the constancy, the unbrokenness, the depth,
+which the Apostle here desires should be the characteristics
+of Christian love to God. We sometimes
+cherish such emotion; but, alas, how rare it is for us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280a" id="Page_280a">[280]</a></span>
+to dwell in that calm home all the days of our lives!
+We visit that serene sanctuary at intervals, and then
+for the rest of our days we are hurried to and fro
+between contending affections, and wander homeless
+amidst inadequate loves. But what Paul asked, and
+what should be the conscious aim of the Christian
+life, is, that we should 'dwell all our days in the house
+of the Lord, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to
+enquire in His temple.'</p>
+
+<p>Alas, when we think of our own experiences, how
+fair and far seems that other, contemplated as a
+possibility in my text, that our hearts should 'abide
+in the love of God'!</p>
+
+<p>Let me remind you, too, that steadfastness of
+habitual love all round our hearts, as it were, is the
+source and germ of all perfectness of life and conduct.
+'Love and do as Thou wilt,' is a bold saying, but not
+too bold. For the very essence of love is the smelting
+of the will of the lover into the will of the beloved.
+And there is nothing so certain as that, in regard to
+all human relations, and in regard to the relations to
+God which in many respects follow, and are moulded
+after the pattern of, our earthly relations of love, to
+have the heart fixed in pure affection is to have the
+whole life subordinated in glad obedience. Nothing
+is so sweet as to do the beloved's will. The germ of
+all righteousness, as well as the characteristic spirit of
+every righteous deed, lies in love to God. This is
+the mother tincture which, variously coloured and
+with various additions, makes all the different
+precious liquids which we can pour as libations on
+His altar. The one saving salt of all deeds in reference
+to Him is that they are the outcome and expression
+of a loving heart. He who loves is righteous, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281a" id="Page_281a">[281]</a></span>
+doeth righteousness. So, 'love is the fulfilling of
+the law.'</p>
+
+<p>That the heart should be fixed in its abode in love
+to God is the secret of all blessedness, as it is the
+source of all righteousness. Love is always joy in
+itself; it is the one deliverance from self-bondage
+to which self is the one curse and misery of man.
+The emancipation from care and sorrow and unrest
+lies in that going out of ourselves which we call by
+the name of love. There be things masquerading
+about the world, and profaning the sacred name of
+love by taking it to themselves, which are only selfishness
+under a disguise. But true love is the annihilation,
+and therefore the apotheosis and glorifying, of
+self; and in that annihilation lies the secret charm
+which brings all blessedness into a life.</p>
+
+<p>But, then, though love in itself be always bliss,
+yet, by reason of the imperfections of its objects,
+it sometimes leads to sorrow. For limitations and
+disappointments and inadequacies of all sorts haunt
+our earthly loves whilst they last; and we have all
+to see them fade, or to fade away from them. The
+thing you love may change, the thing you love
+must die; and therefore love, which in itself is
+blessedness, hath often, like the little book that the
+prophet swallowed, a bitter taste remaining when the
+sweetness is gone. But if we set our hearts on God,
+we set our hearts on that which knows no variableness,
+neither the shadow of turning. <i>There</i> are no inadequate
+responses, no changes that we need fear. On
+that love the scythe of death, which mows down all
+other products of the human heart, hath no power;
+and its stem stands untouched by the keen edge
+that levels all the rest of the herbage. Love God,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282a" id="Page_282a">[282]</a></span>
+and thou lovest eternity; and therefore the joy of the
+love is eternal as its object. So he who loves God is
+building upon a rock, and whosoever has this for
+his treasure carries his wealth with him whithersoever
+he goes. Well may the Apostle gather into one
+potent word, and one mighty wish, the whole fulness
+of his desires for his friends. And wise shall we be if
+we make this the chiefest of our aims, that our hearts
+may have their home in the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, there is another chamber in this house
+of the soul. The outer room, where the heart inhabits
+that loves God, leads into another compartment, 'the
+patience of Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, I suppose I need not remind many of you that
+this great New Testament word 'patience' has a far
+wider area of meaning than that which is ordinarily
+covered by that expression. For <i>patience</i>, as we use
+it, is simply a passive virtue. But the thing that is
+meant by the New Testament word which is generally
+so rendered has an active as well as a passive side. On
+the passive side it is the calm, unmurmuring, unreluctant
+submission of the will to whatsoever evil may
+come upon us, either directly from God's hand, or
+through the ministration and mediation of men who
+are His sword. On the active side it is the steadfast
+persistence in the path of duty, in spite of all that may
+array itself against us. So there are the two halves of
+the virtue which is here put before us&mdash;unmurmuring
+submission and bold continuance in well-doing, whatsoever
+storms may hurtle in our faces.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in both of these aspects, the life of Jesus
+Christ is the great pattern. As for the passive side,
+need I remind you how, 'as a sheep before her shearers
+is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'? 'When He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283a" id="Page_283a">[283]</a></span>
+was reviled He reviled not again, but committed
+Himself unto Him that judgeth uprightly.' No anger
+ever flushed His cheek or contracted His brow. He
+never repaid scorn with scorn, nor hate with hate.
+All men's malice fell upon Him, like sparks upon wet
+timber, and kindled no conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>As for the active side, I need not remind you how
+'He set His face to go to Jerusalem'&mdash;how the great
+solemn '<i>must</i>' which ruled His life bore Him on,
+steadfast and without deflection in His course, through
+all obstacles. There never was such heroic force as
+the quiet force of the meek and gentle Christ, which
+wasted no strength in displaying or boasting of itself,
+but simply, silently, unconquerably, like the secular
+motions of the stars, dominated all opposition, and
+carried Him, unhasting and unresting, on His path.
+That life, with all its surface of weakness, had an iron
+tenacity of purpose beneath, which may well stand for
+our example. Like some pure glacier from an Alpine
+peak, it comes silently, slowly down into the valley;
+and though to the eye it seems not to move, it presses
+on with a force sublime in its silence and gigantic in
+its gentleness, and buries beneath it the rocks that
+stand in its way. The patience of Christ is the very
+sublimity of persistence in well-doing. It is our example,
+and more than our example&mdash;it is His gift
+to us.</p>
+
+<p>Such passive and active patience is the direct fruit
+of love to God. The one chamber opens into the other.
+For they whose hearts dwell in the sweet sanctities
+of the love of God will ever be those who say, with
+a calm smile, as they put out their hand to the
+bitterest draught, 'the cup which My Father hath
+given Me, shall I not drink it?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284a" id="Page_284a">[284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Love, and evil dwindles; love, and duty becomes
+supreme; and in the submission of the will, which is
+the true issue of love, lies the foundation of indomitable
+and inexhaustible endurance and perseverance.</p>
+
+<p>Nor need I remind you, I suppose, that in this
+resolve to do the will of God, in spite of all antagonism
+and opposition, lies a condition at once of moral
+perfection and of blessedness. So, dear friends, if we
+would have a home for our hearts, let us pass into
+that sweet, calm, inexpugnable fortress provided
+for us in the love of God and the patience of
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now notice, secondly, the Guide of the heart to
+its home.</p>
+
+<p>'The Lord direct you.' I have already explained
+that we have here a distinct address to Jesus Christ
+as divine, and the hearer of prayer. The Apostle
+evidently expects a present, personal influence from
+Christ to be exerted upon men's hearts. And this is
+the point to which I desire to draw your attention in
+a word or two. We are far too oblivious of the present
+influence of Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, upon the
+hearts of men that trust Him. We have very imperfectly
+apprehended our privileges as Christians if our
+faith do not expect, and if our experience have not
+realised, the inward guidance of Christ moment by
+moment in our daily lives. I believe that much of
+the present feebleness of the Christian life amongst its
+professors is to be traced to the fact that their
+thoughts about Jesus Christ are predominantly
+thoughts of what He did nineteen centuries ago,
+and that the proportion of faith is not observed in
+their perspective of His work, and that they do not
+sufficiently realise that to-day, here, in you and me, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285a" id="Page_285a">[285]</a></span>
+we have faith in Him, He is verily and really putting
+forth His power.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's prayer is but an echo of Christ's promise.
+The Master said, 'He shall guide you into all truth.'
+The servant prays, 'The Lord direct your hearts into
+the love of God.' And if we rightly know the whole
+blessedness that is ours in the gift of Jesus Christ, we
+shall recognise His present guidance as a reality in
+our lives.</p>
+
+<p>That guidance is given to us mainly by the Divine
+Spirit laying upon our hearts the great facts which
+evoke our answering love to God. 'We love Him
+because He first loved us'; and the way by which
+Jesus directs our hearts into the love of God is mainly
+by shedding abroad God's love to us in our spirits by
+the Holy Spirit which is given to us.</p>
+
+<p>But, besides that, all these movements in our hearts
+so often neglected, so often resisted, by which we are
+impelled to a holier life, to a deeper love, to a more
+unworldly consecration&mdash;all these, rightly understood,
+are Christ's directions. He leads us, though
+often we know not the hand that guides; and every
+Christian may be sure of this&mdash;and he is sinful if he
+does not live up to the height of his privileges&mdash;that
+the ancient promises are more than fulfilled in his
+experience, and that he has a present Christ, an indwelling
+Christ, who will be his Shepherd, and lead
+him by green pastures and still waters sometimes
+and through valleys of darkness and rough defiles
+sometimes, but always with the purpose of bringing
+him nearer and nearer to the full possession of the
+love of God and the patience of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The vision which shone before the eyes of the
+father of the forerunner, was that 'the dayspring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286a" id="Page_286a">[286]</a></span>
+from on high hath visited us, to guide our feet into
+the way of peace.' It is fulfilled in Jesus who directs
+our hearts into love and patience, which are the way
+of peace.</p>
+
+<p>We are not to look for impressions and impulses
+distinguishable from the operations of our own
+inward man. We are not to fall into the error of
+supposing that a conviction of duty or a conception of
+truth is of divine origin because it is strong. But
+the true test of their divine origin is their correspondence
+with the written word, the standard of truth
+and life. Jesus guides us to a fuller apprehension of
+the great facts of the infinite love of God in the Cross.
+Shedding abroad a Saviour's love does kindle ours.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, notice the heart's yielding to its guide.</p>
+
+<p>If this was Paul's prayer for his converts, it should
+be our aim for ourselves. Christ is ready to direct our
+hearts, if we will let Him. All depends on our yielding
+to that sweet direction, loving as that of a mother's
+hand on her child's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>What is our duty and wisdom in view of these
+truths? The answer may be thrown into the shape
+of one or two brief counsels.</p>
+
+<p>First, desire it. Do you Christian people want to
+be led to love God more? Are you ready to love the
+world less, which you will have to do if you love God
+more? Do you wish Christ to lay His hand upon you,
+and withdraw you from much, that He may draw you
+into the sanctities and sublimities of His own experienced
+love? I do not think the lives of some of us look
+very like as if we should welcome that direction. And
+it is a sharp test, and a hard commandment to say to
+a Christian professor, 'Desire to be led into the love
+of God.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287a" id="Page_287a">[287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again, expect it. Do not dismiss all that I have
+been saying about a present Christ leading men by
+their own impulses, which are His monitions, as
+fanatical and mystical and far away from daily experience.
+Ah! it is not only the boy Samuel whose
+infancy was an excuse for his ignorance, who takes
+God's voice to be only white-bearded Eli's. There are
+many of us who, when Christ speaks, think it is only
+a human voice. Perhaps His deep and gentle tones
+are thrilling through my harsh and feeble voice; and
+He is now, even by the poor reed through which He
+breathes His breath, saying to some of you, 'Come
+near to Me.' Expect the guidance.</p>
+
+<p>Still your own wills that you may hear His voice.
+How can you be led if you never look at the Guide?
+How can you hear that still small voice amidst the
+clattering of spindles, and the roar of wagons, and
+the noises in your own heart? Be still, and He will
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>Follow the guidance, and at once, for delay is fatal.
+Like a man walking behind a guide across some
+morass, set your feet in the print of the Master's and
+keep close at His heels, and then you will be safe.
+And so, dear friends, if we want to have anchorage for
+our love, let us set our love on God, who alone is
+worthy of it, and who alone of all its objects will
+neither fail us nor change. If we would have the
+temper which lifts us above the ills of life and enables
+us to keep our course unaffected by them all, as the
+gentle moon moves with the same silent, equable pace
+through piled masses of cloud and clear stretches of
+sky, we must attain submission through love, and
+gain unreluctant endurance and steadfast wills from
+the example and source of both, the gentle and strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288a" id="Page_288a">[288]</a></span>
+Christ. If we would have our hearts calm, we must
+let Him guide them, sway them, curb their vagrancies,
+stimulate their desires, and satisfy the desires which
+He has stimulated. We must abandon self, and say,
+'Lord, I cannot guide myself. Do Thou direct my
+wandering feet.' The prayer will not be in vain.
+He will guide us with His eye, and that directing of
+our hearts will issue in experiences of love and
+patience, whose 'very sweetness yieldeth proof that
+they were born for immortality.' The Guide and the
+road foreshadow the goal. The only natural end to
+which such a path can lead and such guidance point
+is a heaven of perfect love, where patience has done
+its perfect work, and is called for no more. The
+experience of present direction strengthens the hope
+of future perfection. So we may take for our own
+the triumphant confidence of the Psalmist, and embrace
+the nearest and the remotest future in one calm
+vision of faith that 'Thou wilt guide me with Thy
+counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE LORD OF PEACE AND THE PEACE
+OF THE LORD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now the Lord of Peace Himself give you peace always, by all means. The
+Lord be with you all.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Thess.</span> iii. 16.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have reached here the last of the brief outbursts
+of prayer which characterise this letter, and bear
+witness to the Apostle's affection for his Thessalonian
+converts. It is the deepening of the ordinary Jewish
+formula of meeting and parting. We find that, in
+most of his letters, the Apostle begins with wishing
+'grace and peace,' and closes with an echo of the wish.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289a" id="Page_289a">[289]</a></span>
+'Peace be unto you' was often a form which meant
+nothing. But true religion turns conventional insincerities
+into real, heartfelt desires. It was often a
+wish destined to remain unfulfilled. But loving wishes
+are potent when they are changed into petitions.</p>
+
+<p>The relation between the two clauses of my text
+seems to be that the second, 'The Lord be with you
+all,' is not so much a separate, additional supplication
+as rather the fuller statement, in the form of prayer,
+of the means by which the former supplication is to
+be accomplished. 'The Lord of Peace' gives peace by
+giving His own presence. This, then, is the supreme
+desire of the Apostle, that Christ may be with them
+all, and in His presence they may find the secret
+of tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>I. The deepest longing of every human soul is for
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>There are many ways in which the supreme good
+may be represented, but perhaps none of them is so
+lovely, and exercises such universal fascination of
+attraction, as that which presents it in the form of
+rest. It is an eloquent testimony to the unrest which
+tortures every heart that the promise of peace should
+to all seem so fair. It may be presented and aimed at
+in very ignoble and selfish ways. It may be sought for
+in cowardly shirking of duty, in sluggish avoidance of
+effort, in selfish absorption, apart from all the miseries
+of mankind. It may be sought for in the ignoble paths
+of mere pleasure, amidst the sanctities of human love,
+amidst the nobilities of intellectual effort and pursuit.
+But all men in their workings are aiming at rest of
+spirit, and only in such rest does blessedness lie.
+'There is no joy but calm.' It is better than all the
+excitements of conflict, and better than the flush of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290a" id="Page_290a">[290]</a></span>
+victory. Best which is not apathy, rest which is not
+indolence, rest which is contemporaneous with, and
+the consequence of, the full wholesome activity of the
+whole nature in its legitimate directions, that is the
+good that we are all longing for. The sea is not
+stagnant, though it be calm. There will be the slow
+heave of the calm billow, and the wavelets may
+sparkle in the sunlight, though they be still from all
+the winds that rave. Deep in every human heart, in
+yours and mine, brother, is this cry for rest and peace.
+Let us see to it that we do not mistranslate the
+meaning of the longing, or fancy that it can be found
+in the ignoble, the selfish, the worldly ways to which
+I have referred. We want, most of all, peace in our
+inmost hearts.</p>
+
+<p>II. Then the second thing to be suggested here is
+that the Lord of Peace Himself is the only giver of
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I may take for granted, on the part at
+least of the members of my own congregation, some
+remembrance of a former discourse upon another of
+these petitions, in which I pointed out how, in
+phraseology analogous to that of my text, there
+were the distinct reference to the divinity of Jesus
+Christ, the distinct presentation of prayer to Him,
+the implication of His present activity upon Christian
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>And here again we have the august and majestic
+'Himself.' Here again we have the distinct reference
+of the title 'Lord' to Jesus. And here again we have
+plainly prayer to Him.</p>
+
+<p>But the title by which He is addressed is profoundly
+significant, 'The Lord of Peace.' Now we find, in
+another of Paul's letters, in immediate conjunction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291a" id="Page_291a">[291]</a></span>
+with His teaching, that casting all our care upon God
+is the sure way to bring the peace of God into our
+hearts, the title 'the God of Peace'; and he employs
+the same phraseology in another of his letters, when
+he prays that the 'God of Peace' would fill the Roman
+Christians 'with all joy and peace in believing.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, here is a title which is all but distinctively
+divine. 'The <i>Lord</i> of Peace' is brought into parallelism
+and equality with 'the God of Peace'; which
+were blasphemy unless the underlying implication was
+that Jesus Christ Himself was divine.</p>
+
+<p>He is the 'Lord of Peace' because that tranquillity
+of heart and spirit, that unruffled calm which we all
+see from afar, and long to possess, was verily His, in
+His manhood, during all the calamities and changes
+and activities of His earthly life. I have said that
+'peace' is not apathy, that it is not indifference, that
+it is not self-absorption. Look at the life of the
+'Lord of Peace.' In Him there were wholesome
+human emotions. He sorrowed, He wept, He wondered,
+He was angry, He pitied, He loved. And yet all these
+were perfectly consistent with the unruffled calm which
+marked His whole career. So peace is not stolid indifference,
+nor is it to be found in the avoidance of
+difficult duties, or the cowardly shirking of sacrifices
+and pains and struggles; but rather it is 'peace subsisting
+at the heart of endless agitation,' of which the
+great example stands in Him who was 'the Man of
+Sorrows and acquainted with grief,' and who yet, in
+it all, was 'the Lord of Peace.'</p>
+
+<p>Why was Christ's manhood so perfectly tranquil?
+The secret lies here. It was a manhood in unbroken
+communion with the Father. And what was the
+secret of that unbroken communion with the Father?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292a" id="Page_292a">[292]</a></span>
+It lies here, in the perfect submission of His will.
+Resignation is peace. The surrender of self-will is
+peace. Obedience is peace. Trust is peace, and
+fellowship with the divine is peace. So Christ has
+taught us in His life&mdash;'The Father hath not left Me
+alone, because I do always the things that please Him.'
+And therein He has marked out for us the path of
+righteousness and communion, which is ever the path
+of peace. 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose
+mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.'
+That is the secret of the tranquillity of the ever-calm
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Being thus the Lord of Peace, inasmuch as it was
+His own constant and unbroken possession, He is the
+sole giver of it to others.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! brethren, our hearts want far more, for their
+stable restfulness, than we can find in any hand, or in
+any heart, except those of Jesus Christ Himself. For
+what do we need? We need, in order that we should
+know the sweetness of repose, an adequate object for
+every part of our nature. If we find something that
+is good and sweet and satisfying for some portion of
+this complex being of ours, all its other hungry desires
+are apt to be left unappeased. So we are shuttle-cocked
+from one wish to another, and bandied about
+from one partial satisfaction to another, and in them
+all it is but segments of our being that are satisfied,
+whilst all the rest of the circumference remains disquieted.
+We need that, in one attainable and single
+object, there shall be at once that which will subjugate
+the will, that which will illuminate and appease
+the conscience, that which will satisfy the seeking
+intellect, and hold forth the promise of endless progress
+in insight and knowledge, that which will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293a" id="Page_293a">[293]</a></span>
+meet all the desires of our ravenous clamant nature,
+and that which will fill every creek and cranny of our
+empty hearts as with the flashing brightness of an
+inflowing tide.</p>
+
+<p>And where shall we find all these, but in one dear
+heart, and where shall we discern the one object,
+whom, possessing, we have enough; and without
+whom, possessing all beside, we are mendicants and
+starving? Where, but in that dear Lord, who Himself
+will supply all our needs, and will minister to us peace,
+because for will and conscience and intellect and
+affections and desires He supplies the pabulum that
+they require, and gives more than enough for their
+satisfaction?</p>
+
+<p>We want, if we are to be at rest, that there shall be
+some absolute control over our passions, lusts, desires,
+which torture us for ever, as long as they are ungoverned.
+There is only one hand which will take
+the wild beasts of our nature, bind them in the silken
+leash of His love, and lead them along, tamed and
+obedient.</p>
+
+<p>We want, for our peace, that all our relations with
+circumstances and men around us shall be rectified.
+And who is there that can bring about such harmony
+between us and our surroundings that calamities
+shall not press upon us with their heaviest weight,
+nor opposing circumstances kindle angry resistance,
+but only patient perseverance and thankful persistence
+in the path of duty? It is only Christ that can
+regulate our relations to the things and the men
+around us, and make all things work together to our
+consciousness for our good.</p>
+
+<p>Further, if we are to be at rest, and possess any
+true, fundamental, and stable tranquillity, we want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294a" id="Page_294a">[294]</a></span>
+that our relations with God shall consciously be
+rectified and made blessed. And I, for my part, do
+not believe that any man comes into the full sweetness
+of an assured friendship with God, unless he comes to
+it by the road of faith in that Saviour in whom God
+draws near to us with tenderness in His heart, and
+blessings dropping from His open Hands. To be at
+peace with God is the beginning of all true tranquillity,
+and that can be secured only by faith in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>So, because He brings the reconciliation between
+man and God, because He brings the rectification
+of our relation to circumstances and men, because He
+brings the control of desires and passions and inclinations,
+and because He satisfies all the capacities of
+our natures, in Him, and in Him only, is there peace
+for us.</p>
+
+<p>III. So note, thirdly, that the peace of the Lord of
+Peace is perfect.</p>
+
+<p>'Give you peace always,' that points to perpetual,
+unbroken duration in time, and through all changing
+circumstances which might threaten a less stable and
+deeply-rooted tranquillity. And then, 'by all means,'
+as our Authorised Version has it, or, better, 'in all
+ways,' as the Revised Version reads, the reference
+being, not so much to the various manners in which
+the divine peace is to be bestowed, as to the various
+aspects which that peace is capable of assuming.
+Christ's peace, then, is perpetual and multiform,
+unbroken, and presenting itself in all the aspects in
+which tranquillity is possible for a human spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible, then, thinks Paul, that there shall be
+in our hearts a deep tranquillity, over which disasters,
+calamities, sorrows, losses, need have no power. There
+is no necessity why, when my outward life is troubled,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295a" id="Page_295a">[295]</a></span>
+my inward life should be perturbed. There may be
+light in the dwellings of Goshen, while darkness lies
+over all the land of Egypt. The peace which Christ
+gives is no exemption from warfare, but is realised in
+the midst of warfare. It is no immunity from sorrows,
+but is then most felt when the storm of sorrow beating
+upon us is patiently accepted. The rainbow
+steadfastly stands spanning the tortured waters of the
+cataract. The fire may burn, like that old Greek fire,
+beneath the water. The surface may be agitated,
+but the centre may be calm. It is not calamity
+that breaks our peace, but it is the resistance of our
+wills to calamity which troubles us. When we can
+bow and submit and say, 'Thy will be done,' 'it
+seemeth good to Thee, do as Thou wilt,' then nothing
+can break the peace of God in our hearts. We seek
+in the wrong quarter for peace when we seek it in the
+disposition of outward things according to our wills.
+We seek in the right way when we seek it in the disposition
+of our wills according to the will of the
+Father manifest in our circumstances. There may
+be peace always, even whilst the storms, efforts, and
+calamities of life are in full operation around us and
+on us. That peace may be uninterrupted and uniform,
+extended on one high level, as it were through all
+our lives. It is not so with us, dear brethren; there
+are ups and downs which are our own fault. The
+peace of God may be permanent, but, in order that it
+should be, there must be permanent communion and
+permanent obedience.</p>
+
+<p>Further, says the Apostle, Christ's peace will not
+manifest itself in one form only, but in all the shapes
+in which peace is possible. There are many enemies
+that beset this calmness of spirit; for them all there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296a" id="Page_296a">[296]</a></span>
+is the appropriate armour and defence in the peace of
+God, I have already enumerated in part some of the
+requirements for true and permanent tranquillity of
+soul. All these are met in the peace of Christ.
+Whatever it is that disturbs men, He has His anodyne
+that will soothe. If circumstances threaten, if men
+array themselves against us, if our own evil hearts rise
+up in rebellion, if our passions disturb us, if our consciences
+accuse: for all these Christ brings tranquillity
+and calm. In every way in which men can
+be disturbed, and in every way, therefore, in which
+peace can be manifest, Christ's gift avails. 'Come
+unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and
+I will give you rest.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, 'the Lord of Peace' gives it by giving
+His own presence.</p>
+
+<p>The Thessalonians, as they listened to Paul's first
+prayer, might think to themselves, 'Always, by all
+means.' That is a large petition! Can it be fufilled?
+And so the Apostle adds, 'The Lord be with you all.'
+You cannot separate Christ's gifts from Christ. The
+only way to get anything that He gives is to get Him.
+It is His presence that does everything. If He is with
+me, the world's annoyances will seem very small. If
+I hold His hand I shall not be much troubled. If I can
+only nestle close to His side, and come under His cloak,
+He will shield me from the cold blast, from whatever
+side it blows. If my heart is twined around Him it
+will partake of the stability and calm of the great
+heart on which it rests.</p>
+
+<p>The secret of tranquillity is the presence of Christ.
+When He is in the vessel the waves calm themselves.
+So, Christian men and women, if you and I are
+conscious of breaches of our restfulness, interruptions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297a" id="Page_297a">[297]</a></span>
+of our tranquillity by reason of surging, impatient
+passions, and hot desires within ourselves, or by
+reason of the pressure of outward circumstances, or by
+reason of our having fallen beneath our consciences,
+and done wrong things, let us understand that the
+breaches of our peace are not owing to Him, but only
+to our having let go His hand. It is our own faults
+if we are ever troubled; if we kept close to Him we
+should not be. It is our own faults if the world ever
+agitates us beyond the measure that is compatible
+with central calm. Sorrow should not have the power
+to touch the citadel of our lives. Effort should not
+have the power to withdraw us from our trustful
+repose in Him. And nothing here would have the
+power, if we did not let our hand slip out of His, and
+break our communion with Him.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, 'in the world ye shall have
+tribulation, in Me ye shall have peace.' Keep inside
+the fortress and nothing will disturb. 'He that
+dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall
+abide under the shadow of the Almighty.' The only
+place where that hungry, passion-ridden heart of
+yours, conscious of alienation from God, can find rest,
+is close by Jesus Christ. 'The Lord be with us all,'
+and then the peace of that Lord shall clothe and fill
+our hearts in Christ Jesus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298a" id="Page_298a">[298]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>I. TIMOTHY</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now, the end of the commandment is love, out of a pure heart, and of a good
+conscience, and of faith unfeigned.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> 1. 6.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle has just said that he left Timothy in
+Ephesus, in order to check some tendencies there
+which were giving anxiety. Certain teachers had
+appeared, the effect of whose activity was to create
+parties, to foster useless speculations, and to turn the
+minds of the Ephesian Christians away from the
+practical and moral side of Christianity. In opposition
+to these, the Apostle here lays down the broad principle
+that God has spoken, not in order to make acute
+theologians, or to provide materials for controversy,
+but in order to help us to love. The whole of these
+latest letters of the Apostle breathe the mellow wisdom
+of old age, which has learned to rate brilliant intellectualism,
+agility, incontroversial fence and the like,
+far lower than homely goodness. And so, says Paul,
+'the end of the commandment is love.'</p>
+
+<p>Now he here states, not only the purpose of the
+divine revelation, but gives us a summary, but yet
+sufficient, outline of the method by which God works
+towards that purpose. The commandment is the
+beginning, love is the end or aim. And between these
+two there are inserted three things, a 'pure heart,' a
+'good conscience,' 'faith unfeigned.' Now of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299a" id="Page_299a">[299]</a></span>
+three the two former are closely connected, and the
+third is the cause, or condition, of both of them. It is,
+therefore, properly named last as being first in order,
+and therefore last reached in analysis. When you
+track a stream from its mouth to its source, the
+fountain-head is the last thing that you come to. And
+here we have, as in these great lakes in Central Africa&mdash;out
+of which finally the Nile issues&mdash;the stages of the
+flow. There are the twin lakes, a 'good conscience'
+and a 'pure heart.' These come from 'unfeigned faith,'
+which lies higher up in the hills of God; and they run
+down into the love which is the 'end of the commandment.'
+The faith lays hold on the commandment, and
+so the process is complete. Or, if you begin at the top,
+instead of at the bottom, God gives the word; faith
+grasps the word, and thereby nourishes a 'pure heart'
+and a 'good conscience,' and thereby produces a
+universal love. So, then, we have three steps to look
+at here.</p>
+
+<p>I. First of all, what God speaks to us for.</p>
+
+<p>'The end of the commandment is love.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, I take it that the word 'commandment' here
+means, not this or that specific precept, but the whole
+body of Christian revelation, considered as containing
+laws for life. And to begin with, and only to mention,
+it is something to get that point of view, that all which
+God says, be it promise, be it self-manifestation, be it
+threatening, or be it anything else, has a preceptive
+bearing, and is meant to influence life and conduct. I
+shall have a word or two more to say about that
+presently, but note, just as we go on, how remarkable
+it is, and how full of lessons, if we will ponder it, that
+one name for the Gospel on the lips of the man who
+had most to say about the contrast between Gospel and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300a" id="Page_300a">[300]</a></span>
+Law is 'commandment.' Try to feel the stringency of
+that aspect of evangelical truth and of Christian
+revelation.</p>
+
+<p>Then I need not remind you how here the indefinite
+expression 'love' must be taken, as I think is generally
+the case in the New Testament, when the object on
+which the love rests is not defined, as including both of
+the twin commandments, of which the second, our
+Master says, is like unto the first, love to God and love
+to man. In the Christian idea these two are one. They
+are shoots from the one root. The only difference is
+that the one climbs and the other grows along the
+levels of earth. There is no gulf set in the New Testament
+teaching, and there ought to be none in the
+practice and life of a Christian man, between the love
+of God and the love of man. They are two aspects of
+one thing.</p>
+
+<p>Then, if so, mark how, according to the Apostle's
+teaching here, in this one thought of a dual-sided love,
+one turned upwards, one turned earthwards, there lies
+the whole perfection of a human soul. You want
+nothing more if you are 'rooted and grounded in love.'
+That will secure all goodness, all morality, all religion,
+everything that is beautiful, and everything that is
+noble. And all this is meant to be the result of God's
+speech to us.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, two very plain practical principles may be
+deduced and enforced from this first thought. First,
+the purpose of all revelation and the test of all religion
+is&mdash;character and conduct.</p>
+
+<p>It is all very well to know about God, to have our
+minds filled with true thoughts about Him, His nature,
+and dealings with us. Orthodoxy is good, but orthodoxy
+is a means to an end. There should be nothing in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301a" id="Page_301a">[301]</a></span>
+a man's creed which does not act upon his life. Or, if
+I may put it into technical words, all a man's <i>credenda</i>
+should be his <i>agenda;</i> and whatsoever he believes
+should come straight into his life to influence it, and to
+shape character. Here, then, is the warning against
+a mere notional orthodoxy, and against regarding
+Christian truth as being intended mainly to illuminate
+the understanding, or to be a subject of speculation and
+discussion. There are people in all generations, and
+there are plenty of them to-day, who seem to think
+that the great verities of the Gospel are mainly meant
+to provide material for controversy&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="As if religion were intended">
+<tr><td align='left'>'As if religion were intended</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For nothing else but to be mended';</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and that they have done all that can be expected when
+they have tried to apprehend the true bearing of this
+revelation, and to contend against misinterpretations.
+This is the curse of religious controversy, that it blinds
+men to the practical importance of the truths for which
+they are fighting. It is as if one were to take some
+fertile wheat-land, and sand it all over, and roll it
+down, and make it smooth for a gymnasium, where
+nothing would grow. So the temper which finds in
+Christian truth simply a 'ministration of questions,'
+as my text says, mars its purpose, and robs itself
+of all the power and nourishment that it might find
+there.</div>
+
+<p>No less to be guarded against is the other misconception
+which the clear grasp of our text would
+dismiss at once, that the great purpose for which God
+speaks to us men, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, is
+that we may, as we say, be 'forgiven,' and escape any
+of the temporal or eternal consequences of our wrongdoing.
+That <i>is</i> a purpose, no doubt, and men will never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302a" id="Page_302a">[302]</a></span>
+rise to the apprehension of the loftiest purposes, nor
+penetrate to a sympathetic perception of the inmost
+sweetness of the Gospel, unless they begin with its
+redemptive aspect, even in the narrowest sense of that
+word. But there are a miserable number of so-called
+and of real Christians in this world, and in our
+churches to-day, who have little conception that God
+has spoken to them for anything else than to deliver
+them from the fear of death, and from the incidence on
+them of future condemnation. He <i>has</i> spoken for this
+purpose, but the ultimate end of all is that we may be
+helped to love Him, and so to be like Him. The aim of
+the commandment is love, and if you ever are tempted
+to rest in intellectual apprehensions, or to pervert the
+truth of God into a mere arena on which you can display
+your skill of fence and your intellectual agility, or
+if ever you are tempted to think that all is done when
+the sweet message of forgiveness is sealed upon a
+man's heart, remember the solemn and plain words of
+my text&mdash;the final purpose of all is that we may love
+God and man.</p>
+
+<p>But then, on the other side, note that no less
+distinctly is the sole foundation of this love laid in
+God's speech. My text, in its elevation of sentiment
+and character and conduct above doctrine, falls in with
+the prevailing tendencies of this day; but it provides
+the safeguards which these tendencies neglect. Notice
+that this favourite saying of the most advanced school
+of broad thinkers, who are always talking about the
+decay of dogma, and the unimportance of doctrine as
+compared with love, is here uttered by a man who was
+no sentimentalist, but to whom the Christian system
+was a most distinct and definite thing, bristling all
+over with the obnoxious doctrines which are by some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303a" id="Page_303a">[303]</a></span>
+of us so summarily dismissed as of no importance. My
+very text protests against the modern attempt to
+wrench away the sentiments and emotions produced in
+men, by the reception of Christian truth, from the
+truth which it recognises as the only basis on which
+they can be produced. It declares that the 'commandment'
+must come first, before love can follow; and the
+rest of the letter, although, as I say, it decisively
+places the end of revelation as being the moral and
+religious perfecting of men into assimilation with the
+divine love, no less decisively demands that for such
+a perfecting there shall be laid the foundation of the
+truth as it is revealed in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And that is what we want to-day in order to make
+breadth wholesome, and if only we will carry with us
+the two thoughts, the commandment and love, we shall
+not go far wrong. But what would you think of a man
+that said, 'I do not want any foundations. I want a
+house to live in'? And pray how are you going to get
+your house without the foundations? Or would he be
+a wise man who said, 'Oh, never mind about putting
+grapes into the vine vat, and producing fermentation;
+give me the wine!' Yes! But you must have the
+fermentation first. The process is not the result, of
+course, but there is no result without the process. And
+according to New Testament teaching, which, I am bold
+to say, is verified by experience, there is no deep, all-swaying,
+sovereign, heart-uniting love to God which is
+not drawn from the acceptance of the truth as it is in
+Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>II. And so I come, secondly, to note the purifying
+which is needed prior to such love.</p>
+
+<p>Our text, as I said, divides the process into stages;
+or, if I may go back to a former illustration, into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304a" id="Page_304a">[304]</a></span>
+levels. And on the level immediately above the love,
+down into which the waters of the twin lakes glide, are
+a pure heart and a good conscience. These are the
+requisites for all real and operative love. Now they
+are closely connected, as it seems to me, more closely
+so than with either the stage which precedes or that
+which follows. They are, in fact, two twin thoughts,
+very closely identified, though not quite identical.</p>
+
+<p>A pure heart is one that has been defecated and
+cleansed from the impurities which naturally attach to
+human affections. A 'good conscience' is one which is
+void of offence towards God and man, and registers the
+emotions of a pure heart. It is like a sheet of sensitive
+paper that, with a broken line, indicates how many
+hours of sunshine in the day there have been. We
+need not discuss the question as to which of these two
+great gifts and blessings which sweeten a whole life
+come first. In the initial stages of the Christian life I
+suppose the good conscience precedes the pure heart.
+For forgiveness which calms the conscience and purges
+it of the perilous stuff which has been injected into it
+by our corruptions&mdash;forgiveness comes before cleansing,
+and the conscience is calm before the heart is
+purified. But in the later stages of the Christian life
+the order seems to be reversed, and there cannot be in
+a man a conscience that is good unless there is a heart
+that is pure.</p>
+
+<p>But however that may be&mdash;and it does not affect the
+general question before us&mdash;mark how distinctly Paul
+lays down here the principle that you will get no real
+love of God or man out of men whose hearts are foul,
+and whose consciences are either torpid or stinging
+them. I need not dwell upon that, for it is plain to
+anybody that will think for a moment that all sin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305a" id="Page_305a">[305]</a></span>
+separates between a man and God; and that from a
+heart all seething and bubbling, like the crater of a
+volcano, with foul liquids, and giving forth foul odours,
+there can come no love worth calling so to God, nor
+any benevolence worth calling so to man. Wherever
+there is sin, unrecognised, unconfessed, unpardoned,
+there there is a black barrier built up between a
+man's heart and the yearning heart of God on the
+other side. And until that barrier is swept away, until
+the whole nature receives a new set, until it is
+delivered from the love of evil, and from its self-centred
+absorption, and until conscience has taken into
+grateful hands, if I might so say, the greatest of all
+gifts, the assurance of the divine forgiveness, I, for
+one, do not believe that deep, vital, and life-transforming
+love to God is possible. I know that it is very
+unfashionable, I know it is exceedingly narrow teaching,
+but it seems to me that it is Scriptural teaching;
+and it seems to me that if we will strip it of the
+exaggerations with which it has often been surrounded,
+and recognise that there may be a kind of instinctive
+and occasional recognition of a divine love, there may
+be a yearning after a clear light, and fuller knowledge
+of it, and yet all the while no real love to God, rooted
+in and lording over and moulding the life, we shall not
+find much in the history of the world, or in the
+experience of ourselves or of others, to contradict the
+affirmation that you need the cleansing of forgiveness,
+and the recognition of God's love in Jesus Christ,
+before you can get love worth calling so in return to
+Him in men's hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, there is much to-day to shame Christian
+men in the singular fact which is becoming more
+obvious daily, of a divorce between human benevolence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306a" id="Page_306a">[306]</a></span>
+and godliness. It is a scandal that there should be so
+many men in the world who make no pretensions to
+any sympathy with your Christianity, and who set you
+an example of benevolence, self-sacrifice, enthusiasm
+for humanity, as it is called. I believe that the one
+basis upon which there can be solidly built benevolence
+to men is devotion to God, because of God's great love
+to us in Jesus Christ. But I want to stir, if I might
+not say sting, you and myself into a recognition of our
+obligations to mankind, more stringent and compelling
+than we have ever felt it, by this phenomenon of
+modern life, that a divorce has been proclaimed
+between philanthropy and religion. The end of the
+commandment is love, out of a pure heart, and of a
+good conscience.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, notice the condition of such purifying.</p>
+
+<p>To recur to my former illustration, we have to go up
+country to a still higher level. What feeds the two
+reservoirs that feed the love? What makes the heart
+pure and the conscience good? Paul answers, 'faith
+unfeigned'; not mere intellectual apprehension, not
+mere superficial or professed, but deep, genuine, and
+complete faith which has in it the element of reliance
+as well as the element of credence. Belief is not all
+that goes to make faith. Trust is not all that goes to
+make faith. Belief and trust are indissolubly wedded
+in the conception of it. Such a faith, which knows
+what it lays hold of&mdash;for it lays hold upon definite
+truth, and lays hold on what it knows, for it trusts in
+Him whom the truth reveals&mdash;such a faith makes the
+heart pure and the conscience good.</p>
+
+<p>And how does it do so? By nothing in itself. There
+is no power in my faith to make me one bit better than
+I am. There is no power in it to still one accusation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307a" id="Page_307a">[307]</a></span>
+conscience. It is only the condition on which the one
+power that purges and that calms enters into my heart
+and works there. The power of faith is the power of
+that which faith admits to operate in my life. If we
+open our hearts the fire will come in, and it will thaw
+the ice, and melt out the foulness from my heart. It is
+important for practice that we should clearly understand
+that the great things which the Bible says of
+faith it says of it only because it is the channel, the
+medium, the condition, by and on which the real power,
+which is Jesus Christ Himself, acts upon us. It is not
+the window, but the sunshine, that floods this building
+with light. It is not the opened hand, but the gift laid
+in it, that enriches the pauper. It is not the poor
+leaden pipe, but the water that flows through it, that
+fills the cistern, and cleanses it, whilst it fills. It is not
+your faith, but the Christ whom your faith brings into
+your heart and conscience, that purges the one, and
+makes the other void of offence towards God and man.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, let us learn the secret of all nobility, of
+all power, of all righteousness of character and conduct.
+Put your foot on the lowest round of the ladder, and
+then aspire and climb, and you will reach the summit.
+Take the first step, and be true to it after you have
+taken it, and the last will surely come. He that can
+say, 'We have known and believed the love that God
+hath to us,' will also be able to say, 'We love Him
+because He first loved us.' 'And this commandment
+have we of God, that he who loves God loves his brother
+also.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308a" id="Page_308a">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>'THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF
+THE HAPPY GOD'</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'The glorious gospel of the blessed God.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> i. 11.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Two remarks of an expository character will prepare
+the way for our consideration of this text. The first
+is, that the proper rendering is that which is given in
+the Revised Version&mdash;'the gospel of the glory,' not the
+'glorious gospel.' The Apostle is not telling us what
+kind of thing the Gospel is, but what it is about. He
+is dealing not with its quality, but with its contents.
+It is a Gospel which reveals, has to do with, is the
+manifestation of, the glory of God.</p>
+
+<p>Then the other remark is with reference to the
+meaning of the word 'blessed.' There are two Greek
+words which are both translated 'blessed' in the New
+Testament. One of them, the more common, literally
+means 'well spoken of,' and points to the action of
+praise or benediction; describes what a man is when
+men speak well of him, or what God is when men
+praise and magnify His name. But the other word,
+which is used here, and is only applied to God once
+more in Scripture, has no reference to the human
+attribution of blessing and praise to Him, but
+describes Him altogether apart from what men say
+of Him, as what He is in Himself, the 'blessed,' or, as
+we might almost say, the 'happy' God. If the word
+happy seems too trivial, suggesting ideas of levity, of
+turbulence, of possible change, then I do not know
+that we can find any better word than that which is
+already employed in my text, if only we remember that
+it means the solemn, calm, restful, perpetual gladness
+that fills the heart of God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309a" id="Page_309a">[309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So much, then, being premised, there are three
+points that seem to me to come out of this remarkable
+expression of my text. First, the revelation of God in
+Christ, of which the Gospel is the record, is the glory
+of God. Second, that revelation is, in a very profound
+sense, an element in the blessedness of God. And, lastly,
+that revelation is the good news for men. Let us look
+at these three points, then, in succession.</p>
+
+<p>I. Take, first, that striking thought that the revelation
+of God in Jesus Christ is the glory of God.</p>
+
+<p>The theme, or contents, or purpose of the whole
+Gospel, is to set forth and make manifest to men the
+glory of God.</p>
+
+<p>Now what do we mean by 'the glory'? I think, perhaps,
+that question may be most simply answered by
+remembering the definite meaning of the word in the
+Old Testament. There it designates, usually, that
+supernatural and lustrous light which dwelt between
+the Cherubim, the symbol of the presence and of the
+self-manifestation of God. So that we may say, in
+brief, that the glory of God is the sum-total of the
+light that streams from His self-revelation, considered
+as being the object of adoration and praise by a world
+that gazes upon Him.</p>
+
+<p>And if this be the notion of the glory of God, is it
+not a startling contrast which is suggested between
+the apparent contents and the real substance of that
+Gospel? Suppose a man, for instance, who had no
+previous knowledge of Christianity, being told that
+in it he would find the highest revelation of the glory
+of God. He comes to the book, and finds that the
+very heart of it is not about God, but about a man;
+that this revelation of the glory of God is the biography
+of a man; and more than that, that the larger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310a" id="Page_310a">[310]</a></span>
+portion of that biography is the story of the humiliations,
+and the sufferings, and the death of the man.
+Would it not strike him as a strange paradox that
+the history of a <i>man's</i> life was the shining apex of all
+revelations of the glory of <i>God?</i> And yet so it is, and
+the Apostle, just because to him the Gospel was the
+story of the Christ who lived and died, declares that
+in this story of a human life, patient, meek, limited,
+despised, rejected, and at last crucified, lies, brighter
+than all other flashings of the divine light, the very
+heart of the lustre and palpitating centre and fontal
+source of all the radiance with which God has flooded
+the world. The history of Jesus Christ is the glory of
+God. And that involves two or three considerations
+on which I dwell briefly.</p>
+
+<p>One of them is this: Christ, then, is the self-revelation
+of God. If, when we deal with the story of His
+life and death, we are dealing simply with the biography
+of a man, however pure, lofty, inspired he may
+be, then I ask what sort of connection there is between
+that biography which the four Gospels gives us, and
+what my text says is the substance of the Gospel?
+What force of logic is there in the Apostle's words:
+'God commendeth <i>His</i> love toward us in that whilst
+we were yet sinners <i>Christ</i> died for us,' unless there
+is some altogether different connection between the
+God who commends His love and the Christ who dies
+to commend it, than exists between a mere man and
+God? Brethren! to deliver my text, and a hundred
+other passages of Scripture, from the charge of being
+extravagant nonsense, and clear, illogical <i>non sequiturs</i>,
+you must believe that in that man Christ Jesus 'we
+behold His glory&mdash;the glory of the only begotten of
+the Father'; and that when we look&mdash;haply not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311a" id="Page_311a">[311]</a></span>
+without some touch of tenderness and awed admiration
+in our hearts&mdash;upon His gentleness, we have to
+say, 'the patient God'; when we look upon His tears
+we have to say, 'the pitying God'; when we look upon
+His Cross we have to say, 'the redeeming God'; and
+gazing upon the Man, to see in Him the manifest divinity.
+Oh! listen to that voice, 'He that hath seen Me hath
+seen the Father,' and bow before the story of the human
+life as being the revelation of the indwelling God.</p>
+
+<p>And then, still further, my text suggests that this
+self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the very climax
+and highest point of all God's revelations to men. I
+believe that the loftiest exhibition and conception of
+the divine character which is possible to us must be
+made to us in the form of a man. I believe that the
+law of humanity, for ever, in heaven as on earth, is
+this, that the Son is the revealer of God; and that no
+loftier&mdash;yea, at bottom, no other&mdash;communication of
+the divine nature can be made to man than is made
+in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>But be that as it may, let me urge upon you this
+thought, that in that wondrous story of the life and
+death of our Lord Jesus Christ the very high-water
+mark of divine self-communication has been touched
+and reached. All the energies of the divine nature are
+embodied there. The 'riches, both of the <i>wisdom</i> and
+of the <i>knowledge</i> of God,' are in the Cross and Passion
+of our Saviour. 'To declare at this time His <i>righteousness</i>'
+Jesus Christ came to die. The Cross is 'the <i>power</i>
+of God unto salvation.' Or, to put it into other words,
+and avail oneself of an illustration, we know the old
+story of the queen who, for the love of an unworthy
+human heart, dissolved pearls in the cup and gave
+them to him to drink. We may say that God comes to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312a" id="Page_312a">[312]</a></span>
+us, and for the love of us, reprobate and unworthy,
+has melted all the jewels of His nature into that cup
+of blessing which He offers to us, saying: 'Drink ye
+all of it.' The whole Godhead, so to speak, is smelted
+down to make that rushing river of molten love which
+flows from the Cross of Christ into the hearts of men.
+Here is the highest point of God's revelation of
+Himself.</p>
+
+<p>And my text implies, still further, that the true
+living, flashing centre of the glory of God is the love
+of God. Christendom is more than half heathen yet,
+and it betrays its heathenism not least in its vulgar
+conceptions of the divine nature and its glory. The
+majestic attributes which separate God from man, and
+make Him unlike His creatures, are the ones which
+people too often fancy belong to the glorious side of
+His character. They draw distinctions between 'grace'
+and 'glory,' and think that the latter applies mainly
+to what I might call the physical and the metaphysical,
+and less to the moral, attributes of the divine nature.
+We adore power, and when it is expanded to infinity
+we think that it is the glory of God. But my text
+delivers us from all such misconceptions. If we rightly
+understand it, then we learn this, that the true heart
+of the glory is tenderness and love. Of power that
+weak man hanging on the Cross is a strange embodiment;
+but if we learn that there is something more
+godlike in God than power, then we can say, as we look
+upon Jesus Christ: 'Lo! this is our God. We have
+waited for Him, and He will save us.' Not in the
+wisdom that knows no growth, not in the knowledge
+which has no border-land of ignorance ringing it round
+about, not in the unwearied might of His arm, not in
+the exhaustless energy of His being, not in the un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313a" id="Page_313a">[313]</a></span>slumbering
+watchfulness of His all-seeing eye, not in
+that awful presence wheresoever creatures are; not in
+any or in all of these lies the glory of God, but in His
+love. These are the fringes of the brightness; this is
+the central blaze. The Gospel is the Gospel of the
+glory of God, because it is all summed up in the one
+word&mdash;'God so loved the world that He gave His only
+begotten Son.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, in the next place, the revelation of God in
+Christ is an element in the blessedness of God.</p>
+
+<p>We are come here into places where we see but very
+dimly, and it becomes us to speak very cautiously.
+Only as we are led by the divine teaching may we
+affirm at all. But it cannot be unwise to accept in
+simple literality utterances of Scripture, however they
+may seem to strike us as strange. And so I would say&mdash;the
+philosopher's God may be all-sufficient and unemotional,
+the Bible's God 'delighteth in mercy,'
+rejoiceth in His gifts, and is glad when men accept
+them. It is something, surely, amid all the griefs and
+sorrows of this sorrow-haunted and devil-hunted world,
+to rise to this lofty region and to feel that there is a
+living personal joy at the heart of the universe. If
+we went no further, to me there is infinite beauty and
+mighty consolation and strength in that one thought&mdash;the
+happy God. He is not, as some ways of representing
+Him figure Him to be, what the older astronomers
+thought the sun was, a great cold orb, black and frigid
+at the heart, though the source and centre of light and
+warmth to the system. But He Himself is joy, or if
+we dare not venture on that word, which brings with
+it earthly associations, and suggests the possibility of
+alteration&mdash;He is the blessed God. And the Psalmist
+saw deeply into the divine nature, who, not contented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314a" id="Page_314a">[314]</a></span>
+with hymning His praise as the possessor of the
+fountain of life, and the light whereby we see light,
+exclaimed in an ecstasy of anticipation, 'Thou makest
+us to drink of the rivers of Thy pleasures.'</p>
+
+<p>But there is a great deal more than that here, if not
+in the word itself, at least in its connection, which
+connection seems to suggest that, howsoever the divine
+nature must be supposed to be blessed in its own
+absolute and boundless perfectness, an element in the
+blessedness of God Himself arises from His self-communication
+through the Gospel to the world. All love
+delights in imparting. Why should not God's? On
+the lower level of human affection we know that it is
+so, and on the highest level we may with all reverence
+venture to say, The quality of that mercy .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. 'is
+twice blest,' and that divine love 'blesseth Him that
+gives and them that take.'</p>
+
+<p>He created a universe because He delights in His
+works, and in having creatures on whom He can lavish
+Himself. He 'rests in His love, and rejoices over us
+with singing' when we open our hearts to the reception
+of His light, and learn to know Him as He has
+declared Himself in His Christ. The blessed God is
+blessed because He is God. But He is blessed too
+because He is the loving and, therefore, the giving God.</p>
+
+<p>What a rock-firmness such a thought as this gives to
+the mercy and the love that He pours out upon us! If
+they were evoked by our worthiness we might well
+tremble, but when we know, according to the grand
+words familiar to many of us, that it is His nature
+and property to be merciful, and that He is far gladder
+in giving than we can be in receiving, then we may be
+sure that His mercy endureth for ever, and that it is
+the very necessity of His being&mdash;and He cannot turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315a" id="Page_315a">[315]</a></span>
+His back upon Himself&mdash;to love, to pity, to succour,
+and to bless.</p>
+
+<p>III. And so, lastly, the revelation of God in Christ is
+good news for us all.</p>
+
+<p>'The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God.' How
+that word 'Gospel' has got tarnished and enfeebled by
+constant use and unreflective use, so that it slips glibly
+off my tongue and falls without producing any effect
+upon your hearts! It needs to be freshened up by considering
+what really it means. It means this: here are
+we like men shut up in a beleaguered city, hopeless, helpless,
+with no power to break out or to raise the siege;
+provisions failing, death certain. Some of you older
+men and women remember how that was the case in
+that awful siege of Paris, in the Franco-German War,
+and what expedients were adopted in order to get
+some communication from without. And here to us,
+prisoned, comes, as it did to them, a despatch borne
+under a dove's wing, and the message is this:&mdash;God is
+love; and that you may know that He is, He has sent
+you His Son who died on the Cross, the sacrifice for
+a world's sin. Believe it, and trust it, and all your
+transgressions will pass away.</p>
+
+<p>My brother, is not that good news? Is it not <i>the</i>
+good news that you need&mdash;the news of a Father, of
+pardon, of hope, of love, of strength, of purity, of
+heaven? Does it not meet our fears, our forebodings,
+our wants at every point? It comes to you. What do
+you do with it? Do you welcome it eagerly, do you
+clutch it to your hearts, do you say, 'This is <i>my</i> Gospel'?
+Oh! let me beseech you, welcome the message; do not
+turn away from the word from heaven, which will
+bring life and blessedness to all your hearts! Some of
+you have turned away long enough, some of you,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316a" id="Page_316a">[316]</a></span>
+perhaps, are fighting with the temptation to do so
+again even now. Let me press that ancient Gospel
+upon your acceptance, that Christ the Son of God has
+died for you, and lives to bless and help you. Take it
+and live! So shall you find that, 'as cold water to a
+thirsty soul,' so is this best of all news from the far
+country.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE GOSPEL IN SMALL</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
+into the world to save sinners.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> i. 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Condensation is a difficult art. There are few things
+drier and more unsatisfactory than small books on
+great subjects, abbreviated statements of large systems.
+Error lurks in summaries, and yet here the whole
+fulness of God's communication to men is gathered into
+a sentence; tiny as a diamond, and flashing like it.
+My text is the one precious drop of essence, distilled
+from gardens full of fragrant flowers. There is an
+old legend of a magic tent, which could be expanded
+to shelter an army, and contracted to cover a single
+man. That great Gospel which fills the Bible and
+overflows on the shelves of crowded libraries is here,
+without harm to its power, folded up into one saying,
+which the simplest can understand sufficiently to
+partake of the salvation which it offers.</p>
+
+<p>There are five of these 'faithful sayings' in the
+letters of Paul, usually called 'the pastoral epistles.'
+It seems to have been a manner with him, at that
+time of his life, to underscore anything which he felt
+to be especially important by attaching to it this label.
+They are all, with one exception, references to the
+largest truths of the Gospel. I turn to this one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317a" id="Page_317a">[317]</a></span>
+the first of them now, for the sake of gathering some
+lessons from it.</p>
+
+<p>I. Note, then, first, here the Gospel in a nutshell.</p>
+
+<p>'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.'
+Now, every word there is weighty, and might be, not
+beaten out, but opened out into volumes. Mark who
+it is that comes&mdash;the solemn double name of that
+great Lord, 'Christ Jesus.' The former tells of His
+divine appointment and preparation, inasmuch as the
+Spirit of the Lord God is upon Him, anointing Him
+to proclaim good tidings to the poor, and to open the
+prison doors to all the captives, and asserts that it is
+He to whom prophets and ritual witnessed, and for
+whose coming prophets and kings looked wearily
+through the ages, and died rejoicing even to see afar
+off the glimmer of His day. The name of Jesus tells
+of the child born in Bethlehem, who knows the experience
+of our lives by His own, and not only bends
+over our griefs with the pity and omniscience of a
+God, but with the experience and sympathy of a man.</p>
+
+<p>'Christ Jesus came.' Then He <i>was</i> before He came.
+His own will impelled His feet, and brought Him to
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>'Christ Jesus came to save.' Then there is disease,
+for saving is healing; and there is danger, for saving
+is making secure.</p>
+
+<p>'Christ Jesus came to save sinners'&mdash;the universal
+condition, co-extensive with the 'world' into which,
+and for which, He came. And so the essence of the
+Gospel, as it lay in Paul's mind, and had been verified
+in his experience, was this&mdash;that a divine person had
+left a life of glory, and in wonderful fashion had taken
+upon Himself manhood in order to deliver men from
+the universal danger and disease. That is the Gospel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318a" id="Page_318a">[318]</a></span>
+which Paul believed, and which he commends to us as
+'a faithful saying.'</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, if that be so, there are two or three
+things very important for us to lay to heart. The
+first is the universality of sin. That is the thing
+in which we are all alike, dear friends. That is the
+one thing about which any man is safe in his estimate
+of another. We differ profoundly. The members of
+this congregation, gathered accidentally together, and
+perhaps never to be all together again, may be at the
+antipodes of culture, of condition, of circumstances, of
+modes of life; but, just as really below all the diversities
+there lies the common possession of the one human
+heart, so really and universally below all diversities
+there lies the black drop in the heart, and 'we all have
+sinned and come short of the glory of God.' It is that
+truth which I want to lay on your hearts as the first
+condition to understanding anything about the power,
+the meaning, the blessedness of the Gospel which we
+say we believe.</p>
+
+<p>And what does Paul mean by this universal indictment?
+If you take the vivid autobiographical sketch
+in the midst of which it is embedded, you will understand.
+He goes on to say, 'of whom I am chief.' It
+was the same man that said, without supposing that
+he was contradicting this utterance at all, 'touching
+the righteousness which is in the law' I was 'blameless.'
+And yet, 'I am chief.' So all true men who
+have ever shown us their heart, in telling their Christian
+faith, have repeated Paul's statement; from
+Augustine in his wonderful <i>Confessions</i>, to John
+Bunyan in his <i>Grace Abounding to the Chief of
+Sinners</i>. And then prosaic men have said, 'What
+profligates they must have been, or what exaggerators<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319a" id="Page_319a">[319]</a></span>
+they are now!' No. Sewer gas of the worst sort has
+no smell; and the most poisonous exhalations are only
+perceptible by their effects. What made Paul think
+himself the chief of sinners was not that he had broken
+the commandments, for he might have said, and in
+effect did say, 'All these have I kept from my youth
+up,' but that, through all the respectability and morality
+of his early life there ran this streak&mdash;an alienation
+of heart, in the pride of self-confidence, from God, and
+an ignorance of his own wretchedness and need. Ah!
+brethren, I do not need to exaggerate, nor to talk
+about 'splendid vices,' in the untrue language of one
+of the old saints, but this I seek to press on you: that
+the deep, universal sin does not lie in the indulgence
+of passions, or the breach of moralities, but it lies
+here&mdash;'thou hast left Me, the fountain of living water.'
+That is what I charge on myself, and on every one of
+you, and I beseech you to recognise the existence of
+this sinfulness beneath all the surface of reputable
+and pure lives. Beautiful they may be; God forbid
+that I should deny it: beautiful with many a strenuous
+effort after goodness, and charming in many respects,
+but yet vitiated by this, 'The God in whose hand thy
+breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou hast not
+glorified.' That is enough to make a man brush away
+all the respectabilities and proprieties and graces, and
+look at the black reality beneath, and wail out 'of
+whom I am chief.'</p>
+
+<p>But, further, Paul's condensed summary of the
+Gospel implies the fatal character of this universal
+sin. 'He comes to save,' says he. Now what
+answers to 'save' is either disease or danger. The
+word is employed in the original in antithesis to both
+conditions. To save is to heal and to make safe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320a" id="Page_320a">[320]</a></span>
+And I need not remind you, I suppose, of how truly
+the alienation from God, and the substitution for Him
+of self or of creature, is the sickness of the whole man.
+But the end of sickness uncured is death. We 'have
+no healing medicine,' and the 'wound is incurable'
+by the skill of any earthly chirurgeon. The notion
+of sickness passes, therefore, at once into that of
+danger: for unhealed sickness can only end in death.
+Oh! that my words could have the waking power
+that would startle some of my complacent hearers
+into the recognition of the bare facts of their lives
+and character, and of the position in which they
+stand on a slippery inclined plane that goes straight
+down into darkness!</p>
+
+<p>You do not hear much about the danger of sin
+from some modern pulpits. God forbid that it should
+be the staple of any; but God forbid that it should
+be excluded from any! Whilst fear is a low motive,
+self-preservation is not a low one; and it is to that
+that I now appeal. Brethren, the danger of every sin
+is, first, its rapid growth; second, its power of separating
+from God; third, the certainty of a future&mdash;ay!
+and <i>present</i>&mdash;retribution.</p>
+
+<p>To me, the proof of the fatal effect of sin is what
+God had to do in order to stop it. Do you think that
+it would be a small, superficial cut which could be
+stanched by nothing else but the pierced hand of
+Jesus Christ? Measure the intensity of danger by
+the cost of deliverance, and judge how grave are the
+wounds for the healing of which stripes had to be laid
+on Him. Ah! if you and I had not been in danger
+of death, Jesus Christ would not have died. And if it
+be true that the Son of God laid aside His glory, and
+came into the world and died on the Cross for men,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321a" id="Page_321a">[321]</a></span>
+out of the very greatness of the gift, and the marvellousness
+of the mercy, there comes solemn teaching as
+to the intensity of the misery and the reality and
+awfulness of the retribution from which we were
+delivered by such a death. Sin, the universal condition,
+brings with it no slight disease and no small danger.</p>
+
+<p>Further, we may gather from this condensed summary
+where the true heart and essence of the Christian
+revelation is. You will never understand it until
+you are contented to take the point of view which the
+New Testament takes, and give all weight and gravity
+to the fact of man's transgression and the consequences
+thereof. We shall never know what the power and
+the glory of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is
+until we recognise that, first and foremost, it is the
+mighty means by which man's ruin is repaired, man's
+downrush is stopped, sin is forgiven and capable of
+being cleansed. Only when we think of the Gospel
+of Jesus Christ as being, first and foremost, the
+redemption of the world by the great act of incarnation
+and sacrifice, do we come to be in a position
+in any measure to estimate its superlative worth.</p>
+
+<p>And, for my part, I believe that almost all the mistakes
+and errors and evaporations of Christianity into a
+mere dead nothing which have characterised the various
+ages of the Church come mainly from this, that men
+fail to see how deep and how fatal are the wounds
+of sin, and so fail to apprehend the Gospel as being
+mainly and primarily a system of redemption. There
+are many other most beautiful aspects about it, much
+else in it, that is lovely and of good report, and fitted
+to draw men's hearts and admiration; but all is rooted
+in this, the life and death of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice
+by whom we are forgiven, and in whom we are healed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322a" id="Page_322a">[322]</a></span>
+And if you strike that out, you have a dead nothing
+left&mdash;an eviscerated Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that we all need to be reminded of that
+to-day, as we always do, but mainly to-day, when we
+hear from so many lips estimates, favourable or
+unfavourable to Christianity and its mission in the
+world, which leave out of sight, or minimise into
+undue insignificance, or shove into a backward place,
+its essential characteristic, that it is the power of God
+through Christ, His Son Incarnate, dying and rising
+again for the salvation of individual souls from the
+penalty, the guilt, the habit, and the love of their sins,
+and only secondarily is it a morality, a philosophy, a
+social lever. I take for mine the quaint saying of one
+of the old Puritans, 'When so many brethren are
+preaching to the times, it may be allowed one poor
+brother to preach for eternity.'</p>
+
+<p>'This is a faithful saying, that Christ Jesus came
+into the world to save sinners.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, secondly, note the reliableness of this
+condensed Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>When a man in the middle of some slight plank,
+thrown across a stream, tests it with a stamp of his
+foot, and calls to his comrades, 'It is quite firm,'
+there is reason for their venturing upon it too. That
+is exactly what Paul is doing here. How does he
+know that it is 'a faithful saying'? Because he has
+proved it in his own experience, and found that in
+his case the salvation which Jesus Christ was said to
+effect has been effected. Now there are many other
+grounds of certitude besides this, but, after all, it is
+worth men's while to consider how many millions
+there have been from the beginning who would be
+ready to join chorus with the Apostle here, and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323a" id="Page_323a">[323]</a></span>
+say, 'One thing I know, that whereas I was blind,
+now I see.' My experience cannot be your certitude;
+but if you and I are suffering from precisely the same
+disease, and I have tested a cure, my experiences
+should have some weight with you. And so, brethren,
+I point you to all the thousands who are ready to
+say, 'This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him,
+and saved him.' Are there any who give counter-evidence;
+that say, 'We have tried it. It is all a sham
+and imagination. We have asked this Christ of yours
+to forgive us, and He has not. We have asked Him
+to cleanse us, and He has not. We have tried Him, and
+He is an impostor, and we will have no more to do
+with Him.' There are people, alas! who have gone back
+to their wallowing in the mire, but it was not because
+Christ had failed in His promises, but because they
+did not care to have them fulfilled any more. Jesus
+Christ does not promise that His salvation shall
+work against the will of men who submit themselves
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only because of that consentient chorus
+of many voices&mdash;the testimony of which wise men will
+not reject&mdash;that the word is 'a faithful saying.' This
+is no place or time to enter upon anything like a condensation
+of the Christian evidence; but, in lieu of
+everything else, I point to one proof. There is no fact
+in the history of the world better attested, and the
+unbelief of which is more unreasonable, than the
+Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if Christ rose from
+the dead&mdash;and you cannot understand the history of
+the world unless He did, nor the existence of the
+Church either&mdash;if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, it
+seems to me that almost all the rest follows of
+necessity: the influx of the supernatural, the unique<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324a" id="Page_324a">[324]</a></span>
+character of His career, the correspondence of the end
+with the beginning, the broad seal of the divine confirmation
+stamped upon His claims to be the Son of
+God and the Redeemer of the world. All these things
+seem to me to come necessarily from that fact. And
+I say, given the consentient witness of nineteen
+centuries, given the existence of the Church, given
+the effects of Christianity in the world, given that
+upon which they repose&mdash;the Resurrection of Jesus
+Christ from the dead&mdash;the conclusion is sound, 'This
+is a faithful saying .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. that He came into the world
+to save sinners.'</p>
+
+<p>Men talk, nowadays, very often as if the progress
+of science and new views as to the evolution of
+creatures or of mankind had effected the certitude of
+the Gospel. It does not seem to me that they have
+in the smallest degree. 'The foundation of God
+standeth sure,' whatever may become of some of the
+superstructures which men have built upon it. They
+may very probably be blown away. So much the
+better if we get the rock to build upon once more. A
+great deal is going, but not the Gospel. Do not let us
+be afraid, or suppose that it will suffer. Do not let us
+dread every new speculation as if it was going to
+finish Christianity, but recognise this&mdash;that the fact
+of man's sin and, blessed be God! the fact of man's
+redemption stands untouched by them all; and to-day,
+as of old, Jesus Christ is, and is firmly manifested to
+be, the world's Saviour. Whatsoever refuge may be
+swept away by any storms, 'Behold, I lay in Zion for a
+foundation, a stone, a tried corner-stone, a sure foundation:
+He that believeth shall not be confounded.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, notice the consequent wisdom and duty
+of acceptance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325a" id="Page_325a">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Worthy of all acceptation,' says Paul. Yes, of
+course, if it is reliable. That word of the Lord which
+is 'sure, making wise the simple,' deserves to be
+received. Now this phrase, 'all acceptation,' may
+mean either of two things: it may either mean worthy
+of being welcomed by all men, or by the whole of
+each man.</p>
+
+<p>This Gospel deserves to be welcomed by every man,
+for it is fitted for every man, since it deals with
+the primary human characteristic of transgression.
+Brethren! we need different kinds of intellectual
+nutriment, according to education and culture.
+We need different kinds of treatment, according
+to condition and circumstance. The morality of
+one age is not the morality of another. Much,
+even of right and wrong, is local and temporary;
+but black man and white, savage and civilised,
+philosopher and fool, king and clown, all need the
+same air to breathe, the same water to drink, the same
+sun for light and warmth, and all need the same
+Christ for redemption from the same sin, for safety
+from the same danger, for snatching from the same
+death. This Gospel is a Gospel for the world, and for
+every man in it. Have you taken it for yours? If it
+is 'worthy of all acceptation,' it is worthy of <i>your</i>
+acceptation. If you have not, you are treating Him
+and it with indignity, as if it was a worthless letter
+left in the post-office for you, which you knew was
+there, but which you did not think valuable enough
+to take the trouble to go for. The gift lies at your
+side. It is less than truth to say that it is '<i>worthy</i> of
+being accepted.' Oh! it is infinitely more than that.</p>
+
+<p>It is, also, 'worthy of all acceptation' in the sense
+of worthy of being accepted into all a man's nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326a" id="Page_326a">[326]</a></span>
+because it will fit it all and bless it all. Some of us
+give it a half welcome. We take it into our heads,
+and then we put a partition between them and our
+hearts, and keep our religion on the other side, so that
+it does not influence us at all. It is worthy of being
+received by the understanding, to which it will bring
+truth absolute; of being received by the will, to which
+it will bring the freedom of submission; of being
+received by the conscience, to which it will bring
+quickening; of being received by the affections, to
+which it will bring pure and perfect love. For hope,
+it will bring a certainty to gaze upon; for passions, a
+curb; for effort, a spur and a power; for desires, satisfaction;
+for the whole man, healing and light.</p>
+
+<p>Brother! take it. And, if you do, begin where it
+begins, with your sins; and be contented to be saved as
+a sinner in danger and sickness, who can neither defend
+nor heal yourself. And thus coming, you will test the
+rope and find it hold; you will take the medicine and
+know that it cures; and, by your own experience,
+you will be able to say, 'This <i>is</i> a faithful saying,
+Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE CHIEF OF SINNERS</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Of whom I am chief.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> i. 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The less teachers of religion talk about themselves the
+better; and yet there is a kind of personal reference,
+far removed from egotism and offensiveness. Few
+such men have ever spoken more of themselves than
+Paul did, and yet none have been truer to his motto:
+'We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus.' For the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327a" id="Page_327a">[327]</a></span>
+scope of almost all his personal references is the
+depreciation of self, and the magnifying of the wonderful
+mercy which drew him to Jesus Christ. Whenever
+he speaks of his conversion it is with deep emotion and
+with burning cheeks. Here, for instance, he adduces
+himself as the typical example of God's long-suffering.
+If <i>he</i> were saved none need despair.</p>
+
+<p>I take it that this saying of the Apostle's, 'Of whom
+I am chief,' paradoxical and exaggerated as it seems to
+many men, is in spirit that which all who know themselves
+ought to re-echo; and without which there is
+little strength in Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>I. And so I ask you to note, first, what this man
+thinks of himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Of whom I am chief.' Now, if we set what we know
+of the character of Saul of Tarsus before he was a
+Christian by the side of that of many who have won a
+bad supremacy in wickedness, the words seem entirely
+strange and exaggerated. But, as I have often had
+to say, the principle of the Apostle's estimate is to
+be found in his belief that, not the outward manifestation
+of evil in specific acts of immorality, or flagrant
+breaches of commandment, but the inward principle
+from which the deeds flowed, is the measure of a man's
+criminality, and that, according to the uniform teaching
+of Scripture, the very root of sin, and that which
+is common to all the things that the world's conscience
+and ordinary morality designate as wrong, is to be
+found here, that self has become the centre, the aim,
+and the law instead of God. 'This is the condemnation,'
+said Paul's Master&mdash;<i>not</i> that men have done so-and-so
+and so-and-so, but&mdash;'that light is come into the world,
+and men love darkness.' That is the root of evil.
+'When the Comforter is come,' said Paul's Master, 'He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328a" id="Page_328a">[328]</a></span>
+will convince the world of sin.' Because they have
+broken the commandments? Because they have been
+lustful, ambitious, passionate, murderous, profligate,
+and so on? No! 'Because they believe not in Me.'</p>
+
+<p>The common root of all sin is alienation of heart
+and will from God. And it is by the root, and not by
+the black clusters of poisonous berries that have come
+from it, that men are to be judged. Here is the
+mother-tincture. You may colour it in different ways,
+and you may flavour it with different essences, and
+you will get a whole <i>pharmacop&oelig;ia</i> of poisons out of it.
+But the mother-poison of them all is this, that men turn
+away from the light, which is God; and for you and
+me is God in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>So this man, looking back from the to-day of his
+present devotion and love to the yesterdays of his
+hostility, avails himself indeed of the palliation, 'I did
+it ignorantly, in unbelief,' but yet is smitten with the
+consciousness that whilst as touching the righteousness
+that is of the law he was blameless, his attitude to that
+incarnate love was such as now, he thinks, stamps him
+as the worst of men.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, <i>there</i> is the standard by which we have to
+try ourselves. If we get down below the mere surface
+of acts, and think, not of what we do, but of what we
+are, we shall then, at any rate, have in our hands the
+means by which we can truly estimate ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>But what have we to say about that word 'chief'?
+Is not that exaggeration? Well, yes and no. For
+every man ought to know the weak and evil places of
+his own heart better than he does those of any besides.
+And if he does so know them, he will understand that
+the ordinary classification of sin, according to the
+apparent blackness of the deed, is very superficial and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329a" id="Page_329a">[329]</a></span>
+misleading. Obviously, the worst of acts need not be
+done by the worst of men, and it does not at all follow
+that the man who does the awful deed stands out
+from his fellows in the same bad pre-eminence in
+which his deed stands out from theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Take a concrete case. Go into the slums of Manchester,
+and take some of the people there, battered
+almost out of the semblance of humanity, and all
+crusted over and leprous with foul-smelling evils that
+you and I never come within a thousand miles of
+thinking it possible that we should do. Did you ever
+think that it is quite possible that the worst harlot,
+thief, drunkard, profligate in your back streets may be
+more innocent in their profligacy than you are in your
+respectability; and that we may even come to this
+paradox, that the worse the act, as a rule, the less
+guilty the doer? It is not such a paradox as it looks,
+because, on the one hand, the presence of temptation,
+and, on the other hand, the absence of light, make all
+the difference. And these people, who could not have
+been anything else, are innocent in degradation as
+compared with you, with all your education and culture,
+and opportunities of going straight, and knowledge
+of Christ and His love. The little transgressions
+that you do are far greater than the gross ones that
+they do. 'But for the grace of God, there goes John
+Bradford,' said the old preacher, when he saw a man
+going to the scaffold. And you and I, if we know
+ourselves, will not think that we have an instance of
+exaggeration, but only of the object nearest seeming
+the largest, when Paul said 'Of whom I am chief.'</p>
+
+<p>Only go and look for your sin in the way they look
+for Guy Fawkes at the House of Commons before the
+session. Take a dark lantern, and go down into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330a" id="Page_330a">[330]</a></span>
+cellars. And If you do not find something there
+that will take all the conceit out of you, it must be
+because you are very short-sighted, or phenomenally
+self-complacent.</p>
+
+<p>What does it matter though there be vineyards on
+the slopes of Vesuvius, and bright houses nestling at
+its base, and beauty lying all around like the dream of
+a god, if, when a man cranes his neck over the top of
+the crater, he sees that that cone, so graceful on the
+outside, is seething with fire and sulphur? Let us
+look down into the crater of our own hearts, and what
+we see there may well make us feel as Paul did when
+he said, 'Of whom I am chief.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, such an estimate is perfectly consistent with
+a clear recognition of any good that may be in the
+character and manifest in life. For the same Paul
+who says, 'Of whom I am chief,' says, in the almost
+contemporaneous letter sent to the same person, 'I
+have fought a good fight; I have finished my course;
+I have kept the faith'; and he is the same man who
+asserted, 'In nothing am I behind the very chiefest
+apostles, though I be nothing.' The true Christian
+estimate of one's own evil and sin does not in the least
+interfere with the recognition of what God strengthens
+one to do, or of the progress which, by God's grace,
+may have been made in holiness and righteousness.
+The two things may lie side by side with perfect
+harmony, and ought to do so, in every Christian
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>But notice one more point. The Apostle does not
+say 'I <i>was</i>,' but 'I <i>am</i> chief.' What! A man who
+could say, in another connection, 'If any man be in
+Christ Jesus, he is a new creature; old things are
+passed away'&mdash;the man who could say, in another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331a" id="Page_331a">[331]</a></span>
+connection, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
+and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
+the faith of the Son of God'&mdash;does he also say, 'I <i>am</i>
+chief'? Is he speaking about his present? Are old
+sins bound round a man's neck for evermore? If they
+be, what is the meaning of the Gospel that Jesus
+Christ redeems us from our sins? Well, he means
+this. No lapse of time, nor any gift of divine pardon,
+nor any subsequent advancement in holiness and
+righteousness, can alter the fact that I, the very same
+I that am now rejoicing in God's salvation, am the
+man that did all these things; and, in a very profound
+sense, they remain mine through all eternity. I may
+be a forgiven sinner, and a cleansed sinner, and a
+sanctified sinner, but I <i>am</i> a sinner&mdash;not I <i>was</i>. The
+imperishable connection between a man and his past,
+which may be so tragical, and, thank God, may be so
+blessed, even in the case of remembered and confessed
+sin, is solemnly hinted at in the words before us. We
+carry with us ever the fact of past transgression, and
+no forgiveness, nor any future 'perfecting of holiness
+in the fear' and by the grace 'of the Lord' can alter
+that fact. Therefore, let us beware lest we bring upon
+our souls any more of the stains which, though they
+be in a blessed and sufficient sense blotted out, do yet
+leave the marks where they have fallen for ever.</p>
+
+<p>II. Note how this man comes to such an estimate
+of himself.</p>
+
+<p>He did not think so deeply and penitently of his
+past at the beginning of his career, true and deep as
+his repentance, and valid and genuine as his conversion
+were. But as he advanced in the love of Jesus
+Christ, his former active hostility became more monstrous
+to him, and the higher he rose, the clearer was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332a" id="Page_332a">[332]</a></span>
+his vision of the depth from which he had struggled;
+for growth in Christian holiness deepens the conviction
+of prior imperfection.</p>
+
+<p>If God has forgiven my sin the more need for me
+to remember it. 'Thou shalt be ashamed and confounded,
+and never open thy mouth any more because
+of thy transgressions, when I am pacified towards thee
+for all that thou hast done.' If you, my brother, have
+any real and genuine hold of God's pardoning mercy,
+it will bow you down the more completely on your
+knees in the recognition of your own sin. The man
+who, as soon as the pressure of guilt and danger which
+is laid upon him seems to him to be lifted off, springs
+up like some elastic figure of indiarubber, and goes on
+his way in jaunty forgetfulness of his past evil, needs
+to ask himself whether he has ever passed from death
+unto life. Not to remember the old sin is to be blind.
+The surest sign that we are pardoned is the depth of
+our habitual penitence. Try yourselves, you Christian
+people who are so sure of your forgiveness, try yourselves
+by that test, and if you find that you are
+thinking less of your past evil, be doubtful whether
+you have ever entered into the genuine possession of
+the forgiving mercy of your God.</p>
+
+<p>And then, still further, this penitent retrospect is
+the direct result of advancement in Christian characteristics.
+We are drawn to begin some study or
+enterprise by the illusion that there is but a little way
+to go. 'Alps upon alps arise' when once we have
+climbed a short distance up the hill, and it has become
+as difficult to go back as to go forward.</p>
+
+<p>So it is in the Christian life&mdash;the sign of growing
+perfection is the growing consciousness of imperfection.
+A spot upon a clean palm is more conspicuous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333a" id="Page_333a">[333]</a></span>
+than a diffuse griminess over all the hand. One stain
+upon a white robe spoils it which would not be noticed
+upon one less lustrously clean. And so the more
+we grow towards God in Christ, and the more we
+appropriate and make our own His righteousness,
+the more we shall be conscious of our deficiencies,
+and the less we shall be prepared to assert virtues
+for ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it comes to pass that conscience is least
+sensitive when it is most needed, and most swift to
+act when it has least to do. So it comes to pass, too,
+that no man's acquittal of himself can be accepted as
+sufficient; and that he is a fool in self-knowledge who
+says, 'I am not conscious of guilt, therefore I am
+innocent.' 'I know nothing against myself, yet am I
+not hereby justified: but He that judgeth me is the
+Lord.' The more you become like Christ the more
+you will find out your unlikeness to Him.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, note what this judgment of himself did
+for this man.</p>
+
+<p>I said in the beginning of my remarks that it
+seemed to me that without the reproduction of this
+estimate of ourselves there would be little strong
+Christian life in us. It seems to me that that continual
+remembrance which Paul carried with him of
+what he had been, and of Christ's marvellous love in
+drawing him to Himself, was the very spring of all
+that was noble and conspicuously Christian in his
+career. And I venture to say, in two or three words,
+what I think you and I will never have unless we
+have this lowly self-estimate.</p>
+
+<p>Without it there will be no intensity of cleaving to
+Jesus Christ. If you do not know that you are ill,
+you will not take the medicine. If you do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334a" id="Page_334a">[334]</a></span>
+believe that the house is on fire, you will not mind
+the escape. The life-buoy lies unnoticed on the shelf
+above the berth as long as the sea is calm and everything
+goes well. Unless you have been down into the
+depths of your own heart, and seen the evil that is
+there, you will not care for the redeeming Christ, nor
+will you grasp Him as a man does who knows that
+there is nothing between him and ruin except that
+strong hand. We must be driven to the Saviour as
+well as drawn to Him if there is to be any reality or
+tightness in the clutch with which we hold Him.
+And if you do not hold Him with a firm clutch you
+do not hold Him at all.</p>
+
+<p>Further, without this lowly estimate there will be
+no fervour of grateful love. That is the reason
+why so much both of orthodox and heterodox religion
+amongst us to-day is such a tepid thing as it is.
+It is because men have never felt either that they
+need a Redeemer, or that Jesus Christ has redeemed
+them. I believe that there is only one power that
+will strike the rock of a human heart, and make the
+water of grateful devotion flow out, and that is the
+belief in Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of mankind,
+and as my Saviour. Unless that be your faith, which
+it will not be except you have this conviction of my
+text in its spirit and essence, there will not be in
+your hearts the love which will glow there, an all-transforming
+power.</p>
+
+<p>And is there anything in the world more obnoxious,
+more insipid, than lukewarm religion? If, with marks
+of quotation, I might use the coarse, strong expression
+of John Milton&mdash;'It gives a vomit to God Himself.'
+'Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spue
+thee out of my mouth.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335a" id="Page_335a">[335]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And without it there will be little pity of, and love
+for, our fellows. Unless we feel the common evil, and
+estimate by the intensity of its working in ourselves
+how sad are its ravages in others, our charity to men
+will be as tepid as our love to God. Did you ever
+notice that, historically, the widest benevolence to
+men goes along with what some people call the
+'narrowest' theology? People tell us, for instance,
+to mark the contrast between the theology which is
+usually called evangelical and the wide benevolence
+usually accompanying it, and ask how the two things
+agree. The 'wide' benevolence comes directly from
+the 'narrow' theology. He that knows the plague
+of his own heart, and how Christ has redeemed him,
+will go, with the pity of Christ in his heart, to help to
+redeem others.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, 'If we say that we have no sin,
+we deceive ourselves.' 'If we confess our sins, He is
+faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us
+from all unrighteousness.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A TEST CASE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might
+show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter
+believe.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> i. 16.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The smallest of God's creatures, if it were only a gnat
+dancing in a sunbeam, has a right to have its well-being
+considered as an end of God's dealings. But no
+creature is so isolated or great as that it has a right
+to have its well-being regarded as the sole end of God's
+dealings. That is true about all His blessings and
+gifts; it is eminently true about His gift of salvation.
+He saves men because He loves them individually, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336a" id="Page_336a">[336]</a></span>
+desires to make them blessed; but He also saves them
+because He desires that through them others shall be
+brought into the living knowledge of His love. It is
+most especially true about great religious teachers and
+guides.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's humility is as manifest as his self-consciousness
+when he says in my text, 'This is what I was
+saved for. Not merely, not even principally, for the
+blessings that thereby accrue to myself, but that in
+me, as a crucial instance, there should be manifested
+the whole fulness of the divine love and saving
+power.' So he puts his own experience as giving no
+kind of honour or glory to himself, but as simply
+showing the grace and infinite love of Jesus Christ.
+Paul disappears as but a passive recipient; and Christ
+strides into the front as the actor in his conversion and
+apostleship.</p>
+
+<p>So we may take this point of view of my text, and
+look at the story of what befell the great Apostle as
+being in many different ways an exhibition of the
+great verities of the Gospel. I desire to signalise,
+especially, three points here. We see in it the demonstration
+of the life of Christ; an exhibition of the love
+of the living Christ; and a marvellous proof of the
+power of that loving and living Lord.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, take the experience of this Apostle
+as a demonstration of the exalted life, and continuous
+energy in the world, of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>What was it that turned the brilliant young disciple
+of Gamaliel, the rising hope of the Pharisaic
+party, the hammer of the heretics, into one of themselves?
+The appearance of Jesus Christ. Paul rode
+out of Jerusalem believing Him to be dead, and His
+Resurrection a lie. He staggered into Damascus,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337a" id="Page_337a">[337]</a></span>
+blind but seeing, and knowing that Jesus Christ lived
+and reigned. Now if you will let the man tell you
+himself what he saw, or thought he saw, you will
+come to this, that it was a visible, audible manifestation
+of a corporeal Christ. For it is extremely noteworthy
+that the Apostle ranks the appearance to himself,
+on the road to Damascus, as in the same class
+with the appearances to the other apostles which he
+enumerates in the great chapter in the Epistle to the
+Corinthians. He draws no distinction, as far as evidential
+force goes, between the appearance to Simon
+and to the five hundred brethren and to the others,
+and that which flashed upon him and made a Christian
+of him. Other men that were with him saw the light.
+He saw the Christ within the blaze. Other men heard
+a noise; he heard audible and intelligible words in his
+own speech. This is <i>his</i> account of the phenomenon.
+What do <i>you</i> think of his account?</p>
+
+<p>There are but three possible answers! It was imposture;
+it was delusion; it was truth. The theory
+of imposture is out of court. 'Do men gather
+grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?' Such a life
+as followed is altogether incongruous with the notion
+that the man who lived it was a deceiver. A fanatic
+he may have been; self-deceived he may have been;
+but transparently sincere he undeniably was. It is
+not given to impostors to move the world, as Paul
+did and does.</p>
+
+<p>Was it delusion? Well it is a strange kind of
+hallucination which has such physical accompaniments
+and consequences as those in the story&mdash;not wanting
+confirmation from witnesses&mdash;which has come to us.</p>
+
+<p>'At midday, O king'&mdash;in no darkness; in no shut-up
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338a" id="Page_338a">[338]</a></span>chamber, 'at midday, O king&mdash;I heard .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+I saw .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.' 'The men that were with me' partly
+shared in the vision. There was a lengthened conversation;
+two senses at least were appealed to, vision and
+hearing, and in both vision and hearing there were partial
+participators. Physical consequences that lasted
+for three days accompanied the hallucination; and the
+man 'was blind, not seeing the sun, and neither did
+eat nor drink.' There must be some soil beforehand
+in which delusions of such a sort can root themselves.
+But, if we take the story in the Acts of the Apostles,
+there is not the smallest foothold for the fashionable
+notion, which is entirely due to men's dislike of the
+supernatural, that there was any kind of misgiving in
+the young Pharisee, springing from the influence of
+Stephen's martyrdom, as he went forth breathing out
+threatenings and slaughter. The plain fact is that, at
+one moment he hated Jesus Christ as a bad man, and
+believed that the story of the Resurrection was a gross
+falsehood; and that at the next moment he knew
+Him to be living and reigning, and the Lord of his
+life and of the world. Hallucinations do not come
+thus, like a thunderclap on unprepared minds. Nor
+is there anything in the subsequent history of the
+man that seems to confirm, but everything that contradicts,
+the idea that such a revolutionary change
+as upset all his mental furniture, and changed the
+whole current of his life, and slammed in his face the
+door that was wide open to advancement and reputation,
+came from a delusion.</p>
+
+<p>I think the hallucination theory is out of court, too,
+and there is nothing left but the old-fashioned one,
+that what he said he saw, <i>he saw</i>, and did not fancy;
+and that which he said he heard, <i>he heard;</i> and that
+it was not a buzzing of a diseased nerve in his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339a" id="Page_339a">[339]</a></span>
+ears, but the actual speech of the glorified Christ.
+Very well, then; if that be true, what then? The old-fashioned
+belief&mdash;Jesus who died on the Cross is
+living, Jesus who died on the Cross is glorified, Jesus
+who died on the Cross is exalted to the throne of the
+universe, puts His hand into the affairs of the world
+as a power amongst them. Paul's Christology is but
+the <i>rationale</i> of the vision that led to Paul's conversion.
+It was in part because he 'saw that Just
+One, and heard the words of His mouth,' that he
+declares, 'God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him
+a name that is above every name, that at the name of
+Jesus every knee should bow.' I do not say that the
+vision to Paul is a demonstration of the reality of the
+Resurrection, but I do say that it is a very strong confirmatory
+evidence, which the opponents of that truth
+will have much difficulty in legitimately putting aside.</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, let me ask you to consider how this
+man's experience is an exhibition of the love of the
+living Lord.</p>
+
+<p>That is the main point on which the Apostle dwells
+in my text, in which he says that in him Jesus Christ
+'shows forth all long-suffering.' The whole fulness
+of His patient, pitying grace was lavished upon him.
+He says this because he puts side by side his hostility
+and Christ's love, what he had believed of Jesus, and
+how Jesus had borne with him and loved him through
+all, and had drawn him to Himself and received him.
+So he established by his own experience this great
+truth, that the love of Jesus Christ is never darkened
+by one single speck of anger, that He 'suffereth long,
+and is kind'; that He meets hostility with patient
+love, hatred with a larger outpouring of His affection,
+and that His only answer to men's departures from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340a" id="Page_340a">[340]</a></span>
+Him in heart and feeling is more mightily to seek to
+draw them to Himself. 'Long-suffering' means, in
+its true and proper sense, the patient acceptance,
+without the smallest movement of indignation, of unworthy
+treatment. And just as Christ on earth 'gave
+His back to the smiter, and His cheeks to them that
+pulled off the hair'; and let the lips of Judas touch
+His, nor withdrew His face from 'shame and spitting';
+and was never stirred to one impatient or angry word
+by any opposition, so now, and to us all, with equal
+boundlessness of endurance, He lets men hate Him,
+and revile Him, and forget Him, and turn their backs
+upon Him; and for only answer has, 'Come unto Me
+all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give
+you rest.'</p>
+
+<p>Oh, dear brethren, we can weary out all loves except
+one. By carelessness, rebelliousness, the opposition of
+indifference, we can chill the affection of those to whom
+we are dearest. 'Can a mother forget? Yea, she may
+forget,' but you cannot provoke Jesus Christ to cease
+His love. Some of you have been trying it all your
+days, but you have not done it yet. There does come a
+time when 'the wrath of the Lamb'&mdash;which is a very
+terrible paradox&mdash;is kindled, and will fall, I fear, on
+some men and women who are listening now. But
+not yet. You cannot make Christ angry. 'For this
+cause I obtained mercy, that in me Jesus Christ might
+show forth all long-suffering, <i>for a pattern</i>'&mdash;for the
+same long-suffering is extended to us all.</p>
+
+<p>And then, in like manner, I may remind you that out
+of Paul's experience, as a cardinal instance and standing
+example of Christ's heart and dealings, comes the
+thought that that long-suffering is always wooing men
+to itself, and making efforts to draw them away from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341a" id="Page_341a">[341]</a></span>
+their own evil. In Paul's case there was a miracle.
+That difference is of small consequence. As truly as
+ever Christ spoke to Paul from the heavens, so truly,
+and so tenderly, does He speak to every one of us. He
+is drawing us all&mdash;you that yield and you that do not
+yield to His attractions, by the kindliest gifts of His
+love, by the revelations of His grace, by the movements
+of His Spirit, by the providences of our days, by even
+my poor lips addressing you now&mdash;for, if I be speaking
+His truth, it is not I that speak, but He that speaks in
+me. I beseech you, dear friends, recognise in this old
+story of the persecutor turned apostle nothing exceptional,
+though there be something miraculous, but
+only an exceptional form of manifestation of the
+normal activity of the love of Christ towards every
+soul. He loves, He draws, He welcomes all that come
+to Him. His servant, who stood over the blind,
+penitent persecutor, and said to him, '<i>Brother</i> Saul!'
+was only faintly echoing the glad reception which the
+elder Brother of the family gives to this and to every
+prodigal who comes back; because He Himself has
+drawn Him.</p>
+
+<p>If we will only recognise the undying truth for all
+of us that lies beneath the individual experience of
+this apostle, we, too, may share in the attraction of
+His love, in the constraining and blessed influences
+of that love received, and in the welcome with which
+He hails us when we turn. If this man were thus
+dealt with, no man need despair.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, we may notice how this experience is
+a manifestation of the power of the living, loving Lord.</p>
+
+<p>The first and plainest thing that it teaches us about
+that power is that Jesus Christ is able in one moment
+to revolutionise a life. There is nothing more striking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342a" id="Page_342a">[342]</a></span>
+than the suddenness and completeness of the change
+which passed. 'One day is with the Lord as a
+thousand years'; and there come moments in every
+life into which there is crammed and condensed a
+whole world of experience, so as that a man looks
+back from this instant to that before, and feels that a
+gulf, deep as infinity, separates him from his old self.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is very unfashionable in these days to talk
+about conversion at all. It is even more unfashionable
+to talk about sudden conversions. I venture to
+say that there are types of character and experience
+which will never be turned to good, unless they are
+turned suddenly; while there are others, no doubt, to
+whom the course is a gradual one, and you cannot tell
+where the dawn broadens into perfect day. But, in
+the case of men who have grown up to some degree of
+maturity of life, either in sensuous sin or crusted over
+with selfish worldliness, or in any other way, by reason
+of intellectual pursuits, or others have become forgetful
+of God and careless of religion&mdash;unless such men
+are in a moment arrested and wheeled round at once,
+there is very little chance of their ever being so at all.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure I am speaking to some now who, unless
+the truth of Christ comes into their minds with
+arresting flash, and unless they are in one moment,
+into which an eternity is condensed, changed in their
+purposes, will never be changed.</p>
+
+<p>Do not, my friend, listen to the talk that sudden
+conversion is impossible or unlikely. It is the only
+kind of conversion that some of you are capable of.
+I remember a man, one of the best Christian men in
+a humble station in life that I ever knew&mdash;he did not
+live in Manchester&mdash;he had been a drunkard up to
+his fortieth or fiftieth year. One day he was walking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343a" id="Page_343a">[343]</a></span>
+across an open field, and a voice, as he thought, spoke
+to him and said, naming him, 'If you don't sign the
+pledge to-day you will be damned!' He turned on
+his heel, and walked straight down the street to the
+house of a temperance friend, and said, 'I have come
+to sign the pledge.' He signed it, and from that day
+to the day of his death 'adorned the doctrine of Jesus
+Christ' his Saviour. If that man had not been suddenly
+converted he would never have been converted.
+So I say that this story of the text is a crucial instance
+of Christ's power to lay hold upon a man, and wheel
+him right round all in a moment, and send him on a
+new path. He wants to do that with all of you to
+whom He has not already done it. I beseech you, do
+not stick your heels into the ground in resistance, nor
+when He puts His hand on your shoulder stiffen your
+back that He may not do what He desires with you.</p>
+
+<p>May we not see here, too, a demonstration of
+Christ's power to make a life nobly and blessedly new,
+different from all its past, and adorned with strange
+and unexpected fruits of beauty and wisdom and holiness?
+This man's account of his future, from the
+moment of that incident on the Damascus road to the
+headman's block outside the walls of Rome, is this:
+'If any man be in Christ he is a new creature'; 'I
+live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' Christ will do
+that for us all; for long-suffering was shown on the
+Apostle for a pattern to them who should hereafter
+believe.</p>
+
+<p>So, you Christian people, it is as much your business
+as it was Paul's, to be visible rhetoric, manifest demonstrations
+in your lives of the truth of the Gospel. Men
+ought to say about us, 'There must be something in
+the religion that has done that for these people.' We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344a" id="Page_344a">[344]</a></span>
+ought to be such that our characters shall induce the
+thought that the Christ who has made men like us
+cannot be a figment. Do you show, Christian men,
+that you are grafted upon the true Vine by the abundance
+of the fruit that you bring forth? Can you venture
+to say, as Paul said, If you want to know what
+Jesus Christ's love and power are, look at me? Do not
+venture adducing yourself as a specimen of His power
+unless you have a life like Paul's to look back upon.</p>
+
+<p>For us all the fountain to which Paul had recourse
+is open. Why do we draw so little from it? The fire
+which burned, refining and illuminating, in him may
+be kindled in all our hearts. Why are we so icy? His
+convictions are of some value, as subsidiary evidence
+to Gospel facts; his experience is of still more value
+as an attestation and an instance of Gospel blessings.
+Believe like Paul and you will be saved like Paul.
+Jesus Christ will show to you all long-suffering. For
+though Paul received it all he did not exhaust it, and
+the same long-suffering which was lavished on him is
+available for each of us. Only you too must say like
+him, 'I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE GLORY OF THE KING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now, unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour
+and glory for ever and ever. Amen.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> i. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>With this burst of irrepressible praise the Apostle
+ends his reference to his own conversion as a transcendent,
+standing instance of the infinite love and
+transforming power of God. Similar doxologies accompany
+almost all his references to the same fact.
+This one comes from the lips of 'Paul the aged,' looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345a" id="Page_345a">[345]</a></span>
+back from almost the close of a life which owed
+many sorrows and troubles to that day on the road
+to Damascus. His heart fills with thankfulness that
+overflows into the great words of my text. He had
+little to be thankful for, judged according to the rules
+of sense; but, though weighed down with care, having
+made but a poor thing of the world because of that
+vision which he saw that day, and now near martyrdom,
+he turns with a full heart to God, and breaks into this
+song of thanksgiving. There are lives which bear to
+be looked back upon. Are ours of that kind?</p>
+
+<p>But my object is mainly to draw your attention to
+what seems to me a remarkable feature in this burst
+of thanksgiving. And perhaps I shall best impress the
+thought which it has given to me if I ask you to look,
+first, at the character of the God who is glorified by
+Paul's salvation; second, at the facts which glorify
+such a God; and, last, at the praise which should fill
+the lives of those who know the facts.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, notice the God who is glorified by
+Paul's salvation.</p>
+
+<p>Now what strikes me as singular about this great
+doxology is the characteristics, or, to use a technical
+word, the attributes, of the divine nature which the
+Apostle selects. They are all those which separate
+God from man; all those which present Him as arrayed
+in majesty, apart from human weaknesses, unapproachable
+by human sense, and filling a solitary
+throne. These are the characteristics which the
+Apostle thinks receive added lustre, and are lifted to
+a loftier height of 'honour and glory,' by the small
+fact that he, Paul, was saved from sins as he journeyed
+to Damascus.</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy to roll out oratorical platitudes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346a" id="Page_346a">[346]</a></span>
+about these specific characteristics of the divine nature,
+but that would be as unprofitable as it would be easy.
+All that I want to do now is just to note the force of
+the epithets; and, if I can, to deepen the impression
+of the remarkableness of their selection.</p>
+
+<p>With regard, then, to the first of them, we at once
+feel that the designation of 'the King' is unfamiliar to
+the New Testament. It brings with it lofty ideas, no
+doubt; but it is not a name which the writers of the
+New Testament, who had been taught in the school of
+love, and led by a Son to the knowledge of God, are
+most fond of using. 'The King' has melted into 'the
+Father.' But here Paul selects that more remote and
+less tender name for a specific purpose. He is 'the
+King'&mdash;not '<i>eternal</i>,' as our Bible renders it, but more
+correctly 'the King of the Ages.' The idea intended is
+not so much that of unending existence as that He
+moulds the epochs of the world's history, and directs
+the evolution of its progress. It is the thought of an
+overruling Providence, with the additional thought
+that all the moments are a linked chain, through
+which He flashes the electric force of His will. He is
+'King of the Ages.'</p>
+
+<p>The other epithets are more appropriately to be
+connected with the word 'God' which follows than
+with the word 'King' which precedes. The Apostle's
+meaning is this: 'The King of the ages, even the God
+who is,' etc. And the epithets thus selected all tend
+in the same direction. 'Incorruptible.' That at once
+parts that mystic and majestic Being from all of which
+the law is <i>decay</i>. There may be in it some hint of
+moral purity, but more probably it is simply what I
+may call a physical attribute, that that immortal
+nature not only <i>does</i> not, but <i>cannot</i>, pass into any less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347a" id="Page_347a">[347]</a></span>
+noble forms. Corruption has no share in His immortal
+being.</p>
+
+<p>As to 'invisible,' no word need be said to illustrate
+that. It too points solely to the separation of God
+from all approach by human sense.</p>
+
+<p>And then the last of the epithets, which, according
+to the more accurate reading of the text, should be,
+not as our Bible has it, 'the only <i>wise</i> God,' but 'the
+<i>only</i> God,' lifts Him still further above all comparison
+and contact with other beings.</p>
+
+<p>So the whole set forth the remote attributes which
+make a man feel, 'The gulf between Him and me is so
+great that thought cannot pass across it, and I doubt
+whether love can live half-way across that flight, or
+will not rather, like some poor land bird with tiny
+wings, drop exhausted, and be drowned in the abyss
+before it reaches the other side.' We expect to find
+a hymn to the infinite love. Instead of that we get
+praise, which might be upon the lips of many a thinker
+of Paul's day and of ours, who would laugh the idea of
+revelation, and especially of a revelation such as Paul
+believed in, to absolute scorn. And yet he knew what
+he was saying when he did not lift up his praise to the
+God of tenderness, of pity, of forgiveness, of pardoning
+love, but to 'the King of the ages; the incorruptible,
+invisible, only God'; the God whose honour and glory
+were magnified by the revelation of Himself in Jesus
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>II. And so that brings me, in the second place, to ask
+you to look at the facts which glorify even such a God.</p>
+
+<p>Paul was primarily thinking of his own individual
+experience; of what passed when the voice spoke to
+him, 'Why persecutest thou Me?' and of the transforming
+power which had changed him, the wolf, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348a" id="Page_348a">[348]</a></span>
+teeth red with the blood of the saints, into a lamb.
+But, as he is careful to point out, the personal allusion
+is lost in his contemplation of his own history, as being
+a specimen and test-case for the blessing and encouragement
+of all who 'should hereafter believe upon
+Him unto life everlasting.' So what we come to is this&mdash;that
+the work of Jesus Christ is that which paints
+the lily and gilds the refined gold of the divine loftinesses
+and magnificence, and which brings honour and
+glory even to that remote and inaccessible majesty.
+For, in that revelation of God in Jesus Christ, there is
+added to all these magnificent and all but inconceivable
+attributes and excellences, something that is far
+diviner and nobler than themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There be two great conceptions smelted together in
+the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, of which neither
+attains its supremest beauty except by the juxtaposition
+of the other. Power is harsh, and scarcely worthy
+to be called divine, unless it be linked with love. Love
+is not glorious unless it be braced and energised by
+power. And, says Paul, these two are brought together
+in Jesus; and therefore each is heightened by
+the other. It is the love of God that lifts His power to
+its highest height; it is the revelation of Him as stooping
+that teaches us His loftiness. It is because He has
+come within the grasp of our humanity in Jesus Christ
+that we can hymn our highest and noblest praises to
+'the King eternal, the invisible God.'</p>
+
+<p>The sunshine falls upon the snow-clad peaks of the
+great mountains and flushes them with a tender pink
+that makes them nobler and fairer by far than when
+they were veiled in clouds. And so all the divine
+majesty towers higher when we believe in the divine
+condescension, and there is no god that men have ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349a" id="Page_349a">[349]</a></span>
+dreamed of so great as the God who stoops to sinners
+and is manifest in the flesh and Cross of the Man of
+Sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>Take these characteristics of the divine nature as
+get forth in the text one by one, and consider how the
+Revelation in Jesus Christ, and its power on sinful
+men, raises our conceptions of them. 'The King of
+the ages'&mdash;and do we ever penetrate so deeply into
+the purpose which has guided His hand, as it moulded
+and moved the ages, as when we can say with Paul
+that His 'good pleasure' is that, 'in the dispensation
+of the fulness of times, He might gather together in
+one all things in Christ.' The intention of the epochs
+as they emerge, the purpose of all their linked intricacies
+and apparently diverse movements, is this one
+thing, that God in Christ may be manifest to men,
+a nd that humanity may be gathered, like sheep round
+the Shepherd, into the one fold of the one Lord. For
+that the world stands; for that the ages roll, and He
+who is the King of the epochs hath put into the hands
+of the Lamb that was slain the Book that contains all
+their events; and only His hand, pierced upon Calvary,
+is able to open the seals, to read the Book. The King
+of the ages is the Father of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And in like manner, that incorruptible God, far away
+from us because He is so, and to whom we look up
+here doubtingly and despairingly and often complainingly
+and ask, 'Why hast Thou made us thus, to be
+weighed upon with the decay of all things and of ourselves?'
+comes near to us all in the Christ who knows
+the mystery of death, and thereby makes us partakers
+of an inheritance incorruptible. Brethren, we shall
+never adore, or even dimly understand, the blessedness
+of believing in a God who cannot decay nor change,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350a" id="Page_350a">[350]</a></span>
+unless from the midst of graves and griefs we lift our
+hearts to Him as revealed in the face of the dying
+Christ. He, though He died, did not see corruption,
+and we through Him shall pass into the same blessed
+immunity.</p>
+
+<p>'The King .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. the God invisible.' No man hath
+seen God 'at any time, nor can see Him.' Who will
+honour and glorify that attribute which parts Him
+wholly from our sense, and so largely from our apprehension,
+as will he who can go on to say, 'the only
+begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He
+hath declared Him.' We look up into a waste Heaven;
+thought and fear, and sometimes desire, travel into its
+tenantless spaces. We say the blue is an illusion;
+there is nothing there but blackness. But 'he that
+hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' And we can lift
+thankful praise to Him, the King invisible, when we
+hear Jesus saying, 'thou hast both seen Him, and it is
+He that talketh with thee.'</p>
+
+<p>'The only God.' How that repels men from His
+throne! And yet, if we apprehend the meaning of
+Christ's Cross and work, we understand that the
+solitary God welcomes my solitary soul into such
+mysteries and sacred sweetnesses of fellowship with
+Himself that, the humanity remaining undisturbed,
+and the divinity remaining unintruded upon, we yet
+are one in Him, and partakers of a divine nature.
+Unless we come to God through Jesus Christ, the
+awful attributes in the text spurn a man from His
+throne, and make all true fellowship impossible.</p>
+
+<p>So let me remind you that the religion which does
+not blend together in indissoluble union these two, the
+majesty and the lowliness, the power and the love, the
+God inaccessible and the God who has tabernacled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351a" id="Page_351a">[351]</a></span>
+with us in Jesus Christ, is sure to be almost an impotent
+religion. Deism in all its forms, the religion
+which admits a God and denies a revelation; the
+religion which, in some vague sense, admits a revelation
+and denies an incarnation; the religion which
+admits an incarnation and denies a sacrifice; all these
+have little to say to man as a sinner; little to say to
+man as a mourner; little power to move his heart,
+little power to infuse strength into his weakness. If
+once you strike out the thought of a redeeming Christ
+from your religion, the temperature will go down
+alarmingly, and all will soon be frost bound.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, there is no real adoration of the loftiness
+of the King of the ages, no true apprehension of the
+majesty of the God incorruptible, invisible, eternal,
+until we see Him in the face and in the Cross of Jesus
+Christ. The truths of this gospel of our salvation do
+not in the smallest degree impinge upon or weaken, but
+rather heighten, the glory of God. The brightest glory
+streams from the Cross. It was when He was standing
+within a few hours of it, and had it full in view, that
+Jesus Christ broke out into that strange strain of
+triumph, 'Now is God glorified.' 'The King of the
+ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God,' is more
+honoured and glorified in the forgiveness that comes
+through Jesus Christ, and in the transforming power
+which He puts forth in the Gospel, than in all besides.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, let me draw your attention to the praise
+which should fill the lives of those who know these
+facts.</p>
+
+<p>I said that this Apostle seems always, when he refers
+to his own individual conversion, to have been melted
+into fresh outpourings of thankfulness and of praise.
+And that is what ought to be the life of all of you who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352a" id="Page_352a">[352]</a></span>
+call yourselves Christians; a continual warmth of
+thankfulness welling up in the heart, and not seldom
+finding utterance in the words, but always filling the
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Not seldom, I say, finding utterance in the words. It
+is a delicate thing for a man to speak about himself,
+and his own religious experience. Our English reticence,
+our social habits, and many other even less
+worthy hindrances rise in the way; and I should be
+the last man to urge Christian people to cast their
+pearls before swine, or too fully to</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Open wide the bridal chamber of the heart,'</p></div>
+
+<p>to let in the day. There is a wholesome fear of men
+who are always talking about their own religious
+experiences. But there are times and people to whom
+it is treason to the Master for us not to be frank in the
+confession of what we have found in Him. And I
+think there would be less complaining of the want of
+power in the public preaching of the Word if more
+professing Christians more frequently and more simply
+said to those to whom their words are weighty, 'Come
+and hear and I will tell you what God hath done for
+my soul.' 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith the Lord. It is
+a strange way that Christian people in this generation
+have of discharging their obligations that they should
+go, as so many of them do, from the cradle of their
+Christian lives to their graves, never having opened
+their lips for the Master who has done all for them.</p>
+
+<p>Only remember, if you venture to speak you will
+have to live your preaching. 'There is no speech nor
+language, their voice is not heard, their sound is gone
+out through all the earth.' The silent witness of life
+must always accompany the audible proclamation, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353a" id="Page_353a">[353]</a></span>
+in many cases is far more eloquent than it. Your
+consistent thankfulness manifested in your daily
+obedience, and in the transformation of your character,
+will do far more than all my preaching, or the preaching
+of thousands like me, to commend the Gospel of
+Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>One last word, brethren. This revelation is made to
+us all. What is God to you, friend? Is He a remote,
+majestic, unsympathising, terrible Deity? Is He dim,
+shadowy, unwelcome; or is He God whose love softens
+His power; Whose power magnifies his love? Oh! I
+beseech you, open your eyes and your hearts to see that
+that remote Deity is of no use to you, will do nothing
+for you, cannot help you, may probably judge you, but
+will never heal you. And open your hearts to see that
+'the only God' whom men can love is God in Christ. If
+here we lift up grateful praise 'unto Him that loveth
+us and hath loosed us from our sins in His blood,' we,
+too, shall one day join in that great chorus which at
+last will be heard saying, 'Blessing and honour and
+glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the
+throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WHERE AND HOW TO PRAY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands without
+wrath and doubting.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> ii. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The context shows that this is part of the Apostle's
+directory for public worship, and that, therefore, the
+terms of the first clause are to be taken somewhat
+restrictedly. They teach the duty of the male members
+of the Church to take public, audible part in its
+worship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354a" id="Page_354a">[354]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Everywhere, therefore, must here properly be taken
+in the restricted signification of 'every place of
+Christian assembly.' And from the whole passage
+there comes a picture of what sort of thing a meeting
+of the primitive Church for worship was, very different
+from anything that we see nowadays. 'Every one of
+you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath an exhortation.'
+I fancy that some of the eminently respectable
+and utterly dead congregations which call themselves
+Christian Churches would be very much astonished if
+they could see what used to be the manner of Christian
+worship nineteen hundred years ago, and would get a
+new notion of what was meant by 'decently, and in
+order.'</p>
+
+<p>But we may fairly, I suppose, if once we confess that
+this is so, widen somewhat the scope of these words,
+and take them rather as expressive of the Apostle's
+desire and injunction, for the word that he used here,
+'I will,' is a very strong one, to all Christian people,
+be they men or women, that they pray 'everywhere,'
+in the widest sense of that expression, 'lifting up holy
+hands without wrath or doubting.'</p>
+
+<p>I do not attempt anything more than just to go, step
+by step, through the Apostle's words and gather up
+the duties which each enjoins.</p>
+
+<p>'I will that men pray everywhere.' That is the
+same in spirit as the Apostle's other command: 'Pray
+without ceasing; in everything give thanks.' A very
+high ideal, but a very reasonable one, for unless we
+can find some place where God is not, and where the
+telegraph between heaven and earth is beyond our
+reach, there is no place where we should not pray.
+And unless we can find a place where we do not want
+God, nor need Him, there is no place where we should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355a" id="Page_355a">[355]</a></span>
+not pray. Because, then, 'everywhere' is equally near
+Him, and the straight road to His throne is of the
+same length from every hole and corner of the world;
+therefore, wherever men are, they ought to be clinging
+to His skirts, and reaching out their open hands for
+His benefits; and because, wherever a man is, there he
+utterly depends upon God, and needs the actual intervention
+of His love, and the energising of His power
+for everything, even for his physical life, so that he
+cannot wink his eyelashes without God's help, therefore,
+'In every place I will that men pray.'</p>
+
+<p>And how is that to be done? First of all, by keeping
+out of all places where it is impossible that we should
+pray; for although He is everywhere, and we want
+Him everywhere, there are places&mdash;and some of us
+know the roads to them but too well, and are but too
+often in them&mdash;where prayer would be a strange incongruity.
+A man will not pray over the counter of
+a public-house. A man will not pray over a sharp
+bargain. A man will not pray that God may bless his
+outbursts of anger, or sensuality and the like. A man
+will not pray when he feels that he is deep down in
+some pit of self-caused alienation from God. The
+possibility of praying in given circumstances is a sharp
+test, although a very rough and ready one, whether
+we ought to be in these circumstances or not. Do not
+let us go where we cannot take God with us; and if
+we feel that it would be something like blasphemy to
+call to Him from such a place, do not let us trust
+ourselves there. Jonah could pray out of the belly of
+the fish, and there was no incongruity in that; but
+many a professing Christian man gets swallowed up by
+monsters of the deep, and durst not for very shame send
+up a prayer to God. Get out of all such false positions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356a" id="Page_356a">[356]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But if the Apostle wills 'that men pray alway,' it
+must be possible while going about business, study,
+daily work, work at home amongst the children,
+work in the factory amongst spindles, work in the
+counting-house amongst ledgers, work in the study
+amongst lexicons, not only to pray whilst we are
+working, but to make work prayer, which is even
+better. The old saying that is often quoted with
+admiration, 'work is worship,' is only half true. There
+is a great deal of work that is anything but worship.
+But it is true that if, in all that I do, I try to realise
+my dependence on God for power; to look to Him for
+direction, and to trust to Him for issue, then, whether
+I eat, or drink, or pray, or study, or buy and sell, or
+marry or am given in marriage, all will be worship
+of God. 'I will that men pray everywhere.' What
+a noble ideal, and not an impossible or absurd one!
+This was not the false ideal of a man that had withdrawn
+himself from duty in order to cultivate his
+own soul, but the true ideal of one of the hardest
+workers that ever lived. Paul could say 'I am pressed
+above measure, insomuch that I despair of life, and
+that which cometh upon me daily is the care of all
+the churches,' and yet driven, harassed beyond his
+strength with business and cares as he was, he did
+himself what he bids us do. His life was prayer,
+therefore his life was Christ, therefore he was equal
+to all demands. None of us are as hard-worked, as
+heavily pressed, as much hunted by imperative and
+baying dogs of duties as Paul was. It is possible for
+us to obey this commandment and to pray everywhere.
+A servant girl down on her knees doing the
+doorsteps may do that task from such a motive, and
+with such accompaniments, as she dips her cloth into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357a" id="Page_357a">[357]</a></span>
+the hot-water bucket, as to make even it prayer to
+God. We each can lift all the littlenesses of our lives
+into a lofty region, if only we will link them on to the
+throne of God by prayer.</p>
+
+<p>There is another way by which this ideal can be
+attained, and that is to cultivate the habit, which I
+think many Christian people do not cultivate, of little
+short swallow-flights of prayer in the midst of our
+daily work. 'They cried unto God in the battle, and
+He was entreated of them.' If a Philistine sword was
+hanging over the man's head, do you think he would
+have much time to drop down upon his knees, to make
+a petition, divided into all the parts which divines tell
+us go to make up the complete idea of prayer? I
+should think not; but he could say, 'Save me, O
+Lord!' 'They cried to God in the battle&mdash;little, sharp,
+short shrieks of prayer&mdash;and He was entreated of
+them.' If you would cast swift electric flashes of that
+kind more frequently up to heaven, you would bring
+down the blessings that very often do not come after
+the most elaborate and proper and formal petitions.
+'Lord, save or I perish!' It did not take long to say
+that, but it made the difference between drowning and
+deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, notice the conditions of true prayer
+that are here required. I will that men pray everywhere
+'lifting up <i>holy</i> hands.' That is a piece of symbolism,
+of course. Apparently the Jewish attitude of
+prayer was unlike ours. They seem to have stood
+during devotion and to have elevated their hands with
+open, empty, upturned palms to heaven. We clasp
+ours in entreaty, or fold them as a symbol of resignation
+and submission. They lifted them, with the
+double idea, I suppose, of offering themselves to God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358a" id="Page_358a">[358]</a></span>
+thereby, and of asking Him to put something into the
+empty hand, just as a beggar says nothing, but holds
+out a battered hat, in order to get a copper from a
+passer-by. The psalmist desired that the lifting up of
+his hands might be as the 'evening sacrifice.'</p>
+
+<p>If a man stands with his open, empty palm held up
+to God, it is as much as to say 'I need, I desire, I expect.'
+And these elements are what we must have in our
+prayers; the sense of want, the longing for supply,
+the anticipation of an answer. What do you hold out
+your hand for? Because you expect me to drop something
+into it, because you want to get something.
+How do you hold out your hand? Empty. And if I
+am clasping my five fingers round some earthly good
+it is of no use to hold up that hand to God. Nothing
+will come into it. How can it? He must first take
+the imitation diamonds out of it or we must turn it
+round and shake them out before He can fill it with
+real jewels. As for him who continues to clutch
+worldly goods, 'let not that man think that he shall
+receive anything of the Lord.' Empty the palm before
+you lift it.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, says Paul, 'lifting up <i>holy</i> hands.'
+That, of course, needs no explanation. One of the
+psalms, you may remember, says 'I will wash mine
+hands in innocency, so will I compass Thine altar.'
+The psalmist felt that unless there was a previous
+lustration and cleansing, it was vain for him to go
+round the altar. And you may remember how sternly
+and eloquently the prophet Isaiah rebukes the hypocritical
+worshippers in Jerusalem when he says to
+them, 'Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make
+you clean, put away the evil of your doings,' and <i>then</i>
+come and pray. A foul hand gets nothing from God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359a" id="Page_359a">[359]</a></span>
+How can it? God's best gift is of such a sort as
+cannot be laid upon a dirty palm. A little sin dams
+back the whole of God's grace, and there are too many
+men that pray, pray, pray, and never get any of the
+things that we pray for, because there is something
+stopping the pipe, and they do not know what it is,
+and perhaps would be very sorry to clear it out if
+they did. But all the same, the channel of communication
+is blocked and stopped, and it is impossible that
+any blessing should come. Geographers tell us that a
+microscopic vegetable grows rapidly in one of the
+upper affluents of the Nile, and makes a great dam
+across the river which keeps back the water, and so
+makes one of the lakes which have recently been explored;
+and then, when the dam breaks, the rising of
+the Nile fertilises Egypt. Some of us have growing,
+unchecked, and unnoticed, in the innermost channels
+of our hearts, little sins that mat themselves together
+and keep increasing until the grace of God is utterly
+kept from permeating the parched recesses of our
+spirits. 'I will that men pray, lifting up holy hands,'
+and unless we do, alas! for us.</p>
+
+<p>If these are the requirements, you will say, 'How
+can I pray at all?' Well, do you remember what the
+Psalmist says? 'If I regard iniquity in my heart, the
+Lord will not hear me,' but then he goes on, 'Blessed
+be God, who hath not turned away my prayer nor His
+mercy from me.' It is always true that if we regard
+iniquity in our hearts, if in our inmost nature we love
+the sin, that stops the prayer from being answered.
+But, blessed be God, it is not true that our having
+done the sin prevents our petitions being granted.
+For the sin that is not regarded in the heart, but is
+turned away from with loathing hath no intercepting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360a" id="Page_360a">[360]</a></span>
+power. So, though the uplifted hands art stained, He
+will cleanse them if, as we lift them to Him, we say,
+'Lord, they are foul, if thou wilt Thou canst make them
+clean.'</p>
+
+<p>But the final requirement is: 'Without wrath or
+doubting.' I do not think that Christian people
+generally recognise with sufficient clearness the close
+and inseparable connection which subsists between
+their right feelings towards their fellow-men and the
+acceptance of their prayers with God. It is very
+instructive that here, alongside of requirements which
+apply to our relations to God, the Apostle should put
+so emphatically and plainly one which refers to our
+relations to our fellows. An angry man is a very unfit
+man to pray, and a man who cherishes in his heart any
+feelings of that nature towards anybody may be quite
+sure that he is thereby shutting himself out from
+blessings which otherwise might be his. We do not
+sufficiently realise, or act on the importance, in regard
+to our relations with God, of our living in charity
+with all men. 'First, go and be reconciled to thy
+brother,' is as needful to-day as when the word was
+spoken.</p>
+
+<p>'Without .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. doubting.' Have I the right to be
+perfectly sure that my prayer will be answered? Yes
+and no. If my prayer is, as all true prayer ought to
+be, the submission of my will to God's and not the
+forcing of my will upon God, then I have the right to be
+perfectly sure. But if I am only asking in self-will, for
+things that my own heart craves, that is not prayer;
+that is dictation. That is sending instructions to
+heaven; that is telling God what He ought to do.
+That is not the kind of prayer that may be offered
+'without doubting.' It might, indeed, be offered, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361a" id="Page_361a">[361]</a></span>
+offered at all, with the certainty that it will not be
+answered. For this is the assurance on which we are
+to rest&mdash;and some of us may think it is a very poor
+one&mdash;'we know that, if we ask anything <i>according to
+His will</i>, He heareth us.' To get what we want would
+often be our ruin. God loves His children a great
+deal too well to give them serpents when they ask for
+them, thinking they are fish, or to give them stones
+when they beseech Him for them, believing them to
+be bread. He will never hand you a scorpion when
+you ask Him to give it you, because, with its legs and
+its sting tucked under its body, it is like an egg.</p>
+
+<p>We make mistakes in our naming of things and in
+our desires after things, and it is only when we have
+learned to say 'Not my will but Thine be done,' that
+we have the right to pray, 'without doubting.' If we
+do so pray, certainly we receive. But a tremulous
+faith brings little blessing, and small answer. An
+unsteady hand cannot hold the cup still for Him to
+pour in the wine of His grace, but as the hand shakes,
+the cup moves, and the precious gift is spilled. The
+still, submissive soul will be filled, and the answer to
+its prayer will be, 'Whatsoever things ye desire
+believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have
+them.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><p>'Exercise thyself unto Godliness.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> iv. 7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Timothy seems to have been not a very strong character:
+sensitive, easily discouraged, and perhaps with
+a constitutional tendency to indolence. At all events,
+it is very touching to notice how the old Apostle&mdash;a
+prisoner, soon to be a martyr&mdash;forgot all about his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362a" id="Page_362a">[362]</a></span>
+own anxieties and burdens, and, through both of his
+letters to his young helper, gives himself to the task
+of bracing him up. Thus he says to him, in my text,
+amongst other trumpet-tongued exhortations, 'Exercise
+thyself unto godliness.'</p>
+
+<p>If I were preaching to ministers, I should have
+a good deal to say about the necessity of this precept
+for them, and to remind them that it was first spoken,
+not to a private member of the Church, as an injunction
+for the Christian life in general, but as having
+a special bearing on the temptations and necessities
+of those who stand in official positions in the Church.
+For there is nothing that is more likely to sap a man's
+devotion, and to eat out the earnestness and sincerity
+of a Christian life, than that he should be&mdash;as I, for
+instance, and every man in my position has to be&mdash;constantly
+occupied with presenting God's Word to
+other people. We are apt to look upon it as, in some
+sense, our stock-in-trade, and to forget to apply it to
+ourselves. So it was with a very special bearing on
+the particular occupation and temptation of his correspondent
+that Paul said 'Exercise thyself unto godliness'
+before you begin to talk to other people.</p>
+
+<p>But that would not be appropriate to my present
+audience. And I take this injunction as one of universal
+application.</p>
+
+<p>I. Notice, then, here expressed the ever-present and
+universal aim of the Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>Paul does not say 'be godly'; but 'exercise thyself
+unto'&mdash;with a view towards&mdash;'godliness.' In other
+words, to him godliness is the great aim which every
+Christian man should set before him as the one
+supreme purpose of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am not going to spend any time on mere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363a" id="Page_363a">[363]</a></span>
+verbal criticism, but I must point to the somewhat
+unusual word which the Apostle here employs for
+'godliness.' It is all but exclusively confined to these
+last letters of the Apostle. It was evidently a word
+that had unfolded the depth and fulness and comprehensiveness
+of its meaning to him in the last stage of
+his religious experience. For it is only once employed
+in the Acts of the Apostles, and some two or three
+times in the doubtful second Epistle of St. Peter. And
+all the other instances of its use lie in these three
+letters&mdash;the one to Titus and two to Timothy; and eight
+of them are in this first one. The old Apostle keeps
+perpetually recurring to this one idea of 'godliness.'
+What does he mean by it? The etymological meaning
+of the word is 'well-directed reverence,' but it is to be
+noticed that the context specifically points to one form
+of well-directed reverence, viz. as shown in conduct.
+'Active godliness' is the meaning of the word; religion
+embodied in deeds, emotions, and sentiments,
+and creeds, put into fact.</p>
+
+<p>This noble and pregnant word teaches us, first of all,
+that all true religion finds its ultimate sphere and best
+manifestation in the conduct of daily life. That
+sounds like a platitude. I wish it were. If we believed
+that, and worked it out, we should be very
+different people from what the most of us are; and our
+chapels would be very different places, and the professing
+Church would have a new breath of life over it.
+Religion must have its foundation laid deep in the
+truths revealed by God for our acceptance. And does
+God tell us anything simply that we may believe it,
+and there an end? What is the purpose of all the
+principles and facts which make up the body of the
+Christian revelation? To enlighten us? Yes! To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364a" id="Page_364a">[364]</a></span>
+enlighten us only? A hundred times no! The destination
+of a principle, of a truth, is to pass out from the
+understanding into the whole nature of man.</p>
+
+<p>And if, as I said, the foundation of religion is laid in
+truths, principles, facts, the second story of the building
+is certain emotions, sentiments, feelings, desires,
+and affections, and 'experiences'&mdash;as people call them&mdash;which
+follow from the acceptance of these truths
+and principles. And is that all? A thousand times
+no! What do we get the emotions for? What does
+God give you a Revelation of Himself for, that kindles
+your love if you believe it? That you may love? Yes!
+Only that you may love? Certainly not. And so the
+top story is conduct, based upon the beliefs, and
+inspired by the emotions.</p>
+
+<p>In former centuries, the period between the Reformation
+and our fathers' time, the tendency of the
+Protestant Church was very largely to let the conception
+of religion as a body of truths overshadow
+everything else. And nowadays, amongst a great
+many people, the temptation is to take the second
+story for the main one, and to think that if a man
+loves, and has the glow at his heart of the conscious
+reception of God's love, and has longings and yearnings,
+and Christian hopes and desires, and passes into the
+sweetnesses of communion with God, in his solitary
+moments, and plunges deep into the truths of God's
+Word, that is godliness. But the true exhortation
+to us is&mdash;Do not stop with putting in the foundations
+of a correct creed, nor at the second stage of an
+emotional religion. Both are needful. Number one
+and number two are infinitely precious, but both exist
+for number three. And true religion has its sphere in
+conduct. 'Exercise thyself unto godliness.' That does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365a" id="Page_365a">[365]</a></span>
+not mean <i>only</i>&mdash;for it does include that&mdash;cultivate
+devout emotions, or realise the facts and the principles
+of the Gospel, but it means, take these along with you
+into your daily life, and work them out there. Bring
+all the facts and truths of your creed, and all the
+sweet and select, the secret and sacred, emotions which
+you have felt, to bear upon your daily life. The
+soil in which the tree grows, and the roots of the
+tree, its stem and its blossoms, are all means to the
+end&mdash;fruit. What is the use of the clearest conceptions,
+and of the most tender, delicate, holy emotions,
+if they do not drive the wheels of action? God does
+not give us the Gospel to make us wise, nor even to
+make us blessed, but He gives it to us to make
+us good men and women, working His work in
+our daily tasks. All true religion has its sphere in
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>But then there is another side to that. All true conduct
+must have its root in religion, and I, for my part&mdash;though
+of course it is extremely 'narrow' and
+'antiquated' to profess it&mdash;I, for my part, do not
+believe that in the long-run, and in general, you will
+get noble living apart from the emotions and sentiments
+which the truths of Christianity, accepted and
+fed upon, are sure to produce. And so this day, with
+its very general depreciation of the importance of
+accurate conceptions of revealed truth, and its exaltation
+of conduct, is on the verge of a very serious error.
+Godliness, well-directed reverence, is the parent of all
+noble living, and the one infallible way to produce
+a noble life is faith in Christ, and love which flows
+from the faith.</p>
+
+<p>If all that is so, if godliness is, not singing psalms,
+not praying, not saying 'How sweet it is to feel the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366a" id="Page_366a">[366]</a></span>
+love of God,' still less saying 'I accept the principles of
+Christianity as they are laid down in the Bible'; but
+carrying out beliefs and emotions in deeds, then the
+true aim which we should have continually before us
+as Christians is plain enough. We may not reach it
+completely, but we can approximate indefinitely
+towards it. Aim is more important than achievement.
+Direction is more vital in determining the character of
+a life than progress actually made. Note the form of
+the exhortation, 'exercise thyself <i>towards</i> godliness,'
+which involves the same thought as is expressed in
+Paul's other utterance of irrepressible aspiration and
+effort, 'Not as if I had already attained, either were
+already perfect, but I follow after,' or as he had just
+said, 'press towards the mark,' in continual approximation
+to the ideal. A complete penetration of all our
+actions by the principles and emotions of the Gospel is
+what is set before us here.</p>
+
+<p>And that is the only aim that corresponds to what
+and where I am and to what I need. I fall back upon
+the grandly simple old words, very dear to some of us,
+perhaps, by boyish associations, 'Man's chief end is to
+glorify God, and (so) to enjoy Him for ever.' 'Unto
+Godliness' is to be the aim of every true life, and it is
+the only aim which corresponds to our circumstances
+and our relations, our powers and possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>II. Notice the discipline which such an aim demands.</p>
+
+<p>'Exercise thyself.' Now, I have no doubt that the
+bulk of my hearers know that the word here rendered
+'exercise' is drawn from the athlete's training-ground,
+and is, in fact, akin to the word which is
+transported into English under the form 'gymnasium.'
+The Apostle's notion is that, just as the athlete, racer,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367a" id="Page_367a">[367]</a></span>
+or boxer goes through a course of training, so there
+is a training as severe, necessary for the godliness which
+Paul regards as the one true aim of life.</p>
+
+<p>You Christian people ought to train your spirits at
+least as carefully as the athlete does his muscles.
+There are plenty of people, calling themselves Christians,
+who never give one-hundredth part as much
+systematic and diligent pains to fulfil the ideal of their
+Christian life as men will take to learn to ride a
+bicycle or to pull the stroke oar in a college boat.
+The self-denial and persistence and concentration
+which are freely spent upon excellence in athletic
+pursuits might well put to shame the way in which
+Christians go about the task of 'doing' their religion.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose there never was a time, in England's history
+at any rate, whatever it may have been in Greece,
+when modern instances might give more point to an
+old saw than to-day does for this text, when athletic
+sports of all kinds are taking up so much of the time
+and the energy of our young men. I do not want to
+throw cold water on that, but I do say it is a miserable
+thing to think that so many professing Christians will
+give a great deal more pains to learn to play lawn
+tennis than ever they did to learn to be good, Christian
+people.</p>
+
+<p>'Exercise thyself unto godliness.' Make a business
+of living your Christianity. Be in earnest about it.
+A tragically large number of professing Christians
+never were in earnest about mending themselves.
+And that is why they are so far, far behind. 'Exercise
+thyself.' You say, How?</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I say, first of all, concentration. 'This <i>one</i>
+thing I do.' That does not mean narrowing, because
+this 'one thing' can be done by means of all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368a" id="Page_368a">[368]</a></span>
+legitimate things that we have to do in the world.
+Next Friday, when you go on 'Change, you can be
+exercising yourself to godliness there. Whatever may
+be the form of our daily occupation, it is the <i>gymnasium</i>
+where God has put us to exercise our muscles
+in, and so to gain 'the wrestling thews that throw the
+world.' 'Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of
+His might.' The concentration for which I plead does
+not shut us out from any place but the devil's wrestling-ground.
+All that is legitimate, all that is innocent, may
+be made a means for manifesting and for increasing
+our godliness. Only you have to take God with you
+into your life, and to try, more and more consciously,
+to make Him the motive-power of all that you do.
+Then the old saying which is profoundly true as it was
+originally meant, and has of late years been so misused
+as to become profoundly false, will be true again,
+'<i>Laborare est orare</i>.' Yes! it is; if worship underlies
+the work, but not else.</p>
+
+<p>Again I say, exercise yourselves by abstinence. How
+many things did the athlete at Corinth do without in
+his training? How many things do prizefighters and
+rowing men do without when in training to-day?
+How rigidly, for a while at any rate, they abstain&mdash;whether
+they recompense themselves afterwards or
+not has nothing to do with my present purpose. And
+is it not a shame that some sensual man shall, for the
+sake of winning a medal or a cup, be able gladly to
+abandon the delights of sense&mdash;eating, drinking, and
+the like&mdash;and content himself with a hermit's Spartan
+fare, and that Christian people so seldom, and so
+reluctantly, and so partially turn away from the
+poisoned cups and the indigestible dainties which the
+world provides for them? I think that any Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369a" id="Page_369a">[369]</a></span>
+man who complains of the things which he is shut out
+from doing if he is to cultivate the godliness which
+should be his life need only go to any place where
+horse-jockeys congregate to get a lesson that he may
+well lay to heart. 'Exercise thyself,' for it is unto
+godliness.</p>
+
+<p>And then what I said in a former part of this sermon
+about the various stages of religion may suggest
+another view of the method of discipline proper to the
+Christian life. The strenuous exercise of all our
+powers is called for. But if it is true that the godliness
+of my text is the last outcome of the emotions
+which spring from the reception of certain truths,
+then if we work backwards, as it were, we shall get
+the best way of producing the godliness. That is to
+say, the main effort for all men who are in earnest
+in regard to their own growth in Christlikeness is to
+keep themselves in touch with the truths of the
+Gospel, and in the exercise of the sentiments and
+emotions which flow from these. Or, to put it into
+other words, the 'gymnastic' is to be, mainly, the
+man's clinging, with all his might of mind and heart,
+to Christ, and the truths that are wrapped up in Him;
+and the cultivation of the habit of continual faith and
+love turned to that Lord. If I see to number one&mdash;the
+creed, and to number two&mdash;the emotions, they will see
+to number three&mdash;the conduct. Keep the truths of the
+Gospel well in your minds, and keep yourselves well
+in the attitude of contact with Jesus Christ, and power
+for life will come into you. But if the fountain is
+choked, the bed of the stream will be dry. They tell
+us that away up in Abyssinia there form across the
+bed of one of the branches of the Nile great fields of
+weed. And as long as they continue unbroken the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370a" id="Page_370a">[370]</a></span>
+lower river is shrunken. But when the stream at the
+back of them bursts its way through them, then come
+the inundations down in Egypt, and bring fertility.
+And there are hundreds of professing Christians
+whose fields lie barren and baked in the sunshine,
+because they have stopped with weeds, far away up
+amongst the hills, the stream that would water them.
+Clear out the weeds, and the water will do the rest.</p>
+
+<p>And 'exercise thyself unto godliness' by keeping the
+crown and the prize often and clear in view. 'Paul
+the aged' in this very letter says: 'I have finished my
+course, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
+glory.' He had said, in the midst of the strife: 'Not
+as though I had already attained&mdash;I press toward the
+mark for the prize.' And the prize which gleamed
+before him through all the dust of the arena now
+shone still more brightly when his hand had all but
+clasped it. If we desire to 'run with perseverance
+the race that is set before us' we must keep our eyes
+fixed on Jesus, and see in Him, not only the Rewarder,
+but the Reward, of the 'exercise unto godliness.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ONE WITNESS, MANY CONFESSORS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Thou .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. 13. I give
+thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ
+Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, 14. That thou keep
+this commandment.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> vi. 12-14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>You will observe that 'a good confession,' or rather
+'the good confession,' is said here to have been made
+both by Timothy and by Christ. But you will observe
+also that whilst the subject-matter is the same, the
+action of Timothy and Jesus respectively is different.
+The former professes, or rather confesses, the good
+confession; the latter witnesses. There must be some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371a" id="Page_371a">[371]</a></span>
+reason for the significant variation of terms to indicate
+that the relation of Timothy and Jesus to the
+good confession which they both made was, in some
+way, a different one, and that though what they said
+was identical, their actions in saying it were different.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another point of parallelism to be
+noticed. Timothy made his profession 'before many
+witnesses,' but the Apostle calls to his remembrance,
+and summons up before the eye of his imagination, a
+more august tribunal than that before which he had
+confessed his faith, and says that he gives him charge
+'before God' (for the same word is used in the original
+in both verses), 'who quickeneth all things, and before
+Christ Jesus.' So the earthly witnesses of the man's
+confession dwindle into insignificance when compared
+with the heavenly ones. And upon these thoughts is
+based the practical exhortation, 'Keep the commandment
+without spot.' So, then, we have three things:
+the great Witness and His confession, the subordinate
+confessors who echo His witness, and the practical
+issue that comes out of both thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>I. We have the great Witness and His confession.</p>
+
+<p>Now, you will remember, perhaps, that if we turn to
+the Gospels, we find that all of them give the subject-matter
+of Christ's confession before Pilate, as being that
+He was the King of the Jews. But the Evangelist John
+expands that conversation, and gives us details which
+present a remarkable verbal correspondence with the
+words of the Apostle here, and must suggest to us that,
+though John's Gospel was not written at the date of
+this Epistle, the fact that is enshrined for us in it was
+independently known by the Apostle Paul.</p>
+
+<p>For, if I may for a moment recall the incident to
+you, you will remember that when Pilate put to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372a" id="Page_372a">[372]</a></span>
+Saviour the question, 'Art Thou a King?' our Lord,
+before He would answer, took pains to make quite
+clear the sense in which the judge asked Him of His
+royal state. For He said, 'Sayest thou this thing of
+thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me? If it is your
+Roman idea of a king, the answer must be, "No."
+If it is the Jewish Messianic idea, the answer must be,
+"Yes." I must know first what the question means, in
+the mind of the questioner, before I answer it.' And
+when Pilate brushes aside Christ's question, with a sort
+of impatient contempt, and returns to the charge,
+'What hast Thou done?' our Lord, whilst He makes
+the claim of sovereignty, takes care to make it in such
+a way as to show that Rome need fear nothing from
+Him, and that His dominion rested not upon force.
+'My Kingdom is not of this world.' And then, when
+Pilate, like a practical Roman, bewildered with all
+these fine-spun distinctions, sweeps them impatiently
+out of the field, and comes back to 'Yes, or No; are
+you a King?' our Lord gives a distinct affirmative
+answer, but at once soars up into the region where
+Pilate had declined to follow Him: 'To this end was I
+born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I
+might bear witness to the truth.' 'Before Pontius
+Pilate he witnessed the good confession.' And His
+confession was His royalty, His relation to the truth,
+and His pre-existence. 'To this end was I born,' and
+the next clause is no mere tautology, nor a non-significant
+parallelism, 'and for this cause came I into
+the world.' Then He was before He came, and birth to
+Him was not the beginning of being, but the beginning
+of a new relation.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, out of this great word of our text, which
+falls into line with a great many other words of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373a" id="Page_373a">[373]</a></span>
+New Testament, we may gather important and significant
+truths with regard to two things, the matter and
+the manner of Christ's witnessing. You remember how
+the same Apostle John&mdash;for whom that word 'witness'
+has a fascination in all its manifold applications&mdash;in
+that great vision of the Apocalypse, when to his
+blessed sight the vision of the Master was once given,
+extols Him as 'the faithful witness, and the First-begotten
+from the dead, and the Prince of the kings of
+the earth.' And you may remember how our Lord
+Himself, after His conversation with Nicodemus, says,
+'We speak that we do know, and bear witness to that
+we have seen,' and how again, in answer to the taunts
+of the Jews, He takes the taunt as the most intimate
+designation of the peculiarity of His person and of His
+work, when He says, 'I am one that bear witness of
+Myself.' So, then, we have to interpret his declaration
+before Pilate in the light of all these other sayings,
+and to remember that He who said that He came to
+bear witness to the truth, said also, 'I am the truth,'
+and therefore that his great declaration that He was
+the witness-bearer to the truth is absolutely synonymous
+with His other declaration that He bears witness
+of Himself.</p>
+
+<p>Now, here we come upon one of the great peculiarities
+of Christ as a religious teacher. The new thing,
+the distinctive peculiarity, the differentia between
+Him and all other teachers, lies just here, that His
+theme is not so much moral or religious principles,
+as His own nature and person. He was the most egotistical
+man that ever lived on the face of the earth,
+with an egotism only to be accounted for, if we believe,
+as He Himself said, that in His person was the
+truth that He proclaimed, and that when He witnessed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374a" id="Page_374a">[374]</a></span>
+to Himself He revealed God. And thus He stands,
+separate from all other teachers, by this, that He is
+His own theme and His own witness.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the matter of the good confession to
+which we need only add here its pendant in the confession
+before the High Priest. To the representative
+of the civil government He said, 'I am a king,' and
+then, as I remarked, He soared up into regions where
+no Roman official could rise to follow Him, and to
+the representative of the Theocratic government He
+said, 'Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at
+the right hand of God, and coming in the clouds of
+heaven.' These two truths, that He is the Son of God,
+who by His witness to the truth, that is, Himself, lays
+the foundations of a Monarchy which shall stretch far
+further than the pinions of the Roman eagles could
+ever fly, and that he is the Son of Man who, exalted to
+the right hand of God, is to be the Judge of mankind&mdash;these
+are the good confessions to which the Lord
+witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>Then with regard to the manner of His witness.
+That brings us to another of the peculiarities of
+Christ's teaching. I have said that He was the most
+egotistical of men. I would say, too, that there never
+was another who clashed down in the front of
+humanity such tremendous assertions, with not the
+faintest scintilla of an attempt to prove them to our
+understandings, or commend them by any other plea
+than this, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you!'</p>
+
+<p>A witness does not need to argue. A witness is a
+man who reports what he has seen and heard. The
+whole question is as to his veracity and competency.
+Jesus Christ states it for the characteristic of His
+work, 'We speak that we do know, and bear witness to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375a" id="Page_375a">[375]</a></span>
+that we have seen.' His relation to the truth which
+He brings to us is not that of a man who has thought
+it out, who has been brought to it by experience, or by
+feeling, or by a long course of investigation; still less
+is it the relation which a man would bear to a truth
+that he had learnt from others originally, however
+much he had made it his own thereafter: but it is
+that of one who is not a thinker, or a learner, or a
+reasoner, but who is simply an attester, a witness.
+And so He stands before us, and says, 'The words that
+I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life.
+Believe Me, and believe the words, for no other reason,
+primarily, than because I speak them.' In these two
+respects, then, the matter and the manner of His
+witness, He stands alone, and we have to bow before
+Him and say, 'Speak, Lord! for thy servant heareth.'
+'Before Pontius Pilate He witnessed a good confession.'</p>
+
+<p>II. We have here suggested to us the subordinate
+confessors who echo the Lord's witness.</p>
+
+<p>It is a matter of no consequence when, and before
+whom, this Timothy professed his good profession. It
+may have been at his baptism. It may have been
+when he was installed in his office. It may have been
+before some tribunal of which we know nothing.
+That does not matter. The point is that a Christian
+man is to be an echo of the Lord's good confession, and
+is to keep within the lines of it, and to be sure that all
+of it is echoed in his life. Christ has told us what to
+say, and we are here to say it over again. Christ has
+witnessed; we are to confess. Our relation to that
+truth is different from His. We hear it; He speaks it.
+We accept it; He reveals it. We are influenced by it;
+He <i>is</i> it. He brings it to the world on His own
+authority; we are to carry it to the world on His.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376a" id="Page_376a">[376]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Be sure that you Christian men are echoes of your
+Master. Be sure that you reverberate the note that
+He struck. Be sure that all its music is repeated by
+you And take care that you neither fall short of it,
+nor go beyond it, in your faith and in your profession.
+Echoes of Christ&mdash;that is the highest conception of a
+Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>But though there is all the difference between the
+Witness and the confessors, do not let us forget that,
+if we are truly Christian, there is a very deep and
+blessed sense in which we, too, may witness what we
+have seen and heard. A Christian preacher of any
+sort&mdash;and by that I mean, not merely a man who
+stands in a pulpit, as I do, but all Christian people,
+in their measure and degree&mdash;will do nothing by
+professing the best profession, unless that profession
+sounds like the utterance of a man who speaks that he
+knows, and who can say, 'that which our eyes have
+beheld, that which we have handled, of the Word of
+life, we make known unto you.' And so, by the power
+of personal experience speaking out in our lives, and
+by the power of it alone, as I believe, will victories be
+won, and the witness of Jesus Christ be repeated in the
+world. Christian men and women, the old saying
+which was addressed by a prophet to Israel is more
+true, more solemnly true of us, and presses on us with
+a heavier weight of obligation, as well as lifts us up
+into a position of greater blessedness: 'Ye are my
+witnesses, saith the Lord.' That is what you and I are
+here for&mdash;to bear witness, different and yet like to, the
+witness borne by the Lord. We have all to do that, by
+words, though not only by them. That is the obligation
+that a great many Christian people take very
+lightly. That yoke of Jesus Christ many of us slip our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377a" id="Page_377a">[377]</a></span>
+necks out of. If He has witnessed, you have to confess.
+But some of you carry your Christianity in
+secret, and button your coats over the cockade that
+should tell whose soldiers you are, and are ashamed, or
+too shy, or too nervous, or too afraid of ridicule, or
+not sufficiently sure of your own grip of the Master, to
+confess Him before men. I beseech you remember
+that a Christian man is no Christian unless 'with the
+mouth confession is made unto salvation,' as well as
+'with the heart' belief is exercised unto righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, we have here the practical issue of all
+this.</p>
+
+<p>'I charge thee before God, who quickeneth all things,
+and before Jesus Christ, that thou keep the commandment
+without spot.' The 'commandment,' of course,
+may be used in a specific sense, referring to what has
+just been enjoined, but more probably we are to regard
+the same thing which, considered in its relation to
+Jesus Christ, is His testimony, as being, in its relation
+to us, His commandment. For all Christ's gospel of
+revelation that He has made of Himself to the world,
+is meant to influence, not only belief and feeling, but
+conduct and character as well. All the New Testament,
+in so far as it is a record of what Christ is, and
+thereby a declaration of what God is, is also for us an
+injunction as to what we ought to be. The whole
+Gospel is law, and the testimony is commandment, and
+we have to keep it, as well as to confess it. Let me
+put the few things that I have to say, under this last
+division of my subject, the practical issue, into the
+shape of three exhortations, not for the sake of seeming
+to arrogate any kind of superiority, but for the
+sake of point and emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Let the life bear witness to the confession. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378a" id="Page_378a">[378]</a></span>
+is the use of Timothy's standing there, and professing
+himself a Christian before many witnesses if, when
+he goes out into the world, his conduct gives the lie to
+his creed, and he lives like the men that are not
+Christians? Back up your confession by your conduct,
+and when you say 'I believe in Jesus Christ,' let your
+life be as true an echo of His life as your confession is
+of His testimony. Else we shall come under the condemnation,
+'Nothing but leaves,' and shall fall under
+the punishment of the continuance of unfruitfulness,
+which is our crime as well as our punishment. There
+is a great deal more done by consistent living for, and
+by inconsistent living against, the truth of the Gospel,
+than by all the words of all the preachers in the world.
+Your faults go further, and tell more, than my sermons,
+and your Christian characters will go further than all
+the eloquence of the most devoted preachers. 'There
+is no voice nor language, where their sound is not
+heard. Their line is gone out into all the earth, and
+their words to the end of the world.'</p>
+
+<p>Again, let the thought of the Great Witness stimulate
+us. He, too, took His place by our sides, though with
+the differences that I have pointed out, yet with
+resemblances which bring Him very near us. He, too;
+knew what it was to stand amongst those who shrugged
+their shoulders, and knit their brows at His utterances,
+and turned away from Him, calling Him sometimes
+'dreamer,' sometimes 'revolutionary,' sometimes 'blasphemer,'
+and now and then a messenger of good
+tidings and a preacher of the gospel of peace. He
+knows all our hesitations, all our weaknesses, all our
+temptations. He was the first of the martyrs, in the
+narrower sense of the word. He is the leader of the
+great band of witnesses for God. Let us stand by His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379a" id="Page_379a">[379]</a></span>
+side, and be like Him in our bearing witness in this
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Again, let the thought of the great tribunal stimulate
+us. 'I give thee charge before God, who quickeneth
+all things&mdash;and who therefore will quicken you&mdash;and
+before Jesus Christ, that thou keep this commandment.'
+Jesus, who witnessed to the truth, witnesses,
+in the sense of beholding and watching, us, knowing
+our weakness and ready to help us. 'The faithful
+witness, and the first begotten from the dead, and the
+Prince of the kings of the earth,' is by us, as we witness
+for Him. And so, though we are compassed about with
+so great a cloud of witnesses, the saints in the past
+who have witnessed for God, and been witnessed to by
+Him, we have to turn away from them, and 'look off'
+from all others, 'unto Jesus.' And we may, like the
+first of the noble army of martyrs, see the heavens
+opened, and Jesus 'standing'&mdash;started to His feet, to
+see and to help Stephen&mdash;'at the right hand of God.'</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, let us listen to His witness, let us accept it,
+setting to our seals that God is true. Then let us try
+to echo it back by word, and to attest our confession
+by our conduct, and then we may comfort ourselves
+with the great word, 'He that confesseth Me before
+men, Him will I also confess before My Father which
+is in Heaven.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE CONDUCT THAT SECURES THE
+REAL LIFE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come,
+that they may lay hold on eternal life.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Tim.</span> vi. 19.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In the first flush of the sense of brotherhood, the
+Church of Jerusalem tried the experiment of having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380a" id="Page_380a">[380]</a></span>
+all things in common. It was not a success, it was
+soon abandoned, it never spread. In the later history
+of the Church, and especially in these last Pauline
+letters, we see clearly that distinctions of pecuniary
+position were very definitely marked amongst the believers.
+There were 'rich men' in the churches of which
+Timothy had charge. No doubt they were rich after
+a very modest fashion, for Paul's standard of opulence
+is not likely to have been a very high one, seeing that
+he himself ministered with his own hands to his
+necessities, and had only one cloak to keep him warm
+in winter time. But great or small as were the
+resources of these men, they were rich in comparison
+with some of their brethren. The words of my text
+are the close of the very plain things which Paul commands
+Timothy to tell them. He assures them that
+if they will be rich in good works, and ready to
+distribute, they will lay up for themselves a good
+'foundation against the time to come.'</p>
+
+<p>The teaching in the text is, of course, a great deal
+wider than any specific application of it. It is very
+remarkable, especially as coming from Paul. 'Lay up
+a good foundation'&mdash;has he not said, 'Other foundation
+can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
+Christ'? 'That they may lay hold on eternal life'&mdash;has
+he not said, 'The <i>gift</i> of God is eternal life'? Is he
+not going dead in the teeth of his own teaching, 'Not
+by works of righteousness which we have done, but by
+His mercy He saved us'? I think not. Let us see what
+he does say.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, he says that the real life is the future
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Those of you who use the Revised Version will see
+that it makes an alteration in the last clause of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381a" id="Page_381a">[381]</a></span>
+text, and instead of 'eternal life' it reads 'the life
+which is life indeed,' the true life; not simply designating
+it as eternal, but designating it as being the only
+thing that is worth calling by the august name of life.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is quite clear that Paul here is approximating
+very closely to the language of his brother John, and
+using this great word 'life' as being, in substance,
+equivalent to his own favourite word of 'salvation,'
+as including in one magnificent generalisation all that
+is necessary for the satisfaction of man's needs, the
+perfection of his blessedness, and the glorifying of
+his nature. Paul's notion of life, like John's, is that
+it is the one all-comprehensive good which men need
+and seek.</p>
+
+<p>And here he seems to relegate that 'life which is
+life indeed' to the region of the future, because he contemplates
+it as being realised 'in the time to come,'
+and as being the result of the conduct which is here
+enjoined. But you will find that substantially the same
+exhortation is given in the 12th verse of this chapter,
+'Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on the life
+eternal'&mdash;where the process of grasping this 'life,' and
+therefore the possession of it, are evidently regarded
+as possible here, and the duty of every Christian man
+in this present world. That is to say, there is a double
+aspect of this august conception of the 'life which is life
+indeed.' In one aspect it is present, may be and ought
+to be ours, here and now; in another aspect it lies
+beyond the flood, and is the inheritance reserved in
+the heavens. That double aspect is parallel with the
+way in which the New Testament deals with the other
+cognate conception of salvation, which it sometimes
+regards as past, sometimes as present, sometimes as
+future. The complete idea is that the life of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382a" id="Page_382a">[382]</a></span>
+Christian soul here and yonder, away out into the
+furthest extremities of eternity, and up to the loftiest
+climax of perfectness, is in essence one, whilst yet the
+differences between the degree in which its germinal
+possession here and its full-fruited enjoyment hereafter
+differ is so great as that, in comparison with the
+completion that is waiting the Christian soul beyond
+the grave, all of the same life that is here enjoyed
+dwindles into nothingness. It appears to me that
+these two sides of the truth, the essential identity of
+the life of the Christian soul beyond and here, and the
+all but infinite differences and progresses which separate
+the two, are both needful, very needful, to be kept
+in view by us.</p>
+
+<p>There is here on earth, amidst all our imperfections
+and weakness and sin, a root in the heart that trusts
+in Christ, which only needs to be transplanted into its
+congenial soil to blossom and burgeon into undreamed
+of beauty, and to bear fruit the savour of which no
+mortal lips can ever taste. The dwarfed rhododendrons
+in our shrubberies have in them the same
+nature as the giants that adorn the slopes of the
+Himalayas. Transplant these exotics to their native
+soil, and you would see what it was in them to be.
+Think of the life that is now at its best; its weakness,
+its blighted hopes, its thwarted aims, its foiled endeavours;
+think of its partings, its losses, its conflicts.
+Think of its disorders, its sins, and consequent sufferings;
+think of the shadow at its close, which flings
+long trails of blackness over many preceding years.
+Think of its swift disappearance, and then say if such
+a poor, fragmentary thing is worthy of the name of
+life, if that were all that the man was for.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not all. There is a 'life which is life indeed,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383a" id="Page_383a">[383]</a></span>
+over which no shadow can pass, nor any sorrow darken
+the blessed faces or clog the happy hearts of those
+who possess it. They 'have all and abound.' They
+know all and are at rest. They dread nothing, and
+nothing do they regret. They leave nothing behind as
+they advance, and of their serenity and their growth
+there is no end. That is worth calling life. It lies
+beyond this dim spot of earth. It is 'hid with Christ
+in God.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, notice that conduct here determines the
+possession of the true life.</p>
+
+<p>Paul never cares whether he commits the rhetorical
+blunder of mixing up metaphors or not. That matters
+very little, except to a pedant and a rhetorician. In
+his impetuous way he blends three here, and has no
+time to stop to disentangle them. They all mean
+substantially the same thing which I have stated in
+the words that conduct here determines the possession
+of life hereafter; but they put it in three different
+figurative fashions which we may separate and look at
+one by one.</p>
+
+<p>The first of them is this, that by our actions here we
+accumulate treasure hereafter. 'Laying up in store
+for themselves' is one word in the original, and it
+contains even more than is expressed in our paraphrase,
+for it is really 'treasuring off.' And the idea
+is that the rich man is bade to take a portion of his
+worldly goods, and, by using these for beneficent purposes,
+out of them to store a treasure beyond the
+grave. What is employed thus, and from the right
+motives and in the right way, is not squandered, but
+laid up in store. You remember the old epitaph,</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="What I spent I lost">
+<tr><td align='left'>'What I spent I lost;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What I gave I have.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384a" id="Page_384a">[384]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Now that is Christ's teaching, for did He not say: 'Sell
+all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt
+have treasure in heaven'? Did He not say: 'Lay
+not up for yourselves treasures on earth, .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. but lay
+up treasures in heaven'? And if anybody's theology
+finds it difficult to incorporate these solemn teachings
+of our Lord with the rest of it, so much the worse for
+the theology.</div>
+
+<p>I have no doubt at all that Christianity has yet a
+great deal to teach the Christian Church and the
+world about the acquisition of money and the disposal
+of money; and, though I do not want to dwell
+now upon that specific application of the general
+principle of my text, I cannot help reminding you,
+dear friends, that for a very large number of us, almost
+the most important influence shaping our characters
+is the attitude that we take in regard to these things&mdash;the
+getting and the distribution of worldly wealth.
+For the bulk of Christian people there are few things
+more important as sharp tests of the reality of their
+religion, or more effective in either ennobling or
+degrading their whole character, than what they do
+about these two plain matters.</p>
+
+<p>But then my text goes a great deal further than
+that; and whilst it applies unflinchingly this principle
+to the one specific case, it invites us to apply it all
+round the circumference of our earthly conduct.
+What you are doing here is piling up for you, on the
+other side of the wall, what you will have to live
+with, and either get good or evil out of, through
+all eternity. A man who is going to Australia pays
+some money into a bank here, and when he gets to
+Melbourne it is punctually paid out to him across the
+counter. That is what we are doing here, lodging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385a" id="Page_385a">[385]</a></span>
+money on this side that we are going to draw on that.
+And it is this which gives to the present its mystical
+significance and solemnity, that all our actions are
+piling up for us future possessions: 'treasuring up
+wrath against the day of wrath'; or, contrariwise,
+'glory, immortality, honour, eternal life.' We are
+like men digging a trench on one side of a hedge and
+flinging the spadefuls over to the other. They are all
+being piled up behind the barrier, and when we go
+round the end of it we shall find them all waiting for us.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Apostle superimposes upon this another
+metaphor. He does not care to unravel it. 'Laying
+up in store for themselves a store,' he would have said
+if he had been a pedant, 'which is also a good foundation.'
+Now I take it that that does not mean a basis
+for hope, or anything of that sort, but that it conveys
+this thought, that our actions here are putting in the
+foundations on which the eternal building of our
+future life shall be reared. When a man excavates
+and lays the first courses of the stones of his building,
+he thereby determines every successive stage of it,
+until the headstone is brought forth with rejoicing.
+We are laying foundations in that profound sense in
+this world. Our nature takes a set here, and I fail to
+see any reason cognisable by us why that ply of the
+nature should ever be taken out of it in any future.
+I do not dogmatise; but it seems to me that all that we
+do know of life and of God's dealings in regard to man
+leads us to suppose that the next world is a world of
+continuations, not of beginnings; that it is the second
+volume of the book, and hangs logically and necessarily
+upon the first that was finished when a man
+died. Our lives here and hereafter appear to me to be
+like some geometrical figure that wants two sheets of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386a" id="Page_386a">[386]</a></span>
+paper for its completion: on the first the lines run up
+to the margin, and on the second they are carried on
+in the direction which was manifest in the section that
+was visible here.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear friends, let us remember that this is the
+reason why our smallest acts are so tremendous that
+by our actions we are making character, and that
+character is destiny, here and hereafter. You are
+putting in the foundations of the building that you
+have to live in; see that they are of such a sort as will
+support a house eternal in the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>The last of the metaphors under which the Apostle
+suggests the one idea is that our conduct here determines
+our capacity to lay hold of the prize. It
+seems to me that the same allusion is lingering in his
+mind which is definitely stated in the previous verse
+to which I have already referred, where the eternal life
+which Timothy is exhorted to lay hold of is regarded
+as being the prize of the good fight of faith, which he
+is exhorted to fight. And so the third metaphor here
+is that which is familiar in Paul's writings, where
+eternal life is regarded as a garland or prize, given to
+the victor in race or arena. It is exactly the same
+notion as he otherwise expresses when he says that
+he follows after if that he may 'lay hold of that for
+which also he is laid hold of by Jesus Christ.' This is
+the underlying thought, that according to a Christian
+man's acts here is his capacity of receiving the real
+life yonder.</p>
+
+<p>That is not given arbitrarily. Each man gets as
+much of it when he goes home as he can hold. The
+tiniest vessel is filled, the largest vessel is filled. But
+the little vessel may, and will, grow bigger if that which
+is deposited in it be rightly employed. Let us lay this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387a" id="Page_387a">[387]</a></span>
+to heart, that Christian men dare not treat it as a
+matter of indifference whether to the full they live
+lives consistent with their profession, and do the will
+of their Master or no. It is not all the same, and it
+will not be all the same yonder, whether we have
+adorned the teaching, or whether our lives have
+habitually and criminally fallen beneath the level of
+our professions. Brethren, we are too apt to forget
+that there is such a thing as being 'saved, yet so as by
+fire'; and that there is such a thing as 'having an
+entrance ministered abundantly into the Kingdom.'
+Be you sure of this, that if the hands of your spirits
+are ever to be capable of grasping the prize, it must
+be as the result of conduct here on earth, which has
+been treasuring up treasures yonder, and laying a
+foundation on which the incorruptible house may
+solidly rest.</p>
+
+<p>III. And now the last word that I have to say is that
+these principles are perfectly compatible with the great
+truth of salvation by faith.</p>
+
+<p>For observe to whom the text is spoken. It is to
+men who have professed to be believers, and it is on
+the ground of their faith that these rich men in
+Timothy's churches are exhorted to this conduct.
+There is no incompatibility between the doctrine that
+eternal life is the gift of God, and the placing of those
+who have received that gift under a strict law of
+recompense.</p>
+
+<p>That is the teaching of the whole New Testament.
+It was to <i>Christian</i> men that it was said: 'Be not
+deceived; God is not mocked, whatsoever a man soweth
+that shall he also reap.' It is the teaching of Jesus
+Christ Himself.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a dreadful danger that we, with our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388a" id="Page_388a">[388]</a></span>
+partial vision, shall see one side of the truth so clearly
+that we do not see the other; and so you get two
+antagonistic schools of Christian teaching who have
+torn the one word into halves. One of them says,
+'Man is saved by faith only,' and forgets 'faith without
+works is dead'; and the other says, 'Do your duty, and
+never mind about your belief,' and forgets that the
+belief&mdash;the trust&mdash;is the only sure foundation on which
+conduct can be based, and the only source from which
+it is certain to flow.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if I should not be misunderstood by that same
+narrow and contracted vision of which I have been
+speaking, I would venture to say that salvation by
+faith alone may be so held as to be a very dangerous
+doctrine, and that there is a very real sense in which
+a man is saved by works. And if you do not like that,
+go home and read the Epistle of James, and see what
+you make of his teaching: 'Ye see, brethren, how that
+by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.'
+'Faith wrought with his works, and by his works was
+his faith made perfect.'</p>
+
+<p>Only let us understand where the exhortation of the
+text comes in. We have to begin with absolute departure
+from all merit in work, and the absolute casting
+of ourselves on Jesus Christ. If you have not done
+that, my brother, the teaching 'Laying up in store for
+themselves a good foundation' has no application to
+you, but this teaching has, 'Other foundation can no
+man lay. Behold, I lay in Zion a tried corner-stone.
+Whosoever believeth in Him shall not make haste.'
+If you have not committed your souls and selves and
+lives and hopes to Jesus Christ, the teaching 'Lay hold
+on eternal life' has only a very modified application to
+you, because the only hand that can grasp that life is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389a" id="Page_389a">[389]</a></span>
+the hand of faith that is content to receive it from His
+hands with the prints of the nails in them. But if you
+have given yourselves to that Saviour, and received the
+germinal gift of eternal life from Him, then, take my
+text as absolutely imperative for you. Remember
+that it is for you, resting on Christ, to treasure up
+eternal life; for you to build on that sure foundation
+gold and silver and precious stones which may stand
+the fire; for you, by faithful continuance in well-doing,
+to lay hold of that for which you have been laid hold
+of by Jesus Christ. May it be true of all of us that
+'our works do follow us'!</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Thy works, thine alms">
+<tr><td align='left'>'Thy works, thine alms, and all thy good endeavour</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.'</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections.
+Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture, by 
+Alexander Maclaren
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+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture
+       Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters
+       I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+Release Date: April 19, 2007 [EBook #21190]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          SECOND CORINTHIANS,
+          GALATIANS,
+          AND PHILIPPIANS
+
+          CHAPTERS I TO END
+
+          COLOSSIANS, THESSALONIANS,
+          AND FIRST TIMOTHY
+
+          NEW YORK
+          GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+          _EXPOSITIONS OF
+          HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+          ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+          SECOND CORINTHIANS
+
+          _Chaps. VII to End_
+
+          GALATIANS AND
+          PHILIPPIANS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+II. CORINTHIANS
+
+HOPE AND HOLINESS (2 Cor. vii. 1)                                 1
+
+SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD (2 Cor. vii. 10)                          8
+
+GIVING AND ASKING (2 Cor. viii. 1-12)                            20
+
+RICH YET POOR (2 Cor. viii. 9)                                   27
+
+WILLING AND NOT DOING (2 Cor. viii. 11)                          36
+
+ALL GRACE ABOUNDING (2 Cor. ix. 8)                               42
+
+GOD'S UNSPEAKABLE GIFT (2 Cor. ix. 15)                           50
+
+A MILITANT MESSAGE (2 Cor. x. 5 and 6, R.V.)                     57
+
+SIMPLICITY TOWARDS CHRIST (2 Cor. xi. 3)                         65
+
+STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS (2 Cor. xii. 8, 9)                          74
+
+NOT YOURS BUT YOU (2 Cor. xii. 14)                               83
+
+
+GALATIANS
+
+FROM CENTRE TO CIRCUMFERENCE (Gal. ii. 20)                       91
+
+THE EVIL EYE AND THE CHARM (Gal. iii. 1)                        100
+
+LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE (Gal. iii. 4)                             109
+
+THE UNIVERSAL PRISON (Gal. iii. 22)                             116
+
+THE SON SENT (Gal. iv. 4, 5, R.V.)                              126
+
+WHAT MAKES A CHRISTIAN: CIRCUMCISION OR FAITH? (Gal. v. 6)      136
+
+'WALK IN THE SPIRIT' (Gal. v. 16)                               153
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT (Gal. v. 22, 23)                        162
+
+BURDEN-BEARING (Gal. vi. 2-5)                                   171
+
+DOING GOOD TO ALL (Gal. vi. 10)                                 180
+
+THE OWNER'S BRAND (Gal. vi. 17)                                 189
+
+
+PHILIPPIANS
+
+LOVING GREETINGS (Phil. i. 1-8, R.V.)                           200
+
+A COMPREHENSIVE PRAYER (Phil. i. 9-11, R.V.)                    206
+
+A PRISONER'S TRIUMPH (Phil. i. 12-20, R.V.)                     211
+
+A STRAIT BETWIXT TWO (Phil. i. 21-25)                           219
+
+CITIZENS OF HEAVEN (Phil. i. 27, 28)                            233
+
+A PLEA FOR UNITY (Phil. ii. 1-4, R.V.)                          244
+
+THE DESCENT OF THE WORD (Phil. ii. 5-8, R.V.)                   253
+
+THE ASCENT OF JESUS (Phil. ii. 9-11, R.V.)                      260
+
+WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION (Phil. ii. 12, 13)                  268
+
+COPIES OF JESUS (Phil. ii. 14-16, R.V.)                         281
+
+A WILLING SACRIFICE (Phil. ii. 16-18, R.V.)                     287
+
+PAUL AND TIMOTHY (Phil. ii. 19-24, R.V.)                        295
+
+PAUL AND EPAPHRODITUS (Phil. ii. 25-30, R.V.)                   305
+
+PREPARING TO END (Phil. iii. 1-3, R.V.)                         311
+
+THE LOSS OF ALL (Phil. iii. 4-8, R.V.)                          321
+
+THE GAIN OF CHRIST (Phil. iii. 8, 9, R.V.)                      328
+
+SAVING KNOWLEDGE (Phil. iii. 10, 11, R.V.)                      336
+
+LAID HOLD OF AND LAYING HOLD (Phil. iii. 12)                    348
+
+THE RACE AND THE GOAL (Phil. iii. 13, 14)                       359
+
+THE SOUL'S PERFECTION (Phil. iii. 15)                           369
+
+THE RULE OF THE ROAD (Phil. iii. 16)                            381
+
+WARNINGS AND HOPES (Phil. iii. 17-21, R.V.)                     391
+
+
+
+
+II. CORINTHIANS
+
+HOPE AND HOLINESS
+
+          Having therefore these promises . . . let us cleanse
+          ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and
+          spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of
+          God.'--2 COR. vii. 1.
+
+
+It is often made a charge against professing Christians that their
+religion has very little to do with common morality. The taunt has
+sharpened multitudes of gibes and been echoed in all sorts of tones: it
+is very often too true and perfectly just, but if ever it is, let it be
+distinctly understood that it is not so because of Christian men's
+religion but in spite of it. Their bitterest enemy does not condemn them
+half so emphatically as their own religion does: the sharpest censure of
+others is not so sharp as the rebukes of the New Testament. If there is
+one thing which it insists upon more than another, it is that religion
+without morality is nothing--that the one test to which, after all,
+every man must submit is, what sort of character has he and how has he
+behaved--is he pure or foul? All high-flown pretension, all fervid
+emotion has at last to face the question which little children ask, 'Was
+he a good man?'
+
+The Apostle has been speaking about very high and mystical truths, about
+all Christians being the temple of God, about God dwelling in men, about
+men and women being His sons and daughters; these are the very truths
+on which so often fervid imaginations have built up a mystical piety
+that had little to do with the common rules of right and wrong. But Paul
+keeps true to the intensely practical purpose of his preaching and
+brings his heroes down to the prosaic earth with the homely common sense
+of this far-reaching exhortation, which he gives as the fitting
+conclusion for such celestial visions.
+
+I. A Christian life should be a life of constant self-purifying.
+
+This epistle is addressed to the church of God which is at Corinth with
+all the _saints_ which are in all Achaia.
+
+Looking out over that wide region, Paul saw scattered over godless
+masses a little dispersed company to each of whom the sacred name of
+Saint applied. They had been deeply stained with the vices of their age
+and place, and after a black list of criminals he had had to say to them
+'such were some of you,' and he lays his finger on the miracle that had
+changed them and hesitates not to say of them all, 'But ye are washed,
+but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord
+Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.'
+
+The first thing, then, that every Christian has is a cleansing which
+accompanies forgiveness, and however his garment may have been 'spotted
+by the flesh,' it is 'washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.'
+Strange cleansing by which black stains melt out of garments plunged in
+red blood! With the cleansing of forgiveness and justification comes,
+wherever they come, the gift of the Holy Spirit--a new life springing up
+within the old life, and untouched by any contact with its evils. These
+gifts belong universally to the initial stage of the Christian life and
+require for their possession only the receptiveness of faith. They
+admit of no co-operation of human effort, and to possess them men have
+only to 'take the things that are freely given to them of God.' But of
+the subsequent stages of the Christian life, the laborious and constant
+effort to develop and apply that free gift is as essential as, in the
+earliest stage, it is worse than useless. The gift received has to be
+wrought into the very substance of the soul, and to be wrought out in
+all the endless varieties of life and conduct. Christians are cleansed
+to begin with, but they have still daily to cleanse themselves: the
+leaven is hid in the three measures of meal, but ''tis a life-long task
+till the lump be leavened,' and no man, even though he has the life that
+was in Jesus within him, will grow up 'into the measure of the stature
+of the fulness of Christ' unless, by patient and persistent effort, he
+is ever pressing on to 'the things that are before' and daily striving
+to draw nearer to the prize of his high calling. We are cleansed, but we
+have still to cleanse ourselves.
+
+Yet another paradox attaches to the Christian life, inasmuch as God
+cleanses us, but we have to cleanse ourselves. The great truth that the
+spirit of God in a man is the fontal source of all his goodness, and
+that Christ's righteousness is given to us, is no pillow on which to
+rest an idle head, but should rather be a trumpet-call to effort which
+is thereby made certain of success. If we were left to the task of
+self-purifying by our own efforts we might well fling it up as
+impossible. It is as easy for a man to lift himself from the ground by
+gripping his own shoulders as it is for us to rise to greater heights of
+moral conduct by our own efforts; but if we can believe that God gives
+the impulse after purity, and the vision of what purity is, and imparts
+the power of attaining it, strengthening at once our dim sight and
+stirring our feeble desires and energising our crippled limbs, then we
+can 'run with patience the race that is set before us.'
+
+We must note the thoroughness of the cleansing which the Apostle here
+enjoins. What is to be got rid of is not this or that defect or vice,
+but '_all_ filthiness of flesh and spirit.' The former, of course,
+refers primarily to sins of impurity which in the eyes of the Greeks of
+Corinth were scarcely sins at all, and the latter to a state of mind
+when fancy, imagination, and memory were enlisted in the service of
+evil. Both are rampant in our day as they were in Corinth. Much modern
+literature and the new gospel of 'Art for Art's sake' minister to both,
+and every man carries in himself inclinations to either. It is no
+partial cleansing with which Paul would have us to be satisfied: '_all_'
+filthiness is to be cast out. Like careful housewives who are never
+content to cease their scrubbing while a speck remains upon furniture,
+Christian men are to regard their work as unfinished as long as the
+least trace of the unclean thing remains in their flesh or in their
+spirit. The ideal may be far from being realised at any moment, but it
+is at the peril of the whole sincerity and peacefulness of their lives
+if they, in the smallest degree, lower the perfection of their ideal in
+deference to the imperfection of their realisation of it.
+
+It must be abundantly clear from our own experience that any such
+cleansing is a very long process. No character is made, whether it be
+good or bad, but by a slow building up: no man becomes most wicked all
+at once, and no man is sanctified by a wish or at a jump. As long as men
+are in a world so abounding with temptation, 'he that is washed' will
+need daily to 'wash his feet' that have been stained in the foul ways of
+life, if he is to be 'clean every whit.'
+
+As long as the spirit is imprisoned in the body and has it for its
+instrument there will be need for much effort at purifying. We must be
+content to overcome one foe at a time, and however strong may be the
+pilgrim's spirit in us, we must be content to take one step at a time,
+and to advance by very slow degrees. Nor is it to be forgotten that as
+we get nearer what we ought to be, we should be more conscious of the
+things in which we are not what we ought to be. The nearer we get to
+Jesus Christ, the more will our consciences be enlightened as to the
+particulars in which we are still distant from Him. A speck on a
+polished shield will show plain that would never have been seen on a
+rusty one. The saint who is nearest God will think more of his sins than
+the man who is furthest from him. So new work of purifying will open
+before us as we grow more pure, and this will last as long as life
+itself.
+
+II. The Christian life is to be not merely a continual getting rid of
+evil, but a continual becoming good.
+
+Paul here draws a distinction between cleansing ourselves from
+filthiness and perfecting holiness, and these two, though closely
+connected and capable of being regarded as being but the positive and
+negative sides of one process, are in reality different, though in
+practice the former is never achieved without the latter, nor the latter
+accomplished without the former. Holiness is more than purity; it is
+consecration. That is holy which is devoted to God, and a saint is one
+whose daily effort is to devote his whole self, in all his faculties and
+nature, thoughts, heart, and will, more and more, to God, and to
+receive into himself more and more of God.
+
+The purifying which Paul has been enjoining will only be successful in
+the measure of our consecration, and the consecration will only be
+genuine in the measure of our purifying. Herein lies the broad and
+blessed distinction between the world's morality and Christian ethics.
+The former fails just because it lacks the attitude towards a Person who
+is the very foundation of Christian morality, and changes a hard and
+impossible law into love. There is no more futile waste of breath than
+that of teachers of morality who have no message but Be good! Be good!
+and no motive by which to urge it but the pleasures of virtue and the
+disadvantages of vice, but when the vagueness of the abstract thought of
+goodness solidifies into a living Person and that Person makes his
+appeal first to our hearts and bids us love him, and then opens before
+us the unstained light of his own character and beseeches us to be like
+him, the repellent becomes attractive: the impossible becomes possible,
+and 'if ye love Me keep My commandments' becomes a constraining power
+and a victorious impulse in our lives.
+
+III. The Christian life of purifying and consecration is to be animated
+by hope and fear.
+
+The Apostle seems to connect hope more immediately with the cleansing,
+and holiness with the fear of God, but probably both hope and fear are
+in his mind as the double foundation on which both purity and
+consecration are to rest, or the double emotion which is to produce them
+both. These promises refer directly to the immediately preceding words,
+'I will be a Father unto you and ye shall be My sons and daughters,' in
+which all the blessings which God can give or men can receive are fused
+together in one lustrous and all-comprehensive whole. So all the great
+truths of the Gospel and all the blessed emotions of sonship which can
+spring up in a human heart are intended to find their practical result
+in holy and pure living. For this end God has spoken to us out of the
+thick darkness; for this end Christ has come into our darkness; for this
+end He has lived; for this end He died; for this end He rose again; for
+this end He sends His Spirit and administers the providence of the
+world. The purpose of all the Divine activity as regards us men is not
+merely to make us happy, but to make us happy in order that we may be
+good. He whom what he calls his religion has only saved from the wrath
+of God and the fear of hell has not learned the alphabet of religion.
+Unless God's promises evoke men's goodness it will be of little avail
+that they seem to quicken their hope. Joyful confidence in our sonship
+is only warranted in the measure in which we are like our Father. Hope
+often deludes and makes men dreamy and unpractical. It generally paints
+pictures far lovelier than the realities, and without any of their
+shadows; it is too often the stimulus and ally of ignoble lives, and
+seldom stirs to heroism or endurance, but its many defects are not due
+to itself but to its false choice of objects on which to fix. The hope
+which is lifted from trailing along the earth and twining round
+creatures and which rises to grasp these promises ought to be, and in
+the measure of its reality is the ally of all patient endurance and
+noble self-sacrifice. Its vision of coming good is all directed to the
+coming Christ, and 'every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth
+himself even as He is pure.'
+
+In Paul's experience there was no contrariety between hope set on Jesus
+and fear directed towards God. It is in the fear of God that holiness is
+to be perfected. There is a fear which has no torment. Yet more, there
+is no love in sons or daughters without fear. The reverential awe with
+which God's children draw near to God has in it nothing slavish and no
+terror. Their love is not only joyful but lowly. The worshipping gaze
+upon His Divine majesty, the reverential and adoring contemplation of
+His ineffable holiness, and the poignant consciousness, after all
+effort, of the distance between us and Him will bow the hearts that love
+Him most in lowliest prostration before Him. These two, hope and fear,
+confidence and awe, are like the poles on which the whole round world
+turns and are united here in one result. They who 'set their hope in
+God' must 'not forget the works of God but keep His commandments'; they
+who 'call Him Father,' 'who without respect of persons judgeth' must
+'pass the time of their sojourning here in fear,' and their hopes and
+their fears must drive the wheels of life, purify them from all
+filthiness and perfect them in all holiness.
+
+
+
+
+SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD
+
+          'Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not
+          to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world
+          worketh death.'--2 COR. vii. 10.
+
+
+Very near the close of his missionary career the Apostle Paul summed up
+his preaching as being all directed to enforcing two points, 'Repentance
+towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' These two, repentance
+and faith, ought never to be separated in thought, as they are
+inseparable in fact. True repentance is impossible without faith, true
+faith cannot exist without repentance.
+
+Yet the two are separated very often, even by earnest Christian
+teachers. The tendency of this day is to say a great deal about faith,
+and not nearly enough in proportion about repentance; and the effect is
+to obscure the very idea of faith, and not seldom to preach 'Peace!
+peace! when there is no peace.' A gospel which is always talking about
+faith, and scarcely ever talking about sin and repentance, is denuded,
+indeed, of some of its most unwelcome characteristics, but is also
+deprived of most of its power, and it may very easily become an ally of
+unrighteousness, and an indulgence to sin. The reproach that the
+Christian doctrine of salvation through faith is immoral in its
+substance derives most of its force from forgetting that 'repentance
+towards God' is as real a condition of salvation as is 'faith in our
+Lord Jesus Christ.' We have here the Apostle's deliverance about one of
+these twin thoughts. We have three stages--the root, the stem, the
+fruit; sorrow, repentance, salvation. But there is a right and a wrong
+kind of sorrow for sin. The right kind breeds repentance, and thence
+reaches salvation; the wrong kind breeds nothing, and so ends in death.
+
+Let us then trace these stages, not forgetting that this is not a
+complete statement of the case, and needs to be supplemented in the
+spirit of the words which I have already quoted, by the other part of
+the inseparable whole, 'faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+I. First, then, consider the true and the false sorrow for sin.
+
+The Apostle takes it for granted that a recognition of our own evil, and
+a consequent penitent regretfulness, lie at the foundation of all true
+Christianity. Now I do not insist upon any uniformity of experience in
+people, any more than I should insist that all their bodies should be of
+one shape or of one proportion. Human lives are infinitely different,
+human dispositions are subtly varied, and because neither the one nor
+the other are ever reproduced exactly in any two people, therefore the
+religious experience of no two souls can ever be precisely alike.
+
+We have no right to ask--and much harm has been done by asking--for an
+impossible uniformity of religious experience, any more than we have a
+right to expect that all voices shall be pitched in one key, or all
+plants flower in the same month, or after the same fashion. You can
+print off as many copies as you like, for instance, of a drawing of a
+flower on a printing-press, and they shall all be alike, petal for
+petal, leaf for leaf, shade for shade; but no two hand-drawn copies will
+be so precisely alike, still less will any two of the real buds that
+blow on the bush. Life produces resemblance with differences; it is
+machinery that makes facsimiles.
+
+So we insist on no pedantic or unreal uniformity; and yet, whilst
+leaving the widest scope for divergencies of individual character and
+experience, and not asking that a man all diseased and blotched with the
+leprosy of sin for half a lifetime, and a little child that has grown up
+at its mother's knee, 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,' and
+so has been kept 'innocent of much transgression,' shall have the same
+experience; yet Scripture, as it seems to me, and the nature of the case
+do unite in asserting that there are certain elements which, in varying
+proportions indeed, will be found in all true Christian experience, and
+of these an indispensable one--and in a very large number, if not in
+the majority of cases, a fundamental one--is this which my text calls
+'godly sorrow.'
+
+Dear brethren, surely a reasonable consideration of the facts of our
+conduct and character point to that as the attitude that becomes us.
+Does it not? I do not charge you with crimes in the eye of the law. I do
+not suppose that many of you are living in flagrant disregard of the
+elementary principles of common every-day morality. Some are, no doubt.
+There are, no doubt, unclean men here; there are some who eat and drink
+more than is good for them, habitually; there are, no doubt, men and
+women who are living in avarice and worldliness, and doing things which
+the ordinary conscience of the populace points to as faults and
+blemishes. But I come to you respectable people that can say: 'I am not
+as other men are, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican'; and
+pray you, dear friends, to look at your character all round, in the
+light of the righteousness and love of God, and to plead to the
+indictment which charges you with neglect of many a duty and with sin
+against Him. How do you plead, 'guilty or not guilty, sinful or not
+sinful?' Be honest with yourselves, and the answer will not be far to
+seek.
+
+Notice how my text draws a broad distinction between the right and the
+wrong kind of sorrow for sin. 'Godly sorrow' is, literally
+rendered,'sorrow according to God,' which may either mean sorrow which
+has reference to God, or sorrow which is in accordance with His will;
+that is to say, which is pleasing to Him. If it is the former, it will
+be the latter. I prefer to suppose that it is the former--that is,
+sorrow which has reference to God. And then, there is another kind of
+sorrow, which the Apostle calls the 'sorrow of the world,' which is
+devoid of that reference to God. Here we have the characteristic
+difference between the Christian way of looking at our own faults and
+shortcomings, and the sorrow of the world, which has got no blessing in
+it, and will never lead to anything like righteousness and peace. It is
+just this--one has reference to God, puts its sin by His side, sees its
+blackness relieved against the 'fierce light' of the Great White Throne,
+and the other has not that reference.
+
+To expand that for a moment,--there are plenty of us who, when our sin
+is behind us, and its bitter fruits are in our hands, are sorry enough
+for our faults. A man that is lying in the hospital a wreck, with the
+sins of his youth gnawing the flesh off his bones, is often enough sorry
+that he did not live more soberly and chastely and temperately in the
+past days. That fraudulent bankrupt who has not got his discharge and
+has lost his reputation, and can get nobody to lend him money enough to
+start him in business again, as he hangs about the streets, slouching in
+his rags, is sorry enough that he did not keep the straight road. The
+'sorrow of the world' has no thought about God in it at all. The
+consequences of sin set many a man's teeth on edge who does not feel any
+compunction for the wrong that he did. My brethren, is that the position
+of any that are listening to me now?
+
+Again, men are often sorry for their conduct without thinking of it as
+sin against God. Crime means the transgression of man's law, wrong means
+the transgression of conscience's law, sin is the transgression of God's
+law. Some of us would perhaps have to say--'I have done crime.' We are
+all of us quite ready to say: 'I have done wrong many a time'; but
+there are some of us who hesitate to take the other step, and say: 'I
+have done sin.' Sin has, for its correlative, God. If there is no God
+there is no sin. There may be faults, there may be failures, there may
+be transgressions, breaches of the moral law, things done inconsistent
+with man's nature and constitution, and so on; but if there be a God,
+then we have personal relations to that Person and His law; and when we
+break His law it is more than crime; it is more than fault; it is more
+than transgression; it is more than wrong; it is sin. It is when you
+lift the shutter off conscience, and let the light of God rush in upon
+your hearts and consciences, that you have the wholesome sorrow that
+worketh repentance and salvation and life.
+
+Oh, dear friends, I do beseech you to lay these simple thoughts to
+heart. Remember, I urge no rigid uniformity of experience or character,
+but I do say that unless a man has learned to see his sin in the light
+of God, and in the light of God to weep over it, he has yet to know 'the
+strait gate that leadeth unto life.'
+
+I believe that a very large amount of the superficiality and
+easy-goingness of the Christianity of to-day comes just from this, that
+so many who call themselves Christians have never once got a glimpse of
+themselves as they really are. I remember once peering over the edge of
+the crater of Vesuvius, and looking down into the pit, all swirling with
+sulphurous fumes. Have you ever looked into your hearts, in that
+fashion, and seen the wreathing smoke and the flashing fire there? If
+you have, you will cleave to that Christ, who is your sole deliverance
+from sin.
+
+But, remember, there is no prescription about depth or amount or length
+of time during which this sorrow shall be felt. If, on the one hand, it
+is essential, on the other hand there are a great many people who ought
+to be walking in the light and the liberty of God's Gospel who bring
+darkness and clouds over themselves by the anxious scrutinising
+question: 'Is my sorrow deep enough?' Deep enough! What for? What is the
+use of sorrow for sin? To lead a man to repentance and to faith. If you
+have as much sorrow as leads you to penitence and trust you have enough.
+It is not your sorrow that is going to wash away your sin, it is
+Christ's blood. So let no man trouble himself about the question, Have I
+sorrow enough? The one question is: 'Has my sorrow led me to cast myself
+on Christ?'
+
+II. Still further, look now for a moment at the next stage here. 'Godly
+sorrow worketh repentance.'
+
+What is repentance? No doubt many of you would answer that it is 'sorrow
+for sin,' but clearly this text of ours draws a distinction between the
+two. There are very few of the great key-words of Christianity that have
+suffered more violent and unkind treatment, and have been more obscured
+by misunderstandings, than this great word. It has been weakened down
+into penitence, which in the ordinary acceptation, means simply the
+emotion that I have already been speaking about, viz., a regretful sense
+of my own evil. And it has been still further docked and degraded, both
+in its syllables and in its substance, into _penance_. But the
+'repentance' of the New Testament and of the Old Testament--one of the
+twin conditions of salvation--is neither sorrow for sin nor works of
+restitution and satisfaction, but it is, as the word distinctly
+expresses, a change of purpose in regard to the sin for which a man
+mourns. I cannot now expand and elaborate this idea as I should like,
+but let me remind you of one or two passages in Scripture which may show
+that the right notion of the word is not sorrow but changed attitude and
+purpose in regard to my sin.
+
+We find passages, some of which ascribe and some deny repentance to the
+Divine nature. But if there be a repentance which is possible for the
+Divine nature, it obviously cannot mean sorrow for sin, but must signify
+a change of purpose. In the Epistle to the Romans we read, 'The gifts
+and calling of God are without repentance,' which clearly means without
+change of purpose on His part. And I read in the story of the mission of
+the Prophet Jonah, that 'the Lord repented of the evil which He had said
+He would do unto them, and He did it not.' Here, again, the idea of
+repentance is clearly and distinctly that of a change of purpose. So fix
+this on your minds, and lay it on your hearts, dear friends, that the
+repentance of the New Testament is not idle tears nor the twitchings of
+a vain regret, but the resolute turning away of the sinful heart from
+its sins. It is 'repentance toward God,' the turning from the sin to the
+Father, and that is what leads to salvation. The sorrow is separated
+from the repentance in idea, however closely they may be intertwined in
+fact. The sorrow is one thing, and the repentance which it works is
+another.
+
+Then notice that this change of purpose and breaking off from sin is
+produced by the sorrow for sin, of which I have been speaking; and that
+the production of this repentance is the main characteristic difference
+between the godly sorrow and the sorrow of the world. A man may have his
+paroxysms of regret, but the question is: Does it make any difference
+in his attitude? Is he standing, after the tempest of sorrow has swept
+over him, with his face in the same direction as before; or has it
+whirled him clean round, and set him in the other direction? The one
+kind of sorrow, which measures my sin by the side of the brightness and
+purity of God, vindicates itself as true, because it makes me hate my
+evil and turn away from it. The other, which is of the world, passes
+over me like the empty wind through an archway, it whistles for a moment
+and is gone, and there is nothing left to show that it was ever there.
+The one comes like one of those brooks in tropical countries, dry and
+white for half the year, and then there is a rush of muddy waters,
+fierce but transient, and leaving no results behind. My brother! when
+your conscience pricks, which of these two things does it do? After the
+prick, is the word of command that your Will issues 'Right about face!'
+or is it 'As you were'? Godly sorrow worketh a change of attitude,
+purpose, mind; the sorrow of the world leaves a man standing where he
+was. Ask yourselves the question: Which of the two are you familiar
+with?
+
+Again, the true means of evoking true repentance is the contemplation of
+the Cross. Law and the fear of hell may startle into sorrow, and even
+lead to some kind of repentance. But it is the great power of Christ's
+love and sacrifice which will really melt the heart into true
+repentance. You may hammer ice to pieces, but it is ice still. You may
+bray a fool in a mortar, and his folly will not depart from him. Dread
+of punishment may pulverise the heart, but not change it; and each
+fragment, like the smallest bits of a magnet, will have the same
+characteristics as the whole mass. But 'the goodness of God leads to
+repentance' as the prodigal is conquered and sees the true hideousness
+of the swine's trough, when he bethinks himself of the father's love. I
+beseech you to put yourselves under the influence of that great love,
+and look on that Cross till your hearts melt.
+
+III. We come to the last stage here. Salvation is the issue of
+repentance. 'Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation not to be
+repented of.'
+
+What is the connection between repentance and salvation? Two sentences
+will answer the question. You cannot get salvation without repentance.
+You do not get salvation by repentance.
+
+You cannot get the salvation of God unless you shake off your sin. It is
+no use preaching to a man, 'Faith, Faith, Faith!' unless you preach
+along with it,'Break off your iniquities.' 'Let the wicked forsake his
+way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him turn unto the
+Lord.' The nature of the case forbids it. It is a clear contradiction in
+terms, and an absolute impossibility in fact, that God should save a man
+with the salvation which consists in the deliverance from sin, whilst
+that man is holding to his sin. Unless, therefore, you have not merely
+sorrow, but repentance, which is turning away from sin with resolute
+purpose, as a man would turn from a serpent, you cannot enter into the
+Kingdom of Heaven.
+
+But you do not get salvation for your repentance. It is no case of
+barter, it is no case of salvation by works, that work being repentance:
+
+          'Could my zeal no respite know,
+           Could my tears for ever flow,
+           All for sin could not atone,
+           Thou must save, and Thou alone.'
+
+Not my penitence, but Christ's death, is the ground of the salvation of
+every one that is saved at all. Yet repentance is an indispensable
+condition of salvation.
+
+What is the connection between repentance and faith? There can be no
+true repentance without trust in Christ. There can be no true trust in
+Christ without the forsaking of my sin. Repentance without faith, in so
+far as it is possible, is one long misery; like the pains of those poor
+Hindoo devotees that will go all the way from Cape Comorin to the shrine
+of Juggernaut, and measure every foot of the road with the length of
+their own bodies in the dust. Men will do anything, and willingly make
+any sacrifice, rather than open their eyes to see this,--that
+repentance, clasped hand in hand with Faith, leads the guiltiest soul
+into the forgiving presence of the crucified Christ, from whom peace
+flows into the darkest heart.
+
+On the other hand, faith without repentance is not possible, in any deep
+sense. But in so far as it is possible, it produces a superficial
+Christianity which vaguely trusts to Christ without knowing exactly what
+it is trusting Him for, or why it needs Him; and which has a great deal
+to say about what I may call the less important parts of the Christian
+system, and nothing to say about its vital centre; which preaches a
+morality which is not a living power to create; which practises a
+religion which is neither a joy nor a security. The old word of the
+Master has a deep truth in it: 'These are they which heard the word, and
+anon with joy received it.' Having no sorrow, no penitence, no deep
+consciousness of sin, 'they have no root in themselves, and in time of
+temptation they fall away.' If there is to be a profound, an
+all-pervading, life-transforming-sin, and devil-conquering faith, it
+must be a faith rooted deep in penitence and sorrow for sin.
+
+Dear brethren, if, by God's grace, my poor words have touched your
+consciences at all, I beseech you, do not trifle with the budding
+conviction! Do not seek to have the wound skinned over. Take care that
+you do not let it all pass in idle sorrow or impotent regret. If you do,
+you will be hardened, and the worse for it, and come nearer to that
+condition which the sorrow of the world worketh, the awful death of the
+soul. Do not wince from the knife before the roots of the cancer are cut
+out. The pain is merciful. Better the wound than the malignant growth.
+Yield yourselves to the Spirit that would convince you of sin, and
+listen to the voice that calls to you to forsake your unrighteous ways
+and thoughts. But do not trust to any tears, do not trust to any
+resolves, do not trust to any reformation. Trust only to the Lord who
+died on the Cross for you, whose death for you, whose life in you, will
+be deliverance from your sin. Then you will have a salvation which, in
+the striking language of my text, 'is not to be repented of,' which will
+leave no regrets in your hearts in the day when all else shall have
+faded, and the sinful sweets of this world shall have turned to ashes
+and bitterness on the lips of the men that feed on them.
+
+'The sorrow of the world works death.' There are men and women listening
+to me now who are half conscious of their sin, and are resisting the
+pleading voice that comes to them, who at the last will open their eyes
+upon the realities of their lives, and in a wild passion of remorse,
+exclaim: 'I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly.' Better to
+make thorough work of the sorrow, and by it to be led to repentance
+toward God and faith in Christ, and so secure for our own that salvation
+for which no man will ever regret having given even the whole world,
+since he gains his own soul.
+
+
+
+
+GIVING AND ASKING
+
+          'Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace
+          of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia; 2.
+          How that in a great trial of affliction the
+          abundance of their joy and their deep poverty
+          abounded unto the riches of their liberality. 3.
+          For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond
+          their power they were willing of themselves; 4.
+          Praying us with much entreaty that we would
+          receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship
+          of the ministering to the saints. 5. And this they
+          did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own
+          selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of
+          God: 6. Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he
+          had begun, so he would also finish in you the same
+          grace also. 7. Therefore, as ye abound in every
+          thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and
+          in all diligence, and in your love to us; see that
+          ye abound in this grace also. 8. I speak not by
+          commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of
+          others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.
+          9. For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+          that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He
+          became poor, that ye through His poverty might be
+          rich. 10. And herein I give my advice: for this is
+          expedient for you, who have begun before, not only
+          to do, but also to be forward a year ago. 11. Now
+          therefore perform the doing of it; that as there
+          was a readiness to will, so there may be a
+          performance also out of that which ye have. 12.
+          For if there be first a willing mind, it is
+          accepted according to that a man hath, and not
+          according to that he hath not.'--2 COR. viii.
+          1-12.
+
+
+A collection from Gentile churches for their poor brethren in Jerusalem
+occupied much of Paul's time and efforts before his last visit to that
+city. Many events, which have filled the world with noise and been
+written at length in histories, were less significant than that first
+outcome of the unifying spirit of common faith. It was a making visible
+of the grand thought, 'Ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' Practical help,
+prompted by a deep-lying sense of unity which overleaped gulfs of
+separation in race, language, and social conditions, was a unique
+novelty. It was the first pulsation of that spirit of Christian
+liberality which has steadily grown in force and sweep ever since.
+Foolish people gibe at some of its manifestations. Wiser ones regard
+its existence as not the least of the marks of the divine origin of
+Christianity.
+
+This passage is a striking example of the inimitable delicacy of the
+Apostle. His words are full of what we should call tact, if it were not
+manifestly the spontaneous utterance of right feeling. They are a
+perfect model of the true way to appeal for money, and set forth also
+the true spirit in which such appeals should be made.
+
+In verses 1 to 5, Paul seeks to stimulate the liberality of the
+Corinthians by recounting that of the Macedonian churches. His sketch
+draws in outline the picture of what all Christian money-giving should
+be. We note first the designation of the Macedonian Christians'
+beneficence as 'a grace' given by God to them. It is twice called so
+(vers. 1, 4), and the same name is applied in regard to the Corinthians'
+giving (vers. 6, 7). That is the right way to look at money
+contributions. The opportunity to give them, and the inclination to do
+so, are God's gifts. How many of us think that calls for service or
+money are troublesome obligations, to be got out of as easily as
+possible! A true Christian will be thankful, as for a love token from
+God, for every occasion of giving to Him. It would be a sharp test for
+many of us to ask ourselves whether we can say, 'To me . . . is this grace
+given,' that I should part with my money for Christ's sake.
+
+Note, further, the lovely picture of these Macedonian givers. They were
+plunged in sorrows and troubles, but these did not dry their fountains
+of sympathy. Nothing is apt to be more selfish than grief; and if we
+have tears to spare for others, when they are flowing bitterly for
+ourselves, we have graduated well in Christ's school. Paul calls the
+Macedonians' troubles 'proof of their affliction,' meaning that it
+constituted a proof of their Christian character; that is, by the manner
+in which it was borne; and in it they had still 'abundance of joy,' for
+the paradox of the Christian life is that it admits of the co-existence
+of grief and gladness.
+
+Again, Christian giving gives from scanty stores. 'Deep poverty' is no
+excuse for not giving, and will be no hindrance to a willing heart. 'I
+cannot afford it' is sometimes a genuine valid reason, but oftener an
+insincere plea. Why are subscriptions for religious purposes the first
+expenditure to be reduced in bad times?
+
+Further, Christian giving gives up to the very edge of ability, and
+sometimes goes beyond the limits of so-called prudence. In all regions
+'power to its last particle is duty,' and unless power is strained it is
+not fully exercised. It is in trying to do what we cannot do that we do
+best what we can do. He who keeps well within the limits of his supposed
+ability will probably not do half as much as he could. While there is a
+limit behind which generosity even for Christ may become dishonesty or
+disregard of other equally sacred claims, there is little danger of
+modern Christians transgressing that limit, and they need the stimulus
+to do a little more than they think they can do, rather than to listen
+to cold-blooded prudence.
+
+Further, Christian giving does not wait to be asked, but takes the
+opportunity to give as itself 'grace' and presses its benefactions. It
+is an unwonted experience for a collector of subscriptions to be
+besought to take them 'with much entreaty,' but it would not be so
+anomalous if Christian people understood their privileges.
+
+Further, Christian giving begins with the surrender of self to Christ,
+from which necessarily follows the glad offering of wealth. These
+Macedonians did more than Paul had hoped, and the explanation of the
+unexpected largeness of their contributions was their yielding of
+themselves to Jesus. That is the deepest source of all true liberality.
+If a man feels that he does not own himself, much less will he feel that
+his goods are his own. A slave's owner possesses the slave's bit of
+garden ground, his hut, and its furniture. If I belong to Christ, to
+whom does my money belong? But the consciousness that my goods are not
+mine, but Christ's, is not to remain a mere sentiment. It can receive
+practical embodiment by my giving them to Christ's representatives. The
+way for the Macedonians to show that they regarded their goods as
+Christ's, was to give them to Paul for Christ's poor saints. Jesus has
+His representatives still, and it is useless for people to talk or sing
+about belonging to Him, unless they verify their words by deeds.
+
+Verse 6 tells the Corinthians that the success of the collection in
+Macedonia had induced Paul to send Titus to Corinth to promote it there.
+He had previously visited it on the same errand (chap. xii. 14), and now
+is coming to complete 'this grace.' The rest of the passage is Paul's
+appeal to the Corinthians for their help in the matter, and certainly
+never was such an appeal made in a more dignified, noble, and lofty
+tone. He has been dilating on the liberality of others, and thereby
+sanctioning the stimulating of Christian liberality, in the same way as
+other graces may legitimately be stimulated, by example. That is
+delicate ground to tread on, and needs caution if it is not to
+degenerate into an appeal to rivalry, as it too often does, but in
+itself is perfectly legitimate and wholesome. But, passing from that
+incitement, Paul rests his plea on deeper grounds.
+
+First, Christian liberality is essential to the completeness of
+Christian character. Paul's praise in verse 7 is not mere flattery, nor
+meant to put the Corinthians into good humour. He will have enough to
+say hereafter about scandals and faults, but now he gives them credit
+for all the good he knew to be in them. Faith comes first, as always. It
+is the root of every Christian excellence. Then follow two graces,
+eminently characteristic of a Greek church, and apt to run to seed in
+it,--utterance and knowledge. Then two more, both of a more emotional
+character,--earnestness and love, especially to Paul as Christ's
+servant. But all these fair attributes lacked completeness without the
+crowning grace of liberality. It is the crowning grace, because it is
+the practical manifestation of the highest excellences. It is the result
+of sympathy, of unselfishness, of contact with Christ, of drinking in of
+His spirit, Love is best. Utterance and knowledge and earnestness are
+poor beside it. This grace is like the diamond which clasps a necklace
+of jewels.
+
+Christian giving does not need to be commanded. 'I speak not by way of
+commandment.' That is poor virtue which only obeys a precept. Gifts
+given because it is duty to give them are not really gifts, but taxes.
+They leave no sweet savour on the hand that bestows, and bring none to
+that which receives. 'I call you not servants, but friends.' The region
+in which Christian liberality moves is high above the realm of law and
+its correlative, obligation.
+
+Further, Christian liberality springs spontaneously from conscious
+possession of Christ's riches. We cannot here enter on the mysteries of
+Christ's emptying Himself of His riches of glory. We can but touch the
+stupendous fact, remembering that the place whereon we stand is holy
+ground. Who can measure the nature and depth of that self-denuding of
+the glory which He had with the Father before the world was? But, thank
+God, we do not need to measure it, in order to feel the solemn, blessed
+force of the appeal which it makes to us. Adoring wonder and gratitude,
+unfaltering trust and absolute self-surrender to a love so
+self-sacrificing, must ever follow the belief of that mystery of Divine
+mercy, the incarnation and sacrifice of the eternal Son.
+
+But Paul would have us remember that the same mighty act of stooping
+love, which is the foundation of all our hope, is to be the pattern for
+all our conduct. Even in His divinest and most mysterious act, Christ is
+our example. A dewdrop is rounded by the same laws which shape the
+planetary spheres or the sun himself; and Christians but half trust
+Christ if they do not imitate Him. What selfishness in enjoyment of our
+'own things' could live in us if we duly brought ourselves under the
+influence of that example? How miserably poor and vulgar the appeals by
+which money is sometimes drawn from grudging owners and tight-buttoned
+pockets, sound beside that heart-searching and heart-moving one, 'Ye
+know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ!'
+
+Further, Christian liberality will not go off in good intentions and
+benevolent sentiments. The Corinthians were ready with their 'willing'
+on Titus's previous visit. Now Paul desires them to put their good
+feelings into concrete shape. There is plenty of benevolence that never
+gets to be beneficence. The advice here has a very wide application: 'As
+there was the readiness to will, so there may be the completion also.'
+We all know where the road leads that is paved with good intentions.
+
+Further, Christian liberality is accepted and rewarded according to
+willingness, if that is carried into act according to ability. While the
+mere wish to help is not enough, it is the vital element in the act
+which flows from it; and there may be more of it in the widow's mite
+than in the rich man's large donation--or there may be less. The
+conditions of acceptable offerings are twofold--first, readiness, glad
+willingness to give, as opposed to closed hearts or grudging bestowals;
+and, second, that willingness embodied in the largest gift possible. The
+absence of either vitiates all. The presence of both gives trifles a
+place in God's storehouse of precious things. A father is glad when his
+child brings him some utterly valueless present, not because he must,
+but because he loves; and many a parent has such laid away in sacred
+repositories. God knows how to take gifts from His children, not less
+well than we who are evil know how to do it.
+
+But the gracious saying of our passage has a solemn side; for if only
+gifts 'according as a man hath' are accepted, what becomes of the many
+which fall far short of our ability, and are really given, not because
+we have the willing mind, but because we could not get out of the
+unwelcome necessity to part with a miserably inadequate percentage of
+our possessions. Is God likely to be satisfied with the small dividends
+which we offer as composition for our great debt?
+
+
+
+
+RICH YET POOR
+
+          'For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+          that, though He was rich yet for your sakes He
+          became poor, that ye through His poverty might be
+          rich.'--2 COR. viii. 9.
+
+
+The Apostle has been speaking about a matter which, to us, seems very
+small, but to him was very great viz., a gathering of pecuniary help
+from the Gentile churches for the poor church in Jerusalem. Large
+issues, in his estimation, attended that exhibition of Christian unity,
+and, be it great or small, he applies the highest of all motives to this
+matter. 'For ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He
+was rich yet for your sakes He became poor.' The trivial things of life
+are to be guided and shaped by reference to the highest of all things,
+the example of Jesus Christ; and that in the whole depth of His
+humiliation, and even in regard to His cross and passion. We have here
+set forth, as the pattern to which the Christian life is to be
+conformed, the deepest conception of what our Lord's career on earth
+was.
+
+The whole Christian Church is about to celebrate the nativity of our
+Lord at this time. This text gives us the true point of view from which
+to regard it. We have here the work of Christ in its deepest motive,
+'The grace of our Lord Jesus.' We have it in its transcendent
+self-impoverishment, 'Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became
+poor.' We have it in its highest issue, 'That ye through His poverty
+might become rich.' Let us look at those points.
+
+I. Here we have the deepest motive which underlies the whole work of
+Christ, unveiled to us.
+
+'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Every word here is
+significant. It is very unusual in the New Testament to find that
+expression 'grace' applied to Jesus Christ. Except in the familiar
+benediction, I think there are only one or two instances of such a
+collocation of words. It is 'the grace of God' which, throughout the New
+Testament, is the prevailing expression. But here 'grace is attributed
+to Jesus'; that is to say, the love of the Divine heart is, without
+qualification or hesitation, ascribed to Him. And what do we mean by
+grace? We mean love in exercise to inferiors. It is infinite
+condescension in Jesus to love. His love stoops when it embraces us.
+Very significant, therefore, is the employment here of the solemn full
+title, 'the Lord Jesus Christ,' which enhances the condescension by
+making prominent the height from which it bent. The 'grace' is all the
+more wonderful because of the majesty and sovereignty, to say the least
+of it, which are expressed in that title, the Lord. The highest stoops
+and stands upon the level of the lowest. 'Grace' is love that expresses
+itself to those who deserve something else. And the deepest motive,
+which is the very key to the whole phenomena of the life of Jesus
+Christ, is that it is all the exhibition, as it is the consequence, of a
+love that, stooping, forgives. 'Grace' is love that, stooping and
+forgiving, communicates its whole self to unworthy and transgressing
+recipients. And the key to the life of Jesus is that we have set forth
+in its operation a love which is not content to speak only the ordinary
+language of human affection, or to do its ordinary deeds, but is
+self-impelled to impart what transcends all other gifts of human
+tenderness, and to give its very self. And so a love that condescends, a
+love that passes by unworthiness, is turned away by no sin, is unmoved
+to any kind of anger, and never allows its cheek to flush or its heart
+to beat faster, because of any provocation and a love that is content
+with nothing short of entire surrender and self-impartation underlies
+all that precious life from Bethlehem to Calvary.
+
+But there is another word in our text that may well be here taken into
+consideration. 'For your sakes,' says the Apostle to that Corinthian
+church, made up of people, not one of whom had ever seen or been seen by
+Jesus. And yet the regard to them was part of the motive that moved the
+Lord to His life, and His death. That is to say, to generalise the
+thought, this grace, thus stooping and forgiving and self-imparting, is
+a love that gathers into its embrace and to its heart all mankind; and
+is universal because it is individualising. Just as each planet in the
+heavens, and each tiny plant upon the earth, are embraced by, and
+separately receive, the benediction of that all-encompassing arch of the
+heaven, so that grace enfolds all, because it takes account of each.
+Whilst it is love for a sinful world, every soul of us may say: 'He
+loved me, and'--therefore--'gave Himself for me.' Unless we see beneath
+the sweet story of the earthly life this deep-lying source of it all, we
+fail to understand that life itself. We may bring criticism to bear upon
+it; we may apprehend it in diverse affecting, elevating, educating
+aspects; but, oh! brethren, we miss the blazing centre of the light, the
+warm heart of the fire, unless we see pulsating through all the
+individual facts of the life this one, all-shaping, all-vitalising
+motive; the grace--the stooping, the pardoning, the self-communicating,
+the individualising, and the universal love of Jesus Christ.
+
+So then, we have here set before us the work of Christ in its--
+
+II. Most mysterious and unique self-impoverishment.
+
+'He was . . . He became,' there is one strange contrast. 'He was _rich_
+. . . He became _poor_,' there is another. 'He was . . . He became.' What
+does that say? Well, it says that if you want to understand Bethlehem,
+you must go back to a time before Bethlehem. The meaning of Christ's
+birth is only understood when we turn to that Evangelist who does not
+narrate it. For the meaning of it is here; 'the Word became flesh, and
+dwelt among us.' The surface of the fact is the smallest part of the
+fact. They say that there is seven times as much of an iceberg under
+water as there is above the surface. And the deepest and most important
+fact about the nativity of our Lord is that it was not only the birth of
+an Infant, but the Incarnation of the Word. 'He was . . . He became.' We
+have to travel back and recognise that that life did not begin in the
+manger. We have to travel back and recognise the mystery of godliness,
+God manifest in the flesh.
+
+And these two words 'He was . . . He became,' imply another thing, and
+that is, that Jesus Christ who died because He chose, was not passive in
+His being born, but as at the end of His earthly life, so at its
+beginning exercised His volition, and was born because He willed, and
+willed because of 'the grace of our Lord Jesus.'
+
+Now in this connection it is very remarkable, and well worth our
+pondering, that throughout the whole of the Gospels, when Jesus speaks
+of His coming into the world, He never uses the word 'born' but once,
+and that was before the Roman governor, who would not have understood or
+cared for anything further, to whom He did say,'To this end was I
+born.' But even when speaking to him His consciousness that that word
+did not express the whole truth was so strong that He could not help
+adding--though He knew that the hard Roman procurator would pay no
+attention to the apparent tautology--the expression which more truly
+corresponded to the fact, 'and for this cause came I into the world.'
+The two phrases are not parallel. They are by no means synonymous. One
+expresses the outward fact; the other expresses that which underlay it.
+'To this end was I born.' Yes! 'And for this cause came I.' He Himself
+put it still more definitely when He said, 'I came forth from the
+Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go unto
+the Father.' So the two extremities of the earthly manifestation are
+neither of them ends; but before the one, and behind the other, there
+stretches an identity or oneness of Being and condition. The one as the
+other, the birth and the death, may be regarded as, in deepest reality,
+not only what He passively endured, but what He actively did. He was
+born, and He died, that in all points He might be 'like unto His
+brethren.' He 'came' into the world, and He 'went' to the Father. The
+end circled round to the beginning, and in both He acted because He
+chose, and chose because He loved.
+
+So much, then, lies in the one of these two antitheses of my text; and
+the other is no less profound and significant. 'He was rich; He became
+poor.' In this connection 'rich' can only mean possessed of the Divine
+fulness and independence; and 'poor' can only mean possessed of human
+infirmity, dependence, and emptiness. And so to Jesus of Nazareth, to be
+born was impoverishment. If there is nothing more in His birth than in
+the birth of each of us, the words are grotesquely inappropriate to the
+facts of the case. For as between nothingness, which is the alternative,
+and the possession of conscious being, there is surely a contrast the
+very reverse of that expressed here. For us, to be born is to be endowed
+with capacities, with the wealth of intelligent, responsible, voluntary
+being; but to Jesus Christ, if we accept the New Testament teaching, to
+be born was a step, an infinite step, downwards, and He, alone of all
+men, might have been 'ashamed to call men brethren.' But this denudation
+of Himself, into the particulars of which I do not care to enter now,
+was the result of that stooping grace which 'counted it not a thing to
+be clutched hold of, to be equal with God; but He made Himself of no
+reputation, and was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient unto
+death, even the death of the Cross.'
+
+And so, dear friends, we know the measure of the stooping love of Jesus
+only when we read the history by the light of this thought, that 'though
+He was rich' with all the fulness of that eternal Word which was 'in the
+beginning with God,' 'He became poor,' with the poverty, the infirmity,
+the liability to temptation, the weakness, that attach to humanity; 'and
+was found in all points like unto His brethren,' that He might be able
+to help and succour them all.
+
+The last thing here is--
+
+III. The work of Christ set forth in its highest issue.
+
+'That we through His poverty might become rich.' Of course, the
+antithetical expressions must be taken to be used in the same sense, and
+with the same width of application, in both of the clauses. And if so,
+just think reverently, wonderingly, thankfully, of the infinite vista
+of glorious possibility that is open to us here. Christ was rich in the
+possession of that Divine glory which Had had with the Father before the
+world was. 'He became poor,' in assuming the weakness of the manhood
+that you and I carry, that we, in the human poverty which is like His
+poverty, may become rich with wealth that is like His riches, and that
+as He stooped to earth veiling the Divine with the human, we may rise to
+heaven, clothing the human with the Divine.
+
+For surely there is nothing more plainly taught in Scriptures, and I am
+bold to say nothing to which any deep and vital Christian experience
+even here gives more surely an anticipatory confirmation, than the fact
+that Christ became like unto us, that each of us may become like unto
+Him. The divine and the human natures are similar, and the fact of the
+Incarnation, on the one hand, and of the man's glorification by
+possession of the divine nature on the other, equally rest upon that
+fundamental resemblance between the divine nature and the human nature
+which God has made in His own image. If that which in each of us is
+unlike God is cleared away, as it can be cleared away, through faith in
+that dear Lord, then the likeness as a matter of course, comes into
+force.
+
+The law of all elevation is that whosoever desires to lift must stoop;
+and the end of all stooping is to lift the lowly to the place from which
+the love hath bent itself. And this is at once the law for the
+Incarnation of the Christ, and for the elevation of the Christian. 'We
+shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.' And the great love,
+the stooping, forgiving, self-communicating love, doth not reach its
+ultimate issue, nor effect fully the purposes to which it ever is
+tending, unless and until all who have received it are 'changed from
+glory to glory even into the image of the Lord.' We do not understand
+Jesus, His cradle, or His Cross, unless on the one hand we see in them
+His emptying Himself that He might fill us, and, on the other hand, see,
+as the only result which warrants them and satisfies Him, our complete
+conformity to His image, and our participation in that glory which He
+has at the right hand of God. That is the prospect for humanity, and it
+is possible for each of us.
+
+I do not dwell upon other aspects of this great self-emptying of our
+Lord's, such as the revelation in it to us of the very heart of God, and
+of the divinest thing in the divine nature, which is love, or such as
+the sympathy which is made possible thereby to Him, and which is not
+only the pity of a God, but the compassion of a Brother. Nor do I touch
+upon many other aspects which are full of strengthening and teaching.
+That grand thought that Jesus has shared our human poverty that we may
+share His divine riches is the very apex of the New Testament teaching,
+and of the Christian hope. We have within us, notwithstanding all our
+transgressions, what the old divines used to call a 'deiform nature,'
+capable of being lifted up into the participation of divinity, capable
+of being cleansed from all the spots and stains which make us so unlike
+Him in whose likeness we were made.
+
+Brethren, let us not forget that this stooping, and pardoning, and
+self-imparting love, has for its main instrument to appeal to our
+hearts, not the cradle but the Cross. We are being told by many people
+to-day that the centre of Christianity lies in the thought of an
+Incarnation. Yes. But our Lord Himself has told us what that was for.
+
+'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
+give His life a ransom for many.' It is only when we look to that Lord
+in His death, and see there the very lowest point to which He stooped,
+and the supreme manifestation of His grace, that we shall be drawn to
+yield our hearts and lives to Him in thankfulness, in trust, and in
+imitation: and shall set Him before us as the pattern for our conduct,
+as well as the Object of our trust.
+
+Brethren, my text was spoken originally as presenting the motive and the
+example for a little piece of pecuniary liability. Do you take the
+cradle and the Cross as the law of your lives? For depend upon it, the
+same necessity which obliged Jesus to come down to our level, if He
+would lift us to His; to live our life and die our death, if He would
+make us partakers of His immortal life, and deliver us from death; makes
+it absolutely necessary that if we are to live for anything nobler than
+our own poor, transitory self-aggrandisement, we too must learn to stoop
+to forgive, to impart ourselves, and must die by self-surrender and
+sacrifice, if we are ever to communicate any life, or good of life, to
+others. He has loved us, and given Himself for us. He has set us therein
+an example which He commends to us by His own word when He tells us that
+'if a corn of wheat' is to bring forth 'much fruit' it must die, else it
+'abideth alone.' Unless we die, we never truly live; unless we die to
+ourselves for others, and like Jesus, we live alone in the solitude of a
+self-enclosed self-regard. So living, we are dead whilst we live.
+
+
+
+
+WILLING AND NOT DOING
+
+          'Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as
+          there was a readiness to will so there may be a
+          performance also.'--2 COR. viii. 11.
+
+
+The Revised Version reads: 'But now complete the doing also; that as
+there was the readiness to will, so there may be the completion also out
+of your ability.' A collection of money for the almost pauper church at
+Jerusalem bulked very largely in the Apostle's mind at the date of the
+writing of the two letters to the Corinthian church. We learn that that
+church had been the first to agree to the project, and then had very
+distinctly hung back from implementing its promises and fulfilling its
+good intentions. So the Apostle, in the chapter from which my text is
+taken, with wonderful delicacy, dignity, and profundity, sets forth the
+true principle, not only of Christian giving, but of Christian asking.
+The text advises that the gushing sentiments of brotherly sympathy and
+liberality which had inspired the Corinthians a year ago should now bear
+some fruit in action. So Paul is going to send Titus, his right-hand man
+at the time, to hurry up and finish off the collection and have done
+with it. The text is in effect the message which Titus was to carry; but
+it has a far wider application than that. It is a needful advice for us
+all about a great many other things: 'As there was a readiness to will,
+so let there be a performance also.'
+
+Resolutions, noble and good and Christlike, have a strange knack of
+cheating the people who make them. So we all need the exhortation not to
+be befooled by fancying that we have done, when we have only willed. Of
+course we shall not do unless we will. But there is a wide gap, as our
+experience witnesses, between the two things. We all know what place it
+is to which, according to the old proverb, the road is paved with good
+intentions; and the only way to pull up that paving is to take Paul's
+advice here and always, and immediately to put into action the resolves
+of our hearts. Now I desire to say two or three very plain and simple
+things about this matter.
+
+I. I would have you consider the necessity of this commandment.
+
+Consider that the fault here warned against is a universal one. What
+different men we should be if our resolutions had fruited in conduct! In
+all regions of life that is true, but most emphatically is it true in
+regard to religion. The damning tragedy of many lives, and I dare say of
+those of some of my hearers, is that men have over and over again
+determined that they would be Christians, and they are not Christians
+yet; just because they have let 'the native hue of resolution be
+sicklied over' by some paleness or other, and so have resolved and
+resolved and resolved till every nerve of action is rotted away, and
+they will die unchristian. I dare say that there are men or women
+listening to me now, perhaps with grey hairs upon them, who can remember
+times, in the springtide of their youth, when they said, 'I will give my
+heart to Jesus Christ, and set my faith upon Him'; and they have not
+done it yet. Now, therefore, 'as there was a readiness to will, let
+there be also the performance.'
+
+But it is not only in regard to that most important of all resolves that
+I wish to say a word. All Christians, I am sure, know what it is, over
+and over again, to have had stirrings in their hearts which they have
+been able to consolidate into determination, but have not been able to
+carry into act. 'The children have come to the birth, and there is not
+strength to bring them forth.' That is true about all of us, more or
+less, and it is very solemnly true of a great many of us professing
+Christians. We have tried to cure--we have determined that we will
+cure--manifest and flagrant defects or faults in our Christian life. We
+have resolved, and some nipping frost has come, and the blossoms have
+dropped on the grass before they have ever set into fruit. I know that
+is so about you, because I know that it is so about myself. And
+therefore, dear brethren, I appeal to you, and ask you whether the
+exhortation of my text has not a sharp point for every one of
+us--whether the universality of this defect does not demand that we all
+should gravely consider the exhortation here before us?
+
+Then, again, let me remind you how this injunction is borne in upon us
+by the consideration of the strength of the opposition with which we
+have always to contend, in every honest attempt to bring to act our best
+resolutions. Did you ever try to cure some little habit, some mere
+trifle, a trick of manner or twist of the finger, or some attitude or
+tone that might be ugly and awkward, and that people told you that it
+would be better to get rid of? You know how hard it is. There is always
+a tremendous gulf between the ideal and its realisation in life. As long
+as we are moving _in vacuo_ we move without any friction or difficulty;
+but as soon as we come out into a world where there are an atmosphere
+and opposing forces, then friction comes in, and speed diminishes; and
+we never become what we aim to be. We begin with grand purposes, and we
+end with very poor results. We all start, in our early days, with the
+notion that our lives are going to be radiant and beautiful, and all
+unlike what the limitations of power and the antagonisms that we have to
+meet make of them at last. The tree of our life's doings has to grow,
+like those contorted pines on the slopes of the Alps, in many storms,
+with heavy weights of snow on its branches, and beaten about by tempests
+from every quarter of the heavens; and so it gets gnarled and knotted
+and very unlike the symmetrical beauty that we dreamed would adorn it.
+We begin with saying: 'Come! Let us build a tower whose top shall reach
+to heaven'; and we are contented at last, if we have put up some little
+tumble-down shed where we can get shelter for our heads from the blast.
+
+And the difficulty in bringing into action our best selves besets us in
+the matter of translating our resolutions into practice. What are
+arrayed against it? A feeble will, enslaved too often by passions and
+flesh and habits, and all about us lie obstacles to our carrying into
+action our conscientious convictions, our deepest resolutions; obstacles
+to our being true to our true selves; to which obstacles, alas, far too
+many of us habitually, and all of us occasionally, succumb. That being
+the case, do not we all need to ponder in our deepest hearts, and to
+pray for grace to make the motto of our lives, 'As there was a readiness
+to will, let there be a performance'?
+
+II. Consider the importance of this counsel.
+
+That is borne in upon mind and conscience by looking at the disastrous
+effects of letting resolutions remain sterile. Consider how apt we are
+to deceive ourselves with unfulfilled purposes. The quick response which
+an easily-moved nature may make to some appeal of noble thought or lofty
+principle is mistaken for action, and we are tempted to think that
+willing is almost as good as if we had done what we half resolved on.
+And there is a kind of glow of satisfaction that comes when such a man
+thinks, 'I have done well in that I have determined.' The Devil will let
+you resolve as much as you like--the more the better; only the more
+easily you resolve, the more certainly he will block the realisation.
+Let us take care of that seducing temptation which is apt to lead us all
+to plume ourselves on good resolutions, and to fancy that they are
+almost equivalent to their own fulfilment. Cheques are all very well if
+there be bullion in the bank cellars to pay them with when they fall
+due, but if that be not so, then the issuing of them is crime and fraud.
+Our resolutions, made and forgotten as so many of our good resolutions
+are, are very little better.
+
+Note, too, how rapidly the habit of substituting lightly-made
+resolutions for seriously-endeavoured acts grows.
+
+And mark, further, how miserable and debilitating it is to carry the
+dead weight of such unaccomplished intentions.
+
+Nothing so certainly weakens a man as a multitude of resolves that he
+knows he has never fulfilled. They weaken his will, burden his
+conscience, stand in the way of his hopes, make him feel as if the
+entail of evil was too firm and strong to be ever broken. 'O wretched
+man that I am!' said one who had made experience of what it was to will
+what was good, and not to find how to perform, 'who shall deliver me
+from the body of this death?' It is an awful thing to have to carry a
+corpse about on your back. And that was what Paul thought the man did
+who loaded his own shoulders with abortive resolutions, that perished
+in the birth, and never grew up to maturity. Weak and miserable is
+always the man who is swift to resolve and slow to carry out his
+resolutions.
+
+III. And now let me say a word before I close about how this universal
+and grave disease is to be coped with.
+
+Well, I should say to begin with, let us take very soberly and
+continually into our consciousness the recognition of the fact that the
+disease is there. And then may I say, let us be rather slower to resolve
+than we often are. 'Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that
+thou shouldest vow and not pay.' The man who has never had the
+determination to give up some criminal indulgence--say, drink--is
+possibly less criminal, and certainly less weak, than the man who, when
+his head aches, and the consequences of his self-indulgence are vividly
+realised by him, makes up his mind to be a teetotaller, and soon
+stumbles into the first dram-shop that is open, and then reels out a
+drunkard. Do not vow until you have made up your minds to pay. Remember
+that it is a solemn act to determine anything, especially anything
+bearing on moral and religious life; and that you had far better keep
+your will in suspense than spring to the resolution with thoughtless
+levity and leave it with the same.
+
+Further, the habit of promptly carrying out our resolves is one that,
+like all other habits, can be cultivated. And we can cultivate it in
+little things, in the smallest trifles of daily life, which by their
+myriads make up life itself, in order that it may be a fixed custom of
+our minds when great resolves have to be made. The man who has trained
+himself day in and day out, in regard to the insignificances of daily
+life, to let act follow resolve as the thunder peal succeeds the
+lightning flash, is the man who, if he is moved to make a great resolve
+about his religion, or about his conduct, will be most likely to carry
+it out. Get the magical influence of habit on your side, and you will
+have done much to conquer the evil of abortive resolutions.
+
+But then there is something a great deal more than that to be said. The
+Apostle did not content himself, in the passage already referred to,
+with bewailing the wretchedness of the condition in which to will was
+present, but how to perform he found not. He asked, and he triumphantly
+answered, the question, 'Who shall deliver me?' with the great words, 'I
+thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' There is the secret; keep near
+Him, trust Him, open your hearts to the influences of that Divine Spirit
+who makes us free from the law of sin and death. And if thus, knowing
+our weakness, recognising our danger, humbly trying to cultivate the
+habit of prompt discharge of all discerned duty, we leave ourselves in
+Jesus Christ's hands, and wait, and ask, and believe that we possess,
+His cleansing Spirit, then we shall not ask and wait in vain. 'Work out
+your own salvation, . . . for it is God that worketh in you, both the
+willing and the doing.'
+
+
+
+
+ALL GRACE ABOUNDING
+
+          'God is able to make all grace abound toward you;
+          that ye, always having all-sufficiency in all
+          things, may abound to every good work.'--2 COR.
+          ix. 8.
+
+
+In addition to all his other qualities the Apostle was an extremely good
+man of business; and he had a field for the exercise of that quality in
+the collection for the poor saints of Judea, which takes up so much of
+this letter, and occupied for so long a period so much of his thoughts
+and efforts. It was for the sake of showing by actual demonstration that
+would 'touch the hearts' of the Jewish brethren, the absolute unity of
+the two halves of the Church, the Gentile and the Jewish, that the
+Apostle took so much trouble in this matter. The words which I have read
+for my text come in the midst of a very earnest appeal to the Corinthian
+Christians for their pecuniary help. He is dwelling upon the same
+thought which is expressed in the well-known words: 'What I gave I kept;
+what I kept I lost.'
+
+But whilst the words of my text primarily applied to money matters, you
+see that they are studiously general, universal. The Apostle, after his
+fashion, is lifting up a little 'secular' affair into a high spiritual
+region; and he lays down in my text a broad general law, which goes to
+the very depths of the Christian life.
+
+Now, notice, we have here in three clauses three stages which we may
+venture to distinguish as the fountain, the basin, the stream. 'God is
+able to make all grace abound toward you';--there is the fountain. 'That
+ye always, having all-sufficiency in all things';--there is the basin
+that receives the gush from the fountain. 'May abound in every good
+work';--there is the steam that comes from the basin. The fountain pours
+into the basin, that the flow from the basin may feed the stream.
+
+Now this thought of Paul's goes to the heart of things. So let us look
+at it.
+
+I. The Fountain.
+
+The Christian life in all its aspects and experiences is an outflow from
+the 'the Fountain of Life,' the giving God. Observe how emphatically the
+Apostle, in the context, accumulates words that express universality:
+'_all_ grace . . . _all_-sufficiency for _all_ things . . . _every_ good
+work.' But even these expressions do not satisfy Paul, and he has to
+repeat the word 'abound,' in order to give some faint idea of his
+conception of the full tide which gushes from the fountain. It is 'all
+grace,' and it is abounding grace.
+
+Now what does he mean by 'grace'? That word is a kind of shorthand for
+the whole sum of the unmerited blessings which come to men through Jesus
+Christ. Primarily, it describes what we, for want of a better
+expression, have to call a 'disposition' in the divine nature; and it
+means, then, if so looked at, the unconditioned, undeserved,
+spontaneous, eternal, stooping, pardoning love of God. That is grace, in
+the primary New Testament use of the phrase.
+
+But there are no idle 'dispositions' in God. They are always energising,
+and so the word glides from meaning the disposition, to meaning the
+manifestation and activities of it, and the 'grace' of our Lord is that
+love in exercise. And then, since the divine energies are never
+fruitless, the word passes over, further, to mean all the blessed and
+beautiful things in a soul which are the consequences of the Promethean
+truth of God's loving hand, the outcome in life of the inward bestowment
+which has its cause, its sole cause, in God's ceaseless, unexhausted
+love, unmerited and free.
+
+That, very superficially and inadequately set forth, is at least a
+glimpse into the fulness and greatness of meaning that lies in that
+profound New Testament word, 'grace.' But the Apostle here puts
+emphasis on the variety of forms which the one divine gift assumes.
+It is '_all_ grace' which God is able to make abound toward you. So
+then, you see this one transcendent gift from the divine heart, when
+it comes into our human experience, is like a meteor when it passes
+into the atmosphere of earth, and catches fire and blazes, showering
+out a multitude of radiant points of light. The grace is
+many-sided--many-sided to us, but one in its source and in its
+character. For at bottom, that which God in His grace gives to us as His
+grace is what? Himself; or if you like to put it in another form, which
+comes to the same thing--new life through Jesus Christ. That is the
+encyclopaediacal gift, which contains within itself all grace. And just
+as the physical life in each of us, one in all its manifestations,
+produces many results, and shines in the eye, and blushes in the cheek,
+and gives strength to the arm, and flexibility and deftness to the
+fingers and swiftness to the foot: so also is that one grace which,
+being manifold in its manifestations, is one in its essence. There are
+many graces, there is one Grace.
+
+But this grace is not only many-sided, but abounding. It is not
+congruous with God's wealth, nor with His love, that He should give
+scantily, or, as it were, should open but a finger of the hand that is
+full of His gifts, and let out a little at a time. There are no sluices
+on that great stream so as to regulate its flow, and to give sometimes a
+painful trickle and sometimes a full gush, but this fountain is always
+pouring itself out, and it 'abounds.'
+
+But then we are pulled up short by another word in this first clause:
+'God is _able_ to make.' Paul does not say, 'God will make.' He puts the
+whole weight of responsibility for that ability becoming operative upon
+us. There are conditions; and although we may have access to that full
+fountain, it will not pour on us 'all grace' and 'abundant grace,'
+unless we observe these, and so turn God's ability to give into actual
+giving. And how do we do that? By desire, by expectance, by petition,
+by faithful stewardship. If we have these things, if we have tutored
+ourselves, and experience has helped in the tuition, to make large our
+expectancy, God will smile down upon us and 'do exceeding abundantly
+above all' that we 'think' as well as above all that we 'ask.' Brethren,
+if our supplies are scant, when the full fountain is gushing at our
+sides, we are 'not straitened in God, we are straitened in ourselves.'
+Christian possibilities are Christian obligations, and what we might
+have and do not have, is our condemnation.
+
+I turn, in the next place, to what I have, perhaps too fancifully,
+called
+
+II. The Basin.
+
+'God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having always
+all-sufficiency in all things, may,' . . . etc.
+
+The result of all this many-sided and exuberant outpouring of grace from
+the fountain is that the basin may be full. Considering the infinite
+source and the small receptacle, we might have expected something more
+than 'sufficiency' to have resulted.
+
+Divine grace is sufficient. Is it not more than sufficient? Yes, no
+doubt. But what Paul wishes us to feel is this--to put it into very
+plain English--that the good gifts of the divine grace will always be
+proportioned to our work, and to our sufferings too. We shall feel that
+we have enough, if we are as we ought to be. Sufficiency is more than a
+man gets anywhere else. 'Enough is as good as a feast.' And if we have
+strength, which we may have, to do the day's tasks, and strength to
+carry the day's crosses, and strength to accept the day's sorrows, and
+strength to master the day's temptations, that is as much as we need
+wish to have, even out of the fulness of God. And we shall get it, dear
+brethren, if we will only fulfil the conditions. If we exercise
+expectance, and desire and petition and faithful stewardship, we shall
+get what we need. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' if the road is a
+steep and rocky one that would wear out leather. 'As thy days so shall
+thy strength be.' God does not hurl His soldiers in a blundering attack
+on some impregnable mountain, where they are slain in heaps at the base;
+but when He lays a commandment on my shoulders, He infuses strength into
+me, and according to the good homely old saying that has brought comfort
+to many a sad and weighted heart, makes the back to bear the burden. The
+heavy task or the crushing sorrow is often the key that opens the door
+of God's treasure-house. You have had very little experience either of
+life or of Christian life, if you have not learnt by this time that the
+harder your work, and the darker your sorrows, the mightier have been
+God's supports, and the more starry the lights that have shone upon your
+path. 'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things.'
+
+One more word: this sufficiency _should be_ more uniform, _is_ uniform
+in the divine intention, and in so far as the flow of the fountain is
+concerned. Always having had I may be sure that I always shall have. Of
+course I know that, in so far as our physical nature conditions our
+spiritual experience, there will be ups and downs, moments of
+emancipation and moments of slavery. There will be times when the flower
+opens, and times when it shuts itself up. But I am sure that the great
+mass of Christian people might have a far more level temperature in
+their Christian experience than they have; that we could, if we would,
+have far more experimental knowledge of this 'always' of my text. God
+means that the basin should be always full right up to the top of the
+marble edge, and that the more is drawn off from it, the more should
+flow into it. But it is very often like the reservoirs in the hills for
+some great city in a drought, where great stretches of the bottom are
+exposed, and again, when the drought breaks, are full to the top of the
+retaining wall. That should not be. Our Christian life should run on the
+high levels. Why does it not? Possibilities are duties.
+
+And now, lastly, we have here what, adhering to my metaphor, I call
+
+III. The stream.
+
+'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things, may abound to
+every good work.'
+
+That is what God gives us His grace for; and that is a very important
+consideration. The end of God's dealings with us, poor, weak, sinful
+creatures, is character and conduct. Of course you can state the end in
+a great many other ways; but there have been terrible evils arising from
+the way in which Evangelical preachers have too often talked, as if the
+end of God's dealings with us was the vague thing which they call
+'salvation,' and by which many of their hearers take them to mean
+neither more nor less than dodging Hell. But the New Testament, with all
+its mysticism, even when it soars highest, and speaks most about the
+perfection of humanity, and the end of God's dealings being that we may
+be 'filled with the fulness of God,' never loses its wholesome, sane
+hold of the common moralities of daily life, and proclaims that we
+receive all, in order that we may be able to 'maintain good works for
+necessary uses.' And if we lay that to heart, and remember that a
+correct creed, and a living faith, and precious, select, inward emotions
+and experiences are all intended to evolve into lives, filled and
+radiant with common moralities and 'good works'--not meaning thereby the
+things which go by that name in popular phraseology, but 'whatsoever
+things are lovely . . . and of good report'--then we shall understand a
+little better what we are here for and what Jesus Christ died for, and
+what His Spirit is given and lives in us for. So 'good works' is the
+end, in one very important aspect, of all that avalanche of grace which
+has been from eternity rushing down upon us from the heights of God.
+
+There is one more thing to note, and that is that, in our character and
+conduct, we should copy the 'giving grace.' Look how eloquently and
+significantly, in the first and last clauses of my text, the same words
+recur. 'God is able to make _all_ grace abound, that ye may _abound_ in
+_all_ good work.' Copy God in the many-sidedness and in the copiousness
+of the good that flows out from your life and conduct, because of your
+possession of that divine grace. And remember, 'to him that hath shall
+be given.' We pray for more grace; we need to pray for that, no doubt.
+Do we use the grace that God has given us? If we do not, the remainder
+of that great word which I have just quoted will be fulfilled in you.
+God forbid that any of us should receive the grace of God in vain, and
+therefore come under the stern and inevitable sentence, 'From him that
+hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath!'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S UNSPEAKABLE GIFT
+
+          'Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.'--2
+          COR. ix. 15.
+
+
+It seems strange that there should ever have been any doubt as to what
+gift it is which evokes this burst of thanksgiving. There is but one of
+God's many mercies which is worthy of being thus singled out. There is
+one blazing central sun which shines out amidst all the galaxy of lights
+which fill the heavens. There is one gift of God which, beyond all
+others, merits the designation of 'unspeakable.' The gift of Christ
+draws all other divine gifts after it. 'How should He not with Him also
+freely give us all things.'
+
+The connection in which this abrupt jet of praise stands is very
+remarkable. The Apostle has been dwelling on the Christian obligation of
+giving bountifully and cheerfully, and on the great law that a glad
+giver is 'enriched' and not impoverished thereby, whilst the recipients,
+for their part, are blessed by having thankfulness evoked towards the
+givers. And that contemplation of the happy interchange of benefit and
+thanks between men leads the fervid Apostle to the thoughts which were
+always ready to spring to his lips--of God as the great pattern of
+giving and of the gratitude to Him which should fill all our souls. The
+expression here 'unspeakable' is what I wish chiefly to fix upon now. It
+means literally that which cannot be fully declared. Language fails
+because thought fails.
+
+I. The gift comes from unspeakable love.
+
+God _so_ loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The love is
+the cause of the gift: the gift is the expression of the love. John's
+Gospel says that the Son which is in the bosom of the Father has
+_declared_ Him. Paul here uses a related word for _unspeakable_ which
+might be rendered 'that which cannot be fully declared.' The declaration
+of the Father partly consists in this, that He is declared to be
+undeclarable, the proclamation of His name consists partly in this that
+it is proclaimed to be a name that cannot be proclaimed. Language fails
+when it is applied to the expression of human emotion; no tongue can
+ever fully serve the heart. Whether there be any thoughts too great for
+words or no, there are emotions too great. Language is ever 'weaker than
+our grief' and not seldom weaker than our love. It is but the surface
+water that can be run off through the narrow channel of speech: the
+central deep remains. If it be so with human affection, how much more
+must it be so with God's love? With lowly condescension He uses all
+sweet images drawn from earthly relationships, to help us in
+understanding His. Every dear name is pressed into the service--father,
+mother, husband, wife, brother, friend, and after all are exhausted, the
+love which clothed itself in them all in turn, and used them all to give
+some faint hint of its own perfection, remains unspoken. We know human
+love, its limitations, its changes, its extravagances, its shortcomings,
+and cannot but feel how unworthy it is to mirror for us that perfection
+in God which we venture to name by a name so soiled. The analogies
+between what we call love in man and love in God must be supplemented by
+the differences between them, if we are ever to approach a worthy
+conception of the unspeakable love that underlies the unspeakable gift.
+
+II. The gift involves unspeakable sacrifice.
+
+Human love desires to give its most precious treasures to its object
+and is then most blessed: divine love cannot come short of human in this
+most characteristic of its manifestations. Surely the copy is not to
+surpass the original, nor the mirror to flash more brightly than the sun
+which, at the brightest, it but reflects. In such a matter we can but
+stammer when we try to find words. As our text warns us, we are trying
+to utter the unutterable when we seek to speak of God's giving up for
+us; but however such a thought may seem to be forbidden by other aspects
+of the divine nature, it seems to be involved in the great truth that
+'God is love.' Since He is, His blessedness too, must be in imparting,
+and in parting with what He gives. A humble worshipper in Jewish times
+loved enough to say that he would not offer unto God an offering that
+cost him nothing, and that loving height of self-surrender was at the
+highest, but a lowly imitation of the love to which it looked up. When
+Paul in the Epistle to the Romans says, 'He that spared not His own Son
+but delivered Him up for us all,' he is obviously alluding to, and all
+but quoting, the divine words to Abraham, 'Seeing thou hast not withheld
+thy son, thine only son, from Me,' and the allusion permits us to
+parallel what God did when He sent His Son with what Abraham did when,
+with wrung heart, but with submission, he bound and laid Isaac on the
+altar and stretched forth his hand with the knife in it to slay him.
+Such a representation contradicts the vulgar conceptions of a
+passionless, self-sufficing, icy deity, but reflection on the facts of
+our own experience and on the blessed secrets of our own love, leads us
+to believe that some shadow of loss passed across the infinite and
+eternal completeness of the divine nature when 'God sent forth His Son
+made of a woman.' And may we not go further and say that when Jesus on
+the Cross cried from out of the darkness of eclipse, 'My God! My God!
+Why hast Thou forsaken me?' there was something in the heavens
+corresponding to the darkness that covered the earth and something in
+the Father's heart that answered the Son's. But our text warns us that
+such matters are not for our handling in speech, and are best dealt
+with, not as matters of possibly erring speculation, but as materials
+for lowly thanks unto God for His unspeakable gift.
+
+But whatever may be true about the love of the Father who sent, there
+can be no doubt about the love of the Son who came. No man helps his
+fellows in suffering but at the cost of his own suffering. Sympathy
+means _fellow-feeling_, and the one indispensable condition of all
+rescue work of any sort is that the rescuer must bear on his own
+shoulders the sins or sorrows that he is able to bear away. Heartless
+help is no help. It does not matter whether he who 'stands and says, "Be
+ye clothed and fed,"' gives or does not give 'the things necessary,' he
+will be but a 'miserable comforter' if he has not in heart and feeling
+entered into the sorrows and pains which he seeks to alleviate. We need
+not dwell on the familiar truths concerning Him who was a 'man of
+sorrows and acquainted with grief.' All through His life He was in
+contact with evil, and for Him the contact was like that of a naked hand
+pressed upon hot iron. The sins and woes of the world made His path
+through it like that of bare feet on sharp flints. If He had never died
+it would still have been true that 'He was wounded for our
+transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.' On the Cross He
+completed the libation which had continued throughout His life and
+'poured out His soul unto death' as He had been pouring it out all
+through His life. We have no measure by which we can estimate the
+inevitable sufferings in such a world as ours of such a spirit as
+Christ's. We may know something of the solitude of uncongenial society;
+of the pain of seeing miseries that we cannot comfort, of the horrors of
+dwelling amidst impurities that we cannot cleanse, and of longings to
+escape from them all to some nest in the wilderness, but all these are
+but the feeblest shadows of the incarnate sorrows whose name among men
+was Jesus. Nothing is more pathetic than the way in which our Lord kept
+all these sorrows close locked within His own heart, so that scarcely
+ever did they come to light. Once He did permit a glimpse into that
+hidden chamber when He said, 'O faithless generation, how long shall I
+be with you, how long shall I suffer you?' But for the most part His
+sorrow was unspoken because it was 'unspeakable.' Once beneath the
+quivering olives in the moonlight of Gethsemane, He made a pitiful
+appeal for the little help which three drowsy men could give Him, when
+He cried, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye
+here and watch with Me,' but for the most part the silence at which His
+judges 'marvelled greatly,' and raged as much as they marvelled, was
+unbroken, and as 'a sheep before her shearers is dumb,' so 'He opened
+not His mouth.' The sacrifice of His death was, for the most part,
+silent like the sacrifice of His life. Should it not call forth from us
+floods of praise and thanks to God for His unspeakable gift?
+
+III. The gift brings with it unspeakable results.
+
+In Christ are hid 'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' When God
+gave us Him, He gave us a storehouse in which are contained treasures of
+truth which can never be fully comprehended, and which, even if
+comprehended, can never be exhausted. The mystery of the Divine Name
+revealed in Jesus, the mystery of His person, are themes on which the
+Christian world has been nourished ever since, and which are as full of
+food, not for the understanding only, but far more for the heart and the
+will, to-day as ever they were. The world may think that it has left the
+teaching of Jesus behind, but in reality the teaching is far ahead, and
+the world's practise is but slowly creeping towards its imperfect
+attainment. The Gospel is the guide of the race, and each generation
+gathers something more from it, and progresses in the measure in which
+it follows Christ; and as for the race, so for the individual. Each of
+Christ's scholars finds his own gift, and in the measure of his
+faithfulness to what he has found makes ever new discoveries in the
+unsearchable riches of Christ. After all have fed full there still
+remain abundant baskets full to be taken up.
+
+He who has sounded the depths of Jesus most completely is ever the first
+to acknowledge that he has been but as a child 'gathering pebbles on the
+beach while the great ocean lies unsounded before him.' No single soul,
+and no multitude of souls, can exhaust Jesus; neither our individual
+experiences, nor the experiences of a believing world can fully realise
+the endless wealth laid up in Him. He is the Alpha and the Omega of all
+our speech, the first letter and the last of our alphabet, between which
+lie all the rest.
+
+The gift is completed in consequences yet unspeakable. Even the first
+blessings which the humblest faith receives from the pierced hands have
+more in them than words can tell. Who has ever spoken adequately and in
+full correspondence with reality what it is to have God's pardoning
+love flowing in upon the soul? Many singers have sung sweet psalms and
+hymns and spiritual songs on which generations of devout souls have fed,
+but none of them has spoken the deepest blessedness of a Christian life,
+or the calm raptures of communion with God. It is easy to utter the
+words 'forgiveness, reconciliation, acceptance, fellowship, eternal
+life'; the syllables can be spoken, but who knows or can utter the
+depths of the meanings? After all human words the half has not been told
+us, and as every soul carries within itself unrevealable emotions, and
+is a mystery after all revelation, so the things which God's gift brings
+to a soul are after all speech unspeakable, and the words 'cannot be
+uttered' which they who are caught up into the third heavens hear.
+
+Then we may extend our thoughts to the future form of Christian
+experience. 'It doth not yet appear what we should be.' All our
+conceptions of a future existence must necessarily be inadequate.
+Nothing but experience can reveal them to us, and our experience there
+will be capable of indefinite expansion, and through eternity there will
+be endless growth in the appropriation of the unspeakable gift.
+
+For us the only recompense that we can make for the unspeakable gift is
+to receive it with 'thanks unto God' and the yielding up of our hearts
+to Him. God pours this love upon us freely, without stint. It is
+unspeakable in the depths of its source, in the manner of its
+manifestation, in the glory of its issues. It is like some great stream,
+rising in the trackless mountains, broad and deep, and leading on to a
+sunlit ocean. We stand on the bank; let us trust ourselves to its broad
+bosom. It will bear us safe. And let us take heed that we receive not
+the gift of God _in vain_.
+
+
+
+
+A MILITANT MESSAGE
+
+          'Casting down imaginations, and every high thing
+          that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and
+          bringing every thought into captivity to the
+          obedience of Christ; and being in readiness to
+          avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall
+          be fulfilled.'--2 COR. x. 5 and 6 (R.V.).
+
+
+None of Paul's letters are so full of personal feeling as this one is.
+It is written, for the most part, at a white heat; he had heard from his
+trusted Titus tidings which on one hand filled him with a thankfulness
+of which the first half of the letter is the expression; but there had
+also been tidings of a very different kind, and from this point onwards
+the letter is seething with the feelings which these had produced. There
+was in the Corinthian Church a party, probably Judaisers, which denied
+his authority and said bitter things about his character. They
+apparently had contrasted the force of his letters and the feebleness of
+his 'bodily presence' and speech. They insinuated that his 'bark was
+worse than his bite.' Their language put into plain English would be
+something like this, 'Ah! He is very bold at a distance, let him come
+and face us and we shall see a difference. Vapouring in his letters, he
+will be meek enough when he is here.'
+
+These slanderers seem to have thought of Paul as if he 'warred according
+to flesh,' and it is this charge, that he was actuated in his opposition
+to the evils in Corinth by selfish considerations and worldly interests,
+which seems to have set the Apostle on fire. In answer he pours out
+quick, indignant questionings, sharp irony, vehement self-vindication,
+passionate remonstrances, flashes of wrath, sudden jets of tenderness.
+What a position for him to have to say, 'I am not a low schemer; I am
+not working for myself.' Yet it is the common lot of all such men to be
+misread by little, crawling creatures who cannot believe in heroic
+self-forgetfulness. He answers the taunt that he 'walked according to
+the flesh' in the context by saying, 'Yes, I live in the flesh, my
+outward life is like that of other men, but I do not go a-soldiering
+_according_ to the flesh. It is not for my own sinful self that I get
+the rules of my life's battle, neither do I get my weapons from the
+flesh. They could not do what they do if that were their origin: they
+are of God and therefore mighty.' Then the metaphor as it were catches
+fire, and in our text he expands the figure of a warfare and sets before
+us the destruction of fortresses, the capture of their garrisons, and
+the leading of them away into another land, the stern punishment of the
+rebels who still hold out, and the merciful delay in administering it.
+It has been suggested that there is an allusion in our text to the
+extermination of the pirates in Paul's native Cilicia which happened
+some fifty or sixty years before his birth and ended in destroying their
+robber-holds and taking some thousands of prisoners. Whether that be so
+or no, the Apostle's kindled imagination sets forth here great truths as
+to the effects which his message is meant to produce and, thank God, has
+produced.
+
+I. The opposing fortresses.
+
+The Apostle conceives of himself and of his brother preachers of Christ
+as going forth on a merciful warfare. He thinks of strong rock
+fortresses, with lofty walls set on high, and frowning down on any
+assailants. No doubt he is thinking first of the opposition which he had
+to front in Corinth from the Judaisers to whom we have referred, but the
+application of the metaphor goes far beyond the petty strife in Corinth
+and carries for us the wholesome lesson that one main cause which keeps
+men back from Christ is a too high estimate of themselves. Some of us
+are enclosed in the fortress of self-sufficiency: we will not humbly
+acknowledge our dependence on God, and have turned self-reliance into
+the law of our lives. There are many voices, some of them sweet and
+powerful, which to-day are preaching that gospel. It finds eager
+response in many hearts, and there is something in us all to which it
+appeals. We are often tempted to say defiantly, 'Who is Lord over us?'
+And the teaching that bids us rely on ourselves is so wholly in accord
+with the highest wisdom and the noblest life that what is good and what
+is evil in each of us contribute to reinforce it. Self-dependence is a
+great virtue, and the mother of much energy and nobleness, but it is
+also a great error and a great sin. To be so self-sufficing as not to
+need externals is good; to be so self-sufficing as not to need or to see
+God is ruin and death. The title which, as one of our great thinkers
+tells us, a humourist put on the back of a volume of heterodox tracts,
+'Every man his own redeemer,' makes a claim for self-sufficiency which
+more or less unconsciously shuts out many men from the salvation of
+Christ.
+
+There is the fortress of culture and the pride of it in which many of us
+are to-day entrenched against the Gospel. The attitude of mind into
+which persons of culture tend to fall is distinctly adverse to their
+reception of the Gospel, and that is not because the Gospel is adverse
+to culture, but because cultured people do not care to be put on the
+same level with publicans and harlots. They would be less disinclined to
+go into the feast if there were in it reserved seats for superior people
+and a private entrance to them. If the wise and prudent were more of
+both, they would be liker the babes to whom these things are revealed,
+and they would be revealed to them too. Not knowledge but the
+superciliousness which is the result of the conceit of knowledge hinders
+from God, and is one of the strongest fortresses against which the
+weapons of our warfare have to be employed.
+
+There is the fortress of ignorance. Most men who are kept from Christ
+are so because they know neither themselves nor God. The most widely
+prevailing characteristic of the superficial life of most men is their
+absolute unconsciousness of the fact of sin; they neither know it as
+universal nor as personal. They have never gone deeply enough down into
+the depths of their own hearts to have come up scared at the ugly things
+that lie sleeping there, nor have they ever reflected on their own
+conduct with sufficient gravity to discern its aberrations from the law
+of right, hence the average man is quite unconscious of sin, and is a
+complete stranger to himself. The cup has been drunk by and intoxicated
+the world, and the masses of men are quite unaware that it has
+intoxicated them.
+
+They are ignorant of God as they are of themselves, and if at any time,
+by some flash of light, they see themselves as they are, they think of
+God as if He were altogether such an one as themselves, and fall back on
+a vague trust in the vaguer mercy of their half-believed-in God as their
+hope for a vague salvation. Men who thus walk in a vain show will never
+feel their need of Jesus, and the lazy ignorance of themselves and the
+as lazy trust in what they call their God, are a fortress against which
+it will task the power of God to make any weapons of warfare mighty to
+its pulling down.
+
+II. The casting down of fortresses.
+
+The first effect of any real contact with Christ and His Gospel is to
+reveal a man to himself, to shatter his delusive estimates of what he
+is, and to pull down about his ears the lofty fortress in which he has
+ensconced himself. It seems strange work for what calls itself a Gospel
+to begin by forcing a man to cry out with sobs and tears, Oh, wretched
+man that I am! But no man will ever reach the heights to which Christ
+can lift him, who does not begin his upward course by descending to the
+depths into which Christ's Gospel begins its work by plunging him.
+Unconsciousness of sin is sure to lead to indifference to a Saviour, and
+unless we know ourselves to be miserable and poor and blind and naked,
+the offer of gold refined by fire and white garments that we may clothe
+ourselves will make no appeal to us. The fact of sin makes the need for
+a Saviour; our individual sense of sin makes us sensible of our need of
+a Saviour.
+
+Paul believed that the weapons of his warfare were mighty enough to cast
+down the strongest of all strongholds in which men shut themselves up
+against the humbling Gospel of salvation by the mercy of God. The
+weapons to which he thus trusted were the same to which Jesus pointed
+His disciples when, about to leave them, He said, 'When the Comforter is
+come He will convict the world of sin because they believe not in Me.'
+Jesus brought to the world the perfect revelation of the holiness of
+God, and set before us all a divine pattern of manhood to rebuke and
+condemn our stained and rebellious lives, and He turned us away from the
+superficial estimate of actions to the careful scrutiny of motives. By
+all these and many other ways He presented Himself to the world a
+perfect man, the incarnation of a holy God and the revelation and
+condemnation of sinful humanity. Yet, all that miracle of loveliness,
+gentleness, and dignity is beheld by men without a thrill, and they see
+in Him no 'beauty that they should desire Him,' and no healing to which
+they will trust. Paul's way of kindling penitence in impenitent spirits
+was not to brandish over them the whips of law or to seek to shake souls
+with terror of any hell, still less was it to discourse with philosophic
+calm on the obligations of duty and the wisdom of virtuous living; his
+appeal to conscience was primarily the pressing on the heart of the love
+of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. When the heart is melted, the
+conscience will not long continue indurated. We cannot look lovingly and
+believingly at Jesus and then turn to look complacently on ourselves.
+Not to believe on Him is the sin of sins, and to be taught that it is so
+is the first step in the work of Him who never merits the name of the
+Comforter more truly than when He convicts the world of sin.
+
+For a Christianity that does not begin with the deep consciousness of
+sin has neither depth nor warmth and has scarcely vitality. The Gospel
+is no Gospel, and we had almost said, 'The Christ is no Christ' to one
+who does not feel himself, if parted from Christ, 'dead in trespasses
+and sins.' Our religion depends for all its force, our gratitude and
+love for all their devotion, upon our sense that 'the chastisement of
+our peace was laid upon Him, and that by His stripes we are healed.'
+Since He gave Himself for us, it is meet that we give ourselves to Him,
+but there will be little fervour of devotion or self-surrender, unless
+there has been first the consciousness of the death of sin and then the
+joyous consciousness of newness of life in Christ Jesus.
+
+III. The captives led away to another land.
+
+The Apostle carries on his metaphor one step further when he goes on to
+describe what followed the casting down of the fortresses. The enemy,
+driven from their strongholds, have nothing for it but to surrender and
+are led away in captivity to another land. The long strings of prisoners
+on Assyrian and Egyptian monuments show how familiar an experience this
+was. It may be noted that perhaps our text regards the obedience of
+Christ as being the far country into which 'every thought was to be
+brought.' At all events Paul's idea here is that the end of the whole
+struggle between 'the flesh' and the weapons of God is to make men
+willing captives of Jesus Christ. We are Christians in the measure in
+which we surrender our wills to Christ. That surrender rests upon, and
+is our only adequate answer to, His surrender for us. The 'obedience of
+Christ' is perfect freedom; His captives wear no chains and know nothing
+of forced service; His yoke is easy, not because it does not press hard
+upon the neck but because it is lined with love, and 'His burden is
+light' not because of its own weight but because it is laid on us by
+love and is carried by kindred love. He only commands himself who gladly
+lets Christ command him. Many a hard task becomes easy; crooked things
+are straightened out and rough places often made surprisingly plain for
+the captives of Christ, whom He leads into the liberty of obedience to
+Him.
+
+IV. Fate of the disobedient.
+
+Paul thinks that in Corinth there will be found some stiff-necked
+opponents of whom he cannot hope that their 'obedience shall be
+fulfilled,' and he sees in the double issue of the small struggle that
+was being waged in Corinth a parable of the wider results of the warfare
+in the world. 'Some believed and some believed not'; that has been the
+brief summary of the experience of all God's messengers everywhere, and
+it is their experience to-day. No doubt when Paul speaks of 'being in
+readiness to avenge all disobedience,' he is alluding to the exercise of
+his apostolic authority against the obdurate antagonists whom he
+contemplates as still remaining obdurate, and it is beautiful to note
+the long-suffering patience with which he will hold his hand until all
+that can be won has been won. But we must not forget that Paul's
+demeanour is but a faint shadow of his Lord's, and that the weapons
+which were ready to avenge all disobedience were the weapons of God. If
+a man steels himself against the efforts of divine love, builds up round
+himself a fortress of self-righteousness and locks its gates against the
+merciful entrance of convictions of sin and the knowledge of a Saviour,
+and if he therefore lives, year in, year out, in disobedience, the
+weapons which he thinks himself to have resisted will one day make him
+feel their edge. We cannot set ourselves against the salvation of Jesus
+without bringing upon ourselves consequences which are wholly evil and
+harmful. Torpid consciences, hungry hearts, stormy wills, tyrannous
+desires, vain hopes and not vain fears come to be, by slow degrees, the
+tortures of the man who drops the portcullis and lifts the bridge
+against the entrance of Jesus. There are hells enough on earth if men's
+hearts were displayed.
+
+But the love which is obliged to smite gives warning that it is ready to
+avenge, long before it lets the blow fall, and does so in order that it
+may never need to fall. As long as it is possible that the disobedient
+shall become obedient to Christ, He holds back the vengeance that is
+ready to fall and will one day fall 'on all disobedience.' Not till all
+other means have been patiently tried will He let that terrible ending
+crash down. It hangs over the heads of many of us who are all unaware
+that we walk beneath the shadow of a rock that at any moment may be set
+in motion and bury us beneath its weight. It is 'in readiness,' but it
+is still at rest. Let us be wise in time and yield to the merciful
+weapons with which Jesus would make His way into our hearts. Or if the
+metaphor of our text presents Him in too warlike a guise, let us listen
+to His own gentle pleading, 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if
+any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him.'
+
+
+
+
+SIMPLICITY TOWARDS CHRIST
+
+          'But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent
+          beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds
+          should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in
+          Christ.'--2 COR. xi. 3.
+
+
+The Revised Version, amongst other alterations, reads, 'the simplicity
+that is _towards_ Christ.'
+
+The inaccurate rendering of the Authorised Version is responsible for a
+mistake in the meaning of these words, which has done much harm. They
+have been supposed to describe a quality or characteristic belonging to
+Christ or the Gospel; and, so construed, they have sometimes been made
+the watchword of narrowness and of intellectual indolence. 'Give us the
+simple Gospel' has been the cry of people who have thought themselves to
+be evangelical when they were only lazy, and the consequence has been
+that preachers have been expected to reiterate commonplaces, which have
+made both them and their hearers listless, and to sink the educational
+for the evangelistic aspect of the Christian teacher's function.
+
+It is quite true that the Gospel is simple, but it is also true that it
+is deep, and they will best appreciate its simplicity who have most
+honestly endeavoured to fathom its depth. When we let our little
+sounding lines out, and find that they do not reach the bottom, we begin
+to wonder even more at the transparency of the clear abyss. It is not
+simplicity _in_ Christ, but _towards_ Christ of which the Apostle is
+speaking; not a quality in Him, but a quality in _us_ towards Him. I
+wish, then, to turn to the two thoughts that these words suggest. First
+and chiefly, the attitude towards Christ which befits our relation to
+Him; and, secondly and briefly, the solicitude for its maintenance.
+
+I. First, then, look at the attitude towards Christ which befits the
+Christian relation to Him.
+
+The word 'simplicity' has had a touch of contempt associated with it. It
+is a somewhat doubtful compliment to say of a man that he is
+'simple-minded.' All noble words which describe great qualities get
+oxidised by exposure to the atmosphere, and rust comes over them, as
+indeed all good things tend to become deteriorated in time and by use.
+But the notion of the word is really a very noble and lofty one. To be
+'without a fold,' which is the meaning of the Greek word and of its
+equivalent 'simplicity,' is, in one aspect, to be transparently honest
+and true, and in another to be out and out of a piece. There is no
+underside of the cloth, doubled up beneath the upper which shows, and
+running in the opposite direction; but all tends in one way. A man with
+no under-currents, no by-ends, who is down to the very roots what he
+looks, and all whose being is knit together and hurled in one direction,
+without reservation or back-drawing, that is the 'simple' man whom the
+Apostle means. Such simplicity is the truest wisdom; such simplicity of
+devotion to Jesus Christ is the only attitude of heart and mind which
+corresponds to the facts of our relation to Him. That relation is set
+forth in the context by a very sweet and tender image, in the true line
+of scriptural teaching, which in many a place speaks of the Bride and
+Bridegroom, and which on its last page shows us the Lamb's wife
+descending from Heaven to meet her husband. The state of devout souls
+and of the community of such here on earth is that of betrothal. Their
+state in heaven is that of marriage. Very beautiful it is to see how
+this fiery Paul, like the ascetic John, who never knew the sacred joys
+of that state, lays hold of the thought of the Bridegroom and the Bride,
+and of his individual relation to both as indicating the duties of the
+Church and the solicitude of the Apostle. He says that he has been the
+intermediary who, according to Oriental custom, arranged the
+preliminaries of the marriage, and brought the bride to the bridegroom,
+and, as the friend of the latter, standing by rejoices greatly to hear
+the bridegroom's voice, and is solicitous mainly that in the tremulous
+heart of the betrothed there should be no admixture of other loves, but
+a whole-hearted devotion, an exclusive affection, and an absolute
+obedience. 'I have espoused you,' says he, 'to one husband that I may
+present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest . . . your mind
+should be corrupted from the simplicity that is towards Him.'
+
+Now that metaphor carries in its implication all that anybody can say
+about the exclusiveness, the depth, the purity, the all-pervasiveness of
+the dependent love which should knit us to Jesus Christ. The same
+thought of whole-hearted, single, absolute devotion is conveyed by
+other Scripture metaphors, the _slave_ and the _soldier_ of Christ. But
+all that is repellent or harsh in these is softened and glorified when
+we contemplate it in the light of the metaphor of my text.
+
+So I might leave it to do its own work, but I may perhaps be allowed to
+follow out the thought in one or two directions.
+
+The attitude, then, which corresponds to our relation to Jesus Christ is
+that, first, of a faith which looks to Him exclusively as the source of
+salvation and of light. The specific danger which was alarming Paul, in
+reference to that little community of Christians in Corinth, was one
+which, in its particular form, is long since dead and buried. But the
+principles which underlay it, the tendencies to which it appealed, and
+the perils which alarmed Paul for the Corinthian Church, are perennial.
+He feared that these Judaising teachers, who dogged his heels all his
+life long, and whose one aim seemed to be to build upon his foundation
+and to overthrow his building, should find their way into this church
+and wreck it. The keenness of the polemic, in this and in the contextual
+chapters, shows how real and imminent the danger was. Now what they did
+was to tell people that Jesus Christ had a partner in His saving work.
+They said that obedience to the Jewish law, ceremonial and other, was a
+condition of salvation, along with trust in Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
+And because they thus shared out the work of salvation between Jesus
+Christ and something else, Paul thundered and lightened at them all his
+life, and, as he tells us in this context, regarded them as preaching
+another Jesus, another spirit, and another gospel. That particular error
+is long dead and buried.
+
+But is there nothing else that has come into its place? Has this old
+foe not got a new face, and does not it live amongst us as really as it
+lived then? I think it does; whether in the form of the grosser kind of
+sacramentarianism and ecclesiasticism which sticks sacraments and a
+church in front of the Cross, or in the form of the definite denial that
+Jesus Christ's death on the Cross is the one means of salvation, or
+simply in the form of the coarse, common wish to have a finger in the
+pie and a share in the work of saving oneself, as a drowning man will
+sometimes half drown his rescuer by trying to use his own limbs. These
+tendencies that Paul fought, and which he feared would corrupt the
+Corinthians from their simple and exclusive reliance on Christ, and
+Christ alone, as the ground and author of their salvation, are perennial
+in human nature, and we have to be on our guard for ever and for ever
+against them. Whether they come in organised, systematic, doctrinal
+form, or whether they are simply the rising in our own hearts of the old
+Adam of pride and self-trust, they equally destroy the whole work of
+Christ, because they infringe upon its solitariness and uniqueness. It
+is not Christ and anything else. Men are not saved by a syndicate. It is
+Jesus Christ alone, and 'beside Him there is no Saviour.' You go into a
+Turkish mosque and see the roof held up by a forest of slim pillars. You
+go into a cathedral chapter-house and see one strong support in the
+centre that bears the whole roof. The one is an emblem of the Christless
+multiplicity of vain supports, the other of the solitary strength and
+eternal sufficiency of the one Pillar on which the whole weight of a
+world's salvation rests, and which lightly bears it triumphantly aloft.
+'I fear lest your minds be corrupted from the simplicity' of a
+reasonable faith directed towards Christ.
+
+And in like manner He is the sole light and teacher of men as to God,
+themselves, their duty, their destinies and prospects. He, and He alone,
+brings these things to light. His word, whether it comes from His lips
+or from the deeds which are part of His revelation, or from the voice of
+the Spirit which takes of His and speaks to the ages through His
+apostles, should be 'the end of all strife.' What He says, and all that
+He says, and nothing else than what He says, is the creed of the
+Christian. He, and He only, is 'the light which lighteth every man that
+cometh into the world.' In this day of babblements and confusions, let
+us listen for the voice of Christ and accept all which comes from Him,
+and let the language of our deepest hearts be, 'Lord, to whom shall we
+go? Thou only hast the words of eternal life.'
+
+Again, our relation to Jesus Christ demands exclusive love to Him.
+'Demands' is an ugly word to bracket with love. We might say, and
+perhaps more truly, permits or privileges. It is the joy of the
+betrothed that her duty is to love, and to keep her heart clear from all
+competing affections. But it is none the less her duty because it is her
+joy. What Christ is to you, if you are a Christian, and what He longs to
+be to us all, whether we are Christians or not, is of such a character
+as that the only fitting attitude of our hearts to Him in response is
+that of exclusive affection. I do not mean that we are to love nothing
+but Him, but I mean that we are to love all things else in Him, and
+that, if any creature so delays or deflects our love as that either it
+does not pass, by means of the creature, into the presence of the
+Christ, or is turned away from the Christ by the creature, then we have
+fallen beneath the sweet level of our lofty privilege, and have won for
+ourselves the misery due to distracted and idolatrous hearts. Love to
+one who has done what He has done for us is in its very nature
+exclusive, and its exclusiveness is all-pervasive exclusiveness. The
+centre diamond makes the little stones set round it all the more
+lustrous. We must love Jesus Christ all in all or not at all. Divided
+love incurs the condemnation that falls heavily upon the head of the
+faithless bride.
+
+Dear friends, the conception of the essence of religion as being love is
+no relaxation, but an increase, of its stringent requirements. The more
+we think of that sweet bond as being the true union of the soul with
+God, who is its only rest and home, the more reasonable and imperative
+will appear the old commandment, 'Thou shalt love Him with all thy
+heart, and soul, and strength, and mind.'
+
+But, further, our relation to Jesus Christ is such as that nothing short
+of absolute obedience to His commandment corresponds to it. There must
+be the simplicity, the single-mindedness that thus obeys, obeys swiftly,
+cheerfully, constantly. In all matters His command is my law, and, as
+surely as I make His command my law, will He make my desire His motive.
+For He Himself has said, in words that bring together our obedience to
+His will and His compliance with our wishes, in a fashion that we should
+not have ventured upon unless He had set us an example, 'If ye love Me,
+keep My commandments. If ye ask anything in My name I will do it.' The
+exclusive love that binds us, by reason of our faith in Him alone, to
+that Lord ought to express itself in unhesitating, unfaltering,
+unreserved, and unreluctant obedience to every word that comes from His
+mouth.
+
+These brief outlines are but the poorest attempt to draw out what the
+words of my text imply. But such as they are, let us remember that they
+do set forth the only proper response of the saved man to the saving
+Christ. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' Anything short of a faith that
+rests on Him alone, of a love that knits itself to His single,
+all-sufficient heart, and of an obedience that bows the whole being to
+the sweet yoke of His commandment is an unworthy answer to the Love that
+died, and that lives for us all.
+
+II. And now I have only time to glance at the solicitude for the
+maintenance of this exclusive single-mindedness towards Christ.
+
+Think of what threatens it. I say nothing about the ferment of opinion
+in this day, for one man that is swept away from a thorough
+whole-hearted faith by intellectual considerations, there are a dozen
+from whom it is filched without their knowing it, by their own
+weaknesses and the world's noises. And so it is more profitable that we
+should think of the whole crowd of external duties, enjoyments,
+sweetnesses, bitternesses, that solicit us, and would seek to draw us
+away. Who can hear the low voice that speaks peace and wisdom when
+Niagara is roaring past his ears? 'The world is too much with us, late
+and soon. Buying and selling we lay waste our powers,' and break
+ourselves away from our simple devotion to that dear Lord. But it is
+possible that we may so carry into all the whirl the central peace, as
+that we shall not be disturbed by it; and possible that 'whether we eat
+or drink, or whatsoever we do, we may do all to His glory,' so that we
+can, even in the midst of our daily pressing avocations and cares be
+keeping our hearts in the heavens, and our souls in touch with our Lord.
+
+But it is not only things without that draw us away. Our own weaknesses
+and waywardnesses, our strong senses, our passions, our desires, our
+necessities, all these have a counteracting force, which needs continual
+watchfulness in order to be neutralised. No man can grasp a stay, which
+alone keeps him from being immersed in the waves, with uniform tenacity,
+unless every now and then he tightens his muscles. And no man can keep
+himself firmly grasping Jesus Christ without conscious effort directed
+to bettering his hold.
+
+If there be dangers around us, and dangers within us, the discipline
+which we have to pursue in order to secure this uniform, single-hearted
+devotion is plain enough. Let us be vividly conscious of the
+peril--which is what some of us are not. Let us take stock of ourselves
+lest creeping evil may be encroaching upon us, while we are all
+unaware--which is what some of us never do. Let us clearly contemplate
+the possibility of an indefinite increase in the closeness and
+thoroughness of our surrender to Him--a conviction which has faded away
+from the minds of many professing Christians. Above all, let us find
+time or make time for the patient, habitual contemplation of the great
+facts which kindle our devotion. For if you never think of Jesus Christ
+and His love to you, how can you love Him back again? And if you are so
+busy carrying out your own secular affairs, or pursuing your own
+ambitions, or attending to your own duties, as they may seem to be, that
+you have no time to think of Christ, His death, His life, His Spirit,
+His yearning heart over His bride, how can it be expected that you will
+have any depth of love to Him? Let us, too, wait with prayerful patience
+for that Divine Spirit who will knit us more closely to our Lord.
+
+Unless we do so, we shall get no happiness out of our religion, and it
+will bring no praise to Christ or profit to ourselves. I do not know a
+more miserable man than a half-and-half Christian, after the pattern of,
+I was going to say, the ordinary average of professing Christians of
+this generation. He has religion enough to prick and sting him, and not
+enough to impel him to forsake the evil which yet he cannot comfortably
+do. He has religion enough to 'inflame his conscience,' not enough to
+subdue his will and heart. How many of my hearers are in that condition
+it is for them to settle. If we are to be Christian men at all, let us
+be it out and out. Half-and-half religion is no religion.
+
+          'One foot in sea, and one on shore;
+           To one thing constant never!'
+
+That is the type of thousands of professing Christians. 'I fear lest by
+any means your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is towards
+Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS
+
+          'For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that
+          it might depart from me. And He said unto me, My
+          grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is
+          made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore
+          will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the
+          power of Christ may rest upon me.'--2 COR. xii. 8,
+          9.
+
+
+This very remarkable page in the autobiography of the Apostle shows us
+that he, too, belonged to the great army of martyrs who, with hearts
+bleeding and pierced through and through with a dart, yet did their work
+for God. It is of little consequence what his thorn in the flesh may
+have been. The original word suggests very much heavier sorrow than the
+metaphor of 'a thorn' might imply. It really seems to mean not a tiny
+bit of thorn that might lie half concealed in the finger tip, but one
+of those hideous stakes on which the cruel punishment of impalement used
+to be inflicted. And Paul's thought is, not that he has a little,
+trivial trouble to bear, but that he is, as it were, forced quivering
+upon that tremendous torture.
+
+Unquestionably, what he means is some bodily ailment or other. The
+hypothesis that the 'thorn in the flesh' was the sting of the animal
+nature inciting him to evil is altogether untenable, because such a
+thorn could never have been left when the prayer for its removal was
+earnestly presented; nor could it ever have been, when left, an occasion
+for glorifying. Manifestly it was no weakness removable by his own
+effort, no incapacity for service which in any manner approximated to
+being a fault, but purely and simply some infliction from God's hand
+(though likewise capable of being regarded as a 'messenger of Satan')
+which hindered him in his work, and took down any proud flesh and danger
+of spiritual exaltation in consequence of the largeness of his religious
+privileges.
+
+Our text sets before us three most instructive windings, as it were, of
+the stream of thoughts that passed through the Apostle's mind, in
+reference to this burden that he had to carry, and may afford wholesome
+contemplation for us to-day. There is, first, the instinctive shrinking
+which took refuge in prayer. Then there is the insight won by prayer
+into the sustaining strength for, and the purposes of, the thorn that
+was not to be plucked out. And then, finally, there is the peace of
+acquiescence, and a will that accepts--not the inevitable, but the
+loving.
+
+I. First of all we see the instinctive shrinking from that which
+tortured the flesh, which takes refuge in prayer.
+
+There is a wonderful, a beautiful, and, I suppose, an intentional
+parallel between the prayers of the servant and of the Master. Paul's
+petitions are the echo of Gethsemane. There, under the quivering olives,
+in the broken light of the Paschal moon, Jesus 'thrice' prayed that the
+cup might pass from Him. And here the servant, emboldened and instructed
+by the example of the Master, 'thrice' reiterates his human and natural
+desire for the removal of the pain, whatever it was, which seemed to him
+so to hinder the efficiency and the fulness, as it certainly did the
+joy, of his service.
+
+But He who prayed in Gethsemane was He to whom Paul addressed his
+prayer. For, as is almost always the case in the New Testament, 'the
+Lord' here evidently means Christ, as is obvious from the connection of
+the answer to the petition with the Apostle's final confidence and
+acquiescence. For the answer was, 'My strength is made perfect in
+weakness'; and the Apostle's conclusion is, 'Most gladly will I glorify
+in infirmity,' that the strength or 'power _of Christ_ may rest upon
+me.' Therefore the prayer with which we have to deal here is a prayer
+offered to Jesus, who prayed in Gethsemane, and to whom we can bring our
+petitions and our desires.
+
+Notice how this thought of prayer directed to the Master Himself helps
+to lead us deep into the sacredest and most blessed characteristics of
+prayer. It is only telling Christ what is in our hearts. Oh, if we lived
+in the true understanding of what prayer really is--the emptying out of
+our inmost desire and thoughts before our Brother, who is likewise our
+Lord--questions as to what it was permissible to pray for, and what it
+was not permissible to pray for, would be irrelevant, and drop away of
+themselves. If we had a less formal notion of prayer, and realised more
+thoroughly what it was--the speech of a confiding heart to a
+sympathising Lord--then everything that fills our hearts would be seen
+to be a fitting object of prayer. If anything is large enough to
+interest me, it is not too small to be spoken about to Him.
+
+So the question, which is often settled upon very abstract and deep
+grounds that have little to do with the matter--the question as to
+whether prayer for outward blessings is permissible--falls away of
+itself. If I am to talk to Jesus Christ about everything that concerns
+me, am I to keep my thumb upon all that great department and be silent
+about it? One reason why our prayers are often so unreal is, because
+they do not fit our real wants, nor correspond to the thoughts that are
+busy in our minds at the moment of praying. Our hearts are full of some
+small matter of daily interest, and when we kneel down not a word about
+it comes to our lips. Can that be right?
+
+The difference between the different objects of prayer is not to be
+found in the rejection of all temporal and external, but in remembering
+that there are two sets of things to be prayed about, and over one set
+must ever be written 'If it be Thy will,' and over the other it need not
+be written, because we are sure that the granting of our wishes _is_ His
+will. We know about the one that 'if we ask anything according to His
+will, He heareth us.' That may seem to be a very poor and shrunken kind
+of hope to give a man, that if his prayer is in conformity with the
+previous determination of the divine will, it will be answered. But it
+availed for the joyful confidence of that Apostle who saw deepest into
+the conditions and the blessedness of the harmony of the will of God and
+of man. But about the other set we can only say, 'Not my will, but
+Thine be done.' With that sentence, not as a formula upon our lips but
+deep in our hearts, let us take everything into His presence--thorns and
+stakes, pinpricks and wounds out of which the life-blood is ebbing--let
+us take them all to Him, and be sure that we shall take none of them in
+vain.
+
+So then we have the Person to whom the prayer is addressed, the subjects
+with which it is occupied, and the purpose to which it is directed.
+'Take away the burden' was the Apostle's petition; but it was a mistaken
+petition and, therefore, unanswered.
+
+II. That brings me to the second of the windings, as I have ventured to
+call them, of this stream--viz. the insight into the source of strength
+for, and the purpose of, the thorn that could not be taken away. The
+Lord said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee. For My strength'
+(where the word 'My' is a supplement, but a necessary one) 'is made
+perfect in weakness.'
+
+The answer is, in form and in substance, a gentle refusal of the form of
+the petition, but it is a more than granting of its essence. For the
+best answer to such a prayer, and the answer which a true man means when
+he asks, 'Take away the burden,' need not be the external removal of the
+pressure of the sorrow, but the infusing of power to sustain it. There
+are two ways of lightening a burden, one is diminishing its actual
+weight, the other is increasing the strength of the shoulder that bears
+it. And the latter is God's way, is Christ's way, of dealing with us.
+
+Now mark that the answer which this faithful prayer receives is no
+communication of anything fresh, but it is the opening of the man's eyes
+to see that already he has all that he needs. The reply is not, 'I
+_will_ give thee grace sufficient,' but 'My grace' (which thou hast
+now) 'is sufficient for thee.' That grace is given and possessed by the
+sorrowing heart at the moment when it prays. Open your eyes to see what
+you have, and you will not ask for the load to be taken away. Is not
+that always true? Many a heart is carrying some heavy weight; perhaps
+some have an incurable sorrow, some are stricken by disease that they
+know can never be healed, some are aware that the shipwreck has been
+total, and that the sorrow that they carry to-day will lie down with
+them in the dust. Be it so! 'My grace (not shall be, but) _is_
+sufficient for thee.' And what thou hast already in thy possession is
+enough for all that comes storming against thee of disease,
+disappointment, loss, and misery. Set on the one side all possible as
+well as all actual weaknesses, burdens, pains, and set on the other
+these two words--'My grace,' and all these dwindle into nothingness and
+disappear. If troubled Christian men would learn what they have, and
+would use what they already possess, they would less often beseech Him
+with vain petitions to take away their blessings which are in the thorns
+in the flesh. 'My grace is sufficient.'
+
+How modestly the Master speaks about what He gives! 'Sufficient'? Is not
+there a margin? Is there not more than is wanted? The overplus is
+'exceeding abundant,' not only 'above what we ask or think,' but far
+more than our need. 'Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not _sufficient_
+that every one may take a little,' says Sense. Omnipotence says, 'Bring
+the few small loaves and fishes unto Me'; and Faith dispensed them
+amongst the crowd; and Experience 'gathered up of the fragments that
+remained' more than there had been when the multiplication began. So the
+grace utilised increases; the gift grows as it is employed. 'Unto him
+that hath shall be given.' And the 'sufficiency' is not a bare adequacy,
+just covering the extent of the need, with no overlapping margin, but is
+large beyond expectation, desire, or necessity; so leading onwards to
+high hopes and a wider opening of the open mouths of our need that the
+blessing may pour in.
+
+The other part of this great answer, that the Christ from Heaven spoke
+in or to the praying spirit of this not disappointed, though refused,
+Apostle, unveiled the purpose of the sorrow, even as the former part had
+disclosed the strength to bear it. For, says He, laying down therein the
+great law of His kingdom in all departments and in all ways, 'My
+strength is made perfect'--that is, of course, perfect in its
+manifestation or operations, for it is perfect in itself already. 'My
+strength is made perfect in weakness.' It works in and through man's
+weakness.
+
+God works with broken reeds. If a man conceits himself to be an iron
+pillar, God can do nothing with or by him. All the self-conceit and
+confidence have to be taken out of him first. He has to be brought low
+before the Father can use him for His purposes. The lowlands hold the
+water, and, if only the sluice is open, the gravitation of His grace
+does all the rest and carries the flood into the depths of the lowly
+heart.
+
+His strength loves to work in weakness, only the weakness must be
+conscious, and the conscious weakness must have passed into conscious
+dependence. There, then, you get the law for the Church, for the works
+of Christianity on the widest scale, and in individual lives. Strength
+that conceits itself to be such is weakness; weakness that knows itself
+to be such is strength. The only true source of Power, both for
+Christian work and in all other respects, is God Himself; and our
+strength is ours but by derivation from Him. And the only way to secure
+that derivation is through humble dependence, which we call faith in
+Jesus Christ. And the only way by which that faith in Jesus Christ can
+ever be kindled in a man's soul is through the sense of his need and
+emptiness. So when we know ourselves weak, we have taken the first step
+to strength; just as, when we know ourselves sinners, we have taken the
+first step to righteousness; just as in all regions the recognition of
+the doleful fact of our human necessity is the beginning of the joyful
+confidence in the glad, triumphant fact of the divine fulness. All our
+hollownesses, if I may so say, are met with His fulness that fits into
+them. It only needs that a man be aware of that which he is, and then
+turn himself to Him who is all that he is not, and then into his empty
+being will flow rejoicing the whole fulness of God. 'My strength is made
+perfect in weakness.'
+
+III. Lastly, mark the calm final acquiescence in the loving necessity of
+continued sorrow. 'Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my
+infirmity that the power of Christ may rest upon me.' The will is
+entirely harmonised with Christ's. The Apostle begins with instinctive
+shrinking, he passes onwards to a perception of the purpose of his trial
+and of the sustaining grace; and he comes now to acquiescence which is
+not passivity, but glad triumph. He is more than submissive, he gladly
+glories in his infirmity in order that the power of Christ may 'spread a
+tabernacle over' him. 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted,'
+said the old prophet. Paul says, in a yet higher note of concord with
+God's will, 'I am glad that I sorrow. I rejoice in weakness, because it
+makes it easier for me to cling, and, clinging, I am strong, and
+conquer evil.' Far better is it that the sting of our sorrow should be
+taken away, by our having learned what it is for, and having bowed to
+it, than that it should be taken away by the external removal which we
+sometimes long for. A grief, a trial, an incapacity, a limitation, a
+weakness, which we use as a means of deepening our sense of dependence
+upon Him, is a blessing, and not a sorrow. And if we would only go out
+into the world trying to interpret its events in the spirit of this
+great text, we should less frequently wonder and weep over what
+sometimes seem to us the insoluble mysteries of the sorrows of ourselves
+and of other men. They are all intended to make it more easy for us to
+realise our utter hanging upon Him, and so to open our hearts to receive
+more fully the quickening influences of His omnipotent and
+self-sufficing grace.
+
+Here, then, is a lesson for those who have to carry some cross and know
+they must carry it throughout life. It will be wreathed with flowers if
+you accept it. Here is a lesson for all Christian workers. Ministers of
+the Gospel especially should banish all thoughts of their own
+cleverness, intellectual ability, culture, sufficiency for their work,
+and learn that only when they are emptied can they be filled, and only
+when they know themselves to be nothing are they ready for God to work
+through them. And here is a lesson for all who stand apart from the
+grace and power of Jesus Christ as if they needed it not. Whether you
+know it or not, you are a broken reed; and the only way of your ever
+being bound up and made strong is that you shall recognise your
+sinfulness, your necessity, your abject poverty, your utter emptiness,
+and come to Him who is righteousness, riches, fulness, and say,
+'Because I am weak, be Thou my strength.' The secret of all noble,
+heroic, useful, happy life lies in the paradox, 'When I am weak, then am
+I strong,' and the secret of all failures, miseries, hopeless losses,
+lies in its converse, 'When I am strong, then am I weak.'
+
+
+
+
+NOT YOURS BUT YOU
+
+          'I seek not yours, but you.'--2 COR. xii. 14.
+
+
+Men are usually quick to suspect others of the vices to which they
+themselves are prone. It is very hard for one who never does anything
+but with an eye to what he can make out of it, to believe that there are
+other people actuated by higher motives. So Paul had, over and over
+again, to meet the hateful charge of making money out of his
+apostleship. It was one of the favourite stones that his opponents in
+the Corinthian Church, of whom there were very many, very bitter ones,
+flung at him. In this letter he more than once refers to the charge. He
+does so with great dignity, and with a very characteristic and delicate
+mixture of indignation and tenderness, almost playfulness. Thus, in the
+context, he tells these Corinthian grumblers that he must beg their
+pardon for not having taken anything of them, and so honoured them. Then
+he informs them that he is coming again to see them for the third time,
+and that that visit will be marked by the same independence of their
+help as the others had been. And then he just lets a glimpse of his
+pained heart peep out in the words of my text. 'I seek not yours, but
+you.' _There_ speaks a disinterested love which feels obliged, and yet
+reluctant, to stoop to say that it _is_ love, and that it _is_
+disinterested. Where did Paul learn this passionate desire to possess
+these people, and this entire suppression of self in the desire? It was
+a spark from a sacred fire, a drop from an infinite ocean, an echo of a
+divine voice. The words of my text would never have been Paul's if the
+spirit of them had not first been Christ's. I venture to take them in
+that aspect, as setting forth Christ's claims upon us, and bearing very
+directly on the question of Christian service and of Christian
+liberality.
+
+I. So, then, first of all, I remark, Christ desires personal surrender.
+
+'I seek not yours, but _you_,' is the very mother-tongue of love; but
+upon our lips, even when our love is purest, there is a tinge of
+selfishness blending with it, and very often the desire for another's
+love is as purely selfish as the desire for any material good. But in so
+far as human love is pure in its desire to possess another, we have the
+right to believe the deep and wonderful thought that there is something
+corresponding to it in the heart of Christ, which is a revelation for us
+of the heart of God; and that, however little we may be able to construe
+the whole meaning of the fact, He does stretch out an arm of desire
+towards us; and for His own sake, as for ours, would fain draw us near
+to Himself, and is 'satisfied,' as He is not without it, when men's
+hearts yield themselves up to Him, and let Him love them and lavish
+Himself upon them. I do not venture into these depths, but I would lay
+upon our hearts that the very inmost meaning of all that Jesus Christ
+has said, and is saying, to each of us by the records of His life, by
+the pathos of His death, by the miracle of His Resurrection, by the
+glory of His Ascension, by the power of His granted Spirit, is, 'I seek
+you.'
+
+And, brethren, our self-surrender is the essence of our Christianity.
+Our religion lies neither in our heads nor in our acts; the deepest
+notion of it is that it is the entire yielding up of ourselves to Jesus
+Christ our Lord. There is plenty of religion which is a religion of the
+head and of creeds. There is plenty of religion which is the religion of
+the hand and of the tongue, and of forms and ceremonies and sacraments;
+external worship. There is plenty of religion which surrenders to Him
+some of the more superficial parts of our personality, whilst the
+ancient Anarch, Self, sits undisturbed on his dark throne, in the depths
+of our being. But none of these are the religion that either Christ
+requires or that we need. The only true notion of a Christian is a man
+who can truly say, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
+
+And that is the only kind of life that is blessed; our only true
+nobleness and beauty and power and sweetness are measured by, and
+accurately correspond with, the completeness of our surrender of
+ourselves to Jesus Christ. As long as the earth was thought to be the
+centre of the planetary system there was nothing but confusion in the
+heavens. Shift the centre to the sun and all becomes order and beauty.
+The root of sin, and the mother of death, is making myself my own law
+and Lord; the germ of righteousness, and the first pulsations of life,
+lie in yielding ourselves to God in Christ, because He has yielded
+Himself unto us.
+
+I need not remind you, I suppose, that this self-surrender is a great
+deal more than a vivid metaphor: that it implies a very hard fact;
+implies at least two things, that we have yielded ourselves to Jesus
+Christ, by the love of our hearts, and by the unreluctant submission of
+our wills, whether He commands or whether He sends sufferings or joys.
+
+And, oh, brethren, be sure of this, that no such giving of myself away,
+in the sweet reciprocities of a higher than human affection, is
+possible, in the general, and on the large scale, if you evacuate from
+the Gospel the great truth, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.' I
+believe--and therefore I am bound to preach it--that the only power
+which can utterly annihilate and cast out the dominion of self from a
+human soul is the power that is lodged in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
+on the Cross for sinful men.
+
+And whilst I would fully recognise all that is noble, and all that is
+effective, in systems either of religion, or of irreligious morality,
+which have no place within their bounds for that great motive, I am sure
+of this, that the evil self within us is too strong to be exorcised by
+anything short of the old message, 'Jesus Christ has given His life for
+thee, wilt thou not give thyself unto Him?'
+
+II. Christ seeks personal service.
+
+'I seek . . . you'; not only for My love, but for My tools; for My
+instruments in carrying out the purposes for which I died, and
+establishing My dominion in the world. Now I want to say two or three
+very plain things about this matter, which lies very near my heart, as
+to some degree responsible for the amount of Christian activity and
+service in this my congregation. Brethren, the surrender of ourselves to
+Jesus Christ in acts of direct Christian activity and service, will be
+the outcome of a real surrender of ourselves to Him in love and
+obedience.
+
+I cannot imagine a man who, in any deep sense, has realised his
+obligations to that Saviour, and in any real sense has made the great
+act of self-renunciation, and crowned Christ as his Lord, living for the
+rest of his life, as so many professing Christians do, dumb and idle, in
+so far as work for the Master is concerned. It seems to me that, among
+the many wants of this generation of professing Christians, there is
+none that is more needed than that a wave of new consecration should
+pass over the Church. If men who call themselves Christians lived more
+in habitual contact with the facts of their redeeming Saviour's
+sacrifice for them, there would be no need to lament the fewness of the
+labourers, as measured against the overwhelming multitude of the fields
+that are white to harvest. If once that flood of a new sense of Christ's
+gift, and a consequent new completeness of our returned gifts to Him,
+flowed over the churches, then all the little empty ravines would be
+filled with a flashing tide. Not a shuttle moves, not a spindle
+revolves, until the strong impulse born of fire rushes in; and then, all
+is activity. It is no use to flog, flog, flog, at idle Christians, and
+try to make them work. There is only one thing that will set them to
+work, and that is that they shall live nearer their Master, and find out
+more of what they owe to Him; and so render themselves up to be His
+instruments for any purpose for which He may choose to use them.
+
+This surrender of ourselves for direct Christian service is the only
+solution of the problem of how to win the world for Jesus Christ.
+Professionals cannot do it. Men of my class cannot do it. We are clogged
+very largely by the fact that, being necessarily dependent on our
+congregations for a living, we cannot, with as clear an emphasis as you
+can, go to people and say, 'We seek not yours, but you.' I have nothing
+to say about the present ecclesiastical arrangements of modern Christian
+communities. That would take me altogether from my present purposes, but
+I want to lay this upon your consciences, dear brethren, that you who
+have other means of living than proclaiming Christ's name have an
+advantage, which it is at your peril that you fling away. As long as the
+Christian Church thought that an ordained priest was a man who could do
+things that laymen could not do, the limitation of Christian service to
+the priesthood was logical. But when the Christian Church, especially as
+represented by us Nonconformists, came to believe that a minister was
+only a man who preached the Gospel, which every Christian man is bound
+to do, the limitations of Christian service to the official class became
+an illogical survival, utterly incongruous with the fundamental
+principles of our conception of the Christian Church. And yet here it
+is, devastating our churches to-day, and making hundreds of good people
+perfectly comfortable, in an unscriptural and unchristian indolence,
+because, forsooth, it is the minister's business to preach the Gospel. I
+know that there is not nearly as much of that indolence as there used to
+be. Thank God for that. There are far more among our congregations than
+in former times who have realised the fact that it is _every_ Christian
+man's task, somehow or other, to set forth the great name of Jesus
+Christ. But still, alas, in a church with, say, 400 members, you may
+knock off the last cypher, and you will get a probably not too low
+statement of the number of people in it who have realised and fulfilled
+this obligation. What about the other 360 'dumb dogs, that will not
+bark'? And in that 360 there will probably be several men who can make
+speeches on political platforms, and in scientific lecture-halls, and
+about social and economical questions, only they cannot, for the life of
+them, open their mouths and say a word to a soul about Him whom they say
+they serve, and to whom they say they belong.
+
+Brethren, this direct service cannot be escaped from, or commuted by a
+money payment. In the old days a man used to escape serving in the
+militia if he found a substitute, and paid for him. There are a great
+many good Christian people who seem to think that Christ's army is
+recruited on that principle. But it is a mistake. 'I seek you, not
+yours.'
+
+III. Lastly, and only a word. Christ seeks us, _and_ ours.
+
+Not you _without_ yours, still less yours without you. This is no place,
+nor is the fag end of a sermon the time, to talk about so wide a subject
+as the ethics of Christian dealing with money. But two things I will
+say--consecration of self is extremely imperfect which does not include
+the consecration of possessions, and, conversely, consecration of
+possessions which does not flow from, and is not accompanied by, the
+consecration of self, is nought.
+
+If, then, the great law of self-surrender is to run through the whole
+Christian life, that law, as applied to our dealing with what we own,
+prescribes three things. The first is _stewardship_, not ownership; and
+that all round the circumference of our possessions. Depend upon it, the
+angry things that we hear to-day about the unequal distribution of
+wealth will get angrier and angrier, and will be largely justified in
+becoming so by the fact that so many of us, _Christians included_, have
+firmly grasped the notion of possession, and utterly forgotten the
+obligation of stewardship.
+
+Again, the law of self-surrender, in its application to all that we
+have, involves our continual reference to Jesus Christ in our
+disposition of these our possessions. I draw no line of distinction, in
+this respect, between what a man spends upon himself, and what he spends
+upon 'charity,' and what he spends upon religious objects. _One_
+principle is to govern, getting, hoarding, giving, enjoying, and that
+is, that in it all Christ shall be Master.
+
+Again, the law of self-surrender, in its application to our possessions,
+implies that there shall be an element of sacrifice in our use of these;
+whether they be possessions of intellect, of acquirement, of influence,
+of position, or of material wealth. The law of help is sacrifice, and
+the law for a Christian man is that he shall not offer unto the Lord his
+God that which costs him nothing.
+
+So, dear friends, let us all get near to that great central fire till it
+melts our hearts. Let the love which is our hope be our pattern.
+Remember that though only faintly, and from afar, can the issues of
+Christ's great sacrifice be reproduced in any actions of ours, the
+spirit which brought Him to die is the spirit which must instruct and
+inspire us to live. Unless we can say, 'He loved me, and gave Himself
+for me; I yield myself to Him'; and unless our lives confirm the
+utterance, we have little right to call ourselves His disciples.
+
+
+
+
+GALATIANS
+
+
+
+
+FROM CENTRE TO CIRCUMFERENCE
+
+          'The life which I now live in the flesh I live by
+          the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
+          gave Himself for me.'--GAL. ii. 20.
+
+
+We have a bundle of paradoxes in this verse. First, 'I am crucified with
+Christ, nevertheless I live.' The Christian life is a dying life. If we
+are in any real sense joined to Christ, the power of His death makes us
+dead to self and sin and the world. In that region, as in the physical,
+death is the gate of life; and, inasmuch as what we die to in Christ is
+itself only a living death, we live because we die, and in proportion as
+we die.
+
+The next paradox is, 'Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' The Christian
+life is a life in which an indwelling Christ casts out, and therefore
+quickens, self. We gain ourselves when we lose ourselves. His abiding in
+us does not destroy but heightens our individuality. We then most truly
+live when we can say, 'Not I, but Christ liveth in me'; the soul of my
+soul and the self of myself.
+
+And the last paradox is that of my text, 'The life which I live in the
+flesh, I live in' (not 'by') 'the faith of the Son of God.' The true
+Christian life moves in two spheres at once. Externally and
+superficially it is 'in the flesh,' really it is 'in faith.' It belongs
+not to the material nor is dependent upon the physical body in which we
+are housed. We are strangers here, and the true region and atmosphere of
+the Christian life is that invisible sphere of faith.
+
+So, then, we have in these words of my text a Christian man's frank
+avowal of the secret of his own life. It is like a geological cutting,
+it goes down from the surface, where the grass and the flowers are,
+through the various strata, but it goes deeper than these, to the fiery
+heart, the flaming nucleus and centre of all things. Therefore it may do
+us all good to make a section of our hearts and see whether the _strata_
+there are conformable to those that are here.
+
+I. Let us begin with the centre, and work to the surface. We have,
+first, the great central fact named last, but round which all the
+Christian life is gathered.
+
+'The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.' These two
+words, the 'loving' and the 'giving,' both point backwards to some one
+definite historical fact, and the only fact which they can have in view
+is the great one of the death of Jesus Christ. That is His giving up of
+Himself. That is the signal and highest manifestation and proof of His
+love.
+
+Notice (though I can but touch in the briefest possible manner upon the
+great thoughts that gather round these words) the three aspects of that
+transcendent fact, the centre and nucleus of the whole Christian life,
+which come into prominence in these words before us. Christ's death is a
+great act of self-surrender, of which the one motive is His own pure and
+perfect love. No doubt in other places of Scripture we have set forth
+the death of Christ as being the result of the Father's purpose, and we
+read that in that wondrous surrender there were two givings up The
+Father 'freely gave Him up to the death for us all.' That divine
+surrender, the Apostle ventures, in another passage, to find dimly
+suggested from afar, in the silent but submissive and unreluctant
+surrender with which Abraham yielded his only begotten son on the
+mountain top. But besides that ineffable giving up by the Father of the
+Son, Jesus Christ Himself, moved only by His love, willingly yields
+Himself. The whole doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has been
+marred by one-sided insisting on the truth that God sent the Son, to the
+forgetting of the fact that the Son 'came'; and that He was bound to the
+Cross neither by cords of man's weaving nor by the will of the Father,
+but that He Himself bound Himself to that Cross with the 'cords of love
+and the bands of a man,' and died from no natural necessity nor from any
+imposition of the divine will upon Him unwilling, but because He would,
+and that He would because He loved. 'He loved me, and gave Himself for
+me.'
+
+Then note, further, that here, most distinctly, that great act of
+self-surrendering love which culminates on the Cross is regarded as
+being for man in a special and peculiar sense. I know, of course, that
+from the mere wording of my text we cannot argue the atoning and
+substitutionary character of the death of Christ, for the preposition
+here does not necessarily mean 'instead of,' but 'for the behoof of.'
+But admitting that, I have another question. If Christ's death is for
+'the behoof of' men, in what conceivable sense does it benefit them,
+unless it is in the place of men? The death 'for me' is only for me when
+I understand that it is 'instead of' me. And practically you will find
+that wherever the full-orbed faith in Christ Jesus as the death for all
+the sins of the whole world, bearing the penalty and bearing it away,
+has begun to falter and grow pale, men do not know what to do with
+Christ's death at all, and stop talking about it to a very large extent.
+
+Unless He died as a sacrifice, I, for one, fail to see in what other
+than a mere sentimental sense the death of Christ is a death for men.
+
+And lastly, about this matter, observe how here we have brought into
+vivid prominence the great thought that Jesus Christ in His death has
+regard to single souls. We preach that He died for all. If we believe in
+that august title which is laid here as the vindication of our faith on
+the one hand, and as the ground of the possibility of the benefits of
+His death being world-wide on the other--viz. the Son of God--then we
+shall not stumble at the thought that He died for all, because He died
+for each. I know that if you only regard Jesus Christ as human I am
+talking utter nonsense; but I know, too, that if we believe in the
+divinity of our Lord, there need be nothing to stumble us, but the
+contrary, in the thought that it was not an abstraction that He died
+for, that it was not a vague mass of unknown beings, clustered together,
+but so far away that He could not see any of their faces, for whom He
+gave His life on the Cross. That is the way in which, and in which
+alone, _we_ can embrace the whole mass of humanity--by losing sight of
+the individuals. We generalise, precisely because we do not see the
+individual units; but that is not God's way, and that is not Christ's
+way, who is divine. For Him the _all_ is broken up into its parts, and
+when we say that the divine love loves all, we mean that the divine love
+loves each. I believe (and I commend the thought to you) that we do not
+fathom the depth of Christ's sufferings unless we recognise that the
+sins of each man were consciously adding pressure to the load beneath
+which He sank; nor picture the wonders of His love until we believe that
+on the Cross it distinguished and embraced each, and, therefore,
+comprehended all. Every man may say, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for
+me.'
+
+II. So much, then, for the first central fact that is here. Now let me
+say a word, in the second place, about the faith which makes that fact
+the foundation of my own personal life.
+
+'I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself
+for me.' I am not going to plunge into any unnecessary dissertations
+about the nature of faith; but may I say that, like all other familiar
+conceptions, it has got worn so smooth that it glides over our mental
+palate without roughening any of the _papillae_ or giving any sense or
+savour at all? And I do believe that dozens of people like you, who have
+come to church and chapel all your lives, and fancy yourselves to be
+fully _au fait_ at all the Christian truth that you will ever hear from
+my lips, do not grasp with any clearness of apprehension the meaning of
+that fundamental word 'faith.'
+
+It is a thousand pities that it is confined by the accidents of language
+to our attitude in reference to Jesus Christ. So some of you think that
+it is some kind of theological juggle which has nothing to do with, and
+never can be seen in operation in, common life. Suppose, instead of the
+threadbare, technical 'faith' we took to a new translation for a minute,
+and said '_trust_,' do you think that would freshen up the thought to
+you at all? It is the very same thing which makes the sweetness of your
+relations to wife and husband and friend and parent, which, transferred
+to Jesus Christ and glorified in the process, becomes the seed of
+immortal life and the opener of the gate of Heaven. Trust Jesus Christ.
+That is the living centre of the Christian life; that is the process by
+which we draw the general blessing of the Gospel into our own hearts,
+and make the world-wide truth, our truth.
+
+I need not insist either, I suppose, on the necessity, if our Christian
+life is to be modelled upon the Apostolic lines, of our faith embracing
+the Christ in all these aspects in which I have been speaking about His
+work. God forbid that I should seem to despise rudimentary and
+incomplete feelings after Him in any heart which may be unable to say
+'Amen' to Paul's statement here. I want to insist very earnestly, and
+with special reference to the young, that the true Christian faith is
+not merely the grasp of the person, but it is the grasp of the Person
+who is 'declared to be the Son of God,' and whose death is the voluntary
+self-surrender motived by His love, for the carrying away of the sins of
+every single soul in the whole universe. That is the Christ, the full
+Christ, cleaving to whom our faith finds somewhat to grasp worthy of
+grasping. And I beseech you, be not contented with a partial grasp of a
+partial Saviour; neither shut your eyes to the divinity of His nature,
+nor to the efficacy of His death, but remember that the true Gospel
+preaches Christ and Him crucified; and that for us, saving faith is the
+faith that grasps the Son of God 'Who loved me and gave Himself for me.'
+
+Note, further, that true faith is personal faith, which appropriates,
+and, as it were, fences in as my very own, the purpose and benefit of
+Christ's giving of Himself. It is always difficult for lazy people (and
+most of us are lazy) to transfer into their own personal lives, and to
+bring into actual contact with themselves and their own experience,
+wide, general truths. To assent to them, when we keep them in their
+generality, is very easy and very profitless. It does no man any good to
+say 'All men are mortal'; but how different it is when the blunt end of
+that generalisation is shaped into a point, and I say 'I have to die!'
+It penetrates then, and it sticks. It is easy to say 'All men are
+sinners.' That never yet forced anybody down on his knees. But when we
+shut out on either side the lateral view and look straight on, on the
+narrow line of our own lives, up to the Throne where the Lawgiver sits,
+and feel 'I am a sinful man,' that sends us to our prayers for pardon
+and purity. And in like manner nobody was ever wholesomely terrified by
+the thought of a general judgment. But when you translate it into 'I
+must stand there,' the terror of the Lord persuades men.
+
+In like manner that great truth which we all of us say we believe, that
+Christ has died for the world, is utterly useless and profitless to us
+until we have translated it into Paul's world, 'loved _me_ and gave
+Himself for _me_.' I do not say that the essence of faith is the
+conversion of the general statement into the particular application, but
+I do say that there is no faith which does not realise one's personal
+possession of the benefits of the death of Christ, and that until you
+turn the wide word into a message for yourself alone, you have not yet
+got within sight of the blessedness of the Christian life. The whole
+river may flow past me, but only so much of it as I can bring into my
+own garden by my own sluices, and lift in my own bucket, and put to my
+own lips, is of any use to me. The death of Christ for the world is a
+commonplace of superficial Christianity, which is no Christianity; the
+death of Christ for myself, as if He and I were the only beings in the
+universe, that is the death on which faith fastens and feeds.
+
+And, dear brother, you have the right to exercise it. The Christ loves
+each, and therefore He loves all; that is the process in the divine
+mind. The converse is the process in the revelation of that mind; the
+Bible says to us, Christ loves all, and therefore we have the right to
+draw the inference that He loves each. You have as much right to take
+every 'whosoever' of the New Testament as your very own, as if on the
+page of your Bible that 'whosoever' was struck out, and your name, John,
+Thomas, Mary, Elizabeth, or whatever it is, were put in there. 'He loved
+_me_.' Can _you_ say that? Have you ever passed from the region of
+universality, which is vague and profitless, into the region of personal
+appropriation of the person of Jesus Christ and His death?
+
+III. And now, lastly, notice the life which is built upon this faith.
+
+The true Christian life is dual. It is a life in the flesh, and it is
+also a life in faith. These two, as I have said, are like two spheres,
+in either of which a man's course is passed, or, rather, the one is
+surface and the other is central. Here is a great trailing spray of
+seaweed floating golden on the unquiet water, and rising and falling on
+each wave or ripple. Aye! but its root is away deep, deep, deep below
+the storms, below where there is motion, anchored upon a hidden rock
+that can never move. And so my life, if it be a Christian life at all,
+has its surface amidst the shifting mutabilities of earth, but its root
+in the silent eternities of the centre of all things, which is Christ
+in God. I live in the flesh on the outside, but if I am a Christian at
+all, I live in the faith in regard of my true and proper being.
+
+This faith, which grasps the Divine Christ as the person whose
+love-moved death is my life, and who by my faith becomes Himself the
+Indwelling Guest in my heart; this faith, if it be worth anything, will
+mould and influence my whole being. It will give me motive, pattern,
+power for all noble service and all holy living. The one thing that
+stirs men to true obedience is that their hearts be touched with the
+firm assurance that Christ loved them and died for them.
+
+We sometimes used to see men starting an engine by manual force; and
+what toil it was to get the great cranks to turn, and the pistons to
+rise! So we set ourselves to try and move our lives into holiness and
+beauty and nobleness, and it is dispiriting work. There is a far better,
+surer way than that: let the steam in, and that will do it. That is to
+say--let the Christ in His dying power and the living energy of His
+indwelling Spirit occupy the heart, and activity becomes blessedness,
+and work is rest, and service is freedom and dominion.
+
+The life that I live in the flesh is poor, limited, tortured with
+anxiety, weighed upon by sore distress, becomes dark and gray and dreary
+often as we travel nearer the end, and is always full of miseries and of
+pains. But if within that life in the flesh there be a life in faith,
+which is the life of Christ Himself brought to us through our faith,
+that life will be triumphant, quiet, patient, aspiring, noble, hopeful,
+gentle, strong, Godlike, being the life of Christ Himself within us.
+
+So, dear friends, test your faith by these two tests, what it grasps
+and what it does. If it grasps a whole Christ, in all the glory of His
+nature and the blessedness of His work, it is genuine; and it proves its
+genuineness if, and only if, it works in you by love; animating all your
+action, bringing you ever into the conscious presence of that dear Lord,
+and making Him pattern, law, motive, goal, companion and reward. 'To me
+to live is Christ.'
+
+If so, then we live indeed; but to live in the flesh is to die; and the
+death that we die when we live in Christ is the gate and the beginning
+of the only real life of the soul.
+
+
+
+
+THE EVIL EYE AND THE CHARM
+
+          'Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey
+          the truth, before whose eye Jesus Christ hath been
+          evidently set forth, crucified among you?'--GAL.
+          iii. 1.
+
+
+The Revised Version gives a shorter, and probably correct, form of this
+vehement question. It omits the two clauses 'that ye should not obey the
+truth' and 'among you.' The omission increases the sharpness of the
+thrust of the interrogation, whilst it loses nothing of the meaning.
+
+Now, a very striking metaphor runs through the whole of this question,
+which may easily be lost sight of by ordinary readers. You know the old
+superstition as to the Evil Eye, almost universal at the date of this
+letter and even now in the East, and lingering still amongst ourselves.
+Certain persons were supposed to have the power, by a look, to work
+mischief, and by fixing the gaze of their victims, to suck the very life
+out of them. So Paul asks who the malign sorcerer is who has thus
+fascinated the fickle Galatians, and is draining their Christian life
+out of their eyes.
+
+Very appropriately, therefore, if there is this reference, which the
+word translated 'bewitched' carries with it, he goes on to speak about
+Jesus Christ as having been displayed before their eyes. They had seen
+Him. How did they come to be able to turn away to look at anything else?
+
+But there is another observation to be made by way of introduction, and
+that is as to the full force of the expression 'evidently set forth.'
+The word employed, as commentators tell us, is that which is used for
+the display of official proclamations, or public notices, in some
+conspicuous place, as the Forum or the market, that the citizens might
+read. So, keeping up the metaphor, the word might be rendered, as has
+been suggested by some eminent scholars, 'placarded'--'Before whose eyes
+Jesus Christ has been placarded.' The expression has acquired somewhat
+ignoble associations from modern advertising, but that is no reason why
+we should lose sight of its force. So, then, Paul says, 'In my
+preaching, Christ was conspicuously set forth. It is like some
+inexplicable enchantment that, having seen Him, you should turn away to
+gaze on others.' It is insanity which evokes wonder, as well as sin
+which deserves rebuke; and the fiery question of my text conveys both.
+
+I. Keeping to the metaphor, I note first the placard which Paul had
+displayed.
+
+'Jesus Christ crucified has been conspicuously set forth before you,' he
+says to these Galatians. Now, he is referring, of course, to his own
+work of preaching the Gospel to them at the beginning. And the vivid
+metaphor suggests very strikingly two things. We see in it the Apostle's
+notion of what He had to do. His had been a very humble office, simply
+to hang up a proclamation. The one virtue of a proclamation is that it
+should be brief and plain. It must be authoritative, it must be urgent,
+it must be 'writ large,' it must be easily intelligible. And he that
+makes it public has nothing to do except to fasten it up, and make sure
+that it is legible. If I might venture into modern phraseology, what
+Paul means is that he was neither more nor less than a bill-sticker,
+that he went out with the placards and fastened them up.
+
+Ah! if we ministers universally acted up to the implications of this
+metaphor, do you not think the pulpit would be more frequently a centre
+of power than it is to-day? And if, instead of presenting our own
+ingenuities and speculations, we were to realise the fact that we have
+to hide ourselves behind the broad sheet that we fasten up, there would
+be a new breath over many a moribund church, and we should hear less of
+the often warrantable sarcasms about the inefficiency of the modern
+pulpit.
+
+But I turn from Paul's conception of the office to his statement of his
+theme. '_Jesus_ was displayed amongst you.' If I might vary the metaphor
+a little, the placard that Paul fastened up was like those that modern
+advertising ingenuity displays upon all our walls. It was a
+picture-placard, and on it was portrayed one sole figure--Jesus, the
+Person. Christianity is Christ, and Christ is Christianity; and wherever
+there is a pulpit or a book which deals rather with doctrines than with
+Him who is the Fountain and Quarry of all doctrine, there is divergence
+from the primitive form of the Gospel.
+
+I know, of course, that doctrines--which are only formal and orderly
+statements of principles involved in the facts--must flow from the
+proclamation of the person, Christ. I am not such a fool as to run
+amuck against theology, as some people in this day do. But what I wish
+to insist upon is that the first form of Christianity is not a theory,
+but a history, and that the revelation of God is the biography of a man.
+We must begin with the person, Christ, and preach Him. Would that all
+our preachers and all professing Christians, in their own personal
+religious life, had grasped this--that, since Christianity is not first
+a philosophy but a history, and its centre not an ordered sequence of
+doctrines but a living person, the act that makes a man possessor of
+Christianity is not the intellectual process of assimilating certain
+truths, and accepting them, but the moral process of clinging, with
+trust and love, to the person, Jesus.
+
+But, further, if any of you consult the original, you will see that the
+order of the sentence is such as to throw a great weight of emphasis on
+that last word 'crucified.' It is not merely a person that is portrayed
+on the placard, but it is that person _upon the Cross_. Ah! brethren,
+Paul himself puts his finger, in the words of my text, on what, in his
+conception, was the throbbing heart of all his message, the vital point
+from which all its power, and all the gleam of its benediction, poured
+out upon humanity--'Christ crucified.' If the placard is a picture of
+Christ in other attitudes and in other aspects, without the picture of
+Him crucified, it is an imperfect representation of the Gospel that Paul
+preached and that Christ was.
+
+II. Now, think, secondly, of the fascinators that draw away the eyes.
+
+Paul's question is not one of ignorance, but it is a rhetorical way of
+rebuking, and of expressing wonder. He knew, and the Galatians knew,
+well enough who it was that had bewitched them. The whole letter is a
+polemic worked in fire, and not in frost, as some argumentation is,
+against a very well-marked class of teachers--viz. those emissaries of
+Judaism who had crept into the Church, and took it as their special
+function to dog Paul's steps amongst the heathen communities that he had
+gathered together through faith in Christ, and used every means to upset
+his work.
+
+I cannot but pause for a moment upon this original reference of my text,
+because it is very relevant to the present condition of things amongst
+us. These men whom Paul is fighting as if he were in a sawpit with them,
+in this letter, what was their teaching? This: they did not deny that
+Jesus was the Christ; they did not deny that faith knit a man to Him,
+but what they said was that the observance of the external rites of
+Judaism was necessary in order to entrance into the Church and to
+salvation. They did not in their own estimation detract from Christ, but
+they added to Him. And Paul says that to add is to detract, to say that
+anything is necessary except faith in Jesus Christ's finished work is to
+deny that that finished work, and faith in it, are the means of
+salvation; and the whole evangelical system crumbles into nothingness if
+once you admit that.
+
+Now, is there anybody to-day who is saying the same things, with
+variations consequent upon change of external conditions? Are there no
+people within the limits of the Christian Church who are reiterating the
+old Jewish notion that external ceremonies--baptism and the Lord's
+Supper--are necessary to salvation and to connection with the Christian
+Church? And is it not true now, as it was then, that though they do not
+avowedly detract, they so represent these external rites as to detract,
+from the sole necessity of faith in the perfected work of Jesus Christ?
+The centre is shifted from personal union with a personal Saviour by a
+personal faith to participation in external ordinances. And I venture to
+think that the lava stream which, in this Epistle to the Galatians, Paul
+pours on the Judaisers of his day needs but a little deflection to pour
+its hot current over, and to consume, the sacramentarian theories of
+this day. 'O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?' Is it not like
+some malignant sorcery, that after the Evangelical revival of the last
+century and the earlier part of this, there should spring up again this
+old, old error, and darken the simplicity of the Gospel teaching, that
+Christ's work, apprehended by faith, without anything else, is the
+means, and the only means, of salvation?
+
+But I need not spend time upon that original application. Let us rather
+come more closely to our own individual lives and their weaknesses. It
+is a strange thing, so strange that if one did not know it by one's own
+self, one would be scarcely disposed to believe it possible, that a man
+who has 'tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to
+come,' and has known Jesus Christ as Saviour and Friend, should decline
+from Him, and turn to anything besides. And yet, strange and sad, and
+like some enchantment as it is, it is the experience at times and in a
+measure, of us all; and, alas! it is the experience, in a very tragical
+degree, of many who have walked for a little while behind the Master,
+and then have turned away and walked no more with Him. We may well
+wonder; but the root of the mischief is in no baleful glitter of a
+sorcerer's eye without us, but it is in the weakness of our own wills
+and the waywardness of our own hearts, and the wandering of our own
+affections. We often court the coming of the evil influence, and are
+willing to be fascinated and to turn our backs upon Jesus. Mysterious it
+is, for why should men cast away diamonds for paste? Mysterious it is,
+for we do not usually drop the substance to get the shadow. Mysterious
+it is, for a man does not ordinarily empty his pockets of gold in order
+to fill them with gravel. Mysterious it is, for a thirsty man will not
+usually turn away from the full, bubbling, living fountain, to see if he
+can find any drops still remaining, green with scum, stagnant and
+odorous, at the bottom of some broken cistern. But all these follies are
+sanity as compared with the folly of which we are guilty, times without
+number, when, having known the sweetness of Jesus Christ, we turn away
+to the fascinations of the world. Custom, the familiarity that we have
+with Him, the attrition of daily cares--like the minute grains of sand
+that are cemented on to paper, and make a piece of sandpaper that is
+strong enough to file an inscription off iron--the seductions of worldly
+delights, the pressure of our daily cares--all these are as a ring of
+sorcerers that stand round about us, before whom we are as powerless as
+a bird in the presence of a serpent, and they bewitch us and draw us
+away.
+
+The sad fact has been verified over and over again on a large scale in
+the history of the Church. After every outburst of renewed life and
+elevated spirituality there is sure to come a period of reaction when
+torpor and formality again assert themselves. What followed the
+Reformation in Germany? A century of death. What followed Puritanism in
+England? An outburst of lust and godlessness.
+
+So it has always been, and so it is with us individually, as we too
+well know. Ah, brethren! the seductions are omnipresent, and our poor
+eyes are very weak, and we turn away from the Lord to look on these
+misshapen monsters that are seeking by their gaze to draw us into
+destruction. I wonder how many professing Christians are in this
+audience who once saw Jesus Christ a great deal more clearly, and
+contemplated Him a great deal more fixedly, and turned their hearts to
+Him far more lovingly, than they do to-day? Some of the great mountain
+peaks of Africa are only seen for an hour or two in the morning, and
+then the clouds gather around them, and hide them for the rest of the
+day. It is like the experience of many professing Christians, who see
+Him in the morning of their Christian life far more vividly than they
+ever do after. 'Who hath bewitched you?' The world; but the
+arch-sorcerer sits safe in our own hearts.
+
+III. Lastly, keeping to the metaphor, let me suggest, although my text
+does not touch upon it, the Amulet.
+
+One has seen fond mothers in Egypt and Palestine who hang on their
+babies' necks charms, to shield them from the influence of the Evil Eye;
+and there is a charm that we may wear if we will, which will keep us
+safe. There is no fascination in the Evil Eye if you do not look at it.
+
+The one object that the sorcerer has is to withdraw our gaze from
+Christ; it is not illogical to say that the way to defeat the object is
+to keep our gaze fixed on Christ. If you do not look at the baleful
+glitter of the Evil Eye it will exercise no power over you; and if you
+will steadfastly look at Him, then, and only then, you will not look at
+it. Like Ulysses in the legend, bandage the eyes and put wax in the
+ears, if you would neither be tempted by hearing the songs, nor by
+seeing the fair forms, of the sirens on their island. To look fixedly at
+Jesus Christ, and with the resolve never to turn away from Him, is the
+only safety against these tempting delights around us.
+
+But, brethren, it is the crucified Christ, looking to whom, we are safe
+amidst all seductions and snares. I doubt whether a Christ who did not
+die for men has power enough over men's hearts and minds to draw them to
+Himself. The cords which bind us to Him are the assurance of His dying
+love which has conquered us. If only we will, day by day, and moment by
+moment, as we pass through the duties and distractions, the temptations
+and the trials, of this present life, by an act of will and thought turn
+ourselves to Him, then all the glamour of false attractiveness will
+disappear from the temptations around us, and we shall see that the
+sirens, for all their fair forms, end in loathly fishes' tails and sit
+amidst dead men's bones.
+
+Brethren, 'looking _off_ unto Jesus' is the secret of triumph over the
+fascinations of the world. And if we will habitually so look, then the
+sweetness that we shall experience will destroy all the seducing power
+of lesser and earthly sweetness, and the blessed light of the sun will
+dim and all but extinguish the deceitful gleams that tempt us into the
+swamps where we shall be drowned. Turn away, then, from these things;
+cleave to Jesus Christ; and though in ourselves we may be as weak as a
+humming-bird before a snake, or a rabbit before a tiger, He will give us
+strength, and the light of His face shining down upon us will fix our
+eyes and make us insensible to the fascinations of the sorcerers. So we
+shall not need to dread the question, 'Who hath bewitched you?' but
+ourselves challenge the utmost might of the fascination with the
+triumphant question, 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?'
+
+Help us, O Lord! we beseech Thee, to live near Thee. Turn away our eyes
+from beholding vanity, and enable us to set the Lord always before us
+that we be not moved.
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE
+
+          'Have ye suffered so many things in vain?'--GAL.
+          iii 4.
+
+          Preached on the last Sunday of the year.
+
+
+This vehement question is usually taken to be a reminder to the fickle
+Galatians that their Christian faith had brought upon them much
+suffering from the hands of their unbelieving brethren, and to imply an
+exhortation to faithfulness to the Gospel lest they should stultify
+their past brave endurance. Yielding to the Judaising teachers, and
+thereby escaping the 'offence of the Cross,' they would make their past
+sufferings vain. But it may be suggested that the word 'suffered' here
+is rather used in what is its known sense elsewhere, namely, with the
+general idea of _feeling_, the nature of the feeling being undefined. It
+is a touching proof of the preponderance of pain and sorrow that by
+degrees the significance of the word has become inextricably intertwined
+with the thought of sadness; still, it is possible to take it in the
+text as meaning _experienced_ or _felt_, and to regard the Apostle as
+referring to the whole of the Galatians' past experience, and as
+founding his appeal for their steadfastness on all the joys as well as
+the sorrows, which their faith had brought them.
+
+Taking the words in this more general sense they become a question which
+it is well for us to ask ourselves at such a time as this, when the
+calendar naturally invites us to look backwards and ask ourselves what
+we have made of all our experiences in the past, or rather what, by the
+help of them all, we have made of ourselves.
+
+I. The duty of retrospect.
+
+For almost any reason it is good for us to be delivered from our
+prevailing absorption in the present. Whatever counterpoises the
+overwhelming weight of the present is, so far, a blessing and a good,
+and whatever softens the heart and keeps up even the lingering
+remembrance of early, dewy freshness and of the high aspirations which,
+even for a brief space, elevated our past selves is gain amidst the
+dusty commonplaces of to-day. We see things better and more clearly when
+we get a little away from them, as a face is more distinctly visible at
+armslength than when held close.
+
+But our retrospects are too often almost as trivial and degrading as is
+our absorption in the present, and to prevent memory from becoming a
+minister of frivolity if not of sin, it is needful that such a question
+as that of our text be urgently asked by each of us. Memory must be in
+closest union with conscience, as all our faculties must be, or she is
+of little use. There is a mere sentimental luxury of memory which finds
+a pensive pleasure in the mere passing out from the hard present into
+the soft light, not without illusion in its beams, of the 'days that are
+no more.' Merely to live over again our sorrows and joys without any
+clear discernment of what their effects on our moral character have
+been, is not the retrospect that becomes a man, however it might suit
+an animal. We have to look back as a man might do escaping from the
+ocean on to some frail sand-bank which ever breaks off and crumbles away
+at his very heels. To remember the past mainly as it affected our joy or
+our sorrow is as unworthy as to regard the present from the same point
+of view, and robs both of their highest worth. To remember is only then
+blessed and productive of its highest possible good in us, when the
+question of our text insists on being faced, and the object of
+retrospect is not to try to rekindle the cold coals of past emotions,
+but to ascertain what effect on our present characters our past
+experiences have had. We have not to turn back and try to gather some
+lingering flowers, but to look for the fruit which has followed the
+fallen blossoms.
+
+II. The true test for the past.
+
+The question of our text implies, as we have already suggested, that our
+whole lives, with all their various and often opposite experiences, are
+yet an ordered whole, having a definite end. There is some purpose
+beyond the moment to be served. Our joys and our sorrows, our gains and
+our losses, the bright hours and the dark hours, and the hours that are
+neither eminently bright nor supremely dark, our failures and our
+successes, our hopes disappointed or fulfilled, and all the infinite
+variety of condition and environment through which our varying days and
+years have led us, co-operate for one end. It is life that makes men;
+the infant is a bundle of possibilities, and as the years go on, one
+possible avenue of development after another is blocked. The child might
+have been almost anything; the man has become hardened and fixed into
+one shape.
+
+But all this variety of impulses and complicated experiences need the
+co-operation of the man himself if they are to reach their highest
+results in him. If he is simply recipient of these external forces
+acting upon him, they will shape him indeed, but he will be a poor
+creature. Life does not make men unless men take the command of life,
+and he who lets circumstances and externals guide him, as the long water
+weeds in a river are directed by its current, will, from the highest
+point of view, have experienced the variations of a lifetime in vain.
+
+No doubt each of our experiences has its own immediate and lower purpose
+to serve, and these purposes are generally accomplished, but beyond
+these each has a further aim which is not reached without diligent
+carefulness and persistent effort on our parts. If we would be sure of
+what it is to suffer life's experiences in vain, we have but to ask
+ourselves what life is given us for, and we all know that well enough to
+be able to judge how far we have used life to attain the highest ends of
+living. We may put these ends in various ways in our investigation of
+the results of our manifold experiences. Let us begin with the
+lowest--we received life that we might learn truth, then if our
+experience has not taught us wisdom it has been in vain. It is
+deplorable to have to look round and see how little the multitude of men
+are capable of forming anything like an independent and intelligent
+opinion, and how they are swayed by gusts of passion, by blind
+prejudice, by pretenders and quacks of all sorts. It is no less sad for
+us to turn our eyes within and discover, perhaps not without surprise
+and shame, how few of what we are self-complacent enough to call our
+opinions are due to our own convictions.
+
+If we ever are honest enough with ourselves to catch a glimpse of our
+own unwisdom, the question of our text will press heavily upon us, and
+may help to make us wiser by teaching us how foolish we are. An infinite
+source of wisdom is open to us, and all the rich variety of our lives'
+experiences has been lavished on us to help us, and what have we made of
+it all?
+
+But we may rise a step higher and remember that we are made moral
+creatures. Therefore, whatever has not developed infant potentialities
+in us, and made them moral qualities, has been experienced in vain. 'Not
+enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end and way.' Life is meant to
+make us love and do the good, and unless it has produced that effect on
+us, it has failed. If this be true, the world is full of failures, like
+the marred statues in a bad sculptor's studio, and we ourselves have
+earnestly to confess that the discipline of life has too often been
+wasted upon us, and that of us the divine complaint from of old has been
+true: 'In vain have I smitten thy children, they have received no
+correction.'
+
+There is no sadder waste than the waste of sorrow, and alas! we all know
+how impotent our afflictions have been to make us better. But not
+afflictions only have failed in their appeal to us, our joys have as
+often been in vain as our sorrows, and memory, when it turns its lamp on
+the long past, sees so few points at which life has taught us to love
+goodness, and be good, that she may well quench her light and let the
+dead past bury its dead.
+
+But we must rise still higher, and think of men as being made for God,
+and as being the only creatures known to us who are capable of religion.
+'Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' And this
+chief end is in fullest harmony with the lower ends to which we have
+just referred, and they will never be realised in their fullest
+completeness unless that completeness is sought in this the chief end.
+From of old meditative souls have known that the beginning of wisdom is
+the fear of the Lord, and that that fear is as certainly the beginning
+of goodness. It was not an irrelevant rebuke to the question, 'What good
+thing shall I do?' when Jesus set the eager young soul who asked it, to
+justify to himself his courteous and superficial application to Him of
+the abused and vulgarised title of 'Good,' and pointed him to God as the
+only Being to whom that title, in its perfectness, could be given. If
+'there is none good but one, that is God,' man's goodness must be drawn
+from Him, and morality without religion will in theory be incomplete,
+and in practice a delusion. If, then, men are made to need God, and
+capable of possessing Him, and of being possessed by Him, then the great
+question for all of us is, has life, with all its rapid whirl of
+changing circumstance and varying fortunes, drawn us closer to God, and
+made us more fit to receive more of Him? So supreme is this chief end
+that a life which has not attained it can only be regarded as 'in vain'
+whatever other successes it may have attained. So unspeakably more
+important and necessary is it, that compared with it all else sinks into
+nothingness; hence many lives which are dazzling successes in the eyes
+of men are ghastly failures in reality.
+
+Now, if we take these plain principles with us in our retrospect of the
+past year we shall be launched on a very serious inquiry, and brought
+face to face with a very penitent answer. Some of us may have had great
+sorrows, and the tears may be scarcely dry upon our cheeks: some of us
+may have had great gladnesses, and our hearts may still be throbbing
+with the thrill: some of us may have had great successes, and some of us
+heavy losses, but the question for us to ask is not of the quality of
+our past experiences, but as to their effects upon us. Has life been so
+used by us as to help us to become wiser, better, more devout? And the
+answer to that question, if we are honest in our scrutiny of ourselves,
+and if memory has not been a mere sentimental luxury, must be that we
+have too often been but unfaithful recipients alike of God's mercies and
+God's chastisements, and have received much of the discipline of life,
+and remained undisciplined. The question of our text, if asked by me,
+would be impertinent, but it is asked of each of us by the stern voice
+of conscience, and for some of us by the lips of dear ones whose loss
+has been among our chiefest sufferings. God asks us this question, and
+it is hard to make-believe to Him.
+
+III. The best issue of the retrospect.
+
+The world says, 'What I have written I have written,' and there is a
+very solemn and terrible reality in the thought of the irrevocable past.
+Whether life has achieved the ends for which it was given or no, it has
+achieved some ends. It may have made us into characters the very
+opposite of God's intention for us, but it has made us into certain
+characters which, so far as the world sees, can never be unmade or
+re-made. The world harshly preaches the indelibility of character, and
+proclaims that the Ethiopian may as soon be expected to change his skin
+or the leopard his spots as the man accustomed to do evil may learn to
+do well. That dreary fatalism which binds the effects of a dead past on
+a man's shoulders, and forbids him to hope that anything will
+obliterate the marks of 'what once hath been,' is in violent
+contradiction to the large hope brought into the world by Jesus Christ.
+What we have written we _have_ written, and we have no power to erase
+the lines and make the sheet clean again, but Jesus Christ has taken
+away the handwriting 'that was against us,' nailing it to His cross.
+Instead of our old sin-worn and sin-marked selves, He proffers to each
+of us a new self, not the outcome of what we have been, but the image of
+what He is and the prophecy of what we shall be. By the great gift of
+holiness for the future by the impartation of His own life and spirit,
+Jesus makes all things new. The Gospel recognises to the full how bad
+some who have received it were, but it can willingly admit their past
+foulness, because it contrasts with all that former filth their present
+cleanness, and to the most inveterately depraved who have trusted in
+Christ rejoices to say, 'Ye were washed, ye were sanctified, ye were
+justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+THE UNIVERSAL PRISON
+
+          'But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin,
+          that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be
+          given to them that believe.'--GAL. iii. 22.
+
+
+The Apostle uses here a striking and solemn figure, which is much veiled
+for the English reader by the ambiguity attaching to the word
+'concluded.' It literally means 'shut up,' and is to be taken in its
+literal sense of confining, and not in its secondary sense of inferring.
+So, then, we are to conceive of a vast prison-house in which mankind is
+confined. And then, very characteristically, the Apostle passes at once
+to another metaphor when he goes on to say 'under sin.' What a moment
+before had presented itself to his vivid imagination as a great dungeon
+is now represented as a heavy weight, pressing down upon those beneath;
+if, indeed, we are not, perhaps, rather to think of the low roof of the
+dark dungeon as weighing on the captives.
+
+Further, he says that Scripture has driven men into this captivity.
+That, of course, cannot mean that revelation makes us sinners, but it
+does mean that it makes us more guilty, and that it declares the fact of
+human sinfulness as no other voice has ever done. And then the grimness
+of the picture is all relieved and explained, and the office ascribed to
+God's revelation harmonised with God's love, by the strong, steady beam
+of light that falls from the last words, which tell us that the
+prisoners have not been bound in chains for despair or death, but in
+order that, gathered together in a common doleful destiny, they may
+become recipients of a common blessed salvation, and emerge into liberty
+and light through faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+So here are three things--the prison-house, its guardian, and its
+breaker. 'The Scripture hath shut up all under sin, in order that the
+promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given unto all them that
+believe.'
+
+I. First, then, note the universal prison-house.
+
+Now the Apostle says two things--and we may put away the figure and look
+at the facts that underlie it. The one is that all sin is imprisonment,
+the other is that all men are in that dungeon, unless they have come out
+of it through faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+All sin is imprisonment. That is the direct contrary of the notion that
+many people have. They say to themselves, 'Why should I be fettered and
+confined by these antiquated restrictions of a conventional morality?
+Why should I not break the bonds, and do as I like?' And they laugh at
+Christian people who recognise the limitations under which God's law has
+put them; and tell us that we are 'cold-blooded folks who live by rule,'
+and contrast their own broad 'emancipation from narrow prejudice.' But
+the reality is the other way. The man who does wrong is a slave in the
+measure in which he does it. If you want to find out--and mark this, you
+young people, who may be deceived by the false contrasts between the
+restraints of duty and the freedom of living a dissolute life--if you
+want to find out how utterly 'he that committeth sin is the slave of
+sin,' try to break it off, and you will find it out fast enough. We all
+know, alas! the impotence of the will when it comes to hand grips with
+some evil to which we have become habituated; and how we determine and
+determine, and try, and fail, and determine again, with no better
+result. We are the slaves of our own passions; and no man is free who is
+hindered by his lower self from doing that which his better self tells
+him he ought to do. The tempter comes to you, and says, 'Come and do
+this thing, just for once. You can leave off when you like, you know.
+There is no need to do it a second time.' And when you have done it, he
+changes his note, and says, 'Ah! you are in, and you cannot get out. You
+have done it once; and in my vocabulary once means twice, and once and
+twice mean _always_.'
+
+Insane people are sometimes tempted into a house of detention by being
+made to believe that it is a grand mansion, where they are just going to
+pay a flying visit, and can come away when they like. But once inside
+the walls, they never get past the lodge gates any more. The foolish
+birds do not know that there is lime on the twigs, and their little feet
+get fastened to the branch, and their wings flutter in vain. 'He that
+committeth sin is the slave of sin--shut up,' dungeoned, 'under sin.'
+
+But do not forget, either, the other metaphor in our text, in which the
+Apostle, with characteristic rapidity, and to the horror of rhetorical
+propriety, passes at once from the thought of a dungeon to the thought
+of an impending weight, and says, 'Shut up _under_ sin.'
+
+What does that mean? It means that we are guilty when we have done
+wrong; and it means that we are under penalties which are sure to
+follow. No deed that we do, howsoever it may fade from the tablets of
+our memory, but writes in visible characters, in proportion to its
+magnitude, upon our characters and lives. All human acts have perpetual
+consequences. The kick of the rifle against the shoulder of the man that
+fires it is as certain as the flight of the bullet from its muzzle. The
+chalk cliffs that rise above the Channel entomb and perpetuate the
+relics of myriads of evanescent lives; and our fleeting deeds are
+similarly preserved in our present selves. Everything that a man wills,
+whether it passes into external act or not, leaves, in its measure,
+ineffaceable impressions on himself. And so we are not only dungeoned
+in, but weighed upon by, and lie under, the evil that we do.
+
+Nor, dear friends, dare I pass in silence what is too often passed in
+silence in the modern pulpit, the plain fact that there is a future
+waiting for each of us beyond the grave, of which the most certain
+characteristic, certified by our own forebodings, required by the
+reasonableness of creation, and made plain by the revelation of
+Scripture, is that it is a future of retribution, where we shall have to
+carry our works; and as we have brewed so shall we drink; and the beds
+that we have made we shall have to lie upon. 'God shut up all under
+sin.'
+
+Note, again, the universality of the imprisonment.
+
+Now I am not going to exaggerate, I hope. I want to keep well within the
+limits of fact, and to say nothing that is not endorsed by your own
+consciences, if you will be honest with yourselves. And I say that the
+Bible does not charge men universally with gross transgressions. It does
+not talk about the virtues that grow in the open as if they were
+splendid vices; but it does say, and I ask you if our own hearts do not
+tell us that it says truly, that no man is, or has been, does, or has
+done, that which his own conscience tells him he should have been and
+done. We are all ready to admit faults, in a general way, and to confess
+that we have come short of what our own consciousness tells us we ought
+to be. But I want you to take the other step, and to remember that since
+we each stand in a personal relation to God, therefore all
+imperfections, faults, negligences, shortcomings, and, still more,
+transgressions of morality, or of the higher aspirations of our lives,
+are sins. Because sin--to use fine words--is the correlative of God. Or,
+to put it into plainer language, the deeds which in regard to law may be
+crimes, or those which in regard to morality may be vices, or in regard
+to our own convictions of duty may be shortcomings, seeing they all have
+some reference to Him, assume a very much graver character, and they are
+all sins.
+
+Oh, brethren, if we realise how intimately and inseparably we are knit
+to God, and how everything that we do, and do not do, but should have
+done, has an aspect in reference to Him, I think we should be less
+unwilling to admit, and less tinged with levity and carelessness in
+admitting, that all our faults are transgressions of His law, and we
+should find ourselves more frequently on our knees before Him, with the
+penitent words on our lips and in our hearts, 'Against Thee, Thee only
+have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.'
+
+That was the prayer of a man who had done a foul evil in other people's
+sight; who had managed to accumulate about as many offences to as many
+people in one deed as was possible. For, as a king he had sinned against
+his nation, as a friend he had sinned against his companion, as a
+captain he had sinned against his brave subordinate, as a husband he had
+sinned against his wife, and he had sinned against Bathsheba. And yet,
+with all that tangle of offences against all these people, he says,
+'Against Thee, Thee only.' Yes! Because, accurately speaking, the _sin_
+had reference to God, and to God alone. And I wish for myself and for
+you to cultivate the habit of connecting, thus, all our actions, and
+especially our imperfections and our faults, with the thought of God,
+that we may learn how universal is the enclosure of man in this dreadful
+prison-house.
+
+II. And so, I come, in the second place, to look at the guardian of the
+prison.
+
+That is a strange phrase of my text attributing the shutting of men up
+in this prison-house to the merciful revelation of God in the Scripture.
+And it is made still more striking and strange by another edition of
+the same expression in the Epistle to the Romans, where Paul directly
+traces the 'concluding all in disobedience' to God Himself.
+
+There may be other subtle thoughts connected with that expression which
+I do not need to enter upon now. But one that I would dwell upon, for a
+moment, is this, that one great purpose of Scripture is to convince us
+that we are sinful in God's sight. I do not need to remind you, I
+suppose, how that was, one might almost say, the dominant intention of
+the whole of the ceremonial and moral law of Israel, and explains its
+many else inexplicable and apparently petty commandments and
+prohibitions. They were all meant to emphasise the difference between
+right and wrong, obedience and disobedience, and so to drive home to
+men's hearts the consciousness that they had broken the commandments of
+the living God. And although the Gospel comes with a very different
+guise from that ancient order, and is primarily gift and not law, a
+Gospel of forgiveness, and not the promulgation of duty or the
+threatening of condemnation, yet it, too, has for one of its main
+purposes, which must be accomplished in us before it can reach its
+highest aim in us, the kindling in men's hearts of the same
+consciousness that they are sinful men in God's sight.
+
+Ah, brethren, we all need it. There is nothing that we need more than to
+have driven deep into us the penetrating point of that conviction. There
+must be some external standard by which men may be convinced of their
+sinfulness, for they carry no such standard within them. Your conscience
+is only _you_ judging on moral questions, and, of course, as you change,
+it will change too. A man's whole state determines the voice with which
+conscience shall speak to him, and so the worse he is, and the more he
+needs it, the less he has it. The rebels cut the telegraph wires. The
+waves break the bell that hangs on the reef, and so the black rocks get
+many a wreck to gnaw with their sharp teeth. A man makes his conscience
+dumb by the very sins that require a conscience trumpet-tongued to
+reprehend them. And therefore it needs that God should speak from
+Heaven, and say to us, '_Thou_ art the man,' or else we pass by all
+these grave things that I am trying to urge upon you now, and fall back
+upon our complacency and our levity and our unwillingness to take stock
+of ourselves, and front the facts of our condition. And so we build up a
+barrier between ourselves and God, and God's grace, which nothing short
+of that grace and an omnipotent love and an all-powerful Redeemer can
+ever pull down.
+
+I wish to urge in a few words, yet with much earnestness, this thought,
+that until we have laid to heart God's message about our own personal
+sinfulness we have not got to the place where we can in the least
+understand the true meaning of His Gospel, or the true work of His Son.
+May I say that I, for one, am old-fashioned enough to look with great
+apprehension on certain tendencies of present-day presentations of
+Christianity which, whilst they dwell much upon the social blessings
+which it brings, do seem to me to be in great peril of obscuring the
+central characteristic of the Gospel, that it is addressed to sinful
+men, and that the only way by which individuals can come to the
+possession of any of its blessings is by coming as penitent sinners, and
+casting themselves on the mercy of God in Jesus Christ? The beginning of
+all lies here, where Paul puts it, 'the Scripture hath herded all men,'
+in droves, into the prison, that it might have mercy upon all.
+
+Dear friend, as the old proverb has it, deceit lurks in generalities. I
+have no doubt you are perfectly willing to admit that all are sinful.
+Come a little closer to the truth, I beseech you, and say each is
+sinful, and I am one of the captives.
+
+III. And so, lastly, the breaker of the prison-house.
+
+I need not spend your time in commenting on the final words of this
+text. Suffice it to gather their general purport and scope. The
+apparently stern treatment which God by revelation applies to the whole
+mass of mankind is really the tenderest beneficence. He has shut them up
+in the prison-house in order that, thus shut up, they may the more
+eagerly apprehend and welcome the advent of the Deliverer. He tells us
+each our state, in order that we may the more long for, and the more
+closely grasp, the great mercy which reverses the state. And so how
+shallow and how unfair it is to talk about evangelical Christianity as
+being gloomy, stern, or misanthropical! You do not call a doctor unkind
+because he tells an unsuspecting patient that his disease is far
+advanced, and that if it is not cured it will be fatal. No more should a
+man turn away from Christianity, or think it harsh and sour, because it
+speaks plain truths. The question is, are they true? not, are they
+unpleasant?
+
+If you and I, and all our fellows, are shut up in this prison-house of
+sin, then it is quite clear that none of us can do anything to get
+ourselves out. And so the way is prepared for that great message with
+which Jesus opened His ministry, and which, whilst it has a far wider
+application, and reference to social as well as to individual evils,
+begins with the proclamation of liberty to the captives, and the opening
+of the prison to them that are bound.
+
+There was once a Roman emperor who wished that all his enemies had one
+neck, that he might slay them all at one blow. The wish is a fact in
+regard to Christ and His work, for by it all our tyrants have been
+smitten to death by one stroke; and the death of Jesus Christ has been
+the death of sin and death and hell--of sin in its power, in its guilt,
+and in its penalty. He has come into the prison-house, and torn the bars
+away, and opened the fetters, and every man may, if he will, come out
+into the blessed sunshine and expatiate there.
+
+And if, brethren, it is true that the universal prison-house is opened
+by the death of Jesus Christ, who is the Propitiation for the sins of
+the whole world, and the power by which the most polluted may become
+clean, then there follows, as plainly, that the only thing which we have
+to do is, recognising and feeling our bound impotence, to stretch out
+chained hands and take the gift that He brings. Since all is done for
+each of us, and since none of us can do sufficient for himself to break
+the bond, then what we should do is to trust to Him who has broken every
+chain and let the oppressed go free.
+
+Oh, dear friend, if you want to get to the heart of the sweetness and
+the blessedness and power of the Gospel, you must begin here, with the
+clear and penitent consciousness that you are a sinful man in God's
+sight, and can do nothing to cleanse, help, or liberate yourself. Is
+Jesus Christ the breaker of the bond for you? Do you learn from Him what
+your need is? Do you trust yourself to Him for Pardon, for cleansing,
+for emancipation? Unless you do, you will never know His most precious
+preciousness, and you have little right to call yourself a Christian. If
+you do, oh, than a great light will shine in the prison-house, and your
+chains will drop from your wrists, and the iron door will open of its
+own accord, and you will come out into the morning sunshine of a new
+day, because you have confessed and abhorred the bondage into which you
+have cast yourselves, and accepted the liberty wherewith Christ hath
+made you free.
+
+
+
+
+THE SON SENT
+
+          'When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth
+          His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that
+          He might redeem them which were under the law,
+          that we might receive the adoption of sons.'--GAL.
+          iv. 4, 5 (R.V.).
+
+
+It is generally supposed that by the 'fulness of time' Paul means to
+indicate that Christ came at the moment when the world was especially
+prepared to receive Him, and no doubt that is a true thought. The Jews
+had been trained by law to the conviction of sin; heathenism had tried
+its utmost, had reached the full height of its possible development, and
+was decaying. Rome had politically prepared the way for the spread of
+the Gospel. Vague expectations of coming change found utterance even
+from the lips of Roman courtier poets, and a feeling of unrest and
+anticipation pervaded society; but while no doubt all this is true and
+becomes more certain the more we know of the state of things into which
+Christ came, it is to be noted that Paul is not thinking of the fulness
+of time primarily in reference to the world which received Him, but to
+the Father who sent Him. Our text immediately follows words in which the
+air is described as being 'under guardians and stewards' until the time
+appointed of His Father, and the fulness of time is therefore the moment
+which God had ordained from the beginning for His coming. He, from of
+old, had willed that at that moment this Son should be born, and it is
+to the punctual accomplishment of His eternal purpose that Paul here
+directs our thoughts. No doubt the world's preparedness is part of the
+reason for the divine determination of the time, but it is that divine
+determination rather than the world's preparedness to which the first
+words of our text must be taken to refer.
+
+The remaining portion of our text is so full of meaning that one shrinks
+from attempting to deal with it in our narrow space, but though it opens
+up depths beyond our fathoming, and gathers into one concentrated
+brightness lights on which our dim eyes can hardly look, we may venture
+to attempt some imperfect consideration even of these great words.
+Following their course of thought we may deal with
+
+I. The mystery of love that sent.
+
+The most frequent form under which the great fact of the incarnation is
+represented in Scripture is that of our text--'God sent His Son.' It is
+familiar on the lips of Jesus, but He also says that 'God gave His Son.'
+One can feel a shade of difference in the two modes of expression. The
+former bringing rather to our thoughts the representative character of
+the Son as Messenger, and the latter going still deeper into the mystery
+of Godhead and bringing into view the love of the Father who spared not
+His Son but freely bestowed Him on men. Yet another word is used by
+Jesus Himself when He says, 'I came forth from God,' and that expression
+brings into view the perfect willingness with which the Son accepted the
+mission and gave Himself, as well as was given by God. All three phases
+express harmonious, though slightly differing aspects of the same fact,
+as the facets of a diamond might flash into different colours, and all
+must be held fast if we would understand the unspeakable gift of God.
+Jesus was sent; Jesus was given; Jesus came. The mission from the
+Father, the love of the Father, the glad obedience of the Son, must ever
+be recognised as interpenetrating, and all present in that supreme act.
+
+There have been many men specially sent forth from God, whose personal
+existence began with their birth, and so far as the words are concerned,
+Jesus might have been one of these. There was a man sent from God whose
+name was John, and all through the ages he has had many companions in
+his mission, but there has been only one who 'came' as well as 'was
+sent,' and He is the true light which lighteth every man. To speak in
+theological language of the pre-existence of the Son is cold, and may
+obscure the truth which it formulates in so abstract a fashion, and may
+rob it of power to awe and impress. But there can be no question that in
+our text, as is shown by the juxtaposition of 'sent' and 'born,' and in
+all the New Testament references to the subject, the birth of Jesus is
+not regarded as the beginning of the being of the Son. The one lies far
+back in the depths of eternity and the mystery of the divine nature, the
+other is a historical fact occurring in a definite place and at a dated
+moment. Before time was the Son was, delighting in the Father, and 'in
+the beginning was the word and the word was with God,' and He who in
+respect of His expression of the Father's mind and will was the Word,
+was the Son in respect of the love that bound the Father and Him in one.
+Into the mysteries of that love and union no eyes can penetrate, but
+unless our faith lays hold of it, we know not the God whom Jesus has
+declared to us. The mysteries of that divine union and communion lie
+beyond our reach, but well within the grasp of our faith and the work of
+the Son in the world, ever since there was a world, is not obscurely
+declared to all who have eyes to see and hearts to understand. For He
+has through all ages been the active energy of the divine power, or as
+the Old Testament words it, 'The Arm of the Lord,' the Agent of
+creation, the Revealer of God, the Light of the world and the Director
+of Providence. 'He was in the world and the world was made by Him, and
+the world knew Him not.'
+
+Now all this teaching that the Son was long before Jesus was born is no
+mere mysterious dogma without bearing on daily needs, but stands in the
+closest connection with Christ's work and our faith in it. It is the
+guarantee of His representative character; on it depends the
+reliableness of His revelation of God. Unless He is the Son in a unique
+sense, how could God have spoken unto us in Him, and how could we rely
+on His words? Unless He was 'the effulgence of His glory and the express
+image of His person': how could we be sure that the light of His
+countenance was light from God and that in His person God was so
+presented as that he who had seen Him had seen the Father? The
+completeness and veracity of His revelation, the authoritative fulness
+of His law, the efficacy of His sacrifice and the prevalence of His
+intercession all depend on the fact of His divine life with God long
+before His human life with men. It is a plain historical fact that a
+Christianity which has no place for a pre-existent Son in the bosom of
+the Father has only a maimed Christ in reference to the needs of sinful
+men. If our Christ were not the eternal Son of God, He will not be the
+universal Saviour of men.
+
+Nor is this truth less needful in its bearing on modern theories which
+will have nothing to say to the supernatural, and in a fatalistic
+fashion regard history as all the result of an orderly evolution in
+which the importance of personal agents is minimised. To it Jesus, like
+all other great men, is a product of His age, and the immediate result
+of the conditions under which He appeared. But when we look far beyond
+the manger of Bethlehem into the depths of Eternity and see God so
+loving the world as to give His Son, we cannot but recognise that He has
+intervened in the course of human history and that the mightiest force
+in the development of man is the eternal Son whom He sent to save the
+world.
+
+II. The miracle of lowliness that came.
+
+The Apostle goes on from describing the great fact which took place in
+heaven to set forth the great fact which completed it on earth. The
+sending of the Son took effect in the birth of Jesus, and the Apostle
+puts it under two forms, both of which are plainly designed to present
+Christ's manhood as His full identification of Himself with us. The Son
+of God became the son of a woman; from His mother He drew a true and
+complete humanity in body and soul. The humanity which He received was
+sufficiently kindred with the divinity which received it to make it
+possible that the one should dwell in the other and be one person. As
+born of a woman the Son of God took upon Himself all human experiences,
+became capable of sharing our pure emotions, wept our tears, partook in
+our joys, hoped and feared as we do, was subject to our changes, grew as
+we grow, and in everything but sin, was a man amongst men.
+
+But the Son of God could not be as the sons of men. Him the Father
+heard always. Even when He came down from Heaven and became the Son of
+Man, He continued to be 'The Son of Man which is in Heaven.' Amid all
+the distractions and limitations of His earthly life, the continuity and
+depth of His communion with the Father were unbroken and the
+completeness of His obedience undiminished. He was a Man, but He was
+also the Man, the one realised ideal of humanity that has ever walked
+the earth, to whom all others, even the most complete, are fragments,
+the fairest foul, the most gracious harsh. In Him and in Him only has
+been 'given the world assurance of a man.'
+
+The other condition which is here introduced is 'born under the law,' by
+which it may be noted that the Apostle does not mean the Jewish law,
+inasmuch as he does not use the definite article with the word. No doubt
+our Lord was born as a Jew and subject to the Jewish law, but the
+thought here and in the subsequent clause is extended to the general
+notion of law. The very heart of our Lord's human identification is that
+He too had duties imperative upon Him, and the language of one of the
+Messianic psalms was the voice of His filial will during all His earthly
+life; 'Lo! I come, in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I
+delight to do Thy will and Thy law is within My heart.' The very secret
+of His human life was discovered by the heathen centurion, at whose
+faith He marvelled, who said, 'I _also_ am a man under authority'; so
+was Jesus. The Son had ever been obedient in the sweet communion of
+Heaven, but the obedience of Jesus was not less perfect, continual and
+unstained. It was the man Jesus who summed up His earthly life in 'I do
+always the things that please Him'; it was the man Jesus who, under the
+olives in Gethsemane, made the great surrender and yielded up His own
+will to the will of the Father who sent Him.
+
+He was under law in that the will of God dominated His life, but He was
+not so under it as we are on whom its precepts often press as an
+unwelcome obligation, and who know the weight of guilt and condemnation.
+If there is any one characteristic of Jesus more conspicuous than
+another it is the absence in Him of any consciousness of deficiency in
+His obedience to law, and yet that absence does not in the smallest
+degree infringe on His claim to be 'meek and lowly in heart.' 'Which of
+you convinceth Me of sin?' would have been from any other man a defiance
+that would have provoked a crushing answer if it had not been taken as a
+proof of hopeless ignorance of self, but when Christ asks the question,
+the world is silent. The silence has been all but unbroken for nineteen
+hundred years, and of all the busy and often unfriendly eyes that have
+been occupied with Him and the hostile pens that have been eager to say
+something new about Him, none have discovered a flaw, or dared to 'hint
+a fault.' That character has stamped its own impression of perfectness
+on all eyes even the most unfriendly or indifferent. In Him there is
+seen the perfect union and balance of opposite characteristics; the rest
+of us, at the best, are but broken arcs; Jesus is the completed round.
+He is under law as fully, continuously and joyfully obedient; but for
+Him it had no accusing voice, and it laid on Him no burden of broken
+commandments. He was born of a woman, born under law, but he lived
+separate from sinners though identified with them.
+
+III. The marvel of exaltation that results.
+
+Our Lord's lowliness is described in the two clauses which we have just
+been considering. They express His identification with us from a double
+point of view, and that double point of view is continued in the final
+clauses of our text which state the double purpose of God in sending His
+Son. He became one with us that we might become one with Him. The two
+elements of this double purpose are stated in the reverse order to the
+two elements of Christ's lowliness. The redemption of them that were
+under law is presented as the reason for His being born under law, and
+our reception of the 'adoption of sons' is the purpose of the Son's
+being sent and born of a woman. The order in which Paul here deals with
+the two parts of the divine purpose is not to be put down to mere
+rhetorical ornament, but corresponds to the order in which these two
+elements are realised by men. For there must be redemption from law
+before there is the adoption of sons.
+
+We have already had occasion to point out that 'law' here must be taken
+in the wide sense and not restricted to the Jewish law. It is a
+world-wide redemption which the Father's love had in view in sending His
+Son, but that all-comprehending, fatherly love could not reach its aim
+by the mere forth-putting of its own energy. A process was needed if the
+divine heart was to accomplish its desire, and the majestic stages in
+that process are set forth here by Paul. The world was under law in a
+very sad fashion, and though Jesus has come to redeem them that are
+under law, the crushing weight of commandments flouted, of duties
+neglected, of sins done, presses heavily upon many of us. And yet how
+many of us there are who do not know the burden that we carry and have
+had no personal experience like that of Bunyan's Christian with the pack
+on his back all but weighing him down? Jesus Christ has become one of
+us, and in His sinless life has 'magnified the law and made it
+honourable,' and in His sinless death He endures the consequences of
+sin, not as due to Himself, but because they are man's. But we must
+carefully keep in view, that as we have already pointed out, we are to
+think of Christ's mission as His coming as well as the Father's sending,
+and that therefore we do not grasp the full idea of our Lord's enduring
+the consequences of sin unless we take it as meaning His voluntary
+identification of Himself in love with us sinful men. His obedience was
+perfect all His life long, and His last and highest act of obedience was
+when He became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
+
+This is the only means by which the burden of law in any of its forms
+can be taken away from us. For a law which is not loved will be heavy
+and hard however holy and just and good it may be, and a law which we
+have broken will become sooner or later its own avenger. Faithful in
+_Pilgrim's Progress_ tells how 'So soon as a man overtook me he was but
+a word and a blow, for down he knocked me and laid me for dead. . . . He
+struck me another deadly blow on the breast and beat me down backward,
+so I lay at his foot as dead as before, so when I came to myself again I
+cried him "Mercy," but he said, "I know not how to show mercy," and with
+that knocked me down again; he had doubtless made an end of me but that
+one came by and bid him forbear. . . . I did not know him at first, but as
+he went by I perceived the holes in his hands and in his sides.' He was
+born under law that He might redeem them that were under law.
+
+The slaves bought into freedom are received into the great family. The
+Son has become flesh that they who dwell in the flesh may rise to be
+sons, but the Son stands alone even in the midst of His identification
+with us, and of the great results which follow for us from it. He is the
+Son by nature; we are sons by adoption. He became man that we might
+share in the possession of God. When the burden of law is lifted off it
+is possible to bestow the further blessing of sonship, but that blessing
+is only possible through Him in whom, and from whom, we derive a life
+which is divine life. There is a profound truth in the prophetic
+sentence, 'Behold I and the children which God hath given me!' for, in
+one aspect, believers are the children of Christ, and in another, they
+are sons of God.
+
+We have been speaking of the Son's identification with us in His
+mission, and our identification with Him, but that identification
+depends on ourselves and is only an accomplished fact through our faith.
+When we trust in Him it is true that all His--His righteousness, His
+Sonship, His union with the Father--is ours, and that all ours--our
+sins, our guilt, our alienation from God and our dwelling in the far-off
+land of rags and vice--is His. In His voluntary identification with us,
+He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. It is for us to
+determine whether we will lay on Him our iniquities, as the Father has
+already laid the iniquities of us all. Are we by faith in Him who was
+born of a woman, born under law, making our very own the redemption from
+the law which He has wrought and the adoption of sons which He bestows?
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MAKES A CHRISTIAN: CIRCUMCISION OR FAITH?
+
+          'In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any
+          thing, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh
+          by love.'--GAL. v. 6.
+
+
+It is a very singular instance of imaginative misreading of plain facts
+that the primitive Church should be held up as a pattern Church. The
+early communities had apostolic teaching; but beyond that, they seem to
+have been in no respect above, and in many respects below, the level of
+subsequent ages. If we may judge of their morality by the exhortations
+and dehortations which they received from the Apostle, Corinth and
+Thessalonica were but beginners in holiness. If we may judge of their
+intelligence by the errors into which they were in danger of falling,
+these first congregations had indeed need that one should teach them
+which were the first principles of the oracles of God. It could not be
+otherwise. They were but just rescued from heathenism, and we need not
+wonder if their spirits long bore the scars of their former bondage. If
+we wish to know what the apostolic churches were like, we have but to
+look at the communities gathered by modern missionaries. The same
+infantile simplicity, the same partial apprehensions of the truth, the
+same danger of being led astray by the low morality of their heathen
+kindred, the same openness to strange heresy, the same danger of
+blending the old with the new, in opinion and in practice, beset both.
+
+The history of the first theological difference in the early churches is
+a striking confutation of the dream that they were perfect, and a
+striking illustration of the dangers to which they were exposed from
+the attempt, so natural to us all, to put new wine into old bottles. The
+Jewish and the Gentile elements did not coalesce. The point round which
+the strife was waged was not whether Gentiles might come into the
+Church. That was conceded by the fiercest Judaisers. But it was whether
+they could come in as Gentiles, without first being incorporated into
+the Jewish nation by circumcision, and whether they could remain in as
+Gentiles, without conforming to Jewish ceremonial and law.
+
+Those who said 'No' _were_ members of the Christian communities, and,
+being so, they still insisted that Judaism was to be eternal. They
+demanded that the patched and stiff leathern bottle, which had no
+elasticity or pliability, should still contain the quick fermenting new
+wine of the kingdom. And certainly, if ever man had excuse for clinging
+to what was old and formal, these Judaising Christians held it. They
+held by a law written with God's own finger, by ordinances awful by
+reason of divine appointment, venerable by reason of the generations to
+which they had been of absolute authority, commended by the very example
+of Christ Himself. Every motive which can bind heart and conscience to
+the reverence and the practice of the traditions of the Fathers, bound
+them to the Law and the ordinances which had been Israel's treasure from
+Abraham to Jesus.
+
+Those who said 'Yes' were mostly Gentiles, headed and inspired by a
+Hebrew of the Hebrews. They believed that Judaism was preparatory, and
+that its work was done. For those among themselves who were Jews, they
+were willing that its laws should still be obligatory; but they fought
+against the attempt to compel all Gentile converts to enter Christ's
+kingdom through the gate of circumcision.
+
+The fight was stubborn and bitter. I suppose it is harder to abolish
+forms than to change opinions. Ceremonies stand long after the thought
+which they express has fled, as a dead king may sit on his throne stiff
+and stark in his golden mantle, and no one come near enough to see that
+the light is gone out of his eyes, and the will departed from the hand
+that still clutches the sceptre. All through Paul's life he was dogged
+and tormented by this controversy. There was a deep gulf between the
+churches he planted and this reactionary section of the Christian
+community. Its emissaries were continually following in his footsteps.
+As he bitterly reproaches them, they entered upon another man's line of
+things made ready to their hand, not caring to plant churches of
+circumcised Gentiles themselves, but starting up behind him as soon as
+his back was turned, and spoiling his work.
+
+This Epistle is the memorial of that foot-to-foot feud. It is of
+perennial use, as the tendencies against which it is directed are
+constant in human nature. Men are ever apt to confound form and
+substance, to crave material embodiments of spiritual realities, to
+elevate outward means into the place of the inward and real, to which
+all the outward is but subsidiary. In every period of strife between the
+two great opponents, this letter has been the stronghold of those who
+fight for the spiritual conception of religion. With it Luther waged his
+warfare, and in this day, too, its words are precious.
+
+My text contains Paul's condensed statement of his whole position in the
+controversy. It tells us what he fought for, and why he fought, against
+the attempt to suspend union to Christ on an outward rite.
+
+I. The first grand principle contained in these words is that faith
+working by love makes a Christian.
+
+The antithesis of our text appears in somewhat varied forms in two other
+places in the Apostle's writings. To the Corinthians he says,
+'Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping
+of the commandments of God.' His last word to the Galatians--the
+gathering up into one strong sentence of his whole letter--is, 'In
+Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor
+uncircumcision, but a new creature.'
+
+Now, all these assertions embody substantially the same opposition
+between the conception of Christianity as depending upon a ceremonial
+rite, and as being a spiritual change. And the variations in the second
+member of the contrast throw light on each other. In one, the essential
+thing is regarded from the divine side as being not a rite performed on
+the body, but a new nature, the result of a supernatural regeneration.
+In another, the essential thing is set forth as being not an outward
+act, but an inward principle, which produces appropriate effects on the
+whole being. In yet another the essential thing is conceived as being
+not a mere ceremonial, but practical obedience, the consequence of the
+active principle of faith, and the sign of the new life. There is an
+evident sequence in the three sayings. They begin with the deepest, the
+divine act of a new creation--and end with the outermost, the last
+result and object of both the others--deeds of conformity to God's law.
+
+This one process in its triple aspects, says Paul, constitutes a man a
+Christian. What correspondence is there between it, in any of its
+parts, and a carnal ordinance? They belong to wholly different
+categories, and it is the most preposterous confusion to try to mix them
+up together. Are we to tack on to the solemn powers and qualities, which
+unite the soul to Christ, this beggarly addition that the Judaisers
+desire, and to say, the essentials of Christianity are a new creature,
+faith, obedience--and circumcision? That is, indeed, sewing old cloth on
+a new garment, and huddling together in grotesque chaos things which are
+utterly diverse. It is as absurd bathos as to say the essentials of a
+judge are integrity, learning, patience--and an ermine robe!
+
+There would be less danger of being entangled in false notions of the
+sort which devastated Galatia and have afflicted the Church ever since,
+if people would put a little more distinctly before their own minds what
+they mean by 'religion'; what sort of man they intend when they talk
+about 'a Christian.' A clear notion of the thing to be produced would
+thin away a wonderful deal of mist as to the way of producing it. So
+then, beginning at the surface, in order to work inward, my first remark
+is that religion is the harmony of the soul with God, and the conformity
+of the life to His law.
+
+The loftiest purpose of God, in all His dealings, is to make us like
+Himself; and the end of all religion is the complete accomplishment of
+that purpose. There is no religion without these elements--consciousness
+of kindred with God, recognition of Him as the sum of all excellence and
+beauty, and of His will as unconditionally binding upon us, aspiration
+and effort after a full accord of heart and soul with Him and with His
+law, and humble confidence that that sovereign beauty will be ours. 'Be
+ye imitators of God as dear children' is the pure and comprehensive
+dictate which expresses the aim of all devout men. 'To keep His
+commandments' goes deeper than the mere external deeds. Were it not so,
+Paul's grand words would shrink to a very poor conception of religion,
+which would then have its shrine and sphere removed from the sacred
+recesses of the inmost spirit to the dusty Babel of the market-place and
+the streets. But with that due and necessary extension of the words
+which results from the very nature of the case, that obedience must be
+the obedience of a man, and not of his deeds only, and must include the
+submission of the will and the prostration of the whole nature before
+Him; they teach a truth which, fully received and carried out, clears
+away whole mountains of theoretical confusion and practical error.
+Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of
+actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right
+emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the
+semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or
+apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the
+Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its
+worship. But to be godly is to be godlike. The full accord of all the
+soul with His character, in whom, as their native home, dwell
+'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,' and the full
+glad conformity of the will to His sovereign will, who is the life of
+our lives--this, and nothing shallower, nothing narrower, is religion in
+its perfection; and the measure in which we have attained to this
+harmony with God, is the measure in which we are Christians. As two
+stringed instruments may be so tuned to one keynote that, if you strike
+the one, a faint ethereal echo is heard from the other, which blends
+undistinguishably with its parent sound; so, drawing near to God, and
+brought into unison with His mind and will, our responsive spirits
+vibrate in accord with His, and give forth tones, low and thin indeed,
+but still repeating the mighty music of heaven. 'Circumcision is
+nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the
+commandments of God.'
+
+But our text tells us, further, that if we look backwards from character
+and deed to motive, this harmony with God results from love becoming the
+ruling power of our lives. The imitation of the object of worship has
+always been felt to be the highest form of worship. Many an ancient
+teacher, besides the Stoic philosopher, has said, 'He who copies the
+gods worships them adequately.' One of the prophets lays it down as a
+standing rule, 'The people will walk every one in the name of his God.'
+But it is only in the Christian attitude towards God that the motive
+power is found which makes such imitation more than an impossible duty,
+even as it is only in the revealed character of God that a pattern is
+found, to imitate which is to be perfect. Everywhere besides, harmony
+with the gods meant discord with conscience and flagrant outrages of the
+commonest moralities. Everywhere else, the task of copying them was one
+lightened by no clear confidence in their love, and by no happy
+consciousness of our own. But for us, the love revealed is the perfect
+law, and the love evoked is the fulfilling of the law.
+
+And this is the might and nobleness of the Christian love to God; that
+it is no idle emotion or lazy rapture, no vague sentiment, but the root
+of all practical goodness, of all strenuous effort, of all virtue, and
+of all praise. That strong tide is meant to drive the busy wheels of
+life and to bear precious freightage on its bosom; not to flow away in
+profitless foam. Love is the fruitful mother of bright children, as our
+great moralist-poet learned when he painted her in the House of
+Holiness:
+
+          'A multitude of babes about her hung,
+           Playing their sport that joyed her to behold.'
+
+Her sons are Strength and Justice, and Self-control and Firmness, and
+Courage and Patience, and many more besides; and her daughters are Pity
+with her sad eyes, and Gentleness with her silvery voice, and Mercy
+whose sweet face makes sunshine in the shade of death, and Humility all
+unconscious of her loveliness; and linked hand in hand with these, all
+the radiant band of sisters that men call Virtues and Graces. These will
+dwell in our hearts, if Love their mighty mother be there. If we are
+without her, we shall be without them.
+
+There is discord between man and God which can only be removed by the
+sweet commerce of love, established between earth and heaven. God's love
+has come to us. When ours springs responsive to Him, then the schism is
+ended, and the wandering child forgets his rebellion, as he lays his
+aching head on the father's bosom, and feels the beating of the father's
+heart. Our souls by reason of sin are 'like sweet bells jangled, out of
+tune and harsh.' Love's master hand laid upon them restores to them
+their part in 'the fair music that all creatures make to their great
+Lord,' and brings us into such accord with God that
+
+          'We on earth with undiscording voice
+           May rightly answer'
+
+even the awful harmonies of His lips. The essential of religion is
+concord with God, and the power which makes that concord is love to God.
+
+But this text leads to a still further consideration, namely, the
+dominion of love to God in our hearts arises from faith.
+
+We thus reach the last link, or rather the staple, of the chain from
+which all hangs. Religion is harmony with God; that harmony is produced
+by love; and that love is produced by faith. Therefore the fundamental
+of all Christianity in the soul is faith. Would this sound any fresher
+and more obvious if we varied the language, and said that to be
+religious we must be like God, that to be like Him we must love Him, and
+that to love Him we must be sure that He loves us? Surely that is too
+plain to need enlarging on.
+
+And is it not true that faith must precede our love to God, and affords
+the only possible basis on which that can be built? How can we love Him
+so long as we are in doubt of His heart, or misconceive His character,
+as if it were only power and wisdom, or awful severity? Men cannot love
+an unseen person at all, without some very special token of his personal
+affection for them. The history of all religions shows that where the
+gods have been thought of as unloving, the worshippers have been
+heartless too. It is only when we know and believe the love that God
+hath to us, that we come to cherish any corresponding emotion to Him.
+Our love is secondary, His is primary; ours is reflection, His the
+original beam; ours is echo, His the mother-tone. Heaven must bend to
+earth before earth can rise to heaven. The skies must open and drop down
+love, ere love can spring in the fruitful fields. And it is only when we
+look with true trust to that great unveiling of the heart of God which
+is in Jesus Christ, only when we can say, 'Herein is love--that He gave
+His Son to be the propitiation for our sins,' that our hearts are
+melted, and all their snows are dissolved into sweet waters, which,
+freed from their icy chains, can flow with music in their ripple and
+fruitfulness along their course, through our otherwise silent and barren
+lives. Faith in Christ is the only possible basis for active love to
+God.
+
+And this thought presents the point of contact between the teaching of
+Paul and John. The one dwells on faith, the other on love, but he who
+insists most on the former declares that it produces its effects on
+character by the latter; and he who insists most on the latter is
+forward to proclaim that it owes its very existence to the former.
+
+It presents also the point of contact between Paul and James. The one
+speaks of the essential of Christianity as faith, the other as works.
+They are only striking the stream at different points, one at the
+fountain-head, one far down its course among the haunts of men. They
+both preach that faith must be 'faith that worketh,' not a barren assent
+to a dogma, but a living trust that brings forth fruits in the life.
+Paul believes as much as James that faith without works is dead, and
+demands the keeping of the commandments as indispensable to all true
+Christianity. James believes as much as Paul that works without faith
+are of none effect. So all three of these great teachers of the Church
+are represented in this text, to which each of them might seem to have
+contributed a word embodying his characteristic type of doctrine. The
+threefold rays into which the prism parts the white light blend again
+here, where faith, love, and work are all united in the comprehensive
+saying, 'In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor
+uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.'
+
+The sum of the whole matter is this--He who is one in will and heart
+with God is a Christian. He who loves God is one in will and heart with
+Him. He who trusts Christ loves God. That is Christianity in its
+ultimate purpose and result. That is Christianity in its means and
+working forces. That is Christianity in its starting-point and
+foundation.
+
+II. But we have to consider also the negative side of the Apostle's
+words. They affirm that in comparison with the essential--faith, all
+externals are infinitely unimportant.
+
+Paul's habit was always to settle questions by the widest principles he
+could bring to bear upon them--which one may notice in passing is the
+very opposite to the method that has been in favour with many Church
+teachers and guides since, who have preferred to live from hand to
+mouth, and to dispose of difficulties by the narrowest considerations
+that would avail to quiet them. In our text the question in hand is
+settled on a ground which covers a great deal more than the existing
+dispute. Circumcision is regarded as one of a whole class--namely, the
+class of outward rites and observances; and the contrast drawn between
+it and faith extends to all the class to which it belongs. It is not
+said to be powerless because it is an Old Testament rite, but because it
+is a rite. Its impotence lies in the very nature which it has in common
+with all external institutions, whether they be of the Old Testament or
+of the New, whether they be enjoined of God or invented by men. To them
+all the same characteristic cleaves. Compared with faith they are of no
+avail. Not that they are absolutely useless. They have their place, but
+'_in Christ Jesus_' they are nothing. Union to Him depends on quite
+another order of facts, which may or may not exist along with
+circumcision, or with baptism, or with the Lord's Supper. However
+important these may be, they have no place among the things which bind a
+soul to its Saviour. They may be helps to these things, but nothing
+more. The rite does not ensure the faith, else the antithesis of our
+text were unmeaning. The rite does not stand in the place of faith, or
+the contrast implied were absurd. But the two belong to totally
+different orders of things, which may co-exist indeed, but may also be
+found separately; the one is the indispensable spiritual experience
+which makes us Christians, the other belongs to a class of material
+institutions which are much as helps to, but nothing as substitutes or
+equivalents for, faith.
+
+Keep firm hold of the positive principle with which we have been dealing
+in the former part of this sermon, and all forms and externals fall as a
+matter of course into their proper place. If religion be the loving
+devotion of the soul to God, resting upon reasonable faith, then all
+besides is, at the most, a means which may further it. If loving trust
+which apprehends the truth, and cleaves to the Person, revealed to us in
+the Gospel, be the link which binds men to God, then the only way by
+which these externals can be 'means of grace' is by their aiding us to
+understand better and to feel more the truth as it is in Jesus, and to
+cleave closer to Him who is the truth. Do they enlighten the
+understanding? Do they engrave deeper the loved face carven on the
+tablets of memory, which the attrition of worldly cares is ever
+obliterating, and the lichens of worldly thoughts ever filling up? Do
+they clear out the rubbish from the channels of the heart, that the
+cleansing stream may flow through them? Do they, through the senses,
+minister to the soul its own proper food of clear thought, vivid
+impressions, loving affections, trustful obedience? Do they bring Christ
+to us, and us to Him, in the only way in which approach is
+possible--through the occupation of mind and heart and will with His
+great perfectness? Then they are means of grace, precious and helpful,
+the gifts of His love, the tokens of His wise knowledge of our weakness,
+the signs of His condescension, in that He stoops to trust some portion
+of our remembrance of Him to the ministry of sense. But in comparison
+with that faith which they cannot plant, though they may strengthen it,
+they are nothing; and in the matter of uniting the soul to God and
+making men 'religious,' they are of no avail at all.
+
+And such thoughts as these have a very wide sweep, as well as a very
+deep influence. Religion is the devotion of the soul to God. Then
+_everything_ besides is not religion, but at most a means to it. That is
+true about all Christian ordinances. Baptism is spoken about by Paul in
+terms which plainly show that he regarded it as 'nothing' in the same
+sense, and under the same limitations, as he thought that circumcision
+was nothing. 'I baptized some of you,' says he to the Corinthians; 'I
+scarcely remember whom, or how many. I have far more important work to
+do--to preach the Gospel.' It is true about all acts and forms of
+Christian worship. These are not religion, but means to it. Their only
+value and their only test is--Do they help men to know and feel Christ
+and His truth? It is true about laws of life, and many points of
+conventional morality. Remember the grand freedom with which the same
+Apostle dealt with questions about meats offered to idols, and the
+observance of days and seasons. The same principle guided him there too,
+and he relegated the whole question back to its proper place with, 'Meat
+commendeth us not to God; for neither if we eat are we the better,
+neither if we eat not are we the worse.' 'He that regardeth the day,
+regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the
+Lord he doth not regard it.' It is true, though less obviously and
+simply, about subordinate doctrines. It is true about the mere
+intellectual grasp of the fundamental truths of God's revelation. These,
+and the belief of these, are not Christianity, they are helps towards
+it.
+
+The separation is broad and deep. On one side are all externals, rites,
+ceremonies, politics, Church arrangements, forms of worship, modes of
+life, practices of morality, doctrines, and creeds--all which are
+externals to the soul: on the other is faith working through love, the
+inmost attitude and deepest emotion of the soul. The great heap is fuel.
+The flame is loving faith. The only worth of the fuel is to feed the
+flame. Otherwise it is of no avail, but lies dead and cold, a mass of
+blackness. We are joined to God by faith. Whatever strengthens that
+faith is precious as a help, but is worthless as a substitute.
+
+III. There is a constant tendency to exalt these unimportant externals
+into the place of faith.
+
+The whole purpose of the Gospel may be described to be our deliverance
+from the dominion of sense, and the transference of the centre of our
+life to the unseen world. This end is no doubt partly accomplished by
+the help of sense. So long as men have bodily organisations, there will
+be need for outward helps. Men's indolence, and men's sense-ridden
+natures, will take symbols for royalties, bank-notes for wealth. The
+eye will be tempted to stay on the rich colours of the glowing glass,
+instead of passing through them to heaven's light beyond. To make the
+senses a ladder for the soul to climb to heaven by, will be perilously
+likely to end in the soul going down the ladder instead of up. Forms are
+sure to encroach, to overlay the truth that lies at their root, to
+become dimly intelligible, or quite unmeaning, and to constitute at last
+the end instead of the means. Is it not then wise to minimise these
+potent and dangerous allies? Is it not needful to use them with the
+remembrance that a minute quantity may strengthen, but an overdose will
+kill--ay, and that the minute quantity may kill too? Christ instituted
+two outward rites. There could not have been fewer if there was to be an
+outward community at all, and they could not have been simpler; but look
+at the portentous outgrowth of superstition, and the unnumbered evils,
+religious, moral, social, and even political, which have come from the
+invincible tendency of human nature to corrupt forms, even when the
+forms are the sweet and simple ones of Christ's own appointment. What a
+lesson the history of the Lord's Supper, and its gradual change from the
+domestic memorial of the dying love of our Lord to the 'tremendous
+sacrifice,' reads us as to the dangerous ally which spiritual
+religion--and there is no other religion than spiritual--enlists when it
+seeks the help of external rites!
+
+But remember that this danger of converting religion into outward
+actions has its root in us all, and is not annihilated by our rejection
+of an elaborate ceremonial. There is much significance in the double
+negation of my text, 'Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.' If the
+Judaisers were tempted to insist on the former, as indispensable, their
+antagonists were as much tempted to insist on the latter. The one were
+saying, 'A man cannot be a Christian unless he be circumcised.' The
+other would be in danger of replying, 'He cannot be a Christian if he
+is.' There may be as much formalism in protesting against forms as in
+using them. Extremes meet; and an unspiritual Quaker, for instance, is
+at bottom of the same way of thinking as an unspiritual Roman Catholic.
+They agree in their belief that certain outward acts are essential to
+worship, and even to religion. They only differ as to what these acts
+are. The Judaiser who says, 'You must be circumcised,' and his
+antagonist who says, 'You must be uncircumcised,' are really in the same
+boat.
+
+And this is especially needful to be kept in mind by those who, like the
+most of us, hold fast by the free and spiritual conception of
+Christianity. That freedom we may turn into a bondage, and that
+spirituality into a form, if we confound it with the essentials of
+Christianity, and deny the possibility of the life being developed
+except in conjunction with it. My text has a double edge. Let us use it
+against all this Judaising which is going on round about us, and against
+all the tendency to it in our own hearts. The one edge smites the
+former, the other edge the latter. Circumcision is nothing, as most of
+us are forward to proclaim. But, also, remember, when we are tempted to
+trust in our freedom, and to fancy that in itself it is good,
+_uncircumcision is nothing_. You are no more a Christian for your
+rejection of forms than another man is for his holding them. Your
+negation no more unites you to Christ than does his affirmation. One
+thing alone does that,--faith which worketh by love, against which sense
+ever wars, both by tempting some of us to place religion in outward
+acts and ceremonies, and by tempting others of us to place it in
+rejecting the forms which our brethren abuse.
+
+IV. When an indifferent thing is made into an essential, it ceases to be
+indifferent, and must be fought against.
+
+Paul proclaimed that circumcision and uncircumcision were alike
+unavailing. A man might be a good Christian either way. They were not
+unimportant in all respects, but in regard to being united to Christ, it
+did not matter which side one took. And, in accordance with this noble
+freedom, he for himself practised Jewish rites; and, when he thought it
+might conciliate prejudice without betraying principle, had Timothy
+circumcised. But when it came to be maintained as a principle that
+Gentiles _must_ be circumcised, the time for conciliation was past. The
+other side had made further concession impossible. The Apostle had no
+objection to circumcision. What he objected to was its being forced upon
+all as a necessary preliminary to entering the Church. And as soon as
+the opposite party took that ground, then there was nothing for it but
+to fight against them to the last. They had turned an indifferent thing
+into an essential, and he could no longer treat it as indifferent.
+
+So whenever parties or Churches insist on external rites as essential,
+or elevate any of the subordinate means of grace into the place of the
+one bond which fastens our souls to Jesus, and is the channel of grace
+as well as the bond of union, then it is time to arm for the defence of
+the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, and to resist the attempt to bind
+on free shoulders the iron yoke. Let men and parties do as they like, so
+long as they do not turn their forms into essentials. In broad freedom
+of speech and spirit, which holds by the one central principle too
+firmly to be much troubled about subordinate matters--in tolerance of
+diversities, which does not spring from indifference, but from the very
+clearness of our perception of, and from the very fervour of our
+adherence to, the one essential of the Christian life--let us take for
+our guide the large, calm, lofty thoughts which this text sets forth
+before us. Let us thankfully believe that men may love Jesus, and be fed
+from His fulness, whether they be on one side of this undying
+controversy or on the other. Let us watch jealously the tendencies in
+our own hearts to trust in our forms or in our freedom. And whensoever
+or wheresoever these subordinates are made into things essential, and
+the ordinances of Christ's Church are elevated into the place which
+belongs to loving trust in Christ's love, then let _our_ voices at least
+be heard on the side of that mighty truth that 'in Jesus Christ neither
+circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which
+worketh by love.'
+
+
+
+
+'WALK IN THE SPIRIT'
+
+          'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+          lust of the flesh.'--GAL. v. 16.
+
+
+We are not to suppose that the Apostle here uses the familiar contrast
+of spirit and flesh to express simply different elements of human
+nature. Without entering here on questions for which a sermon is
+scarcely a suitable vehicle of discussion, it may be sufficient for our
+present purpose to say that, as usually, when employing this antithesis
+the Apostle means by Spirit the divine, the Spirit of God, which he
+triumphed in proclaiming to be the gift of every believing soul. The
+other member of the contrast, 'flesh,' is similarly not to be taken as
+equivalent to body, but rather as meaning the whole human nature
+considered as apart from God and kindred with earth and earthly things.
+The flesh, in its narrower sense, is no doubt a predominant part of this
+whole, but there is much in it besides the material organisation. The
+ethics of Christianity suffered much harm and were degraded into a false
+and slavish asceticism for long centuries, by monastic misunderstandings
+of what Paul meant by the flesh, but he himself was too clear-sighted
+and too high-toned to give his adhesion to the superficial notion that
+the body is the seat and source of sin. We need look no further than the
+catalogue of the 'works of the flesh' which immediately follows our
+text, for, although it begins with gross sins of a purely fleshly kind,
+it passes on to such as hatred, emulations, wrath, envyings and
+suchlike. Many of these works of the flesh are such as an angel with an
+evil heart could do, whether he had a body or not. It seems therefore
+right to say that the one member of the contrast is the divine Spirit of
+holiness, and the other is man as he is, without the life-giving
+influence of the Spirit of God. In Paul's thought the idea of the flesh
+always included the idea of sin, and the desires of the flesh were to
+him not merely rebellious, sensuous passion, but the sinful desires of
+godless human nature, however refined, and as some would say,
+'spiritual' these might be. We do not need to inquire more minutely as
+to the meaning of the Apostle's terms, but may safely take them as, on
+the one hand, referring to the divine Spirit which imparts life and
+holiness, and on the other hand, to human nature severed from God, and
+distracted by evil desires because wrenched away from Him.
+
+The text is Paul's battle-cry, which he opposed to the Judaising
+disturbers in Galatia. They said 'Do this and that; labour at a round of
+observances; live by rule.' Paul said, 'No! That is of no use; you will
+make nothing of such an attempt nor will ever conquer evil so. Live by
+the spirit and you will not need a hard outward law, nor will you be in
+bondage to the works of the flesh.' That feud in the Galatian churches
+was the earliest battle which Christianity had to fight between two
+eternal tendencies of thought--the conception of religion as consisting
+in outward obedience to a law, and consequently as made up of a series
+of painful efforts to keep it, and the conception of religion as being
+first the implanting of a new, divine life, and needing only to be
+nourished and cared for in order to drive forth evils from the heart,
+and so to show itself living. The difference goes very far and very
+deep, and these two views of what religion is have each their adherents
+to-day. The Apostle throws the whole weight of his authority into the
+one scale, and emphatically declares this as the one secret of victory,
+'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.'
+
+I. What it is to walk in the Spirit.
+
+The thought which is but touched upon here is set forth more largely,
+and if we may so say, profoundly, in the Epistle to the Romans (chap.
+viii.). There, to walk after the flesh, is substantially the same as to
+be carnally minded, and that 'mind of the flesh' is regarded as being by
+fatal necessity not 'subject to the law of God,' and consequently as in
+itself, with regard to future consequences, to be death. The fleshly
+mind which is thus in rebellion against the law of God is sure to issue
+in 'desires of the flesh,' just as when the pressure is taken off, some
+ebullient liquid will bubble. They that are after the flesh of course
+will 'mind the things of the flesh.' The vehement desires which we
+cherish when we are separated from God and which we call sins, are
+graver as a symptom than even they are in themselves, for they show
+which way the wind blows, and are tell-tales that betray the true
+direction of our nature. If we were not after the flesh we should not
+mind the things of the flesh. The one expression points to the
+deep-seated nature, the other to the superficial actions to which it
+gives rise.
+
+And the same duality belongs to the life of those who are 'after the
+Spirit.' 'To walk,' of course, means to carry on the practical life, and
+the Spirit is here thought of not so much perhaps as the path on which
+we are to travel, but rather as the norm and direction by which we are
+to travel on life's common way. Just as the desires of the flesh were
+certain to be done by those who in their deepest selves belonged to the
+flesh, so every soul which has received the unspeakable gift of newness
+of life through the Spirit of God will have the impulses to mind and do
+the things of the Spirit. If we live in the Spirit we shall also--and
+let us also--walk in the Spirit.
+
+But let us make no mistakes, or think that our text in its great
+commandment and radiant hope has any word of cheer to those who have not
+received into their hearts, in however feeble a manner and minute a
+measure, the Spirit of the Son. The first question for us all is, have
+we received the Holy Ghost?--and the answer to that question is the
+answer to the other, have we accepted Christ? It is through Him and
+through faith in Him that that supreme gift of a living spirit is
+bestowed. And only when our spirits bear witness with that Spirit that
+we are the children of God, have we a right to look upon the text as
+pointing our duty and stimulating our hope. If our practical life is to
+be directed by the Spirit of God, He must enter into our spirits, and we
+shall not be in Him but in the measure that He is in us. Nor will our
+spirits be life because of righteousness unless He dwells in us and
+casts forth the works of the flesh. There will be no practical direction
+of our lives by the Spirit of God unless we make conscience of
+cultivating the reception of His life-giving and cleansing influences,
+and unless we have inward communion with our inward guide, intimate and
+frank, prolonged and submissive. If we are for ever allowing the light
+of our inward godliness to be blown about by gusts, or to show in our
+inmost hearts but a faint and flickering spark, how can we expect that
+it will shine safe direction on our outward path?
+
+II. Such walking in the Spirit conquers the flesh.
+
+We all know it as a familiar experience that the surest way to conquer
+any strong desire or emotion is to bring some other into operation. To
+concentrate attention on any overmastering thought or purpose, even if
+our object is to destroy it, is but too apt to strengthen it. And so to
+fix our minds on our own desires of the flesh, even though we may be
+honestly wishing to suppress them, is a sure way to invest them with new
+force; therefore the wise counsels of sages and moralists are, for the
+most part, destined to lead those who listen to them astray. Many a man
+has, in good faith, set himself to conquer his own evil lusts and has
+found that the nett result of his struggles has been to make the lusts
+more conspicuous and correspondingly more powerful. The Apostle knows a
+better way, which he has proved to his own experience, and now, with
+full confidence and triumph, presses upon his hearers. He would have
+them give up the monotonous and hopeless fight against the flesh and
+bring another ally into the field. His chief exhortation is a positive,
+not a negative one. It is vain to try to tie up men with restrictions
+and prohibitions, which when their desires are stirred will be burst
+like Samson's bonds. But if once the positive exhortation here is
+obeyed, then it will surely make short work of the desires and passions
+which otherwise men, for the most part, do not wish to get rid of, and
+never do throw off by any other method.
+
+We have pointed out that in our text to walk in the Spirit means to
+regulate the practical life by the Spirit of God, and that the 'desires
+of the flesh' mean the desires of the whole human nature apart from God.
+But even if we take the contrasted terms in their lower and commonly
+adopted sense, the text is true and useful. A cultivated mind habituated
+to lofty ideas, and quick to feel the nobility of 'spiritual' pursuits
+and possessions, will have no taste for the gross delights of sense, and
+will recoil with disgust from the indulgences in which more animal
+natures wallow. But while this is true, it by no means exhausts the
+great principle laid down here. We must take the contrasted terms in
+their fullest meaning if we would arrive at it. The spiritual life
+derived from Jesus Christ and lodged in the human spirit has to be
+guarded, cherished and made dominant, and then it will drive out the
+old. If the Spirit which is life because of righteousness is allowed
+free course in a human spirit, it will send forth its powers into the
+body which is 'dead because of sin,' will regulate its desires, and if
+needful will suppress them. And it is wiser and more blessed to rely on
+this overflowing influence than to attempt the hopeless task of coercing
+these desires by our own efforts.
+
+If we walk in the Spirit, we shall thereby acquire new tastes and
+desires of a higher kind which will destroy the lower. They to whom
+manna is sweet as angel's food find that they have lost their relish for
+the strong-smelling and rank-flavoured Egyptian leeks and garlic. A
+guest at a king's table will not care to enter a smoky hovel and will
+not be hungry for the food to be found there. If we are still dependent
+on the desires of the flesh we are still but children, and if we are
+walking in the Spirit we have outgrown our childish toys. The enjoyment
+of the gifts which the Spirit gives deadens temptation and robs many
+things that were very precious of their lustre.
+
+We may also illustrate the great principle of our text by considering
+that when we have found our supreme object there is no inducement to
+wander further in the search after delights. Desires are confessions of
+discontent, and though the absolute satisfaction of all our nature is
+not granted to us here, there is so much of blessedness given and so
+many of our most clamant desires fully met in the gift of life in
+Christ, that we may well be free from the prickings of desires which
+sting men into earnest seeking after often unreal good. 'The fruit of
+the Spirit is love, joy, peace,' and surely if we have these we may well
+leave the world its troubled delights and felicities. Christ's joy
+remains in us and our joy is full. The world desires because it does not
+possess. When a deeper well is sunk, a shallower one is pretty sure to
+give out. If we walk in the Spirit we go down to the deepest
+water-holding stratum, and all the surface wells will run dry.
+
+Further, we may note, that this walking in the Spirit brings into our
+lives the mightiest motives of holy living and so puts a bridle on the
+necks and a bit in the mouths of our untamed desires. Holding fellowship
+with the divine Indweller and giving the reins into His strong hand, we
+receive from Him the spirit of adoption and learn that if we are
+children then are we heirs. Is there any motive that will so surely
+still the desires of the flesh and of the mind as the blessed thought
+that God is ours and we His? Surely their feet should never stumble or
+stray, who are aware of the Spirit of the Son bearing witness with their
+spirit that they are the children of God. Surely the measure in which we
+realise this will be the measure in which the desires of the flesh will
+be whipped back to their kennels, and cease to disturb us with their
+barks.
+
+The whole question here as between Paul and his opponents just comes to
+this; if a field is covered with filth, whether is it better to set to
+work on it with wheel-barrows and shovels, or to turn a river on it
+which will bear away all the foulness? The true way to change the fauna
+and flora of a country is to change the level, and as the height
+increases they change themselves. If we desire to have the noxious
+creatures expelled from ourselves, we must not so much labour at their
+expulsion as see to the elevation of our own personal being and then we
+shall succeed. That is what Paul says, 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall
+not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.'
+
+III. Such a life is not freed from the necessity of struggle.
+
+The highest condition, of course, would be that we had only to grow, not
+to fight. It will come some day that all evil shall drop away, and that
+to walk in the Spirit will need no effort, but that time has not come
+yet. So in addition to all that we have been saying in this sermon, we
+must further say that Paul's exhortation has always to be coupled with
+the other to fight the good fight. The highest word for our earthly
+lives is not 'victory' but 'contest.' We shall not walk in the Spirit
+without many a struggle to keep ourselves within that charmed
+atmosphere. The promise of our text is not that we shall not feel, but
+that we shall not fulfil, the desires of the flesh.
+
+Now this is very commonplace and threadbare teaching, but it is none the
+less important, and is especially needful to be strongly emphasised when
+we have been speaking as we have just been doing. It is a historical
+fact, illustrated over and over again since Paul wrote, and not without
+illustration to-day, that there is constant danger of lax morality
+infecting Christian life under pretence of lofty spirituality. So it
+must ever be insisted upon that the test of a true walking in the Spirit
+is that we are thereby fitted to fight against the desires of the flesh.
+When we have the life of the Spirit within us, it will show itself as
+Paul has said in another place by the righteousness of the law being
+fulfilled in us, and by our 'mortifying the deeds of the body.' The gift
+of the Spirit does not take us out of the ranks of the combatants, but
+teaches us to fight, and arms us with its own sword for the conflict.
+There will be abundant opportunities of courage in attacking the sin
+that doth so easily beset us, and in resisting temptations which come to
+us by reason of our own imperfect sanctification. But there is all the
+difference between fighting at our own hand and fighting with the help
+of God's Spirit, and there is all the difference between fighting with
+the help of an unseen ally in heaven and fighting with a Spirit within
+us who helpeth our infirmities and Himself makes us able to contend, and
+sure, if we keep true to Him, to be more than conquerers through Him
+that loveth us.
+
+Such a conflict is a gift and a joy. It is hard but it is blessed,
+because it is an expression of our truest love; it comes from our
+deepest will; it is full of hope and of assured victory. How different
+is the painful, often defeated and monotonous attempt to suppress our
+nature by main force, and to tread a mill-horse round! The joyous
+freedom and buoyant hope taught us in the gospel way of salvation have
+been cramped and confined and all their glories veiled as by a mass of
+cobwebs spun beneath a golden roof, but our text sweeps away the foul
+obstruction. Let us learn the one condition of victorious conflict, the
+one means of subduing our natural humanity and its distracting desires,
+and let nothing rob us of the conviction that this is God's way of
+making men like angels. 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+lusts of the flesh.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
+
+          'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
+          long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23.
+          Meekness, temperance'--GAL. v. 22, 23.
+
+
+'The fruit of the Spirit,' says Paul, not the fruits, as we might more
+naturally have expected, and as the phrase is most often quoted; all
+this rich variety of graces, of conduct and character, is thought of as
+one. The individual members are not isolated graces, but all connected,
+springing from one root and constituting an organic whole. There is
+further to be noted that the Apostle designates the results of the
+Spirit as fruit, in strong and intentional contrast with the results of
+the flesh, the grim catalogue of which precedes the radiant list in our
+text. The works of the flesh have no such unity, and are not worthy of
+being called fruit. They are not what a man ought to bring forth, and
+when the great Husbandman comes, He finds no fruit there, however full
+of activity the life has been. We have then here an ideal of the noblest
+Christian character, and a distinct and profound teaching as to how to
+attain it. I venture to take the whole of this list for my text, because
+the very beauty of each element in it depends on its being but part of a
+whole, and because there are important lessons to be gathered from the
+grouping.
+
+I. The threefold elements of character here.
+
+It is perhaps not too artificial to point out that we have here three
+triads of which the first describes the life of the Spirit in its
+deepest secret; the second, the same life in its manifestations to men;
+and the third, that life in relation to the difficulties of the world,
+and of ourselves.
+
+The first of these three triads includes love, joy, and peace, and it is
+not putting too great a strain on the words to point out that the source
+of all three lies in the Christian relation to God. They regard nothing
+but God and our relation to Him; they would be all the same if there
+were no other men in the world, or if there were no world. We cannot
+call them duties or virtues; they are simply the results of communion
+with God--the certain manifestations of the better life of the Spirit.
+Love, of course, heads the list, as the foundation and moving principle
+of all the rest. It is the instinctive act of the higher life and is
+shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is the life sap which
+rises through the tree and given form to all the clusters. The remaining
+two members of this triad are plainly consequences of the first. Joy is
+not so much an act or a grace of character as an emotion poured into
+men's lives, because in their hearts abides love to God. Jesus Christ
+pledged Himself to impart His joy to remain in us, with the issue that
+our joy should be full. There is only one source of permanent joy which
+takes possession of and fills all the corners and crannies of the heart,
+and that is a love towards God equally abiding and all-pervasive. We
+have all known joys so perturbed, fragmentary and fleeting, that it is
+hard to distinguish them from sorrows, but there is no need that joys
+should be like green fruits hard and savourless and ready to drop from
+the tree. If God is 'the gladness of our joy,' and all our delights come
+from communion with Him, our joy will never pass and will fill the whole
+round of our spirits as the sea laves every shore.
+
+Peace will be built upon love and joy, if our hearts are ever turning to
+God and ever blessed with the inter-communion of love between Him and
+us. What can be strong enough to disturb the tranquillity that fills the
+soul independent of all externals? However long and close may be the
+siege, the well in the castle courtyard will be full. True peace comes
+not from the absence of trouble but from the presence of God, and will
+be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we
+live in, and partake of, the love of God.
+
+The second triad is long-suffering, kindness, goodness. All these three
+obviously refer to the spiritual life in its manifestations to men. The
+first of them--long-suffering--describes the attitude of patient
+endurance towards inflictors of injury or enemies, if we come forth from
+the blessed fellowship with God, where love, joy, and peace reign
+unbroken, and are met with a cold gust of indifference or with an icy
+wind of hate. The reality of our happy communion and the depth of our
+love will be tested by the patience of our long-suffering. Love
+suffereth long, is not easily provoked, is not soon angry. He has little
+reason to suppose that the love of God is shed abroad in his heart, or
+that the Spirit of God is bringing forth fruit in him, who has not got
+beyond the stage of repaying hate with hate, and scorn with scorn. Any
+fool can answer a fool according to his folly, but it takes a wise and a
+good man to overcome evil with good, and to love them that hate; and yet
+how certainly the fires of mutual antagonism would go out if there were
+only one to pile on the fuel! It takes two to make a quarrel, and no man
+living under the influence of the Spirit of God can be one of such a
+pair.
+
+The second and third members of this triad--kindness, goodness, slide
+very naturally into one another. They do not only require the negative
+virtue of not retaliating, but express the Christian attitude towards
+all of meeting them, whatever their attitude, with good. It is possible
+that kindness here expresses the inward disposition and goodness, the
+habitual actions in which that disposition shows itself. If that be the
+distinction between them, the former would answer to benevolence and the
+latter to beneficence. These three graces include all that Paul presents
+as Christian duty to our fellows. The results of the life of the Spirit
+are to pass beyond ourselves and to influence our whole conduct. We are
+not to live only as mainly for the spiritual enjoyments of fellowship
+with God. The true field of religion is in moving amongst men, and the
+true basis of all service of men is love and fellowship with God.
+
+The third triad--faithfulness, meekness, temperance--seems to point to
+the world in which the Christian life is to be lived as a scene of
+difficulties and oppositions. The rendering of the Revised Version is to
+be preferred to that of the Authorised in the first of the three, for it
+is not faith in its theological sense to which the Apostle is here
+referring. Possibly, however, the meaning may be trustfulness just as in
+1 Corinthians xiii. it is given as a characteristic of love that it
+'believeth all things.' More probably, however, the meaning is
+faithfulness, and Paul's thought is that the Christian life is to
+manifest itself in the faithful discharge of all duties and the honest
+handling of all things committed to it. Meekness even more distinctly
+contemplates a condition of things which is contrary to the Christian
+life, and points to a submissiveness of spirit which does not lift
+itself up against oppositions, but bends like a reed before the storm.
+Paul preached meekness and practised it, but Paul could flash into
+strong opposition and with a resonant ring in his voice could say 'To
+whom we gave place by subjection, No! not for an hour.' The last member
+of the triad--temperance--points to the difficulties which the spiritual
+life is apt to meet with in the natural passions and desires, and
+insists upon the fact that conflict and rigid and habitual self-control
+are sure to be marks of that life.
+
+II. The unity of the fruit.
+
+We have already pointed out the Apostles remarkable use of the word
+'fruit' here, by which he indicates that all the results of the life of
+the Spirit in the human spirit are to be regarded as a whole that has a
+natural growth. The foundation of all is of course that love which is
+the fulfilling of the law. It scarcely needs to be pointed out how love
+brings forth both the other elements of the first triad, but it is no
+less important to note that it and its two companions naturally lead on
+to the relations to men which make up the second triad. It is, however,
+worth while to dwell on that fact because there are many temptations for
+Christian people to separate between them. The two tables of the law are
+not seldom written so far apart that their unity ceases to be noted.
+There are many good people whose notions of religious duties are shut up
+in churches or chapels and limited to singing and praying, reading the
+Bible and listening to sermons, and who, even while they are doing good
+service in common life, do not feel that it is as much a religious duty
+to suppress the wish to retaliate as it is to sit in the sunshine of
+God's love and to feel Christ's joy and peace filling the heart. On the
+other hand many loud voices, some of them with great force of words and
+influence on the popular mind, are never wearied of preaching that
+Christianity is worn out as a social impulse, and that the service of
+man has nothing to do with the love of God. As plainly Paul's first
+triad naturally leads to his third. When the spiritual life has realised
+its deepest secret it will be strong to manifest itself as vigorous in
+reference to the difficulties of life. When that heart is blessed in its
+own settled love, abounding joy and untroubled peace, faithfulness and
+submission will both be possible and self-control will not be hard.
+
+III. The culture of the tree which secures the fruit.
+
+Can we suppose that the Apostle here is going back in thought to our
+Lord's profound teaching that every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,
+but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit? The obvious felicity of
+that metaphor often conceals for us the drastic force of its teaching,
+it regards all a man's conduct as but the outcome of his character, and
+brushes aside as trifling all attempts at altering products, whilst the
+producer remains unaltered. Whether Paul was here alluding to a known
+saying of Jesus or no, he was insisting upon the very centre of
+Christian ethics, that a man must first be good in order to do good. Our
+Lord's words seemed to make an impossible demand--'Make the tree
+good'--as the only way of securing good fruit, and it was in accordance
+with the whole cast of the Sermon on the Mount that the means of
+realising that demand was left unexpressed. But Paul stood on this side
+of Pentecost, and what was necessarily veiled in Christ's earlier
+utterances stood forth a revealed and blessed certainty to him. He had
+not to say 'Make the tree good' and be silent as to how that process was
+to be effected; to him the message had been committed, 'The Spirit also
+helpeth our infirmity.' There is but one way by which a corrupt tree can
+be made good, and that is by grafting into the wild briar stock a
+'layer' from the rose. The Apostle had a double message to proclaim, and
+the one part was built upon the other. He had first to preach--and this
+day has first to believe that God has sent His own Son in the likeness
+of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin--and then he had to proclaim
+that, through that mission, it became possible that the ordinance of the
+law might be fulfilled in us who 'walk not after the flesh but after the
+spirit.' The beginning, then, of all true goodness is to be sought in
+receiving into our corrupt natures the uncorrupted germs of the higher
+life, and it is only in the measure in which that Spirit of God moves in
+our spirits and, like the sap in the vine, permeates every branch and
+tendril, that fruit to eternal life will grow. Christian graces are the
+products of the indwelling divine life, and nothing else will succeed in
+producing them. All the preachings of moralists and all the struggles
+after self-improvement are reduced to impotence and vanity by the stern,
+curt sentence--'a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit.' Surely it
+should come to us all as a true gospel when we feel ourselves foiled by
+our own evil nature in our attempts to be better, that the first thing
+we have to do is not to labour at either of the two impossible tasks of
+the making our bad selves good, or of the getting good fruits from bad
+selves, but to open our spirits through faith in Jesus for the entrance
+into us of His Spirit which will change our corruption into
+incorruption, and cleanse us from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
+Shall we not seek to become recipient of that new life, and having
+received it, should we not give diligence that it may in us produce all
+its natural effects?
+
+These fruits, though they are the direct results of the indwelling
+Spirit and will never be produced without its presence, are none the
+less truly dependent upon our manner of receiving that Spirit and on our
+faithfulness and diligence in the use of its gifts. It is, alas! sadly
+too true, and matter of tragically common experience that instead of
+'trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord' heavy with ruddy
+clusters, there are but dwarfed and scrubby bushes which have scarcely
+life enough to keep up a little show of green leaves and 'bring no fruit
+to perfection'. Would that so-called Christian people would more
+earnestly and searchingly ask themselves why it is that, with such
+possibilities offered to them, their actual attainments should be so
+small. They have a power which is able to do for them exceeding
+abundantly above all that they can ask or think, and its actual effects
+on them are well on this side of both their petitions and their
+conceptions. There need be no difficulty in answering the question why
+our Christian lives do not correspond more closely to the Spirit that
+inspires them. The plain answer is that we have not cultivated, used,
+and obeyed Him. The Lord of the vineyard would less often have to ask
+'Wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it
+forth wild grapes?' if we listened more obediently to the pathetic
+command which surely should touch a grateful heart--'Grieve not the holy
+Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.'
+
+IV. How this is the only worthy fruit.
+
+We have already pointed out that the Apostle in the preceding context
+varies his terms, and catalogues the actions that come from the godless
+self as works, whilst those which are the outcome of the Spirit are
+fruit. The distinction thus drawn is twofold. Multiplicity is contrasted
+with unity and fruit with works. The deeds of the flesh have no
+consistency except that of evil; they are at variance with themselves--a
+huddled mob without regularity or order; and they are works indeed, but
+so disproportionate to the nature of the doer and his obligations that
+they do not deserve to be called fruit. It is not to attach too much
+importance to an accidental form of speech to insist upon this
+distinction as intended to be drawn, and as suggesting to us very solemn
+thoughts about many apparently very active lives. The man who lives to
+God truly lives; the busiest life which is not rooted in Him and
+directed towards Him has so far missed its aim as to have brought forth
+no good fruit, and therefore to have incurred the sentence that it is
+cut down and cast into the fire. There is a very remarkable expression
+in Scripture, 'The unfruitful works of darkness,' which admits the busy
+occupation and energy of the doers and denies that all that struggling
+and striving comes to anything. Done in the dark, they seemed to have
+some significance, when the light comes in they vanish. It is for us to
+determine whether our lives shall be works of the flesh, full, perhaps,
+of a time of 'sound and fury,' but 'signifying nothing,' or whether they
+shall be fruits of the Spirit, which we 'who have gathered shall eat in
+the courts of His holiness.' They will be so if, living in the Spirit,
+we walk in the Spirit, but if we 'sow to the flesh' we shall have a
+harder husbandry and a bitterer harvest when 'of the flesh we reap
+corruption,' and hear the awful and unanswerable question, 'What fruit
+had ye then of those things whereof ye are now ashamed?'
+
+
+
+
+BURDEN-BEARING
+
+          'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the
+          law of Christ. . . . 5. For every man shall bear his
+          own burden.'--GAL. vi. 25.
+
+
+The injunction in the former of these verses appears, at first sight, to
+be inconsistent with the statement in the latter. But Paul has a way of
+setting side by side two superficially contradictory clauses, in order
+that attention may be awakened, and that we may make an effort to
+apprehend the point of reconciliation between them. So, for instance,
+you remember he puts in one sentence, and couples together by a 'for,'
+these two sayings: 'Work out your own salvation'; 'It is God that
+worketh in you.' So here he has been exhorting the Galatian Christians
+to restore a fallen brother. That is one case to which the general
+commandment, 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' is applicable.
+
+I cannot here enter on the intervening verses by which he glides from
+the one to the other of these two thoughts which I have coupled
+together, but I may just point out in a word the outline of his course
+of thought. 'Bear ye one another's burden,' says he; and then he thinks,
+'What is it that keeps men from bearing each other's burdens?' Being
+swallowed up with themselves, and especially being conceited about their
+own strength and goodness. And so he goes on: 'If a man think himself to
+be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.' And what is the
+best cure for all these fancies inside us of how strong and good we are?
+To look at our work with an impartial and rigid judgment. It is easy for
+a man to plume himself on being good, and strong, and great; but let him
+look at what he has done, and try that by a high standard, and that will
+knock the conceit out of him. Or, if his work stands the test, then 'he
+shall have rejoicing in himself, and not' by comparing himself with
+other people. Two blacks do not make a white, and we are not to heighten
+the lustre of our own whiteness by comparing it with our neighbour's
+blackness. Take your act for what _it_ is worth, apart altogether from
+what other people are. Do not say, 'God! I thank thee that I am not as
+other men are . . . or even as this publican'; but look to yourself. There
+is an occupation with self which is good, and is a help to brotherly
+sympathy.
+
+And so the Apostle has worked round, you see, to almost an opposite
+thought from the one with which he started. 'Bear ye one another's
+burdens.' Yes, but a man's work is his own and nobody else's, and a
+man's character is his own and nobody else's, so 'every man shall bear
+his own burden.' The statements are not contradictory. They complete
+each other. They are the north and the south poles, and between them is
+the rounded orb of the whole truth. So then, let me point out that:
+
+I. There are burdens which can be shared, and there are burdens which
+_cannot_.
+
+Let us take the case from which the whole context has arisen. Paul was
+exhorting the Galatians, as I explained, in reference to their duty to a
+fallen brother; and he speaks of him--according to our version--as
+'overtaken in a fault.' Now, that is scarcely his idea, I think. The
+phrase, as it stands in our Bibles, suggests that Paul is trying to
+minimise the gravity of the man's offence; but just in proportion as he
+minimised its gravity would he weaken his exhortation to restore him.
+But what he is really doing is not to make as little as possible of the
+sin, but to make as much of it as is consistent with the truth. The word
+'overtaken' suggests that some sin, like a tiger in a jungle, springs
+upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness of the assault. The word
+so rendered may perhaps be represented by some such phrase as
+'discovered'; or, if I may use a 'colloquialism,' if a man be caught
+'red-handed.' That is the idea. And Paul does not use the weak word
+'fault,' but a very much stronger one, which means stark staring sin. He
+is supposing a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it at
+all. Here is a brother who has had an unblemished reputation; and all
+at once the curtain is thrown aside behind which he is working some
+wicked thing; and there the culprit stands, with the bull's-eye light
+flashed upon him, ashamed and trembling. Paul says, 'If you are a
+spiritual man'--there is irony there of the graver sort--'show your
+spirituality by going and lifting him up, and trying to help him.' When
+he says, 'Restore such an one,' he uses an expression which is employed
+in other connections in the New Testament, such as for mending the
+broken meshes of a net, for repairing any kind of damage, for setting
+the fractured bones of a limb. And that is what the 'spiritual' man has
+to do. He is to show the validity of his claim to live on high by
+stooping down to the man bemired and broken-legged in the dirt. We have
+come across people who chiefly show their own purity by their harsh
+condemnation of others' sins. One has heard of women so very virtuous
+that they would rather hound a fallen sister to death than try to
+restore her; and there are saints so extremely saintly that they will
+not touch the leper to heal him, for fear of their own hands being
+ceremonially defiled. Paul says, 'Bear ye one another's burdens'; and
+especially take a lift of each other's sin.
+
+I need not remind you how the same command applies in relation to
+pecuniary distress, narrow circumstances, heavy duties, sorrows, and all
+the 'ills that flesh is heir to.' These can be borne by sympathy, by
+true loving outgoing of the heart, and by the rendering of such
+practical help as the circumstances require.
+
+But there are burdens that cannot be borne by any but the man himself.
+
+There is the awful burden of personal existence. It is a solemn thing
+to be able to say 'I.' And that carries with it this, that after all
+sympathy, after all nestling closeness of affection, after the tenderest
+exhibition of identity of feeling, and of swift godlike readiness to
+help, each of us lives alone. Like the inhabitants of the islands of the
+Greek Archipelago, we are able to wave signals to the next island, and
+sometimes to send a boat with provisions and succour, but we are parted,
+'with echoing straits between us thrown.' Every man, after all, lives
+alone, and society is like the material things round about us, which are
+all compressible, because the atoms that compose them are not in actual
+contact, but separated by slenderer or more substantial films of
+isolating air. Thus there is even in the sorrows which we can share with
+our brethren, and in all the burdens which we can help to bear, an
+element which cannot be imparted. 'The heart knoweth its own
+bitterness', and neither 'stranger' nor other 'intermeddleth' with the
+deepest fountains of 'its joy.'
+
+Then again, there is the burden of responsibility which can be shared by
+none. A dozen soldiers may be turned out to make a firing party to shoot
+the mutineer, and no man knows who fired the shot, but one man did fire
+it. And however there may have been companions, it was his rifle that
+carried the bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say, 'The
+woman that Thou gavest me tempted me, and I did eat.' Or we say, 'My
+natural appetites, for which I am not responsible, but Thou who madest
+me art, drew me aside, and I fell', or we may say, 'It was not I; it was
+the other boy.' And then there rises up in our hearts a veiled form, and
+from its majestic lips comes 'Thou art the man'; and our whole being
+echoes assent--_Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa_--'My fault, my exceeding
+great fault.' No man can bear that burden.
+
+And then, closely connected with responsibility there is another--the
+burden of the inevitable consequences of transgression, not only away
+yonder in the future, when all human bonds of companionship shall be
+broken, and each man shall 'give account of himself to God,' but here
+and now; as in the immediate context the Apostle tells us, 'Whatsoever a
+man soweth, that shall he also reap.' The effects of our evil deeds come
+back to roost; and they never make a mistake as to where they should
+alight. If I have sown, I, and no one else, will gather. No sympathy
+will prevent to-morrow's headache after to-night's debauch, and nothing
+that anybody can do will turn the sleuth-hounds off the scent. Though
+they may be slow-footed, they have sure noses and deep-mouthed fangs.
+'If thou be wise thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest
+thou alone shalt bear it.' So there are burdens which can, and burdens
+which cannot, be borne.
+
+II. Jesus Christ is the Burden-bearer for both sorts of burdens.
+
+'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ,' not
+only as spoken by His lips, but as set forth in the pattern of His life.
+We have, then, to turn to Him, and think of Him as Burden-bearer in even
+a deeper sense than the psalmist had discerned, who magnified God as 'He
+who daily beareth our burdens.'
+
+Christ is the Burden-bearer of our sin. 'The Lord hath laid'--or made to
+meet--'upon Him the iniquity of us all.' The Baptist pointed his lean,
+ascetic finger at the young Jesus, and said, 'Behold the Lamb of God
+which beareth'--and beareth away--'the sin of the world.' How heavy the
+load, how real its pressure, let Gethsemane witness, when He clung to
+human companionship with the unutterably solemn and plaintive words, 'My
+soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch
+with Me.' He bore the burden of the world's sin.
+
+Jesus Christ is the bearer of the burden of the consequences of sin, not
+only inasmuch as, in His sinless humanity, He knew by sympathy the
+weight of the world's sin, but because in that same humanity, by
+identification of Himself with us, deeper and more wonderful than our
+plummets have any line long enough to sound the abysses of, He took the
+cup of bitterness which our sins have mixed, and drank it all when He
+said, 'My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Consequences still
+remain: thank God that they do! 'Thou wast a God that forgavest them,
+and Thou didst inflict retribution on their inventions.' So the outward,
+the present, the temporal consequences of transgression are left
+standing in all their power, in order that transgressors may thereby be
+scourged from their evil, and led to forsake the thing that has wrought
+them such havoc. But the ultimate consequence, the deepest of all,
+separation from God, has been borne by Christ, and need never be borne
+by us.
+
+I suppose I need not dwell on the other aspects of this burden-bearing
+of our Lord, how that He, in a very deep and real sense, takes upon
+Himself the sorrows which we bear in union with, and faith on, Him. For
+then the griefs that still come to us, when so borne, are transmitted
+into 'light affliction which is but for a moment.' 'In all their
+afflictions He was afflicted.' Oh, brethren! you with sad hearts, you
+with lonely lives, you with carking cares, you with pressing, heavy
+duties, cast your burden on the Christ, and He 'will sustain you,' and
+sorrows borne in union with Him will change their character, and the
+very cross shall be wreathed in flowers.
+
+Jesus bears the burden of that solemn solitude which our personal being
+lays upon us all. The rest of us stand round, and, as I said, hoist
+signals of sympathy, and sometimes can stretch a brotherly hand out and
+grasp the sufferer's hand. But their help comes from without; Christ
+comes in, and dwells in our hearts, and makes us no longer alone in the
+depths of our being, which He fills with the effulgence and peace of His
+companionship. And so for sin, for guilt, for responsibility, for
+sorrow, for holiness, Christ bears our burdens.
+
+Yes! And when He takes ours on His shoulders, He puts His on ours. 'My
+yoke is easy, and My burden is light.' As the old mystics used to say,
+Christ's burden carries him that carries it. It may add a little weight,
+but it gives power to soar, and it gives power to progress. It is like
+the wings of a bird, it is like the sails of a ship.
+
+III. Lastly, Christ's carrying our burdens binds us to carry our
+brother's!
+
+'So fulfil the law of Christ.' There is a very biting sarcasm, and, as I
+said about another matter, a grave irony in Paul's use of that word
+'law' here. For the whole of this Epistle has been directed against the
+Judaising teachers who were desirous of cramming Jewish law down
+Galatian throats, and is addressed to their victims in the Galatian
+churches who had fallen into the trap. Paul turns round on them here,
+and says, 'You want law, do you? Well, if you _will_ have it, here it
+is--the law of Christ.' Christ's life is our law. Practical Christianity
+is doing what Christ did. The Cross is not only the ground of our hope,
+but the pattern of our conduct.
+
+And, says Paul in effect, the example of Jesus Christ, in all its sweep,
+and in all the depth of it, is the only motive by which this injunction
+that I am giving you will ever be fulfilled. 'Bear ye one another's
+burdens.' You will never do that unless you have Christ as the ground of
+your hope, and His great sacrifice as the example for your conduct. For
+the hindrance that prevents sympathy is self-absorption; and that
+natural selfishness which is in us all will never be exorcised and
+banished from us thoroughly, so as that we shall be awake to all the
+obligations to bear our brother's burdens, unless Christ has dethroned
+self, and is the Lord of our inmost spirits.
+
+I rejoice as much as any man in the largely increased sense of mutual
+responsibility and obligation of mutual aid, which is sweetening society
+by degrees amongst us to-day, but I believe that no Socialistic or other
+schemes for the regeneration of society which are not based on the
+Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will live and grow. There is
+but one power that will cast out natural selfishness, and that is love
+to Christ, apprehending His Cross as the great example to which our
+lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing sense of
+brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not consciously connected with
+any faith in Christianity, is, to a very large extent, the result of the
+diffusion through society of the spirit of Christianity, even where its
+body is rejected. Thank God, the river of the water of life can
+percolate through many a mile of soil, and reach the roots of trees far
+away, in the pastures of the wilderness, that know not whence the
+refreshing moisture has come. But on the wide scale be sure of this: it
+is the law of Christ that will fight and conquer the natural selfishness
+which makes bearing our brother's burdens an impossibility for men.
+Only, Christian people! let us take care that we are not robbed of our
+prerogative of being foremost in all such things, by men whose zeal has
+a less heavenly source than ours ought to have. Depend upon it, heresy
+has less power to arrest the progress of the Church than the selfish
+lives of Christian professors.
+
+So, dear friends, let us see to it that we first of all cast our own
+burdens on the Christ who is able to bear them all, whatever they are.
+And then let us, with lightened hearts and shoulders, make our own the
+heavy burdens of sin, of sorrow, of care, of guilt, of consequences, of
+responsibility, which are crushing down many that are weary and heavy
+laden. For be sure of this, if we do not bear our brother's burdens, the
+load that we thought we had cast on Christ will roll back upon
+ourselves. He is able to bear both us and our burdens, if we will let
+Him, and if we will fulfil that law of Christ which was illustrated in
+all His life, 'Who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor,'
+and was written large in letters of blood upon that Cross where there
+was 'laid on Him the iniquity of us all.'
+
+
+
+
+DOING GOOD TO ALL
+
+          'As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good
+          unto all. . . .'--GAL. vi. 10.
+
+
+'As we have therefore'--that points a finger backwards to what has gone
+before. The Apostle has been exhorting to unwearied well-doing, on the
+ground of the certain coming of the harvest season. Now, there is a
+double link of connection between the preceding words and our text; for
+'do good' looks back to 'well-doing,' and the word rendered
+'opportunity' is the same as that rendered 'season.' So, then, two
+thoughts arise--'well-doing' includes doing good to others, and is not
+complete unless it does. The future, on the whole, is the season of
+reaping; the present life on the whole is the season of sowing; and
+while life as a whole is the seed-time, in detail it is full of
+opportunities, openings which make certain good deeds possible, and
+which therefore impose upon us the obligation to do them. If we were in
+the habit of looking on life mainly as a series of opportunities for
+well-doing, how different it would be; and how different we should be!
+
+Now, this injunction is seen to be reasonable by every man, whether he
+obeys it or not. It is a commonplace of morality, which finds assent in
+all consciences, however little it may mould lives. But I wish to give
+it a particular application, and to try to enforce its bearing upon
+Christian missionary work. And the thought that I would suggest is just
+this, that no Christian man discharges that elementary obligation of
+plain morality, if he is indifferent to this great enterprise. 'As we
+have an opportunity, let us do good to all.' That is the broad
+principle, and one application is the duty of Christian men to diffuse
+the Gospel throughout the world.
+
+I. Let me ask you to look at the obligation that is thus suggested.
+
+As I have said, well-doing is the wider, and doing good to others the
+narrower, expression. The one covers the whole ground of virtue, the
+other declares that virtue which is self-regarding, the culture which
+is mainly occupied with self, is lame and imperfect, and there is a
+great gap in it, as if some cantle had been cut out of the silver disc
+of the moon. It is only full-orbed when in well-doing, and as a very
+large constituent element of it, there is included the doing good to
+others. That is too plain to need to be stated. We hear a great deal
+to-day about altruism. Well, Christianity preaches that more
+emphatically than any other system of thought, morals, or religion does.
+And Christianity brings the mightiest motives for it, and imparts the
+power by which obedience to that great law that every man's conscience
+responds to is made possible.
+
+But whilst thus we recognise as a dictate of elementary morality that
+well-doing must necessarily include doing good to others, and feel, as I
+suppose we all do feel, when we are true to our deepest convictions,
+that possessions of all sorts, material, mental, and all others, are
+given to us in stewardship, and not in absolute ownership, in order that
+God's grace in its various forms may fructify through us to all, my
+present point is that, if that is recognised as being what it is, an
+elementary dictate of morality enforced by men's relationships to one
+another, and sealed by their own consciences, there is no getting away
+from the obligation upon all Christian men which it draws after it, of
+each taking his share in the great work of imparting the gospel to the
+whole world.
+
+For that gospel is our highest good, the best thing that we can carry to
+anybody. We many of us recognise the obligation that is devolved upon us
+by the possession of wealth, to use it for others as well as for
+ourselves. We recognise, many of us, the obligation that is devolved
+upon us by the possession of knowledge, to impart it to others as well
+as ourselves. We are willing to give of our substance, of our time, of
+our effort, to impart much that we have. But some of us seem to draw a
+line at the highest good that we have, and whilst responding to all
+sorts of charitable and beneficent appeals made to us, and using our
+faculties often for the good of other people, we take no share and no
+interest in communicating the highest of all goods, the good which comes
+to the man in whose heart Christ rests. It is our highest good, because
+it deals with our deepest needs, and lifts us to the loftiest position.
+The gospel brings our highest good, because it brings eternal good,
+whilst all other benefits fade and pass, and are left behind with life
+and the dead flesh. It is our highest good, because if that great
+message of salvation is received into a heart, or moulds the life of a
+nation, it will bring after it, as its ministers and results, all manner
+of material and lesser benefit. And so, giving Christ we give _our_
+best, and giving Christ we give the highest gift that a weary world can
+receive.
+
+Remember, too, that the impartation of this highest good is one of the
+main reasons why we ourselves possess it. Jesus Christ can redeem the
+world alone, but it cannot become a redeemed world without the help of
+His servants. He needs us in order to carry into all humanity the
+energies that He brought into the midst of mankind by His Incarnation
+and Sacrifice; and the cradle of Bethlehem and the Cross of Cavalry are
+not sufficient for the accomplishment of the purpose for which they
+respectively came to pass, without the intervention and ministry of
+Christian people. It was for this end amongst others, that each of us
+who have received that great gift into our hearts have been enriched by
+it. The river is fed from the fountains of the hills, in order that it
+may carry verdure and life whithersoever it goes. And you and I have
+been brought to the Cross of Christ, and made His disciples, not only in
+order that we ourselves might be blessed and quickened by the gift
+unspeakable, but in order that through us it may be communicated, just
+as each particle when leavened in the mass of the dough communicates its
+energy to its adjacent particle until the whole is leavened.
+
+I am afraid that indifference to the communication of the highest good,
+which marks sadly too many Christian professors in all ages, and in this
+age, is a suspicious indication of a very slight realisation of the good
+for themselves. Luther said that justification was the article of a
+standing or a falling church. That may be true in the region of
+theology, but in the region of practical life I do not know that you
+will find a test more reliable and more easy of application than this,
+Does a man care for spreading amongst his fellows the gospel that he
+himself has received? If he does not, let him ask himself whether, in
+any real sense, he has it. 'Well-doing' includes doing good to others,
+and the possession of Christ will make it certain that we shall impart
+Him.
+
+II. Notice the bearing of this elementary injunction upon the scope of
+the obligation.
+
+'Let us do good to all men.' It was Christianity that invented the word
+'humanity'; either in its meaning of the aggregate of men or its meaning
+of a gracious attitude towards them. And it invented the word because it
+revealed the thing on which it rests. 'Brotherhood' is the sequel of
+'Fatherhood,' and the conception of mankind, beneath all diversities of
+race and culture and the like, as being an organic whole, knit together
+by a thousand mystical bands, and each atom of which has connection
+with, and obligations to, every other--that is a product of
+Christianity, however it may have been in subsequent ages divorced from
+a recognition of its source. So, then, the gospel rises above all the
+narrow distinctions which call themselves patriotism and are parochial,
+and it says that there is 'neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, Jew
+nor Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,' but all are one. Get
+high enough up upon the hill, and the hedges between the fields are
+barely perceptible. Live on the elevation to which the Gospel of Jesus
+Christ lifts men, and you look down upon a great prairie, without a
+fence or a ditch or a division. So my text comes with profound
+significance, 'Let us do good to all,' because all are included in the
+sweep of that great purpose of love, and in the redeeming possibilities
+of that great death on the Cross. Christ has swept the compass, if I may
+say so, of His love and work all round humanity; and are we to extend
+our sympathies or our efforts less widely? The circle includes the
+world; our sympathies should be as wide as the circle that Christ has
+drawn.
+
+Let me remind you, too, that only such a world-wide communication of the
+highest good that has blessed ourselves will correspond to the proved
+power of that Gospel which treats as of no moment diversities that are
+superficial, and can grapple with and overcome, and bind to itself as a
+crown of glory, every variety of character, of culture, of circumstance,
+claiming for its own all races, and proving itself able to lift them
+all. 'The Bread of God which came down from heaven' is an exotic
+everywhere, because it came down from heaven, but it can grow in all
+soils, and it can bring forth fruit unto eternal life everywhere amongst
+mankind. So 'let us do good to all.'
+
+And then we are met by the old objection, 'The eyes of a fool are in the
+ends of the earth. Keep your work for home, that wants it.' Well! I am
+perfectly ready to admit that in Christian work, as in all others there
+must be division of labour, and that one man's tastes and inclinations
+will lead him to one sphere and one form of it; and another man's to
+another; and I am quite ready, not to admit, but strongly to insist,
+that, whatever happens, home is not to be neglected. 'All men' includes
+the slums in England as well as the savages in Africa, and it is no
+excuse for neglecting either of these departments that we are trying to
+do something in the other. But it is not uncharitable to say that the
+objection to which I am referring is most often made by one or other of
+two classes, either by people who do not care about the Gospel, nor
+recognise the 'good' of it at all, or by people who are ingenious in
+finding excuses for not doing the duty to which they are at the moment
+summoned. The people that do the one are the people that do the other.
+Where do you get your money from for home work? Mainly from the
+Christian Churches. Who is it that keeps up missionary work abroad?
+Mainly the Christian Churches. There is a vast deal of unreality in that
+objection. Just think of the disproportion between the embarrassment of
+riches in our Christian appliances here in England and the destitution
+in these distant lands. Here the ships are crammed into a dock, close up
+against one another, rubbing their yards upon each other; and away out
+yonder on the waters there are leagues of loneliness, where never a
+sail is seen. Here, at home, we are drenched with Christian teaching,
+and the Churches are competing with each other, often like rival
+tradespeople for their customers; and away out yonder a man to half a
+million is considered a fair allowance. 'Let us do good to all.'
+
+III. Lastly, note the bearing of this elementary precept on the
+occasions that rise for the discharge of the duty.
+
+'As we have opportunity.' As I have already said, the Christian way to
+look at our circumstances is to regard them as openings for the exercise
+of Christian virtue, and therefore summonses to its discharge. And if we
+regarded our own position individually, so we should find that there
+were many, many doors that had long been opened, into which we had been
+too blind or too lazy, or too selfishly absorbed in our own concerns, to
+enter. The neglected opportunities, the beckoning doors whose thresholds
+we have never crossed, the good that we might have done and have not
+done--these are as weighty to sink us as the positive sins, the
+opportunities for which have appealed to our worse selves.
+
+But I desire to say a word, not only about the opportunities offered to
+us individually, but about those offered to England for this great
+enterprise. The prophet of old represented the proud Assyrian conqueror
+as boasting, 'My hand hath gathered as a nest the riches of the peoples
+. . . and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or
+peeped.' It might be the motto of England to-day. It is not for nothing
+that we and our brethren across the Atlantic, the inheritors of the same
+faith and morals and literature, and speaking the same tongue, have had
+given to us the wide dominion that we possess, I know that England has
+not climbed to her place without many a crime, and that in her 'skirts
+is found the blood of poor innocents,' but yet we have that connection,
+for good or for evil, with subject races all over the earth. And I ask
+whether or not that is an opportunity that the Christian Church is bound
+to make use of. What have we been intrusted with it for? Commerce,
+dominion, the impartation of Western knowledge, literature, laws? Yes!
+Is that all? Are you to send shirting and not the Gospel? Are you to
+send muskets that will burst, and gin that is poison, and not
+Christianity? Are you to send Shakespeare, and Milton, and modern
+science, and Herbert Spencer, and not Evangelists and the Gospels? Are
+you to send the code of English law and not Christ's law of love? Are
+you to send godless Englishmen, 'through whom the name of God is
+blasphemed amongst the Gentiles,' and are you not to send missionaries
+of the Cross? A Brahmin once said to a missionary, 'Look here! Your Book
+is a good Book. If you were as good as your Book you would make India
+Christian in ten years.'
+
+Brethren! the European world to-day is fighting and scrambling over what
+it calls the unclaimed corners of the world; looking upon all lands that
+are uncivilised by Western civilisation either as markets, or as parts
+of their empire. Is there no other way of looking at the heathen world
+than that? How did Christ look at it? He was moved when He saw the
+multitudes as 'sheep having no shepherd.' Oh! if Christian men, as
+members of this nation, would rise to the height of Christ's place of
+vision, and would look at the world with His eyes, what a difference it
+would make! I appeal to you, Christian men and women, as members of
+this nation, and therefore responsible, though it may be
+infinitesimally, for what this nation is doing in the distant corners of
+the world, and urge on you that you are bound, so far as your influence
+goes, to protest against the way of looking at these heathen lands as
+existing to be exploited for the material benefit of these Western
+Powers. You are bound to lend your voice, however weak it may be, to the
+protests against the savage treatment of native races--against the
+drenching of China with narcotics, and Africa with rum; to try to look
+at the world as Christ looked at it, to rise to the height of that great
+vision which regards all men as having been in His heart when He died on
+the Cross, and refuses to recognise in this great work 'Barbarian,
+Scythian, bond or free.' We have awful responsibilities; the world is
+open to us. We have the highest good. How shall we obey this elementary
+principle of our text, unless we help as we can in spreading Christ's
+reign? Blessed shall we be if, and only if, we fill the seed-time with
+delightful work, and remember that well-doing is imperfect unless it
+includes doing good to others, and that the best good we can do is to
+impart the Unspeakable Gift to the men that need it.
+
+
+
+
+THE OWNER'S BRAND
+
+          'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
+          Jesus.'--GAL. vi. 17.
+
+
+The reference in these words is probably to the cruel custom of branding
+slaves as we do cattle, with initials or signs, to show their ownership.
+It is true that in old times criminals, and certain classes of Temple
+servants, and sometimes soldiers, were also so marked, but it is most in
+accordance with the Apostle's way of thinking that he here has reference
+to the first class, and would represent himself as the _slave_ of Jesus
+Christ, designated as His by the scars and weaknesses which were the
+consequences of his apostolic zeal. Imprisonment, beating by the Jewish
+rod, shipwrecks, fastings, weariness, perils, persecutions, all these he
+sums up in another place as being the tokens by which he was approved as
+an apostle of Jesus Christ. And here he, no doubt, has the same thought
+in his mind, that his bodily weakness, which was the direct issue of his
+apostolic work, showed that he was Christ's. The painful infirmity under
+which, as we learn, he was more especially suffering, about the time of
+writing this letter, may also have been in his mind.
+
+All through this Epistle he has been thundering and lightning against
+the disputers of this apostolic authority. And now at last he softens,
+and as it were, bares his thin arm, his scarred bosom, and bids these
+contumacious Galatians look upon them, and learn that he has a right to
+speak as the representative and messenger of the Lord Jesus.
+
+So we have here two or three points, I think, worth considering. First,
+think for a moment of the slave of Christ; then of the brands which mark
+the ownership; then of the glory in the servitude and the sign; and then
+of the immunity from human disturbances which that service gives. 'From
+henceforth let no man trouble me. I bear in my body the marks of the
+Lord Jesus.'
+
+I. First, then, a word or two about that conception of the slave of
+Christ.
+
+It is a pity that our Bible has not rendered the title which Paul ever
+gives himself at the beginning of his letters, by that simple word
+'slave,' instead of the feebler one, 'servant.' For what he means when
+he calls himself the 'servant of Jesus Christ' is not that he bore to
+Christ the kind of relation which servants among us bear to those who
+have hired and paid them, and to whom they have come under obligations
+of their own will which they can terminate at any moment by their own
+caprice; but that he was in the roughest and simplest sense of the word,
+Christ's slave.
+
+What lies in that metaphor? Well, it is the most uncompromising
+assertion of the most absolute authority on the one hand, and claim of
+unconditional submission and subjection on the other.
+
+The slave belonged to his master; the master could do exactly as he
+liked with him. If he killed him nobody had anything to say. He could
+set him to any task; he could do what he liked with any little
+possession or property that the slave seemed to have. He could break all
+his relationships, and separate him from wife and kindred.
+
+All that is atrocious and blasphemous when it is applied to the
+relations between man and man, but it is a blessed and magnificent truth
+when it is applied to the relations between a man and Christ. For this
+Lord has absolute authority over us, and He can do what He likes with
+everything that belongs to us; and we, and our duties, and our
+circumstances, and our relationships, are all in His hands, and the one
+thing that we have to render to Him is utter, absolute, unquestioning,
+unhesitating, unintermittent and unreserved obedience and submission.
+That which is abject degradation when it is rendered to a man, that
+which is blasphemous presumption when it is required by a man, that
+which is impossible, in its deepest reality, as between man and man, is
+possible, is blessed, is joyful and strong when it is required by, and
+rendered to, Jesus Christ. We are His slaves if we have any living
+relationship to Him at all. Where, then, in the Christian life, is there
+a place for self-will; where a place for self-indulgence; where for
+murmuring or reluctance; where for the assertion of any rights of my own
+as against that Master? We owe absolute obedience and submission to
+Jesus Christ.
+
+And what does the metaphor carry as to the basis on which this authority
+rests? How did men acquire slaves? Chiefly by purchase. The abominations
+of the slave market are a blessed metaphor for the deep realities of the
+Christian life. Christ has bought you for His own. The only thing that
+gives a human soul the right to have any true authority over another
+human soul is that it shall have yielded itself to the soul whom it
+would control. We must first of all give ourselves away before we have
+the right to possess, and the measure in which we give ourselves to
+another is the measure in which we possess another. And so Christ our
+Lord, according to the deep words of one of Paul's letters, 'gives
+Himself for us, that He might purchase unto Himself a people for His
+possession.' 'Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price.'
+
+Therefore the absolute authority, and unconditional surrender and
+submission which are the very essence of the Christian life, at bottom
+are but the corresponding and twofold effects of one thing, and that is
+love. For there is no possession of man by man except that which is
+based on love. And there is no submission of man to man worth calling
+so except that which is also based therein.
+
+          'Thou hearts alone wouldst move;
+           Thou only hearts dost love.'
+
+The relation in both its parts, on the side of the Master and on the
+side of the captive bondsman, is the direct result and manifestation of
+that love which knits them together.
+
+Therefore the Christian slavery, with its abject submission, with its
+utter surrender and suppression of mine own will, with its complete
+yielding up of self to the control of Jesus, who died for me; because it
+is based upon His surrender of Himself to me, and in its inmost essence
+it is the operation of love, is therefore co-existent with the noblest
+freedom.
+
+This great Epistle to the Galatians is the trumpet call and clarion
+proclamation of Christian liberty. The breath of freedom blows
+inspiringly through it all. The very spirit of the letter is gathered up
+in one of its verses, 'I have been called unto liberty,' and in its
+great exhortation, 'Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ
+hath made you free.' It is then sufficiently remarkable and profoundly
+significant that in this very letter, which thus is the protest of the
+free Christian consciousness against all limitations and outward
+restrictions, there should be this most emphatic declaration that the
+liberty of the Christian is slavery and the slavery of the Christian is
+freedom. He is free whose will coincides with his outward law. He is
+free who delights to do what he must do. He is free whose rule is love,
+and whose Master is Incarnate Love. 'If the Son make you free, ye shall
+be free indeed.' 'O Lord, truly I am Thy servant, Thou hast loosed my
+bands.' 'I bear in my body' the charter of my liberty, for I bear in my
+body the 'brand of the Lord Jesus.'
+
+II. And so now a word in the next place about these marks of ownership.
+
+As I have said, the Apostle evidently means thereby distinctly the
+bodily weaknesses, and possibly diseases, which were the direct
+consequences of his own apostolic faithfulness and zeal. He considered
+that he proved himself to be a minister of God by his stripes,
+imprisonments, fastings, by all the pains and sufferings and their
+permanent consequences in an enfeebled constitution, which he bore
+because he had preached the Cross of Christ. He knew that these things
+were the result of his faithful ministry. He believed that they had been
+sent by no blundering, blind fate; by no mere secondary causes; but by
+his Master Himself, whose hand had held the iron that branded into the
+hissing flesh the marks of His ownership. He felt that by means of these
+he had been drawn nearer to his Master, and the ownership had been made
+more perfect. And so in a rapture of contempt of pain, this heroic soul
+looks upon even bodily weakness and suffering as being the signs that he
+belonged to Christ, and the means of that possession being made more
+perfect.
+
+Now, what is all that to us Christian people who have no persecutions to
+endure, and none of whom I am afraid have ever worked hard enough for
+Christ to have damaged our health by it? Is there anything in this text
+that may be of general application to us all? Yes! I think so. Every
+Christian man or woman ought to bear, in his or her body, in a plain,
+literal sense, the tokens that he or she belongs to Jesus Christ. You
+ask me how? 'If thy foot or thine hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast
+it from thee.'
+
+There are things in your physical nature that you have to suppress; that
+you have always to regulate and coerce; that you have sometimes entirely
+to cast away and to do without, if you mean to be Jesus Christ's at all.
+The old law of self-denial, of subduing the animal nature, its passions,
+appetites, desires, is as true and as needful to-day as it ever was; and
+for us all it is essential to the loftiness and purity of our Christian
+life that our animal nature and our fleshly constitution should be well
+kept down under heel and subdued. As Paul himself said in another place,
+'I bring under my body, and I keep it in subjection, lest by any means I
+should myself, having proclaimed to others the laws of the contest, be
+rejected from the prize.' Oh, you Christian men and women! if you are
+not living a life of self-denial, if you are not crucifying the flesh,
+with its affections and lusts, if you are not bearing 'about in the body
+the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Christ may be
+manifested in your mortal body,' what tokens are there that you are
+Christ's slaves at all?
+
+Then, besides this, we may expand the thought even further, and say
+that, in a very real sense, all the pains and sorrows and
+disappointments and afflictions that mainly touch our mortal part should
+be taken by us as, and made by us to be, the tokens that we belong to
+the Master.
+
+But it is not only in limitations and restrictions and self-denials and
+pains that Christ's ownership of us ought to be manifested in our daily
+lives, and so by means of our mortal bodies, but if there be in our
+hearts a deep indwelling possession of the grace and sweetness of
+Christ, it will make itself visible, ay! even in our faces, and 'beauty
+born of' our communion with Him 'shall pass into' and glorify even
+rugged and care-lined countenances. There may be, and there ought to be,
+in all Christian people, manifestly visible the tokens of the indwelling
+serenity of the indwelling Christ. And it should not be left to some
+moment of rapture at the end of life, for men to look upon us, to behold
+our faces, 'as it had been the face of an angel,' but by our daily walk,
+by our countenances full of a removed tranquillity, and a joy that rises
+from within, men ought to take knowledge of us that we have been with
+Jesus, and it should be the truth--I bear in my body the tokens of His
+possession.
+
+III. Now, once more notice the glorying in the slavery and its signs.
+
+'I bear,' says Paul; and he uses, as many of you may know, a somewhat
+remarkable word, which does not express mere bearing in the sense of
+toleration and patient endurance, although that is much; nor mere
+bearing in the sense of carrying, but implies bearing with a certain
+triumph as men would do who, coming back victorious from conflict, and
+being received into the city, were proud to show their scars, the
+honourable signs of their courage and constancy. So, with a triumph that
+is legitimate, the Apostle solemnly and proudly bears before men the
+marks of the Lord Jesus. Just as he says in another place:--'Thanks be
+unto God, which always leadeth us about in triumph in Jesus Christ,' He
+was proud of being dragged at the conqueror's chariot wheels, chained to
+them by the cords of love; and so he was proud of being the slave of
+Christ.
+
+It is a degradation to a man to yield abject submission, unconditional
+service to another man. It is the highest honour of our natures so to
+bow before that dear Lord. To prostrate ourselves to Him is to lift
+ourselves high in the scale of being. The King's servant is every other
+person's master. And he that feels that he is Christ's, may well be, not
+proud but conscious, of the dignity of belonging to such a Lord. The
+monarch's livery is a sign of honour. In our old Saxon kingdom the
+king's menials were the first nobles. So it is with us. The aristocracy
+of humanity are the slaves of Jesus Christ.
+
+And let us be proud of the marks of the branding iron, whether they come
+in the shape of sorrows and pains, or otherwise. It is well that we
+should have to carry these. It is blessed, and a special mark of the
+Master's favour that He should think it worth His while to mark us as
+His own, by any sorrow or by any pain. Howsoever hot may be the iron,
+and howsoever deeply it may be pressed by His firm, steady, gentle hand
+upon the quivering flesh and the shrinking heart, let us be thankful if
+He, even by it, impresses on us the manifest tokens of ownership. Oh,
+brethren! if we could come to look upon sorrows and losses with this
+clear recognition of their source, meaning and purpose, they change
+their nature, the paradox is fulfilled that we do 'gather grapes of
+thorns and figs of thistles.' 'I bear in my body,' with a solemn triumph
+and patient hope, 'the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
+
+IV. And now, lastly, the immunity from any disturbance which men can
+bring, which these marks, and the servitude they express, secure.
+
+'From henceforth let no man trouble me.' Paul claims that his apostolic
+authority, having been established by the fact of his sufferings for
+Christ, should give him a sacredness in their eyes; that henceforth
+there should be no rebellion against his teaching and his word. We may
+expand the thought to apply more to ourselves, and say that, in the
+measure in which we belong to Christ, and hear the marks of His
+possession of us, in that measure are we free from the disturbance of
+earthly influences and of human voices; and from all the other sources
+of care and trouble, of perturbation and annoyance, which harass and vex
+other men's spirits. 'Ye are bought with a price,' says Paul elsewhere.
+'Be not the servants of men.' Christ is your Master; do not let men
+trouble you. Take your orders from Him; let men rave as they like. Be
+content to be approved by Him; let men think of you as they please. The
+Master's smile is life, the Master's frown is death to the slave; what
+matters it what other people may say? 'He that judgeth me is the Lord.'
+So keep yourselves above the cackle of 'public opinion'; do not let your
+creed be crammed down your throats even by a consensus of however
+venerable and grave human teachers. Take your directions from your
+Master, and pay no heed to other voices if they would command. Live to
+please Him, and do not care what other people think. You are Christ's
+servant; 'let no man trouble' you.
+
+And so it should be about all the distractions and petty annoyances that
+disturb human life and harass our hearts. A very little breath of wind
+will ruffle all the surface of a shallow pond, though it would sweep
+across the deep sea and produce no effect. Deepen your natures by close
+union with Christ, and absolute submission to Him, and there will be a
+great calm in them, and cares and sorrows, and all the external sources
+of anxiety, far away, down there beneath your feet, will 'show scarce
+so gross as beetles,' whilst you stand upon the high cliff and look down
+upon them all. 'From henceforth no man shall trouble me.' 'I bear in my
+body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
+
+My brother! Whose marks do you bear? There are only two masters. If an
+eye that could see things as they are, were to go through this
+congregation, whose initials would it discern in your faces? There are
+some of us, I have no doubt, who in a very horrid sense bear in our
+bodies the marks of the idol that we worship. Men who have ruined their
+health by dissipation and animal sensualism--are there any of them here
+this morning? Are there none of us whose faces, whose trembling hands,
+whose diseased frames, are the tokens that they belong to the flesh and
+the world and the devil? Whose do _you_ bear?
+
+Oh! when one looks at all the faces that pass one upon the street--this
+all drawn with avarice and earthly-mindedness; that all bloated with
+self-indulgence and loose living--when one sees the mean faces, the
+passionate faces, the cruel faces, the vindictive faces, the lustful
+faces, the worldly faces, one sees how many of us bear in our bodies the
+marks of _another_ lord. They have no rest day nor night who worship the
+beast; and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.
+
+I pray you, yield yourselves to your true Lord, so on earth you may bear
+the beginnings of the likeness that stamps you His, and hereafter, as
+one of His happy slaves, shall do priestly service at His throne and see
+His face, and His name shall be in your foreheads.
+
+
+
+
+PHILIPPIANS
+
+
+
+
+LOVING GREETINGS
+
+          'Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to
+          all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at
+          Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: 2. Grace
+          to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
+          Jesus Christ. 3. I thank my God upon all my
+          remembrance of you, 4. Always in every
+          supplication of mine on behalf of you all making
+          my supplication with joy, 5. For your fellowship
+          in furtherance of the gospel from the first day
+          until now; 6. Being confident of this very thing
+          that He which began a good work in you will
+          perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ: 7. Even
+          as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf
+          of you all, because I have you in my heart,
+          inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence
+          and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are
+          partakers with me of grace. 8. For God is my
+          witness, how I long after you all in the tender
+          mercies of Christ Jesus.'--PHIL. i. 1-8 (R.V.).
+
+
+The bond between Paul and the church at Philippi was peculiarly close.
+It had been founded by himself, as is narrated at unusual length in the
+book of Acts. It was the first church established in Europe. Ten years
+had elapsed since then, possibly more. Paul is now a prisoner in Rome,
+not suffering the extremest rigour of imprisonment, but still a prisoner
+in his own hired house, accessible to his friends and able to do work
+for God, but still in the custody of soldiers, chained and waiting till
+the tardy steps of Roman law should come up to him, or perhaps till the
+caprice of Nero should deign to hear his cause. In that imprisonment we
+have his letters to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and
+Philemon, which latter three are closely connected in time, the two
+former in subject, and the two latter in destination. This letter stands
+apart from those to the great Asiatic churches.
+
+Its tone and general cast are unlike those of most of his letters. It
+contains no doctrinal discussions and no rebukes of evil, but is an
+outpouring of happy love and confidence. Like all Paul's epistles it
+begins with salutations, and like most of them with prayer, but from the
+very beginning is a long gush of love. These early verses seem to me
+very beautiful if we regard them either as a revelation of the personal
+character of the Apostle, or as a picture of the relation between
+teacher and taught in its most blessed and undisturbed form, or as a
+lovely ideal of friendship and love in any relation, hallowed and
+solemnised by Christian feeling.
+
+Verses one and two contain the apostolic greeting. In it we note the
+senders. Timothy is associated with Paul, according to his custom in all
+his letters even when he goes on immediately to speak in the singular.
+He ever sought to hide his own supremacy and to bring his friends into
+prominence. He was a great, lowly soul, who had no pride in the dignity
+of his position but felt the weight of its responsibility and would fain
+have had it shared. He calls Timothy and himself the slaves of Christ.
+He regarded it as his highest honour to be Christ's born servant, bound
+to absolute submission to the all-worthy Lord who had died to win him.
+It is to be noted that there is no reference here to apostolic
+authority, and the contrast is very remarkable in this respect with the
+Epistle to the Galatians, where with scornful emphasis he asserts it as
+bestowed 'not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ
+and God the Father.' In this designation of himself, we have already the
+first trace of the intimate and loving relationship in which Paul stood
+to the Philippians. There was no need for him to assert what was not
+denied, and he did not wish to deal with them officially, but rather
+personally. There is a similar omission in Philemon and a pathetic
+substitution there of the 'prisoner of Jesus Christ' for the 'slave of
+Christ Jesus.'
+
+The persons addressed are 'all the saints in Christ Jesus.' As he had
+not called himself an apostle, so he does not call them a church. He
+will not lose in an abstraction the personal bond which unites them.
+They are saints, which is not primarily a designation of moral purity,
+but of consecration to God, from whom indeed purity flows. The primitive
+meaning of the word is _separation_; the secondary meaning is
+_holiness_, and the connection between these two meanings contains a
+whole ethical philosophy. They are saints in Christ Jesus; union with
+Him is the condition both of consecration and of purity.
+
+The Philippian community had an organisation primitive but sufficient.
+We do not enter on the discussion of its two offices further than to
+note that the bishops are evidently identical with the elders, in the
+account in Acts xx. of Paul's parting with the Ephesian Christians,
+where the same persons are designated by both titles, as is also the
+case in Titus i. 5 and 7; the one name (elder) coming from the Hebrew
+and designating the office on the side of dignity, the other (bishop)
+being of Greek origin and representing it in terms of function. We note
+that there were several elders then in the Philippian church, and that
+their place in the salutation negatives the idea of hierarchical
+supremacy.
+
+The benediction or prayer for grace and peace is couched in the form
+which it assumes in all Paul's letters. It blends Eastern and Western
+forms of greeting. 'Grace' being the Greek and 'Peace' the Hebrew form
+of salutation. So Christ fuses and fulfils the world's desires. The
+grace which He gives is the self-imparting love of God, the peace which
+He gives is its consequence, and the salutation is an unmistakable
+evidence of Paul's belief in Christ's divinity.
+
+This salutation is followed by a great burst of thankful love, for the
+full apprehension of which we must look briefly at the details of these
+verses. We have first Paul's thankfulness in all his remembrance of the
+Philippians, then he further defines the times of his thankfulness as
+'always in every supplication of mind on behalf of you all making my
+supplication with joy.' His gratitude for them is expressed in all his
+prayers which are all thank-offerings. He never thinks of them nor prays
+for them without thanking God for them. Then comes the reason for his
+gratitude--their fellowship in furtherance of the gospel, from the first
+day when Lydia constrained him to come into her house, until this moment
+when now at the last their care of him had flourished again. The Revised
+Version's rendering 'fellowship in furtherance of' instead of
+'fellowship in' conveys the great lesson which the other rendering
+obscures--that the true fellowship is not in enjoyment but in service,
+and refers not so much to a common participation in the blessedness as
+in the toils and trials of Christian work. This is apparent in an
+immediately following verse where the Philippians' fellowship with
+Christ is again spoken of as consisting in sharing both in His bonds and
+in the double work of defending the gospel from gainsayers and in
+positively proclaiming it. Very beautifully in this connection does he
+designate that work and toil as 'my grace.'
+
+The fellowship which thus is the basis of his thanksgiving leads on to a
+confidence which he cherishes for them and which helps to make his
+prayers joyful thanksgivings. And such confidence becomes him because
+he has them in his heart, and 'love hopeth all things' and delights to
+believe in and anticipate all good concerning its object. He has them in
+his heart because they faithfully share with him his honourable, blessed
+burdens. But that is not all, it is 'in the tender mercies' of Christ
+that he loved them. His love is the love of Christ in him; his being is
+so united to Jesus that his heart beats with the same emotion as throbs
+in Christ's, and all that is merely natural and of self in his love is
+changed into a solemn participation in the great love which Christ has
+to them. This, then, being the general exposition of the words, let us
+now dwell for a little while on the broad principles suggested by them.
+
+I. Participation in the work of Christ is the noblest basis for love and
+friendship.
+
+Paul had tremendous courage and yet hungered for sympathy. He had no
+outlets for his love but his fellow Christians. There had, no doubt,
+been a wrenching of the ties of kindred when he became a Christian, and
+his love, dammed back and restrained, had to pour itself on his
+brethren.
+
+The Church is a workshop, not a dormitory, and every Christian man and
+woman is bound to help in the common cause. These Philippians help Paul
+by sympathy and gifts, indeed, but by their own direct work as well, and
+things are not right with us unless leaders can say, 'Ye all are
+partakers of my grace.' There are other real and sweet bonds of love and
+friendship, but the most real and sweetest is to be found in our common
+relation to Jesus Christ and in our co-operation in the work which is
+ours because it is His and we are His.
+
+II. Thankful, glad prayer flows from such co-operation.
+
+The prisoner in his bonds in the alien city had the remembrance of his
+friends coming into his chamber like fresh, cool air, or fragrance from
+far-off gardens. A thrill of gladness was in his soul as often as he
+thought on them. It is blessed if in our experience teacher and taught
+are knit together thus; without some such bond of union no good will be
+done. The relation of pastor and people is so delicate and spiritual,
+the purpose of it so different from that of mere teaching, the laws of
+it so informal and elastic, the whole power of it, therefore, so
+dependent on sympathy and mutual kindliness that, unless there be
+something like the bond which united Paul and the Philippians, there
+will be no prosperity or blessing. The thinnest film of cloud prevents
+deposition of dew. If all men in pulpits could say what Paul said of the
+Philippians, and all men in pews could deserve to have it said of them,
+the world would feel the power of a quickened Church.
+
+III. Confidence is born of love and common service.
+
+Paul delights to think that God will go on because God has already begun
+a good work in them, and Paul delights to think of their perfection
+because he loves them. 'God is not a man that He should lie, or the son
+of man that He should repent.' His past is the guarantee for His future;
+what He begins He finishes.
+
+IV. Our love is hallowed and greatened in the love of Christ.
+
+Paul lived, yet not he, but Christ lived in him. It is but one
+illustration of the principle of his being that Christ who was the life
+of his life, is the heart of his love. He longed after his Philippian
+friends in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus. This and this only is
+the true consecration of love when we live and love in the Lord; when we
+will as Christ does, think as He does, love as He does, when the mind
+that was in Christ Jesus was in us. It is needful to guard against the
+intrusion of mere human affection and regard into our sacred relations
+in the Church; it is needful to guard against it in our own personal
+love and friendship. Let us see that we ourselves know and believe the
+love wherewith Christ hath loved us, and then let us see that that love
+dwells in us informing and hallowing our hearts, making them tender with
+His great tenderness, and turning all the water of our earthly
+affections into the new wine of His kingdom. Let the law for our hearts,
+as well as for our minds and wills, be 'I live, yet not I but Christ
+liveth in me.'
+
+
+
+
+A COMPREHENSIVE PRAYER
+
+          'And this I pray, that your love may abound yet
+          more and more in knowledge and all discernment;
+          10. So that ye may approve the things that are
+          excellent; that ye may be sincere and void of
+          offence unto the day of Christ; 11. Being filled
+          with the fruits of righteousness, which are
+          through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of
+          God.'--PHIL. i. 9-11 (R.V.).
+
+
+What a blessed friendship is that of which the natural language is
+prayer! We have many ways, thank God, of showing our love and of helping
+one another, but the best way is by praying for one another. All that is
+selfish and low is purged out of our hearts in the act, suspicions and
+doubts fade away when we pray for those whom we love. Many an alienation
+would have melted like morning mists if it had been prayed about, added
+tenderness and delicacy come to our friendships so like the bloom on
+ripening grapes. We may test our loves by this simple criterion--Can we
+pray about them? If not, should we have them? Are they blessings to us
+or to others?
+
+This prayer, like all those in Paul's epistles, is wonderfully full. His
+deep affection for, and joy in, the Philippian church breathes in every
+word of it. Even his jealous watchfulness saw nothing in them to desire
+but progress in what they possessed. Such a desire is the highest that
+love can frame. We can wish nothing better for one another than growth
+in the love of God. Paul's estimate of the highest good of those who
+were dearest to him was that they should be more and more completely
+filled with the love of God and with its fruits of holiness and purity,
+and what was his supreme desire for the Philippians is the highest
+purpose of the gospel for us all, and should be the aim of our effort
+and longing, dominating all others as some sovereign mountain peak
+towers above the valleys. Looking then at this prayer as containing an
+outline of true progress in the Christian life, we may note:
+
+I. The growth in keenness of conscience founded on growth in love.
+
+Paul does not merely desire that their love may abound, but that it may
+become more and more 'rich in knowledge and all discernment.' The former
+is perhaps accurate knowledge, and the latter the application of it.
+'Discernment' literally means 'sense,' and here, of course, when
+employed about spiritual and moral things it means the power of
+apprehending good and bad as such. It is, I suppose, substantially
+equivalent to conscience, the moral tact or touch of the soul by which,
+in a manner analogous to bodily sense, it ascertains the moral character
+of things. This growth of love in the power of spiritual and moral
+discernment is desired in order to its exercise in 'proving things that
+differ.' It is a process of discrimination and testing that is meant,
+which is, I think, fairly represented by the more modern expression
+which I have used--keenness of conscience.
+
+I need spend little time in remarking on the absolute need of such a
+process of discrimination. We are surrounded by temptations to evil, and
+live in a world where maxims and principles not in accordance with the
+gospel abound. Our own natures are but partially sanctified. The shows
+of things must be tested. Apparent good must be proved. The Christian
+life is not merely to unfold itself in peace and order, but through
+conflict. We are not merely to follow impulses, or to live as angels do,
+who are above sin, or as animals do who are beneath it. When false coin
+is current it is folly to accept any without a test. All around us there
+is glamour, and so within us there is need for careful watchfulness and
+quick discrimination.
+
+This keenness of conscience follows on the growth of love. Nothing makes
+a man more sensitive to evil than a hearty love to God. Such a heart is
+keener to discern what is contrary to its love than any ethical maxims
+can make it. A man who lives in love will be delivered from the blinding
+influence of his own evil tastes, and a heart steadfast in love will not
+be swayed by lower temptations. Communion with God will, from its very
+familiarity with Him, instinctively discern the evil of evil, as a man
+coming out of pure air is conscious of vitiated atmosphere which those
+who dwell in it do not perceive. It used to be said that Venice glass
+would shiver into fragments if poison were poured into the cup. As evil
+spirits were supposed to be cast out by the presence of an innocent
+child or a pure virgin, so the ugly shapes that sometimes tempt us by
+assuming fair disguises will be shown in their native hideousness when
+confronted with a heart filled with the love of God.
+
+Such keenness of judgment is capable of indefinite increase. Our
+consciences should become more and more sensitive: we should always be
+advancing in our discovery of our own evils, and be more conscious of
+our sins, the fewer we have of them. Twilight in a chamber may reveal
+some foul things, and the growing light will disclose more. 'Secret
+faults' will cease to be secret when our love abounds more and more in
+knowledge, and in all discernment.
+
+II. The purity and completeness of character flowing from this keenness
+of conscience.
+
+The Apostle desires that the knowledge which he asks for his Philippian
+friends may pass over into character, and he describes the sort of men
+which he desires them to be in two clauses, 'sincere and void of
+offence' being the one, 'filled with the fruits of righteousness' being
+the other. The former is perhaps predominantly negative, the latter
+positive. That which is sincere is so because when held up to the light
+it shows no flaws, and that which is without offence is so because the
+stones in the path have been cleared away by the power of
+discrimination, so that there is no stumbling. The life which discerns
+keenly will bring forth the fruit which consists of righteousness, and
+that fruit is to fill the whole nature so that no part shall be without
+it.
+
+Nothing lower than this is the lofty standard towards which each
+Christian life is to aim, and to which it can indefinitely approximate.
+It is not enough to aim at the negative virtue of sincerity so that the
+most searching scrutiny of the web of our lives shall detect no flaws
+in the weaving, and no threads dropped or broken. There must also be the
+actual presence of positive righteousness filling life in all its parts.
+That lofty standard is pressed upon us by a solemn motive, 'unto the day
+of Christ.' We are ever to keep before us the thought that in that
+coming day all our works will be made manifest, and that all of them
+should be done, so that when we have to give account of them we shall
+not be ashamed.
+
+The Apostle takes it for granted here that if the Philippian Christians
+know what is right and what is wrong, they will immediately choose and
+do the right. Is he forgetting the great gulf between knowledge and
+practice? Not so, but he is strong in the faith that love needs only to
+know in order to do. The love which abounds more and more in knowledge
+and in all discernment will be the soul of obedience, and will delight
+in fulfilling the law which it has delighted in beholding. Other
+knowledge has no tendency to lead to practice, but this knowledge which
+is the fruit of love has for its fruit righteousness.
+
+III. The great Name in which this completeness is secured.
+
+The Apostle's prayer dwells not only on the way by which a Christian
+life may increase itself, but in its close reaches the yet deeper
+thought that all that growth comes 'through Jesus Christ.' He is the
+Giver of it all, so that we are not so much called to a painful toil as
+to a glad reception. Our love fills us with the fruits of righteousness,
+because it takes all these from His hands. It is from His gift that
+conscience derives its sensitiveness. It is by His inspiration that
+conscience becomes strong enough to determine action, and that even our
+dull hearts are quickened into a glow of desiring to have in our lives,
+the law of the spirit of life, that was in Christ Jesus, and to make our
+own all that we see in Him of 'things that are lovely and of good
+report.'
+
+The prayer closes with a reference to the highest end of all our
+perfecting--the glory and praise of God; the former referring rather to
+the transcendent majesty of God in itself, and the latter to the
+exaltation of it by men. The highest glory of God comes from the gradual
+increase in redeemed men's likeness to Him. They are 'the secretaries of
+His praise,' and some portion of that great honour and responsibility
+lies on each of us. If all Christian men were what they all might be and
+should be, swift and sure in their condemnation of evil and loyal
+fidelity to conscience, and if their lives were richly hung with ripened
+clusters of the fruits of righteousness, the glory of God would be more
+resplendent in the world, and new tongues would break into praise of Him
+who had made men so like Himself.
+
+
+
+
+A PRISONER'S TRIUMPH
+
+          'Now I would have you know, brethren, that the
+          things which happened unto me have fallen out
+          rather unto the progress of the gospel; 13. So
+          that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout
+          the whole praetorian guard, and to all the rest;
+          14. And that most of the brethren in the Lord,
+          being confident through my bonds, are more
+          abundantly bold to speak the word of God without
+          fear. 15. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy
+          and strife; and some also of good will: 16. The
+          one do it of love, knowing that I am set for the
+          defence of the gospel: 17. But the other proclaim
+          Christ of faction, not sincerely, thinking to
+          raise up affliction for me in my bonds. 18. What
+          then? only that in every way, whether in pretence
+          or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and therein I
+          rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. 19. For I know
+          that this shall turn to my salvation, through your
+          supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus
+          Christ. 20. According to my earnest expectation
+          and hope, that in nothing shall I be put to shame,
+          but that with all boldness, as always, so now also
+          Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by
+          life or by death.'--PHIL. i. 12-20 (R.V.)
+
+
+Paul's writings are full of autobiography, that is partly owing to
+temperament, partly to the profound interpenetration of his whole
+nature with his religion. His theology was but the generalisation of his
+experience. He has felt and verified all that he has to say. But the
+personal experiences of this sunny letter to his favourite church have a
+character all their own. In that atmosphere of untroubled love and
+sympathy a shyer heart than Paul's would have opened: his does so in
+tenderness, gladness, and trust. We have here the unveiling of his
+inmost self in response to what he knew would be an eager desire for
+news of his welfare. This whole section appears to me to be a wonderful
+revelation of his prison thoughts, an example of what we may call the
+ennobling power of a passionate enthusiasm for Christ. Remember that he
+is a prisoner, shut out from his life's work, waiting to be tried before
+Nero, whose reign had probably, by this time, passed from its delusive
+morning of dewy promise to its lurid noon. The present and the future
+were dark for him, and yet in spite of them all comes forth this burst
+of undaunted courage and noble gladness. We simply follow the course of
+the words as they lie, and we find in them,
+
+I. An absorbing purpose which bends all circumstances to its service and
+values them only as instruments.
+
+The things which happened unto me; that is Paul's minimising euphemism
+for the grim realities of imprisonment, or perhaps for some recent
+ominous turns in his circumstances. To him they are not worth dwelling
+on further, nor is their personal incidence worth taking into account;
+the only thing which is important is to say how these things have
+affected his life's work. It is enough for him, and he believes that it
+will be enough even for his loving friends at Philippi to know that,
+instead of their being as they might have feared, and as he sometimes
+when he was faithless expected, hindrances to his work, they have turned
+out rather to 'the furtherance of the gospel.' Whether he has been
+comfortable or not is a matter of very small importance, the main thing
+is that Christ's work has been helped, and then he goes on to tell two
+ways in which his imprisonment had conduced to this end.
+
+'My bonds became manifest in Christ.' It has been clearly shown why I
+was a prisoner; all the Praetorian guard had learned what Paul was there
+for. We know from Acts that he was 'suffered to abide by himself with
+the soldier that kept him.' He has no word to say of the torture of
+compulsory association, night and day, with the rude legionaries, or of
+the horrors of such a presence in his sweetest, sacredest moments of
+communion with his Lord. These are all swallowed up in the thought as
+they were in the fact, that each new guard as he came to sit there
+beside Paul was a new hearer, and that by this time he must have told
+the story of Christ and His love to nearly the whole corps. That is a
+grand and wonderful picture of passionate earnestness and absorbed
+concentration in one pursuit. Something of the same sort is in all
+pursuits, the condition of success and the sure result of real interest.
+We have all to be specialists if we would succeed in any calling. The
+river that spreads wide flows slow, and if it is to have a scour in its
+current it must be kept between high banks. We have to bring ourselves
+to a point and to see that the point is red-hot if we mean to bore with
+it. If our limitations are simply enforced by circumstances, they may be
+maiming, but if they come of clear insight and free choice of worthy
+ends, they are noble. The artist, the scholar, the craftsman, all need
+to take for their motto 'This one thing I do.' I suppose that a man
+would not be able to make a good button unless he confined himself to
+button-making. We see round us abundant examples of men who, for
+material aims and almost instinctively, use all circumstances for one
+end and appraise them according to their relations to that, and they are
+quoted as successful, and held up to young souls as patterns to be
+imitated. Yes! But what about the man who does the same in regard to
+Christ and His work? Is he thought of as an example to be imitated or as
+a warning to be avoided? Is not the very same concentration when applied
+to Christian work and living thought to be fanatical, which is welcomed
+with universal applause when it is directed to lower pursuits? The
+contrast of our eager absorption in worldly things and of the ease with
+which any fluttering butterfly can draw us away from the path which
+leads us to God, ought to bring a blush to all cheeks and penitence to
+all hearts. There was no more obligation on Paul to look at the
+circumstances of his life thus than there is on every Christian to do
+so. We do not desire that all should be apostles, but the Apostle's
+temper and way of looking at 'the things which happened unto' him should
+be our way of looking at the things which happen unto us. We shall
+estimate them rightly, and as God estimates them, only when we estimate
+them according to their power to serve our souls and to further Christ's
+kingdom.
+
+II. The magnetism or contagion of enthusiasm.
+
+The second way by which Paul's circumstances furthered the gospel was
+'that most of the brethren, being confident through my bonds, are more
+abundantly bold to speak the word of God.' His constancy and courage
+stirred them up. Moved by good-will and love, they were heartened to
+preach because they saw in him one 'appointed by God for the defence of
+the gospel.' A soul all on flame has power to kindle others. There is an
+old story of a Scottish martyr whose constancy at the stake touched so
+many hearts that 'a merry gentleman' said to Cardinal Beaton, 'If ye
+burn any more you should burn them in low cellars, for the reek (smoke)
+of Mr. Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon.'
+
+It is not only in the case of martyrs that enthusiasm is contagious.
+However highly we may estimate the impersonal forces that operate for
+'the furtherance of the gospel' we cannot but see that in all ages, from
+the time of Paul down to to-day, the main agents for the spread of the
+gospel have been individual souls all aflame with the love of God in
+Christ Jesus and filled with the life of His Spirit. The history of the
+Church has largely consisted in the biographies of its saints, and every
+great revival of religion has been the flame kindled round a flaming
+heart. Paul was impelled by his own love; the brethren in Rome were in a
+lower state as only reflecting his, and it ought to be the prerogative
+of every Christian to be a centre and source of kindling influence
+rather than a mere recipient of it. It is a question which may well be
+asked by each of us about ourselves--would anybody find quickening
+impulses to divine life and Christian service coming from us, or do we
+simply serve to keep others' coldness in countenance? It was said of old
+of Jesus Christ, 'He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire,'
+and that promise remains effective to-day, however little one looking on
+the characters of the mass of so-called Christians would believe it.
+They seem rather to have been plunged into ice-cold water than into
+fire, and their coldness is as contagious as Paul's radiant enthusiasm
+was. Let us try, for our parts, to radiate out the warmth of the love of
+God, that it may kindle in others the flame which it has lighted in
+ourselves, and not be like icebergs floating southwards and bringing
+down the temperature of even the very temperate seas in which we find
+ourselves.
+
+III. The wide tolerance of such enthusiasm.
+
+It is stigmatised as 'narrow,' which to-day is the sin of sins, but it
+is broad with the true breadth. Such enthusiasm lifts a man high enough
+to see over many hedges and to be tolerant even of intolerance, and of
+the indifference which tolerates everything but earnestness. Paul here
+deals with a class amongst the Roman Christians who were 'preaching of
+envy and strife,' with the malicious calculation that so they would
+annoy him and 'add affliction' to his bonds. It is generally supposed
+that these were Judaising Christians against whom Paul fulminates in all
+his letters, but I confess that, notwithstanding the arguments of
+authoritative commentators, I cannot believe that they are the same set
+of men preaching the same doctrines which in other places he treats as
+destructive of the whole gospel. The change of tone is so great as to
+require the supposition of a change of subjects, and the Judaisers with
+whom the Apostle waged a neverending warfare, never did evangelistic
+work amongst the heathen as these men seem to have done, but confined
+themselves to trying to pervert converts already made. It was not their
+message but their spirit that was faulty. With whatever purpose of
+annoyance they were animated, they did 'preach Christ,' and Paul
+superbly brushes aside all that was antagonistic to him personally, in
+his triumphant recognition that the one thing needful _was_ spoken, even
+from unworthy motives and with a malicious purpose. The situation here
+revealed, strange though it appears with our ignorance of the facts, is
+but too like much of what meets us still. Do we not know denominational
+rivalries which infuse a bitter taint of envy and strife into much
+evangelistic earnestness, and is the spectacle of a man preaching Christ
+with a taint of sidelong personal motives quite unknown to this day? We
+may press the question still more closely home and ask ourselves if we
+are entirely free from the influence of such a spirit. No man who knows
+himself and has learned how subtly lower motives blend themselves with
+the highest will be in haste to answer these questions with an
+unconditional 'No,' and no man who looks on the sad spectacle of
+competing Christian communities and knows anything of the methods of
+competition that are in force, will venture to deny that there are still
+those who preach Christ of envy and strife.
+
+It comes, then, to be a testing question for each of us, have we learned
+from Paul this lesson of tolerance, which is not the result of cold
+indifference, but the outcome of fiery enthusiasm and of a clear
+recognition of the one thing needful? Granted that there is preaching
+from unworthy motives and modes of work which offend our tastes and
+prejudices, and that there are types of evangelistic earnestness which
+have errors mixed up with them, are we inclined to say 'Nevertheless
+Christ is proclaimed, and therein I rejoice, Yea, and will rejoice'?
+Much chaff may be blended with the seeds sown; the chaff will lie inert
+and the seed will grow. Such tolerance is the very opposite of the
+carelessness which comes from languid indifference. The one does not
+mind what a man preaches because it has no belief in any of the things
+preached, and to it one thing is as good as another, and none are of any
+real consequence. The other proceeds from a passionate belief that the
+one thing which sinful men need to hear is the great message that Christ
+has lived and died for them, and therefore, it puts all else on one side
+and cares nothing for jangling notes that may come in, if only above
+them the music of His name sounds out clear and full.
+
+IV. The calm fronting of life and death as equally magnifying Christ.
+
+The Apostle is sure that all the experiences of his prison will turn to
+his ultimate salvation, because he is sure that his dear friends in
+Philippi will pray for him, and that through their prayers he will
+receive a 'supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,' which shall be enough
+to secure his steadfastness. His expectation is not that he will escape
+from prison or from martyrdom, both of which stand only too clearly
+before him, but that whatever may be waiting for him in the future, 'all
+boldness' will be granted him, so that whether he lives he will live to
+the Lord, or whether he dies, he will die to the Lord. He had so
+completely accepted it as his life's purpose to magnify Jesus, that the
+extremest possible changes of condition came to be insignificant to him.
+He had what we may have, the true anaesthetic which will give us a
+'solemn scorn of ills' and make even the last and greatest change from
+life to death of little account. If we magnify Christ in our lives with
+the same passionate earnestness and concentrated absorption as Paul had,
+our lives like some train on well-laid rails will enter upon the bridge
+across the valley with scarce a jolt. With whatever differences--and the
+differences are to us tremendous--the same purpose will be pursued in
+life and in death, and they who, living, live to the praise of Christ,
+dying will magnify Him as their last act in the body which they leave.
+What was it that made possible such a passion of enthusiasm for a man
+whom Paul had never seen in the flesh? What changed the gloomy
+fuliginous fanaticism of the Pharisee, at whose feet were laid the
+clothes of the men who stoned Stephen, into this radiant light, all
+aflame with a divine splendour? The only answer is in Paul's own words,
+'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' That answer is as true for each
+of us as it was for him. Does it produce in us anything like the effects
+which it produced in him?
+
+
+
+
+A STRAIT BETWIXT TWO
+
+          'To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22.
+          But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of
+          my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23.
+          For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire
+          to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far
+          better: 24. Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is
+          more needful for you. 25. And having this
+          confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue
+          with you all for your furtherance and joy of
+          faith.'--PHIL. i. 21-25.
+
+
+A preacher may well shrink from such a text. Its elevation of feeling
+and music of expression make all sermons on it sound feeble and harsh,
+like some poor shepherd's pipe after an organ. But, though this be true,
+it may not be useless to attempt, at least, to point out the course of
+thought in these grand words. They flow like a great river, which
+springs at first with a strong jet from some deep cave, then is torn and
+chafed among dividing rocks, and after a troubled middle course, moves
+at last with stately and equable current to the sea. The Apostle's
+thoughts and feelings have here, as it were, a threefold bent in their
+flow. First, we have the clear, unhesitating statement of the
+comparative advantages of life and death to a Christian man, when
+thought of as affecting himself alone. The one is Christ, the other
+gain. But we neither live nor die to ourselves; and no man has a right
+to think of life or death only from the point of view of his own
+advantage. So the problem is not so simple as it looked. Life here is
+the condition of fruitful labour here. There are his brethren and his
+work to think of. These bring him to a stand, and check the rising wish.
+He knows not which state to prefer. The stream is dammed back between
+rocks, and it chafes and foams and seems to lose its way among them.
+Then comes a third bend in the flow of thought and feeling, and he
+gladly apprehends it as his present duty to remain at his work. If his
+own joy is thereby less, his brethren's will be more. If he is not to
+depart and be with Christ, he will remain and be with Christ's friends,
+which is, in some sort, being with Him too. If he may not have the gain
+of death, he will have the fruit of work in life.
+
+Let us try to fill up, somewhat, this meagre outline of the warm stream
+that pours through these great words.
+
+I. The simplicity of the comparison between life and death to a
+Christian thinking of himself alone.
+
+'To me' is plainly emphatic. It means more than 'in my judgment' or even
+'in my case.' It is equal to 'To me personally, if I stood alone, and
+had no one to consider but myself.' 'To live' refers mainly here to
+outward practical life of service, and 'to die' should, perhaps, rather
+be 'to be dead,' referring, not to the act of dissolution, but to the
+state after; not to the entrance chamber, but to the palace to which it
+admits.
+
+So we have here grandly set forth the simplicity and unity of the
+Christian life. While the words probably refer mainly to outward life,
+they presuppose an inward, of which that outward is the expression. In
+every possible phase of the word 'life,' Christ is the life of the
+Christian. To live is Christ, for He is the mystical source from whom
+all ours flows. 'With Thee is the fountain of life,' and all life, both
+of body and spirit, is from Him, by Him, and in Him. 'To live is
+Christ,' for He is the aim and object, as well as the Lord, of it all,
+and no other is worth calling life, but that which is _for_ Him by
+willing consecration, as well as _from_ Him by constant derivation. 'To
+live is Christ,' for He is the model of all our life, and the one
+all-sufficient law for us is to follow Him.
+
+Life is to be _as_ Christ, _for_ Christ, _by_, _in_, and _from_ Christ.
+So shall there be strength, peace, and freedom in our days. The unity
+brought into life thereby will issue in calm blessedness, contrasted
+wondrously with the divided hearts and aims which fritter our days into
+fragments, and make our lives heaps of broken links instead of chains.
+
+Surely this is the charm which brings rest into the most troubled
+history, and nobleness into the lowliest duties. There is nothing so
+grand as the unity breathed into our else distracted days by the
+all-pervading reference to and presence of Christ. Without that, we are
+like the mariners of the old world, who crept timidly from headland to
+headland, making each their aim for a while, and leaving each inevitably
+behind, never losing sight of shore, nor ever knowing the wonders of the
+deep and all the majesty of mid-ocean, nor ever touching the happy
+shores beyond, which they reach who carry in their hearts a compass that
+ever points to the unseen pole.
+
+Then comes the other great thought, that where life is simply Christ,
+death will be simply gain.
+
+Paul, no doubt, shrank from the act of death, as we all do. It was not
+the narrow passage which attracted him, but the broad land beyond. Every
+other aspect of that was swallowed up in one great thought, which will
+occupy us more at length presently. But that word 'gain' suggests that
+to Paul's confident faith death was but an increase and progression in
+all that was good here. To him it was no loss to lose flesh and sense
+and all the fleeting joys with which they link us. To him death was no
+destruction of his being, and not even an interruption of its
+continuity. Everything that was of any real advantage to him was to be
+his after as before. The change was clear gain. Everything good was to
+be just as it had been, only better. Nothing was to be dropped but what
+it was progress to lose, and whatever was kept was to be heightened.
+
+How strongly does that view express the two thoughts of the _continuity_
+and _intensifying_ of the Christian life beyond the grave! And what a
+contrast does that simple, sublime confidence present to many another
+thought of death! To how many men its blackness seems to be the sudden
+swallowing up of the light of their very being! To how many more does it
+seem to put an end to all their occupations, and to shear their lives in
+twain, as remorselessly as the fall of the guillotine severs the head
+from the body. How are the light butterfly wings of the trivialities in
+which many men and women spend their days to carry them across the awful
+gulf? What are the people to do on the other side whose lives have all
+been given to purposes and tasks that stop on this side? Are there shops
+and mills, or warehouses and drawing-rooms, or studies and
+lecture-halls, over there? Will the lives which have not struck their
+roots down through all the surface soil to the rock, bear transplanting?
+Alas! for the thousands landed in that new country, as unfit for it by
+the tenor of their past occupations, as some pale artisan, with delicate
+fingers and feeble muscles, set down as a colonist to clear the forest!
+
+This Paul had a work here which he could carry on hereafter. There would
+be no reversal of view, no change in the fundamental character of his
+occupations. True, the special forms of work which he had pursued here
+would be left behind, but the principle underlying them would continue.
+It matters very little to the servant whether he is out in the cold and
+wet 'ploughing and tending cattle,' or whether he is waiting on his
+master at table. It is service all the same, only it is warmer and
+lighter in the house than in the field, and it is promotion to be made
+an indoor servant.
+
+So the direction of the life, and the source of the life, and the
+fundamentals of the life continue unchanged. Everything is as it was,
+only in the superlative degree. To other men the narrow plain on which
+their low-lying lives are placed is rimmed by the jagged, forbidding
+white peaks. It is cold and dreary on these icy summits where no
+creature can live. Perhaps there is land on the other side; who knows?
+The pale barrier separates all here from all there; we know not what may
+be on the other side. Only we feel that the journey is long and chill,
+that the ice and the barren stone appal, and that we never can carry our
+household goods, our tools, or our wealth with us up to the black jaws
+of the pass.
+
+But for this man the Alps were tunnelled. There was no interruption in
+his progress. He would go, he believed, without 'break of gauge,' and
+would pass through the darkness, scarcely knowing when it came, and
+certainly unchecked for even a moment, right on to the other side where
+he would come out, as travellers to Italy do, to fairer plains and bluer
+skies, to richer harvests and a warmer sun. No jolt, no pause, no
+momentary suspension of consciousness, no reversal, nor even
+interruption in his activity, did Paul expect death to bring him, but
+only continuance and increase of all that was essential to his life.
+
+He has calmness in his confidence. There is nothing hysterical or
+overwrought or morbid in these brief words, so peaceful in their trust,
+so moderate and restrained in their rapture. Are our anticipations of
+the future moulded on such a pattern? Do we think of it as quietly as
+this man did? Are we as tranquilly sure about it? Is there as little
+mist of uncertainty about the clearly defined image to our eye as there
+was to his? Is our confidence so profound that these brief monosyllables
+are enough to state it? Above all, do we know that to die will be gain,
+because we can honestly say that to live is Christ? If so, our hope is
+valid, and will not yield when we lean heavily upon it for support in
+the ford over the black stream. If our hope is built on anything
+besides, it will snap then like a rotten pole, and leave us to stumble
+helpless among the slippery stones and the icy torrent.
+
+II. The second movement of thought here, which troubles and complicates
+this simple decision, as to what is the best for Paul himself, is the
+hesitation springing from the wish to help his brethren.
+
+As we said, no man has a right to forget others in settling the question
+whether he would live or die. We see the Apostle here brought to a stand
+by two conflicting currents of feelings. For himself he would gladly
+go, for his friends' sake he is drawn to the opposite choice. He has
+'fallen into a place where two seas meet,' and for a minute or two his
+will is buffeted from side to side by the 'violence of the waves.' The
+obscurity of his language, arising from its broken construction,
+corresponds to the struggle of his feelings. As the Revised Version has
+it, 'If to live in the flesh--if this is the fruit of my work, then what
+I shall choose, I wot not.' By which fragmentary sentence, rightly
+representing as it does the roughness of the Greek, we understand him to
+mean that if living on in this life is the condition of his gaining
+fruit from his toil, then he has to check the rising wish, and is
+hindered from decisive preference either way. Both motives act upon him,
+one drawing him deathward, the other holding him firmly here. He is in a
+dilemma, pinned in, as it were, between the two opposing pressures. On
+the one hand he has the desire (not 'a desire,' as the English Bible has
+it, as if it were but one among many) turned towards departing to be
+with Christ; but on the other, he knows that his remaining here is for
+the present all but indispensable for the immature faith of the churches
+which he has founded. So he stands in doubt for a moment, and the
+picture of his hesitation may well be studied by us.
+
+Such a reason for wishing to die in conflict with such a reason for
+wishing to live, is as noble as it is rare, and, thank God, as imitable
+as it is noble.
+
+Notice the aspect which death wore to his faith. He speaks of it as
+'departing,' a metaphor which does not, like many of the flattering
+appellations which men give that last enemy, reveal a quaking dread
+which cannot bear to look him in his ashen, pale face. Paul calls him
+gentle names, because he fears him not at all. To him all the
+dreadfulness, the mystery, the pain and the solitude have melted away,
+and death has become a mere change of place. The word literally means
+_to unloose_, and is employed to express pulling up the tent-pegs of a
+shifting encampment, or drawing up the anchor of a ship. In either case
+the image is simply that of removal. It is but striking the earthly
+house of this tent; it is but one more day's march, of which we have had
+many already, though this is over Jordan. It is but the last day's
+journey, and to-morrow there will be no packing up in the morning and
+resuming our weary tramp, but we shall be at home, and go no more out.
+So has the awful thing at the end dwindled, and the brighter and greater
+the land behind it shines, the smaller does it appear.
+
+The Apostle thinks little of dying because he thinks so much of what
+comes after. Who is afraid of a brief journey if a meeting with dear
+friends long lost is at the end of it? The narrow avenue seems short,
+and its roughness and darkness are nothing, because Jesus Christ stands
+with outstretched arms at the other end, beckoning us to Himself, as
+mothers teach their children to walk. Whosoever is sure that he will be
+with Christ can afford to smile at death, and call it but a shifting of
+place. And whosoever feels the desire to be with Christ will not shrink
+from the means by which that desire is fulfilled, with the agony of
+revulsion that it excites in many an imagination. It will always be
+solemn, and its physical accompaniments of pain and struggle will always
+be more or less of a terror, and the parting, even for a time, from our
+dear ones, will always be loss, but nevertheless if we see Christ across
+the gulf, and know that one struggle more and we shall clasp Him with
+'inseparable hands with joy and bliss in over measure for ever,' we
+shall not dread the leap.
+
+One thought about the future should fill our minds, as it did Paul's,
+that it is to be with Christ. How different that nobly simple
+expectation, resolving all bliss into the one element, is from the
+morbid curiosity as to details, which vulgarises and weakens so much of
+even devout anticipation of the future. To us as to him Heaven should be
+Christ, and Christ should be Heaven. All the rest is but accident.
+Golden harps and crowns, and hidden manna and white robes and thrones,
+and all the other representations, are but symbols of the blessedness of
+union with Him, or consequences of it. Immortal life and growth in
+perfection, both of mind and heart, and the cessation of all that
+disturbs, and our investiture with glory and honour, flung around our
+poor natures like a royal robe over a naked body, are all but the
+many-sided brightnesses that pour out from Him, and bathe in their
+rainbowed light those who are with Him.
+
+To be with Christ is all we need. For the loving heart to be near Him is
+enough.
+
+          'I shall clasp thee again, O soul of my soul,
+           And with God be the rest.'
+
+Let us not fritter away our imaginations and our hopes on the
+subordinate and non-essential accompaniments, but concentrate all their
+energy on the one central thought. Let us not lose this gracious image
+in a maze of symbols, that, though precious, are secondary. Let us not
+inquire, with curiosity that will find no answer, about the unrevealed
+wonders and staggering mysteries of that transcendent thought, life
+everlasting. Let us not acquire the habit of thinking of the future as
+the perfecting of our humanity, without connecting all our speculations
+with Him, whose presence will be all of heaven to us all. But let us
+keep His serene figure ever clear before our imaginations in all the
+blaze of the light, and try to feed our hopes and stay our hearts on
+this aspect of heavenly blessedness as the all-embracing one, that all,
+each for himself, shall be for ever conscious of Christ's loving
+presence, and of the closest union with Him, a union in comparison with
+which the dearest and sacredest blendings of heart with heart and life
+with life are cold and distant. For the clearness of our hope the fewer
+the details the better: for the willingness with which we turn from life
+and face the inevitable end, it is very important that we should have
+that one thought disengaged from all others. The one full moon, which
+dims all the stars, draws the tides after it. These lesser lights may
+gem the darkness, and dart down white shafts of brilliance in quivering
+reflections on the waves, but they have no power to move their mass. It
+is Christ and Christ only who draws us across the gulf to be with Him,
+and reduces death to a mere shifting of our encampment.
+
+This is a noble and worthy reason for wishing to die; not because Paul
+is disappointed and sick of life, not because he is weighed down with
+sorrow, or pain, or loss, or toil, but because he would like to be with
+his Master. He is no morbid sentimentalist, he is cherishing no
+unwholesome longing, he is not weary of work, he indulges in no
+hysterical raptures of desire. What an eloquent simplicity is in that
+quiet 'very far better!' It goes straight to one's heart, and says more
+than paragraphs of falsetto yearnings. There is nothing in such a wish
+to die, based on such a reason, that the most manly and wholesome piety
+need be ashamed of. It is a pattern for us all.
+
+The attraction of life contends with the attraction of heaven in these
+verses. That is a conflict which many good men know something of, but
+which does not take the shape with many of us which it assumed with
+Paul. Drawn, as he is, by the supreme desire of close union with his
+Master, for the sake of which he is ready to depart, he is tugged back
+even more strongly by the thought that, if he stays here, he can go on
+working and gaining results from his labour. It does not follow that he
+did not expect service if he were with Christ. We may be very sure that
+Paul's heaven was no idle heaven, but one of happy activity and larger
+service. But he will not be able to help these dear friends at Philippi
+and elsewhere who need him, as he knows. So love to them drags at his
+skirts, and ties him here.
+
+One can scarcely miss the remarkable contrast between Paul's 'To abide
+in the flesh is more needful for you,' and the saying of Paul's Master
+to people who assuredly needed His presence more than Philippi needed
+Paul's, 'It is expedient for you that I go away.' This is not the place
+to work out the profound significance of the contrast, and the questions
+which it raises as to whether Christ expected His work to be finished
+and His helpfulness ended by His death, as Paul did by his. It must
+suffice to have suggested the comparison.
+
+Returning to our text, such a reason for wishing to die, held in check
+and overcome by such a reason for wishing to live, is great and noble.
+There are few of us who would not own to the mightier attraction of
+life; but how few of us who feel that, for ourselves personally, if we
+were free to think only of ourselves, we should be glad to go, because
+we should be closer to Christ, but that we hesitate for the sake of
+others whom we think we can help! Many of us cling to life with a
+desperate clutch, like some poor wretch pushed over a precipice and
+trying to dig his nails into the rock as he falls. Some of us cling to
+it because we dread what is beyond, and our longing to live is the
+measure of our dread to die. But Paul did not look forward to a thick
+darkness of judgment, or to nothingness. He saw in the darkness a great
+light, the light in the windows of his Father's house, and yet he turned
+willingly away to his toil in the field, and was more than content to
+drudge on as long as he could do anything by his work. Blessed are they
+who share his desire to depart, and his victorious willingness to stay
+here and labour! They shall find that such a life in the flesh, too, is
+being with Christ.
+
+III. Thus the stream of thought passes the rapids and flows on smoothly
+to its final phase of peaceful acquiescence.
+
+That is expressed very beautifully in the closing verse, 'Having this
+confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all, for
+your furtherance and joy in faith.' Self is so entirely overcome that he
+puts away his own desire to enter into their joy, and rejoices with
+them. He cannot yet have for himself the blessedness which his spirit
+seeks. Well, be it so; he will stop here and find a blessedness in
+seeing them growing in confidence and knowledge of Christ and in the
+gladness that comes from it. He gives up the hope of that higher
+companionship with Jesus which drew him so mightily. Well, be it so; he
+will have companionship with his brethren, and 'abiding with you all'
+may haply find, even before the day of final account, that to 'visit'
+Christ's little ones is to visit Christ. Therefore he fuses his opposing
+wishes into one. He is no more in a strait betwixt two, or unwitting
+what he shall choose. He chooses nothing, but accepts the appointment of
+a higher wisdom. There is rest for him, as for us, in ceasing from our
+own wishes, and laying our wills silent and passive at His feet.
+
+The true attitude for us in which to face the unknown future, with its
+dim possibilities, and especially the supreme alternative of life or
+death, is neither desire nor reluctance, nor a hesitation compounded of
+both, but trustful acquiescence. Such a temper is far from indifference,
+and as far from agitation. In all things, and most of all in regard to
+these matters, it is best to hold desire in equilibrium till God shall
+speak. Torture not yourself with hopes or fears. They make us their
+slaves. Put your hand in God's hand, and let Him guide you as He will.
+Wishes are bad steersmen. We are only at peace when desires and dreads
+are, if not extinct, at all events held tightly in. Rest, and wisdom,
+and strength come with acquiescence. Let us say with Richard Baxter, in
+his simple, noble words:
+
+          'Lord, it belongs not to my care
+             Whether I die or live;
+           To love and serve Thee is my share,
+             And that Thy grace must give.'
+
+We may learn, too, that we may be quite sure that we shall be left here
+as long as we are needed. Paul knew that his stay was needful, so he
+could say, 'I know that I shall abide with you.' We do not, but we may
+be sure that if our stay is needful we shall abide. We are always
+tempted to think ourselves indispensable, but, thank God, nobody is
+necessary. There are no irreparable losses, hard as it is to believe it.
+We look at our work, at our families, our business, our congregations,
+our subjects of study, and we say to ourselves, 'What will become of
+them when I am gone? Everything would fall to pieces if I were
+withdrawn.' Do not be afraid. Depend on it, you will be left here as
+long as you are wanted. There are no incomplete lives and no premature
+removals. To the eye of faith the broken column in our cemeteries is a
+sentimental falsehood. No Christian life is broken short off so, but
+rises in a symmetrical shaft, and its capital is garlanded with
+amaranthine flowers in heaven. In one sense all our lives are
+incomplete, for they and their issues are above, out of our sight here.
+In another none are, for we are 'immortal till our work is done.'
+
+The true attitude, then, for us is patient service till He withdraws us
+from the field. We do not count him a diligent servant who is always
+wearying for the hour of leaving off to strike. Be it ours to labour
+where He puts us, patiently waiting till 'death's mild curfew' sets us
+free from the long day's work, and sends us home.
+
+Brethren! there are but two theories of life; two corresponding aspects
+of death. The one says, 'To me to live is Christ, and to die gain'; the
+other, 'To me to live is self, and to die is loss and despair.' One or
+other must be your choice. Which?
+
+
+
+
+CITIZENS OF HEAVEN
+
+          'Only let your conversation be as it becometh the
+          gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you,
+          or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs,
+          that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind
+          striving together for the faith of the gospel; 28.
+          And in nothing terrified by your
+          adversaries.'--PHIL. i. 27, 28.
+
+
+We read in the Acts of the Apostles that Philippi was the chief city of
+that part of Macedonia, and a 'colony.' Now, the connection between a
+Roman colony and Rome was a great deal closer than that between an
+English colony and England. It was, in fact, a bit of Rome on foreign
+soil.
+
+The colonists and their children were Roman citizens. Their names were
+enrolled on the lists of Roman tribes. They were governed not by the
+provincial authorities, but by their own magistrates, and the law to
+which they owed obedience was not that of the locality, but the law of
+Rome.
+
+No doubt some of the Philippian Christians possessed these privileges.
+They knew what it was to live in a community to which they were less
+closely bound than to the great city beyond the sea. They were members
+of a mighty polity, though they had never seen its temples nor trod its
+streets. They lived in Philippi, but they belonged to Rome. Hence there
+is a peculiar significance in the first words of our text. The
+rendering, 'conversation,' was inadequate even when it was made. It has
+become more so now. The word then meant 'conduct.' It now means little
+more than words. But though the phrase may express loosely the Apostle's
+general idea, it loses entirely the striking metaphor under which it is
+couched. The Revised Version gives the literal rendering in its
+margin--'Behave as citizens'--though it adopts in its text a rendering
+which disregards the figure in the word, and contents itself with the
+less picturesque and vivid phrase--'let your manner of life be worthy.'
+But there seems no reason for leaving out the metaphor; it entirely fits
+in with the purpose of the Apostle and with the context.
+
+The meaning is, Play the citizen in a manner worthy of the Gospel. Paul
+does not, of course, mean, Discharge your civic duties as Christian men,
+though some Christian Englishmen need that reminder; but the city of
+which these Philippians were citizens was the heavenly Jerusalem, the
+metropolis, the mother city of us all. He would kindle in them the
+consciousness of belonging to another order of things than that around
+them. He would stimulate their loyalty to obedience to the city's laws.
+As the outlying colonies of Rome had sometimes entrusted to them the
+task of keeping the frontiers and extending the power of the imperial
+city, so he stirs them up to aggressive warfare; and as in all their
+conflicts the little colony felt that the Empire was at its back, and
+therefore looked undaunted on shoals of barbarian foes, so he would have
+his friends at Philippi animated by lofty courage, and ever confident of
+final victory.
+
+Such seems to be a general outline of these eager exhortations to the
+citizens of heaven in this outlying colony of earth. Let us think of
+them briefly in order now.
+
+I. Keep fresh the sense of belonging to the mother city.
+
+Paul was not only writing _to_ Philippi, but _from_ Rome, where he might
+see how, even in degenerate days, the consciousness of being a Roman
+gave dignity to a man, and how the idea became almost a religion. He
+would kindle a similar feeling in Christians.
+
+We do belong to another polity or order of things than that with which
+we are connected by the bonds of flesh and sense. Our true affinities
+are with the mother city. True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the
+blue waters is another community, of which we are really members, and
+sometimes in calm weather we can see, if we climb to a height above the
+smoke of the valley where we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains
+of that other land, lying bathed in sunlight and dreamlike on the opal
+waves.
+
+Therefore it is a great part of Christian discipline to keep a vivid
+consciousness that there is such an unseen order of things at present in
+existence. We speak popularly of 'the future life,' and are apt to
+forget that it is also the _present_ life to an innumerable company. In
+fact, this film of an earthly life floats in that greater sphere which
+is all around it, above, beneath, touching it at every point.
+
+It is, as Peter says, 'ready to be unveiled.' Yes, behind the thin
+curtain, through which stray beams of the brightness sometimes shoot,
+that other order stands, close to us, parted from us by a most slender
+division, only a woven veil, no great gulf or iron barrier. And before
+long His hand will draw it back, rattling with its rings as it is put
+aside, and _there_ will blaze out what has always been, though we saw it
+not. It is so close, so real, so bright, so solemn, that it is worth
+while to try to feel its nearness; and we are so purblind, and such
+foolish slaves of mere sense, shaping our lives on the legal maxim that
+things which are non-apparent must be treated as non-existent, that it
+needs a constant effort not to lose the feeling altogether.
+
+There is a present connection between all Christian men and that
+heavenly City. It not merely exists, but we belong to it in the measure
+in which we are Christians. All these figurative expressions about our
+citizenship being in heaven and the like, rest on the simple fact that
+the life of Christian men on earth and in heaven is fundamentally the
+same. The principles which guide, the motives which sway, the tastes and
+desires, affections and impulses, the objects and aims, are
+substantially one. A Christian man's true affinities are with the things
+not seen, and with the persons there, however his surface relationship
+knit him to the earth. In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a
+stranger here and a native of the heavens. That great City is, like some
+of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad river, with the mass of the
+metropolis on the one bank, but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As
+the Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to London, so is earth to
+heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the bridge. As Philippi
+was to Rome, so is earth to heaven, the colony on the outskirts of the
+empire, ringed round by barbarians, and separated by sounding seas, but
+keeping open its communications, and one in citizenship.
+
+Be it our care, then, to keep the sense of that city beyond the
+river vivid and constant. Amid the shows and shams of earth look
+ever onward to the realities 'the things which _are_,' while all
+else only seems to be. The things which are seen are but smoke
+wreaths, floating for a moment across space, and melting into
+nothingness while we look. We do not belong to them or to the
+order of things to which they belong. There is no kindred between
+us and them. Our true relationships are elsewhere. In this present
+visible world all other creatures find their sufficient and homelike
+abode. 'Foxes have holes, and birds their roosting-places'; but man
+alone has not where to lay his head, nor can he find in all the width
+of the created universe a place in which and with which he can be
+satisfied. Our true _habitat_ is elsewhere. So let us set our thoughts
+and affections on things above. The descendants of the original settlers
+in our colonies talk still of coming to England as going 'home,' though
+they were born in Australia, and have lived there all their lives. In
+like manner we Christian people should keep vigorous in our minds the
+thought that our true home is there where we have never been, and that
+here we are foreigners and wanderers.
+
+Nor need that feeling of detachment from the present sadden our spirits,
+or weaken our interest in the things around us. To recognise our
+separation from the order of things in which we 'move,' because we
+belong to that majestic unseen order in which we really 'have our
+being,' makes life great and not small. It clothes the present with
+dignity beyond what is possible to it if it be not looked at in the
+light of its connection with 'the regions beyond.' From that connection
+life derives all its meaning. Surely nothing can be conceived more
+unmeaning, more wearisome in its monotony, more tragic in its joy, more
+purposeless in its efforts, than man's life, if the life of sense and
+time be all. Truly it is 'like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
+and fury, signifying nothing.' 'The white radiance of eternity,'
+streaming through it from above, gives all its beauty to the 'dome of
+many-coloured glass' which men call life. They who feel most their
+connection with the city which hath foundations should be best able to
+wring the last drop of pure sweetness out of all earthly joys, to
+understand the meaning of all events, and to be interested most keenly,
+because most intelligently and most nobly, in the homeliest and
+smallest of the tasks and concerns of the present.
+
+So, in all things, act as citizens of the great Mother of heroes and
+saints beyond the sea. Ever feel that you belong to another order, and
+let the thought, 'Here we have no continuing city,' be to you not merely
+the bitter lesson taught by the transiency of earthly joys and treasures
+and loves, but the happy result of 'seeking for the city which hath the
+foundations.'
+
+II. Another exhortation which our text gives is, Live by the laws of the
+city.
+
+The Philippian colonists were governed by the code of Rome. Whatever
+might be the law of the province of Macedonia, they owed no obedience to
+it. So Christian men are not to be governed by the maxims and rules of
+conduct which prevail in the province, but to be governed from the
+capital. We ought to get from on-lookers the same character that was
+given to the Jews, that we are 'a people whose laws are different from
+all people that be on earth,' and we ought to reckon such a character
+our highest praise. Paul would have these Philippian Christians act
+'worthy of _the gospel_.' That is our law.
+
+The great good news of God manifest in the flesh, and of our salvation
+through Christ Jesus, is not merely to be believed, but to be obeyed.
+The gospel is not merely a message of deliverance, it is also a rule of
+conduct. It is not merely theology, it is also ethics. Like some of the
+ancient municipal charters, the grant of privileges and proclamation of
+freedom is also the sovereign code which imposes duties and shapes life.
+A gospel of laziness and mere exemption from hell was not Paul's gospel.
+A gospel of doctrines, to be investigated, spun into a system of
+theology, and accepted by the understanding, and there an end, was not
+Paul's gospel. He believed that the great facts which he proclaimed
+concerning the self-revelation of God in Christ would unfold into a
+sovereign law of life for every true believer, and so his one
+all-sufficient precept and standard of conduct are in these simple
+words, 'worthy of the gospel.'
+
+That law is all-sufficient. In the truths which constituted Paul's
+gospel, that is to say, in the truths of the life, death, and
+resurrection of Jesus Christ, lies all that men need for conduct and
+character. In Him we have the 'realised ideal,' the flawless example,
+and instead of a thousand precepts, for us all duty is resolved into
+one--be like Christ. In Him we have the mighty motive, powerful enough
+to overcome all forces that would draw us away, and like some strong
+spring to keep us in closest contact with right and goodness. Instead of
+a confusing variety of appeals to manifold motives of interest and
+conscience, and one knows not what beside, we have the one all-powerful
+appeal, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments,' and that draws all the
+agitations and fluctuations of the soul after it, as the rounded fulness
+of the moon does the heaped waters in the tidal wave that girdles the
+world. In Him we have all the helps that weakness needs, for He Himself
+will come and dwell with us and in us, and be our righteousness and our
+strength.
+
+Live 'worthy of the gospel,' then. How grand the unity and simplicity
+thus breathed into our duties and through our lives! All duties are
+capable of reduction to this one, and though we shall still need
+detailed instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free from
+the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry, which fetters men's limbs
+with microscopic bands, and shall joyfully learn how much mightier and
+happier is the life which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than that
+which is hampered by a thousand regulations.
+
+Nor is such an all-comprehensive precept a mere toothless generality.
+Let a man try honestly to shape his life by it; and he will find soon
+enough how close it grips him, and how wide it stretches, and how deep
+it goes. The greatest principles of the gospel are to be fitted to the
+smallest duties. Indeed that combination--great principles and small
+duties--is the secret of all noble and calm life, and nowhere should it
+be so beautifully exemplified as in the life of a Christian man. The
+tiny round of the dew-drop is shaped by the same laws that mould the
+giant sphere of the largest planet. You cannot make a map of the poorest
+grass-field without celestial observations. The star is not too high nor
+too brilliant to move before us and guide simple men's feet along their
+pilgrimage. 'Worthy of the gospel' is a most practical and stringent
+law.
+
+And it is an exclusive commandment too, shutting out obedience to other
+codes, however common and fashionable they may be. We are governed from
+home, and we give no submission to provincial authorities. Never mind
+what people say about you, nor what may be the maxims and ways of men
+around you. These are no guides for you. Public opinion (which only
+means for most of us the hasty judgments of the half-dozen people who
+happen to be nearest us), use and wont, the customs of our set, the
+notions of the world about duty, with all these we have nothing to do.
+The censures or the praise of men need not move us. We report to
+headquarters, and subordinates' estimate need be nothing to us. Let us
+then say, 'With me it is a very small matter that I should be judged of
+men's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.' When we may be
+misunderstood or harshly dealt with, let us lift our eyes to the lofty
+seat where the Emperor sits, and remove ourselves from men's sentences
+by our 'appeal unto Caesar'; and, in all varieties of circumstances and
+duty, let us take the Gospel which is the record of Christ's life,
+death, and character, for our only law, and labour that, whatever others
+may think of us, we 'may be well pleasing to Him.'
+
+III. Further, our text bids the colonists fight for the advance of the
+dominions of the City.
+
+Like the armed colonists whom Russia and other empires had on their
+frontier, who received their bits of land on condition of holding the
+border against the enemy, and pushing it forward a league or two when
+possible, Christian men are set down in their places to be 'wardens of
+the marches,' citizen soldiers who hold their homesteads on a military
+tenure, and are to 'strive together for the faith of the gospel.'
+
+There is no space here and now to go into details of the exposition of
+this part of our text. Enough to say in brief that we are here exhorted
+to 'stand fast'; that is, as it were, the defensive side of our warfare,
+maintaining our ground and repelling all assaults; that this successful
+resistance is to be 'in one spirit,' inasmuch as all resistance depends
+on our poor feeble spirits being ingrafted and rooted in God's Spirit,
+in vital union with whom we may be knit together into a unity which
+shall oppose a granite breakwater to the onrushing tide of opposition;
+that in addition to the unmoved resistance which will not yield an inch
+of the sacred soil to the enemy, we are to carry the war onwards, and,
+not content with holding our own, are with one mind to strive together
+for the faith of the gospel. There is to be discipline, then, and
+compact organisation, like that of the legions whom Paul, from his
+prison among the Praetorian guards, had often seen shining in steel,
+moving like a machine, grim, irresistible. The cause for which we are to
+fight is the faith of the gospel, an expression which almost seems to
+justify the opinion that 'the faith' here means, as it does in later
+usage, the sum and substance of that which is believed. But even here
+the word may have its usual meaning of the subjective act of trust in
+the gospel, and the thought may be that we are unitedly to fight for its
+growing power in our own hearts and in the hearts of others. In any
+case, the idea is plainly here that Christian men are set down in the
+world, like the frontier guard, to push the conquests of the empire, and
+to win more ground for their King.
+
+Such work is ever needed, never more needed than now. In this day when a
+wave of unbelief seems passing over society, when material comfort and
+worldly prosperity are so dazzlingly attractive to so many, the solemn
+duty is laid upon us with even more than usual emphasis, and we are
+called upon to feel more than ever the oneness of all true Christians,
+and to close up our ranks for the fight. All this can only be done after
+we have obeyed the other injunctions of this text. The degree in which
+we feel that we belong to another order of things than this around us,
+and the degree in which we live by the Imperial laws, will determine the
+degree in which we can fight with vigour for the growth of the dominion
+of the City. Be it ours to cherish the vivid consciousness that we are
+here dwelling not in the cities of the Canaanites, but, like the father
+of the faithful, in tents pitched at their gates, nomads in the midst
+of a civic life to which we do not belong, in order that we may breathe
+a hallowing influence through it, and win hearts to the love of Him whom
+to imitate is perfection, whom to serve is freedom.
+
+IV. The last exhortation to the colonists is, Be sure of victory.
+
+'In nothing terrified by your adversaries,' says Paul. He uses a very
+vivid, and some people might think, a very vulgar metaphor here. The
+word rendered _terrified_ properly refers to a horse shying or plunging
+at some object. It is generally things half seen and mistaken for
+something more dreadful than themselves that make horses shy; and it is
+usually a half-look at adversaries, and a mistaken estimate of their
+strength, that make Christians afraid. Go up to your fears and speak to
+them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally fade away. So we
+may go into the battle, as the rash French minister said he did into the
+Franco-German war, 'with a light heart,' and that for good reasons. We
+have no reason to fear for ourselves. We have no reason to fear for the
+ark of God. We have no reason to fear for the growth of Christianity in
+the world. Many good men in this time seem to be getting half-ashamed of
+the gospel, and some preachers are preaching it in words which sound
+like an apology rather than a creed. Do not let us allow the enemy to
+overpower our imaginations in that fashion. Do not let us fight as if we
+expected to be beaten, always casting our eyes over our shoulders, even
+while we are advancing, to make sure of our retreat, but let us trust
+our gospel, and trust our King, and let us take to heart the old
+admonition, 'Lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not
+afraid.'
+
+Such courage is a prophecy of victory. Such courage is based upon a sure
+hope. 'Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the
+Lord Jesus as Saviour.' The little outlying colony in this far-off edge
+of the empire is ringed about by wide-stretching hosts of dusky
+barbarians. Far as the eye can reach their myriads cover the land, and
+the watchers from the ramparts might well be dismayed if they had only
+their own resources to depend on. But they know that the Emperor in his
+progress will come to this sorely beset outpost, and their eyes are
+fixed on the pass in the hills where they expect to see the waving
+banners and the gleaming spears. Soon, like our countrymen in Lucknow,
+they will hear the music and the shouts that tell that He is at hand.
+Then when He comes, He will raise the siege and scatter all the enemies
+as the chaff of the threshing-floor, and the colonists who held the post
+will go with Him to the land which they have never seen, but which is
+their home, and will, with the Victor, sweep in triumph 'through the
+gates into the city.'
+
+
+
+
+A PLEA FOR UNITY
+
+          'If there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if
+          any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the
+          Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, 2.
+          Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be of the same mind,
+          having the same love, being of one accord, of one
+          mind; 3. Doing nothing through faction or through
+          vainglory, but in lowliness of mind each counting
+          other better than himself; 4. Not looking each of
+          you to his own things, but each of you also to the
+          things of others.'--PHIL. ii. 1-4 (R.V.).
+
+
+There was much in the state of the Philippian church which filled Paul's
+heart with thankfulness, and nothing which drew forth his censures, but
+these verses, with their extraordinary energy of pleading, seem to hint
+that there was some defect in the unity of heart and mind of members of
+the community. It did not amount to discord, but the concord was not as
+full as it might have been. There is another hint pointing in the same
+direction in the appeal to Paul's true yoke-fellow, in chapter iv., to
+help two good women who, though they had laboured much in the gospel,
+had not managed to keep 'of the same mind in the Lord,' and there is
+perhaps a still further indication that Paul's sensitive heart was
+conscious of the beginnings of strife in the air, in the remarkable
+emphasis with which, at the very outset of the letter, he over and over
+again pours out his confidence and affection on them 'all,' as if aware
+of some incipient rifts in their brotherhood. There are always forces at
+work which tend to part the most closely knit unities even when these
+are consecrated by Christian faith. Where there are no dogmatical
+grounds of discord, nor any open alienation, there may still be the
+beginnings of separation, and a chill breeze may be felt even when the
+sun is shining with summer warmth. Wasps are attracted by the ripest
+fruit.
+
+The words of our text present no special difficulty, and bring before us
+a well-worn subject, but it has at least this element of interest, that
+it grips very tightly the deepest things in Christian life, and that
+none of us can truly say that we do not need to listen to Paul's
+pleading voice. We may notice the general division of his thoughts in
+these words, in that he puts first the heart-touching motives for
+listening to his appeal, next describes with the exuberance of
+earnestness the fair ideal of unity to which he exhorts, and finally
+touches on the hindrances to its realisation, and the victorious powers
+which will overcome these.
+
+I. The motives and bonds of Christian unity.
+
+It is not a pedantic dissection (and vivisection) of the Apostle's
+earnest words, if we point out that they fall into four clauses, of
+which the first and third ('any comfort in Christ, any fellowship of the
+Spirit') urge the objective facts of Christian revelation, and the
+second and fourth ('any consolation of love, any tender mercies and
+compassions') put emphasis on the subjective emotions of Christian
+experience. We may lay the warmth of all of these on our own hearts, and
+shall find that these hearts will be drawn into the blessedness of
+Christian unity in the precise measure in which they are affected by
+them.
+
+As to the first of them, it may be suggested that here, as elsewhere in
+the New Testament, the true idea of the word rendered 'comfort' is
+rather 'exhortation.' The Apostle is probably not so much pointing to
+the consolations for trouble which come from Jesus, as to the stimulus
+to unity which flows from Him. It would rather weaken the force of
+Paul's appeal, if the two former grounds of it were so nearly identical
+as they are, if the one is based upon 'comfort' and the other on
+'consolation.' The Apostle is true to his dominant belief, that in Jesus
+Christ there lies, and from Him flows, the sovereign exhortation that
+rouses men to 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.' In Him
+we shall find in the measure in which we are in Him, the most persuasive
+of all exhortations to unity, and the most omnipotent of all powers to
+enforce it. Shall we not be glad to be in the flock of the Good
+Shepherd, and to preserve the oneness which He gave His life to
+establish? Can we live in Him, and not share His love for His sheep?
+Surely those who have felt the benediction of His breath on their
+foreheads when He prayed 'that they may all be one; even as Thou,
+Father, art in Me and I in Thee,' cannot but do what is in them to
+fulfil that prayer, and to bring a little nearer the realisation of
+their Lord's purpose in it, 'that the world may believe that Thou didst
+send Me.' Surely if we lay to heart, and enter into sympathy with, the
+whole life and death of Jesus Christ, we shall not fail to feel the
+dynamic power fusing us together, nor fail to catch the exhortation to
+unity which comes from the lips that said, 'I am the vine, ye are the
+branches.'
+
+The Apostle next bases his appeal for unity on the experiences of the
+Philippian Christians, and on their memories of the comfort which they
+have tasted in the exercise of mutual love. Our hearts find it hard to
+answer the question whether they are more blessed when their love passes
+out from them in a warm stream to others, or when the love of others
+pours into them. To love and to be loved equally elevate courage, and
+brace the weakest for calm endurance and high deeds. The man who loves
+and knows that he is loved will be a hero. It must always seem strange
+and inexplicable that a heart which has known the enlargement and joy of
+love given and received, should ever fall so far beneath itself as to be
+narrowed and troubled by nourishing feelings of separation and
+alienation from those whom it might have gathered into its embrace, and
+thereby communicated, and in communicating acquired, courage and
+strength. We have all known the comfort of love; should it not impel us
+to live in 'the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace'? Men around
+us are meant to be our helpers, and to be helped by us, and the one way
+to secure both is to walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us.
+
+But Paul has still further heart-melting motives to urge. He turns the
+Philippians' thoughts to their fellowship in the Spirit. All believers
+have been made to drink into one spirit, and in that common
+participation in the same supernatural life they partake of a oneness,
+which renders any clefts or divisions unnatural, and contradictory of
+the deepest truths of their experience. The branch can no more shiver
+itself off from the tree, or keep the life sap enclosed within itself,
+than one possessor of the common gift of the Spirit can separate himself
+from the others who share it. We are one in Him; let us be one in heart
+and mind. The final appeal is connected with the preceding, inasmuch as
+it lays emphasis on the emotions which flow from the one life common to
+all believers. That participation in the Spirit naturally leads in each
+participant to 'tender mercies and compassions' directed to all sharers
+in it. The very mark of truly possessing the Spirit's life is a nature
+full of tenderness and swift to pity, and they who have experienced the
+heaven on earth of such emotions should need no other motive than the
+memory of its blessedness, to send them out among their brethren, and
+even into a hostile world, as the apostles of love, the bearers of
+tender mercies, and the messengers of pity.
+
+II. The fair ideal which would complete the Apostle's joy.
+
+We may gather from the rich abundance of motives which the Apostle
+suggests before he comes to present his exhortation, that he suspected
+the existence of some tendencies in the opposite direction in Philippi,
+and possibly the same conclusion may be drawn from the exuberance of
+the exhortation itself, and from its preceding the dehortation which
+follows. He does not scold, he scarcely even rebukes, but he begins by
+trying to melt away any light frost that had crept over the warmth of
+the Philippians' love; and having made that preparation, he sets before
+them with a fulness which would be tautological but for the earnestness
+that throbs in it, the ideal of unity, and presses it upon them still
+more meltingly, by telling them that their realisation of it will be the
+completion of his joy. The main injunction is 'that ye be of the same
+mind,' and that is followed by three clauses which are all but exactly
+synonymous with it, 'having the same love, being of one accord, of one
+mind.' The resemblance of the latter clause to the main exhortation is
+still more complete, if we read with Revised Version (margin) 'of the
+same mind,' but in any case the exhortations are all practically the
+same. The unity which Paul would fain see, is far deeper and more vital
+than mere unanimity of opinion, or identity of polity, or co-operation
+in practice. The clauses which expand it guard us against the mistake of
+thinking that intellectual or practical oneness is all that is meant by
+Christian unity. They are 'of the same mind,' who have the same wishes,
+aims, outlooks, the same hopes and fears, and who are one in the depths
+of their being. They have 'the same love,' all similarly loving and
+being loved, the same emotion filling each heart. They are united in
+soul, or 'with accordant souls' having, and knowing that they have them,
+akin, allied to one another, moving to a common end, and aware of their
+oneness. The unity which Christian people have hitherto reached is at
+its best but a small are of the great circle which the Apostle drew,
+and none of us can read these fervid words without shame. His joy is not
+yet fulfilled.
+
+That exhortation to be 'of the same mind,' not only points to a deep and
+vital unity, but suggests that the ground of the unity is to be found
+without us, in the common direction of our 'minds,' which means far more
+than popular phraseology means by it, to an external object. It is
+having our hearts directed to Christ that makes us one. He is the bond
+and centre of unity. We have just said that the object is external, but
+that has to be taken with a modification, for the true basis of unity is
+the common possession of 'Christ in us.' It is when we have this mind in
+us 'which was also in Christ Jesus,' that we have 'the same mind' one
+with another.
+
+The very keynote of the letter is joy, as may be seen by a glance over
+it. He joys and rejoices with them all, but his cup is not quite full.
+One more precious drop is needed to make it run over. Probably the
+coldness which he had heard of between Euodias and Syntyche had troubled
+him, and if he could be sure of the Philippians' mutual love he would
+rejoice in his prison. We cannot tell whether that loving and careful
+heart is still aware of the fortunes of the Church, but we know of a
+more loving and careful heart which is, and we cannot but believe that
+the alienations and discords of His professed followers bring some
+shadow over the joy of Christ. Do we not hear His voice again asking,
+'what was it that you disputed among yourselves by the way?' and must we
+not, like the disciples, 'hold our peace' when that question is asked?
+May we not hear a voice sweeter in its cadence, and more melting in its
+tenderness than Paul's, saying to us 'Fulfil ye My joy that ye be of
+the same mind.'
+
+III. The hindrances and helps to being of the same mind.
+
+The original has no verb in front of 'nothing' in verse 3, and it seems
+better to supply the one which has been so frequently used in the
+preceding exhortation than 'doing,' which carries us too abruptly into
+the outer region of action. Paul indicates two main hindrances to being
+of the same mind, namely, faction and vainglory on the one hand, and
+self-absorption on the other, and opposed to each the tone of mind which
+is its best conqueror. Faction and vainglory are best defeated by
+humility and unselfishness. As to the former, the love of making or
+heading little cliques in religion or politics or society, has oftenest
+its roots in nothing loftier than vanity or pride. Many a man who poses
+as guided by staunch adherence to conviction is really impelled only by
+a wish to make himself notorious as a leader, and loves to talk of
+'those with whom I act.' There is a strong admixture of a too lofty
+estimate of self in most of the disagreements of Christian people. They
+expect more deference than they get, or their judgment is not taken as
+law, or their place is not so high as they think is their due, or in a
+hundred different ways self-love is wounded, and self-esteem is
+inflamed. All this is true in reference to the smaller communities of
+congregations, and with the necessary modifications it is quite as true
+in reference to the larger aggregations which we call churches or
+denominations. If all in their work that is directly due to faction and
+vainglory were struck out there would be great gaps in their activities,
+and many a flourishing scheme would fall dead.
+
+The cure for all these evils is lowliness of mind. That is a Christian
+word. Used by Greek thinkers, it meant abjectness; and it is one
+conspicuous instance of the change effected in morals by Christian
+teaching that it has become the name of a virtue. We are to dwell not on
+our gifts but on our imperfections, and if we judge ourselves with
+constant reference to the standard in Christ's life, we shall need
+little more to bring us to our knees in true lowliness of mind. The man
+who has been forgiven so many talents will not be in a hurry to take his
+brother by the throat and leave the marks of his fingers for tenpence.
+
+Christian unity is further broken by selfishness. To be absorbed in self
+is of course to have the heart shut to others. Our own interests,
+inclinations, possessions, when they assert themselves in our lives,
+build up impassable barriers between us and our fellows. To live to self
+is the real root of every sin as it is of all loveless life. The Apostle
+uses careful language: he admits the necessity for attention to our 'own
+things,' and only requires that we should look 'also' on the things of
+others. His cure for the hindrances to Christian unity is very complete,
+very practical, and very simple. Each counting other better than
+himself, and each 'looking also to the things of others' seem very
+homely and pedestrian virtues, but homely as they are we shall find that
+they grip us tight, if we honestly try to practise them in our daily
+lives, and we shall find also that the ladder which has its foot on
+earth has its top in the heavens, and that the practice of humility and
+unselfishness leads straight to having 'the mind which was also in
+Christ Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+THE DESCENT OF THE WORD
+
+          'Have this mind in you which was also in Christ
+          Jesus: 6. Who, being in the form of God, counted
+          it not a prize to be on an equality with God, 7.
+          But emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,
+          being made in the likeness of men; 8. And being
+          found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself,
+          becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death
+          of the cross.'--PHIL. ii. 5-8 (R.V.).
+
+
+The purpose of the Apostle in this great passage must ever be kept
+clearly in view. Our Lord's example is set forth as the pattern of that
+unselfish disregard of one's own things, and devotion to the things of
+others, which has just been urged on the Philippians, and the mind which
+was in Him is presented as the model on which they are to fashion their
+minds. This purpose in some measure explains some of the peculiarities
+of the language here, and may help to guide us through some of the
+intricacies and doubtful points in the interpretation of the words. It
+explains why Christ's death is looked at in them only in its bearing
+upon Himself, as an act of obedience and of condescension, and why even
+that death in which Jesus stands most inimitable and unique is presented
+as capable of being imitated by us. The general drift of these verses is
+clear, but there are few Scripture passages which have evoked more
+difference of opinion as to the precise meaning of nearly every phrase.
+To enter on the subtle discussions involved in the adequate exposition
+of the words would far exceed our limits, and we must perforce content
+ourselves with a slight treatment of them, and aim chiefly at bringing
+out their practical side.
+
+The broad truth which stands sun-clear amid all diverse interpretations
+is--that the Incarnation, Life, and Death are the great examples of
+living humility and self-sacrifice. To be born was His supreme act of
+condescension. It was love which made Him assume the vesture of human
+flesh. To die was the climax of His voluntary obedience, and of His
+devotion to us.
+
+I. The height from which Jesus descended.
+
+The whole strange conception of birth as being the voluntary act of the
+Person born, and as being the most stupendous instance of condescension
+in the world's history, necessarily reposes on the clear conviction that
+He had a prior existence so lofty that it was an all but infinite
+descent to become man. Hence Paul begins with the most emphatic
+assertion that he who bore the name of Jesus lived a divine life before
+He was born. He uses a very strong word which is given in the margin of
+the Revised Version, and might well have been in its text. 'Being
+originally' as the word accurately means, carries our thoughts back not
+only to a state which preceded Bethlehem and the cradle, but to that
+same timeless eternity from which the prologue of the Gospel of John
+partially draws the veil when it says, 'In the beginning was the Word,'
+and to which Jesus Himself more obscurely pointed when He said, 'Before
+Abraham was I am.'
+
+Equally emphatic in another direction is Paul's next expression, 'In the
+form of God,' for 'form' means much more than 'shape.' I would point out
+the careful selection in this passage of three words to express three
+ideas which are often by hasty thought regarded as identical. We read of
+'the _form_ of God' (verse 6), 'the _likeness_ of men' (verse 7), and
+'in _fashion_ as a man.' Careful investigation of these two words 'form'
+and 'fashion' has established a broad distinction between them, the
+former being more fixed, the latter referring to that which is
+accidental and outward, which may be fleeting and unsubstantial. The
+possession of the form involves participation in the essence also. Here
+it implies no corporeal idea as if God had a material form, but it
+implies also much more than a mere apparent resemblance. He who is in
+the form of God possesses the essential divine attributes. Only God can
+be 'in the form of God': man is made in the likeness of God, but man is
+not 'in the form of God.' Light is thrown on this lofty phrase by its
+antithesis with the succeeding expression in the next verse, 'the form
+of a servant,' and as that is immediately explained to refer to Christ's
+assumption of human nature, there is no room for candid doubt that
+'being originally in the form of God' is a deliberately asserted claim
+of the divinity of Christ in His pre-existent state.
+
+As we have already pointed out, Paul soars here to the same lofty height
+to which the prologue of John's Gospel rises, and he echoes our Lord's
+own words about 'the glory which I had with Thee before the foundation
+of the world.' Our thoughts are carried back before creatures were, and
+we become dimly aware of an eternal distinction in the divine nature
+which only perfects its eternal oneness. Such an eternal participation
+in the divine nature before all creation and before time is the
+necessary pre-supposition of the worth of Christ's life as the pattern
+of humility and self-sacrifice. That pre-supposition gives all its
+meaning, its pathos, and its power, to His gentleness, and love, and
+death. The facts are different in their significance, and different in
+their power to bless and gladden, to purge and sway the soul, according
+as we contemplate them with or without the background of His
+pre-existent divinity. The view which regards Him as simply a man, like
+all the rest of us, beginning to be when He was born, takes away from
+His example its mightiest constraining force. Only when we with all our
+hearts believe 'that the Word became flesh,' do we discern the
+overwhelming depths of condescension manifested in the Birth. If it was
+not the incarnation of God, it has no claim on the hearts of men.
+
+II. The wondrous act of descent.
+
+The stages in that long descent are marked out with a precision and
+definiteness which would be intolerable presumption, if Paul were
+speaking only his own thoughts, or telling what he had seen with his own
+eyes. They begin with what was in the mind of the eternal Word before He
+began His descent, and whilst yet He is 'in the form of God.' He stands
+on the lofty level before the descent begins, and in spirit makes the
+surrender, which, stage by stage, is afterwards to be wrought out in
+act. Before any of these acts there must have been the disposition of
+mind and will which Paul describes as 'counting it not a thing to be
+grasped to be on an equality with God.' He did not regard the being
+equal to God as a prey or treasure to be clutched and retained at all
+hazards. That sweeps our thoughts into the dim regions far beyond
+Calvary or Bethlehem, and is a more overwhelming manifestation of love
+than are the acts of lowly gentleness and patient endurance which
+followed in time. It included and transcended them all.
+
+It was the supreme example of not 'looking on one's own things.' And
+what made Him so count? What but infinite love. To rescue men, and win
+them to Himself and goodness, and finally to lift them to the place from
+which He came down for them, seemed to Him to be worth the temporary
+surrender of that glory and majesty. We can but bow and adore the
+perfect love. We look more deeply into the depths of Deity than unaided
+eyes could ever penetrate, and what we see is the movement in that abyss
+of Godhead of purest surrender which, by beholding, we are to
+assimilate.
+
+Then comes the wonder of wonders, 'He emptied Himself.' We cannot enter
+here on the questions which gather round that phrase, and which give it
+a factitious importance in regard to present controversies. All that we
+would point out now is that while the Apostle distinctly treats the
+Incarnation as being a laying aside of what made the Word to be equal
+with God, he says nothing, on which an exact determination can be based,
+of the degree or particulars in which the divine nature of our Lord was
+limited by His humanity. The fact he asserts, and that is all. The scene
+in the Upper Chamber was but a feeble picture of what had already been
+done behind the veil. Unless He had laid aside His garments of divine
+glory and majesty, He would have had no human flesh from which to strip
+the robes. Unless He had willed to take the 'form of a servant,' He
+would not have had a body to gird with the slave's towel. The
+Incarnation, which made all His acts of lowly love possible, was a
+greater act of lowly love than those which flowed from it. Looking at it
+from earth, men say, 'Jesus was born.' Looking at it from heaven, Angels
+say, 'He emptied Himself.'
+
+But how did He empty Himself? By taking the form of a slave, that is to
+God. And how did He take the form of a slave? By 'becoming in the
+likeness of men.' Here we are specially to note the remarkable language
+implying that what is true of none other in all the generations of men
+is true of Him. That just as 'emptying Himself' was His own act, also
+the taking the form of a slave by His being born was His own act, and
+was more truly described as a 'becoming.' We note, too, the strong
+contrast between that most remarkable word and the 'being originally'
+which is used to express the mystery of divine pre-existence.
+
+Whilst His becoming in the likeness of men stands in strong contrast
+with 'being originally' and energetically expresses the voluntariness of
+our Lord's birth, the 'likeness of men' does not cast any doubt on the
+reality of His manhood, but points to the fact that 'though certainly
+perfect man, He was by reason of the divine nature present in Him not
+simply and merely man.'
+
+Here then the beginning of Christ's manhood is spoken of in terms which
+are only explicable, if it was a second form of being, preceded by a
+pre-existent form, and was assumed by His own act. The language, too,
+demands that that humanity should have been true essential manhood. It
+was in 'the form' of man and possessed of all essential attributes. It
+was in 'the likeness' of man possessed of all external characteristics,
+and yet was something more. It summed up human nature, and was its
+representative.
+
+III. The obedience which attended the descent.
+
+It was not merely an act of humiliation and condescension to become man,
+but all His life was one long act of lowliness. Just as He 'emptied
+Himself' in the act of becoming in the 'likeness of men,' so He 'humbled
+Himself,' and all along the course of His earthly life He chose constant
+lowliness and to be 'despised and rejected of men.' It was the result
+moment by moment of His own will that to the eyes of men He presented
+'no form nor comeliness,' and that will was moment by moment steadied
+in its unmoved humility, because He perpetually looked 'not on His own
+things, but on the things of others.' The guise He presented to the eyes
+of men was 'the _fashion_ of a man.' That word corresponds exactly to
+Paul's carefully selected term, and makes emphatic both its superficial
+and its transitory character.
+
+The lifelong humbling of Himself was further manifested in His becoming
+'obedient.' That obedience was, of course, to God. And here we cannot
+but pause to ask the question, How comes it that to the man Jesus
+obedience to God was an act of humiliation? Surely there is but one
+explanation of such a statement. For all men but this one to be God's
+slaves is their highest honour, and to speak of obedience as humiliation
+is a sheer absurdity.
+
+Not only was the life of Jesus so perfect an example of unbroken
+obedience that He could safely front His adversaries with the question,
+'Which of you convinceth Me of sin?' and with the claim to 'do always
+the things that pleased Him,' but the obedience to the Father was
+perfected in His death. Consider the extraordinary fact that a man's
+death is the crowning instance of his humility, and ask yourselves the
+question, Who then is this who chose to be born, and stooped in the act
+of dying? His death was obedience to God, because by it He carried out
+the Father's will for the salvation of the world, His death is the
+greatest instance of unselfish self-sacrifice, and the loftiest example
+of looking on the 'things of others' that the world has ever seen. It
+dwindles in significance, in pathos, and in power to move us to
+imitation unless we clearly see the divine glory of the eternal Lord as
+the background of the gentle lowliness of the Man of Sorrows, and the
+Cross. No theory of Christ's life and death but that He was born for us,
+and died for us, either explains the facts and the apostolic language
+concerning them, or leaves them invested with their full power to melt
+our hearts and mould our lives. There is a possibility of imitating Him
+in the most transcendent of His acts. The mind may be in us which was in
+Christ Jesus. That it may, His death must first be the ground of our
+hope, and then we must make it the pattern of our lives, and draw from
+it the power to shape them after His blessed Example.
+
+
+
+
+THE ASCENT OF JESUS
+
+          'Wherefore also God highly exalted Him and gave
+          unto Him the name which is above every name; 10.
+          That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
+          of things in heaven, and things on earth, and
+          things under the earth; 11. And that every tongue
+          should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
+          glory of God the Father.'--PHIL. ii. 9-11 (R.V.).
+
+
+'He that humbleth himself shall be exalted,' said Jesus. He is Himself
+the great example of that law. The Apostle here goes on to complete his
+picture of the Lord Jesus as our pattern. In previous verses we had the
+solemn steps of His descent, and the lifelong humility and obedience of
+the incarnate Son, the man Christ Jesus. Here we have the wondrous
+ascent which reverses all the former process. Our text describes the
+reflex motion by which Jesus is borne back to the same level as that
+from which the descent began.
+
+We have
+
+I. The act of exaltation which forms the contrast and the parallel to
+the descent.
+
+'God highly exalted Him.' The Apostle coins an emphatic word which
+doubly expresses elevation, and in its grammatical form shows that it
+indicates a historical fact. That elevation was a thing once
+accomplished on this green earth; that is to say it came to pass in the
+fact of our Lord's ascension when from some fold of the Mount of Olives
+He was borne upwards and, with blessing hands, was received into the
+Shechinah cloud, the glory of which hid Him from the upward-gazing eyes.
+
+It is plain that the 'Him' of whom this tremendous assertion is made,
+must be the same as the 'He' of whom the previous verses spoke, that is,
+the Incarnate Jesus. It is the manhood which is exalted. His humiliation
+consisted in His becoming man, but His exaltation does not consist in
+His laying aside His humanity. It is not a transient but an eternal
+union into which in the Incarnation it entered with divinity.
+Henceforward we have to think of Him in all the glory of His heavenly
+state as man, and as truly and completely in the 'likeness of men' as
+when He walked with bleeding feet on the flinty road of earthly life. He
+now bears for ever the 'form of God' and 'the fashion of a man.'
+
+Here I would pause for a moment to point out that the calm tone of this
+reference to the ascension indicates that it was part of the recognised
+Christian beliefs, and implies that it had been familiar long before the
+date of this Epistle, which itself dates from not more than at the most
+thirty years from the death of Christ. Surely that lapse of time is far
+too narrow to allow of such a belief having sprung up, and been
+universally accepted about a dead man, who all the while was lying in a
+nameless grave.
+
+The descent is presented as _His_ act, but decorum and truth required
+that the exaltation should be God's act. 'He humbled Himself,' but 'God
+exalted Him.' True, He sometimes represented Himself as the Agent of His
+own Resurrection and Ascension, and established a complete parallel
+between His descent and His ascent, as when He said, 'I came out from
+the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go
+unto the Father.' He was no less obedient to the Father's will when He
+ascended up on high, than He was when He came down to earth, and whilst,
+from one point of view, His Resurrection and Ascension were as truly His
+own acts as were His birth and His death, from another, He had to pray,
+'And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory
+which I had with Thee before the world was.' The Titans presumptuously
+scaled the heavens, according to the old legend, but the Incarnate Lord
+returned to 'His own calm home, His habitation from eternity,' was
+exalted thither by God, in token to the universe that the Father
+approved the Son's descent, and that the work which the Son had done was
+indeed, as He declared it to be, 'finished.' By exalting Him, the Father
+not merely reinstated the divine Word in its eternal union with God, but
+received into the cloud of glory the manhood which the Word had assumed.
+
+II. The glory of the name of Jesus.
+
+What is the name 'which is above every name'? It is the name Jesus. It
+is to be noted that Paul scarcely ever uses that simple appellative.
+There are, roughly speaking, about two hundred instances in which he
+names our Lord in his Epistles, and there are only four places, besides
+this, in which he uses this as his own, and two in which he, as it were,
+puts it into the mouth of an enemy. Probably then, some special reason
+led to its occurrence here, and it is not difficult, I think, to see
+what that reason is. The simple personal name was given indeed with
+reference to His work, but had been borne by many a Jewish child before
+Mary called her child Jesus, and the fact that it is this common name
+which is exalted above every name, brings out still more strongly the
+thought already dwelt upon, that what is thus exalted is the manhood of
+our Lord. The name which expressed His true humanity, which showed His
+full identification with us, which was written over His Cross, which
+perhaps shaped the taunt 'He _saved_ others, Himself He cannot
+save,'--that name God has lifted high above all names of council and
+valour, of wisdom and might, of authority and rule. It is shrined in the
+hearts of millions who render to it perfect trust, unconditional
+obedience, absolute loyalty. Its growing power, and the warmth of
+personal love which it evokes, in centuries and lands so far removed
+from the theatre of His life, is a unique thing in the world's history.
+It reigns in heaven.
+
+But Paul is not content with simply asserting the sovereign glory of the
+name of Jesus. He goes on to set it forth as being what no other name
+borne by man can be, the ground and object of worship, when he declares,
+that 'in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.' The words are quoted
+from the second Isaiah, and occur in one of the most solemn and majestic
+utterances of the monotheism of the Old Testament. And Paul takes these
+words, undeterred by the declaration which precede them, 'I Am am God
+and there is none else,' applies them to Jesus, to the manhood of our
+Lord. Bowing the knee is of course prayer, and in these great words the
+issue of the work of Jesus is unmistakably set forth, as not only being
+that He has declared God to men, who through Him are drawn to worship
+the Father, but that their emotions of love, reverence, worship, are
+turned to _Him_, though as the Apostle is careful immediately to note,
+they are not thereby intercepted from, but directed to, the glory of God
+the Father. In the eternities before His descent, there was equality
+with God, and when He returns, it is to the Father, who in Him has
+become the object of adoration, and round whose throne gather with
+bended knees all those who in Jesus see the Father.
+
+The Apostle still further dwells on the glory of the name as that of the
+acknowledged Lord. And here we have with significant variation in strong
+contrast to the previous name of Jesus, the full title 'Jesus Christ
+Lord.' That is almost as unusual in its completeness as the other in its
+simplicity, and it comes in here with tremendous energy, reminding us of
+the great act to which we owe our redemption, and of all the prophecies
+and hopes which, from of old, had gathered round the persistent hope of
+the coming Messiah, while the name of Lord proclaims His absolute
+dominion. The knee is bowed in reverence, the tongue is vocal in
+confession. That confession is incomplete if either of these three names
+is falteringly uttered, and still more so, if either of them is wanting.
+The Jesus whom Christians confess is not merely the man who was born in
+Bethlehem and known among men as 'Jesus the carpenter.' In these modern
+days, His manhood has been so emphasised as to obscure His Messiahship
+and to obliterate His dominion, and alas! there are many who exalt Him
+by the name that Mary gave Him, who turn away from the name of Jesus as
+'Hebrew old clothes,' and from the name of Lord as antiquated
+superstition. But in all the lowliness and gentleness of Jesus there
+were not wanting lofty claims to be the Christ of whom prophets and
+righteous men of old spake, and whose coming many a generation desired
+to see and died without the sight, and still loftier and more absolute
+claims to be invested with 'all power in heaven and earth,' and to sit
+down with the Father on His throne. It is dangerous work to venture to
+toss aside two of these three names, and to hope that if we pronounce
+the third of them, Jesus, with appreciation, it will not matter if we do
+not name Him either Christ or Lord.
+
+If it is true that the manhood of Jesus is thus exalted, how wondrous
+must be the kindred between the human and the divine, that it should be
+capable of this, that it should dwell in the everlasting burnings of the
+Divine Glory and not be consumed! How blessed for us the belief that our
+Brother wields all the forces of the universe, that the human love which
+Jesus had when He bent over the sick and comforted the sorrowful, is at
+the centre. Jesus is Lord, the Lord is Jesus!
+
+The Psalmist was moved to a rapture of thanksgiving when he thought of
+man as 'made a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and
+honour,' but when we think of the Man Jesus 'sitting at the right hand
+of God,' the Psalmist's words seem pale and poor, and we can repeat them
+with a deeper meaning and a fuller emphasis, 'Thou madest Him to have
+dominion over the works of Thy hands, Thou hast put all things under His
+feet.'
+
+III. The universal glory of the name.
+
+By the three classes into which the Apostle divides creation, 'things in
+heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth,' he simply
+intends to declare, that Jesus is the object of all worship, and the
+words are not to be pressed as containing dogmatic assertions as to the
+different classes mentioned. But guided by other words of Scripture, we
+may permissibly think that the 'things in heaven' tell us that the
+angels who do not need His mediation learn more of God by His work and
+bow before His throne. We cannot be wrong in believing that the glory of
+His work stretches far beyond the limits of humanity, and that His
+kingdom numbers other subjects than those who draw human breath. Other
+lips than ours say with a great voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb that hath
+been slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honour
+and glory and blessing.'
+
+The things on earth are of course men, and the words encourage us to dim
+hopes about which we cannot dogmatise of a time when all the wayward
+self-seeking and self-tormenting children of men shall have learned to
+know and love their best friend, and 'there shall be one flock and one
+shepherd.'
+
+'Things under the earth' seems to point to the old thought of 'Sheol' or
+'Hades' or a separate state of the dead. The words certainly suggest
+that those who have gone from us are not unconscious nor cut off from
+the true life, but are capable of adoration and confession. We cannot
+but remember the old belief that Jesus in His death 'descended into
+Hell,' and some of us will not forget Fra Angelico's picture of the open
+doorway with a demon crushed beneath the fallen portal, and the crowd of
+eager faces and outstretched hands swarming up the dark passage, to
+welcome the entering Christ. Whatever we may think of that ancient
+representation, we may at least be sure that, wherever they are, the
+dead in Christ praise and reverence and love.
+
+IV. The glory of the Father in the glory of the name of Jesus.
+
+Knees bent and tongues confessing the absolute dominion of Jesus Christ
+could only be offence and sin if He were not one with the Father. But
+the experience of all the thousands since Paul wrote, whose hearts have
+been drawn in reverent and worshipping trust to the Son, has verified
+the assertion, that to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord diverts no
+worship from God, but swells and deepens the ocean of praise that breaks
+round the throne. If it is true, and only if it is true, that in the
+life and death of Jesus all previous revelations of the Father's heart
+are surpassed, if it is true and only if it is true, as He Himself said,
+that 'I and the Father are one,' can Paul's words here be anything but
+an incredible paradox. But unless these great words close and crown the
+Apostle's glowing vision, it is maimed and imperfect, and Jesus
+interposes between loving hearts and God. One could almost venture to
+believe that at the back of Paul's mind, when he wrote these words, was
+some remembrance of the great prayer, 'I glorified Thee on the earth,
+having accomplished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.' When the Son
+is glorified we glorify the Father, and the words of our text may well
+be remembered and laid to heart by any who will not recognise the deity
+of the Son, because it seems to them to dishonour the Father. Their
+honour is inseparable and their glory one.
+
+There is a sense in which Jesus is our example even in His ascent and
+exaltation, just as He was in His descent and humiliation. The mind
+which was in Him is for us the pattern for earthly life, though the
+deeds in which that mind was expressed, and especially His 'obedience to
+the death of the Cross,' are so far beyond any self-sacrifice of ours,
+and are inimitable, unique, and needing no repetition while the world
+lasts. And as we can imitate His unexampled sacrifice, so we may share
+His divine glory, and, resting on His own faithful word, may follow the
+calm motion of His Ascension, assured that where He is there we shall be
+also, and that the manhood which is exalted in Him is the prophecy that
+all who love Him will share His glory. The question for us all is, have
+we in us 'the mind that was in Christ'? and the other question is, what
+is that name to us? Can we say, 'Thy mighty name salvation is'? If in
+our deepest hearts we grasp that name, and with unfaltering lips can say
+that 'there is none other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we
+must be saved but the name of Jesus,' then we shall know that
+
+          'To us with Thy dear name are given,
+           Pardon, and holiness, and heaven.'
+
+
+
+
+WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION
+
+          'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
+          13. For it is God which worketh in you both to
+          will and to do of His good pleasure.'--PHIL. ii.
+          12, 13.
+
+
+'What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!' Here are,
+joined together, in the compass of one practical exhortation, the truths
+which, put asunder, have been the war-cries and shibboleths of
+contending sects ever since. _Faith_ in a finished salvation, and yet
+_work_; God working all _in_ me, and yet I able and bound to work
+likewise; God upholding and sustaining His child to the very end;
+'perfecting that which concerns him,' making his salvation certain and
+sure, and yet the Christian working 'with fear and trembling,' lest he
+should be a castaway and come short of the grace of God;--who does not
+recognise in these phrases the mottoes that have been written on the
+opposing banners in many a fierce theological battle, waged with much
+harm to both sides, and ending in no clear victory for either? Yet here
+they are blended in the words of one who was no less profound a thinker
+than any that have come after, and who had the gift of a divine
+inspiration to boot.
+
+Not less remarkable than the fusion here of apparent antagonisms, the
+harmonising of apparent opposites, is the intensely practical character
+of the purpose for which they are adduced at all. Paul has no idea of
+giving his disciples a lesson in abstract theology, or laying for them a
+foundation of a philosophy of free will and divine sovereignty; he is
+not merely communicating to these Philippians truths for their creed,
+but precepts for their deeds. The Bible knows nothing of an unpractical
+theology, but, on the other hand, the Bible knows still less of an
+untheological morality. It digs deep, bottoming the simplest right
+action upon right thinking, and going down to the mountain bases on
+which the very pillars of the universe rest, in order to lay there, firm
+and immovable, the courses of the temple of a holy life. Just as little
+as Scripture gives countenance to the error that makes religion theology
+rather than life, just so little does it give countenance to the far
+more contemptible and shallower error common in our day, which _says_,
+Religion is not theology, but life; and _means_, 'Therefore, it does
+not matter what theology you have, you can work a good life out with any
+creed!' The Bible never teaches unpractical speculations, and the Bible
+never gives precepts which do not rest on the profoundest truths. Would
+God, brethren, that we all had souls as wide as would take in the whole
+of the many-sided scriptural representation of the truths of the Gospel,
+and so avoid the narrowness of petty, partial views of God's infinite
+counsel; and that we had as close, direct, and as free communication
+between head, and heart, and hand, as the Scripture has between precept
+and practice!
+
+But in reference more especially to my text. Keeping in view these two
+points I have already suggested, namely,--that it is the reconciling of
+apparent opposites, and that it is intensely practical, I find in it
+these three thoughts;--First, a Christian has his whole salvation
+accomplished for him, and yet he is to work it out. Secondly, a
+Christian has everything done in him by God, and yet he is to work.
+Lastly, a Christian has his salvation certainly secured, and yet he is
+to fear and tremble.
+
+I. In the first place, A Christian man has his whole salvation already
+accomplished for him in Christ, and yet he is to work it out.
+
+There are two points absolutely necessary to be kept in view in order to
+a right understanding of the words before us, for the want of noticing
+which it has become the occasion of terrible mistakes. These are--the
+persons to whom it is addressed, and the force of the scriptural
+expression 'salvation.' As to the first, this exhortation has been
+misapplied by being addressed to those who have no claim to be
+Christians, and by having such teaching deduced from it as, You do your
+part, and God will do His; You work, and God will certainly help you;
+You co-operate in the great work of your salvation, and you will get
+grace and pardon through Jesus Christ. Now let us remember the very
+simple thing, but very important to the right understanding of these
+words, that none but Christian people have anything to do with them. To
+all others, to all who are not already resting on the finished salvation
+of Jesus Christ, this injunction is utterly inapplicable. It is
+addressed to the 'beloved, who have always obeyed'; to the 'saints in
+Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi.' The whole Epistle is addressed,
+and this injunction with the rest, to Christian men. That is the first
+thing to be remembered. If there be any of you, who have thought that
+these words of Paul's to those who had believed on Christ contained a
+rule of action for you, though you have not rested your souls on Him,
+and exhorted you to try to win salvation by your own doings, let me
+remind you of what Christ said when the Jews came to Him in a similar
+spirit and asked Him, 'What shall we do that we may work the works of
+God?' His answer to them was, and His answer to you, my brother, is,
+'_This_ is the work of God, that ye should _believe_ in Him whom He hath
+sent.' That is the first lesson: Not _work_, but _faith_; unless there
+be faith, no work. Unless you are a Christian, the passage has nothing
+to do with you.
+
+But now, if this injunction be addressed to those who are looking for
+their salvation only to the perfect work of Christ, how can they be
+exhorted to work it out themselves? Is not the oft-recurring burden of
+Paul's teaching 'not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but
+by His mercy He saved us'? How does this text harmonise with these
+constantly repeated assertions that Christ has done all for us, and
+that we have nothing to do, and can do nothing? To answer this question,
+we have to remember that that scriptural expression, 'salvation,' is
+used with considerable width and complexity of signification. It
+sometimes means the whole of the process, from the beginning to the end,
+by which we are delivered from sin in all its aspects, and are set safe
+and stable at the right hand of God. It sometimes means one or other of
+three different parts of that process--either deliverance from the
+guilt, punishment, condemnation of sin; or secondly, the gradual process
+of deliverance from its power in our own hearts; or thirdly, the
+completion of that process by the final and perfect deliverance from sin
+and sorrow, from death and the body, from earth and all its weariness
+and troubles, which is achieved when we are landed on the other side of
+the river. Salvation, in one aspect, is a thing _past_ to the Christian;
+in another, it is a thing _present_; in a third, it is a thing _future_.
+But all these three are one; all are elements of the one
+deliverance--the one mighty and perfect act which includes them all.
+
+These three all come equally from Christ Himself. These three all depend
+equally on His work and His power. These three are all given to a
+Christian man in the first act of faith. But the attitude in which he
+stands in reference to that _accomplished_ salvation which means
+deliverance from sin as a penalty and a curse, and that in which he
+stands to the continuing and progressive salvation which means
+deliverance from the power of evil in his own heart, are somewhat
+different. In regard to the one, he has only to take the finished
+blessing. He has to exercise faith and faith alone. He has nothing to
+do, nothing to add, in order to fit himself for it, but simply to
+receive the gift of God, and to believe on Him whom He hath sent. But
+then, though that reception involves what shall come after it, and
+though every one who has and holds the first thing, the pardon of his
+transgression, has and holds thereby and therein his growing sanctifying
+and his final glory, yet the salvation which means our being delivered
+from the evil that is in our hearts, and having our souls made like unto
+Christ, is one which--free gift though it be--is not ours on the sole
+condition of an initial act of faith, but is ours on the condition of
+continuous faithful reception and daily effort, not in our own strength,
+but in God's strength, to become like Him, and to make our own that
+which God has given us, and which Christ is continually bestowing upon
+us.
+
+The two things, then, are not inconsistent--an accomplished salvation, a
+full, free, perfect redemption, with which a man has nothing to do at
+all, but to take it;--and, on the other hand, the injunction to them who
+have received this divine gift: 'Work out your own salvation.' Work, as
+well as believe, and in the daily practice of faithful obedience, in the
+daily subjugation of your own spirits to His divine power, in the daily
+crucifixion of your flesh with its affections and lusts, in the daily
+straining after loftier heights of godliness and purer atmospheres of
+devotion and love--make more thoroughly your own that which you possess.
+Work into the substance of your souls that which you _have_. Apprehend
+that for which you are apprehended of Christ. 'Give all diligence to
+make your calling and election sure'; and remember that not a past act
+of faith, but a present and continuous life of loving, faithful work in
+Christ, which is His and yet yours, is the 'holding fast the beginning
+of your confidence firm unto the end.'
+
+II. In the second place, God works all in us, and yet we have to work.
+
+There can be no mistake about the good faith and firm emphasis--as of a
+man who knows his own mind, and _knows_ that his word is true--with
+which the Apostle holds up here the two sides of what I venture to call
+the one truth; 'Work out your own salvation--for God works in you.'
+Command implies power. Command and power involve duty. The freedom of
+the Christian's action, the responsibility of the believer for his
+Christian growth in grace, the committal to the Christian man's own
+hands of the means of sanctifying, lie in that injunction, 'Work out
+your own salvation.' Is there any faltering, any paring down or cautious
+guarding of the words, in order that they may not seem to clash with the
+other side of the truth? No: Paul does not say, 'Work it out; _yet_ it
+is God that worketh in you'; not 'Work it out _although_ it is God that
+worketh in you'; not 'Work it out, but then it must always be remembered
+and taken as a caution that it is God that worketh in you!' He blends
+the two things together in an altogether different connection, and
+sees--strangely to some people, no contradiction, nor limitation, nor
+puzzle, but a ground of encouragement to cheerful obedience. Do you
+work, '_for_ it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His
+good pleasure.' And does the Apostle limit the divine operation? Notice
+how his words seem picked out on purpose to express most emphatically
+its all-pervading energy. Look how his words seem picked out on purpose
+to express with the utmost possible emphasis that all which a good man
+is, and does, is its fruit. It is God that _worketh in_ you. That
+expresses more than bringing outward means to bear upon heart and will.
+It speaks of an inward, real, and efficacious operation of the
+Indwelling Spirit of all energy on the spirit in which He dwells.
+'Worketh in you _to will_'; this expresses more than the presentation of
+motives from without, it points to a direct action on the will, by which
+impulses are originated within. God puts in you the first faint motions
+of a better will. 'Worketh in you, doing as well as willing'; this
+points to all practical obedience, to all external acts as flowing from
+His grace in us, no less than all inward good thoughts and holy desires.
+
+It is not that God gives men the power, and then leaves them to make the
+use of it. It is not that the desire and purpose come forth from Him,
+and that then we are left to ourselves to be faithful or unfaithful
+stewards in carrying it out. The whole process, from the first sowing of
+the seed until its last blossoming and fruiting, in the shape of an
+accomplished act, of which God shall bless the springing--it is all
+God's together! There is a thorough-going, absolute attribution of every
+power, every action, all the thoughts words, and deeds of a Christian
+soul, to God. No words could be selected which would more thoroughly cut
+away the ground from every half-and-half system which attempts to deal
+them out in two portions, part God's and part mine. With all emphasis
+Paul attributes all to God.
+
+And none the less strongly does he teach, by the implication contained
+in his earnest injunction, that human responsibility, that human control
+over the human will, and that reality of human agency which are often
+thought to be annihilated by these broad views of God as originating all
+good in the soul and life. The Apostle thought that this doctrine did
+not absorb all our individuality in one great divine Cause which made
+men mere tools and puppets. He did not believe that the inference from
+it was, 'Therefore do you sit still, and feel yourselves the cyphers
+that you are.' His practical conclusion is the very opposite. It is--God
+does all, therefore do you work. His belief in the power of God's grace
+was the foundation of the most intense conviction of the reality and
+indispensableness of his own power, and was the motive which stimulated
+him to vigorous action. Work, for God works in you.
+
+Each of these truths rests firmly on its own appropriate evidence. My
+own consciousness tells me that I am free, that I have power, that I am
+therefore responsible and exposed to punishment for neglect of duty. I
+know what I mean when I speak of the will of God, because I myself am
+conscious of a will. The power of God is an object of intelligent
+thought to me, because I myself am conscious of power. And on the other
+hand, that belief in a God which is one of the deep and universal
+beliefs of men contains in it, when it comes to be thought about, the
+belief in Him as the source of all power, as the great cause of all. If
+I believe in a God at all, I must believe that He whom I so call,
+worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. These two
+convictions are both given to us in the primitive beliefs which belong
+to us all. The one rests on consciousness, and underlies all our moral
+judgments. The other rests on an original belief, which belongs to man
+as such. These two mighty pillars on which all morality and all
+religion repose have their foundations down deep in our nature, and
+tower up beyond our sight. They seem to stand opposite to each other,
+but it is only as the strong piers of some tall arch are opposed.
+Beneath they repose on one foundation, above they join together in the
+completing keystone and bear the whole steady structure.
+
+Wise and good men have toiled to harmonise them, in vain. The task
+transcends the limits of human faculties, as exercised here, at all
+events. Perhaps the time may come when we shall be lifted high enough to
+see the binding arch, but here on earth we can only behold the shafts on
+either side. The history of controversy on the matter surely proves
+abundantly what a hopeless task they undertake who attempt to reconcile
+these truths. The attempt has usually consisted in speaking the one
+loudly and the other in a whisper, and then the opposite side has
+thundered what had been whispered, and has whispered very softly what
+had been shouted very loudly. One party lays hold of the one pole of the
+ark, and the other lays hold of that on the other side. The fancied
+reconciliation consists in paring down one half of the full-orbed truth
+to nothing, or in admitting it in words while every principle of the
+reconciler's system demands its denial. Each antagonist is strong in his
+assertions, and weak in his denials, victorious when he establishes his
+half of the whole, easily defeated when he tries to overthrow his
+opponent's.
+
+This apparent incompatibility is no reason for rejecting truths each
+commended to our acceptance on its own proper grounds. It may be a
+reason for not attempting to dogmatise about them. It may be a warning
+to us that we are on ground where our limited understandings have no
+firm footing, but it is no ground for suspecting the evidence which
+certifies the truths. The Bible admits and enforces them both. It never
+tones down the emphasis of its statement of the one for fear of clashing
+against the other, but points to us the true path for thought, in a firm
+grasp of both, in the abandonment of all attempts to reconcile them, and
+for practical conduct, in the peaceful trust in God who hath wrought all
+our works in us, and in strenuous working out of our own salvation. Let
+us, as we look back on that battlefield where much wiser men than we
+have fought in vain, doing little but raising up 'a little dust that is
+lightly laid again,' and building trophies that are soon struck down,
+learn the lesson it teaches, and be contented to say, The short cord of
+my plummet does not quite go down to the bottom of the bottomless, and I
+do not profess either to understand God or to understand man, both of
+which I should want to do before I understood the mystery of their
+conjoint action. Enough for me to believe that,
+
+          'If any force we have, it is to ill,
+           And all the power is God's, to do and eke to will.'
+
+Enough for me to know that I have solemn duties laid upon me, a life's
+task to be done, my deliverance from mine own evil to work out, and that
+I shall only accomplish that work when I can say with the Apostle, 'I
+live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
+
+God is all, but _thou_ canst work! My brother, take this belief, that
+God worketh all in you, for the ground of your confidence, and feel that
+unless He do all, you can do nothing. Take this conviction, that thou
+canst work, for the spur and stimulus of thy life, and think, These
+desires in my soul come from a far deeper source than the little cistern
+of my own individual life. They are God's gift. Let me cherish them with
+the awful carefulness which their origin requires, lest I should seem to
+have received the grace of God in vain. These two streams of truth are
+like the rain-shower that falls upon the watershed of a country. The one
+half flows down the one side of the everlasting hills, and the other
+down the other. Falling into rivers that water different continents,
+they at length find the sea, separated by the distance of half the
+globe. But the sea into which they fall is one, in every creek and
+channel. And so, the truth into which these two apparent opposites
+converge, is 'the depth of the wisdom and the knowledge of God,' whose
+ways are past finding out--the Author of all goodness, who, if we have
+any holy thought, has given it us; if we have any true desire, has
+implanted it; has given us the strength to do the right and to live in
+His fear; and who yet, doing all the willing and the doing, says to us,
+'Because I do everything, therefore let not _thy_ will be paralysed, or
+_thy_ hand palsied; but because I do everything, therefore will _thou_
+according to My will, and do _thou_ according to My commandments!'
+
+III. Lastly: The Christian has his salvation secured, and yet he is to
+fear and tremble.
+
+'Fear and trembling.' 'But,' you may say, 'perfect love casts out fear.'
+So it does. The fear which has torment it casts out. But there is
+another fear in which there is no torment, brethren; a fear and
+trembling which is but another shape of confidence and calm hope!
+Scripture does tell us that the believing man's salvation is certain.
+Scripture tells us it is certain since he believes. And your faith can
+be worth nothing unless it have, bedded deep in it, that trembling
+distrust of your own power which is the pre-requisite and the companion
+of all thankful and faithful reception of God's infinite mercy. Your
+horizon ought to be full of fear, if your gaze be limited to yourself;
+but oh! above our earthly horizon with its fogs, God's infinite blue
+stretches untroubled by the mist and cloud which are earth-born. I, as
+working, have need to tremble and to fear, but I, as wrought upon, have
+a right to confidence and hope, a hope that is full of immortality, and
+an assurance which is the pledge of its own fulfilment. The worker is
+nothing, the Worker in him is all. Fear and trembling, when the thoughts
+turn to mine own sins and weaknesses, hope and confidence when they turn
+to the happier vision of God! 'Not I'--there is the tremulous
+self-distrust; 'the grace of God in me'--there is the calm assurance of
+victory. Forasmuch, then, as God worketh all things, be _you_ diligent,
+faithful, prayerful, confident. Forasmuch as Christ has perfected the
+work for you, do _you_ 'go on unto perfection.' Let all fear and
+trembling be yours, as a man; let all confidence and calm trust be yours
+as a child of God. Turn your confidence and your fears alike into
+prayer. 'Perfect, O Lord, that which concerneth me; forsake not the work
+of Thine own hands!'--and the prayer will evoke the merciful answer, 'I
+will never leave thee, nor forsake thee God is faithful, who hath called
+you unto the Gospel of His Son; and _will_ keep you unto His everlasting
+kingdom of glory.'
+
+
+
+
+COPIES OF JESUS
+
+          'Do all things without murmurings and disputings;
+          15. That ye may be blameless and harmless,
+          children of God without blemish in the midst of a
+          crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye are
+          seen as lights in the world, 16. Holding forth the
+          word of life.'--PHIL. ii. 14-16 (R.V.).
+
+
+We are told by some superfine modern moralists, that to regard one's own
+salvation as the great work of our lives is a kind of selfishness, and
+no doubt there may be a colour of truth in the charge. At least the
+meaning of the injunction to work out our own salvation may have been
+sometimes so misunderstood, and there have been types of Christian
+character, such as the ascetic and monastic, which have made the
+representation plausible. I do not think that there is much danger of
+anybody so misunderstanding the precept now. But it is worthy of notice
+that there stand here side by side two paragraphs, in the former of
+which the effort to work out one's own salvation is urged in the
+strongest terms, and in the other of which the regard for others is
+predominant. We shall see that the connection between these two is not
+accidental, but that one great reason for working out our salvation is
+here set forth as being the good we may thereby do to others.
+
+I. We note the one great duty of cheerful yielding to God's will.
+
+It is clear, I think, that the precept to do 'all things without
+murmurings and disputings' stands in the closest connection with what
+goes before. It is, in fact, the explanation of how salvation is to be
+wrought out. It presents the human side which corresponds to the divine
+activity, which has just been so earnestly insisted on. God works in us
+'willing and doing,' let us on our parts do with ready submission all
+the things which He so inspires to will and to do.
+
+The 'murmurings' are not against men but against God. The 'disputings'
+are not wrangling with others but the division of mind in one's
+self-questionings, hesitations, and the like. So the one are more moral,
+the other more intellectual, and together they represent the ways in
+which Christian men may resist the action on their spirits of God's
+Spirit, 'willing,' or the action of God's providence on their
+circumstances, 'doing.' Have we never known what it was to have some
+course manifestly prescribed to us as right, from which we have shrunk
+with reluctance of will? If some course has all at once struck us as
+wrong which we had been long accustomed to do without hesitation, has
+there been no 'murmuring' before we yielded? A voice has said to us,
+'Give up such and such a habit,' or 'such and such a pursuit is becoming
+too engrossing': do we not all know what it is not only to feel
+obedience an effort, but even to cherish reluctance, and to let it
+stifle the voice?
+
+There are often 'disputings' which do not get the length of
+'murmurings.' The old word which tried to weaken the plain imperative of
+the first command by the subtle suggestion, 'Yea, hath God said?' still
+is whispered into our ears. We know what it is to answer God's commands
+with a 'But, Lord.' A reluctant will is clever to drape itself with more
+or less honest excuses, and the only safety is in cheerful obedience and
+glad submission. The will of God ought not only to receive obedience,
+but prompt obedience, and such instantaneous and whole-souled submission
+is indispensable if we are to 'work out our own salvation,' and to
+present an attitude of true, receptive correspondence to that of God,
+who 'works in us both to will and to do of His own good pleasure.' Our
+surrender of ourselves into the hands of God, in respect both to inward
+and outward things, should be complete. As has been profoundly said,
+that surrender consists 'in a continual forsaking and losing all self in
+the will of God, willing only what God from eternity has willed,
+forgetting what is past, giving up the time present to God, and leaving
+to His providence that which is to come, making ourselves content in the
+actual moment seeing it brings along with it the eternal order of God
+concerning us' (Madame Guyon).
+
+II. The conscious aim in all our activity.
+
+What God works in us for is that for which we too are to yield ourselves
+to His working, 'without murmurings and disputings,' and to co-operate
+with glad submission and cheerful obedience. We are to have as our
+distinct aim the building up of a character 'blameless and harmless,
+children of God without rebuke.' The blamelessness is probably in
+reference to men's judgment rather than to God's, and the difficulty of
+coming untarnished from contact with the actions and criticisms of a
+crooked and perverse generation is emphasised by the very fact that such
+blamelessness is the first requirement for Christian conduct. It was a
+feather in Daniel's cap that the president and princes were foiled in
+their attempt to pick holes in his conduct, and had to confess that they
+would not 'find any occasion against him, except we find it concerning
+the laws of his God.' God is working in us in order that our lives
+should be such that malice is dumb in their presence. Are we
+co-operating with Him? We are bound to satisfy the world's requirements
+of Christian character. They are sharp critics and sometimes
+unreasonable, but on the whole it would not be a bad rule for Christian
+people, 'Do what irreligious men expect you to do.' The worst man knows
+more than the best man practises, and his conscience is quick to decide
+the course for other people. Our weaknesses and compromises, and love of
+the world, might receive a salutary rebuke if we would try to meet the
+expectations which 'the man in the street' forms of us.
+
+'Harmless' is more correctly pure, all of a piece, homogeneous and
+entire. It expresses what the Christian life should be in itself, whilst
+the former designation describes it more as it appears. The piece of
+cloth is to be so evenly and carefully woven that if held up against the
+light it will show no flaws nor knots. Many a professing Christian life
+has a veneer of godliness nailed thinly over a solid bulk of
+selfishness. There are many goods in the market finely dressed so as to
+hide that the warp is cotton and only the weft silk. No Christian man
+who has memory and self-knowledge can for a moment claim to have reached
+the height of his ideal; the best of us, at the best, are like
+Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were iron and clay, but we ought to
+strain after it and to remember that a stain shows most on the whitest
+robe. What made David's sin glaring and memorable was its contradiction
+of his habitual nobler self. One spot more matters little on a robe
+already covered with many. The world is fully warranted in pointing
+gleefully or contemptuously at Christians' inconsistencies, and we have
+no right to find fault with their most pointed sarcasms, or their
+severest judgments. It is those 'that bear the vessels of the Lord'
+whose burden imposes on them the duty 'be ye clean,' and makes any
+uncleanness more foul in them than in any other.
+
+The Apostle sets forth the place and function of Christians in the
+world, by bringing together in the sharpest contrast the 'children of
+God' and a 'crooked and perverse generation.' He is thinking of the old
+description in Deuteronomy, where the ancient Israel is charged with
+forgetting 'Thy Father that hath bought thee,' and as showing by their
+corruption that they are a 'perverse and crooked generation.' The
+ancient Israel had been the Son of God, and yet had corrupted itself;
+the Christian Israel are 'sons of God' set among a world all deformed,
+twisted, perverted. 'Perverse' is a stronger word than 'crooked,' which
+latter may be a metaphor for moral obliquity, like our own right and
+wrong, or perhaps points to personal deformity. Be that as it may, the
+position which the Apostle takes is plain enough. He regards the two
+classes as broadly separated in antagonism in the very roots of their
+being. Because the 'sons of God' are set in the midst of that 'crooked
+and perverse generation' constant watchfulness is needed lest they
+should conform, constant resort to their Father lest they should lose
+the sense of sonship, and constant effort that they may witness of Him.
+
+III. The solemn reason for this aim.
+
+That is drawn from a consideration of the office and function of
+Christian men. Their position in the midst of a 'crooked and perverse
+generation' devolves on them a duty in relation to that generation. They
+are to 'appear as lights in the world.' The relation between them and it
+is not merely one of contrast, but on their parts one of witness and
+example. The metaphor of light needs no explanation. We need only note
+that the word, 'are seen' or 'appear,' is indicative, a statement of
+fact, not imperative, a command. As the stars lighten the darkness with
+their myriad lucid points, so in the divine ideal Christian men are to
+be as twinkling lights in the abyss of darkness. Their light rays forth
+without effort, being an involuntary efflux. Possibly the old paradox of
+the Psalmist was in the Apostle's mind, which speaks of the eloquent
+silence, in which 'there is no speech nor language, and their voice is
+not heard,' but yet 'their line has gone out through all the earth, and
+their words unto the end of the world.'
+
+Christian men appear as lights by 'holding forth the word of life.' In
+themselves they have no brightness but that which comes from raying out
+the light that is in them. The word of life must live, giving life in
+us, if we are ever to be seen as 'lights in the world.' As surely as the
+electric light dies out of a lamp when the current is switched off, so
+surely shall we be light only when we are 'in the Lord.' There are many
+so-called Christians in this day who stand tragically unaware that their
+'lamps are gone out.' When the sun rises and smites the mountain tops
+they burn, when its light falls on Memnon's stony lips they breathe out
+music, 'Arise, shine, for thy light has come.'
+
+Undoubtedly one way of 'holding forth the word of life' must be to speak
+the word, but silent living 'blameless and harmless' and leaving the
+secret of the life very much to tell itself is perhaps the best way for
+most Christian people to bear witness. Such a witness is constant,
+diffused wherever the witness-bearer is seen, and free from the
+difficulties that beset speech, and especially from the assumption of
+superiority which often gives offence. It was the sight of 'your good
+deeds' to which Jesus pointed as the strongest reason for men's
+'glorifying your Father.' If we lived such lives there would be less
+need for preachers. 'If any will not hear the word they may without the
+word be won.' And reasonably so, for Christianity is a life and cannot
+be all told in words, and the Gospel is the proclamation of freedom from
+sin, and is best preached and proved by showing that we are free. The
+Gospel was lived as well as spoken. Christ's life was Christ's mightiest
+preaching.
+
+          'The word was flesh and wrought
+           With human hands the creed of creeds.'
+
+If we keep near to Him we too shall witness, and if our faces shine like
+Moses' as he came down from the mountain, or like Stephen's in the
+council chamber, men will 'take knowledge of us that we have been with
+Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+A WILLING SACRIFICE
+
+          'That I may have whereof to glory in the day of
+          Christ, that I did not run in vain neither labour
+          in vain. 17. Yea, and if I am offered upon the
+          sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and
+          rejoice with you all. 18. And in the same manner
+          do ye also joy, and rejoice with me.'--PHIL. ii.
+          16-18 (R.V.).
+
+
+We come here to another of the passages in which the Apostle pours out
+all his heart to his beloved Church. Perhaps there never was a Christian
+teacher (always excepting Christ) who spoke more about himself than
+Paul. His own experience was always at hand for illustration. His
+preaching was but the generalisation of his life. He had felt it all
+first, before he threw it into the form of doctrine. It is very hard to
+keep such a style from becoming egotism.
+
+This paragraph is remarkable, especially if we consider that this is
+introduced as a motive to their faithfulness, that thereby they will
+contribute to his joy at the last great testing. There must have been a
+very deep love between Paul and the Philippians to make such words as
+these true and appropriate. They open the very depths of his heart in a
+way from which a less noble and fervid nature would have shrunk, and
+express his absolute consecration in his work, and his eager desire for
+their spiritual good, with such force as would have been exaggeration in
+most men.
+
+We have here a wonderful picture of the relation between him and the
+church at Philippi which may well stand as a pattern for us all. I do
+not mean to parallel our relations with that between him and them, but
+it is sufficiently analogous to make these words very weighty and solemn
+for us.
+
+I. The Philippians' faithfulness Paul's glory in the day of Christ.
+
+The Apostle strikes a solemn note, which was always sounding through his
+life, when he points to that great Day of Christ as the time when his
+work was to be tested. The thought of that gave earnestness to all his
+service, and in conjunction with the joyful thought that, however his
+work might be marred by failures and flaws, he himself was 'accepted in
+the beloved,' was the impulse which carried him on through a life than
+which none of Christ's servants have dared, and done, and suffered more
+for Him. Paul believed that, according to the results of that test, his
+position would in some sort be determined. Of course he does not here
+contradict the foundation principle of his whole Gospel, that salvation
+is not the result of our own works, or virtues, but is the free
+unmerited gift of Christ's grace. But while that is true, it is none the
+less true, that the degree in which believers receive that gift depends
+on their Christian character, both in their life on earth and in the day
+of Christ. One element in that character is faithful work for Jesus.
+Faithful work indeed is not necessarily successful work, and many who
+are welcomed by Jesus, the judge, will have the memory of many
+disappointments and few harvested grains. It was not a reaper, 'bringing
+his sheaves with him,' who stayed himself against the experience of
+failure, by the assurance, 'Though Israel be not gathered yet shall I be
+glorious in the eyes of the Lord.' If our want of success, and others'
+lapse, and apostasy or coldness has not been occasioned by any fault of
+ours, there will be no diminution of our reward. But we can so seldom be
+sure of that, and even then there will be an absence of what might have
+added to gladness.
+
+We need not do more than note that the text plainly implies, that at
+that testing time men's knowledge of all that they did, and the results
+of it, will be complete. Marvellous as it seems to us, with our
+fragmentary memories, and the great tracts of our lives through which we
+have passed mechanically, and which seem to have left no trace on the
+mirror of our consciousness, we still, all of us, have experiences which
+make that all-recovering memory credible. Some passing association, a
+look, a touch, an odour, a sun-set sky, a chord of music will bring
+before us some trivial long-forgotten incident or emotion, as the chance
+thrust of a boat-hook will draw to the surface by its hair, a
+long-drowned corpse. If we are, as assuredly we are, writing with
+invisible ink our whole life's history on the pages of our own minds,
+and if we shall have to read them all over again one day, is it not
+tragic that most of us scribble the pages so hastily and carelessly, and
+forget that, 'what I have written I have written,' and what I have
+written I must read.
+
+But there is another way of looking at Paul's words as being an
+indication of his warm love for the Philippians. Even among the glories,
+he would feel his heart filled with new gladness when he found them
+there. The hunger for the good of others which cannot bear to think even
+of heaven without their presence has been a master note of all true
+Christian teachers, and without it there will be little of the toil, of
+which Paul speaks in the context, 'running and labouring.' He that would
+win men's hearts for any great cause must give his heart to them.
+
+That Paul should have felt warranted in using such a motive with the
+Philippians tells how surely he reckoned on their true and deep love. He
+believes that they care enough for him to feel the power as a motive
+with them, that their faithfulness will make Paul more blessed amidst
+the blessings of heaven. Oh! if such love knit together all Christian
+teachers and their hearers in this time, and if the 'Day of Christ'
+burned before them, as it did before him, and if the vision stirred to
+such running and labouring as his, teachers and taught would oftener
+have to say, 'We are your rejoicing, even as ye are also ours in the Day
+of our Lord Jesus.' The voice of the man who is in the true 'Apostolic
+Succession' will dare to make the appeal, knowing that it will call
+forth an abundant answer, 'Look to yourselves that we lose not the
+things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.'
+
+II. Paul's death an aid to the Philippians' faith.
+
+The general meaning of the Apostle's words is, 'If I have not only to
+run and labour, but to die in the discharge of my Apostolic Mission, I
+joy and rejoice, and I bid you rejoice with me.' We need only note that
+the Apostle here casts his language into the forms consecrated for
+sacrifice. He will not speak of death by its own ugly and threadbare
+name, but thinks of himself as a devoted victim, and of his death as
+making the sacrifice complete. In the figure there is a solemn scorn of
+death, and at the same time a joyful recognition that it is the means of
+bringing him more nearly to God, with whom he would fain be. It is
+interesting, as showing the persistence of these thoughts in the
+Apostle's mind, that the word rendered in our text 'offered,' which
+fully means 'poured out as a drink offering,' occurs again in the same
+connection in the great words of the swan song in II. Timothy, 'I am
+already being offered, and the time of my departure is come.' Death
+looked to him, when he looked it in the eyes, and the block was close by
+him, as it had done when he spoke of it to his Philippian friends.
+
+It is to be noted, in order to bring out more vividly the force of the
+figure, that Paul here speaks of the libation being poured '_on_' the
+sacrifice, as was the practice in heathen ritual. The sacrifice is the
+victim, 'service' is the technical word for priestly ministration, and
+the general meaning is, 'If my blood is poured out as a drink offering
+on the sacrifice ministered by you, which is your faith, I joy with you
+all.' This man had no fear of death, and no shrinking from 'leaving the
+warm precincts of the cheerful day.' He was equally ready to live or to
+die as might best serve the name of Jesus, for to him 'to live was
+Christ,' and therefore to him it could be nothing but 'gain' to die.
+Here he seems to be treating his death as a possibility, but as a
+possibility only, for almost immediately afterwards he says, that he
+'trusts in the Lord that I myself will come shortly.' It is interesting
+to notice the contrast between his mood of mind here and that in the
+previous chapter (i. 25) where the 'desire to depart and to be with
+Christ' is deliberately suppressed, because his continuous life is
+regarded as essential for the Philippians' 'progress and joy in faith.'
+Here he discerns that perhaps his death would do more for their faith
+than would his life, and being ready for either alternative he welcomes
+the possibility. May we not see in the calm heart, which is at leisure
+to think of death in such a fashion, a pattern for us all? Remember how
+near and real his danger was. Nero was not in the habit of letting a
+man, whose head had been in the mouth of the lion, take it out unhurt.
+Paul is no eloquent writer or poet playing with the idea of death, and
+trying to say pretty things about it, but a man who did not know when
+the blow would come, but _did_ know that it would come before long.
+
+We may point here to the two great thoughts in Paul's words, and notice
+the priesthood and sacrifice of life, and the sacrifice and libation of
+death. The Philippians offered as their sacrifice their faith, and all
+the works which flow therefrom. Is that our idea of life? Is it our idea
+of faith? We have no gifts to bring, we come empty-handed unless we
+carry in our hands the offering of our faith, which includes the
+surrender of our will, and the giving away of our hearts, and is
+essentially laying hold of Christ's sacrifice. When we come empty,
+needy, sinful, but cleaving wholly to that perfect sacrifice of the
+Great Priest, we too become priests and our poor gift is accepted.
+
+But another possibility than that of a life of running and labour
+presented itself to Paul, and it is a revelation of the tranquillity of
+his heart in the midst of impending danger, all the more pathetic
+because it is entirely unconscious, that he should be free to cast his
+anticipations into that calm metaphor of being, 'offered upon the
+sacrifice and service of your faith.' His heart beats no faster, nor
+does the faintest shadow of reluctance cross his will, when he thinks of
+his death. All the repulsive accompaniments of a Roman execution fade
+away from his imagination. These are but negligible accidents; the
+substantial reality which obscures them all is that his blood will be
+poured out as a libation, and that by it his brethren's faith will be
+strengthened. To this man death had finally and completely ceased to be
+a terror, and had become what it should be to all Christians, a
+voluntary surrender to God, an offering to Him, an act of worship, of
+trust, and of thankful praise. Seneca, in his death, poured out a
+libation to Jupiter the Liberator, and if we could only know beforehand
+what death delivers us from, and admits us to, we should not be so prone
+to call it 'the last enemy.' What Paul's death was for himself in the
+process of his perfecting called forth, and warranted, the 'joy' with
+which he anticipated it. It did no more for him than it will do for each
+of us, and if our vision were as clear, and our faith as firm as his, we
+should be more ready than, alas! we too often are, to catch up the
+exulting note with which he hails the possibility of its coming.
+
+But it is not the personal bearing only of his death that gives him joy.
+He thinks of it mainly as contributing to the furtherance of the faith
+of others. For that end he was spending the effort and toil of an
+effortful and toilsome life, and was equally ready to meet a violent and
+shameful death. He knew that 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of
+the Church,' and rejoiced, and called upon his brethren also to 'joy
+and rejoice' with him in his shedding of his martyr's blood.
+
+The Philippians might well have thought, as we all are tempted to think,
+that the withdrawal of those round whom our hearts desperately cling,
+and who seem to us to bring love and trust nearer to us, can only be
+loss, but surely the example in our text may well speak to our hearts of
+the way in which we should look at death for ourselves, and for our
+dearest. Their very withdrawal may send us nearer to Christ. The holy
+memories which linger in the sky, like the radiance of a sunken sun, may
+clothe familiar truths with unfamiliar power and loveliness. The thought
+of where the departed have gone may lift our thoughts wistfully thither
+with a new feeling of home. The path that they have trodden may become
+less strange to us, and the victory that they have won may prophesy that
+we too shall be 'more than conquerors through Him that loveth us.' So
+the mirror broken may turn us to the sun, and the passing of the dearest
+that can die may draw us to the Dearer who lives.
+
+Paul, living, rejoiced in the prospect of death. We may be sure that he
+rejoiced in it no less dead than living. And we may permissibly think of
+this text as suggesting how
+
+          'The saints on earth and all the dead
+           But one communion make,'
+
+and are to be united in one joy. They rejoice for their own sakes, but
+their joy is not self-absorbed, and so putting them farther away from
+us. They look back upon earth, the runnings and labourings of the
+unforgotten life here; and are glad to bear in their hearts the
+indubitable token that they have 'not run in vain neither laboured in
+vain.' But surely the depth of their own repose will not make them
+indifferent to those who are still in the midst of struggle and toil,
+nor the fulness of their own felicity make them forget those whom they
+loved of old, and love now with the perfect love of Heaven. It is hard
+for us to rise to complete sympathy with these serenely blessed spirits,
+but yet we too should rejoice. Not indeed to the exclusion of sorrow,
+nor to the neglect of the great purpose to be effected in us by the
+withdrawal, as by the presence of dear ones, the furtherance of our
+faith, but having made sure that that purpose has been effected in us,
+we should then give solemn thanksgivings if it has. It is sad and
+strange to think of how opposite are the feelings about their departure,
+of those who have gone and of those who are left. Would it not be better
+that we should try to share theirs and so bring about a true union? We
+may be sure that their deepest desire is that we should. If some lips
+that we shall never hear any more, till we come where they are, could
+speak, would not they bring to us as their message from Heaven, Do 'ye
+also joy and rejoice with me'?
+
+
+
+
+PAUL AND TIMOTHY
+
+          'But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy
+          shortly unto you, that I also may be of good
+          comfort, when I know your state. 20. For I have no
+          man like-minded, who will care truly for your
+          state. 21. For they all seek their own, not the
+          things of Jesus Christ. 22. But ye know the proof
+          of him, that, as a child serveth a father, so he
+          served with me in furtherance of the gospel. 23.
+          Him therefore I hope to send forthwith, so soon as
+          I shall see how it will go with me: 24. But I
+          trust in the Lord that I myself also shall come
+          shortly.'--PHIL. ii. 19-24 (R.V.).
+
+
+Like all great men Paul had a wonderful power of attaching followers to
+himself. The mass of the planet draws in small aerolites which catch
+fire as they pass through its atmosphere. There is no more beautiful
+page in the history of the early Church than the story of Paul and his
+companions. They gathered round him with such devotion, and followed him
+with such love. They were not small men. Luke and Aquila were among
+them, and they would have been prominent in most companies, but gladly
+took a place second to Paul. He impressed his own personality and his
+type of teaching on his followers as Luther did on his, and as many
+another great teacher has done.
+
+Among all these Timothy seems to have held a special place. Paul first
+found him on his second journey either at Derbe or Lystra. His mother,
+Eunice, was already a believer, his father a Greek. Timothy seems to
+have been converted on Paul's first visit, for on his second he was
+already a disciple well reported of, and Paul more than once calls him
+his 'son in the faith.' He seems to have come in to take John Mark's
+place as the Apostle's 'minister,' and from that time to have been
+usually Paul's trusted attendant. We hear of him as with the Apostle on
+his first visit to Philippi, and to have gone with him to Thessalonica
+and Beroea, but then to have been parted until Corinth. Thence Paul
+went quickly up to Jerusalem and back to Antioch, from which he set out
+again to visit the churches, and made a special stay in Ephesus. While
+there he planned a visit to Macedonia and Achaia, in preparation for one
+to Jerusalem, and finally to Rome. So he sent Timothy and Erastus on
+ahead to Macedonia, which would of course include Philippi. After that
+visit to Macedonia and Greece Paul returned to Philippi, from which he
+sailed with Timothy in his company. He was probably with him all the way
+to Rome, and we find him mentioned as sharer in the imprisonment both
+here and in Colossians.
+
+The references made to him point to a very sweet, good, pure and
+gracious character without much strength, needing to be stayed and
+stiffened by the stronger character, but full of sympathy, unselfish
+disregard of self, and consecrated love to Christ. He had been
+surrounded with a hallowed atmosphere from his youth, and 'from a child
+had known the holy Scriptures,' and 'prophecies' like fluttering doves
+had gone before on him. He had 'often infirmities' and 'tears.' He
+needed to be roused to 'stir up the gift that was in him,' and braced up
+'not to be ashamed,' but to fight against the disabling 'spirit of
+fear,' and to be 'strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.'
+
+The bond between these two was evidently very close, and the Apostle
+felt something of a paternal interest in the very weakness of character
+which was in such contrast to his own strength, and which obviously
+dreaded the discouragement which was likely to be produced by his own
+martyrdom. This favourite companion he will now send to his favourite
+church. The verses of our text express that intention, and give us a
+glimpse into the Apostle's thoughts and feelings in his imprisonment.
+
+I. The prisoner's longing and hope.
+
+The first point which strikes us in this self-revelation of Paul's is
+his conscious uncertainty as to his future. In the previous chapter
+(ver. 25) he is confident that he will live. In the verses immediately
+preceding our text he faces the possibility of death. Here he recognises
+the uncertainty but still 'trusts' that he will be liberated, but yet he
+does not know 'how it may go with' him. We think of him in his lodging
+sometimes hoping and sometimes doubting. He had a tyrant's caprice to
+depend on, and knew how a moment's whim might end all. Surely his way of
+bearing that suspense was very noteworthy and noble. It is difficult to
+keep a calm heart, and still more difficult to keep on steadily at work,
+when any moment might bring the victor's axe. Suspense almost enforces
+idleness, but Paul crowded these moments of his prison time with
+letters, and Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are the
+fruits for which we are indebted to a period which would have been to
+many men a reason for throwing aside all work.
+
+How calmly too he speaks of the uncertain issue! Surely never was the
+possibility of death more quietly spoken of than in 'so soon as I shall
+see how it will go with me.' That means--'as soon as my fate is decided,
+be it what it may, I will send Timothy to tell you.' What a calm pulse
+he must have had! There is no attitudinising here, all is perfectly
+simple and natural. Can we look, do we habitually look, into the
+uncertain future with such a temper--accepting all that may be in its
+grey mists, and feeling that our task is to fill the present with
+strenuous loving service, leaving tomorrow with all its alternatives,
+even that tremendous one of life and death, to Him who will shape it to
+a perfect end?
+
+We note, further, the purpose of Paul's love. It is beautiful to see how
+he yearns over these Philippians and feels that his joy will be
+increased when he hears from them. He is sure, as he believes, to hear
+good, and news which will be a comfort. Among the souls whom he bore on
+his heart were many in the Macedonian city, and a word from them would
+be like 'cold water to a thirsty soul.'
+
+What a noble suppression of self; how deep and strong the tie that bound
+him to them must have been! Is there not a lesson here for all Christian
+workers, for all teachers, preachers, parents, that no good is to be
+done without loving sympathy? Unless our hearts go out to people we
+shall never reach their hearts. We may talk to them for ever, but unless
+we have this loving sympathy we might as well be silent. It is possible
+to pelt people with the Gospel, and to produce the effect of flinging
+stones at them. Much Christian work comes to nothing mainly for that
+reason.
+
+And how deep a love does he show in his depriving himself of Timothy for
+their sakes, and in his reason for sending him! Those reasons would have
+been for most of us the strongest reason for keeping him. It is not
+everybody who will denude himself of the help of one who serves him 'as
+a child serveth a father,' and will part with the only like-minded
+friend he has, because his loving eye will clearly see the state of
+others.
+
+Paul's expression of his purpose to send Timothy is very much more than
+a piece of emotional piety. He 'hopes in the Lord' to accomplish his
+design, and that hope so rooted and conditioned is but one instance of
+the all-comprehending law of his life, that, to him, to 'live is
+Christ.' His whole being was so interpenetrated with Christ's that all
+his thoughts and feelings were 'in the Lord Jesus.' So should our
+purposes be. Our hopes should be derived from union with Him. They
+should not be the play of our own fancy or imagination. They should be
+held in submission to him, and ever with the limitation, 'Not as I will,
+but as Thou wilt.' We should be trusting to Him to fulfil them. If thus
+we hope, our hopes may lead us nearer to Jesus instead of tempting us
+away from Him by delusive brightnesses. There is a religious use of hope
+not only when it is directed to heavenly certainties, and 'enters within
+the veil,' but even when occupied about earthly things. Spenser twice
+paints for us the figure of Hope, one has always something of dread in
+her blue eyes, the other, and the other only, leans on the anchor, and
+'maketh not ashamed'; and her name is 'Hope in the Lord.'
+
+II. The prisoner solitary among self-seeking men.
+
+With wonderful self-surrender the Apostle thinks of his lack of
+like-minded companions as being a reason for depriving himself of the
+only like-minded one who was left with him. He felt that Timothy's
+sympathetic soul would truly care for the Philippians' condition, and
+would minister to it lovingly. He could rely that Timothy would have no
+selfish by-ends to serve, but would seek the things of Jesus Christ. We
+know too little of the circumstances of Paul's imprisonment to know how
+he came to be thus lonely. In the other Epistles of the Captivity we
+have mention of a considerable group of friends, many of whom would
+certainly have been included in a list of the 'like-minded.' We hear,
+for example, of Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, John Mark, Epaphras,
+and Luke. What had become of them all we do not know. They were
+evidently away on Christian service, somewhere or other, or some of them
+perhaps had not yet arrived. At all events for some reason Paul was for
+the time left alone but for Timothy. Not that there were no Christian
+men in Rome, but of those who could have been sent on such an errand
+there were none in whom love to Christ and care for His cause and flock
+were strong enough to mark them as fit for it.
+
+So then we have to take account of Paul's loneliness in addition to his
+other sorrows, and we may well mark how calmly and uncomplainingly he
+bears it. We are perpetually hearing complaints of isolation and the
+difficulty of finding sympathy, or 'people who understand me.' That is
+often the complaint of a morbid nature, or of one which has never given
+itself the trouble of trying to 'understand' others, or of showing the
+sympathy for which it says that it thirsts. And many of these
+complaining spirits might take a lesson from the lonely Apostle. There
+never was a man, except Paul's Master and ours, who cared more for human
+sympathy, had his own heart fuller of it, and received less of it from
+others than Paul. But he had discovered what it would be blessedness for
+us all to lay to heart, that a man who has Christ for his companion can
+do without others, and that a heart in which there whispers, 'Lo, I am
+with you always,' can never be utterly solitary.
+
+May we not take the further lesson that the sympathy which we should
+chiefly desire is sympathy and fellow-service in Christian work? Paul
+did not want like-minded people in order that he might have the luxury
+of enjoying their sympathy, but what he wanted was allies in his work
+for Christ. It was sympathy in his care for the Philippians that he
+sought for in his messenger. And that is the noblest form of
+like-mindedness that we can desire--some one to hold the ropes for us.
+
+Note, too, that Paul does not weakly complain because he had no helpers.
+Good and earnest men are very apt to say much about the half-hearted way
+in which their brethren take up some cause in which they are eagerly
+interested, and sometimes to abandon it altogether for that reason. May
+not such faint hearts learn a lesson from him who had 'no man
+like-minded,' and yet never dreamt of whimpering because of it, or of
+flinging down his tools because of the indolence of his fellow-workers?
+
+There is another point to be observed in the Apostle's words here. He
+felt that their attitude to Christ determined his affinities with men.
+He could have no deep and true fellowship with others, whatever their
+name to live, who were daily 'seeking their own,' and at the same time
+leaving unsought 'the things of Jesus Christ.' They who are not alike in
+their deepest aims can have no real kindred. Must we not say that hosts
+of so-called Christian people do not seem to feel, if one can judge by
+the company they affect, that the deepest bond uniting men is that which
+binds them to Jesus Christ? I would press the question, Do we feel that
+nothing draws us so close to men as common love to Jesus, and that if we
+are not alike on that cardinal point there is a deep gulf of separation
+beneath a deceptive surface of union, an unfathomable gorge marked by a
+quaking film of earth?
+
+It is a solemn estimate of some professing Christians which the Apostle
+gives here, if he is including the members of the Roman Church in his
+judgment that they are not 'like-minded' with him, and are 'seeking
+their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.' We may rather hope that he
+is speaking of others around him, and that for some reason unknown to us
+he was at the time secluded from the Roman Christians. He brings out
+with unflinching precision the choice which determines a life. There is
+always that terrible 'either--or.' To live for Christ is the antagonist,
+and only antagonist of life for self. To live for self is death. To live
+for Jesus is the only life. There are two centres, heliocentric and
+geocentric as the scientists say. We can choose round which we shall
+draw our orbit, and everything depends on the choice which we make. To
+seek 'the things of Jesus Christ' is sure to lead to, and is the only
+basis of, care for men. Religion is the parent of compassion, and if we
+are looking for a man who will care truly for the state of others, we
+must do as Paul did, look for him among those who 'seek the things of
+Jesus Christ.'
+
+III. The prisoner's joy in loving co-operation.
+
+The Apostle's eulogium on Timothy points to his long and intimate
+association with Paul and to the Philippians' knowledge of him as well
+as to the Apostle's clinging to him. There is a piece of delicate beauty
+in the words which we may pause for a moment to point out. Paul writes
+as 'a child serveth a father,' and the natural sequence would have been
+'so he served me,' but he remembers that the service was not to him,
+Paul, but to another, and so he changes the words and says he 'served
+_with_ me in furtherance of the Gospel.' We are both servants
+alike--Christ's servants for the Gospel.
+
+Paul's joy in Timothy's loving co-operation was so deep because Paul's
+whole heart was set on 'the furtherance of the Gospel.' Help towards
+that end was help indeed. We may measure the ardour and intensity of
+Paul's devotion to his apostolic work by the warmth of gratitude which
+he shows to his helper. They who contribute to our reaching our chief
+desire win our warmest love, and the catalogue of our helpers follows
+the order of the list of our aims. Timothy brought to Paul no assistance
+to procure any of the common objects of human desires. Wealth,
+reputation, success in any of the pursuits which attract most men might
+have been held out to the Apostle and not been thought worth stooping to
+take, nor would the offerer have been thanked, but any proffered service
+that had the smallest bearing on that great work to which Paul's life
+was given, and which his conscience told him there would be a curse on
+himself if he did not fulfil, was welcomed as a priceless gift. Do we
+arrange the lists of our helpers on the same fashion, and count that
+they serve us best who help us to serve Christ? It should be as much the
+purpose of every Christian life as it was that of Paul to spread the
+salvation and glory of the 'name that is above every name.' If we lived
+as continually under the influence of that truth as he did, we should
+construe the circumstances of our lives, whether helpful or hindering,
+very differently, and we could shake the world.
+
+Christian unity is very good and infinitely to be desired, but the true
+field on which it should display itself is that of united work for the
+common Lord. The men who have marched side by side through a campaign
+are knit together as nothing else would bind them. Even two horses
+drawing one carriage will have ways and feelings and a common
+understanding, which they would never have attained in any other way.
+There is nothing like common work for clearing away mists. Much
+so-called Christian sympathy and like-mindedness are something like the
+penal cranks that used to be in jails, which generated immense power on
+this side of the wall but ground out nothing on the other.
+
+Let us not forget that in the field of Christian service there is room
+for all manner of workers, and that they are associated, however
+different their work. Paul often calls Timothy his 'fellow-labourer,'
+and once gives him the eulogium, 'he worketh the work of the Lord as I
+also do.' Think of the difference between the two men in age, endowment,
+and sphere! Apparently Timothy at first had very subordinate work taking
+John Mark's place, and is described as being one of those who
+'ministered' to Paul. It is the cup of cold water over again. All work
+done for the same Lord, and with the same motive is the same; 'he that
+receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's
+reward.' When Paul associates Timothy with himself he is copying from
+afar off his Lord, who lets us think of even our poor deeds as done by
+those whom He does not disdain to call His fellow-workers. It would be
+worth living for if, at the last, He should acknowledge us, and say even
+of us, 'he hath served with Me in the Gospel.'
+
+
+
+
+PAUL AND EPAPHRODITUS
+
+          'But I counted it necessary to send to you
+          Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow-worker and
+          fellow-soldier, and your messenger and minister to
+          my need. 26. Since he longed after you all, and
+          was sore troubled, because ye had heard that he
+          was sick. 27. For indeed he was sick nigh unto
+          death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him
+          only, but on me also, that I might not have sorrow
+          upon sorrow. 28. I have sent him therefore the
+          more diligently, that, when ye see him again, ye
+          may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful.
+          29. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all
+          joy; and hold such in honour: 30. Because for the
+          work of Christ he came nigh unto death, hazarding
+          his life to supply that which was lacking in your
+          service toward me.'--PHIL. ii. 25-30 (R.V.).
+
+
+Epaphroditus is one of the less known of Paul's friends. All our
+information about him is contained in this context, and in a brief
+reference in Chapter iv. His was a singular fate--to cross Paul's path,
+and for one short period of his life to be known to all the world, and
+for all the rest before and after to be utterly unknown. The ship sails
+across the track of the moonlight, and then vanishes ghost-like into
+darkness. Of all the inhabitants of Philippi at that time we know the
+names of but three, Euodias, Syntiche, and Epaphroditus, and we owe them
+all to Paul. The context gives us an interesting miniature of the last,
+and pathetic glimpses into the private life of the Apostle in his
+imprisonment, and it is worth our while to try to bring our historic
+imagination to bear on Epaphroditus, and to make him a living man.
+
+The first fact about him is, that he was one of the Philippian
+Christians, and sent by them to Rome, with some pecuniary or material
+help, such as comforts for Paul's prison-house, food, clothing, or
+money. There was no reliable way of getting these to Paul but to take
+them, and so Epaphroditus faced the long journey across Greece to
+Brindisi and Rome, and when arrived there threw himself with ardour into
+serving Paul. The Apostle's heartfelt eulogium upon him shows two phases
+of his work. He was in the first place Paul's helper in the Gospel, and
+his faithfulness there is set forth in a glowing climax, 'My brother and
+fellow-worker and fellow-soldier.' He was in the second place the
+minister to Paul's needs. There would be many ways of serving the
+captive, looking after his comfort, doing his errands, procuring daily
+necessaries, managing affairs, perhaps writing his letters, easing his
+chain, chafing his aching wrists, and ministering in a thousand ways
+which we cannot and need not specify. At all events he gladly undertook
+even servile work for love of Paul.
+
+He had an illness which was probably the consequence of his toil.
+Perhaps over-exertion in travel, or perhaps his Macedonian constitution
+could not bear the enervating air of Rome, or perhaps Paul's prison was
+unhealthy. At any rate he worked till he made himself ill. The news
+reached Philippi in some round-about way, and, as it appears, the news
+of his illness only, not of his recovery. The difficulty of
+communication would sufficiently account for the partial intelligence.
+Then the report found its way back to Rome, and Epaphroditus got
+home-sick and was restless, uneasy, 'sore troubled,' as the Apostle
+says, because they had heard he had been sick. In his low, nervous
+state, barely convalescent, the thought of home and of his brethren's
+anxiety about him was too much for him. It is a pathetic little picture
+of the Macedonian stranger in the great city--pallid looks, recent
+illness, and pining for home and a breath of pure mountain air, and for
+the friends he had left. So Paul with rare abnegation sent him away at
+once, though Timothy was to follow shortly, and accompanied him with
+this outpouring of love and praise in his long homeward journey. Let us
+hope he got safe back to his friends, and as Paul bade them, they
+received him in the Lord with all joy, the echoes of which we almost
+hear as he passes out of our knowledge.
+
+In the remainder of this sermon we shall simply deal with the two
+figures which the text sets before us, and we may look first at the
+glimpses of Paul's character which we get here.
+
+We may note the generous heartiness of his praise in his associating
+Epaphroditus with himself as on full terms of equality, as worker and
+soldier, and the warm generosity of the recognition of all that he had
+done for the Apostle's comfort. Paul's first burst of gratitude and
+praise does not exhaust all that he has to say about Epaphroditus. He
+comes back to the theme in the last words of the context, where he says
+that the Philippian messenger had 'hazarded' his life, or, as we might
+put it with equal accuracy and more force, had 'gambled' his life, or
+'staked it on the die' for Paul's sake. No wonder that men were eager to
+risk their lives for a leader who lavished such praise and such love
+upon them. A man who never opens his lips but to censure or criticise,
+who fastens on faults as wasps do on blemished fruit, will never be
+surrounded by loyal love. Faithful service is most surely bought by
+hearty praise. A caressing hand on a horse's neck is better than a whip.
+
+We may further note the intensity of Paul's sympathy. He speaks of
+Epaphroditus' recovery as a mercy to himself 'lest he should have the
+sorrow of imprisonment increased by the sorrow of his friend's death.'
+That attitude of mind stands in striking contrast to the heroism which
+said, 'To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain,' but the two are
+perfectly consistent, and it was a great soul which had room for them
+both.
+
+We must not leave unnoticed the beautiful self-abnegation which sends
+off Epaphroditus as soon as he was well enough to travel, as a gift of
+the Apostle's love, in order to repay them for what they had done for
+him. He says nothing of his own loss or of how much more lonely he would
+be when the brother whom he had praised so warmly had left him alone.
+But he suns himself in the thought of the Philippians' joy, and in the
+hope that some reflection of it will travel across the seas to him, and
+make him, if not wholly glad, at any rate 'the less sorrowful.'
+
+We have also to notice Paul's delicate recognition of all friendly help.
+He says that Epaphroditus risked his life to 'supply that which was
+lacking in your service toward me.' That implies that all which the
+Philippians' ministration lacked was their personal presence, and that
+Epaphroditus, in supplying that, made his work in a real sense theirs.
+All the loving thoughts, and all the material expressions of them which
+Epaphroditus brought to Paul were fragrant with the perfume of the
+Philippians' love, 'an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable' to Paul as to
+Paul's Lord.
+
+We briefly note some general lessons which may be suggested by the
+picture of Epaphroditus as he stands by the side of Paul.
+
+The first one suggested is the very familiar one of the great uniting
+principle which a common faith in Christ brought into action. Think of
+the profound clefts of separation between the Macedonian and the Jew,
+the antipathies of race, the differences of language, the
+dissimilarities of manner, and then think of what an unheard-of new
+thing it must have been that a Macedonian should 'serve' a Jew! We but
+feebly echo Paul's rapture when he thought that there was 'neither
+Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, but all were one in Christ Jesus,'
+and for all our talk about the unity of humanity and the like, we permit
+the old gulfs of separation to gape as deeply as ever. Dreadnoughts are
+a peculiar expression of the brotherhood of men after nineteen centuries
+of so-called Christianity.
+
+The terms in which the work of Epaphroditus is spoken of by Paul are
+very significant. He has no hesitation in describing the work done for
+himself as 'the work of Christ,' nor in using, as the name for it, the
+word ('service'), which properly refers to the service rendered by
+priestly hands. Work done for Paul was done for Jesus, and that, not
+because of any special apostolic closeness of relation of Paul to Jesus,
+but because, like all other Christians, he was one with his Lord. 'The
+cup of cold water' given 'in the name of a disciple' is grateful to the
+lips of the Master. We have no reason to suppose that Epaphroditus took
+part with Paul in his more properly apostolic work, and the fact that
+the purely material help, and pecuniary service which most probably
+comprised all his 'ministering,' is honoured by Paul with these lofty
+designations, carries with it large lessons as to the sanctity of common
+life. All deeds done from the same motive are the same, however
+different they may be in regard to the material on which they are
+wrought. If our hearts are set to 'hallow all we find,' the most secular
+duties will be acts of worship. It is possible for us in the ordering of
+our own lives to fulfil the great prophecy with which Zechariah crowned
+his vision of the Future, 'In that day shall there be on the bells of
+the horses Holiness unto the Lord'; and the 'pots in the Lord's house
+shall be like the bowls before the altar.'
+
+May we not further draw from Paul's words here a lesson as to the honour
+due to Christian workers? It was his brethren who were exhorted to
+receive their own messenger back again 'in the Lord with all joy, and to
+hold him in honour.' Possibly there were in Philippi some sharp tongues
+and envious spirits, who needed the exhortation. Whether there were so
+or no, the exhortation itself traces lightly but surely the lines on
+which Christians should render, and their fellow-Christians can rightly
+receive, even praise from men. If Epaphroditus were 'received in the
+Lord,' there would be no foolish and hurtful adulation of him, nor
+prostration before him, but he would be recognised as but the instrument
+through which the true Helper worked, and not he, but the Grace of
+Christ in him would finally receive the praise. There are very many
+Christian workers who never get their due of recognition and welcome
+from their brethren, and there are many who get far more of both than
+belongs to them, and both they and the crowds who bring them adulation
+would be freed from dangers, which can scarcely be over-stated, if the
+spirit of Paul's warm-hearted praise of Epaphroditus were kept in view.
+
+Epaphroditus but passes across the illuminated disc of the lantern for a
+moment, and we have scarcely time to catch a glimpse of his face before
+it is lost to us. He and all his brethren are gone, but his name lives
+for ever, and Paul's praise of him and of his work outshines all else
+remembered of the city, where conquerors once reigned, and outside whose
+walls was fought a battle that decided for a time the fate of the world.
+
+
+
+
+PREPARING TO END
+
+          'Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To
+          write the same things to you, to me indeed is not
+          irksome, but for you it is safe. 2. Beware of the
+          dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the
+          concision: 3. For we are the circumcision, who
+          worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ
+          Jesus, and have no confidence in the
+          flesh.'--PHIL. iii. 1-3 (R.V.).
+
+
+The first words of the text show that Paul was beginning to think of
+winding up his letter, and the preceding context also suggests that. The
+personal references to Timothy and Epaphroditus would be in their
+appropriate place near the close, and the exhortation with which our
+text begins is also most fitting there, for it is really the key-note
+of the letter. How then does he come to desert his purpose? The answer
+is to be found in his next advice, the warning against the Judaising
+teachers who were his great antagonists all his life. A reference to
+them always roused him, and here the vehement exhortation to mark them
+well and avoid them opens the flood-gates. Forgetting all about his
+purpose to come to an end, he pours out his soul in the long and
+precious passage which follows. Not till the next chapter does he get
+back to his theme in the reiterated exhortation (iv. 4), 'Rejoice in the
+Lord alway; again I will say, rejoice.' This outburst is very
+remarkable, for its vehemence is so unlike the tone of the rest of the
+letter. That is calm, joyous, bright, but this is stormy and
+impassioned, full of flashing and scathing words, the sudden
+thunder-storm breaks in on a mellow, autumn day, but it hurtles past and
+the sun shines out again, and the air is clearer.
+
+Another question suggested is the reference of the second half of verse
+1. What are 'the same things' to write which is 'safe' for the
+Philippians? Are they the injunctions preceding to 'rejoice in the
+Lord,' or that following, the warning against the Judaisers? The former
+explanation may be recommended by the fact that 'Rejoice' is in a sense
+the key-note of the Epistle, but on the other hand, the things where
+repetition would be 'safe' would most probably be warnings against some
+evil that threatened the Philippians' Christian standing.
+
+There is no attempt at unity in the words before us, and I shall not try
+to force them into apparent oneness, but follow the Apostle's thoughts
+as they lie. We note--
+
+I. The crowning injunction as to the duty of Christian gladness.
+
+A very slight glance over the Epistle will show how continually the note
+of gladness is struck in it. Whatever in Paul's circumstances was 'at
+enmity with joy' could not darken his sunny outlook. This bird could
+sing in a darkened cage. If we brought together the expressions of his
+joy in this letter, they would yield us some precious lessons as to what
+were the sources of his, and what may be the sources of ours. There runs
+through all the instances in the Epistle the implication which comes out
+most emphatically in his earnest exhortation, 'Rejoice in the Lord
+always, and again I say rejoice.' The true source of true joy lies in
+our union with Jesus. To be in Him is the condition of every good, and,
+just as in the former verses 'trust _in the Lord_' is set forth, so the
+joy which comes from trust is traced to the same source. The joy that is
+worthy, real, permanent, and the ally of lofty endeavour and noble
+thoughts has its root in union with Jesus, is realised in communion with
+Him, has Him for its reason or motive, and Him for its safeguard or
+measure. As the passages in question in this Epistle show, such joy does
+not shut out but hallows other sources of satisfaction. In our weakness
+creatural love and kindness but too often draw us away from our joy in
+Him. But with Paul the sources which we too often find antagonistic were
+harmoniously blended, and flowed side by side in the same channel, so
+that he could express them both in the one utterance, 'I rejoiced in the
+Lord greatly that now at the last your care of me hath flourished
+again.'
+
+We do not sufficiently realise the Christian duty of Christian joy,
+some of us even take mortified countenances and voices in a minor key as
+marks of grace, and there is but little in any of us of 'the joy in the
+Lord' which a saint of the Old Testament had learned was our 'strength.'
+There is plenty of gladness amongst professing Christians, but a good
+many of them would resent the question, is your gladness 'in the Lord'?
+No doubt any deep experience in the Christian life makes us aware of
+much in ourselves that saddens, and may depress, and our joy in Him must
+always be shaded by penitent sorrow for ourselves. But that necessary
+element of sadness in the Christian life is not the cause why so many
+Christian lives have little of the buoyancy and hope and spontaneity
+which should mark them. The reason rather lies in the lack of true union
+with Christ, and habitual keeping of ourselves 'in the love of God.'
+
+II. Paul's apology for reiteration.
+
+He is going to give once more old and well-worn precepts which are often
+very tedious to the hearer, and not much less so to the speaker. He can
+only say that to him the repetition of familiar injunctions is not
+'irksome,' and that to them it is 'safe.' The diseased craving for
+'originality' in the present day tempts us all, hearers and speakers
+alike, and we ever need to be reminded that the staple of Christian
+teaching must be old truths reiterated, and that it is not time to stop
+proclaiming them until all men have begun to practise them. But a
+speaker must try to make the thousandth repetition of a truth fresh to
+himself, and not a wearisome form, or a dead commonplace, by freshening
+it to his own mind and by living on it in his own practice, and the
+hearers must remember that it is only the completeness of their
+obedience that antiquates the commandment. The most threadbare
+commonplace becomes a novelty when occasions for its application arise
+in our own lives, just as a prescription may lie long unnoticed in a
+drawer, but when a fever attacks its possessor it will be quickly drawn
+out and worth its weight in gold.
+
+III. Paul's warning against teachers of a ceremonial religion.
+
+It scarcely seems congruous with the tone of the rest of this letter
+that the preachers whom Paul so scathingly points out here had obtained
+any firm footing in the Philippian Church, but no doubt there, as
+everywhere, they had dogged Paul's footsteps, and had tried as they
+always did to mar his work. They had not missionary fervour or Christian
+energy enough to initiate efforts amongst the Gentiles so as to make
+them proselytes, but when Paul and his companions had made them
+Christians, they did their best, or their worst, to insist that they
+could not be truly Christians, unless they submitted to the outward sign
+of being Jews. Paul points a scathing finger at them when he bids the
+Philippians 'beware,' and he permits himself a bitter retort when he
+lays hold of the Jewish contemptuous word for Gentiles which stigmatised
+them as 'dogs,' that is profane and unclean, and hurls it back at the
+givers. But he is not indulging in mere bitter retorts when he brings
+against these teachers the definite charge that they are 'evil workers.'
+People who believed that an outward observance was the condition of
+salvation would naturally be less careful to insist upon holy living. A
+religion of ceremonies is not a religion of morality. Then the Apostle
+lets himself go in a contemptuous play of words, and refuses to
+recognise that these sticklers for circumcision had themselves been
+circumcised. 'I will not call them the circumcision, they have not been
+circumcised, they have only been gashed and mutilated, it has been a
+mere fleshly maiming.' His reason for denying the name to them is his
+profound belief that it belonged to true Christians. His contemptuous
+reference puts in a word, the principle which he definitely states in
+another place, 'He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is that
+circumcision which is outward in the flesh.'
+
+The Apostle here is not only telling us who are the truly circumcised,
+but at the same time he is telling us what makes a Christian, and he
+states three points in which, as I take it, he begins at the end and
+works backwards to the beginning. 'We are the circumcision who worship
+in the Spirit of God'--that is the final result--'and glory in Christ
+Jesus'--'and have no confidence in the flesh'--that is the
+starting-point. The beginning of all true Christianity is distrust of
+self. What does Paul mean by 'flesh'? Body? Certainly not. Animal
+nature, or the passions rooted in it? Not only these, as may be seen by
+noting the catalogue which follows of the things in the flesh, in which
+he might have trusted. What are these? 'Circumcised the eighth day, of
+the tribe of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the
+Hebrews'--these belong to ritual and race; 'as touching the law a
+Pharisee'--that belongs to ecclesiastical standing; 'concerning zeal
+persecuting the church'--that has nothing to do with the animal nature:
+'touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless'--that
+concerns the moral nature. All these come under the category of the
+'flesh,' which, therefore, plainly includes all that belongs to
+humanity apart from God. Paul's old-fashioned language translated into
+modern English just comes to this--it is vain to trust in external
+connection with the sacred community of the Church, or in participation
+in any of its ordinances and rites. To Paul, Christian rites and Jewish
+rites were equally rites and equally insufficient as bases of
+confidence. Do not let us fancy that dependence on these is peculiar to
+certain forms of Christian belief. It is a very subtle all-pervasive
+tendency, and there is no need to lift up Nonconformist hands in holy
+horror at the corruptions of Romanism and the like. Their origin is not
+solely priestly ambition, but also the desires of the so-called laity.
+Demand creates a supply, and if there were not people to think, 'Now it
+shall be well with me because I have a Levite for my priest,' there
+would be no Levites to meet their wishes.
+
+Notice that Paul includes amongst the things belonging to the flesh this
+'touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless.' Many of us
+can say the same. We do our duties so far as we know them, and are
+respectable law-abiding people, but if we are trusting to that, we are
+of the 'flesh.' Have we estimated what God is, and what the real worth
+of our conduct is? Have we looked not at our actions but at our motives,
+and seen them as they are seen from above or from the inside? How many
+'blameless' lives are like the scenes in a theatre, effective and
+picturesque, when seen with the artificial glory of the footlights? But
+go behind the scenes and what do we find? Dirty canvas and cobwebs. If
+we know ourselves we know that a life may have a fair outside, and yet
+not be a thing to trust to.
+
+The beginning of our Christianity is the consciousness that we are
+'naked and poor, and blind, and in need of all things.' Men come to
+Jesus Christ by many ways, thank God, and I care little by what road
+they come so long as they get there, nor do I insist upon any
+stereotyped order of religious experience. But of this I am very sure:
+that unless we abandon confidence in ourselves, because we have seen
+ourselves in the light of God's law, we have not learned all that we
+need nor laid hold of all that Christ gives. Let us measure ourselves in
+the light of God, and we shall learn that we have to take our places
+beside Job, when the vision of God silenced his protestations of
+innocence. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine
+eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.'
+
+That self-distrust should pass into glorying in Christ Jesus. If a man
+has learned his emptiness he will look about for something to fill it.
+Unless I know myself to be under condemnation because of my sin, and
+fevered, disturbed, and made wretched, by its inward consequences which
+forbid repose, the sweetest words of Gospel invitation will pass by me
+like wind whistling through an archway. But if once I have been driven
+from self-confidence, then like music from heaven will come the word,
+'Trust in Jesus.' The seed dropped into the ground puts out a
+downward-going shoot, which is the root, and an upward-growing one,
+which is the stalk. The downward-going shoot is 'no confidence in the
+flesh,' the upward-going is 'glorying in Christ Jesus.'
+
+But that word suggests the blessed experience of triumph in the
+possession of the Person known and felt to be all, and to give all that
+life needs. A true Christian should ever be triumphant in a felt
+experience, in a Name proved to be sufficient, in a power which infuses
+strength into his weakness, and enables him to do the will of God. It is
+for want of utter self-distrust and absolute faith in Christ that
+'glorying' in Him is so far beyond the ordinary mood of the average
+Christian. You say, 'I hope, sometimes I doubt, sometimes I fear,
+sometimes I tremblingly trust.' Is that the kind of experience that
+these words shadow? Why do we continue amidst the mist when we might
+rise into the clear blue above the obscuring pall? Only because we are
+still in some measure clinging to self, and still in some measure
+distrusting our Lord. If our faith were firm and full our 'glorying'
+would be constant. Do not be contented with the prevailing sombre type
+of Christian life which is always endeavouring, and always foiled, which
+is often doubting and often indifferent, but seek to live in the
+sunshine, and expatiate in the light, and 'rejoice in the Lord always.'
+
+'Glorying' not only describes an attitude of mind, but an activity of
+life. Many things to-day tempt Christian people to speak of their
+religion and of their Lord in an apologetic tone, in the face of strong
+and educated unbelief; but if we have within us, as we all may have, and
+ought to have, the triumphant assurance of His sufficiency, nearness,
+and power, it will not be with bated breath that we shall speak of our
+Master, or apologise for our Christianity, but we shall obey the
+commandment, 'Lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not
+afraid.' Ring out the name and be proud that you can ring it out, as the
+Name of _your_ Lord, and _your_ Saviour, and _your_ all-sufficient
+Friend. Whatever other people say, you have the experience, if you are
+a Christian, which more than answers all that they can say.
+
+We have said that the final result set forth here by Paul is, 'We
+worship by the Spirit of God.' The expression translated worship is the
+technical word for rendering priestly service. Just as Paul has asserted
+that uncircumcised Christians, not circumcised Jews, are the true
+circumcision, so he asserts that they are the true priests, and that
+these officials in the outward temple at Jerusalem have forfeited the
+title, and that it has passed over to the despised followers of the
+despised Nazarene. If we have 'no confidence in the flesh,' and are
+'glorying in Christ Jesus,' we are all priests of the most high God.
+'Worship in the Spirit' is our function and privilege. The externals of
+ceremonial worship dwindle into insignificance. They may be means of
+helping, or they may be means of hindering, the 'worship in the Spirit,'
+which I venture to think all experience shows is the more likely to be
+pure and real, the less it invokes the aid of flesh and sense. To make
+the senses the ladder for the soul by which to climb to God is quite as
+likely to end in the soul's going down the ladder as up it. Aesthetic
+aids to worship are crutches which keep a lame soul lame all its days.
+
+Such worship is the obligation as well as the prerogative of the
+Christian. We have no right to say that we have truly forsaken
+confidence in ourselves, and are truly 'glorying' in Christ Jesus,
+unless our daily life is communion with God, and all your work
+'worshipping by the Spirit of God.' Such communion and worship are
+possible for those, and for those only, who have 'no confidence in the
+flesh' and who 'glory in Christ Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+THE LOSS OF ALL
+
+          'Though I myself might have confidence even in the
+          flesh: if any other man thinketh to have
+          confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised
+          the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the
+          tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as
+          touching the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal,
+          persecuting the church; as touching the
+          righteousness which is in the law, found
+          blameless. Howbeit what things were gain to me,
+          these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily,
+          and I count all things to be loss for the
+          excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
+          Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things,
+          and do count them but dung.'--PHIL. iii. 4-8
+          (R.V.).
+
+
+We have already noted that in the previous verses the Apostle is
+beginning to prepare for closing his letter, but is carried away into
+the long digression of which our text forms the beginning. The last
+words of the former verse open a thought of which his mind is always
+full. It is as when an excavator strikes his pickaxe unwittingly into a
+hidden reservoir and the blow is followed by a rush of water, which
+carries away workmen and tools. Paul has struck into the very deepest
+thoughts which he has of the Gospel and out they pour. That one
+antithesis, 'the loss of all, the gain of Christ,' carried in it to him
+the whole truth of the Christian message. We may well ask ourselves what
+are the subjects which lie so near our hearts, and so fill our thoughts,
+that a chance word sets us off on them, and we cannot help talking of
+them when once we begin.
+
+The text exemplifies another characteristic of Paul's, his constant
+habit of quoting his own experience as illustrating the truth. His
+theology is the generalisation of his own experience, and yet that
+continual autobiographical reference is not egotism, for the light in
+which he delights to present himself is as the recipient of the great
+grace of God in pardoning sinners. It is a result of the complete
+saturation of himself with the Gospel. It was to him no mere body of
+principles or thoughts, it was the very food and life of his life. And
+so this characteristic reveals not only his natural fervour of
+character, but the profound and penetrating hold which the Gospel had on
+his whole being.
+
+In our text he presents his own experience as the type to which ours
+must on the whole be conformed. He had gone through an earthquake which
+had shattered the very foundations of his life. He had come to despise
+all that he had counted most precious, and to clasp as the only true
+treasures all that he had despised. With him the revolution had turned
+his whole life upside down. Though the change cannot be so subversive
+and violent with us, the forsaking of self-confidence must be as real,
+and the clinging to Jesus must be as close, if our Christianity is to be
+fervid and dominant in our lives.
+
+I. The treasures that were discovered to be worthless.
+
+We have already had occasion in the previous sermon to refer to Paul's
+catalogue of 'things that were gain' to him, but we must consider it a
+little more closely here. We may repeat that it is important for
+understanding Paul's point of view to note that by 'flesh' he means the
+whole self considered as independent of God. The antithesis to it is
+'spirit,' that is humanity regenerated and vitalised by Divine
+influence. 'Flesh,' then, is humanity not so vitalised. That is to say,
+it is 'self,' including both body and emotions, affections, thoughts,
+and will.
+
+As to the points enumerated, they are those which made the ideal to a
+Jew, including purity of race, punctilious orthodoxy, flaming zeal,
+pugnacious antagonism, and blameless morality. With reference to race,
+the Jewish pride was in 'circumcision on the eighth day,' which was the
+exclusive privilege of one of pure blood. Proselytes might be
+circumcised in later life, but one of the 'stock of Israel' only on the
+'eighth day.' Saul of Tarsus had in earlier days been proud of his
+tribal genealogy, which had apparently been carefully preserved in the
+Gentile home, and had shared ancestral pride in belonging to the once
+royal tribe, and perhaps in thinking that the blood of the king after
+whom he was named flowed in his veins. He was a 'Hebrew of the Hebrews,'
+which does not mean, as it is usually taken to do, intensely,
+superlatively Hebrew, but simply is equivalent to 'myself a Hebrew, and
+come from pure Hebrew ancestors on both sides.' Possibly also the phrase
+may have reference to purity of language and customs as well as blood.
+These four items make the first group. Paul still remembers the time
+when, in the blindness which he shared with his race, he believed that
+these wholly irrelevant points had to do with a man's acceptance before
+God. He had once agreed with the Judaisers that 'circumcision' admitted
+Gentiles into the Jewish community, and so gave them a right to
+participate in the blessings of the Covenant.
+
+Then follow the items of his more properly religious character, which
+seem in their three clauses to make a climax. 'As touching the law a
+Pharisee,' he was of the 'straitest sect,' the champions and
+representatives of the law. 'As touching zeal persecuting the Church,'
+it was not only in Judaism that the mark of zeal for a cause has been
+harassing its opponents. We can almost hear a tone of sad irony as Paul
+recalls that past, remembering how eagerly he had taken charge of the
+clothes trusted to his care by the witnesses who stoned Stephen, and how
+he had 'breathed threatening and slaughter' against the disciples. 'As
+touching the righteousness which is in the law found blameless,' he is
+evidently speaking of the obedience of outward actions and of
+blamelessness in the judgment of men.
+
+So we get a living picture of Paul and of his confidence before he was a
+Christian. All these grounds for pride and self-satisfaction were like
+triple armour round the heart of the young Pharisee, who rode out of
+Jerusalem on the road to Damascus. How little he thought that they would
+all have been pierced and have dropped from him before he got there! The
+grounds of his confidence are antiquated in form, but in substance are
+modern. At bottom the things in which Paul's 'flesh' trusted are exactly
+the same as those in which many of us trust. Even his pride of race
+continues to influence some of us. We have got the length of separating
+between our nationality and our acceptance with God, but we have still a
+kind of feeling that 'God's Englishmen,' as Milton called them, have a
+place of their own, which is, if not a ground of confidence before God,
+at any rate a ground for carrying ourselves with very considerable
+complacency before men. It is not unheard of that people should rely, if
+not on 'circumcision on the eighth day,' on an outward rite which seems
+to connect them with a visible Church. Strict orthodoxy takes the place
+among us which Pharisaism held in Paul's mind before he was a Christian,
+and it is easier to prove our zeal by pugnacity against heretics, than
+by fervour of devotion. The modern analogue of Paul's, 'touching the
+righteousness which is in the law blameless,' is 'I have done my best, I
+have lived a decent life. My religion is to do good to other people.'
+All such talk, which used to be a vague sentiment or excuse, is now put
+forward in definite theoretical substitution for the Christian Truth,
+and finds numerous teachers and acceptors. But how short a way all such
+grounds of confidence go to satisfy a soul that has once seen the vision
+that blazed in on Paul's mind on the road to Damascus!
+
+II. The discovery of their worthlessness.
+
+'These have I counted loss for Christ.' There is a possibility of
+exaggeration in interpreting Paul's words. The things that were 'gain'
+to him were in themselves better than their opposites. It is better to
+to be 'blameless' than to have a life all stained with foulness and
+reeking with sins. But these 'gains' were 'losses,' disadvantages, in so
+far as they led him to build upon them, and trust in them as solid
+wealth. The earthquake that shattered his life had two shocks: the first
+turned upside down his estimate of the value of his gains, the second
+robbed him of them. He first saw them to be worthless, and then, so far
+as others' judgment went, he was stripped of them. Actively he 'counted
+them loss,' passively he 'suffered the loss of all things.' His estimate
+came, and was followed by the practical outcome of his brethren's
+excommunication.
+
+What changed his estimate? In our text he answers the question in two
+forms: first he gives the simple, all-sufficient monosyllabic reason for
+his whole life--'for Christ,' and then he enlarges that motive into 'the
+excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.' The former carries
+us back straight to the vision which revolutionised Paul's life, and
+made him abjure all which he had trusted, and adore what he had
+abhorred. The latter dwells a little more upon the subjective process
+which followed on the vision, but the two are substantially the same,
+and we need only note the solemn fulness of the name of 'Jesus Christ,'
+and the intense motion of submission and of personal appropriation
+contained in the designation, 'my Lord.' It was not when he found his
+way blinded into Damascus that he had learned that knowledge, or could
+apprehend its 'excellency.' The words are enriched and enlarged by later
+experiences. The sacrifice of his earlier 'gains' had been made before
+the 'excellency of the knowledge' had been discerned. It was no mere
+intellectual perception which could be imparted in words, or by
+eyesight, but here as always Paul by 'knowledge' means experience which
+comes from possession and acquaintance, and which therefore gleams ever
+before us as we move, and is capable of endless increase, in the measure
+in which we are true to the estimate of 'gains' and 'losses' to which
+our initial vision of Him has led us. At first we may not know that that
+knowledge excels all others, but as we grow in acquaintance with Jesus,
+and in experience of Him, we shall be sure that it transcends all
+others, because He does and we possess Him.
+
+The revolutionising motive may be conceived of in two ways. We have to
+abandon the lower 'gains' in order to gain Christ, or to abandon these
+because we have gained Him. Both are true. The discernment of Christ as
+the one ground of confidence is ever followed by the casting away of all
+others. Self-distrust is a part of faith. When we feel our feet upon the
+rock, the crumbling sands on which we stood are left to be broken up by
+the sea. They who have seen the Apollo Belvedere will set little store
+by plaster of Paris casts. In all our lives there come times when the
+glimpse of some loftier ideal shows up our ordinary as hollow and poor
+and low. And when once Christ is seen, as Scripture shows Him, our
+former self appears poor and crumbles away.
+
+We are not to suppose that the act of renunciation must be completed
+before a second act of possession is begun. That is the error of many
+ascetic books. The two go together, and abandonment in order to win
+merges into abandonment because we have won. The strongest power to make
+renunciation possible is 'the expulsive power of a new affection.' When
+the heart is filled with love to Christ there is no sense of 'loss,' but
+only of 'exceeding gain,' in casting away all things for Him.
+
+III. The continuous repetition of the discovery.
+
+Paul compares his present self with his former Christian self, and with
+a vehement 'Yea, verily,' affirms his former judgment, and reiterates it
+in still more emphatic terms. It is often easy to depreciate the
+treasures which we possess. They sometimes grow in value as they slip
+from our hands. It is not usual for a man who has 'suffered the loss of
+all things' to follow their disappearance by counting them 'but dung.'
+The constant repetition through the whole Christian course of the
+depreciatory estimate of grounds of confidence is plainly necessary.
+There are subtle temptations to the opposite course. It is hard to keep
+perfectly clear of all building on our own blamelessness or on our
+connection with the Christian Church, and we have need ever to renew the
+estimate which was once so epoch-making, and which 'cast down all our
+imaginations and high things.' If we do not carefully watch ourselves,
+the whispering tempter that was silenced will recover his breath again,
+and be once more ready to drop into our ears his poisonous suggestions.
+We have to take pains and 'give earnest heed' to the initial,
+revolutionary estimate, and to see that it is worked out habitually in
+our daily lives. It is a good exchange when we count 'all but loss for
+the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+THE GAIN OF CHRIST
+
+          'That I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not
+          having a righteousness of my own, even that which
+          is of the law, but that which is through faith in
+          Christ, the righteousness which is of God by
+          faith.'--PHIL. iii. 8, 9 (R.V.).
+
+
+It is not everybody who _can_ say what is his aim in life. Many of us
+have never thought enough about it to have one beyond keeping alive. We
+lose life in seeking for the means of living. Many of us have such a
+multitude of aims, each in its turn drawing us, that no one of them is
+predominant and rules the crowd. There is no strong hand at the tiller,
+and so the ship washes about in the trough of the waves.
+
+It is not everybody who _dares_ to say what is his aim in life. We are
+ashamed to acknowledge even to ourselves what we are not at all ashamed
+to do. Paul knew his aim, and was not afraid to speak it. It was high
+and noble, and was passionately and persistently pursued. He tells us it
+here, and we can see his soul kindling as he speaks. We may note how
+there is here the same double reference as we found in the previous
+verses, gaining Christ corresponding to the previous loss for Christ,
+and the later words of our text being an expansion of the 'excellency of
+the knowledge of Christ Jesus.' No man will ever succeed in any life's
+purpose, unless like Paul he is enthusiastic about it. If his aim does
+not rouse his fervour when he speaks of it, he will never accomplish it.
+We may just remark that Paul does not suppose his aim to be wholly
+unattained, even although he does not count himself to 'have
+apprehended.' He knows that he has gained Christ, and is 'found in Him,'
+but he knows also that there stretch before him the possibilities of
+infinite increase.
+
+I. His life's aim was to have the closest possession of, and
+incorporation in, Christ.
+
+His two expressions, 'that I may gain Christ and be found in Him,' are
+substantially identical in meaning, though they put the same truth from
+different sides, and with some variety of metaphor. We may deal with
+them separately.
+
+The 'gain' is of course the opposite of the 'loss.' His balance-sheet
+has on one side 'all things lost,' on the other 'Christ gained,' and
+that is profitable trading. But we have to go deeper than such a
+metaphor, and to give full scope to the Scriptural truth, that Christ
+really imparts Himself to the believing soul. There is a real
+communication of His own life to us, and thereby we live, as He Himself
+declared, 'He that hath the Son hath life.' The true deep sense in which
+we possess Christ is not to be weakened down, as it, alas! so often is
+in our shallow Christianity, which is but the echo of a shallow
+experience, and a feeble hold of that possession of the Son to which
+Jesus called us, as the condition of our possession of life. Christ is
+thus Himself possessed by all our faculties, each after its kind; head
+and heart, passions and desires, hopes and longings, may each have Him
+abiding in them, guiding them with His strong and gentle hand, animating
+them into nobler life, restraining and controlling, gradually
+transforming and ultimately conforming them to His own likeness. Till
+that Divine Indweller enters in, the shrine is empty, and unclean things
+lurk in its hidden corners. To be a man full summed in all his powers,
+each of us must 'gain Christ.'
+
+The other expression in the text, 'be found in Him,' presents the same
+truth from the completing point of view. We gain Christ in us when we
+are 'found in Him.' We are to be incorporated as members are in the
+body, or imbedded as a stone in the foundation, or to go back to the
+sweetest words, which are the source of all these representations,
+included as 'a branch in the vine.' We are to be in Him for safety and
+shelter, as fugitives take refuge in a strong tower when an enemy swarms
+over the land.
+
+          'And lo! from sin and grief and shame,
+           I hide me, Jesus, in Thy name.'
+
+We are to be in Him that the life sap may freely flow through us. We are
+to be in Him that the Divine Love may fall on us, and that in Jesus we
+may receive our portion of all which is His heritage.
+
+This mutual possession and indwelling is possible if Jesus be the Son of
+God, but the language is absurd in any other interpretation of His
+person. It is clearly in its very nature capable of indefinite increase,
+and as containing in itself the supply of all which we need for life and
+blessedness, is fitted to be what nothing else can pretend to be,
+without wrecking the lives that are unwise enough to pursue it--the
+sovereign aim of a human life. In following it, and only in following
+it, the highest wisdom says Amen to the aspiration of the lowliest
+faith. 'This one thing I do.'
+
+II. Paul's life's aim was righteousness to be received.
+
+He goes on to present some of the consequences which follow on his
+gaining Christ and being 'found in Him,' and before all others he names
+as his aim the possession of 'righteousness.' We must remember that Paul
+believed that righteousness in the sense of 'justification' had been his
+from the moment when Ananias came to where he was sitting in darkness,
+and bid him be baptized and wash away his sins. The word here must be
+taken in its full sense of moral perfectness; even if we included only
+this in our thoughts of his life's aim, how high above most men would he
+tower! But his statement carries him still higher above, and farther
+away from, the common ideas of moral perfection, and what he means by
+righteousness is widely separated from the world's conception, not only
+in regard to its elements, but still more in regard to its source.
+
+It is possible to lose oneself in a dreamy mysticism which has had much
+to say of 'gaining Christ and being found in Him,' and has had too
+little to say about 'having righteousness,' and so has turned out to be
+an ally of indifference and sometimes of unrighteousness. Buddhism and
+some forms of mystical Christianity have fallen into a pit of immorality
+from which Paul's sane combination here would have saved them. There is
+no danger in the most mystical interpretation of the former statement of
+his aim, when it is as closely connected as it is here with the second
+form in which he states it. I have just said that Paul differed from men
+who were seeking for righteousness, not only because his conceptions of
+what constituted it were not the same as theirs, though he in this very
+letter endorses the Greek ideals of 'virtue and praise,' but also and
+more emphatically because he looked for it as a gift, and not as the
+result of his own efforts. To him the only righteousness which availed
+was one which was not 'my own,' but had its source in, and was imparted
+by, God. The world thought of righteousness as the general designation
+under which were summed up a man's specific acts of conformity to law,
+the sum total reached by the addition of many specific instances of
+conformity to a standard of duty. Paul had learned to think of it as
+preceding and producing the specific acts. The world therefore said, and
+says, Do the deeds and win the character; Paul says, Receive the
+character and do the deeds. The result of the one conception of
+righteousness is in the average man spasmodic efforts after isolated
+achievements, with long periods between in which effort subsides into
+torpor. The result in Paul's case was what we know: a continuous effort
+to keep his mind and heart open for the influx of the power which,
+entering into him, would make him able to do the specific acts which
+constitute righteousness. The one road is a weary path, hard to tread,
+and, as a matter of fact, not often trodden. To pile up a righteousness
+by the accumulation of individual righteous acts is an endeavour less
+hopeful than that of the coral polypes slowly building up their reef out
+of the depths of the Pacific, till it rises above the waves. He who
+assumes to be righteous on the strength of a succession of righteous
+acts, not only needs a profounder idea of what makes his acts righteous,
+but should also make a catalogue of his unrighteous ones and call
+himself wicked. The other course is the final deliverance of a man from
+dependence upon his own struggles, and substitutes for the dreary
+alternations of effort and torpor, and for the imperfect harvest of
+imperfectly righteous acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes
+painful strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness which
+is 'my own,' is to seek what we shall never find, and what, if found,
+would crumble beneath us. To seek the righteousness which is from God,
+is to seek what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed receivers
+blessedly know is more than they dreamed of.
+
+But Paul looked for this great gift as a gift in Christ. It was when he
+was 'found in Him' that it became his, and he was found 'blameless.'
+That gift of an imparted life, which has a bias towards all goodness,
+and the natural operation of which is to incline all our faculties
+towards conformity with the will of God, is bestowed when we 'win
+Christ.' Possessing Him, we possess it. It is not only 'imputed,' as our
+fathers delighted to say, but it is 'imparted.' And because it is the
+gift of God in Christ, it was in Paul's view received by faith. He
+expresses that conviction in a double form in our text. It is 'through
+faith' as the channel by which it passes into our happy hands. It is 'by
+faith,' or, more accurately, 'upon faith,' as the foundation on which it
+rests, or the condition on which it depends. Our trust in Christ does
+bring His life to us to sanctify us, and the plain English of all this
+blessed teaching is--if we wish to be better let us trust Christ and get
+Him into the depths of our lives, and righteousness will be ours. That
+transforming Presence laid up in 'the hidden man of the heart,' will be
+like some pungent scent in a wardrobe which keeps away moths, and gives
+out a fragrance that perfumes all that hangs near it.
+
+But all which we have been saying is not to be understood as if there
+was no effort to be made, in order to receive, and to live manifesting,
+the 'righteousness which is of God.' There must be the constant
+abandonment of self, and the constant utilising of the grace given. The
+righteousness is bestowed whenever faith is exercised. The hand is never
+stretched out and the gift not lodged in it. But it is a life's aim to
+possess the 'righteousness which is of God by faith,' because that gift
+is capable of indefinite increase, and will reward the most strenuous
+efforts of a believing soul as long as life continues.
+
+III. Paul's life's aim stretches beyond this life.
+
+Shall we be chargeable with crowding too much meaning into his words, if
+we fix on his remarkable expression, 'be found in Him,' as containing a
+clear reference to that great day of final judgment? We recall other
+instances of the use of the same expression in connections which
+unmistakably point to that time. Such as 'being clothed we shall not be
+found naked,' or 'the proof of your faith . . . might be found unto praise
+and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ,' or 'found of
+Him in peace without spot, blameless.' In the light of these and similar
+passages, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that this 'being
+found' does include a reference to the Apostle's place after death,
+though it is not confined to that. He thinks of the searching eye of the
+Judge taking keen account, piercing through all disguises, and wistfully
+as well as penetratingly scrutinising characters, till it finds that for
+which it seeks. They who are 'found in Him' in that day, are there and
+thus for ever. There is no further fear of falling out of union with
+Him, or of being, by either gradual and unconscious stages, or by sudden
+and overmastering assaults, carried out of the sacred enclosure of the
+City of Refuge in which they dwell henceforth for ever. A dangerous
+presumptuousness has sometimes led to the over-confident assertion,
+'Once in Christ always in Christ.' But Paul teaches us that that
+security of permanent dwelling in Him is to be for ever in this life the
+aim of our efforts, rather than an accomplished fact. So long as we are
+here, the possibility of falling away cannot be shut out, and there must
+always rise before us the question, Am I in Christ? Hence there is need
+for continual watchfulness, self-control, and self-distrust, and the
+life's aim has to be perpetual, not only because it is capable of
+indefinite expansion, but because our weakness is capable of deserting
+it. It is only when at the last we are found by Him, in Him, that we are
+there for ever, with all dangers of departure from Him at an end. In
+that City of Refuge, and there only, 'the gates shall not be shut at
+all,' not solely because no enemies shall attempt to come in, but also
+because no citizens shall desire to go out.
+
+We should ever have before us that hour, and our life's aim should ever
+definitely include the final scrutiny in which many a hidden thing will
+come to light, many a long-lost thing be found, and each man's ultimate
+place in relation to Jesus Christ will be freed from uncertainties,
+ambiguities, hypocrisies, and disguises, and made plain to all
+beholders. In that great day of 'finding,' some of us will have to ask
+with sinking hearts, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' and others will
+break forth into the glad acclaim, 'I have found Him,' or rather 'been
+found of Him.'
+
+So we have before us the one reasonable aim for a man to have Christ, to
+be found in Him, to have His righteousness. It is reasonable, it is
+great enough to absorb all our energies, and to reward them. It will
+last a lifetime, and run on undisturbed beyond life. Following it, all
+other aims will fall into their places. Is this my aim?
+
+
+
+
+SAVING KNOWLEDGE
+
+          'That I may know Him, and the power of His
+          resurrection, and the fellowship of His
+          sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death; if
+          by any means I may attain unto the resurrection
+          from the dead.'--PHIL. iii. 10-11 (R.V.).
+
+
+We have seen how the Apostle was prepared to close his letter at the
+beginning of this chapter, and how that intention was swept away by the
+rush of new thoughts. His fervid faith caught fire when he turned to
+think of what he had lost, and how infinitely more he had gained in
+Christ. His wealth is so great that it cannot be crowded into the narrow
+space of one brief sentence, and after all the glowing words which
+precede our text, he feels that he has not yet adequately set forth
+either his present possessions or his ultimate aims. So here he
+continues the theme which might have seemed most fully dealt with in the
+great thoughts that occupied us in the former sermon, but which still
+wait to be completed here. They are most closely connected with the
+former, and the unity of the sentence is but a parallel to the oneness
+of the idea. The elements of our present text constitute a part of the
+Apostle's aim in life, and may be dealt with as such.
+
+I. Paul's life's aim was the knowledge of Christ.
+
+That sounds an anti-climax after 'Gain' and 'Be in Him.' These phrases
+seem to express a much more intimate relation than this, but we must
+note that it is no mere theoretical or intellectual knowledge which is
+intended. Such knowledge would need no surrender or suffering 'the loss
+of all things.' We can only buy the knowledge of Christ at such a rate,
+but we can buy knowledge about Him very much cheaper. Such knowledge
+would not be worth the price; it lies on the surface of the soul, and
+does nothing. Many a man amongst us has it, and it is of no use to him.
+If Paul had undergone all that he had undergone and sacrificed all that
+he had given up, and for his reward had only gained accurate knowledge
+about Christ, he had certainly wasted his life and made a bad bargain.
+But as always, so here, to know means knowledge based upon experience.
+Did Christ mean that a correct creed was eternal life when He said,
+'This is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ
+whom Thou has sent?' Did Paul mean the dry light of the understanding
+when he prayed that the Ephesians might know the love of Christ which
+passeth knowledge, in order to be filled with all the fulness of God?
+Clearly we have to go much deeper down than that superficial
+interpretation in order to reach the reality of the New Testament
+conception of knowledge. It is co-extensive with life, and is built upon
+inward experience. In a word, it is one aspect of winning Jesus. It is
+consciousness contemplating its riches, counting its gains. As a man
+knows the bliss of parental or wedded love only by having it, or as he
+knows the taste of wine only by drinking it, or the glory of music only
+by hearing it, and the brightness of the day only by seeing it, so we
+know Christ only by winning Him. There must first be the perception and
+possession by sense or emotion, and then the reflection on the
+possession by understanding. This applies to all religious truth. It
+must be possessed ere it be fully known. Like the new name written upon
+the Apocalyptic stone, 'No one knoweth but he that receiveth it.'
+
+The knowledge which was Paul's life's aim was knowledge of a Person:
+the object determines the nature of the knowledge. The mental act of
+knowing a proposition or a science or even of knowing about a person by
+hearing of him is different from that of knowing people when we have
+lived beside them. We need not be afraid of attaching too familiar a
+meaning to this word of our text, if we say that it implies personal
+acquaintance with the Christ whom we know. Of course we come to know Him
+in the first instance through the medium of statements about Him, and we
+cannot too strongly insist, in these days of destructive criticism, on
+the absolute necessity of accepting the Gospel statements as to the life
+of Jesus as the only possible method of knowing Him. But then, beyond
+that acceptance of the record must come the application and
+appropriation of it, and the transmutation of a historical fact into a
+personal experience. We may take an illustration from any of the
+Scriptural truths about Jesus:--For instance, Scripture declares Him to
+be our Redeemer. One man believes Him to be so, welcomes Him into his
+life as such, and finds Him to be such. Another man believes Him to be
+so, but never puts His redeeming power to the proof. Is the knowledge of
+these two rightly called by the same name? That which comes after
+experience is surely not rightly designated by the same title as that
+which has no vivification nor verification of such a sort to build on,
+and is the mere product of the understanding. There is nothing which the
+great mass of so-called Christians need more than to have forced into
+their thoughts the difference between these two kinds of knowledge of
+Christ. There are thousands of them who, if asked, are ready to profess
+that they know Jesus, but to whom He has never been anything more than
+a partially understood article of an uncared for creed, and has never
+been in living contact with their needs, nor known for their strength in
+weakness, their comforter in sorrow, 'their life in death,' their all in
+all.
+
+To deepen that experimental knowledge of Jesus is a worthy aim for the
+whole life, and is a process that may go on indefinitely through it all.
+To know Him more and more is to have more of heaven in us. To be
+penetrating ever deeper into His fulness, and finding every day new
+depths to penetrate is to have a fountain of freshness in our dusty days
+that will never fail or run dry. There is only one inexhaustible person,
+and that is Jesus Christ. We have all fulness in our Lord: we have
+already received all when we received Him. Are we advancing in the
+experience that is the parent of knowing Him? Do new discoveries meet us
+every day as if we were explorers in a virgin land? To have this for our
+aim is enough for satisfaction, for blessedness, and for growth. To know
+Him is a liberal education.
+
+II. That knowledge involves knowing the power of His Resurrection.
+
+The power of His Resurrection is an expression which covers a wide
+ground. There are several distinct and well-marked powers ascribed to it
+in Paul's writings. It has a demonstrative force in reference to our
+Lord's person and work. For He is by it 'declared to be the Son of God
+with power.' That rising again from the dead, taken in conjunction with
+the fact that He dieth no more, but is ascended up on high, and in
+conjunction with His own words concerning Himself and His Resurrection,
+sets Him forth before the world as the Son of God, and is the solemn
+divine approval and acceptance of His work.
+
+It has a revealing power in regard to the condition of humanity in
+death. It is the one fact which establishes immortality, and which not
+only establishes it, but casts some light on the manner of it. The
+possibility of personal life after, and therefore, in death, the
+unbroken continuity of being, the possibility of a resurrection, and a
+glorifying of this corporeal frame, with all the far-reaching
+consequences of these truths in the triumph they give over death, in the
+support and substance they afford to the else-shadowy idea of
+immortality, in the lofty place which they assign to the bodily frame,
+and the conception which they give of man's perfection as consisting of
+body, soul, and spirit--these thoughts have flashed light into all the
+darkness of the grave, have narrowed to a mere strip of coast-line the
+boundaries of the kingdom of death, have proclaimed love as the victor
+in her contest with that shrouded horror. The basis of them all is
+Christ's Resurrection; its power in this respect is the power to
+illuminate, to console, to certify, to wrench the sceptre from the hands
+of death, and to put it in the pierced hands of the Living One that was
+dead, and is Lord both of the dead and the living.
+
+Further, the Resurrection is treated by Paul as having a power for our
+justification, in so far as the risen Lord bestows upon us by His risen
+life the blessings of His righteousness. Paul also represents the
+Resurrection of Christ as having the power of quickening our Spiritual
+life. I need not spend time in quoting the many passages where His
+rising from the dead, and His life after the Resurrection, are treated
+as the type and pattern of our lives: and are not only regarded as
+pattern, but are also regarded as the power by which that new life of
+ours is brought about. It has the power of raising us from the death of
+sin, and bringing us into a new life of the Spirit. And finally, the
+Resurrection of Christ is regarded as having the power of raising His
+servants from the grave to the full possession of His own glorious life,
+and so it is the power of our final victory over death.
+
+Now I do not know that we are entitled to exclude any of these powers
+from view. The broad words of the text include them all, but perhaps the
+two last are mainly meant, and of these chiefly the former.
+
+The risen life of Christ quickens and raises us, and that not merely as
+a pattern, but as a power. It is only if we are in Him that there is so
+real a unity of life between Him and us that there enters into us some
+breath of His own life.
+
+That risen life of the Saviour which we share if we have Him, enters
+into our nature as leaven into the three measures of meal; transforming
+and quickening it, gives new directions, tastes, motives, impulses, and
+power. It bids and inclines us to seek the things that are above, and
+its great exhortation to the hearts in which it dwells, to fix
+themselves there, and to forsake the things that are on the earth, is
+based upon the fact that they have died, and 'their life is hid with
+Christ in God.' Without that leaven the life that we live is a death,
+because it is lived in the 'lusts of the flesh,' doing the desires of
+the flesh and of the mind. There is no real union with Jesus Christ, of
+which the direct issue is not a living experience of the power of His
+Resurrection in bringing us to the likeness of itself in regard to our
+freedom from the bondage to sin, and to our presenting ourselves unto
+God as alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of
+righteousness unto God. It is a solemn thought which we all need to
+press upon our consciences, that the only infallible sign that we have
+been in any measure quickened together with Christ and raised up with
+Him is that we have ceased to live in the lusts of our flesh, doing the
+desires of the flesh and of the mind. The risen life of Jesus may
+indefinitely increase, and will do so in the measure in which we
+honestly make it our life's aim to know Him and the power of His
+Resurrection.
+
+III. The experience of the power of Christ's Resurrection is inseparable
+from the fellowship of His sufferings.
+
+We must not suppose that Paul's solemn and awful words here trench in
+the smallest degree on the solitary unapproachableness of Christ's
+death. He would have answered, as in fact he does answer, the appeal of
+the prophetic sufferer, 'Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto
+my sorrow' with the strongest negative. No other human lips have ever
+tasted, or can ever taste, a cup of such bitterness as He drained for us
+all, and no other human lips have ever been so exquisitely sensitive to
+the bitterness which they have drunk. The identification of Himself with
+a sinful world, the depth and closeness of His community of feeling with
+all sorrow, the consciousness of the glory which He had left, and the
+perpetual sense of the hostility into which He had come, set Christ's
+sufferings by themselves as surely as the effects that flow from them
+declare that they need no repetition, and cannot be degraded by any
+parallel whilst the world lasts.
+
+But yet His Death, like His Resurrection, is set forth in Scripture as
+being a type and power of ours. We have to die to the world by the power
+of the Cross. If we truly trust in His sacrifice there will operate
+upon us motives which separate and detach us from our old selves and the
+old world. A fundamental, ethical, and spiritual change is effected on
+us through faith. We were dead in sin, we are dead to sin. We have to
+blend the two thoughts of the Christian life as being a daily dying and
+a continual resurrection in order to get the whole truth of the double
+aspect of it.
+
+It may be a question whether the Apostle is here referring to outward or
+inward and ethical sorrows, but perhaps we should not do justice to the
+thought unless we extend it to cover both of these. Certainly if his
+theology was but the generalising of his experience, he had ample
+material in his daily life for knowing the fellowship of Christ's
+sufferings. One of his most frequently recurring and most cherished
+thoughts is, that to suffer for Christ is to suffer with Christ, and in
+it he found and teaches us to find strength to endure, and patience to
+outlast any sorrows that may swoop upon us like birds of prey because we
+are Christians. Happy shall we be if Christ's sufferings are ours,
+because it is our union with Him and our likeness to Him, not to
+ourselves, our sins, or our worldliness, that is their occasion. There
+is an old legend that Peter was crucified head downwards, because he
+felt himself unworthy to be as his Master. We may well feel that nothing
+which we can ever bear for Him is worthy to be compared with what He has
+borne for us, and be the more overwhelmed with the greatness of the
+condescension, and the humility of the love which reckon our light
+affliction, which is but for a moment, along with the heavy weight which
+He bore, and the blessed issue of which outlasts time and enriches
+eternity.
+
+But there is another sense in which it is a worthy aim of our lives that
+our sufferings may be felt to be fellowship with His. That is a blessed
+sorrow which brings us closer to our Lord. That is a wholesome sorrow of
+which the issue is an intenser faith in Him, a fuller experience of His
+sufficiency. The storm blows us well when it blows us to His breast, and
+sorrow enriches us, whatever it may take away, which gives us fuller and
+more assured possession of Jesus.
+
+But when we are living in fellowship with Jesus, that union works in two
+directions, and while on the one hand we may then humbly venture to feel
+that our sufferings for Him are sufferings with Him, we may thankfully
+feel, too, that in all our affliction He is afflicted. If His sufferings
+are ours we may be sure that ours are His. And how different they all
+become when we are certain of His sympathy! It is possible that we may
+have a kind of common consciousness with our Lord, if our whole hearts
+and wills are kept in close touch with Him, so that in our experience
+there may be a repetition in a higher form of that strange experience
+alleged to be familiar in hypnotism, where the bitter in one mouth is
+tasted in another.
+
+So, what we ought to make our aim is that in our lives our growing
+knowledge of Christ should lead to the two results, so inexorably
+intertwined, of daily death and daily resurrection, and that we may be
+kept faithful to Him so that our outward sufferings may be caused by our
+union with Him, and not by our own faithlessness, and may be discerned
+by us to be fellowship with His. Then we shall also feel that He bears
+ours with us, and sorrow itself will be calmed and beautified into a
+silent bliss, as the chill peaks when the morning strikes them glow with
+tender pink, and seem soft and warm, though they are grim rock and
+ice-cold snow. Then some faint echo of His history 'who was acquainted
+with grief' may be audible in our outward lives and we, too, may have
+our Gethsemane and our Calvary. It may not be presumption in us to say
+'We are able' when He asks 'Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of'?
+nor terror to hear Him prophesy 'Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I
+drink of,' for we shall remember 'joint-heirs in Christ, if so be that
+we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.'
+
+IV. The end attained.
+
+The Christian life as here manifested is even in its highest forms
+manifestly incomplete. It is a reflected light, and like the reflected
+light in the heavens, advances by imperceptible degrees to fill the
+whole silver round. It may be 'e'en in its imperfections beautiful,' but
+it assuredly has 'a ragged edge.' The hypothetical form of the last
+words of our text does not so much imply a doubt of the possibility of
+attaining the result as the recognition of the indispensable condition
+of effort on the part of him who attains it. That effort forthcoming,
+the attainment is certain.
+
+The Revised Version makes a slight correction which involves a great
+matter, in reading 'the resurrection _from_ the dead.' It is necessary
+to insist on this change in rendering, not because it implies that only
+saints are raised, but because Paul is thinking of that first
+resurrection of which the New Testament habitually speaks. 'The dead in
+Christ shall rise first' as he himself declared in his earliest epistle,
+and the seer in the Apocalypse shed a benediction on 'him that hath part
+in the first resurrection.' Our knowledge of that solemn future is so
+fragmentary that we cannot venture to draw dogmatic inferences from the
+little that has been declared to us, but we cannot forget the distinct
+words of Jesus in which He not only plainly declares a universal
+resurrection, but as plainly proclaims that it falls into two parts, one
+a 'resurrection of life,' and one a 'resurrection of judgment.' The
+former may well be the final aim of a Christian life: the latter is a
+fate which one would think no sane man would deliberately provoke. Each
+carries in its name its dominant characteristic, the one full of
+attractiveness, the other partially unveiling depths of shame and
+punitive retributions which might appal the stoutest heart.
+
+This resurrection of life is the last result of the power of Christ's
+Resurrection received into and working on the human spirit. It is plain
+enough that if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead
+dwell in us there is no term to its operations until our mortal bodies
+also are quickened by His Spirit that dwelleth in us. The ethical and
+spiritual resurrection in the present life finds its completion in the
+bodily resurrection in the future. It cannot be that the transformation
+wrought in a human life shall be complete until it has flowed outwards
+into and permeated the whole of manhood, body, soul, and spirit. The
+three measures of meal have each to be influenced before 'the whole is
+leavened.' If we duly consider the elements necessary to a perfect
+realisation of the divine ideal of humanity, we shall discern that
+redemption must have a gospel to bring to the body as well as to the
+spirit. Whatever has been devastated by sin must be healed by Jesus. It
+is not necessary to suppose that the body which dies is the body which
+rises again, rather the Apostle's far-reaching series of antitheses
+between that which is sown and that which is raised leads us to think
+that the natural body, which has passed through corruption, and the
+particles of which have been gathered into many different combinations,
+does not become the spiritual body. The person who dies is the person
+who lives through death, and who assumes the body of the resurrection,
+and it is the person, not the elements which make up the personality,
+who is spoken of as risen from the dead. The vesture may be different,
+but the wearer is the same.
+
+So that resurrection from the dead is the end of a supernatural life
+begun here and destined to culminate hereafter. It is the last step in
+the manifestation of our being in Christ, and so is being prepared for
+here by every step in advance in gaining Jesus. It should ever be before
+every Christian soul that participation in Christ hereafter is
+conditioned by its progress in likeness to Him here. The Resurrection
+from the dead is not a gift which can be bestowed apart from a man's
+moral state. If he dies having had no knowledge by experience of the
+power of Christ's Resurrection, there is nothing in the fact of death to
+give him that knowledge, and it is impossible to bring 'any means' to
+bear on him by which he will attain unto the 'resurrection from the
+dead.' If God could give that gift irrespective of a man's relations to
+Jesus, He would give it to all. Let us ask ourselves, then, is it not
+worth making the dominant aim of our lives the same as that of Paul's?
+How stands our account then? Are we not wise traders presenting a good
+balance-sheet when we show entered on the one side the loss of all
+things, and on the other the gaining of Christ, and the attaining the
+resurrection from the dead, the perfect transformation of body, soul,
+and spirit, into the perfect likeness of the perfect Lord? Does the
+other balance-sheet show the man as equally solvent who enters on one
+side the gain of a world, and on the other a Christless life, to be
+followed by a resurrection in which is no joy, no advance, no life, but
+which is a resurrection of judgment? May we all be found in Him, and
+attain to the resurrection from the dead!
+
+
+
+
+LAID HOLD OF AND LAYING HOLD
+
+          'I follow after if that I may apprehend that for
+          which also I was apprehended of Christ
+          Jesus.'--PHIL. iii. 12.
+
+
+'I was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.' That is how Paul thinks of what we
+call his conversion. He would never have 'turned' unless a hand had been
+laid upon him. A strong loving grasp had gripped him in the midst of his
+career of persecution, and all that he had done was to yield to the
+grip, and not to wriggle out of it. The strong expression suggests, as
+it seems to me, the suddenness of the incident. Possibly impressions may
+have been working underground, ever since the martyrdom of Stephen,
+which were undermining his convictions, and the very insanity of his
+zeal may have been due to an uneasy consciousness that the ground was
+yielding beneath his feet. That may have been so, but, whether it were
+so or not, the crisis came like a bolt out of the blue, and he was
+checked in full career, as if a voice had spoken to the sea in its
+wildest storm, and frozen its waves into immobility.
+
+There is suggested in the word, too, distinctly, our Lord's personal
+action in the matter. No doubt, the fact of His supernatural appearance
+gives emphasis to the phrase here. But every Christian man and woman has
+been, as truly as ever Paul was, laid hold of by the personal action of
+Jesus Christ. He is present in His Word, and, by multitudes of inward
+impulses and outward providences, He is putting out a gentle and a firm
+hand, and laying it upon the shoulders of all of us. Have we yielded?
+Have we resisted, when we were laid hold of? Did we try to get away? Did
+we plant our feet and say, 'I will not be drawn,' or did we simply
+neglect the pressure? If we have yielded, my text tells us what we have
+to do next. For that hand is laid upon a man for a purpose, and that
+purpose is not secured by the hand being laid upon him, unless he, in
+his turn, will put out a hand and grasp. Our activity is needed; that
+activity will not be put forth without very distinct effort, and that
+effort has to be life-long, because our grasp at the best is incomplete.
+So then, we have here, first of all, to consider--
+
+I. What Christ has laid His grip on us for.
+
+Now, the immediate result of that grasp, when it is yielded to, is the
+sense of the removal of guilt, forgiveness of sins, acceptance with God.
+But these, the immediate results, are by no means the whole results,
+although a great many of us live as if we thought that the only thing
+that Christianity is meant to do to us is that it bars the gates of some
+future hell, and brings to us the message of forgiveness. We cannot
+think too nobly or too loftily of that gift of forgiveness, the initial
+gift that is laid in every Christian man's hands, but we may think too
+exclusively of it, and a great many of us do think of it as if it were
+all that was to be given. A painter has to clear away the old paint off
+a door, or a wall, before he lays on the new. The initial gift that
+comes from being laid hold of by Jesus Christ is the burning off of the
+old coat of paint. But that is only the preliminary to the laying on of
+the new. A man away in the backwoods will spend a couple of years after
+he has got his bit of land in felling and burning the trees, and rooting
+out and destroying the weeds. But is that what he got the clearing for?
+That is only a preliminary to sowing the seed. My friend! If Jesus
+Christ has laid hold of you, and you have let Him keep hold of you, it
+is not only that you may be forgiven, not only that you may sun yourself
+in the light of God's countenance, and feel that a new blessed relation
+is set up between you and Him, but there are great purposes lying at the
+back of that, of which all that is only the preliminary and the
+preparation.
+
+Conversion. Yes; but what is the good of turning a man round unless he
+goes in the direction in which his face is turned? And so here the
+Apostle having for years lived in the light of that great thought, that
+God was reconciled in Jesus Christ, and that he was God's friend,
+discerns far beyond that, in dim perspective, towering high above the
+land in the front, the snowy sunlit summits of a great range to which he
+has yet to climb, and says, 'I press on to lay hold of that for which I
+was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.'
+
+And what was that? On the road to Damascus Paul was only told one thing,
+that Christ had grasped him and drawn him to Himself in order that He
+might make him a chosen vessel to bear the Word far hence amongst the
+Gentiles. The bearing of His conversion upon Paul himself was never
+mentioned. The bearing of His conversion on the world was the only
+subject that Jesus spoke of at first. But here Paul has nothing to say
+about his world-wide mission. He does not think of himself as being
+called to be an Apostle, but as being summoned to be a Christian. And
+so, forgetting for the time all the glorious and yet burdensome
+obligations which were laid upon him, and the discharge of which was the
+very life of his life, he thinks only of what affects his own character,
+the perfecting of which he regards as being the one thing for which he
+was 'laid hold of by Christ Jesus.' The purpose is twofold. No Christian
+man is made a Christian only in order that he may secure his own
+salvation; there is the world to think of. No Christian man is made a
+Christian only in order that he may be Christ's instrument for carrying
+the Word to other people; there is himself to think of. And these two
+phases of the purpose for which Jesus Christ lays hold upon us are very
+hard to unite in practice, giving to each its due place and prominence,
+and they are often separated, to the detriment of both the one that is
+attended to, and the one that is neglected. The monastic life has not
+produced the noblest Christians; and there are pitfalls lying in the
+path of every man who, like me, has for his profession to preach the
+Gospel, which, if they are fallen into, the inward life is utterly
+wrecked.
+
+The two sides of Christ's purpose have, in our practice, to be held
+together, but for the present I only wish to say a word or two about
+that which, as I have indicated, is but one hemisphere of the completed
+orb, and that is our personal culture and growth in the divine life.
+What did Christ lay hold of me for? Paul answers the question very
+strikingly and beautifully in a previous verse. Here is his conception
+of the purpose, 'that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,
+and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His
+death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the
+dead.' That is what you were forgiven for; that is what you have 'passed
+from death unto life' for; that is what you have come into the sweet
+fellowship of God, and can think of Him as your Friend and Helper for.
+
+Let us take the clauses _seriatim_, and say a word about each of them.
+'That I may know Him.' Ah! there is a great deal more in Jesus Christ
+than a man sees when he first sees Him through his tears and his fears,
+and apprehends Him as the Saviour of his soul, and the sacrifice on whom
+the burden and the guilt of his sins were laid. We must begin there, as
+I believe. But woe to us if we stop there. There is far more in Christ
+than that; although all that is in Him is included in that, yet you have
+to dig deep before you find all that is included in it. You have to live
+with Him day by day, and year by year, and to learn to know Him as we
+learn to know husbands and wives, by continual intercourse, by continual
+experience of a sweet and unfailing love, by many a sacred hour of
+interchange of affection and reception of gifts and counsels. It is only
+thus that we learn to know what Jesus Christ is. When He lays hold of
+us, He comes like the angel that came to Peter in the prison in the dark
+and awoke him out of his sleep and said 'Rise! and follow me.' It is
+only when we get out into the street, and have been with Him for awhile,
+and the daylight begins to stream in, that we see clearly the face of
+our Deliverer, and know Him for all that He is. This knowledge is not
+the sort of knowledge that you can get by thinking, or out of a book.
+It is the knowledge of experience. It is the knowledge of love, it is
+the knowledge of union, and it is in order that we may know Christ that
+He lays his hand upon us.
+
+'The power of His Resurrection.' Now, by that I understand a similar
+knowledge, by experience, of the risen life of Jesus Christ flowing into
+us, and filling our hearts and minds with its own power. The risen life
+of Jesus is the nourishment and strengthening and blessing and life of a
+Christian. Our daily experience ought to be that there comes, wavelet by
+wavelet, that silent, gentle, and yet omnipotent influx into our empty
+hearts, the very life of Christ Himself.
+
+I know that this generation says that that is mysticism. I do not know
+whether it is mysticism or not. I am sure it is truth; and I do not
+understand Christianity at all, unless there is that kind of mysticism,
+perfectly wholesome and good, in it. You will never know Jesus Christ
+until you know Him as pouring into your hearts the power of an endless
+life, His own life. Christ for us by all means,--Christ's death the
+basis of our hope, but Christ in us, and Christ's life as the true gift
+to His Church. Have you got that? Do you know the power of His
+Resurrection?
+
+'The fellowship of His sufferings.' Has Paul made a mistake, and
+deserted the chronological order? Why does he put the 'fellowship of the
+sufferings' after the 'power of the Resurrection'? For this plain
+reason, that if we get Christ's life into our hearts, in the measure in
+which we get it we shall bear a similar relation to the world which He
+bore to it, and in our measure will 'fill up that which is behind in the
+sufferings of Christ,' and will understand how true it is that 'if they
+hate Me they will hate you also.' Brethren, the test of us who have the
+life of Christ in our hearts is that we shall, in some measure, suffer
+with Him, because 'as He is, so are we, in this world,' and because we
+must in that case look upon the world, its sins and its sorrows, with
+something of the sad gaze with which He looked across the valley to the
+Temple sparkling in the morning light, and wept over it. So if we know
+the power of His Resurrection we shall know the fellowship of His
+sufferings.
+
+And then Paul goes on, in his definition of the purpose for which Christ
+lays hold upon men, apparently to say the same thing over again, only in
+the opposite order, 'that I may be conformable to His death, if by any
+means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.' Both of these
+clauses, I think, refer to the future, to the actual dying of the body,
+and the actual future resurrection of the same. And the thought is this,
+that if here, through our earthly lives, we have been recipients of the
+risen life of Jesus Christ, and so have stood to the world in our degree
+as He stood to it, then when the moment of death comes to us, we shall,
+in so far, have our departure shaped after His as that we shall be able
+to say, 'Into Thy hands I commit my spirit,' and die willingly, and at
+last shall be partakers of that blessed Resurrection unto life eternal
+which closes the vista of our earthly history. Stephen's death was
+conformed to Christ's in outward fashion, in so far as it echoed the
+Master's prayer, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,'
+and in so far as it echoed the Master's last words, with the significant
+alteration that, whilst Jesus commended His spirit to the Father, the
+first martyr commended his to Jesus Christ.
+
+These, then, are the purposes for which Christ laid His hand upon us,
+that we might know Him, the power of His Resurrection, the fellowship of
+His sufferings, being made conformable to His death yet by attaining the
+resurrection of the dead.
+
+II. Notice, again, our laying hold because we have been laid hold of.
+
+Christ's laying hold of me, blessed and powerful as it is, does not of
+itself secure that I shall reach the end which He had in view in His
+arresting of me. What more is wanted? My effort. 'I follow after if I
+may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended.' Now, notice, in the
+one case, the Apostle speaks of himself, not as passive, but certainly
+not as active. 'I was laid hold of.' What did he do? As I have said, he
+simply yielded to the grasp. But 'I may lay hold of' conveys the idea of
+personal effort; and so these two expressions, 'I was apprehended,' and
+'I apprehend,' suggest this consideration, that, for the initial
+blessings of the Christian life, forgiveness, acceptance, the sense of
+God's favour, and of reconciliation with him, nothing is needed but the
+simple faith that yields itself altogether to the grasp of Christ's
+hand, but that for my possessing what Christ means that I should possess
+when He lays His hand on me, there is needed not only faith but effort.
+I have to put out _my_ hand and tighten my fingers round the thing, if I
+would make it my own, and keep it.
+
+So--faith, to begin with, and work based on faith, to go on with. It is
+because a man is sure that Jesus Christ has laid His hand upon him, and
+meant something when He did it, that he fights on with all his might to
+realise Christ's purpose, and to get and keep the thing which Christ
+meant him to have. There is stimulus in the thought, I was laid hold of
+by Him for a purpose. There is all the difference between striving,
+however eagerly, however nobly, however strenuously, however constantly,
+after self-improvement, by one's own effort only, and striving after it
+because one knows that he is therein fulfilling the purpose for which
+Jesus Christ drew him to Himself.
+
+And if that be so, then the nature of the thing to be laid hold of
+determines what we are to do to lay hold of it. And since to know
+Christ, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His
+sufferings, is the aim and end of our conversion, the way to secure it
+must be keeping in continual touch with Jesus by meditating upon Him, by
+holding many a moment of still, sacred, sweet communion with Him, by
+carefully avoiding whatever might come between us and our knowledge of
+Him, and the influx of His life into us, and by yielding ourselves, day
+by day, to the continual influence of His divine grace upon us and by
+the discipline which shall make our inward natures more and more capable
+of receiving more and more of that dear Lord. These being the things to
+do, in regard to the inward life, there must be effort too, in regard to
+the outward; for we must, if we are to lay hold of that for which we are
+laid hold of by Jesus Christ, bring all the outward life under the
+dominion of this inward impulse, and when the flood pours into our
+hearts we must, by many a sluice and trench, guide it into every corner
+of the field, that all may be irrigated. The first thing they do when
+they are going to sow rice in an Eastern field is to flood it, and then
+they cast in the seed, and it germinates. Flood your lives with Christ,
+and then sow the seed and you will get a crop.
+
+III. Lastly, the text suggests the incompleteness of our grasp.
+
+'I follow that,' says Paul, 'if that I may apprehend.' This letter was
+written far on in his career, in the time of his imprisonment in Rome,
+which all but ended his ministerial activity; and was many years after
+that day on the road to Damascus. And yet, matured Christian and
+exercised Apostle as he was, with all that past behind him, he says, 'I
+follow after, that I may apprehend.' Ah, brother, our experience must be
+incomplete, for we have an infinite aim set before us, and there is no
+end to the possibilities of plunging deeper and deeper and deeper into
+the knowledge of Christ, and having larger and larger and larger
+draughts of the fulness of His life. We have only been like goldseekers,
+who have contented themselves as yet with washing the precious grains
+out of the gravel of the river. There are great reefs filled with the
+ore that we have not touched. Thank God for the necessary incompleteness
+of our 'apprehending.' It is the very salt of life. To have realised our
+aims, to have fulfilled our ideals, to have sucked dry the cluster of
+the grapes is the death of aspiration, of hope, of blessedness; and to
+have the distance beckoning, and all experience 'an arch, wherethro'
+gleams the untravelled world to which we move,' is the secret of
+perpetual youth and energy.
+
+Because incomplete, our experience should be progressive; and that is a
+truth that needs hammering into Christian people to-day. About how many
+of us can it be said that our light 'shineth more and more unto the
+noonday.' Alas! about an enormous number of us it must be said, 'When
+for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you.'
+All our churches have many grown babies, and cases of arrested
+development--people that ought to be living on strong meat, and are
+unable to masticate or digest it, and by their own fault have still need
+of the milk of infancy. There is an old fable about a strange animal
+that fastened itself to the keel of sailing ships, and by some uncanny
+power was able to arrest them in mid-ocean, though the winds were
+filling all their sails. There is a remora, as they called it, of that
+sort adhering to a great many Christian people, and keeping them fixed
+on one spot, instead of 'following after, if that they may apprehend.'
+
+Dear friends--and especially you younger Christians--Christ has laid
+hold of you. Well and good! that is the beginning. He has laid hold of
+you for an end. That end will not be reached without your effort, and
+that effort must be perpetual. It is a life-long task. Ay! and even up
+yonder the apprehending will be incomplete. Like those mathematical
+lines that ever approximate to a point which they never reach, we shall
+through Eternity be, as it were, rising, in ascending and ever-closer
+drawing spirals, to that great Throne, and to Him that sits upon it. So
+that, striking out the humble 'may' from our text, the rest of it
+describes the progressive blessedness of the endless life in the
+heavens, as truly as it does the progressive duty of the Christian life
+here, and the glorified flock that follows the Lamb in the heavenly
+pastures may each say: I follow after in order to apprehend that 'for
+which,' long ago and down amidst the dim shadows of earth, 'I was
+apprehended of Christ Jesus.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RACE AND THE GOAL
+
+          'This one thing I do, forgetting those things
+          which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
+          things which are before, I press toward the mark
+          for the prize.'--PHIL. iii. 13, 14.
+
+
+This buoyant energy and onward looking are marvellous in 'Paul the aged,
+and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.' Forgetfulness of the past and
+eager anticipation for the future are, we sometimes think, the child's
+prerogatives. They may be ignoble and puerile, or they may be worthy and
+great. All depends on the future to which we look. If it be the creation
+of our fancies, we are babies for trusting it. If it be, as Paul's was,
+the revelation of God's purposes, we cannot do a wiser thing than look.
+
+The Apostle here is letting us see the secret of his own life, and
+telling us what made him the sort of Christian that he was. He counsels
+wise obliviousness, wise anticipation, strenuous concentration, and
+these are the things that contribute to success in any field of life.
+Christianity is the perfection of common sense. Men become mature
+Christians by no other means than those by which they become good
+artisans, ripe scholars, or the like. But the misery is that, though
+people know well enough that they cannot be good carpenters, or doctors,
+or fiddlers without certain habits and practices, they seem to fancy
+that they can be good Christians without them.
+
+So the words of my text may suggest appropriate thoughts on this first
+Sunday of a new year. Let us listen, then, to Paul telling us how he
+came to be the sort of Christian man he was.
+
+I. First, then, I would say, make God's aim your aim.
+
+Paul distinguishes here between the 'mark' and the 'prize.' He aims at
+the one for the sake of the other. The one is the object of effort; the
+other is the sure result of successful effort. If I may so say, the
+crown hangs on the winning post; and he who touches the goal clutches
+the garland.
+
+Then, mark that he regards the aim towards which he strains as being the
+aim which Christ had in view in his conversion. For he says in the
+preceding context, 'I labour if that I may lay hold of that for which
+also I have been laid hold of by Jesus Christ.' In the words that follow
+the text he speaks of the prize as being the result and purpose of the
+high calling of God 'in Christ Jesus.' So then he took God's purpose in
+calling, and Christ's purpose in redeeming him, as being his great
+object in life. God's aims and Paul's were identical.
+
+What, then, is the aim of God in all that He has done for us? The
+production in us of God-like and God-pleasing character. For this suns
+rise and set; for this seasons and times come and go; for this sorrows
+and joys are experienced; for this hopes and fears and loves are
+kindled. For this all the discipline of life is set in motion. For this
+we were created; for this we have been redeemed. For this Jesus Christ
+lived and suffered and died. For this God's Spirit is poured out upon
+the world. All else is scaffolding; this is the building which it
+contemplates, and when the building is reared the scaffolding may be
+cleared away. God means to make us like Himself, and so pleasing to
+Himself, and has no other end in all the varieties of His gifts and
+bestowments but only this, the production of character.
+
+Such is the aim that we should set before us. The acceptance of that aim
+as ours will give nobleness and blessedness to our lives as nothing else
+will. How different all our estimates of the meaning and true nature of
+events would be, if we kept clearly before us that their intention was
+not merely to make us blessed and glad, or to make us sorrowful, but
+that, through the blessedness, through the sorrow, through the gift,
+through the withdrawal, through all the variety of dealings, the
+intention was one and the same, to mould us to the likeness of our Lord
+and Saviour! There would be fewer mysteries in our lives, we should
+seldomer have to stand in astonishment, in vain regret, in miserable and
+weakening looking back upon vanished gifts, and saying to ourselves,
+'Why has this darkness stooped upon my path?' if we looked beyond the
+darkness and the light to that for which both were sent. Some plants
+require frost to bring out their savour, and men need sorrow to test and
+to produce their highest qualities. There would be fewer knots in the
+thread of our lives, and fewer mysteries in our experience, if we made
+God's aim ours, and strove through all variations of condition to
+realise it.
+
+How different all our estimate of nearer objects and aims would be, if
+once we clearly recognised what we are here for! The prostitution of
+powers to obviously unworthy aims and ends is the saddest thing in
+humanity. It is like elephants being set to pick up pins; it is like the
+lightning being harnessed to carry all the gossip and filth of one
+capital of the world to the prurient readers in another. Men take these
+great powers which God has given them, and use them to make money, to
+cultivate their intellects, to secure the gratification of earthly
+desires, to make a home for themselves here amidst the illusions of
+time; and all the while the great aim which ought to stand out clear and
+supreme is forgotten by them.
+
+There is nothing that needs more careful examination by us than our
+accepted schemes of life for ourselves; the roots of our errors mostly
+lie in these things that we take to be axioms, and that we never examine
+into. Let us begin this new year by an honest dealing with ourselves,
+asking ourselves this question, 'What am I living for?' And if the
+answer, first of all, be, as, of course, it will be, the accomplishment
+of the nearer and necessary aims, such as the conduct of our business,
+the cultivating of our understandings, the love and peace of our homes,
+then let us press the investigation a little further, and say, What
+then? Suppose I make a fortune, what then? Suppose I get the position I
+am striving for, what then? Suppose I cultivate my understanding and win
+the knowledge that I am nobly striving after, what then? Let us not
+cease to ask the question until we can say, 'Thy aim, O Lord, is my aim,
+and I press toward the mark,' the only mark which will make life noble,
+elastic, stable, and blessed, that I 'may be found in Christ, not having
+mine own righteousness, but that which is of God by faith.' For this we
+have all been made, guided, redeemed. If we carry this treasure out of
+life we shall carry all that is worth carrying. If we fail in this we
+fail altogether, whatever be our so-called success. There is one mark,
+one only, and every arrow that does not hit that target is wasted and
+spent in vain.
+
+II. Secondly, let me say, concentrate all effort on this one aim.
+
+'This one thing I do,' says the Apostle, 'I press toward the mark.' That
+aim is the one which God has in view in all circumstances and
+arrangements. Therefore, obviously, it is one which may be pursued in
+all of these, and may be sought whatsoever we are doing. All
+occupations of life except only sin are consistent with this highest
+aim. It needs not that we should seek any remote or cloistered form of
+life, nor sheer off any legitimate and common interests and occupations,
+but in them all we may be seeking for the one thing, the moulding of our
+characters into the shapes that are pleasing to Him. 'One thing have I
+desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the
+house of the Lord all the days of my life'; wheresoever the outward days
+of my life may be passed. Whatsoever we are doing in business, in shop,
+at a study table, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the road, in the
+house, we may still have the supreme aim in view, that from all
+occupations there may come growth in character and in likeness to Jesus
+Christ.
+
+Only, to keep this supreme aim clear there will require far more
+frequent and resolute effort of what the old mystics used to call
+'recollection' than we are accustomed to put forth. It is hard, amidst
+the din of business, and whilst yielding to other lower, legitimate
+impulses and motives, to set this supreme one high above them all. But
+it is possible if only we will do two things: keep ourselves close to
+God, and be prepared to surrender much, laying our own wills, our own
+fancies, purposes, eager hopes and plans in His hands, and asking Him to
+help us, that we may never lose sight of the harbour light because of
+any tossing waves that rise between us and it, nor may ever be so
+swallowed up in ends, which are only means after all, as to lose sight
+of the only end which is an end in itself. But for the attainment of
+this aim in any measure, the concentration of all our powers upon it is
+absolutely needful. If you want to bore a hole you take a sharp point;
+you can do nothing with a blunt one. Every flight of wild ducks in the
+sky will tell you the form that is most likely to secure the maximum of
+motion with the minimum of effort. The wedge is that which pierces
+through all the loosely-compacted textures against which it is pressed.
+The Roman strategy forced the way of the legion through the
+loose-ordered ranks of barbarian foes by arraying it in that wedge-like
+form. So we, if we are to advance, must gather ourselves together and
+put a point upon our lives by compaction and concentration of effort and
+energy on the one purpose. The conquering word is, 'This one thing I
+do.' The difference between the amateur and the artist is that the one
+pursues an art at intervals by spurts, as a _parergon_--a thing that is
+done in the intervals of other occupations--and that the other makes it
+his life's business. There are a great many amateur Christians amongst
+us, who pursue the Christian life by spurts and starts. If you want to
+be a Christian after God's pattern--and unless you are you are scarcely
+a Christian at all--you have to make it your business, to give the same
+attention, the same concentration, the same unwavering energy to it
+which you do to your trade. The man of one book, the man of one idea,
+the man of one aim is the formidable and the successful man. People will
+call you a fanatic; never mind. Better be a fanatic and get what you aim
+at, which is the highest thing, than be so broad that, like a stream
+spreading itself out over miles of mud, there is no scour in it
+anywhere, no current, and therefore stagnation and death. Gather
+yourselves together, and amidst all the side issues and nearer aims keep
+this in view as the aim to which all are to be subservient--that,
+'whether I eat or drink, or whatsoever I do, I may do all to the glory
+of God.' Let sorrow and joy, and trade and profession, and study and
+business, and house and wife and children, and all home joys, be the
+means by which you may become like the Master who has died for this end,
+that we may become partakers of His holiness.
+
+III. Pursue this end with a wise forgetfulness.
+
+'Forgetting the things that are behind.' The art of forgetting has much
+to do with the blessedness and power of every life. Of course, when the
+Apostle says 'Forgetting the things that are behind,' he is thinking of
+the runner, who has no time to cast his eye over his shoulder to mark
+the steps already trod. He does not mean, of course, either, to tell us
+that we are so to cultivate obliviousness as to let God's mercies to us
+'lie forgotten in unthankfulness, or without praises die.' Nor does he
+mean to tell us that we are to deny ourselves the solace of remembering
+the mercies which may, perhaps, have gone from us. Memory may be like
+the calm radiance that fills the western sky from a sun that has set,
+sad and yet sweet, melancholy and lovely. But he means that we should so
+forget as, by the oblivion, to strengthen our concentration.
+
+So I would say, let us remember, and yet forget, our past failures and
+faults. Let us remember them in order that the remembrance may cultivate
+in us a wise chastening of our self-confidence. Let us remember where we
+were foiled, in order that we may be the more careful of that place
+hereafter. If we know that upon any road we fell into ambushes, 'not
+once nor twice,' like the old king of Israel, we should guard ourselves
+against passing by that road again. He who has not learned, by the
+memory of his past failures, humility and wise government of his life,
+and wise avoidance of places where he is weak, is an incurable fool.
+
+But let us forget our failures in so far as these might paralyse our
+hopes, or make us fancy that future success is impossible where past
+failures frown. Ebenezer was a field of defeat before it rang with the
+hymns of victory. And there is no place in your past life where you have
+been shamefully baffled and beaten, but there, and in that, you may yet
+be victorious. Never let the past limit your hopes of the possibilities
+and your confidence in the certainties and victories of the future. And
+if ever you are tempted to say to yourselves, 'I have tried it so often,
+and so often failed, that it is no use trying it any more. I am beaten
+and I throw up the sponge,' remember Paul's wise exhortation, and
+'forgetting the things that are behind . . . press toward the mark.'
+
+In like manner I would say, remember and yet forget past successes and
+achievements. Remember them for thankfulness, remember them for hope,
+remember them for counsel and instruction, but forget them when they
+tend, as all that we accomplish does tend, to make us fancy that little
+more remains to be done; and forget them when they tend, as all that we
+accomplish ever does tend, to make us think that such and such things
+are our line, and of other virtues and graces and achievements of
+culture and of character, that these are not our line, and not to be won
+by us.
+
+'Our line!' Astronomers take a thin thread from a spider's web and
+stretch it across their object glasses to measure stellar magnitudes.
+Just as is the spider's line in comparison with the whole shining
+surface of the sun across which it is stretched, so is what we have
+already attained to the boundless might and glory of that to which we
+may come. Nothing short of the full measure of the likeness of Jesus
+Christ is the measure of our possibilities.
+
+There is a mannerism in Christian life, as there is in everything else,
+which is to be avoided if we would grow into perfection. There was a
+great artist in the last century who never could paint a picture without
+sticking a brown tree in the foreground. We have all got our 'brown
+trees,' which we think we can do well, and these limit our ambition to
+secure other gifts which God is ready to bestow upon us. So 'forget the
+things that are behind.' Cultivate a wise obliviousness of past sorrows,
+past joys, past failures, past gifts, past achievements, in so far as
+these might limit the audacity of our hopes and the energy of our
+efforts.
+
+IV. So, lastly, pursue the aim with a wise, eager reaching forward.
+
+The Apostle employs a very graphic word here, which is only very
+partially expressed by that 'reaching forth.' It contains a condensed
+picture which it is scarcely possible to put into any one expression.
+'Reaching out over' is the full though clumsy rendering of the word, and
+it gives us the picture of the runner with his whole body thrown
+forward, his hand extended, and his eye reaching even further than his
+hand, in eager anticipation of the mark and the prize. So we are to
+live, with continual reaching out of confidence, clear recognition, and
+eager desire to make our own the unattained.
+
+What is that which gives an element of nobleness to the lives of great
+idealists, whether they be poets, artists, students, thinkers, or what
+not? Only this, that they see the unattained burning ever so clearly
+before them that all the attained seems as nothing in their eyes. And
+so life is saved from commonplace, is happily stung into fresh effort,
+is redeemed from flagging, monotony, and weariness.
+
+The measure of our attainments may be fairly estimated by the extent to
+which the unattained is clear in our sight. A man down in the valley
+sees the nearer shoulder of the hill, and he thinks it the top. The man
+up on the shoulder sees all the heights that lie beyond rising above
+him. Endeavour is better than success. It is more to see the Alpine
+heights unscaled than it is to have risen so far as we have done. They
+who thus have a boundless future before them have an endless source of
+inspiration, of energy, of buoyancy granted to them.
+
+No man has such an absolutely boundless vision of the future which may
+be his as we have, if we are Christian people, as we ought to be. We
+only can thus look forward. For all others a blank wall stretches at the
+end of life, against which hopes, when they strike, fall back stunned
+and dead. But for us the wall may be overleaped, and, living by the
+energy of a boundless hope, we, and only we, can lay ourselves down to
+die, and say then, 'Reaching forth unto the things that are before.'
+
+So, dear friends, make God's aim your aim; concentrate your life's
+efforts upon it; pursue it with a wise forgetfulness; pursue it with an
+eager confidence of anticipation that shall not be put to shame.
+Remember that God reaches His aim for you by giving to you Jesus Christ,
+and that you can only reach it by accepting the Christ who is given and
+being found in Him. Then the years will take away nothing from us which
+it is not gain to lose. They will neither weaken our energy nor flatten
+our hopes, nor dim our confidence, and, at the last we shall reach the
+mark, and, as we touch it, we shall find dropping on our surprised and
+humble heads the crown of life which they receive who have so run, not
+as uncertainly, but doing this one thing, pressing towards the mark for
+the prize.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUL'S PERFECTION
+
+          'Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus
+          minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded,
+          God shall reveal even this unto you.'--PHIL. iii.
+          15.
+
+
+'As many as be perfect'; and how many may they be? Surely a very short
+bede-roll would contain their names; or would there be any other but the
+Name which is above every name upon it? Part of the answer to such a
+question may be found in observing that the New Testament very
+frequently uses the word to express not so much the idea of moral
+completeness as that of physical maturity. For instance, when Paul says
+that he would have his converts to be '_men_ in understanding,' and when
+the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of 'them that are of full age,' the
+same word is used as this 'perfect' in our text. Clearly in such cases
+it means 'full grown,' as in contrast with 'babes,' and expresses not
+absolute completeness, but what we may term a relative perfection, a
+certain maturity of character and advanced stage of Christian
+attainment, far removed from the infantile epoch of the Christian life.
+
+Another contribution to the answer may be found in observing that in
+this very context these 'perfect' people are exhorted to cultivate the
+sense of not having 'already attained,' and to be constantly reaching
+forth to unattained heights, so that a sense of imperfection and a
+continual effort after higher life are parts of Paul's 'perfect man.'
+And it is to be still further noticed that on the same testimony
+'perfect' people may probably be 'otherwise minded'; by which we
+understand not divergently minded from one another, but 'otherwise' than
+the true norm or law of life would prescribe, and so may stand in need
+of the hope that God will by degrees bring them into conformity with His
+will, and show them 'this,' namely, their divergence from His Pattern
+for them.
+
+It is worth our while to look at these large thoughts thus involved in
+the words before us.
+
+I. Then there are people whom without exaggeration the judgment of truth
+calls _perfect_.
+
+The language of the New Testament has no scruple in calling men 'saints'
+who had many sins, and none in calling men perfect who had many
+imperfections; and it does so, not because it has any fantastic theory
+about religious emotions being the measure of moral purity, but partly
+for the reasons already referred to, and partly because it wisely
+considers the main thing about a character to be not the degree to which
+it has attained completeness in its ideal, but what that ideal is. The
+distance a man has got on his journey is of less consequence than the
+direction in which his face is turned. The arrow may fall short, but to
+what mark was it shot? In all regions of life a wise classification of
+men arranges them according to their aims rather than their
+achievements. The visionary who attempts something high and accomplishes
+scarcely anything of it, is often a far nobler man, and his poor,
+broken, foiled, resultless life far more perfect than his who aims at
+marks on the low levels and hits them full. Such lives as these, full
+of yearning and aspiration, though it be for the most part vain, are
+
+          'Like the young moon with a ragged edge
+           E'en in its imperfection beautiful.'
+
+If then it be wise to rank men and their pursuits according to their
+aims rather than their accomplishments, is there one class of aims so
+absolutely corresponding to man's nature and relations that to take them
+for one's own, and to reach some measure of approximation to them, may
+fairly be called the perfection of human nature? Is there one way of
+living concerning which we may say that whosoever adopts it has, in so
+far as he does adopt it, discerned and attained the purpose of his
+being? The literal force of the word in our text gives pertinence to
+that question, for it distinctly means 'having reached the end.' And if
+that be taken as the meaning, there need be no doubt about the answer.
+Grand old words have taught us long ago 'Man's chief end is to glorify
+God and to enjoy Him for ever.' Yes, he who lives for God has taken that
+for his aim which all his nature and all his relations prescribe, he is
+doing what he was made and meant to do; and however incomplete may be
+its attainments, the lowest form of a God-fearing, God-obeying life is
+higher and more nearly 'perfect' than the fairest career or character
+against which, as a blight on all its beauty, the damning accusation may
+be brought, 'The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy
+ways, thou hast not glorified.'
+
+People sneer at 'saints' and point at their failings. They remind us of
+the foul stains in David's career, for instance, and mock as they ask,
+'Is this your man after God's own heart?' Yes, he is; not because
+religion has a morality of its own different from that of the world
+(except as being higher), nor because 'saints' make up for adultery and
+murder by making or singing psalms, but because the main set and current
+of the life was evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous
+sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, as it were,
+wept over with bitter self-abasement and conquered by strenuous effort.
+Better a life of Godward aspiration and straining after purity, even if
+broken by such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward
+grubbing, undisturbed by gross sin.
+
+And another reason warrants the application of the word to men whose
+present is full of incompleteness, namely, the fact that such men have
+in them the germ of a life which has no natural end but absolute
+completeness. The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and
+soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of ragged green,
+very shabby and inconspicuous by the side of the native flowers of earth
+flaunting around it, but it has a divine germinant virtue within, and
+waits but being carried to its own clime and 'planted in the house of
+the Lord' above, to 'flourish in the courts of our God,' when these
+others with their glorious beauty have faded away and are flung out to
+rot.
+
+II. We have set forth here very distinctly two of the characteristics of
+this perfection.
+
+The Apostle in our text exhorts the perfect to be '_thus_ minded.' How
+is that? Evidently the word points back to the previous clauses, in
+which he has been describing his own temper and feeling in the Christian
+race. He sets that before the Philippians as their pattern, or rather
+invites them to fellowship with him in the estimate of themselves and in
+their efforts after higher attainments. 'Be thus minded' means, Think
+as I do of yourselves, and do as I do in your daily life.
+
+How did he think of himself? He tells us in the sentence before, 'Not as
+though I were already perfect. I count not myself to have apprehended.'
+So then a leading characteristic of this true Christian perfection is a
+constant consciousness of imperfection. In all fields of effort, whether
+intellectual, moral, or mechanical, as faculty grows, consciousness of
+insufficiency grows with it. The farther we get up the hill, the more we
+see how far it is to the horizon. The more we know, the more we know our
+ignorance. The better we can do, the more we discern how much we cannot
+do. Only people who never have done and never will do anything, or else
+raw apprentices with the mercifully granted self-confidence of youth,
+which gets beaten out of most of us soon enough, think that they can do
+everything.
+
+In morals and in Christian life the same thing is true. The measure of
+our perfection will be the consciousness of our imperfection--a paradox,
+but a great truth. It is plain enough that it will be so. Conscience
+becomes more sensitive as we get nearer right. The worse a man is the
+less it speaks to him, and the less he hears it. When it ought to
+thunder it whispers; when we need it most it is least active. The thick
+skin of a savage will not be disturbed by lying on sharp stones, while a
+crumpled rose-leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So the practice of
+evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and the practice of goodness
+restores tenderness and sensibility; and many a man laden with crime
+knows less of its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost
+spotless to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be
+conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all dirty and
+dull, a dozen more or fewer will make little difference. As men grow
+better they become like that glycerine barometer recently introduced, on
+which a fall or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to
+record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous. Good people
+sometimes wonder, and sometimes are made doubtful and sad about
+themselves, by this abiding and even increased consciousness of sin.
+There is no need to be so. The higher the temperature the more chilling
+would it be to pass into an ice-house, and the more our lives are
+brought into fellowship with the perfect life, the more shall we feel
+our own shortcomings. Let us be thankful if our consciences speak to us
+more loudly than they used to do. It is a sign of growing holiness, as
+the tingling in a frost-bitten limb is of returning life. Let us seek to
+cultivate and increase the sense of our own imperfection, and be sure
+that the diminution of a consciousness of sin means not diminished power
+of sin, but lessened horror of it, lessened perception of right,
+lessened love of goodness, and is an omen of death, not a symptom of
+life. Painter, scholar, craftsman all know that the condition of advance
+is the recognition of an ideal not attained. Whoever has not before him
+a standard to which he has not reached will grow no more. If we see no
+faults in our work we shall never do any better. The condition of all
+Christian, as of all other progress, is to be drawn by that fair vision
+before us, and to be stung into renewed effort to reach it, by the
+consciousness of present imperfection.
+
+Another characteristic to which these perfect men are exhorted is a
+constant striving after a further advance. How vigorously, almost
+vehemently, that temper is put in the context--'I follow after'; 'I
+press toward the mark'; and that picturesque 'reaching forth,' or, as
+the Revised Version gives it, 'stretching forward.' The full force of
+the latter word cannot be given in any one English equivalent, but may
+be clumsily hinted by some such phrase as 'stretching oneself out over,'
+as a runner might do with body thrown forward and arms extended in
+front, and eagerness in every strained muscle, and eye outrunning foot,
+and hope clutching the goal already. So yearning forward, and setting
+all the current of his being, both faculty and desire, to the yet
+unreached mark, the Christian man is to live. His glances are not to be
+bent backwards, but forwards. He is not to be a 'praiser of the past,'
+but a herald and expectant of a nobler future. He is the child of the
+day and of the morning, forgetting the things which are behind, and ever
+yearning towards the things which are before, and drawing them to
+himself. To look back is to be stiffened into a living death; only with
+faces set forward are we safe and well.
+
+This buoyant energy of hope and effort is to be the result of the
+consciousness of imperfection of which we have spoken. Strange to many
+of us, in some moods, that a thing so bright should spring up from a
+thing so dark, and that the more we feel our own shortcomings, the more
+hopeful should we be of a future unlike the past, and the more earnest
+in our effort to make that future the present! There is a type of
+Christian experience not uncommon among devout people, in which the
+consciousness of imperfection paralyses effort instead of quickening it;
+men lament their evil, their slow progress and so on, and remain the
+same year after year. They are stirred to no effort. There is no
+straining onwards. They almost seem to lose the faith that they can ever
+be any better. How different this from the grand, wholesome completeness
+of Paul's view here, which embraces both elements, and even draws the
+undying brightness of his forward-looking confidence from the very
+darkness of his sense of present imperfection!
+
+So should it be with us, 'as many as be perfect.' Before us stretch
+indefinite possibilities of approximating to the unattainable fulness of
+the divine life. We may grow in knowledge and in holiness through
+endless ages and grades of advance. In a most blessed sense we may have
+that for our highest joy which in another meaning is a punishment of
+unfaithfulness and indocility, that we shall be 'ever learning, and
+never coming to the full knowledge of the truth.' No limit can be put to
+what we may receive of God, nor to the closeness, the fulness of our
+communion with Him, nor to the beauty of holiness which may pass from
+Him into our poor characters, and irradiate our homely faces. Then,
+brethren, let us cherish a noble discontent with all that we at present
+are. Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better things
+beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send out pale shoots that
+feel blindly towards the light, or the seed sown on the top of a rock
+will grope down the bare stone for the earth by which it must be fed.
+Let the sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant confidence in
+what we, even we, may become if we will only take the grace we have. To
+this touchstone let us bring all claims to higher holiness--they who are
+perfect are most conscious of imperfection, and most eager in their
+efforts after a further progress in the knowledge, love, and likeness of
+God in Christ.
+
+III. We have here also distinctly brought out the co-existence with
+these characteristics of their opposites.
+
+'If in anything ye are otherwise minded,' says Paul. I have already
+suggested that this expression evidently refers not to difference of
+opinion among themselves, but to a divergence of character from the
+pattern of feeling and life which he has been proposing to them. If in
+any respects ye are unconscious of your imperfections, if there be any
+'witch's mark' of insensibility in some spot of your conscience to some
+plain transgressions of law, if in any of you there be some complacent
+illusion of your own stainlessness, if to any of you the bright vision
+before you seem faint and unsubstantial, God will show you what you do
+not see. Plainly then he considers that there will be found among these
+perfect men states of feeling and estimates of themselves opposed to
+those which he has been exhorting them to cherish. Plainly he supposes
+that a good man may pass for a time under the dominion of impulses and
+theories which are of another kind from those that rule his life.
+
+He does not expect the complete and uninterrupted dominion of these
+higher powers. He recognises the plain facts that the true self, the
+central life of the soul, the higher nature, 'the new man,' abides in a
+self which is but gradually renewed, and that there is a long distance,
+so to speak, from the centre to the circumference. That higher life is
+planted, but its germination is a work of time. The leaven does not
+leaven the whole mass in a moment, but creeps on from particle to
+particle. 'Make the tree good' and in due time its fruit will be good.
+But the conditions of our human life are conflict, and these peaceful
+images of growth and unimpeded natural development, 'first the blade,
+then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear,' are not meant to
+tell all the truth. Interruptions from external circumstances, struggles
+of flesh with spirit, and of imagination and heart and will against the
+better life implanted in the spirit, are the lot of all, even the most
+advanced here, and however a man may be perfect, there will always be
+the possibility that in something he may be 'otherwise minded.'
+
+Such an admission does not make such interruptions less blameworthy when
+they occur. The doctrine of averages does not do away with the voluntary
+character of each single act. The same number of letters are yearly
+posted without addresses. Does anybody dream of not scolding the errand
+boy who posted them, or the servant who did not address them, because he
+knows that? We are quite sure that we could have resisted each time that
+we fell. That piece of sharp practice in business, or that burst of bad
+temper in the household which we were last guilty of--could we have
+helped it or not? Conscience must answer that question, which does not
+depend at all on the law of averages. Guilt is not taken away by
+asserting that sin cleaves to men, 'perfect men.'
+
+But the feelings with which we should regard sin and contradictions of
+men's truest selves in ourselves and others should be so far altered by
+such thoughts that we should be very slow to pronounce that a man cannot
+be a Christian because he has done so and so. Are there any sins which
+are clearly _incompatible_ with a Christian character? All sins are
+_inconsistent_ with it, but that is a very different matter. The uniform
+direction of a man's life being godless, selfish, devoted to the objects
+and pursuits of time and sense, is incompatible with his being a
+Christian--but, thank God, no single act, however dark, is so, if it be
+in contradiction to the main tendency impressed upon the character and
+conduct. It is not for us to say that any single deed shows a man cannot
+be Christ's, nor to fling ourselves down in despair saying, 'If I were a
+Christian, I could not have done that.' Let us remember that 'all
+unrighteousness is sin,' and the least sin is in flagrant opposition to
+our Christian profession; but let us also remember, and that not to
+blunt our consciences or weaken our efforts, that Paul thought it
+possible for perfect men to be 'otherwise minded' from their deepest
+selves and their highest pattern.
+
+IV. The crowning hope that lies in these words is the certainty of a
+gradual but complete attainment of all the Christian aspirations after
+God and goodness.
+
+The ground of that confidence lies in no natural tendencies in us, in no
+effort of ours, but solely in that great name which is the anchor of all
+our confidence, the name of God. Why is Paul certain that 'God will
+reveal even this unto you'? Because He is God. The Apostle has learned
+the infinite depth of meaning that lies in that name. He has learned
+that God is not in the way of leaving off His work before He has done
+His work, and that none can say of Him, that 'He began to build, and was
+not able to finish.' The assurances of an unchangeable purpose in
+redemption, and of inexhaustible resources to effect it; of a love that
+can never fade, and of a grace that can never be exhausted--are all
+treasured for us in that mighty name. And such confidence is confirmed
+by the manifest tendency of the principles and motives brought to bear
+on us in Christianity to lead on to a condition of absolute perfection,
+as well as by the experience which we may have, if we will, of the
+sanctifying and renewing power of His Spirit in our Spirit.
+
+By the discipline of daily life, by the ministry of sorrow and joy, by
+merciful chastisements dogging our steps when we stray, by duties and
+cares, by the teaching of His word coming even closer to our hearts and
+quickening our consciences to discern evil where we had seen none, as
+well as kindling in us desires after higher and rarer goodness, by the
+reward of enlarged perceptions of duty and greater love towards it, with
+which He recompenses lowly obedience to the duty as yet seen, by the
+secret influences of His Spirit of Power and of Love and of a sound Mind
+breathed into our waiting spirits, by the touch of His own sustaining
+hand and glance of His own guiding eye, He will reveal to the lowly soul
+all that is yet wanting in its knowledge, and communicate all that is
+lacking in character.
+
+So for us, the true temper is confidence in His power and will, an
+earnest waiting on Him, a brave forward yearning hope blended with a
+lowly consciousness of imperfection, which is a spur not a clog, and
+vigorous increasing efforts to bring into life and character the fulness
+and beauty of God. Presumption should be as far from us as despair--the
+one because we have not already attained, the other because 'God will
+reveal even this unto us.' Only let us keep in mind the caution which
+the Apostle, knowing the possible abuses which might gather round His
+teaching, has here attached to it, 'Nevertheless'--though all which I
+have been saying is true, it is only on this understanding--'Whereto we
+have already attained, by the same let us walk.' God will perfect that
+which concerneth you if--and only if--you go on as you have begun, if
+you make your creed a life, if you show what you are. If so, then all
+the rest is a question of time. A has been said, and Z will come in its
+proper place. Begin with humble trust in Christ, and a process is
+commenced which has no natural end short of that great hope with which
+this chapter closes, that the change which begins in the deepest
+recesses of our being, and struggles slowly and with many interruptions,
+into partial visibility in our character, shall one day triumphantly
+irradiate our whole nature out to the very finger-tips, and 'even the
+body of our humiliation shall be fashioned like unto the body of
+Christ's glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to
+subdue all things to Himself.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RULE OF THE ROAD
+
+          'Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained,
+          let us walk by the same rule.'--PHIL. iii. 16.
+
+
+Paul has just been laying down a great principle--viz. that if the main
+direction of a life be right, God will reveal to a man the points in
+which he is wrong. But that principle is untrue and dangerous, unless
+carefully guarded. It may lead to a lazy tolerance of evil, and to
+drawing such inferences as, 'Well! it does not much matter about
+strenuous effort, if we are right at bottom it will all come right
+by-and-by,' and so it may become a pillow for indolence and a clog on
+effort. This possible abuse of a great truth seems to strike the
+Apostle, and so he enters here, with this 'Nevertheless,' a _caveat_
+against that twist of his meaning. It is as if he said, 'Now mind! while
+all that is perfectly true, it is true on conditions; and if they be not
+attended to, it is not true.' God will reveal to a man the things in
+which he is wrong if, and only if, he steadfastly continues in the
+course which he knows and sees to be right. Present attainments, then,
+are in some sense a standard of duty, and if we honestly and
+conscientiously observe that standard we shall get light as we journey.
+In this exhortation of the Apostle's there are many exhortations wrapped
+up; and in trying to draw them out I venture to adhere to the form of
+exhortation for the sake of impressiveness and point.
+
+I. First, then, I would say the Apostle means, 'Live up to your faith
+and your convictions.'
+
+It may be a question whether 'that to which we have already attained'
+means the amount of knowledge which we have won or the amount of
+practical righteousness which we have made our own. But I think that,
+instead of sharply dividing between these two, we shall follow more in
+the course of the Apostle's thought if we unite them together, and
+remember that the Bible does not make the distinct separation which we
+sometimes incline to make between knowledge on the one side and practice
+on the other, but regards the man as a living unity. And thus, both
+aspects of our attainments come into consideration here.
+
+So, then, there are two main thoughts--first, live out your creed, and
+second, live up to your convictions.
+
+Live out your creed. Men are meant to live, not by impulse, by accident,
+by inclination, but by principle. We are not intended to live by rule,
+but we _are_ intended to live by law. And unless we know _why_ we do as
+well as _what_ we do, and give a rational account of our conduct, we
+fall beneath the height on which God intends us to walk. Impulse is all
+very well, but impulse is blind and needs a guide. The imitation of
+those around us, or the acceptance of the apparent necessities of
+circumstances, are, to some extent, inevitable and right. But to be
+driven merely by the force of externals is to surrender the highest
+prerogative of manhood. The highest part of human nature is the reason
+guided by conscience, and a man's conscience is only then rightly
+illuminated when it is illuminated by his creed, which is founded on the
+acceptance of the revelation that God has made of Himself.
+
+And whilst we are clearly meant to be guided by the intelligent
+appropriation of God's truth, that truth is evidently all meant for
+guidance. We are not told anything in the Bible in order that we may
+know as an ultimate object, but we are told it all in order that,
+knowing, we may be, and, being, we may do, according to His will.
+
+Just think of the intensely practical tendency of all the greatest
+truths of Christianity. The Cross is the law of life. The revelation
+that was made there was made, not merely that we might cling to it as a
+refuge from our sins, but that we might accept it as the rule of our
+conduct. All our duties to mankind are summed up in the word 'Love one
+another as I have loved you.' We say that we believe in the divinity of
+Christ; we say that we believe in the great incarnation and sacrificial
+death and eternal priesthood of the loving Son of God. We say that we
+believe in a judgment to come and a future life. Well, then, do these
+truths produce any effect upon my life? have they shaped me in any
+measure into conformity with their great principles? Does there issue
+from them constraining power which grasps me and moulds me as a sculptor
+would a bit of clay in his hands? Am I subject to the Gospel's
+authority, and is the word in which God has revealed Himself to me the
+word which dominates and impels all my life? 'Whereunto we have already
+attained, by the same let us walk.'
+
+But we shall not do that without a distinct effort. For it is a great
+deal easier to live from hand to mouth than to live by principle. It is
+a great deal easier to accept what seems forced upon us by circumstances
+than to exercise control over the circumstances, and make them bend to
+God's holy will. It is a great deal easier to take counsel of
+inclination, and to put the reins in the hands of impulses, passions,
+desires, tastes, or even habits, than it is, at each fresh moment, to
+seek for fresh impulses from a fresh illumination from the ancient and
+yet ever fresh truth. The old kings of France used to be kept with all
+royal state in the palace, but they were not allowed to do anything. And
+there was a rough, unworshipped man that stood by their side, and who
+was the real ruler of the realm. That is what a great many professing
+Christians do with their creeds. They instal them in some inner chamber
+that they very seldom visit, and leave them there, in dignified
+idleness, and the real working ruler of their lives is found elsewhere.
+Let us see to it, brethren, that all our thoughts are incarnated in our
+deeds, and that all our deeds are brought into immediate connection with
+the great principles of God's word. Live by that law, and we live at
+liberty.
+
+And, then, remember that this translating of creed into conduct is the
+only condition of growing illumination. When we act upon a belief, the
+belief grows. That is the source of a great deal of stupid obstinacy in
+this world, because men have been so long accustomed to go upon certain
+principles that it seems incredible to them but that these principles
+should be true. But that, too, is at the bottom of a great deal of
+intelligent and noble firmness of adherence to the true. A man who has
+tested a principle because he has lived upon it has confidence in it
+that nobody else can have.
+
+Projectors may have beautiful specifications with attractive pictures of
+their new inventions; they look very well upon paper, but we must see
+them working before we are sure of their worth. And so, here is this
+great body of Divine truth, which assumes to be sufficient for guidance,
+for conduct, for comfort, for life. Live upon it, and thereby your grasp
+of it and your confidence in it will be immensely increased. And no man
+has a right to say 'I have rejected Christianity as untrue,' unless he
+has put it to the test by living upon it; and if he has, he will never
+say it. A Swiss traveller goes into a shop and buys a brand-new
+alpenstock. Does he lean upon it with as much confidence as another man
+does, who has one with the names of all the mountains that it has helped
+him up branded on it from top to bottom? Take _this_ staff and lean on
+it. Live your creed, and you will believe your creed as you never will
+until you do. Obedience takes a man up to an elevation from which he
+sees further into the deep harmonies of truth. In all regions of life
+the principle holds good: 'To him that hath shall be given.' And it
+holds eminently in reference to our grasp of Christian principles. Use
+them and they grow; neglect them and they perish. Sometimes a man dies
+in a workhouse who has a store of guineas and notes wrapped up in rags
+somewhere about him; and so they have been of no use to him. If you want
+your capital to increase, trade with it. As the Lord said when He gave
+the servants their talents: 'Trade with them till I come.' The creed
+that is utilised is the creed that grows. And that is why so many of you
+Christian people have so little real intellectual grasp of the
+principles of Christianity, because you have not lived upon them, nor
+tried to do it.
+
+And, in like manner, another side of this thought is, be true to your
+convictions. There is no such barrier to a larger and wholesomer view of
+our duty as the neglect of anything that plainly is our duty. It stands
+there, an impassable cliff between us and all progress. Let us live and
+be what we know we ought to be, and we shall know better what we ought
+to be at the next moment.
+
+II. Secondly, let me put the Apostle's meaning in another exhortation,
+Go on as you have begun.
+
+'Whereunto we have already attained, by the same let us walk.' The
+various points to which the men have reached are all points in one
+straight line; and the injunction of my text is 'Keep the road.' There
+are a great many temptations to stray from it. There are nice smooth
+grassy bits by the side of it where it is a great deal easier walking.
+There are attractive things just a footstep or two out of the path--such
+a little deviation that it can easily be recovered. And so, like
+children gathering daisies in the field, we stray away from the path;
+and, like men on a moor, we then look round for it, and it is gone. The
+angle of divergence may be the acutest possible; the deviation when we
+begin may be scarcely visible, but if you draw a line at the sharpest
+angle and the least deviation from a straight line, and carry it out far
+enough, there will be space between it and the line from which it
+started ample to hold a universe. Then, let us take care of small
+deviations from the plain straight path, and give no heed to the
+seductions that lie on either side, but 'whereunto we have already
+attained, by _the same_ let us walk.'
+
+There are temptations, too, to slacken our speed. The river runs far
+more slowly in its latter course than when it came babbling and leaping
+down the hillside. And sometimes a Christian life seems as if it crept
+rather than ran, like those sluggish streams in the Fen country, which
+move so slowly that you cannot tell which way the water is flowing. Are
+not there all round us, are there not amongst ourselves instances of
+checked growth, of arrested development? There are people listening to
+me now, calling themselves--and I do not say that they have not a right
+to do so--Christians, who have not grown a bit for years, but stand at
+the very same point of attainment, both in knowledge and in purity and
+Christlikeness, as they were many, many days ago. I beseech you, listen
+to this exhortation of my text, 'Whereunto we have already attained, by
+the same let us walk,' and continue patient and persistent in the course
+that is set before us.
+
+III. The Apostle's injunction may be cast into this form, Be yourselves.
+
+The representation which underlies my text, and precedes it in the
+context, is that of the Christian community as a great body of
+travellers all upon one road, all with their faces turned in one
+direction, but at very different points on the path. The difference of
+position necessarily involves a difference in outlook. They see their
+duties, and they see the Word of God, in some respects diversely. And
+the Apostle's exhortation is: 'Let each man follow his own insight, and
+whereunto he has attained, by that, and not by his brother's attainment,
+by that let him walk.' From the very fact of the diversity of
+advancement there follows the plain duty for each of us to use our own
+eyesight, and of independent faithfulness to our own measure of light,
+as the guide which we are bound to follow.
+
+There is a dreadful want, in the ordinary Christian life, of any
+appearance of first-hand communication with Jesus Christ, and daring to
+be myself, and to act on the insight into His will which Christ has
+given _me_.
+
+Conventional Godliness, Christian people cut after one pattern, a little
+narrow round of certain statutory duties and obligations, a parrot-like
+repetition of certain words, a mechanical copying of certain methods of
+life, an oppressive sameness, mark so much of modern religion. What a
+freshening up there would come into all Christian communities if every
+man lived by his own perception of truth and duty! If a musician in an
+orchestra is listening to his neighbour's note and time, he will lose
+many an indication from the conductor that would have kept him far more
+right, if he had attended to it. And if, instead of taking our beliefs
+and our conduct from one another, or from the average of Christian men
+round us, we went straight to Jesus Christ and said to Him, 'What
+wouldst _Thou_ have _me_ to do?' there would be a different aspect over
+Christendom from what there is to-day. The fact of individual
+responsibility, according to the measure of our individual light, and
+faithful following of that, wheresoever it may lead us, are the grand
+and stirring principles that come from these words. 'Whereunto we have
+already attained,' by that--and by no other man's attainment or
+rule--let us walk.
+
+But do not let us forget that that same faithful independence and
+independent faithfulness because Christ speaks to us, and we will not
+let any other voice blend with His, are quite consistent with, and,
+indeed, demand, the frank recognition of our brother's equal right. If
+we more often thought of all the great body of Christian people as an
+army, united in its diversity, its line of march stretching for leagues,
+and some in the van, and some in the main body, and some in the rear,
+but all one, we should be more tolerant of divergences, more charitable
+in our judgment of the laggards, more patient in waiting for them to
+come up with us, and more wise and considerate in moderating our pace
+sometimes to meet theirs. All who love Jesus Christ are on the same road
+and bound for the same home. Let us be contented that they shall be at
+different stages on the path, seeing that we know that they will all
+reach the Temple above.
+
+IV. Lastly, cherish the consciousness of imperfection and the confidence
+of success.
+
+'Whereunto we have attained' implies that that is only a partial
+possession of a far greater whole. The road is not finished at the stage
+where we stand. And, on the other hand, 'by the same let us walk,'
+implies that beyond the present point the road runs on equally patent
+and pervious to our feet. These two convictions, of my own imperfection
+and of the certainty of my reaching the great perfectness beyond, are
+indispensable to all Christian progress. As soon as a man begins to
+think that he has realised his ideal, Good-bye! to all advance. The
+artist, the student, the man of business, all must have gleaming before
+them an unattained object, if they are ever to be stirred to energy and
+to run with patience the race that is set before them.
+
+The more distinctly that a man is conscious of his own imperfection in
+the Christian life, the more he will be stung and stirred into
+earnestness and energy of effort, if only, side by side with the
+consciousness of imperfection, there springs triumphant the confidence
+of success. That will give strength to the feeble knees; that will lift
+a man buoyant over difficulties; that will fire desire; that will
+stimulate and solidify effort; that will make the long, monotonous
+stretches of the road easy, the rough places plain, the crooked things
+straight. Over all reluctant, repellent duties it will bear us, in all
+weariness it will re-invigorate us. We are saved by hope, and the more
+brightly there burns before us, not as a tremulous hope, but as a future
+certainty, the thought, 'I shall be like Him, for I shall see Him as He
+is,' the more shall I set my face to the loved goal and my feet to the
+dusty road, and 'press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling
+of God.' Christian progress comes out of the clash and collision of
+these two things, like that of flint and steel--the consciousness of
+imperfection and the confidence of success. And they who thus are driven
+by the one and drawn by the other, in all their consciousness of failure
+are yet blessed, and are crowned at last with that which they believed
+before it came.
+
+'Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house'--the prize won is heaven. But
+'blessed are they in whose hearts are the ways'--the prize desired and
+strained after is heaven upon earth. We may all live a life of continual
+advancement, each step leading upwards, for the road always climbs, to
+purer air, grander scenery, and a wider view. And yonder, progress will
+still be the law, for they who here have followed the Lamb, and sought
+to make Him their pattern and Commander, will there 'follow Him
+whithersoever He goeth.' If here we walk according to that 'whereunto we
+have attained,' there He shall say, 'They will walk with Me in white,
+for they are worthy.'
+
+
+
+
+WARNINGS AND HOPES
+
+          'Brethren, be ye imitators together of me, and
+          mark them which so walk even as ye have us for an
+          ensample. For many walk, of whom I told you often,
+          and now tell you even weeping, that they are the
+          enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is
+          perdition, whose God is the belly, and whose glory
+          is in their shame, who mind earthly things. For
+          our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we
+          wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who
+          shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation,
+          that it may be conformed to the body of His glory,
+          according to the working whereby he is able even
+          to subject all things unto Himself.'--PHIL. iii.
+          17-21 (R.V.).
+
+
+There is a remarkable contrast in tone between the sad warnings which
+begin this section and the glowing hopes with which it closes, and that
+contrast is made the more striking when we notice that the Apostle binds
+the gloom of the one and the radiance of the other by 'For,' which makes
+the latter the cause of the former.
+
+The exhortation in which the Apostle begins by proposing himself as an
+example sounds strange on any lips, and, most of all, on his, but we
+have to note that the points in which he sets himself up as a pattern
+are obviously those on which he touched in the preceding outpouring of
+his heart, and which he has already commended to the Philippians in
+pleading with them to be 'thus minded.' What he desires them to copy is
+his self-distrust, his willingness to sacrifice all things to win
+Christ, his clear sense of his own shortcomings, and his eager straining
+towards as yet unreached perfection. His humility is not disproved by
+such words, but what is remarkable in them is the clear consciousness of
+the main direction and set of his life. We may well hesitate to take
+them for ours, but every Christian man and woman ought to be able to say
+this much. If we cannot in some degree declare that we are so walking,
+we have need to look to our foundations. Such words are really in sharp
+contrast to those in which Jesus is held forth as an example. Notice,
+too, how quickly he passes to associate others with him, and to merge
+the 'Me' into 'Us.' We need not ask who his companions were, since
+Timothy is associated with him at the beginning of the letter.
+
+The exhortation is enforced by pointing to others who had gone far
+astray, and of whom he had warned the Philippians often, possibly by
+letter. Who these unworthy disciples were remains obscure. They were
+clearly not the Judaisers branded in verse 2, who were teachers seeking
+to draw away the Philippians, while these others seem to have been
+'enemies of the Cross of Christ,' not by open hostility nor by
+theoretical errors, but by practical worldliness, and that in these
+ways; they make sense their God, they are proud of what is really their
+disgrace, namely, they are shaking off the restraints of morality; and,
+most black though it may seem least so, they 'mind earthly things' on
+which thought, feeling, and interest are concentrated. Let us lay to
+heart the lesson that such direction of the current of a life to the
+things of earth makes men 'enemies of the Cross of Christ,' whatever
+their professions, and will surely make their end perdition, whatever
+their apparent prosperity. Paul's life seemed loss and was gain; these
+men's lives seemed gain and was loss.
+
+From this dark picture charged with gloom, and in one corner showing
+white waves breaking far out against an inky sky, and a vessel with torn
+sails driving on the rocks, the Apostle turns with relief to the
+brighter words in which he sets forth the true affinities and hopes of a
+Christian. They all stand or fall with the belief in the Resurrection of
+Christ and His present life in His glorified corporeal manhood.
+
+I. Our true metropolis.
+
+The Revised Version puts in the margin as an alternative rendering for
+'citizenship' commonwealth, and there appears to be a renewed allusion
+here to the fact already noted that Philippi was a 'colony,' and that
+its inhabitants were Roman citizens. Paul uses a very emphatic word for
+'is' here which it is difficult to reproduce in English, but which
+suggests essential reality.
+
+The reason why that heavenly citizenship is ours in no mere play of the
+imagination but in most solid substance, is because He is there for whom
+we look. Where Christ is, is our Mother-country, our Fatherland,
+according to His own promise, 'I go to prepare a place for you.' His
+being there draws our thoughts and sets our affections on Heaven.
+
+II. The colonists looking for the King.
+
+The Emperors sometimes made a tour of the provinces. Paul here thinks of
+Christians as waiting for their Emperor to come across the seas to this
+outlying corner of His dominions. The whole grand name is given here,
+all the royal titles to express solemnity and dignity, and the character
+in which we look for Him is that of Saviour. We still need salvation,
+and though in one sense it is past, in another it will not be ours until
+He comes the second time without sin unto salvation. The eagerness of
+the waiting which should characterise the expectant citizens is
+wonderfully described by the Apostle's expression for it, which
+literally means to look away out--with emphasis on both
+prepositions--like a sentry on the walls of a besieged city whose eyes
+are ever fixed on the pass amongst the hills through which the relieving
+forces are to come.
+
+It may be said that Paul is here expressing an expectation which was
+disappointed. No doubt the early Church looked for the speedy return of
+our Lord and were mistaken. We are distinctly told that in that point
+there was no revelation of the future, and no doubt they, like the
+prophets of old, 'searched what manner of time the spirit of Christ
+which was in them did signify.' In this very letter Paul speaks of death
+as very probable for himself, so that he had precisely the same double
+attitude which has been the Church's ever since, in that he looked for
+Christ's coming as possible in his own time, and yet anticipated the
+other alternative. It is difficult, no doubt, to cherish the vivid
+anticipation of any future event, and not to have any certainty as to
+its date. But if we are sure that a given event will come sometime and
+do not know when it may come, surely the wise man is he who thinks to
+himself it may come any time, and not he who treats it as if it would
+come at no time. The two possible alternatives which Paul had before him
+have in common the same certainty as to the fact and uncertainty as to
+the date, and Paul had them both before his mind with the same vivid
+anticipation.
+
+The practical effect of this hope of the returning Lord on our 'walk'
+will be all to bring it nearer Paul's. It will not suffer us to make
+sense our God, nor to fix our affections on things above; it will
+stimulate all energies in pressing towards the goal, and will turn away
+our eyes from the trivialities and transiencies that press upon us, away
+out toward the distance where 'far off His coming shone.'
+
+III. The Christian sharing in Christ's glory.
+
+The same precise distinction between 'fashion' and 'form,' which we have
+had occasion to notice in Chapter II., recurs here. The 'fashion' of
+the body of our humiliation is external and transient; the 'form' of the
+body of His glory to which we are to be assimilated consists of
+essential characteristics or properties, and may be regarded as being
+almost synonymous with 'Nature.' Observing the distinction which the
+Apostle draws by the use of these two words, and remembering their force
+in the former instance of their occurrence, we shall not fail to give
+force to the representation that in the Resurrection the fleeting
+fashion of the bodily frame will be altered, and the glorified bodies of
+the saints made participant of the essential qualities of His.
+
+We further note that there is no trace of false asceticism or of gnostic
+contempt for the body in its designation as 'of our humiliation.' Its
+weaknesses, its limitations, its necessities, its corruption and its
+death, sufficiently manifest our lowliness, while, on the other hand,
+the body in which Christ's glory is manifested, and which is the
+instrument for His glory, is presented in fullest contrast to it.
+
+The great truth of Christ's continual glorified manhood is the first
+which we draw from these words. The story of our Lord's Resurrection
+suggests indeed that He brought the same body from the tomb as loving
+hands had laid there. The invitation to Thomas to thrust his hands into
+the prints of the nails, the similar invitation to the assembled
+disciples, and His partaking of food in their presence, seemed to forbid
+the idea of His rising changed. Nor can we suppose that the body of His
+glory would be congruous with His presence on earth. But we have to
+think of His ascension as gradual, and of Himself as 'changed by still
+degrees' as He ascended, and so as returned to where the 'glory which He
+had with the Father before the world was,' as the Shechinah cloud
+received Him out of the sight of the gazers below. If this be the true
+reading of His last moments on earth, He united in His own experience
+both the ways of leaving it which His followers experience--the way of
+sleep which is death, and the way of 'being changed.'
+
+But at whatever point the change came, He now wears, and for ever will
+wear, the body of a man. That is the dominant fact on which is built the
+Christian belief in a future life, and which gives to that belief all
+its solidity and force, and separates it from vague dreams of
+immortality which are but a wish tremblingly turned into a hope, or a
+dread shudderingly turned into an expectation. The man Christ Jesus is
+the pattern and realised ideal of human life on earth, the revelation of
+the divine life through a human life, and in His glorified humanity is
+no less the pattern and realised ideal of what human nature may become.
+The present state of the departed is incomplete in that they have not a
+body by which they can act on, and be acted on by, an external universe.
+We cannot indeed suppose them lapped in age-long unconsciousness, and it
+may be that the 'dead in Christ' are through Him brought into some
+knowledge of externals, but for the full-summed perfection of their
+being, the souls under the altar have to wait for the resurrection of
+the body. If resurrection is needful for completion of manhood, then
+completed manhood must necessarily be set in a locality, and the
+glorified manhood of Jesus must also now be in a place. To think thus of
+it and of Him is not to vulgarise the Christian conception of Heaven,
+but to give it a definiteness and force which it sorely lacks in popular
+thinking. Nor is the continual manhood of our Lord less precious in its
+influence in helping our familiar approach to Him. It tells us that He
+is still and for ever the same as when on earth, glad to welcome all who
+came and to help and heal all who need Him. It is one of ourselves who
+'sitteth at the right hand of God.' His manhood brings Him memories
+which bind Him to us sorrowing and struggling, and His glory clothes Him
+with power to meet all our needs, to stanch all our wounds, to satisfy
+all our desires.
+
+Our text leads us to think of the wondrous transformation into Christ's
+likeness. We know not what are the differences between the body of our
+humiliation and the body of His glory, but we must not be led away by
+the word Resurrection to fall into the mistake of supposing that in
+death we 'sow that body which shall be.' Paul's great chapter in I.
+Corinthians should have destroyed that error for ever, and it is a
+singular instance of the persistency of the most unsupported mistakes
+that there are still thousands of people who in spite of all that they
+know of what befalls our mortal bodies, and of how their parts pass into
+other forms, still hold by that crude idea. We have no material by which
+to construct any, even the vaguest, outline of that body that shall be.
+We can only run out the contrasts as suggested by Paul in 1st
+Corinthians, and let the dazzling greatness of the positive thought
+which he gives in the text lift our expectations. Weakness will become
+power, corruption incorruption, liability to death immortality,
+dishonour glory, and the frame which belonged and corresponded to 'that
+which was natural,' shall be transformed into a body which is the organ
+of that which is spiritual. These things tell us little, but they may
+be all fused into the great light of likeness to the body of His glory;
+and though that tells us even less, it feeds hope more and satisfies our
+hearts even whilst it does not feed our curiosity. We may well be
+contented to acknowledge that 'it doth not yet appear what we shall be,'
+when we can go on to say, 'We know that when He shall appear we shall be
+like Him.' It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master.
+
+But we must not forget that the Apostle regards even this overwhelming
+change as but part of a mightier process, even the universal subjection
+of all things unto Christ Himself. The Emperor reduces the whole world
+to subjection, and the glorifying of the body as the climax of the
+universal subjugation represents it as the end of the process of
+assimilation begun in this mortal life. There is no possibility of a
+resurrection unto life unless that life has been begun before death.
+That ultimate glorious body is needed to bring men into correspondence
+with the external universe. As is the locality so is the body. Flesh and
+blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. This whole series of thoughts
+makes our glorious resurrection the result not of death, but of Christ's
+living power on His people. It is only in the measure in which He lives
+in us and we in Him, and are partaking by daily participation in the
+power of His Resurrection, that we shall be made subjects of the working
+whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself, and finally
+be conformed to the body of His glory.
+
+
+
+
+_EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+          PHILIPPIANS, COLOSSIANS, FIRST
+          AND SECOND THESSALONIANS
+          AND FIRST TIMOTHY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PHILIPPIANS
+
+A TENDER EXHORTATION (Phil. iv. 1)                                1
+
+NAMES IN THE BOOK OF LIFE (Phil. iv. 3)                          11
+
+REJOICE EVERMORE (Phil. iv. 4)                                   21
+
+HOW TO OBEY AN IMPOSSIBLE INJUNCTION (Phil. iv. 6)               31
+
+THE WARRIOR PEACE (Phil. iv. 7)                                  39
+
+THINK ON THESE THINGS (Phil. iv. 8)                              48
+
+HOW TO SAY 'THANK YOU' (Phil. iv. 10-14, R.V.)                   58
+
+GIFTS GIVEN, SEED SOWN (Phil. iv. 15-19, R.V.)                   66
+
+FAREWELL WORDS (Phil. iv. 20-23, R.V.)                           74
+
+
+COLOSSIANS
+
+SAINTS, BELIEVERS, BRETHREN (Col. i. 2)                          82
+
+THE GOSPEL-HOPE (Col. i. 5)                                      92
+
+'ALL POWER' (Col. i. 11, R.V.)                                   99
+
+THANKFUL FOR INHERITANCE (Col. i. 12, R.V.)                     106
+
+CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR (Col. i. 29)                                114
+
+CHRISTIAN PROGRESS (Col. ii. 6, 7, R.V.)                        124
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST (Col. iii. 1-15)                              127
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST (Col. iii. 1, 2)                              134
+
+WITHOUT AND WITHIN (Col. iv. 5)                                 143
+
+
+I. THESSALONIANS
+
+FAITH, LOVE, HOPE, AND THEIR FRUITS (1 Thess. i. 3)             155
+
+GOD'S TRUMPET (1 Thess. i. 8)                                   164
+
+WALKING WORTHILY (1 Thess. ii. 12)                              170
+
+SMALL DUTIES AND THE GREAT HOPE (1 Thess. iv. 9-18; v. 1, 2)    183
+
+SLEEPING THROUGH JESUS (1 Thess. iv. 14)                        190
+
+THE WORK AND ARMOUR OF THE CHILDREN OF THE DAY (1 Thess. v. 8)  198
+
+WAKING AND SLEEPING (1 Thess. v. 10)                            210
+
+EDIFICATION (1 Thess. v. 11)                                    220
+
+CONTINUAL PRAYER AND ITS EFFECTS (1 Thess. v. 16-18)            229
+
+PAUL'S EARLIEST TEACHING (1 Thess. v. 27)                       237
+
+
+II. THESSALONIANS
+
+CHRIST GLORIFIED IN GLORIFIED MEN (2 Thess. i. 10)              248
+
+WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING (2 Thess. i. 11, 12)                     256
+
+EVERLASTING CONSOLATION AND GOOD HOPE (2 Thess. ii. 16, 17)     267
+
+THE HEART'S HOME AND GUIDE (2 Thess. iii. 5)                    277
+
+THE LORD OF PEACE AND THE PEACE OF THE LORD (2 Thess. iii. 16)  288
+
+
+I. TIMOTHY
+
+THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT (1 Tim. i. 5)                        298
+
+'THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF THE HAPPY GOD' (1 Tim. i. 11)       308
+
+THE GOSPEL IN SMALL (1 Tim. i. 15)                              316
+
+THE CHIEF OF SINNERS (1 Tim. i. 15)                             326
+
+A TEST CASE (1 Tim. i. 16)                                      335
+
+THE GLORY OF THE KING (1 Tim. i. 17)                            344
+
+WHERE AND HOW TO PRAY (1 Tim. ii. 8)                            353
+
+SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS (1 Tim. iv. 7)                              361
+
+THE ONE WITNESS, THE MANY CONFESSORS (1 Tim. vi. 12-14)         370
+
+THE CONDUCT THAT SECURES THE REAL LIFE (1 Tim. vi. 19)          379
+
+
+
+
+A TENDER EXHORTATION
+
+          'Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed
+          for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord,
+          my dearly beloved.'--PHIL. iv. 1.
+
+
+The words I have chosen set forth very simply and beautifully the bond
+which knit Paul and these Philippian Christians together, and the chief
+desire which his Apostolic love had for them. I venture to apply them to
+ourselves, and I speak now especially to the members of my own church
+and congregation.
+
+I. Let us note, then, first, the personal bond which gives force to the
+teacher's words.
+
+That Church at Philippi was, if Paul had any favourites amongst his
+children, his favourite child. The circumstances of its formation may
+have had something to do with that. It was planted by himself; it was
+the first Church in Europe; perhaps the Philippian gaoler and Lydia were
+amongst the 'beloved' and 'longed for' ones who were 'his joy and
+crown.' But be that as it may, all through the letter we can feel the
+throbbing of a very loving heart, and the tenderness of a strong man,
+which is the most tender of all things.
+
+Note how he addresses them. There is no assumption of Apostolic
+authority, but he puts himself on their level, and speaks to them as
+brethren. Then he lets his heart out, and tells them how they lived in
+his love, and how, of course, when he was parted from them, he had
+desired to be with them. And then he touches a deeper and a sacreder
+chord when he contemplates the results of the relation between them, if
+he on his side, and they on theirs, were faithful to it. It says much
+for the teacher, and for the taught, if he can truly say 'My joy,'--'I
+have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in the truth.'
+And not only were they his joy, but they who, by their faithfulness,
+have become his joy, will on that one day in the far future, be his
+'crown.' That metaphor carries on the thoughts to the great Judgment
+Day, and introduces a solemn element, which is as truly present, dear
+friends, in our relation to one another, little of an Apostle as I am,
+as it was in the relation between Paul and the Philippians. They who
+'turn many to righteousness shine as the brightness of the firmament,'
+because those whom they have turned, 'shine as lights in the world.' And
+at that last august and awful tribunal, where you will have to give an
+account for your listening, as I for my speaking, the crown of victory
+laid on the locks of a faithful teacher is the characters of those whom
+he has taught. 'Who is my joy and hope, and crown of rejoicing?' Are not
+even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming?
+
+Now, notice, further, how such mutual affection is needed to give force
+to the teacher's exhortation. Preaching from unloved lips never does any
+good. It irritates, or leaves untouched. Affection melts and opens the
+heart to the entrance of the word. And preaching from unloving lips does
+very little good either. So speaking, I condemn myself. There are men
+who handle God's great, throbbing message of love so coldly as that they
+ice even the Gospel. There are men who have a strange gift of taking all
+the sap and the fervour out of the word that they proclaim, making the
+very grapes of Eshcol into dried raisins. And I feel for myself that my
+ministry may well have failed in this respect. For who is there that can
+modulate his voice so as to reproduce the music of that great message,
+or who can soften and open his heart so as that it shall be a worthy
+vehicle of the infinite love of God?
+
+But, dear brethren, though conscious of many failures in this respect, I
+yet thank God that here, at the end of nearly forty years of a ministry,
+I can look you in the face and believe that your look responds to mine,
+and that I can take these words as the feathers for my arrow, as that
+which will make words otherwise weak go further, and may help to write
+the precepts upon hearts, and to bring them to bear in practice--'My
+beloved and longed for'; 'my joy and my crown.'
+
+Such feelings do not need to be always spoken. There is very little
+chance of us Northerners erring on the side of letting our hearts speak
+too fully and frequently. Perhaps we should be all the better if we were
+a little less reticent, but at any rate you and I can surely trust each
+other after so many years, and now and then, as to-day, let our hearts
+speak.
+
+II. Secondly, notice the all-sufficient precept which such love gives.
+'So stand fast in the Lord.'
+
+That is a very favourite figure of Paul's, as those of you who have any
+reasonable degree of familiarity with his letters will know. Here it
+carries with it, as it generally does, the idea of resistance against
+antagonistic force. But the main thought of it is that of continuous
+steadfastness in our union with Jesus Christ. It applies, of course, to
+the intellect, but not mainly, and certainly not exclusively to
+intellectual adherence to the truths spoken in the Gospel. It covers
+the whole ground of the whole man; will, conscience, heart, practical
+effort, as well as understanding. And it is really Paul's version, with
+a characteristic dash of pugnacity in it, of our Lord's yet deeper and
+calmer words, 'Abide in Me and I in you.' It is the same exhortation as
+Barnabas gave to the infantile church at Antioch, when, to these men
+just rescued from heathenism and profoundly ignorant of much which we
+suppose it absolutely necessary that Christians should know, he had only
+one thing to say, exhorting them all, that 'with purpose of heart they
+should cleave to the Lord.'
+
+Steadfast continuance of personal union with Jesus Christ, extending
+through all the faculties of our nature, and into every corner of our
+lives, is the kernel of this great exhortation. And he who fulfils it
+has little left unfulfilled. Of course, as I said, there is a very
+strong suggestion that such 'standing' is by no means an easy thing, or
+accomplished without much antagonism; and it may help us if, just for a
+moment, we run over the various forms of resistance which they have to
+overcome who stand fast. Nothing stands where it is without effort. That
+is true in the moral world, although in the physical world the law of
+motion is that nothing moves without force being applied to it.
+
+What are the things that would shake our steadfastness, and sweep us
+away? Well, there are, first, the tiny, continuously acting, and
+therefore all but omnipotent forces of daily life--duties, occupations,
+distractions of various kinds--which tend to move us imperceptibly away,
+as by the slow sliding of a glacier, from the hope of the Gospel. There
+is nothing so strong as a gentle pressure, equably and unintermittently
+applied. It is far mightier than thrusts and hammerings and sudden
+assaults. I stood some time ago looking at the Sphinx. The hard
+stone--so hard that it turns the edge of a sculptor's chisel--has been
+worn away, and the solemn features all but obliterated. What by? The
+continual attrition of multitudinous grains of sand from the desert. The
+little things that are always at work upon us are the things that have
+most power to sweep us away from our steadfastness in Jesus Christ.
+
+Then there are, besides, the sudden assaults of strong temptations, of
+sense and flesh, or of a more subtle and refined character. If a man is
+standing loosely, in some careless _degage_ attitude, and a sudden
+impact comes upon him, over he goes. The boat upon a mountain-locked
+lake encounters a sudden gust when opposite the opening of a glen, and
+unless there be a very strong hand and a watchful eye at the helm, is
+sure to be upset. Upon us there come, in addition to that silent
+continuity of imperceptible but most real pressure, sudden gusts of
+temptation which are sure to throw us over, unless we are well and
+always on our guard against them.
+
+In addition to all these, there are ups and downs of our own nature, the
+fluctuations which are sure to occur in any human heart, when faith
+seems to ebb and falter, and love to die down almost into cold ashes.
+But, dear brethren, whilst we shall always be liable to these
+fluctuations of feeling, it is possible for us to have, deep down below
+these, a central core of our personality, in which unchanging continuity
+may abide. The depths of the ocean know nothing of the tides on the
+surface that are due to the mutable moon. We can have in our inmost
+hearts steadfastness, immovableness, even though the surface may be
+ruffled. Make your spirits like one of those great cathedrals whose
+thick walls keep out the noises of the world, and in whose still
+equability there is neither excessive heat nor excessive cold, but an
+approximately uniform temperature, at midsummer and at midwinter. 'Stand
+fast in the Lord.'
+
+Now, my text not only gives an exhortation, but, in the very act of
+giving it, suggests how it is to be fulfilled. For that phrase 'in the
+Lord' not only indicates _where_ we are to stand, but also _how_. That
+is to say--it is only in proportion as we keep ourselves in union with
+Christ, in heart and mind, and will, and work, that we shall stand
+steadfast. The lightest substances may be made stable, if they are glued
+on to something stable. You can mortice a bit of thin stone into the
+living rock, and then it will stand 'four-square to every wind that
+blows.' So it is only on condition of our keeping ourselves in Jesus
+Christ, that we are able to keep ourselves steadfast, and to present a
+front of resistance that does not yield one foot, either to
+imperceptible continuous pressure, to sudden assaults, or to the
+fluctuations of our own changeful dispositions and tempers. The ground
+on which a man stands has a great deal to do with the firmness of his
+footing. You cannot stand fast upon a bed of slime, or upon a sand-bank
+which is being undermined by the tides. And if we, changeful creatures,
+are to be steadfast in any region, our surest way of being so is to knit
+ourselves to Him 'who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,'
+and from whose immortality will flow some copy and reflection of itself
+into our else changeful natures.
+
+Still further, in regard to this commandment, I would pray you to notice
+that very eloquent little word which stands at the beginning of it.
+'_So_ stand fast in the Lord.' 'So.' How? That throws us back to what
+the Apostle has been saying in the previous context. And what has he
+been saying there? The keynote of the previous chapter is progress--'I
+follow after; I press toward the mark, forgetting the things that are
+behind, and reaching forth to the things that are before.' To these
+exhortations to progress he appends this remarkable exhortation:
+'So'--that is, by progress--'stand fast in the Lord,' which being turned
+into other words is just this--if you stand still, you will not stand
+fast. There can be no steadfastness without advancement. If a man is not
+going forward, he is going backward. The only way to ensure stability is
+'pressing toward the mark.' Why, a child's top only stands straight up
+as long as it is revolving. If a man on a bicycle stops, he tumbles. And
+so, in the depths of a Christian life, as in all science, and all walks
+of human activity, the condition of steadfastness is advance. Therefore,
+dear brethren, let no man deceive himself with the notion that he can
+keep at the same point of religious experience and of Christian
+character. You are either more of a Christian, or less of one, than you
+were at a past time. '_So_, stand fast,' and remember that to stand
+_still_ is _not_ to stand _fast_.
+
+Now, whilst all these things that I have been trying to say have
+reference to Christian people at all stages of their spiritual history,
+they have a very especial reference to those in the earlier part of
+Christian life.
+
+And I want to say to those who have only just begun to run the Christian
+life, very lovingly and very earnestly, that this is a text for them.
+For, alas! there is nothing more frequent than that, after the first
+dawnings of a Christian life in a heart, there should come a period of
+overclouding; or that, as John Bunyan has taught us, when Christian has
+gone through the wicket-gate, he should fall very soon into the Slough
+of Despond. One looks round, and sees how many professing Christians
+there are who, perhaps, were nearer Jesus Christ on the day of their
+conversion than they have ever been since, and how many cases of
+arrested development there are amongst professing and real Christians;
+so that when for the 'time they ought to be teachers, they have need' to
+be taught again; and when, after the number of years that have passed,
+they ought to be full-grown men, they are but babes yet. And so I say to
+you, dear young friends, stand fast. Do not let the world attract you
+again. Keep near to Jesus. 'Hold fast that thou hast; let no man take
+thy crown.'
+
+III. Lastly, we have here a great motive which encourages obedience to
+this command.
+
+People generally pass over that 'Therefore' which begins my text, but it
+is full of significance and of importance. It links the precept which we
+have been considering with the immediately preceding hope which the
+Apostle has so triumphantly proclaimed, when he says that 'we look for
+the Saviour from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change the
+body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto the body of
+His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue
+all things to Himself.'
+
+So there rises before us that twofold great hope; that the Master
+Himself is coming to the succour of His servants, and that when He
+comes, He will perfect the incomplete work which has been begun in them
+by their faith and steadfastness, and will change their whole humanity
+so that it shall become participant of, and conformed to, the glory of
+His own triumphant manhood.
+
+That hope is presented by the Apostle as having its natural sequel in
+the 'steadfastness' of my text, and that 'steadfastness' is regarded by
+the Apostle as drawing its most animating motives from the contemplation
+of that great hope. Blessed be God! The effort of the Christian life is
+not one which is extorted by fear, or by the cold sense of duty. There
+are no taskmasters with whips to stand over the heart that responds to
+Christ and to His love. But hope and joy, as well as love, are the
+animating motives which make sacrifices easy, soften the yoke that is
+laid upon our shoulders, and turn labour into joy and delight.
+
+So, dear brethren, we have to set before us this great hope, that Jesus
+Christ is coming, and that, therefore, our labour on ourselves is sure
+not to be in vain. Work that is done hopelessly is not done long, and
+there is no heart in it whilst it is being done. But if we know that
+Christ will appear, 'and that when He who is our life shall appear, we
+also shall appear with Him in glory,' then we may go to work in keeping
+ourselves steadfast in Him, with cheery hearts, and with full assurance
+that what we have been doing will have a great result.
+
+You have read, no doubt, about some little force in North-West India,
+hemmed in by enemies. They may well hold out resolutely and hopefully
+when they know that three relieving armies are converging upon their
+stronghold. And we, too, know that our Emperor is coming to raise the
+siege. We may well stand fast with such a prospect. We may well work at
+our own sanctifying when we know that our Lord Himself--like some
+master-sculptor who comes to his pupil's imperfectly blocked-out work,
+and takes his chisel in his hand, and with a touch or two completes
+it--will come and finish what we, by His grace, imperfectly began. 'So
+stand fast in the Lord,' because you have hope that the Lord is about to
+come, and that when He comes you will be like Him.
+
+One last word. That steadfastness is the condition without which we have
+no right to entertain that hope.
+
+If we keep ourselves near Christ, and if by keeping ourselves near Him,
+we are becoming day by day liker Him, then we may have calm confidence
+that He will perfect that which concerns us. But I, for my part, can
+find nothing, either in Scripture or in the analogy of God's moral
+dealings with us in the world, to warrant the holding out of the
+expectation to a man that, if he has kept himself apart from Jesus
+Christ and his quickening and cleansing power all his life long, Jesus
+Christ will take him in hand after he dies, and change him into His
+likeness. Don't you risk it! Begin by 'standing fast in the Lord.' He
+will do the rest then, not else. The cloth must be dipped into the
+dyer's vat, and lie there, if it is to be tinged with the colour. The
+sensitive plate must be patiently kept in position for many hours, if
+invisible stars are to photograph themselves upon it. The vase must be
+held with a steady hand beneath the fountain, if it is to be filled.
+Keep yourselves in Jesus Christ. Then here you will begin to be changed
+into the same image, and when He comes He will come as your Saviour, and
+complete your uncompleted work, and make you altogether like Himself.
+
+'Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and
+crown, so stand fast in the Lord, dearly beloved.'
+
+
+
+
+NAMES IN THE BOOK OF LIFE
+
+          'Other my fellow-labourers whose names are in the
+          book of life.'--PHIL. iv. 3.
+
+
+Paul was as gentle as he was strong. Winsome courtesy and delicate
+considerateness lay in his character, in beautiful union with fiery
+impetuosity and undaunted tenacity of conviction. We have here a
+remarkable instance of his quick apprehension of the possible effects of
+his words, and of his nervous anxiety not to wound even unreasonable
+susceptibilities.
+
+He had had occasion to mention three of his fellow-workers, and he
+wishes to associate with them others whom he does not purpose to name.
+Lest any of these should be offended by the omission, he soothes them
+with this graceful, half-apologetic reminder that their names are
+inscribed on a better page than his. It is as if he had said, 'Do not
+mind though I do not mention you individually. You can well afford to be
+anonymous in my letter since your names are inscribed in the Book of
+Life.'
+
+_There_ is a consolation for obscure good people, who need not expect to
+live except in two or three loving hearts; and whose names will only be
+preserved on mouldering tombstones that will convey no idea to the
+reader. We may well dispense with other commemoration if we have this.
+
+Now, this figure of the Book of Life appears in Scripture at intervals,
+almost from the beginning to the very end. The first instance of its
+occurrence is in that self-sacrificing, intercessory prayer of Moses,
+when he expressed his willingness to be 'blotted out of Thy book' as an
+atonement for the sin of Israel. Its last appearance is when the
+Apocalyptic Seer is told that none enter into the City of God come down
+from Heaven 'save those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of
+Life.' Of course in plain English the expression is just equivalent to
+being a real disciple of Jesus Christ. But then it presents that general
+notion under a metaphor which, in its various aspects, has a very
+distinct and stringent bearing upon our duties as well as upon our
+blessings and our hopes. I, therefore, wish to work out, as well as I
+can, the various thoughts suggested by this emblem.
+
+I. The first of them is Citizenship.
+
+The figure is, of course, originally drawn from the registers of the
+tribes of Israel. In that use, though not without a glance at some
+higher meaning, it appears in the Old Testament, where we read of 'those
+who are written among them living in Jerusalem'; or 'are written in the
+writing of the house of Israel.' The suggestion of being inscribed on
+the burgess-rolls of a city is the first idea connected with the word.
+In the New Testament, for instance, we find in the great passage in the
+Epistle to the Hebrews the two notions of the city and the census
+brought into immediate connection, where the writer says, 'Ye are come
+unto the city of the living God . . . and to the church of the first-born
+whose names are written in heaven.' In this very letter we have, only a
+verse or two before my text, the same idea of citizenship cropping up.
+'Our _citizenship_ is in Heaven, from whence also we look for the
+Saviour.' That, no doubt, helped to suggest to the Apostle the words of
+my text. And there is another verse in the same letter where the same
+idea comes out. 'Only act the citizen as becometh the Gospel of Christ.'
+Now, you will remember, possibly, that Philippi was, as the Acts of the
+Apostles tells us, a Roman colony. And the reference is exquisitely
+close-fitting to the circumstances of the people of that city. For a
+Roman colony was a bit of Rome in another land, and the citizens of
+Philippi had their names inscribed on the registers of the tribes of
+Rome. The writer himself was another illustration of the same thing, of
+living in a community to which he did not belong and of belonging to a
+community in which he did not live. For Paul was a native of Tarsus; and
+Paul, the native of the Asiatic Tarsus, was a Roman.
+
+So, then, the first thought that comes out of this great metaphor is
+that all of us, if we are Christian people, belong to another polity,
+another order of things than that in which our outward lives are spent.
+And the plain, practical conclusion that comes from it is, cultivate the
+sense of belonging to another order. Just as it swelled the heart of a
+Macedonian Philippian with pride, when he thought that he did not belong
+to the semi-barbarous people round about him, but that his name was
+written in the books that lay in the Capitol of Rome, so should we
+cultivate that sense of belonging to another order. It will make our
+work here none the worse, but it will fill our lives with the sense of
+nobler affinities, and point our efforts to grander work than any that
+belongs to 'the things that are seen and temporal.' Just as the little
+groups of Englishmen in treaty-ports own no allegiance to the laws of
+the country in which they live, but are governed by English statutes, so
+we have to take our orders from headquarters to which we have to
+report. Men in our colonies get their instructions from Downing Street.
+The officials there, appointed by the Home Government, think more of
+what they will say about them at Westminster than of what they say about
+them at Melbourne. So we are citizens of another country, and have to
+obey the laws of our own kingdom, and not those of the soil on which we
+dwell. Never mind about the opinions of men, the babblements of the
+people in the land you live in. To us, the main thing is that we be
+acceptable, well-pleasing unto Him. Are you solitary? Cultivate the
+sense of, in your solitude, being a member of a great community that
+stretches through all the ages, and binds into one the inhabitants of
+eternity and of time.
+
+Remember that this citizenship in the heavens is the highest honour that
+can be conferred upon a man. The patricians of Venice used to have their
+names inscribed upon what was called the 'golden book' that was kept in
+the Doge's Palace. If our names are written in the book of gold in the
+heavens, then we have higher dignities than any that belong to the
+fleeting chronicles of this passing, vain world. So we can accept with
+equanimity evil report or good report, and can acquiesce in a wholesome
+obscurity, and be careless though our names appear on no human records,
+and fill no trumpet of fame blown by earthly cheeks. Intellectual power,
+wealth, gratified ambition, and all the other things that men set before
+them, are small indeed compared with the honour, with the blessedness,
+with the repose and satisfaction that attend the conscious possession of
+citizenship in the heavens. Let us lay to heart the great words of the
+Master which put a cooling hand on all the feverish ambitions of earth.
+'In this rejoice, not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather
+rejoice that your names are written in heaven.'
+
+II. Then the second idea suggested by these words is the possession of
+the life which is life indeed.
+
+The 'Book of Life,' it is called in the New Testament. Its designation
+in the Old might as well be translated 'the book of living' as 'the book
+of life.' It is a register of the men who are truly alive.
+
+Now, that is but an imaginative way of putting the commonplace of the
+New Testament, that anything which is worth calling life comes to us,
+not by creation or physical generation, but by being born again through
+faith in Jesus Christ, and by receiving into our else dead spirits the
+life which He bestows upon all them that trust Him.
+
+In the New Testament 'life' is far more than 'being'; far more than
+physical existence; removed by a whole world from these lower
+conceptions, and finding its complete explanation only in the fact that
+the soul which is knit to God by conscious surrender, love, aspiration,
+and obedience, is the only soul that really lives. All else is
+death--death! He 'that liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth.' The
+ghastly imagination of one of our poets, of the dead man standing on the
+deck pulling at the ropes by the side of the living, is true in a very
+deep sense. In spite of all the feverish activities, the manifold
+vitalities of practical and intellectual life in the world, the deepest,
+truest, life of every man who is parted from God by alienation of will,
+by indifference, and neglect of love, lies sheeted and sepulchred in the
+depths of his own heart. Brethren, there is no life worth calling life,
+none to which that august name can without degradation be applied,
+except the complete life of body, soul, and spirit, in lowly obedience
+to God in Christ. The deepest meaning of the work of the Saviour is that
+He comes into a dead world, and breathes into the bones--very many and
+very dry--the breath of His own life. Christ has died for us; Christ
+will live in us if we will; and, unless He does, we are twice dead.
+
+Do not put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It is
+a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which
+concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest,
+best, and noblest life that is possible for him, who is united to Jesus
+Christ, and drawing from Christ his own life. 'He that hath the Son hath
+life; he that hath not the Son hath not life.' Either my name and yours
+are written in the Book of Life, or they are written in the register of
+a cemetery. We have to make our choice which.
+
+III. Another idea suggested by this emblem is experience of divine
+individualising knowledge and care.
+
+In the Old Testament the book is called 'Thy book,' in the New it is
+called 'the Lamb's book.' That is of a piece with the whole relation of
+the New to the Old, and of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word and
+Manifestor of God, to the Jehovah revealed in former ages. For,
+unconditionally, and without thought of irreverence or idolatry, the New
+Testament lifts over and confers upon Jesus Christ the attributes which
+the Old jealously preserved as belonging only to Jehovah. And thus
+Christ the Manifestor of God, and the Mediator to us of all divine
+powers and blessings, takes the Book and makes the entries in it. Each
+man of us, as in your ledgers, has a page to himself. His account is
+opened, and is not confused with other entries. There is
+individualising love and care, and as the basis of both, individualising
+knowledge. My name, the expression of my individual being, stands there.
+Christ does not deal with me as one of a crowd, nor fling out blessings
+broadcast, that I may grasp them in the midst of a multitude, if I
+choose to put out a hand, but He deals with each of us singly, as if
+there were not any beings in the world but He and I, our two selves, all
+alone.
+
+It is hard to realise the essentially individualising and isolating
+character of our relation to Jesus Christ. But we shall never come to
+the heart of the blessedness and the power of His Gospel unless we
+translate all 'us'-es and 'every ones' and 'worlds' in Scripture into
+'I' and 'me,' and can say not only He gives Himself to be 'the
+propitiation for the sins of the whole world,' but 'He loved _me_ and
+gave Himself for _me_.' The same individualising love which is
+manifested in that mighty universal Atonement, if we rightly understand
+it, is manifested in all His dealings with us. One by one we come under
+His notice; the Shepherd tells His sheep singly as they pass out through
+the gate or into the fold. He knows them all by name. 'I have called
+thee by thy name; thou art Mine.'
+
+Lift up your eyes and behold who made all these; the countless host of
+the nightly stars. What are nebulae to our eyes are blazing suns to His.
+'He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all _by name_ by
+the greatness of His power, for that He is strong in might not one
+faileth.' So we may nestle in the protection of His hand, sure of a
+separate place in His knowledge and His heart.
+
+Deliverance and security are the results of that individualising care.
+In one of the Old Testament instances of the use of this metaphor, we
+read that in the great day of calamity and sorrow 'Thy people shall be
+delivered, even every one that is written in Thy Book.' So we need not
+dread anything if our names are there. The sleepless King will read the
+Book, and will never forget, nor forget to help and succour His poor
+servants.
+
+But there are two other variations of this thought in the Old Testament
+even more tenderly suggestive of that individualising care and strong
+sufficient love than the emblem of my text. We read that when, in the
+exercise of his official functions, the high priest passed into the
+Tabernacle he wore, upon his _breast_, near the seat of personality, and
+the home of love--the names of the tribes graven, and that the same
+names were written on his shoulders, as if guiding the exercise of his
+power. So we may think of ourselves as lying near the beatings of His
+heart, and as individually the objects of the work of His almighty arm.
+Nor is this all. For there is yet another, and still tenderer,
+application of the figure, when we read of the Divine voice as saying to
+Israel, 'I have graven thee on the palms of My hands.' The name of each
+who loves and trusts and serves is written there; printed deep in the
+flesh of the Sovereign Christ. We bear in our bodies the marks, the
+_stigmata_ that tell whose slaves we are--'the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
+And He bears in His body the marks that tell who His servants are.
+
+IV. Lastly, there is suggested by this text the idea of future entrance
+into the land of the living.
+
+The metaphor occurs three times in the final book of Scripture, the book
+which deals with the future and with the last things. And it occurs in
+all these instances in very remarkable connection. First we read, in
+the highly imaginative picture of the final judgment, that when the
+thrones are set two books are opened, one the Book of Life, the other
+the book in which are written the deeds of men, and that by these two
+books men are judged. There is a judgment by conduct. There is also a
+judgment by the Book of Life. That is to say, the question at last comes
+to be, 'Is this man's name written in that book?' Is he a citizen of the
+kingdom, and therefore capable of entering into it? Has he the life from
+Christ in his heart? Or, in other words, the question is, first, has the
+man who stands at the bar faith in Jesus Christ; and, second, has he
+proved that his faith is genuine and real by the course of his earthly
+conduct? These are the books from which the judgment is made.
+
+Further, we read, in that blessed vision which stands at the far-off end
+of all the knowledge of the future which is given to humanity, the
+vision of the City of God 'that came down from heaven as a bride adorned
+for her husband,' that only they enter in there who are 'written in the
+Lamb's Book of Life.' Only citizens are capable of entrance into the
+city. Aliens are necessarily shut out. The Lord, when He writeth up His
+people, shall count that this man was born there, though he never trod
+its streets while on earth, and, therefore, can enter into his native
+home.
+
+Further, in one of the letters to the seven churches our Lord gives as a
+promise to him that overcometh, 'I will not blot his name out of the
+Book of Life, but I will confess his name.'
+
+What need we care what other people may think about us, or whether the
+'hollow wraith of dying fame' that comes like a nimbus round some men
+may fade wholly or no, so long as we may be sure of acknowledgment and
+praise from Him from whom acknowledgment and praise are precious indeed.
+
+I have but one or two more words to add. Remember that Paul had no
+hesitation in taking upon himself to declare that the names of these
+anonymous saints in Philippi were written in the Book of Life. What
+business had he to do that? Had he looked over the pages, and marked the
+entries? He had simply the right of estimating their state by their
+conduct. He saw their works; he knew that these works were the fruit of
+their faith; and he knew that, therefore, their faith had united them to
+Jesus Christ. So, Christian men and women, two things: show your faith
+by your works, and make it impossible for anybody that looks at you to
+doubt what King you serve, and to what city you belong. Again, do not
+ask, 'Is my name there?' Ask, 'Have I faith, and does my faith work the
+works that belong to the Kingdom of Heaven?'
+
+Remember that names can be blotted out of the book. The metaphor has
+often been pressed into the service of a doctrine of unconditional and
+irreversible predestination. But rightly looked at, it points in the
+opposite direction. Remember Moses's agonised cry, 'Blot me out of Thy
+book'; and the Divine answer, 'Him that sinneth against Me, his name
+will I blot out of My book.' And remember that it is only to 'him that
+overcometh' that the promise is made, 'I will not blot him out.' We are
+made partakers of Christ if we 'hold fast the beginning of our
+confidence firm unto the end.'
+
+Remember that it depends upon ourselves whether our names are there or
+not. John Bunyan describes the armed man who came up to the table, where
+the man with the book and the inkhorn was seated, and said: 'Set down
+my name.' And you and I may do that. If we cast ourselves on Jesus
+Christ and yield our wills to be guided by Him, and give our lives for
+His service, then He will write our names in His book. If we trust Him
+we shall be citizens of the City of God; shall be filled with the life
+of Christ; shall be objects of an individualising love and care; shall
+be accepted in that Day; and shall enter in through the gates into the
+city. 'They that forsake me shall be written on the earth'; and there
+wiped out as are the children's scribbles on the sand when the ocean
+come up. They that trust in Jesus Christ shall have their names written
+in the Book of Life; graven on the High Priest's breastplate, and
+inscribed on His mighty hand and His faithful heart.
+
+
+
+
+REJOICE EVERMORE
+
+          'Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say,
+          rejoice!'--PHIL. iv. 4.
+
+
+It has been well said that this whole epistle may be summed up in two
+short sentences: 'I rejoice'; 'Rejoice ye!' The word and the thing crop
+up in every chapter, like some hidden brook, ever and anon sparkling out
+into the sunshine from beneath the shadows. This continual refrain of
+gladness is all the more remarkable if we remember the Apostle's
+circumstances. The letter shows him to us as a prisoner, dependent on
+Christian charity for a living, having no man like-minded to cheer his
+solitude; uncertain as to 'how it shall be with me,' and obliged to
+contemplate the possibility of being 'offered,' or poured out as a
+libation, 'on the sacrifice and service of your faith.' Yet out of all
+the darkness his clear notes ring jubilant; and this sunny epistle
+comes from the pen of a prisoner who did not know but that to-morrow he
+might be a martyr.
+
+The exhortation of my text, with its urgent reiteration, picks up again
+a dropped thread which the Apostle had first introduced in the
+commencement of the previous chapter. He had there evidently been
+intending to close his letter, for he says: 'Finally, my brethren,
+rejoice in the Lord'; but he is drawn away into that precious personal
+digression which we could so ill spare, in which he speaks of his
+continual aspiration and effort towards things not yet attained. And now
+he comes back again, picks up the thread once more, and addresses
+himself to his parting counsels. The reiteration in the text becomes the
+more impressive if we remember that it is a repetition of a former
+injunction. 'Rejoice in the Lord alway'; and then he seems to hear one
+of his Philippian readers saying: 'Why! you told us that once before!'
+'Yes,' he says, 'and you shall hear it once again; so important is my
+commandment that it shall be repeated a third time. So I again say,
+"rejoice!"' Christian gladness is an important element in Christian
+duty; and the difficulty and necessity of it are indicated by the urgent
+repetition of the injunction.
+
+I. So, then, the first thought that suggests itself to me from these
+words is this, that close union with Jesus Christ is the foundation of
+real gladness.
+
+Pray note that 'the Lord' here, as is usually the case in Paul's
+Epistles, means, not the Divine Father, but Jesus Christ. And then
+observe, again, that the phrase 'Rejoice in the Lord' has a deeper
+meaning than we sometimes attach to it. We are accustomed to speak of
+rejoicing in a thing or a person, which, or who, is thereby represented
+as being the occasion or the object of our gladness. And though that is
+true, in reference to our Lord, it is not the whole sweep and depth of
+the Apostle's meaning here. He is employing that phrase, 'in the Lord,'
+in the profound and comprehensive sense in which it generally appears in
+his letters, and especially in those almost contemporaneous with this
+Epistle to the Philippians. I need only refer you, in passing, without
+quoting passages, to the continual use of that phrase in the nearly
+contemporaneous letter to the Ephesians, in which you will find that 'in
+Christ Jesus' is the signature stamped upon all the gifts of God, and
+upon all the possible blessings of the Christian life. 'In Him' we have
+the inheritance; in Him we obtain redemption through His blood, even the
+forgiveness of sins; in Him we are 'blessed with all spiritual
+blessings.' And the deepest description of the essential characteristic
+of a Christian life is, to Paul, that it is a life in Christ.
+
+It is this close union which the Apostle here indicates as being the
+foundation and the source of all that gladness which he desires to see
+spreading its light over the Christian life. 'Rejoice in the
+Lord'--being in Him be glad.
+
+Now that great thought has two aspects, one deep and mysterious, one
+very plain and practical. As to the former, I need not spend much time
+upon it. We believe, I suppose, in the superhuman character and nature
+of Jesus Christ. We believe in His divinity. We can therefore believe
+reasonably in the possibility of a union between Him and us,
+transcending all the forms of human association, and being really like
+that which the creature holds to its Creator in regard to its physical
+being. 'In him we live, and move, and have our being' is the very
+foundation truth in regard to the constitution of the universe. 'In Him
+we live, and move, and have our being' is the very foundation truth in
+regard to the relation of the Christian soul to Jesus Christ. All
+earthly unions are but poor adumbrations from afar of that deep,
+transcendent, mysterious, but most real union, by which the Christian
+soul is in Christ, as the branch is in the vine, the member in the body,
+the planet in its atmosphere, and by which Christ is in the Christian
+soul as the life sap is in every twig, as the mysterious vital power is
+in every member. Thus abiding in Him, in a manner which admits of no
+parallel nor of any doubt, we may, and we shall, be glad.
+
+But then, passing from the mysterious, we come to the plain. To be 'in
+Christ' which is commended to us here as the basis of all true
+blessedness, means that the whole of our nature shall be occupied with,
+and fastened upon, Him; thought turning to Him, the tendrils of the
+heart clinging and creeping around Him, the will submitting itself in
+glad obedience to His beloved and supreme commandments, the aspirations,
+and desires feeling out after Him as the sufficient and eternal good,
+and all the current of our being setting towards Him in earnestness of
+desire, and resting in Him in tranquillity of possession. Thus 'in
+Christ' we may all be.
+
+And, says Paul, in the great words of my text, such a union, reciprocal
+and close, is the secret of all blessedness. If thus we are wedded to
+that Lord, and His life is in us and ours enclosed in Him, then there is
+such correspondence between our necessities and our supplies as that
+there is no room for aching emptiness; no gnawing of unsatisfied
+longings, but the blessedness that comes from having found that which we
+seek, and in the finding being stimulated to a still closer, happier,
+and not restless search after fuller possession. The man that knows
+where to get anything and everything that he needs, and to whom desires
+are but the prophets of instantaneous fruition; surely that man has in
+his possession the talismanic secret of perpetual gladness. They who
+thus dwell in Christ by faith, love, obedience, imitation, aspiration,
+and enjoyment, are like men housed in some strong fortress, who can look
+out over all the fields alive with enemies, and feel that they are safe.
+They who thus dwell in Christ gain command over themselves; and because
+they can bridle passions, and subdue hot and impossible desires, and
+keep themselves well in hand, have stanched one chief source of unrest
+and sadness, and have opened one pure and sparkling fountain of
+unfailing gladness. To rule myself because Christ rules me is no small
+part of the secret of blessedness. And they who thus dwell in Christ
+have the purest joy, the joy of self-forgetfulness. He that is absorbed
+in a great cause; he whose pitiful, personal individuality has passed
+out of his sight; he who is swallowed up by devotion to another, by
+aspiration after 'something afar from the sphere of our sorrow,' has
+found the secret of gladness. And the man who thus can say, 'I live: yet
+not I, but Christ liveth in me,' this is the man who will ever rejoice.
+The world may not call such a temper gladness. It is as unlike the
+sputtering, flaring, foul-smelling joys which it prizes--like those
+filthy but bright 'Lucigens' that they do night work by in great
+factories--it is as unlike the joy of the world as these are to the
+calm, pure moonlight which they insult. The one is of heaven, and the
+other is the foul product of earth, and smokes to extinction swiftly.
+
+II. So, secondly, notice that this joy is capable of being continuous.
+
+'Rejoice in the Lord _always_,' says Paul. That is a hard nut to crack.
+I can fancy a man saying, 'What is the use of giving me such
+exhortations as this? My gladness is largely a matter of temperament,
+and I cannot rule my moods. My gladness is largely a matter of
+circumstances, and I do not determine these. How vain it is to tell me,
+when my heart is bleeding, or beating like a sledge-hammer, to be glad!'
+Yes! Temperament has a great deal to do with joy; and circumstances have
+a great deal to do with it; but is not the mission of the Gospel to make
+us masters of temperament, and independent of circumstances? Is not the
+possibility of living a life that has no dependence upon externals, and
+that may persist permanently through all varieties of mood, the very
+gift that Christ Himself has come to bestow upon us--bringing us into
+communion with Himself, and so making us lords of our own inward nature
+and of externals: so that 'though the fig-tree shall not blossom, and
+there be no fruit in the vine,' yet we may 'rejoice in the Lord, and be
+glad in the God of our salvation.' If a ship has plenty of water in its
+casks or tanks in its hold, it does not matter whether it is sailing
+through fresh water or salt. And if you and I have that union with Jesus
+Christ of which my text speaks, then we shall be, not wholly, but with
+indefinite increase of approximation towards the ideal, independent of
+circumstances and masters of our temperaments. And so it is possible, if
+not absolutely to reach this fair achievement of an unbroken continuity
+of gladness, at least to bring the lucent points so close to one another
+as that the intervals of darkness between shall be scarcely visible,
+and the whole will seem to form one continuous ring of light.
+
+Brother, if you and I can keep near Jesus Christ always--and I suppose
+we can do that in sorrow as in joy--He will take care that our keeping
+near Him will not want its reward in that blessed continuity of felt
+repose which is very near the sunniness of gladness. For, if we in the
+Lord sorrow, we may, then, simultaneously, in the Lord rejoice. The two
+things may go together, if in the one mood and the other we are in union
+with Him. The bitterness of the bitterest calamity is taken away from it
+when it does not separate us from Jesus Christ. And just as the mother
+is specially tender with her sick child, and just as we have often found
+that the sympathy of friends comes to us, when need and grief are upon
+us, in a fashion that would have been incredible beforehand, so it is
+surely true that Jesus Christ can, and does, soften His tone, and select
+the tokens of His presence with especial tenderness for a wounded heart;
+so as that sorrow in the Lord passes into joy in the Lord. And if that
+be so, then the pillar which was cloud in the sunshine brightens into
+fire as night falls on the desert.
+
+But it is not only that this divine gladness is consistent with the
+sorrow that is often necessary for us, but also that the continuity of
+such gladness is secured, because in Christ there are open for us
+sources of blessedness in what is else a dry and thirsty land. If you
+would take this epistle at your leisure, and run over it in order to
+note the various occasions of joy which the Apostle expresses for
+himself, and commends to his brethren, you would see how beautifully
+they reveal to us the power of communion with Jesus Christ, to find
+honey in the rock, good in everything, and a reason for thankful
+gladness in all events.
+
+I have not time, at this stage of my sermon, to do more than just glance
+at these. We find, for instance, that a very large portion of the joy
+which he declares fills his own heart, and which he commends to these
+Philippians, arises from the recognition of good in others. He speaks to
+them of being his 'joy and crown.' He tells them that in his sorrows and
+imprisonment, their 'fellowship in the Gospel, from the first day until
+now,' had brought a whiff of gladness into the close air of the prison
+cell. He begs them to be Christlike in order that they may 'fulfil his
+joy'; and he may lose himself in others' blessings, and therein find
+gladness. A large portion of his joy came from very common things. A
+large portion of the joy that he commends to them he contemplates as
+coming to them from small matters. They were to be glad because Timothy
+came with a message from the Apostle. He is glad because he hears of
+their well-being, and receives a little contribution from them for his
+daily necessities. A large portion of his gladness came from the spread
+of Christ's kingdom. 'Christ is preached,' says he, with a flash of
+triumph, 'and I therein do rejoice; yea, and will rejoice.' And, most
+beautiful of all, no small portion of his gladness came from the
+prospect of martyrdom. 'If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service
+of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all; and do ye joy and
+rejoice with me.'
+
+Now, put all these things together and they just come to this, that a
+heart in union with Jesus Christ can find streams in the desert, joys
+blossoming as the rose, in places that to the un-Christlike eye are
+wilderness and solitary, and out of common things it can bring the
+purest gladness and draw a tribute and revenue of blessedness even from
+the prospect of God-sent sorrows. Dear brethren, if you and I have not
+learned the secret of modest and unselfish delights, we shall vainly
+seek for joy in the vulgar excitements and coarse titillations of
+appetites and desires which the world offers. 'Calm pleasures there
+abide' in Christ. The northern lights are weird and bright, but they
+belong to midwinter, and they come from electric disturbances, and
+portend rough weather afterwards. Sunshine is silent, steadfast, pure.
+Better to walk in that light than to be led astray by fantastic and
+perishable splendours. 'Rejoice in the Lord always.'
+
+III. Lastly, such gladness is an important part of Christian duty.
+
+As I have said, the urgency of the command indicates both its importance
+and its difficulty. It is important that professing Christians should be
+glad Christians (with the joy that is drawn from Jesus Christ, of
+course, I mean), because they thereby become walking advertisements and
+living witnesses for Him. A gloomy, melancholy, professing Christian is
+a poor recommendation of his faith. If you want to 'adorn the doctrine
+of Christ' you will do it a great deal more by a bright face, that
+speaks of a calm heart, calm because filled with Christ, than by many
+more ambitious efforts. This gladness is important because, without it,
+there will be little good work done, and little progress made. It is
+important, surely, for ourselves, for it can be no small matter that we
+should be able to have travelling with us all through the desert that
+mystical rock which follows with its streams of water, and ever provides
+for us the joys that we need. In every aspect, whether as regards men
+who take their notions of Christ and of Christianity, a great deal more
+from the concrete examples of both in human lives than from books and
+sermons, or from the Bible itself--or as regards the work which we have
+to do, or as regards our own inward life, it is all-important that we
+should have that close union with Jesus Christ which cannot but result
+in pure and holy gladness.
+
+But the difficulty, as well as the importance, of the obligation, are
+expressed by the stringent repetition of the commandment, 'And again I
+say, Rejoice.' When objections arise, when difficulties present
+themselves, I repeat the commandment again, in the teeth of them all;
+and I know what I mean when I am saying it. Thus, thought Paul, we need
+to make a definite effort to keep ourselves in touch with Jesus Christ,
+or else gladness, and a great deal besides, will fade away from our
+grasp.
+
+And there are two things that you have to do if you would obey the
+commandment. The one is the direct effort at fostering and making
+continuous your fellowship with Jesus Christ, through your life; and the
+other is looking out for the bright bits in your life, and making sure
+that you do not sullenly and foolishly, perhaps with vain regrets after
+vanished blessings, or perhaps with vain murmurings about unattained
+good, obscure to your sight the mercies that you have, and so cheat
+yourselves of the occasions for thankfulness and joy. There are people
+who, if there be ever such a little bit of a fleecy film of cloud low
+down on their horizon, can see nothing of the sparkling blue arch above
+them for looking at that, and who behave as if the whole sky was one
+roof of doleful grey. Do not you do that! There is always enough to be
+thankful for. Lay hold of Christ, and be sure that you open your eyes
+to His gifts.
+
+Surely, dear friends, if there be offered to us, as there is, a gladness
+which is perfect in the two points in which all other gladness fails, it
+is wise for us to take it. The commonplace which all men believe, and
+most men neglect, is that nothing short of an infinite Person can fill a
+finite soul. And if we look for our joys anywhere but to Jesus Christ,
+there will always be some bit of our nature which, like the sulky elder
+brother in the parable, will scowl at the music and dancing, and refuse
+to come in. All earthly joys are transient as well as partial. Is it not
+better that we should have gladness that will last as long as we do,
+that we can hold in our dying hands, like a flower clasped in some cold
+palm laid in the coffin, that we shall find again when we have crossed
+the bar, that will grow and brighten and broaden for evermore? My joy
+shall remain . . . full.
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO OBEY AN IMPOSSIBLE INJUNCTION
+
+          'Be careful for nothing; but in everything by
+          prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let
+          your requests be made known unto God.'--PHIL. iv.
+          6.
+
+
+It is easy for prosperous people, who have nothing to trouble them, to
+give good advices to suffering hearts; and these are generally as futile
+as they are easy. But who was he who here said to the Church at
+Philippi, 'Be careful for nothing?' A prisoner in a Roman prison; and
+when Rome fixed its claws it did not usually let go without drawing
+blood. He was expecting his trial, which might, so far as he knew, very
+probably end in death. Everything in the future was entirely dark and
+uncertain. It was this man, with all the pressure of personal sorrows
+weighing upon him, who, in the very crisis of his life, turned to his
+brethren in Philippi, who had far fewer causes of anxiety than he had,
+and cheerfully bade them 'be careful for nothing, but in everything by
+prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make their requests known
+unto God.' Had not that bird learned to sing when his cage was darkened?
+And do you not think that advice of that sort, coming not from some one
+perched up on a safe hillock to the strugglers in the field below, but
+from a man in the thick of the fight, would be like a trumpet-call to
+them who heard it?
+
+Now, here are two things. There is an apparently perfectly impossible
+advice, and there is the only course that will make it possible.
+
+I. An apparently impossible advice.
+
+'Be careful for nothing.' I do not need to remind you--for I suppose
+that we all know it--that that word 'careful,' in a great many places in
+the New Testament, does not mean what, by the slow progress of change in
+the significance of words, it has come to mean to-day; but it means what
+it _should_ still mean, 'full of care,' and 'care' meant, not prudent
+provision, forethought, the occupation of a man's common-sense with his
+duty and his work and his circumstances, but it meant the thing which of
+all others unfits a man most for such prudent provision, and that is,
+the nervous irritation of a gnawing anxiety which, as the word in the
+original means, tears the heart apart and makes a man quite incapable of
+doing the wise thing, or seeing the wise thing to do, in the
+circumstances. We all know that; so that I do not need to dwell upon it.
+'Careful' here means neither more nor less than 'anxious.'
+
+But I may just remind you how harm has been done, and good has been lost
+and missed, by people reading that modern meaning into the word. It is
+the same word which Christ employed in the exhortation 'Take no thought
+for to-morrow.' It is a great pity that Christian people sometimes get
+it into their heads that Christ prohibited what common-sense demands,
+and what everybody practises. 'Taking thought for the morrow' is not
+only our duty, but it is one of the distinctions which make us 'much
+better than' the fowls of the air, that have no barns in which to store
+against a day of need. But when our Lord said, 'Take no thought for the
+morrow,' he did not mean 'Do not lay yourselves out to provide for
+common necessities and duties,' but 'Do not fling yourselves into a
+fever of anxiety, nor be too anxious to anticipate the "fashion of
+uncertain evils."'
+
+But even with that explanation, is it not like an unreachable ideal that
+Paul puts forward here? 'Be anxious about nothing'--how can a man who
+has to face the possibilities that we all have to face, and who knows
+himself to be as weak to deal with them as we all are: how can he help
+being anxious? There is no more complete waste of breath than those sage
+and reverend advices which people give us, not to do the things, nor to
+feel the emotions, which our position make absolutely inevitable and
+almost involuntary. Here, for instance, is a man surrounded by all
+manner of calamity and misfortune; and some well-meaning but foolish
+friend comes to him, and, without giving him a single reason for the
+advice, says, 'Cheer up! my friend.' Why should he cheer up? What is
+there in his circumstances to induce him to fall into any other mood? Or
+some unquestionable peril is staring him full in the face, coming
+nearer and nearer to him, and some well-meaning, loose-tongued friend,
+says to him, 'Do not be afraid!'--but he _ought_ to be afraid. That is
+about all that worldly wisdom and morality have to say to us, when we
+are in trouble and anxiety. 'Shut your eyes very hard, and make believe
+very much, and you will not fear.' An impossible exhortation! Just as
+well bid a ship in the Bay of Biscay not to rise and fall upon the wave,
+but to keep an even keel. Just as well tell the willows in the river-bed
+that they are not to bend when the wind blows, as come to me, and say to
+me, 'Be careful about nothing.' Unless you have a great deal more than
+that to say, I must be, and I ought to be, anxious, about a great many
+things. Instead of anxiety being folly, it will be wisdom; and the folly
+will consist in not opening our eyes to facts, and in not feeling
+emotions that are appropriate to the facts which force themselves
+against our eyeballs. Threadbare maxims, stale, musty old commonplaces
+of unavailing consolation and impotent encouragement say to us, 'Do not
+be anxious.' We try to stiffen our nerves and muscles in order to bear
+the blow; or some of us, more basely still, get into a habit of
+feather-headed levity, making no forecasts, nor seeing even what is
+plainest before our eyes. But all that is of no use when once the hot
+pincers of real trouble, impending or arrived, lay hold of our hearts.
+Then of all idle expenditures of breath in the world there is none to
+the wrung heart more idle and more painful than the one that says, Be
+anxious about nothing.
+
+II. So we turn to the only course that makes the apparent impossibility
+possible.
+
+Paul goes on to direct to the mode of feeling and action which will
+give exemption from the else inevitable gnawing of anxious forethought.
+He introduces his positive counsel with an eloquent 'But,' which implies
+that what follows is the sure preservative against the temper which he
+deprecates; 'But in everything by prayer and supplication, with
+thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'
+
+There are, then, these alternatives. If you do not like to take the one,
+you are sure to have to take the other. There is only one way out of the
+wood, and it is this which Paul expands in these last words of my text.
+If a man does not pray about everything, he will be worried about most
+things. If he does pray about everything, he will not be troubled beyond
+what is good for him, about anything. So there are these alternatives;
+and we have to make up our minds which of the two we are going to take.
+The heart is never empty. If not full of God, it will be full of the
+world, and of worldly care. Luther says somewhere that a man's heart is
+like a couple of millstones; if you don't put something between them to
+grind, they will grind each other. It is because God is not in our
+hearts that the two stones rub the surface off one another. So the
+victorious antagonist of anxiety is trust, and the only way to turn
+gnawing care out of my heart and life is to usher God into it, and to
+keep him resolutely in it.
+
+'In everything.' If a thing is great enough to threaten to make me
+anxious, it is great enough for me to talk to God about. If He and I are
+on a friendly footing, the instinct of friendship will make me speak. If
+so, how irrelevant and superficial seem to be discussions whether we
+ought to pray about worldly things, or confine our prayers entirely to
+spiritual and religious matters. Why! if God and I are on terms of
+friendship and intimacy of communication, there will be no question as
+to what I am to talk about to Him; I shall not be able to keep silent as
+to anything that interests me. And we are not right with God unless we
+have come to the point that entire openness of speech marks our
+communications with Him, and that, as naturally as men, when they come
+home from business, like to tell their wives and children what has
+happened to them since they left home in the morning, so naturally we
+talk to our Friend about everything that concerns us. 'In _everything_
+let your requests be made known unto God.' That is the wise course,
+because a multitude of little pimples may be quite as painful and
+dangerous as a large ulcer. A cloud of gnats may put as much poison into
+a man with their many stings as will a snake with its one bite. And if
+we are not to get help from God by telling Him about little things,
+there will be very little of our lives that we shall tell Him about at
+all. For life is a mountain made up of minute flakes. The years are only
+a collection of seconds. Every man's life is an aggregate of trifles.
+'In _everything_ make your requests known.'
+
+'By prayer'--that does not mean, as a superficial experience of religion
+is apt to suppose it to mean, actual petition that follows. For a great
+many of us, the only notion that we have of prayer is asking God to give
+us something that we want. But there is a far higher region of communion
+than that, in which the soul seeks and finds, and sits and gazes, and
+aspiring possesses, and possessing aspires. Where there is no spoken
+petition for anything affecting outward life, there may be the prayer of
+contemplation such as the burning seraphs before the Throne do ever glow
+with. The prayer of silent submission, in which the will bows itself
+before God; the prayer of quiet trust, in which we do not so much seek
+as cleave; the prayer of still fruition--these, in Paul's conception of
+the true order, precede 'supplication.' And if we have such union with
+God, by realising His presence, by aspiration after Himself, by trusting
+Him and submission to Him, then we have the victorious antagonist of all
+our anxieties, and the 'cares that infest the day shall fold their
+tents' and 'silently steal away.' For if a man has that union with God
+which is effected by such prayer as I have been speaking about, it gives
+him a fixed point on which to rest amidst all perturbations. It is like
+bringing a light into a chamber when thunder is growling outside, which
+prevents the flashing of the lightning from being seen.
+
+Years ago an ingenious inventor tried to build a vessel in such a
+fashion as that the saloon for passengers should remain upon one level,
+howsoever the hull might be tossed by waves. It was a failure, if I
+remember rightly. But if we are thus joined to God, He will do for our
+inmost hearts what the inventor tried to do with the chamber within his
+ship. The hull may be buffeted, but the inmost chamber where the true
+self sits will be kept level and unmoved. Brethren! prayer in the
+highest sense, by which I mean the exercise of aspiration, trust,
+submission--prayer will fight against and overcome all anxieties.
+
+'By prayer and supplication.' Actual petition for the supply of present
+wants is meant by 'supplication.' To ask for that supply will very often
+be to get it. To tell God what I think I need goes a long way always to
+bringing me the gift that I do need. If I have an anxiety which I am
+ashamed to speak to Him, that silence is a sign that I ought not to
+have it; and if I have a desire that I do not feel I can put into a
+prayer, that feeling is a warning to me not to cherish such a desire.
+
+There are many vague and oppressive anxieties that come and cast a
+shadow over our hearts, that if we could once define, and put into plain
+words, we should find that we vaguely fancied them a great deal larger
+than they were, and that the shadow they flung was immensely longer than
+the thing that flung it. Put your anxieties into definite speech. It
+will reduce their proportions to your own apprehension very often.
+Speaking them, even to a man who may be able to do little to help, eases
+them wonderfully. Put them into definite speech to God; and there are
+very few of them that will survive.
+
+'By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.' That thanksgiving is
+always in place. If one only considers what he has from God, and
+realises that whatever he has he has received from the hands of divine
+love, thanksgiving is appropriate in any circumstances. Do you remember
+when Paul was in gaol at the very city to which this letter went, with
+his back bloody with the rod, and his feet fast in the stocks, how then
+he and Silas 'prayed and sang praises to God.' Therefore the obedient
+earthquake came and set them loose. Perhaps it was some reminiscence of
+that night which moved him to say to the Church that knew the story--of
+which perhaps the gaoler was still a member--'By prayer and supplication
+with thanksgiving make your requests known unto God.'
+
+One aching nerve can monopolise our attention and make us unconscious of
+the health of all the rest of the body. So, a single sorrow or loss
+obscures many mercies. We are like men who live in a narrow alley in
+some city, with great buildings on either side, towering high above
+their heads, and only a strip of sky visible. If we see up in that strip
+a cloud, we complain and behave as if the whole heavens, right away
+round the three hundred and sixty degrees of the horizon, were black
+with tempest. But we see only a little strip, and there is a great deal
+of blue in the sky; however, there may be a cloud in the patch that we
+see above our heads, from the alley where we live. Everything, rightly
+understood, that God sends to men is a cause of thanksgiving; therefore,
+'in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your
+requests be made known unto God.'
+
+'Casting all your _anxieties_ upon him,' says Peter, 'for He'--not _is
+anxious_; that dark cloud does not rise much above the earth--but, 'He
+careth for you.' And that loving guardianship and tender care is the one
+shield, armed with which we can smile at the poisoned darts of anxiety
+which would else fester in our hearts and, perhaps, kill. 'Be careful
+for nothing'--an impossibility unless 'in everything' we make 'our
+requests known unto God.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WARRIOR PEACE
+
+          'The peace of God, which passeth all
+          understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds
+          through Christ Jesus.'--PHIL. iv. 7.
+
+
+The great Mosque of Constantinople was once a Christian church,
+dedicated to the Holy Wisdom. Over its western portal may still be read,
+graven on a brazen plate, the words, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour
+and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.' For four hundred years
+noisy crowds have fought, and sorrowed, and fretted, beneath the dim
+inscription in an unknown tongue; and no eye has looked at it, nor any
+heart responded. It is but too sad a symbol of the reception which
+Christ's offers meet amongst men, and--blessed be His name!--its
+prominence there, though unread and unbelieved, is a symbol of the
+patient forbearance with which rejected blessings are once and again
+pressed upon us, and He stretches out His hand though no man regards,
+and calls though none do hear. My text is Christ's offer of peace. The
+world offers excitement, Christ promises repose.
+
+I. Mark, then, first, this peace of God.
+
+What is it? What are its elements? Whence does it come? It is of God, as
+being its Source, or Origin, or Author, or Giver, but it belongs to Him
+in a yet deeper sense, for Himself is Peace. And in some humble but yet
+real fashion our restless and anxious hearts may partake in the divine
+tranquillity, and with a calm repose, kindred with that rest from which
+it is derived, may enter into His rest.
+
+If that be too high a flight, at all events the peace that may be ours
+was Christ's, in the perfect and unbroken tranquillity of His perfect
+Manhood. What, then, are its elements? The peace of God must, first of
+all, be peace with God. Conscious friendship with Him is indispensable
+to all true tranquillity. Where that is absent there may be the ignoring
+of the disturbed relationship; but there will be no peace of heart. The
+indispensable requisite is 'a conscience like a sea at rest.' Unless we
+have made sure work of our relationship with God, and know that He and
+we are friends, there is no real repose possible for us. In the whirl of
+excitement we may forget, and for a time turn away from, the realities
+of our relation to Him, and so get such gladness as is possible to a
+life not rooted in conscious friendship with Him. But such lives will be
+like some of those sunny islands in the Eastern Pacific, extinct
+volcanoes, where nature smiles and all things are prodigal and life is
+easy and luxuriant; but some day the clouds gather, and the earth
+shakes, and fire pours forth, and the sea boils, and every living thing
+dies, and darkness and desolation come. You are living, brother, upon a
+volcano's side, unless the roots of your being are fixed in a God who is
+your friend.
+
+Again, the peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human
+life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses.
+Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, 'Do this'; reason,
+judgment, prudence say, 'It is at your peril if you do!' One desire
+fights against another, and so the man is rent asunder. There must be
+the harmonising of all the Being if there is to be real rest of spirit.
+No longer must it be like the chaos ere the creative word was spoken,
+where, in gloom, contending elements strove.
+
+Again, men have not peace, because in most of them everything is topmost
+that ought to be undermost, and everything undermost that ought to be
+uppermost. 'Beggars are on horseback' (and we know where they ride),
+'and princes walking.' The more regal part of the man's nature is
+suppressed, and trodden under foot; and the servile parts, which ought
+to be under firm restraint, and guided by a wise hand, are too often
+supreme, and wild work comes of that. When you put the captain and the
+officers, and everybody on board that knows anything about navigation,
+into irons, and fasten down the hatches on them, and let the crew and
+the cabin boys take the helm and direct the ship, it is not likely that
+the voyage will end anywhere but on the rocks. Multitudes are living
+lives of unrestfulness, simply because they have set the lowest parts of
+their nature upon the throne, and subordinated the highest to these.
+
+Our unrest comes from yet another source. We have not peace, because we
+have not found and grasped the true objects for any of our faculties.
+God is the only possession that brings quiet. The heart hungers until it
+feeds upon Him. The mind is satisfied with no truth until behind truth
+it finds a Person who is true. The will is enslaved and wretched until
+in God it recognises legitimate and absolute authority, which it is
+blessing to obey. Love puts out its yearnings, like the filaments that
+gossamer spiders send out into the air, seeking in vain for something to
+fasten upon, until it touches God, and clings there. There is no rest
+for a man until he rests in God. The reason why this world is so full of
+excitement is because it is so empty of peace, and the reason why it is
+so empty of peace is because it is so void of God. The peace of God
+brings peace with Him, and peace within. It unites our hearts to fear
+His name, and draws all the else turbulent and confusedly flowing
+impulses of the great deep of the spirit after itself, in a tidal wave,
+as the moon draws the waters of the gathered ocean. The peace of God is
+peace with Him, and peace within.
+
+I need not, I suppose, do more than say one word about that descriptive
+clause in my text, It 'passeth understanding.' The understanding is not
+the faculty by which men lay hold of the peace of God any more than you
+can see a picture with your ears or hear music with your eyes. To
+everything its own organ; you cannot weigh truth in a tradesman's scales
+or measure thought with a yard-stick. Love is not the instrument for
+apprehending Euclid, nor the brain the instrument for grasping these
+divine and spiritual gifts. The peace of God transcends the
+understanding, as well as belongs to another order of things than that
+about which the understanding is concerned. You must experience it to
+know it; you must have it in order that you may feel its sweetness. It
+eludes the grasp of the wisest, though it yields itself to the patient
+and loving heart.
+
+II. So notice, in the next place, what the peace of God does.
+
+It 'shall keep your hearts and minds.' The Apostle here blends together,
+in a very remarkable manner, the conceptions of peace and of war, for he
+employs a purely military word to express the office of this Divine
+peace. That word, 'shall keep,' is the same as is translated in another
+of his letters _kept with a garrison_--and, though, perhaps, it might be
+going too far to insist that the military idea is prominent in his mind,
+it will certainly not be unsafe to recognise its presence.
+
+So, then, this Divine peace takes upon itself warlike functions, and
+garrisons the heart and mind. What does he mean by 'the heart and mind'?
+Not, as the English reader might suppose, two different faculties, the
+emotional and the intellectual--which is what we usually roughly mean by
+our distinction between heart and mind--but, as is always the case in
+the Bible, the 'heart' means the whole inner man, whether considered as
+thinking, willing, purposing, or doing any other inward act; and the
+word rendered 'mind' does not mean another part of human nature, but
+the whole products of the operations of the heart. The Revised Version
+renders it by 'thoughts,' and that is correct if it be given a wide
+enough application, so as to include emotions, affections, purposes, as
+well as 'thoughts' in the narrower sense. The whole inner man, in all
+the extent of its manifold operations, that indwelling peace of God will
+garrison and guard.
+
+So note, however profound and real that Divine peace is, it is to be
+enjoyed in the midst of warfare. Quiet is not quiescence. God's peace is
+not torpor. The man that has it has still to wage continual conflict,
+and day by day to brace himself anew for the fight. The highest energy
+of action is the result of the deepest calm of heart; just as the motion
+of this solid, and, as we feel it to be, immovable world, is far more
+rapid through the abysses of space, and on its own axis, than any of the
+motions of the things on its surface. So the quiet heart, 'which moveth
+altogether if it move at all,' rests whilst it moves, and moves the more
+swiftly because of its unbroken repose. That peace of God, which is
+peace militant, is unbroken amidst all conflicts. The wise old Greeks
+chose for the protectress of Athens the goddess of Wisdom, and whilst
+they consecrated to her the olive branch, which is the symbol of peace,
+they set her image on the Parthenon, helmed and spear-bearing, to defend
+the peace, which she brought to earth. So this heavenly Virgin, whom the
+Apostle personifies here, is the 'winged sentry, all skilful in the
+wars,' who enters into our hearts and fights for us to keep us in
+unbroken peace.
+
+It is possible day by day to go out to toil and care and anxiety and
+change and suffering and conflict, and yet to bear within our hearts
+the unalterable rest of God. Deep in the bosom of the ocean, beneath the
+region where winds howl and billows break, there is calm, but the calm
+is not stagnation. Each drop from these fathomless abysses may be raised
+to the surface by the power of the sunbeams, expanded there by their
+heat, and sent on some beneficent message across the world. So, deep in
+our hearts, beneath the storm, beneath the raving winds and the curling
+waves, there may be a central repose, as unlike stagnation as it is
+unlike tumult; and the peace of God may, as a warrior, keep our hearts
+and minds in Christ Jesus.
+
+What is the plain English of that metaphor? Just this, that a man who
+has that peace as his conscious possession is lifted above the
+temptations that otherwise would drag him away. The full cup, filled
+with precious wine, has no room in it for the poison that otherwise
+might be poured in. As Jesus Christ has taught us, there is such a thing
+as cleansing a heart in some measure, and yet because it is 'empty,'
+though it is 'swept and garnished,' the demons come back again. The best
+way to be made strong to resist temptation, is to be lifted above
+feeling it to be a temptation, by reason of the sweetness of the peace
+possessed. Oh! if our hearts were filled, as they might be filled, with
+that divine repose, do you think that the vulgar, coarse-tasting baits
+which make our mouths water now would have any power over us? Will a man
+who bears in his hands jewels of priceless value, and knows them to be
+such, find much temptation when some imitation stone, made of coloured
+glass and a tinfoil backing, is presented to him? Will the world draw us
+away if we are rooted and grounded in the peace of God? Geologists tell
+us that climates are changed and creatures are killed by the slow
+variation of level in the earth. If you and I can only heave our lives
+up high enough, the foul things that live down below will find the air
+too pure and keen for them, and will die and disappear; and all the
+vermin that stung and nestled down in the flats will be gone when we get
+up to the heights. The peace of God will keep our hearts and thoughts.
+
+III. Now, lastly, notice how we get the peace of God.
+
+My text is an exuberant promise, but it is knit on to something before,
+by that 'and' at the beginning of the verse. It is a promise, as all
+God's promises are, on conditions. And here are the conditions. 'Be
+careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with
+thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.' That defines
+the conditions in part; and the last words of the text itself complete
+the definition. 'In Christ Jesus' describes, not so much where we are to
+be kept, as a condition under which we shall be kept. How, then, can I
+get this peace into my turbulent, changeful life?
+
+I answer, first, trust is peace. It is always so; even when it is
+misplaced we are at rest. The condition of repose for the human heart is
+that we shall be 'in Christ,' who has said, 'In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but in Me ye shall have peace.' And how may I be 'in Him'?
+Simply by trusting myself to Him. That brings peace with God.
+
+The sinless Son of God has died on the Cross, a sacrifice for the sins
+of the whole world, for yours and for mine. Let us trust to that, and we
+shall have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. And 'in Him'
+we have, by trust, inward peace, for He, through our faith, controls
+our whole natures, and Faith leads the lion in a silken leash, like
+Spenser's Una. Trust in Christ brings peace amid outward sorrows and
+conflicts. When the pilot comes on board the captain does not leave the
+bridge, but stands by the pilot's side. His responsibility is past, but
+his duties are not over. And when Christ comes into my heart, my effort,
+my judgment, are not made unnecessary, or put on one side. Let Him take
+the command, and stand beside Him, and carry out His orders, and you
+will find rest to your souls.
+
+Again, submission is peace. What makes our troubles is not outward
+circumstances, howsoever afflictive they may be, but the resistance of
+our spirits to the circumstances. And where a man's will bends and says,
+'Not mine but Thine be done,' there is calm. Submission is like the
+lotion that is applied to mosquito bites--it takes away the irritation,
+though the puncture be left. Submission is peace, both as resignation
+and as obedience.
+
+Communion is peace. You will get no quiet until you live with God. Until
+He is at your side you will always be moved.
+
+So, dear friend, fix this in your minds: a life without Christ is a life
+without peace. Without Him you may have excitement, pleasure, gratified
+passions, success, accomplished hopes, but peace never! You never have
+had it, have you? If you live without Him, you may forget that you have
+not Him, and you can plunge into the world, and so lose the
+consciousness of the aching void, but it is there all the same. You
+never will have peace until you go to Him. There is only one way to get
+it. The Christless heart is like the troubled sea that cannot rest.
+There is no peace for it. But in Him you can get it for the asking.
+'The chastisement of our peace was laid upon Him.' For our sakes He died
+on the Cross, so making peace. Trust Him as your only hope, Saviour and
+friend, and the God of peace will 'fill you with all joy and peace in
+believing.' Then bow your wills to Him in acceptance of His providence,
+and in obedience to His commands, and so, 'your peace shall be as a
+river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea.' Then keep your
+hearts in union and communion with Him, and so His presence will keep
+you in perfect peace whilst conflicts last, and, with Him at your side,
+you will pass through the valley of the shadow of death undisturbed, and
+come to the true Salem, the city of peace, where they beat their swords
+into ploughshares, and learn and fear war no more.
+
+
+
+
+THINK ON THESE THINGS
+
+          ' . . . Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
+          things are honest, whatsoever things are just,
+          whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
+          lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if
+          there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
+          think on these things.'--PHIL. iv. 8.
+
+
+I am half afraid that some of you may think, as I have at times thought,
+that I am too old to preach to the young. You would probably listen with
+more attention to one less remote from you in years, and may be disposed
+to discount my advices as quite natural for an old man to give, and
+quite unnatural for a young man to take. But, dear friends, the message
+which I have to bring to you is meant for all ages, and for all sorts of
+people. And, if I may venture a personal word, I proved it, when I stood
+where you stand, and it is fresher and mightier to me to-day than it
+ever was.
+
+You are in the plastic period of your lives, with the world before you,
+and the mightier world within to mould as you will; and you can be
+almost anything you like, I do not mean in regard to externals, or
+intellectual capacities, for these are only partially in our control,
+but in regard to the far more important and real things--viz. elevation
+and purity of heart and mind. You are in the period of life to which
+fair dreams of the future are natural. It is, as the prophet tells us,
+for 'the young man' to 'see visions,' and to ennoble his life thereafter
+by turning them into realities. Generous and noble ideas ought to belong
+to youth. But you are also in the period when there is a keen joy in
+mere living, and when some desires, which get weaker as years go on, are
+very strong, and may mar youthful purity. So, taking all these into
+account, I have thought that I could not do better than press home upon
+you the counsels of this magnificent text, however inadequately my time
+may permit of my dealing with them; for there are dozens of sermons in
+it, if one could expand it worthily.
+
+But my purpose is distinctly practical, and so I wish just to cast what
+I have to say to you into the answer to three questions, the three
+questions that may be asked about everything. What? Why? How?
+
+I. _What_, then, is the counsel here?
+
+'Think on these things.' To begin with, that advice implies that we can,
+and, therefore, that we should, exercise a very rigid control over that
+part of our lives which a great many of us never think of controlling at
+all. There are hosts of people whose thoughts are just hooked on to one
+another by the slightest links of accidental connection, and who
+scarcely ever have put a strong hand upon them, or coerced them into
+order, or decided what they are going to let come into their minds, and
+what to keep out. Circumstances, the necessities of our daily
+occupations, the duties that we owe to one another, all these make
+certain streams of thought very necessary, and to some of us very
+absorbing. And for the rest--well! 'He that hath no rule over his own
+spirit is like a city broken down, without walls'; anybody can go in,
+and anybody can come out. I am sure that amongst young men and women
+there are multitudes who have never realised how responsible they are
+for the flow of the waves of that great river that is always coming from
+the depths of their being, and have never asked whether the current is
+bringing down sand or gold. Exercise control, as becomes you, over the
+run and drift of your thoughts. I said that many of us had minds like
+cities broken down. Put a guard at the gate, as they do in some
+Continental countries, and let in no vagrant that cannot show his
+passport, and a clear bill of health. Now, that is a lesson that some of
+you very much want.
+
+But, further, notice that company of fair guests that you may welcome
+into the hospitalities of your heart and mind. 'Think on these
+things'--and what are they? It would be absurd of me to try to exhaust
+the great catalogue which the Apostle gives here, but let me say a word
+or two about it.
+
+'Whatsoever things are true . . . think on these things.' Let your minds
+be exercised, breathed, braced, lifted, filled by bringing them into
+contact with truth, especially with the highest of all truths, the
+truths affecting God and your relations to Him. Why should you, like so
+many of us, be living amidst the small things of daily life, the trifles
+that are here, and never coming into vital contact with the greatest
+things of all, the truths about God and Christ, and what you have to do
+with them, and what they have to do with you? 'Whatsoever things are
+true . . . think on these things.'
+
+'Whatsoever things are honest,' or, as the word more properly and nobly
+means, 'Whatsoever things are _reverent_, or _venerable_'--let grave,
+serious, solemn thought be familiar to your minds, not frivolities, not
+mean things. There is an old story in Roman history about the barbarians
+breaking into the Capitol, and their fury being awed into silence, and
+struck into immobility, as they saw, round and round in the hall, the
+august Senators, each in his seat. Let your minds be like that, with
+reverent thoughts clustering on every side; and when wild passions, and
+animal desires, and low, mean contemplations dare to cross the
+threshold, they will be awed into silence and stillness. 'Whatsoever
+things are august . . . think on these things.'
+
+'Whatsoever things are just'--let the great, solemn thought of duty,
+obligation, what I ought to be and do, be very familiar to your
+consideration and meditation. 'Whatsoever things are just . . . think on
+these things.'
+
+'Whatsoever things are pure'--let white-robed angels haunt the place.
+Let there be in you a shuddering recoil from all the opposite; and
+entertain angels _not_ unawares. 'Whatsoever things are pure . . . think
+on these things.'
+
+Now, these characteristics of thoughts which I have already touched upon
+all belong to a lofty region, but the Apostle is not contented with
+speaking austere things. He goes now into a region tinged with emotion,
+and he says, 'whatsoever things are lovely'; for goodness is beautiful,
+and, in effect, is the only beautiful. 'Whatsoever things are lovely . . .
+think on these things.' And 'whatsoever things are of good report'--all
+the things that men speak well of, and speak good in the very naming of,
+let thoughts of them be in your minds.
+
+And then he gathers all up into two words. 'If there be any
+virtue'--which covers the ground of the first four, that he has already
+spoken about--viz. true, venerable, just, pure; and 'if there be any
+praise'--which resumes and sums up the two last: 'lovely and of good
+report,' 'think on these things.'
+
+Now, if my purpose allowed it, one would like to point out here how the
+Apostle accepts the non-Christian notions of the people in whose tongue
+he was speaking; and here, for the only time in his letters, uses the
+great Pagan word 'virtue,' which was a spell amongst the Greeks, and
+says, 'I accept the world's notion of what is virtuous and praiseworthy,
+and I bid you take it to your hearts.'
+
+Dear brethren, Christianity covers all the ground that the noblest
+morality has ever attempted to mark out and possess, and it covers a
+great deal more. 'If there be any virtue, as you Greeks are fond of
+talking about, and if there be any praise, if there is anything in men
+which commends noble actions, think on these things.'
+
+Now, you will not obey this commandment unless you obey also the
+negative side of it. That is to say, you will not think on these fair
+forms, and bring them into your hearts, unless you turn away, by
+resolute effort, from their opposites. There are some, and I am afraid
+that in a congregation as large as this there must be some
+representatives of the class, who seem to turn this apostolic precept
+right round about, and whatsoever things are illusory and vain,
+whatsoever things are mean, and frivolous, and contemptible, whatsoever
+things are unjust, and whatsoever things are impure, and whatsoever
+things are ugly, and whatsoever things are branded with a stigma by all
+men they think on _these_ things. Like the flies that are attracted to a
+piece of putrid meat, there are young men who are drawn by all the
+lustful, the lewd, the impure thoughts; and there are young women who
+are too idle and uncultivated to have any pleasure in anything higher
+than gossip and trivial fiction. 'Whatsoever things are noble and
+lovely, think on these things,' and get rid of all the others.
+
+There are plenty of occasions round about you to force the opposite upon
+your notice; and, unless you shut your door fast, and double-lock it,
+they will be sure to come in:--Popular literature, the scrappy
+trivialities that are put into some periodicals, what they call
+'realistic fiction'; modern Art, which has come to be largely the
+servant of sense; the Stage, which has come--and more is the pity! for
+there are enormous possibilities of good in it--to be largely a minister
+of corruption, or if not of corruption at least of frivolity--all these
+things are appealing to you. And some of you young men, away from the
+restraints of home, and in a city, where you think nobody could see you
+sowing your wild oats, have got entangled with them. I beseech you, cast
+out all this filth, and all this meanness and pettiness from your
+habitual thinkings, and let the august and the lovely and the pure and
+the true come in instead. You have the cup in your hand, you can either
+press into it clusters of ripe grapes, and make mellow wine, or you can
+squeeze into it wormwood and gall and hemlock and poison-berries; and,
+as you brew, you have to drink. You have the canvas, and you are to
+cover it with the figures that you like best. You can either do as Fra
+Angelico did, who painted the white walls of every cell in his quiet
+convent with Madonnas and angels and risen Christs, or you can do like
+some of those low-toned Dutch painters, who never can get above a brass
+pan and a carrot, and ugly boors and women, and fill the canvas with
+vulgarities and deformities. Choose which you will have to keep you
+company.
+
+II. Now, let me ask you to think for a moment _why_ this counsel is
+pressed upon you.
+
+Let me put the reasons very briefly. They are, first, because thought
+moulds action. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.' One looks
+round the world, and all these solid-seeming realities of institutions,
+buildings, governments, inventions and machines, steamships and electric
+telegrams, laws and governments, palaces and fortresses, they are all
+but embodied thoughts. There was a thought at the back of each of them
+which took shape. So, in another sense than the one in which the saying
+was originally meant, but yet an august and solemn sense, 'the word is
+made flesh,' and our thoughts became visible, and stand round us, a
+ghastly company. Sooner or later what has been the drift and trend of a
+man's life comes out, flashes out sometimes, and dribbles out at other
+times, into visibility in his actions; and, just as the thunder follows
+on the swift passage of the lightning, so my acts are neither more nor
+less than the reverberation and after-clap of my thoughts.
+
+So if you are entertaining in your hearts and minds this august company
+of which my text speaks, your lives will be fair and beautiful. For what
+does the Apostle immediately go on to add to our text? 'These things
+do'--as you certainly will if you think about them, and as you certainly
+will not unless you do.
+
+Again, thought and work make character. We come into the world with
+certain dispositions and bias. But that is not character, it is only the
+raw material of character. It is all plastic, like the lava when it
+comes out of the volcano. But it hardens, and whatever else my thought
+may do, and whatever effects may follow upon any of my actions, the
+recoil of them on myself is the most important effect to me. And there
+is not a thought that comes into, and is entertained by a man, or rolled
+as a sweet morsel under his tongue, but contributes its own little but
+appreciable something to the making of the man's character. I wonder if
+there is anybody in this chapel now who has been so long accustomed to
+entertain these angels of whom my text speaks as that to entertain their
+opposites would be an impossibility. I hope there is. I wonder if there
+is anybody in this chapel to-night who has been so long accustomed to
+live amidst the thoughts that are small and trivial and frivolous, if
+not amongst those that are impure and abominable, as that to entertain
+their opposites seems almost an impossibility. I am afraid there are
+some. I remember hearing about a Maori woman who had come to live in one
+of the cities in New Zealand, in a respectable station, and after a year
+or two of it she left husband and children, and civilisation, and
+hurried back to her tribe, flung off the European garb, and donned the
+blanket, and was happy crouching over the embers on the clay hearth.
+Some of you have become so accustomed to the low, the wicked, the
+lustful, the impure, the frivolous, the contemptible, that you cannot,
+or, at any rate, have lost all disposition to rise to the lofty, the
+pure, and the true.
+
+Once more; as thought makes deeds, and thought and deeds make character,
+so character makes destiny, here and hereafter. If you have these
+blessed thoughts in your hearts and minds, as your continual companions
+and your habitual guests, then, my friend, you will have a light within
+that will burn all independent of externals; and whether the world
+smiles or frowns on you, you will have the true wealth in yourselves; 'a
+better and enduring substance.' You will have peace, you will be lords
+of the world, and having nothing yet may have all. No harm can come to
+the man who has laid up in his youth, as the best treasure of old age,
+this possession of these thoughts enjoined in my text.
+
+And character makes destiny hereafter. What is a man whose whole life
+has been one long thought about money-making, or about other objects of
+earthly ambition, or about the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the
+eye, and the pride of life, to do in heaven? What would one of those
+fishes in the sunless caverns of America, which, by long living in the
+dark, have lost their eyes, do, if it were brought out into the
+sunshine? A man will go to his own place, the place for which he is
+fitted, the place for which he has fitted himself by his daily life, and
+especially by the trend and the direction of his thoughts.
+
+So do not be led away by talk about 'seeing both sides,' about 'seeing
+life,' about 'knowing what is going on.' 'I would have you simple
+concerning evil, and wise concerning good.' Do not be led away by talk
+about having your fling, and sowing your wild oats. You may make an
+indelible stain on your conscience, which even forgiveness will not wipe
+out; and you may sow your wild oats, but what will the harvest be?
+'Whatsoever a man soweth that'--_that_--'shall he also reap.' Would you
+like all your low thoughts, all your foul thoughts, to return and sit
+down beside you, and say, 'We have come to keep you company for ever'?
+'If there be any virtue . . . think on these things.'
+
+III. Now, lastly, _how_ is this precept best obeyed?
+
+I have been speaking to some extent about that, and saying that there
+must be real, honest, continuous effort to keep out the opposite, as
+well as to bring in the 'things that are lovely and of good report.' But
+there is one more word that I must say in answer to the question how
+this precept can be observed, and it is just this. All these things,
+true, venerable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, are not things
+only; they are embodied in a Person. For whatever things are fair meet
+in Jesus Christ, and He, in His living self, is the sum of all virtue
+and of all praise. So that if we link ourselves to Him by faith and
+love, and take Him into our hearts and minds, and abide in Him, we have
+them all gathered together into that One. Thinking on these things is
+not merely a meditating upon abstractions, but it is clutching and
+living in and with and by the living, loving Lord and Saviour of us all.
+If Christ is in my thoughts, all good things are there.
+
+If you trust Him, and make him your Companion, He will help you, He will
+give you His own life, and in it will give you tastes and desires which
+will make all these fair thoughts congenial to you, and will deliver you
+from the else hopeless bondage of subjection to their very opposites.
+
+Brethren, our souls cleave to the dust, and all our efforts will be
+foiled, partially or entirely, to obey this precept, unless we remember
+that it was spoken to people who had previously obeyed a previous
+commandment, and had taken Christ for their Saviour. We gravitate
+earthwards, alas! after all our efforts, but if we will put ourselves in
+His hands, then He will be as a Magnet drawing us upwards, or rather He
+will give us wings of love and contemplation by which we can soar above
+that dim spot that men call Earth, and walk in the heavenly places. The
+way by which this commandment can be obeyed is by obeying the other
+precept of the same Apostle, 'Set your minds on things which are above,
+where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.'
+
+I beseech you, take Christ and enthrone Him in the very sanctuary of
+your minds. Then you will have all these venerable, pure, blessed
+thoughts as the very atmosphere in which you move. 'Think on these
+things . . . these things do! . . . and the God of Peace shall be with
+you.'
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO SAY 'THANK YOU'
+
+          'But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at
+          length ye have revived your thought for me;
+          wherein ye did indeed take thought, but ye lacked
+          opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want:
+          for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,
+          therein to be content. I know how to be abased,
+          and I know also how to abound: in everything and
+          in all things have I learned the secret both to be
+          filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be
+          in want. I can do all things in Him that
+          strengtheneth me. Howbeit ye did well, that ye had
+          fellowship with my affliction.'--PHIL. iv. 10-14
+          (R.V.).
+
+
+It is very difficult to give money without hurting the recipient. It is
+as difficult to receive it without embarrassment and sense of
+inferiority. Paul here shows us how he could handle a delicate subject
+with a feminine fineness of instinct and a noble self-respect joined
+with warmest gratitude. He carries the weight of obligation, is profuse
+in his thanks, and yet never crosses the thin line which separates the
+expression of gratitude from self-abasing exaggeration, nor that other
+which distinguishes self-respect in the receiver of benefits from proud
+unwillingness to be obliged to anybody. Few words are more difficult to
+say rightly than 'Thank you.' Some people speak them reluctantly and
+some too fluently: some givers are too exacting in the acknowledgments
+they expect, and do not so much give as barter so much help for so much
+recognition of superiority.
+
+The Philippians had sent to Paul some money help by Epaphroditus as we
+heard before in Chapter II., and this gift he now acknowledges in a
+paragraph full of autobiographical interest which may be taken as a very
+model of the money relations between teachers and taught in the church.
+It is besides an exquisite illustration of the fineness and delicacy of
+Paul's nature, and it includes large spiritual lessons.
+
+The stream of the Apostle's thoughts takes three turns here. There is
+first the exuberant and delicate expression of his thanks, then, as
+fearing that they might misunderstand his joy in their affection as if
+it were only selfish gladness that his wants had been met, he gives
+utterance to his triumphant and yet humble consciousness of his
+Christ-given independence in, and of, all circumstances, and then
+feeling in a moment that such words, if they stood alone, might sound
+ungrateful, he again returns to thanks, but not for their gift so much
+as for the sympathy expressed in it. We may follow these movements of
+feeling now.
+
+I. The exuberant expression of thanks, 'I rejoice in the Lord greatly.'
+
+There is an instance of his following his own twice-given precept,
+'Rejoice in the Lord always.' The Philippians' care of him was the
+source of the joy, and yet it was joy in the Lord. So we learn the
+perfect consistency of that joy in Christ with the full enjoyment of all
+other sources of joy, and especially of the joy that arises from
+Christian love and friendship. Union with Christ heightens and purifies
+all earthly relations. Nobody should be so tender and so sweet in these
+as a Christian. His faith should be like the sunshine blazing out over
+the meadows making them greener. It should, and does in the measure of
+its power, destroy selfishness and guard us against the evils which sap
+love and the anxieties which torment it, against the dread that it may
+end, and our hopeless desolation when it does. There is a false ascetic
+idea of Christian devotion as if it were a regard to Christ which made
+our hearts cold to others, which is clean against Paul's experience
+here. His joy went out in fuller stream towards the Philippians because
+it was 'joy in the Lord.'
+
+We may just note in passing the tender metaphor by which the
+Philippians' renewed thought of him is likened to a tree's putting forth
+its buds in a gracious springtide, and may link with it the pretty fancy
+of an old commentator whom some people call prosaic and puritanical
+(Bengel), that the stormy winter had hindered communication, and that
+Epaphroditus and the gifts came with the opening spring.
+
+Paul's inborn delicacy and quick considerateness comes beautifully
+forward in his addition, to remove any suspicion of his thinking that
+his friends in Philippi had been negligent or cold. Therefore he adds
+that he knew that they had always had the will. What had hindered them
+we do not know. Perhaps they had no one to send. Perhaps they had not
+heard that such help would be welcome, but whatever frost had kept the
+tree from budding, he knew that the sap was in it all the same.
+
+We may note that trait of true friendship, confidence in a love that did
+not express itself. Many of us are too exacting in always wanting
+manifestations of our friend's affection. What cries out for these is
+not love so much as self-importance which has not had the attention
+which it thinks its due. How often there have been breaches of intimacy
+which have no better reason than 'He didn't come to see me often
+enough'; 'He hasn't written to me for ever so long'; 'He does not pay me
+the attention I expect.' It is a poor love which is always needing to be
+assured of another's. It is better to err in believing that there is a
+store of goodwill in our friends' hearts to us which only needs occasion
+to be unfolded. One often hears people say that they were quite
+surprised at the proofs of affection which came to them when they were
+in trouble. They would have been happier and more nearly right if they
+had believed in them when there was no need to show them.
+
+II. Consciousness of Christ-given independence and of 'content' is
+scarcely Paul's whole idea here, though that, no doubt, is included. We
+have no word which exactly expresses the meaning. 'Self-sufficient' is a
+translation, but then it has acquired a bad meaning as connoting a false
+estimate of one's own worth and wisdom. What Paul means is that whatever
+be his condition he has in himself enough to meet it. He does not depend
+on circumstances, and he does not depend on other people for strength to
+face them. Many words are not needed to insist that only the man of whom
+these things are true is worth calling a man at all. It is a miserable
+thing to be hanging on externals and so to be always exposed to the
+possibility of having to say, 'They have taken away my Gods.' It is as
+wretched to be hanging on people. 'The good man shall be satisfied for
+himself.' The fortress that has a deep well in the yard and plenty of
+provisions within, is the only one that can hold out.
+
+This independence teaches the true use of all changing circumstances.
+The consequence of 'learning' therewith to be content is further stated
+by the Apostle in terms which perhaps bear some reference to the
+mysteries of Greek religion, since the word rendered 'I have learned the
+secret' means I have been initiated. He can bear either of the two
+extremes of human experience, and can keep a calm and untroubled mind
+whichever of them he has to front. He has the same equable spirit when
+abased and when abounding. He is like a compensation pendulum which
+corrects expansions and contractions and keeps time anywhere. I remember
+hearing of a captain in an Arctic expedition who had been recalled from
+the Tropics and sent straight away to the North Pole. Sometimes God
+gives His children a similar experience.
+
+It is possible for us not only to bear with equal minds both extremes,
+but to get the good out of both. It is a hard lesson and takes much
+conning, to learn to bear sorrow or suffering or want. They have great
+lessons to teach us all, and a character that has not been schooled by
+one of these dwellers in the dark is imperfect as celery is not in
+season till frost has touched it. But it is not less difficult to learn
+how to bear prosperity and abundance, though we think it a pleasanter
+lesson. To carry a full cup without spilling is proverbially difficult,
+and one sees instances enough of men who were far better men when they
+were poor than they have ever been since they were rich, to give a
+terrible significance to the assertion that it is still more difficult
+to live a Christian life in prosperity than in sorrow. But while both
+threaten, both may minister to our growth. Sorrow will drive, and joy
+will draw, us nearer to God. If we are not tempted by abundance to
+plunge our desires into it, nor tempted by sorrow to think ourselves
+hopelessly harmed by it, both will knit us more closely to our true and
+changeless good. The centrifugal and centripetal forces both keep the
+earth in its orbit.
+
+It is only when we are independent of circumstances that we are able to
+get the full good of them. When there is a strong hand at the helm, the
+wind, though it be almost blowing directly against us, helps us forward,
+but otherwise the ship drifts and washes about in the trough. We all
+need the exhortation to be their master, for we can do without them and
+they serve us.
+
+Paul here lets us catch a glimpse of the inmost secret of his power
+without which all exhortations to independence are but waste words. He
+is conscious of a living power flowing through him and making him fit
+for anything, and he is not afraid that any one who studies him will
+accuse him of exaggeration even when he makes the tremendous claim 'I
+can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.' That great word is even
+more emphatic in the original, not only because, as the Revised Version
+shows, it literally is _in_ and not _through_, and so suggests again his
+familiar thought of a vital union with Jesus, but also because he uses a
+compound word which literally means 'strengthening within,' so then the
+power communicated is breathed into the man, and in the most literal
+sense he is 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.' This
+inward impartation of strength is the true and only condition of that
+self-sufficingness which Paul has just been claiming. Stoicism breaks
+down because it tries to make men apart from God sufficient for
+themselves, which no man is. To stand alone without Him is to be weak.
+Circumstances will always be too strong for me, and sins will be too
+strong. A Godless life has a weakness at the heart of its loneliness,
+but Christ and I are always in the majority, and in the face of all
+foes, be they ever so many and strong, we can confidently say, 'They
+that be with us are more than they that be with them.' The old
+experience will prove true in our lives, and though 'they compass us
+about like bees,' the worst that they can do is only to buzz angrily
+round our heads, and their end is in the name of the Lord to be
+destroyed. In ourselves we are weak, but if we are 'rooted, grounded,
+built' on Jesus, we partake of the security of the rock of ages to which
+we are united, and cannot be swept away by the storm, so long as it
+stands unmoved. I have seen a thin hair-stemmed flower growing on the
+edge of a cataract and resisting the force of its plunge, and of the
+wind that always lives in its depths, because its roots are in a cleft
+of the cliff. The secret of strength for all men is to hold fast by the
+'strong Son of God,' and they only are sufficient in whatsoever state
+they are, to whom this loving and quickening voice has spoken the
+charter 'My grace is sufficient for thee.'
+
+III. The renewed thanks for the loving sympathy expressed in the gift.
+
+We have here again an eager anxiety not to be misunderstood as
+undervaluing the Philippians' gift. How beautifully the sublimity of the
+previous words lies side by side with the lowliness and gentleness of
+these.
+
+We note here the combination of that grand independence with loving
+thankfulness for brotherly help. The self-sufficingness of Stoicism is
+essentially inhuman and isolating. It is contrary to God's plan and to
+the fellowship which is meant to knit men together. So we have always to
+take heed to blend with it a loving welcome to sympathy, and not to
+fancy that human help and human kindness is useless. We should be able
+to do without it, but that need not make it the less sweet when it
+comes. We may be carrying water for the march, but shall not the less
+prize a brook by the way. Our firm souls should be like the rocking
+stones in Cornwall, poised so truly that tempests cannot shake them, and
+yet vibrating at the touch of a little child's soft hand. That lofty
+independence needs to be humanised by grateful acceptance of the
+refreshment of human sympathy even though we can do without it.
+
+Paul shows us here what is the true thing in a brother's help for which
+to be thankful. The reason why he was glad of their help was because it
+spoke to his heart and told him that they were making themselves sharers
+with him in his troubles. As he tells us in the beginning of the letter,
+their fellowship in his labours had been from the beginning a joy to
+him. It was not so much their material help as their true sympathy that
+he valued. The high level to which he lifts what was possibly a very
+modest contribution, if measured by money standards, carries with it a
+great lesson for all receivers and for all givers of such gifts,
+teaching the one that they are purely selfish if they are glad of what
+they get, and bidding the other remember that they may give so as to
+hurt by a gift more than by a blow, that they may give infinitely more
+by loving sympathy than by much gold, and that a L5 note does not
+discharge all their obligations. We have to give after His pattern who
+does not toss us our alms from a height, but Himself comes to bestow
+them, and whose gift, though it be the unspeakable gift of eternal life,
+is less than the love it speaks, in that He Himself has in wondrous
+manner become partaker of our weakness. The pattern of all sympathy, the
+giver of all our possessions, is God. Let us hold to Him in faith and
+love, and all earthly love will be sweeter and sympathy more precious.
+Our own hearts will be refined and purified to a delicacy of
+consideration and a tenderness beyond their own. Our souls will be made
+lords of all circumstances and strengthened according to our need. He
+will say to us 'My grace is sufficient for thee,' and we, as we feel His
+strength being made perfect in our weakness, shall be able to say with
+humble confidence, 'I can do all things in Christ who strengtheneth me
+within.'
+
+
+
+
+GIFTS GIVEN, SEED SOWN
+
+          'And ye yourselves also know, ye Philippians, that
+          in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed
+          from Macedonia, no church had fellowship with me
+          in the matter of giving and receiving, but ye
+          only; for even in Thessalonica ye sent once and
+          again unto my need. Not that I seek for the gift;
+          but I seek for the fruit that increaseth to your
+          account. But I have all things, and abound: I am
+          filled, having received from Epaphroditus the
+          things that came from you, an odour of a sweet
+          smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to
+          God. And my God shall fulfil every need of yours
+          according to His riches in glory in Christ
+          Jesus.'--PHIL. iv. 15-19 (R.V.).
+
+
+Paul loved the Philippians too well and was too sure of their love to be
+conscious of any embarrassment in expressing his thanks for money help.
+His thanks are profuse and long drawn out. Our present text still
+strikes the note of grateful acknowledgment. It gives us a little
+glimpse into earlier instances of their liberality, and beautifully
+suggests that as they had done to him so God would do to them, and that
+their liberality was in a fashion a prophecy, because it was in some
+measure an imitation, of God's liberality. He had just said 'I am full,
+having received the things which were sent from you,' and now he says,
+'My God shall fill full all your needs.' The use of the same word in
+these two connections is a piece of what one would call the very
+ingenuity of graceful courtesy, if it were not something far deeper,
+even the utterance of a loving and self-forgetting heart.
+
+I. We may note here Paul's money relations with the churches.
+
+We know that he habitually lived by his own labour. He could call to
+witness the assembled elders at Ephesus, when he declared that 'these
+hands ministered unto my necessities,' and could propose himself as an
+illustration of the words of the Lord Jesus, 'It is more blessed to give
+than to receive.' He firmly holds the right of Christian teachers to be
+supported by the churches, and vehemently insists upon it in the First
+Epistle to the Corinthians. But he waives the right in his own case, and
+passionately insists that it were better for him rather to die than that
+any man should make his glorying void. He will not use to the full his
+right in the Gospel 'that he may make a Gospel without charge,' but when
+needed he gladly accepted money gifts, as he did from the Philippians.
+In our text he points back to an earlier instance of this. The history
+of that instance we may briefly recall. After his indignities and
+imprisonment in Philippi he went straight to Thessalonica, stayed there
+a short time till a riot drove him to take refuge in Berea, whence again
+he had to flee, and guided by brethren reached Athens. There he was
+left alone, and his guides went back to Macedonia to send on Silas and
+Timothy. From Athens he went to Corinth, and there was rejoined by them.
+According to our text, 'in the beginning of the Gospel,' that is, of
+course, its beginning in Philippi, they relieved him twice in
+Thessalonica, and if the words in our text which date the Philippians'
+gift may be read 'when I had departed from Macedonia,' we should have
+here another reference to the same incident mentioned in 2 Corinthians,
+chap. xi. 8-9, where he speaks of being in want there, and having 'the
+measure of my want' supplied by the brethren who came from Macedonia.
+The coincidence of these two incidental references hid away, as it were,
+confirms the historical truthfulness of both Epistles. And if we take
+into view the circumstances in which he was placed in Thessalonica and
+at the beginning of his stay in Corinth, his needing and receiving such
+aid is amply accounted for. Once again, after a long interval, when he
+was a prisoner in Rome, and probably unable to work for his maintenance,
+their care of him flourished again.
+
+In the present circumstances of our churches, it seems necessary that
+the right which Paul so strongly asserted should, for the most part, not
+be waived, but the only true way of giving and receiving as between
+minister and people is when it is a matter not of payment but a gift.
+When it is an expression of sympathy and affection on both sides, the
+relationship is pleasant and may be blessed. When it comes to be a
+business transaction, and is to be measured by the rules applicable to
+such, it goes far to destroy some of the sweetest bonds, and to endanger
+a preacher's best influence.
+
+II. The lofty view here taken of such service.
+
+It is 'the fruit that increaseth to your account.' Fruit, which as it
+were is put to their credit in the account-book of heaven, but it is
+called by Paul by a sacreder name as being an odour of a sweet smell, a
+sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God, in which metaphor all the
+sacred ideas of yielding up precious things to God and of the sacred
+fire that consumed the offering or brought to bear on the prosaic
+material gift.
+
+The principle which the Apostle here lays down in reference to a money
+gift has, of course, a much wider application, and is as true about all
+Christian acts. We need not be staggered at the emphasis with which Paul
+states the truths of their acceptableness and rewardableness, but in
+order fully to understand the ground of his assurance we must remember
+that in his view the root of all such fruit increasing to our account,
+and of everything which can claim to be an odour of a sweet smell well
+pleasing to God, is love to Christ, and the renewal of our nature by the
+spirit of God dwelling in us. In us there dwells no good thing. It is
+only as we abide in Him and His words abide in us that we bear much
+fruit. Separate from Him we can do nothing. If our works are ever to
+smell sweet to God, they must be done for Christ, and in a very profound
+and real sense, done by Him.
+
+The essential character of all work which has the right to be called
+good, and which is acceptable to God, is sacrifice. The one exhortation
+which takes the place and more than fills the place of all other
+commandments, and is enforced by the motive which takes the place, and
+more than takes the place of all other motives, is, 'I beseech you by
+the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice.' It is
+works which in the intention of the doer are offered to Him, and in
+which therefore there is a surrender of our own wills, or tastes, or
+inclinations, or passions, or possessions, that yield to Him an odour of
+a sweet smell. The old condition which touched the chivalrous heart of
+David has to be repeated by us in regard to any work which we can ever
+hope to make well pleasing to God; 'I will not offer burnt offerings
+unto the Lord my God which cost me nothing.'
+
+There is a spurious humility which treats all the works of good men as
+filthy rags, but such a false depreciation is contradicted by Christ's
+'Well done, good and faithful servant.' It is true that all our deeds
+are stained and imperfect, but if they are offered on the altar which He
+provides, it will sanctify the giver and the gift. He is the great Aaron
+who makes atonement for the iniquity of our holy things. And whilst we
+are stricken silent with thankfulness for the wonderful mercy of His
+gracious allowance, we may humbly hope that His 'Well done' will be
+spoken of us, and may labour, not without a foretaste that we do not
+labour in vain, that 'whether present or absent we may be well pleasing
+to Him.'
+
+The fruit is here supposed to be growing, that is, of course, in another
+life. We need not insist that the service and sacrifice and work of
+earth, if the motive be right, tell in a man's condition after death. It
+is not all the same how Christian men live; some gain ten talents, some
+five, and some two, and the difference between them is not always as the
+parable represents it, a difference in the original endowment. An
+entrance may be given into the eternal kingdom, and yet it may not be an
+abundant entrance.
+
+III. The gift that supplies the givers.
+
+Paul has nothing to bestow, but he serves a great God who will see to it
+that no man is the poorer by helping His servants. The king's honour is
+concerned in not letting a poor man suffer by lodging and feeding his
+retainers. The words here suggest to us the source from which our need
+may be filled full, as an empty vessel might be charged to the brim with
+some precious liquid, the measure or limit of the fulness, and the
+channel by which we receive it.
+
+Paul was so sure that the Philippians' needs would all be satisfied,
+because he knew that his own had been; he is generalising from his own
+case, and that, I think, is at all events part of the reason why he says
+with much emphasis, '_My_ God. As He has done to me He will do to you,'
+but even without the 'my,' the great name contains in itself a promise
+and its seal. 'God will supply just because He is God'; that is what His
+name means--infinite fulness and infinite self-communicativeness and
+delight in giving. But is not so absolutely unlimited a promise as this
+convicted of complete unreality when contrasted with the facts of any
+life, even of the most truly Christian or the most outwardly happy? Its
+contradiction of the grim facts of experience is not to be slurred over
+by restricting it to religious needs only. The promise needs the eye of
+Faith to interpret the facts of experience, and to let nothing darken
+the clear vision that if any seeming need is left by God unfilled, it is
+not an indispensable need. If we do not get what we want we may be quite
+sure that we do not need it. The axiom of Christian faith is that
+whatever we do not obtain we do not require. Very desirable things may
+still not be necessary. Let us limit our notions of necessity by the
+facts of God's giving, and then we, too, shall have learned, in
+whatsoever state we are, therein to be content. When the Apostle says
+that God shall fill all our need full up to the brim, was he
+contemplating only such necessities as God could supply through outward
+gifts? Surely not. God Himself is the filler and the only filler of a
+human heart, and it is by this impartation of Himself and by nothing
+else that He bestows upon us the supply of our needs.
+
+Unless we have been initiated into this deepest and yet simplest secret
+of life, it will be full of gnawing pain and unfulfilled longings.
+Unless we have learned that our needs are like the cracks in the parched
+ground, cups to hold the rain from heaven, doors by which God Himself
+can come to us, we shall dwell for ever in a dry and thirsty land. God
+Himself is the only satisfier of the soul. 'Whom have I in heaven but
+Thee, and there is none upon earth that'--if I am not a fool--'I desire
+side by side with Thee?'
+
+But Paul here sets forth in very bold words the measure or limits of the
+divine supply of our need. It is 'according to His riches in glory.'
+Then, all of God belongs to me, and the whole wealth of His aggregated
+perfections is available for stopping the crannies of my heart and
+filling its emptiness. My emptiness corresponds with His fulness as some
+concavity does with the convexity that fits into it, and the whole that
+He is waits to fill and to satisfy me. There is no limit really to what
+a man may have of God except the limitless limit of the infinite divine
+nature, but on the other hand this great promise is not fulfilled all at
+once, and whilst the actual limit is the boundlessness of God, there is
+a working limit, so to speak, a variable one, but a very real one. The
+whole riches of God's glory are available for us, but only so much of
+the boundless store as we desire and are at present capable of taking
+in will belong to us now. What is the use of owning half a continent if
+the owner lives on an acre of it and grows what he wants there, and has
+never seen the broad lands that yet belong to him? Nothing hinders a man
+from indefinitely increased possession of a growing measure of God,
+except his own arbitrarily narrowed measure of desire and capacity.
+Therefore it becomes a solemn question for each of us, Am I day by day
+becoming more and more fit to possess more of God, and enjoy more of the
+God whom I possess? In Him we have each 'a potentiality of wealth beyond
+the dreams of avarice.' Do we growingly realise that boundless
+possibility?
+
+The channel by which that boundless supply is to reach us is distinctly
+set forth here. All these riches are stored up 'in Christ Jesus.' A deep
+lake may be hidden away in the bosom of the hills that would pour
+blessing and fertility over a barren land if it could find a channel
+down into the plains, but unless there be a river flowing out of it, its
+land-locked waters might as well be dried up. When Paul says 'riches in
+glory,' he puts them up high above our reach, but when he adds 'in
+Christ Jesus,' he brings them all down amongst us. In Him is 'infinite
+riches in a narrow room.' If we are in Him then we are beside our
+treasure, and have only to put out our hands and take the wealth that is
+lying there. All that we need is 'in Christ,' and if we are in Christ it
+is all close at our sides.
+
+Then the question comes to be, 'Am I thus near my wealth, and can I get
+at it whenever I want it, as I want it, and as much as I want of it?' We
+can if we will. The path is easy to define, though our slothfulness
+find it hard to tread. That man is in Christ who dwells with Him by
+faith, whose heart is by love plunged in His love, who daily seeks to
+hold communion with Him amid the distractions of life, and who in
+practical submission obeys His will. If thus we trust, if thus we love,
+if thus we hold fast to Him, and if thus we link Him with all our
+activities in the world, need will cease to grow, and will only be an
+occasion for God's gift. 'Delight thyself in the Lord,' and then the
+heart's desires being set upon Him, 'He will give thee the desire of thy
+heart.'
+
+Paul says to us 'My God shall supply all your need.' Let us answer, 'The
+Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.'
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL WORDS
+
+          'Now unto our God and Father be the glory for ever
+          and ever, Amen. Salute every saint in Christ
+          Jesus. The brethren which are with me salute you.
+          All the saints salute you, especially they that
+          are of Caesar's household. The grace of the Lord
+          Jesus Christ be with your spirit.'--PHIL. iv.
+          20-23 (R.V.).
+
+
+These closing words fall into three unconnected parts, a doxology,
+greetings, and a benediction. As in all his letters, the Apostle follows
+the natural instinct of making his last words loving words. Even when he
+had to administer a bitter draught, the last drops in the cup were
+sweetened, and to the Philippians whom he loved so well, and in whose
+loyal love he confided so utterly, his parting was tender as an embrace.
+Taking together the three elements of this farewell, they present to us
+a soul filled with desire for the glory of God and with loving yearning
+for all His brethren. We shall best deal with them by simply taking them
+in order.
+
+I. The Doxology.
+
+It is possibly evoked by the immediately preceding thought of God's
+infinite supply of all human need 'according to his riches in _glory_';
+but the glory which is so richly stored in Christ, and is the full
+storehouse from which our emptiness is to be filled, is not the same as
+the glory here ascribed to Him. The former is the sum of His divine
+perfections, the light of His own infinite being: the latter is the
+praise rendered to Him when we know Him for what He is, and exalt Him in
+our thankful thoughts and adoration. As this doxology is the last word
+of this whole letter, we may say that it gathers into one all that
+precedes it. Our ascription of glory to God is the highest object of all
+His self-manifestation, and should be the end of all our contemplations
+of Him and of His acts. The faith that God does 'all for His glory' may
+be and often has been so interpreted as to make his character repellent
+and hideous, but in reality it is another way of saying that God is
+love. He desires that all men should be gladdened and elevated by
+knowing Him as He is. His glory is to give. That to which He has
+committed the charge of interpreting Him to our dim eyes and disordered
+natures is not the attributes of sovereign power, or creative wisdom, or
+administrative providence, or any other elements which men lay hold of
+in their conceptions of deity. When men make gods they make them in
+their own image: when God reveals God, the emphasis is put on an
+altogether different aspect of His nature. It is His self-communicating
+and paternal love revealed to the heart of a son which will kindle the
+highest aspiration of praise, and that fatherhood is not found in the
+fact that God has made us, but in the higher fact that He has redeemed
+us and has sent the spirit of His Son into our hearts. The doxology of
+our text is a distinctively Christian doxology which Paul conceives can
+only be uttered by lips which have learned to say 'Abba, Father,' 'and
+have received the adoption of sons' through the eternal Son.
+
+Mark, too, that this glad ascription of glory to God is conceived of as
+sounded forth for ever and ever, or literally through 'ages and ages, as
+long as successive epochs shall unfold.' It is not as if the revelation
+of the divine character were in the past, and the light of it continued
+to touch stony lips to music, but it fills in continuous forthcoming
+every age, and in every age men receive the fulness of God, and in every
+age redeemed hearts bring back their tribute of praise and love to Him.
+
+II. The Greetings.
+
+The Apostle's habit of closing all his letters with kindly messages is,
+of course, more than a habit. It is the natural instinct to which all
+true hearts have a hundred times yielded. It is remarkable that in this
+letter there are no individual greetings, but that instead of such there
+is the emphatic greeting to every saint in Christ Jesus. He will not
+single out any where all are so near His heart, and He will have no
+jealousies to be fed by His selection of more favoured persons. It may
+be too, that the omission of individual messages is partly occasioned by
+some incipient tendencies to alienation and faction of which we see some
+traces in His earnest exhortations to stand fast in one spirit, and to
+be of the same mind, having the same love, and being of one accord, as
+well as in his exhortation to two Philippian women to be of the same
+mind in the Lord. The all-embracing word at parting singularly links the
+end of the letter with its beginning, where we find a remarkable
+sequence of similar allusions to 'all' the Philippian Christians. He
+has them all in His heart; they are all partakers with Him of grace; He
+longs after them all.
+
+The designation by which Paul describes the recipients of his greeting
+carries in it a summons as well as a promise. They are saints, and they
+are so as being 'in Christ.' That name is often used as a clumsy
+sarcasm, but it goes to the very root of Christian character. The
+central idea contained in it is that of consecration to God, and that
+which is often taken to be its whole meaning is but a secondary one, a
+result of that consecration. The true basis of all real purity of
+conduct lies in devotion of heart and life to God, and for want of
+discerning the connection of these two elements the world's ethics fail
+in theory and in practice. A 'saint' is not a faultless monster, and the
+persistence of failures and inconsistencies, whilst affording only too
+sad an occasion for penitence and struggle, afford no occasion for a
+man's shrinking from taking to himself the humble claim to be a saint.
+Both the elements of consecration to God and of real and progressive,
+though never complete perfection of personal character, are realised
+only in Christ; in and only in fellowship with Him whose life was
+unbroken fellowship with the Father, and whose will was completely
+accordant with the Father's, do we rise to the height of belonging to
+God. And only in Him who could challenge a world to convict Him of sin
+shall we make even a beginning of personal righteousness. If we are in
+Christ we should be saints to-day however imperfect our holiness, and
+shall be 'as the angels of God' in the day that is coming--nay, rather
+as the Lord of the Angels, 'not having spot or blemish or any such
+thing.'
+
+The New Testament has other names for believers, each of which expresses
+some great truth in regard to them; for example, the earliest name by
+which they knew themselves was the simple one of 'brethren,' which spoke
+of their common relation to a Father and pledged them to the sweetness
+and blessedness of a family. The sarcastic wits of Antioch called them
+Christians as seeing nothing in them other than what they had many a
+time seen in the adherents of some founder of a school or a party. They
+called themselves disciples or believers, revealing by both names their
+humble attitude and their Lord's authority, and by the latter disclosing
+to seeing eyes the central bond which bound them to Him. But the name of
+Saint declares something more than these in that it speaks of their
+relation to God, the fulfilment of the Old Testament ideal, and carries
+in it a prophecy of personal character.
+
+The sharers in Paul's salutation call for some notice. We do not know
+who 'the brethren that are with me' were. We might have supposed from
+Paul's pathetic words that he had no man like-minded with him, that the
+faithful band whom we find named in the other epistles of the captivity
+were dispersed. But though there were none 'like-minded who will care
+truly for your state,' there were some recognised as brethren who were
+closely associated with him, and who, though they had no such warm
+interest in the Philippians as he had, still had a real affection for
+them, drawn no doubt from him. Distinct from these was the whole body of
+the Roman Christians, from the mention of whom we may gather that his
+imprisonment did not prevent his intercourse with them. Again, distinct
+from these, though a part of them, were the saints of Caesar's
+household. He had apparently special opportunities for intercourse with
+them, and probably his imprisonment brought him through the praetorian
+guards into association with them, as Caesar's household included all the
+servants and retainers of Nero.
+
+May we not see in this union of members of the most alien races a
+striking illustration of the new bond which the Gospel had woven among
+men? There was a Jew standing in the midst between Macedonian Greeks and
+proud Roman citizens, including members of that usually most heartless
+and arrogant of all classes, the lackeys of a profligate court, and they
+are all clasping one another's hands in true brotherly love. Society was
+falling to pieces. We know the tragic spectacle that the empire
+presented then. Amidst universal decay of all that held men together,
+here was a new uniting principle; everywhere else dissolution was at
+work; here was again crystallising. A flower was opening its petals
+though it grew on a dunghill. What was it that drew slaves and
+patricians, the Pharisee of Tarsus, rude Lycaonians, the 'barbarous'
+people of Melita, the Areopagite of Athens, the citizens of Rome into
+one loving family? How came Lydia and her slave girl, Onesimus and his
+master, the praetorian guard and his prisoner, the courtier in Nero's
+golden house and the jailer at Philippi into one great fellowship of
+love? They were all one in Christ Jesus.
+
+And what lessons the saints in Caesar's household may teach us! Think of
+the abyss of lust and murder there, of the Emperor by turns a buffoon, a
+sensualist, and a murderer. A strange place to find saints in that sty
+of filth! Let no man say that it is impossible for a pure life to be
+lived in any circumstances, or try to bribe his conscience by insisting
+on the difficulties of his environment. It may be our duty to stand at
+our post however foul may be our surroundings and however uncongenial
+our company, and if we are sure that He has set us there, we may be sure
+that He is with us there, and that there we can live the life and
+witness to His name.
+
+III. The Parting Benediction.
+
+The form of the benediction seems to be more correctly given in the
+Revised Version, which reads 'with your spirit' instead of 'with you
+all.' That form reappears in Galatians and in Philemon. What Paul
+especially desires of his favourite church is that they may possess 'the
+grace.' Grace is love exercising itself to inferiors, and to those who
+deserve something sadder and darker. The gifts of that one grace are
+manifold. They comprise all blessings that man can need or receive. This
+angel comes with her hands and her lap full of good. Her name is
+shorthand for all that God can bestow or man can ask or think.
+
+And it needs all the names by which Christ is known among men to
+describe the encyclopaediacal Person who can bestow the encyclopaediacal
+gift. Here we have them all gathered, as it were, into one great diadem,
+set on His head where once the crown of thorns was twined. He is Lord,
+the name which implies at least absolute authority, and is most probably
+the New Testament translation of the Old Testament name of Jehovah. He
+is our Lord as supreme over us, and wonderful as it is, as belonging to
+us. He holds the keys of the storehouse of grace. The river of the water
+of life flows where He turns it on. He is Jesus--the personal name which
+He bore in the days of His flesh, and by which men who knew Him only as
+one of themselves called Him. It is the token of His brotherhood and
+the guarantee of the sympathy which will ever bestow 'grace for grace.'
+He is the Christ, the Messiah, the name which points back to the Old
+Testament ideas and declares His office, realising all the rapturous
+anticipations of prophets, and the longings of psalmists, and more than
+fulfilling them all by giving Himself to men.
+
+That great gift is to be the companion of every spirit which looks to
+that Jesus in the reality of His humanity, in the greatness of His
+office, in the loftiness of His divinity, and finds in each of His names
+an anchor for its faith and an authoritative claim for its obedience.
+
+Such a wish as this benediction is the truest expression of human
+friendship; it is the highest desire any of us can form for ourselves or
+for those dearest to us. Do we keep it clear before us in our
+intercourse with them so that the end of that intercourse will naturally
+be such a prayer?
+
+Our human love has its limitations. We can but wish for others the grace
+which Christ can give, but neither our wishes nor His giving can make
+the grace ours unless for ourselves we take the great gift that is
+freely given to us of God. It is no accident that all his letters close
+thus. This benediction is the last word of God's revelation to man, the
+brightness in the clear west, the last strain of the great oratorio. The
+last word or last book of Scripture is 'the grace of our Lord Jesus
+Christ be with you all.' Let us take up the solemn Amen in our lips and
+in our hearts.
+
+
+
+
+COLOSSIANS
+
+
+
+
+SAINTS, BELIEVERS, BRETHREN
+
+          ' . . . The saints and faithful brethren in
+          Christ.'--COL. i. 2.
+
+
+'The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,' says the Acts
+of the Apostles. It was a name given by outsiders, and like most of the
+instances where a sect, or school, or party is labelled with the name of
+its founder, it was given in scorn. It hit and yet missed its mark. The
+early believers were Christians, that is, Christ's men, but they were
+not merely a group of followers of a man, like many other groups of whom
+the Empire at that time was full. So they never used that name
+themselves. It occurs twice only in Scripture, once when King Agrippa
+was immensely amused at the audacity of Paul in thinking that he would
+easily make 'a Christian' of him; and once when Peter speaks of
+'suffering as a Christian,' where he is evidently quoting, as it were,
+the indictment on which the early believers were tried and punished.
+What did they call themselves then?
+
+I have chosen this text not for the purpose of speaking about it only,
+but because it gathers together in brief compass the three principal
+designations by which the early believers knew themselves.
+'Saints'--that tells their relation to God, as well as their character,
+for it means 'consecrated,' set apart for Him, and therefore pure;
+'faithful'--that means 'full of faith' and is substantially equivalent
+to the usual 'believers,' which defines their relation to Jesus Christ
+as the Revealer of God; 'brethren'--that defines their relation and
+sentiment towards their fellows. These terms go a great deal deeper than
+the nickname which the wits of Antioch invented. The members of the
+Church were not content with the vague 'Christian,' but they called
+themselves 'saints,' 'believers,' 'brethren.' One designation does not
+appear here, which we must take into account for completeness: the
+earliest of all--disciples. Now, I purpose to bring together these four
+names, by which the early believers thought and spoke of themselves, in
+order to point the lessons as to our position and our duty, which are
+wrapped up in them. And I may just say that, perhaps, it is no sign of
+advance that the Church, as years rolled on, accepted the world's name
+for itself, and that people found it easier to call themselves
+'Christians'--which did not mean very much--than to call themselves
+'saints' or 'believers.'
+
+Now then, to begin with,
+
+I. They were 'Disciples' first of all.
+
+The facts as to the use of that name are very plain, and as instructive
+as they are plain. It is a standing designation in the Gospels, both in
+the mouths of friends and of outsiders; it is sometimes, though very
+sparingly, employed by Jesus Christ Himself. It persists on through the
+book of the Acts of the Apostles, and then it stops dead, and we never
+hear it again.
+
+Now its existence at first, and its entire abandonment afterwards, both
+seem to me to carry very valuable lessons. Let me try to work them out.
+Of course, 'disciple' or 'scholar' has for its correlative--as the
+logicians call it--'teacher.' And so we find that as the original
+adherents of Jesus called themselves 'disciples,' they addressed Him as
+'Master,' which is the equivalent of 'Rabbi.' That at once suggests the
+thought that to themselves, and to the people who saw the origination of
+the little Christian community, the Lord and His handful of followers
+seemed just to be like John and his disciples, the Pharisees and their
+disciples, and many another Rabbi and his knot of admiring adherents.
+Therefore whilst the name was in one view fitting, it was conspicuously
+inadequate, and as time went on, and the Church became more conscious of
+the uniqueness of the bond that knit it to Jesus Christ, it
+instinctively dropped the name 'disciple,' and substituted others more
+intimate and worthy.
+
+But yet it remains permanently true, that Christ's followers are
+Christ's scholars, and that He is their Rabbi and Teacher. Only the
+peculiarity, the absolute uniqueness, of His attitude and action as a
+Teacher lies in two things: one, that His main subject was Himself, as
+He said, 'I am the Truth,' and consequently His characteristic demand
+from His scholars was not, as with other teachers, 'Accept this, that,
+or the other doctrine which I propound,' but 'Believe in Me'; and the
+other, that He seldom if ever argues, or draws conclusions from previous
+premises, that He never speaks as if He Himself had learnt and fought
+His way to what He is saying, or betrays uncertainty, limitation, or
+growth in His opinions, and that for all confirmation of His
+declarations, He appeals only to the light within and to His own
+authority: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you.' No wonder that the common
+people were astonished at His teaching, and felt that here was an
+authority in which the wearisome citations of what Rabbi So-and-So had
+said, altogether lacked.
+
+That teaching abides still, and, as I believe, opens out into, and is
+our source of, all that we know--in distinction and contrast from,
+'imagine,' 'hope,' 'fear'--of God, and of ourselves, and of the future.
+It casts the clearest light on morals for the individual and on politics
+for the community. Whatever men may say about Christianity being effete,
+it will not be effete till the world has learnt and absorbed the
+teaching of Jesus Christ; and we are a good long way from that yet!
+
+If He is thus the Teacher, the perpetual Teacher, and the only Teacher,
+of mankind in regard to all these high things about God and man and the
+relation between them, about life and death and the world, and about the
+practice and conduct of the individual and of the community, then we, if
+we are His disciples, build houses on the rock, in the degree in which
+we not only hear but do the things that He commands. For this Teacher is
+no theoretical handler of abstract propositions, but the authoritative
+imposer of the law of life, and all His words have a direct bearing upon
+conduct. Therefore it is vain for us to say: 'Lord, Lord, Thou hast
+taught in our streets and we have accepted Thy teaching.' He looks down
+upon us from the Throne, as He looked upon the disciples in that upper
+room, and He says to each of us: 'If ye know these things, happy are ye
+if ye do them.'
+
+But the complete disappearance of the name as the development of the
+Church advanced, brings with it another lesson, and that is, that
+precious and great as are the gifts which Jesus Christ bestows as a
+Teacher, and unique as His act and attitude in that respect are, the
+name either of teacher or of disciple fails altogether to penetrate to
+the essence of the relation which knits us together. It is not enough
+for our needs that we shall be taught. The worst man in the world knows
+a far nobler morality than the best man practises. And if it were true,
+as some people superficially say is the case, that evil-doing is the
+result of ignorance, there would be far less evil-doing in the world
+than, alas! there is. It is not for the want of knowing, that we go
+wrong, as our consciences tell us; but it is for want of something that
+can conquer the evil tendencies within, and lift off the burden of a
+sinful past which weighs on us. As in the carboniferous strata what was
+pliant vegetation has become heavy mineral, our evil deeds lie heavy on
+our souls. What we need is not to be told what we ought to be, but to be
+enabled to be it. Electricity can light the road, and it can drive the
+car along it; and that is what we want, a dynamic as well as an
+illuminant, something that will make us able to do and to be what
+conscience has told us we ought to be and do.
+
+Teacher? Yes. But if _only_ teacher, then He is nothing more than one of
+a multitude who in all generations have vainly witnessed to sinful men
+of the better path. There is no reformation for the individual, and
+little hope for humanity, in a Christ whom you degrade to the level of a
+Rabbi, or in a Church which has not pressed nearer to Him than to feel
+itself His disciples.
+
+There was a man who came to Jesus by night, and was in the dark about
+the Jesus to whom he came, and he said, 'We know that Thou art a Teacher
+come from God.' But Jesus did not accept the witness, though a young
+teacher fighting for recognition might have been glad to get it from an
+authoritative member of the Sanhedrim. But He answered, 'Except a man be
+born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' If we need to be born
+again before we see it, it is not teachers of it that will serve our
+turn, but One who takes us by the hand, and translates us out of the
+tyranny of the darkness into the Kingdom of the Son of God's love. So
+much, then, for the first of these names and lessons.
+
+Now turn to the second--
+
+II. The Disciples must be Believers.
+
+That name begins to appear almost immediately after Pentecost, and
+continues throughout. It comes in two forms, one which is in my text,
+'the faithful,' meaning thereby not the reliable, but the people that
+are full of faith; the other, meaning the same thing, they who believe,
+the 'believers.' The Church found that 'disciple' was not enough. It
+went deeper; and, with a true instinct, laid hold of the unique bond
+which knits men to their Lord and Saviour. That name indicates that
+Jesus Christ appears to the man who has faith in a new character. He is
+not any longer the Teacher who is to be listened to, but He is the
+Object of trust. And that implies the recognition, first, of His
+Divinity, which alone is strong enough to bear up the weight of millions
+of souls leaning hard upon it; and, second, of what He has done and not
+merely of what He has said. We accept the Teacher's word; we trust the
+Saviour's Cross. And in the measure in which men learned that the centre
+of the work of the Rabbi Jesus was the death of the Incarnate Son of
+God, their docility was sublimed into faith.
+
+That faith is the real bond that knits men to Jesus Christ. We are
+united to Him, and become recipient of the gifts that He has to bestow,
+by no sacraments, by no externals, by no reverential admiration of His
+supreme wisdom and perfect beauty of character, not by assuming the
+attitude of the disciple, but by flinging our whole selves upon Him,
+because He is our Saviour. That unites us to Jesus Christ; nothing else
+does. Faith is the opening of the heart, by which all His power can be
+poured into us. It is the grasping of His hand, by which, even though
+the cold waters be above our knees and be rising to our hearts, we are
+lifted above them and they are made a solid pavement for our feet. Faith
+is the door opened by ourselves, and through which will come all the
+Glory that dwelt between the cherubim, and will fill the secret place in
+our hearts. To be the disciple of a Rabbi is something; to be the
+'faithful' dependent on the Saviour is to be His indeed.
+
+And then there is to be remembered, further, that this bond, which is
+the only vital link between a man and Christ, is therefore the basis of
+all virtue, of all nobility, of all beauty of conduct, and that
+'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report' are its natural
+efflorescence and fruit. And so that leads us to the third point--
+
+III. The believing Disciple is a 'Saint.'
+
+That name does not appear in the Gospels, but it begins to show in the
+Acts of the Apostles, and it becomes extremely common throughout the
+Epistles of Paul. He had no hesitation in calling the very imperfect
+disciples in Corinth by this great name. He was going to rebuke them for
+some very great offences, not only against Christian elevation of
+conduct, but against common pagan morality; but he began by calling them
+'saints.'
+
+What is a saint? First and foremost, a man who has given himself to God,
+and is consecrated thereby. Whoever has cast himself on Christ, and has
+taken Christ for his, therein and in the same degree as he is exercising
+faith, has thus yielded himself to God. If your faith has not led you
+to such a consecration of will and heart and self, you had better look
+out and see whether it is faith at all. But then, because faith involves
+the consecration of a man to God, and consecration necessarily implies
+purity, since nothing can be laid on God's altar which is not sanctified
+thereby, the name of saint comes to imply purity of character. Sanctity
+is the Christian word which means the very flower and fragrant aroma of
+what the world calls virtue.
+
+But sanctity is not emotion, A man may luxuriate in devout feeling, and
+sing and praise and pray, and be very far from being a saint; and there
+is a great deal of the emotional Christianity of this day which has a
+strange affinity for the opposite of saintship. Sanctity is not
+aloofness. 'There were saints in Caesar's household'--a very unlikely
+place; they were flowers on a dunghill, and perhaps their blossoms were
+all the brighter because of what they grew on, and which they could
+transmute from corruption into beauty. So sanctity is no blue ribbon of
+the Christian profession, to be given to a few select (and mostly
+ascetic) specimens of consecration, but it is the designation of each of
+us, if we are disciples who are more than disciples, that is,
+'believers.' And thus, brethren, we have to see to it that, in our own
+cases, our faith leads to surrender, and our self-surrender to purity of
+life and conduct. Faith, if real, brings sanctity; sanctity, if real, is
+progressive. Sanctity, though imperfect, may be real.
+
+IV. The believing Saints are 'Brethren.'
+
+That is the name that predominates over all others in the latter
+portions of the New Testament, and it is very natural that it should do
+so. It reposes upon and implies the three preceding. Its rapid adoption
+and universal use express touchingly the wonder of the early Church at
+its own unity. The then world was rent asunder by deep clefts of
+misunderstanding, alienation, animosity, racial divisions of Jew and
+Greek, Parthian, Scythian; by sexual divisions which flung men and
+women, who ought to have been linked hand in hand, and united heart to
+heart, to opposite sides of a great gulf; by divisions of culture which
+made wise men look down on the unlearned, and the unlearned hate the
+wise men; by clefts of social position, and mainly that diabolical one
+of slave and free. All these divisive and disintegrating forces were in
+active operation. The only thing except Christianity, which produced
+even a semblance of union, was the iron ring of the Roman power which
+compressed them all into one indeed, but crushed the life out of them in
+the process. Into that disintegrating world, full of mutual repulsion,
+came One who drew men to Himself and said, 'One is your Master, even
+Christ, and all ye are brethren.' And to their own astonishment, male
+and female, Greek and Jew, bond and free, philosopher and fool, found
+themselves sitting at the same table as members of one family; and they
+looked in each other's eyes and said, 'Brother!' There had never been
+anything like it in the world. The name is a memorial of the unifying
+power of the Christian faith.
+
+And it is a reminder to us of our own shortcomings. Of course, in the
+early days, the little band were driven together, as sheep that stray
+over a pasture in the sunshine will huddle into a corner in a storm, or
+when the wolves are threatening. There are many reasons to-day which
+make less criminal the alienation from one another of Christian
+communities and Christian individuals. I am not going to dwell on the
+evident signs in this day, for which God be thanked, that Christian men
+are beginning, more than they once did, to realise their unity in Jesus
+Christ, and to be content to think less of the things that separate than
+of the far greater things that unite. But I would lay upon your hearts,
+as individual parts of that great whole, this, that whatever may be the
+differences in culture, outlook, social position, or the like, between
+two Christian men, they each, the rich man and the poor, the educated
+man and the unlettered one, the master and the servant, ought to feel
+that deep down in their true selves they are nearer one another than
+they are to the men who, differing from them in regard to their faith in
+Jesus Christ, are like them in all these superficial respects. Regulate
+your conduct by that thought.
+
+That name, too, speaks to us of the source from which Christian
+brotherhood has come. We are brethren of each other because we have one
+Father, even God, and the Fatherhood which makes us brethren is not that
+which communicates the common life of humanity, but that which imparts
+the new life of sonship through Jesus Christ. So the name points to the
+only way by which the world's dream of a universal brotherhood can ever
+be fulfilled. If there is to be fraternity there must be fatherhood, and
+the life which, possessed by each, makes a family of all, is the life
+which He gives, who is 'the first-born among many brethren,' and who, to
+them who believe on Him, gives power to become the sons of God, and the
+brethren of all the other sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.
+
+So, dear friends, take these names, ponder their significance and the
+duties they impose. Let us make sure that they are true of us. Do not be
+content with the vague, often unmeaning name of Christian, but fill it
+with meaning by being a believer on Christ, a saint devoted to God, and
+a brother of all who, 'by like precious faith,' have become Sons of God.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSPEL-HOPE
+
+          'The hope of the Gospel.'--COL. i. 5.
+
+
+'God never sends mouths but He sends meat to feed them,' says the old
+proverb. And yet it seems as if that were scarcely true in regard to
+that strange faculty called Hope. It may well be a question whether on
+the whole it has given us more pleasure than pain. How seldom it has
+been a true prophet! How perpetually its pictures have been too highly
+coloured! It has cast illusions over the future, colouring the far-off
+hills with glorious purple which, reached, are barren rocks and cold
+snow. It has held out prizes never won. It has made us toil and struggle
+and aspire and fed us on empty husks. Either we have not got what we
+expected or have found it to be less good than it appeared from afar.
+
+If we think of all the lies that hope has told us, of all the vain
+expenditure of effort to which it has tempted us, of the little that any
+of us have of what we began by thinking we should surely attain, hope
+seems a questionable good, and yet how obstinate it is, living on after
+all disappointments and drawing the oldest amongst us onwards. Surely
+somewhere there must be a reason for this great and in some respects
+awful faculty, a vindication of its existence in an adequate object for
+its grasp.
+
+The New Testament has much to say about hope. Christianity lays hold of
+it and professes to supply it with its true nourishment and support. Let
+us look at the characteristics of Christian hope, or, as our text calls
+it, the hope of the Gospel, that is, the hope which the Gospel creates
+and feeds in our souls.
+
+I. What does it hope for?
+
+The weakness of our earthly hopes is that they are fixed on things which
+are contingent and are inadequate to make us blessed. Even when tinted
+with the rainbow hues, which it lends them, they are poor and small. How
+much more so when seen in the plain colourless light of common day. In
+contrast with these the objects of the Christian hope are certain and
+sufficient for all blessedness. In the most general terms they may be
+stated as 'That blessed hope, even the appearing of the Great God and
+our Saviour.' That is the specific Christian hope, precise and definite,
+a real historical event, filling the future with a certain steadfast
+light. Much is lost in the daily experience of all believers by the
+failure to set that great and precise hope in its true place of
+prominence. It is often discredited by millenarian dreams, but
+altogether apart from these it has solidity and substance enough to bear
+the whole weight of a world rested upon it.
+
+That appearance of God brings with it the fulfilment of our highest
+hopes in the 'grace that is to be brought to us at His appearing.' All
+our blessedness of every kind is to be the result of the manifestation
+of God in His unobscured glory. The mirrors that are set round the
+fountain of light flash into hitherto undreamed-of brightness. It is but
+a variation in terms when we describe the blessedness which is to be the
+result of God's appearing as being the Hope of Salvation in its fullest
+sense, or, in still other words, as being the Hope of Eternal Life.
+Nothing short of the great word of the Apostle John, that when He shall
+appear we shall be like Him, exhausts the greatness of the hope which
+the humblest and weakest Christian is not only allowed but commanded to
+cherish. And that great future is certainly capable of, and in Scripture
+receives, a still more detailed specification. We hear, for example, of
+the hope of Resurrection, and it is most natural that the bodily
+redemption which Paul calls the adoption of the body should first emerge
+into distinct consciousness as the principal object of hope in the
+earliest Christian experience, and that the mighty working whereby Jesus
+is able to subdue all things unto Himself, should first of all be
+discerned to operate in changing the body of our humiliation into the
+body of His glory.
+
+But equally natural was it that no merely corporeal transformation
+should suffice to meet the deep longings of Christian souls which had
+learned to entertain the wondrous thought of likeness to God as the
+certain result of the vision of Him, and so believers 'wait for the hope
+of righteousness by faith.' The moral likeness to God, the perfecting of
+our nature into His image, will not always be the issue of struggle and
+restraint, but in its highest form will follow on sight, even as here
+and now it is to be won by faith, and is more surely attained by waiting
+than by effort.
+
+The highest form which the object of our hope takes is, the Hope of the
+Glory of God. This goes furthest; there is nothing beyond this. The eyes
+that have been wearied by looking at many fading gleams and seen them
+die away, may look undazzled into the central brightness, and we may be
+sure that even we shall walk there like the men in the furnace,
+unconsumed, purging our sight at the fountain of radiance, and being
+ourselves glorious with the image of God. This is the crown of glory
+which He has promised to them that love Him. Nothing less than this is
+what our hope has to entertain, and that not as a possibility, but as a
+certainty. The language of Christian hope is not perhaps this may be,
+but verily it shall be. To embrace its transcendent certainties with a
+tremulous faith broken by much unbelief, is sin.
+
+II. The grounds on which the hope of the Gospel rests.
+
+The grounds of our earthly hopes are for the most part possibilities,
+or, at the best, probabilities turned by our wishes into certainties. We
+moor our ships to floating islands which we resolve to think continents.
+So our earthly hopes vary indefinitely in firmness and substance. They
+are sometimes but wishes turned confident, and can never rise higher
+than their source, or be more certain than it is. At the best they are
+building on sand. At the surest there is an element of risk in them. One
+singer indeed may take for his theme 'The pleasures of Hope,' but
+another answers by singing of 'The fallacies of Hope.' Earth-born hopes
+carry no anchor and have always a latent dread looking out of their blue
+eyes.
+
+But it is possible for us to dig down to and build on rock, to have a
+future as certain as our past, to escape in our anticipations from the
+region of the Contingent, and this we assuredly do when we take the hope
+of the Gospel for ours, and listen to Paul proclaiming to us 'Christ
+which is our Hope,' or 'Christ in you the Hope of glory.' If our faith
+grasps Jesus Christ risen from the dead and for us entered into the
+heavenly state as our forerunner, our hope will see in Him the pattern
+and the pledge of our manhood, and will begin to experience even here
+and now the first real though faint accomplishments of itself. The
+Gospel sets forth the facts concerning Christ which fully warrant and
+imperatively require our regarding Him as the perfect realised ideal of
+manhood as God meant it to be, and as bearing in Himself the power to
+make all men even as He is. He has entered into the fellowship of our
+humiliation and become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh that we
+might become life of His Life and spirit of His Spirit. As certain as it
+is that 'we have borne the image of the earthy,' so certain is it that
+'we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.'
+
+What cruel waste of a divine faculty it is, then, of which we are all
+guilty when we allow our hopes to be frittered away and dissipated on
+uncertain and transient goods which they may never secure, and which,
+even if secured, would be ludicrously or rather tragically insufficient
+to make us blessed, instead of withdrawing them from all these and
+fixing them on Him who alone is able to satisfy our hungry souls in all
+their faculties for ever!
+
+The hope of the Gospel is firm enough to rest our all upon because in
+it, by 'two immutable things in which it is impossible that God should
+lie,' His counsel and His oath, He has given strong encouragement to
+them who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before them.
+Well may the hope for which God's own eternal character is the guarantee
+be called 'sure and steadfast.' The hope of the Gospel rests at last on
+the Being and Heart of God. It is that which God 'who cannot lie hath
+promised before the world was' is working towards whilst the world
+lasts, and will accomplish when the world is no more. He has made known
+His purpose and has pledged all the energies and tendernesses of His
+Being to its realisation. Surely on this rock-foundation we may rest
+secure. The hopes that grow on other soils creep along the surface. The
+hope of the Gospel strikes its roots deep into the heart of God.
+
+III. What the hope of the Gospel is and does for us.
+
+We cannot do better than to lay hold of some of the New Testament
+descriptions of it. We recall first that great designation 'A good hope
+through grace.' This hope is no illusion; it does not come from fumes of
+fancy or the play of imagination. The wish is not father to the thought.
+We do not make bricks without straw nor spin ropes of sand on the shore
+of the great waste sea that waits to swallow us up. The cup of Tantalus
+has had its leaks stopped; the sieve carries the treasure unspilled. The
+rock can be rolled to the hill-top. All the disappointments, fallacies,
+and torments of hope pass away. It never makes ashamed. We have a solid
+certainty as solid as memory. The hope which is through grace is the
+full assurance of hope, and that full assurance is just what every other
+hope lacks. In that region and in that region only we can either say I
+hope or I know.
+
+Another designation is 'A lively hope.' It is no poor pale ghost
+brightening and fading, fading and brightening, through which one can
+see the stars shine, and of little power in practical life, but strong
+and vigorous and not the least active amongst the many forces that make
+up the sum of our lives.
+
+It is most significantly designated as 'The blessed hope.' All others
+quickly pass into sorrows. This alone gives lasting joys, for this
+alone is blessed whilst it is only anticipation, and still more blessed
+when its blossoms ripen into full fruition. In all earthly hopes there
+is an element of unrest, but the hope of the Gospel is so remote, so
+certain, and so satisfying, that it works stillness, and they who most
+firmly grasp it 'do with patience wait for it.' Earthly hopes have
+little moral effect and often loosen the sinews of the soul, and are
+distinctly unfavourable to all strenuous effort. But 'every man that
+hath this hope in Jesus purifieth himself even as He is pure,' and the
+Apostle, whose keen insight most surely discerns the character-building
+value of the fundamental facts of Christian experience, was not wrong
+when he bid us find in the hope of the Gospel deeply rooted within us
+the driving force of the most strenuous efforts after purity like His
+whom it is our deepest desire and humble hope to become like.
+
+Let us remember the double account which Scripture gives of the
+discipline by which the hope of the Gospel is won for our very own. On
+the one hand, we have 'joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in
+hope.' Our faith breeds hope because it grasps the divine facts
+concerning Jesus from which hope springs. And faith further breeds hope
+because it kindles joy and peace, which are the foretastes and earnests
+of the future blessedness. On the other hand, the very opposite
+experiences work to the same end, for 'tribulation worketh patience, and
+patience experience, and experience hope.' Sorrow rightly borne tests
+for us the power of the Gospel and the reality of our faith, and so
+gives us a firmer grip of hope and of Him on whom in the last result it
+all depends. Out of this collision of flint and steel the spark springs.
+The water churned into foam and tortured in the cataract has the fair
+bow bending above it.
+
+But this discipline will not achieve its result, therefore comes the
+exhortation to us all, 'Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and
+hope to the end.' The hope of the Gospel is the one thing that we need.
+Without it all else is futile and frail. God alone is worthy to have the
+whole weight and burden of a creature's hope fixed on Him, and it is an
+everlasting truth that they who are 'without God in the world' also
+'have no hope.' Saints of old held fast by an assurance, which they must
+often have felt left many questions still to be asked, and because they
+were sure that they were continually with Him, were also sure of His
+guidance through life and of His afterwards receiving them to glory. But
+for us the twilight has broadened into day, and we shall be wise if,
+knowing our defencelessness, and forsaking all the lies and illusions of
+this vain present, we flee for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before
+us in the Gospel.
+
+
+
+
+'ALL POWER'
+
+          'Strengthened with all power, according to the
+          might of His glory, unto all patience and
+          longsuffering with joy.'--COL. i. 11 (R.V.).
+
+
+There is a wonderful rush and fervour in the prayers of Paul. No parts
+of his letters are so lofty, so impassioned, so full of his soul, as
+when he rises from speaking of God to men to speaking to God for men. We
+have him here setting forth his loving desires for the Colossian
+Christians in a prayer of remarkable fulness and sweep. Broadly taken,
+it is for their perfecting in religious and moral excellence, and it is
+very instructive to note the idea of what a good man is which is put
+forth here.
+
+The main petition is for wisdom and spiritual understanding applied
+chiefly, as is to be carefully noted, to the knowledge of God's _will_.
+The thought is that what it most imports us to know is the Will of God,
+a knowledge not of merely speculative points in the mysteries of the
+divine nature, but of that Will which it concerns us to know because it
+is our life to do it. The next element in Paul's desires, as set forth
+in the ideal here, is a worthy walk, a practical life, or course of
+conduct which is worthy of Jesus Christ, and in every respect pleases
+Him. The highest purpose of knowledge is a good life. The surest
+foundation for a good life is a full and clear knowledge of the Will of
+God.
+
+Then follow a series of clauses which seem to expand the idea of the
+worthy walk and to be co-ordinate or perhaps slightly causal, and to
+express the continuous condition of the soul which is walking worthily.
+Let us endeavour to gather from these words some hints as to what it is
+God's purpose that we should become.
+
+I. The many-sided strength which may be ours.
+
+The form of the word 'strengthened' here would be more fully represented
+by 'being strengthened,' and suggests an unintermitted process of
+bestowal and reception of God's might rendered necessary by our
+continuous human weakness, and by the tear and wear of life. As in the
+physical life there must be constant renewal because there is constant
+waste, and as every bodily action involves destruction of tissue so that
+living is a continual dying, so is it in the mental and still more in
+the spiritual life. Just as there must be a perpetual oxygenation of
+blood in the lungs, so there must be an uninterrupted renewal of
+spiritual strength for the highest life. It is demanded by the
+conditions of our human weakness. It is no less rendered necessary by
+the nature of the divine strength imparted, which is ever communicating
+itself, and like the ocean cannot but pour so much of its fulness as can
+be received into every creek and crack on its shore.
+
+The Apostle not merely emphasises the continuousness of this
+communicated strength, but its many-sided variety, by designating it
+'all power.' In this whole context that word 'all' seems to have a charm
+for him. We read in this prayer of '_all_ spiritual wisdom,' of 'walking
+worthily of the Lord unto _all_ pleasing,' of 'fruit in _every_ good
+work,' and now of '_all_ power,' and lastly of '_all_ patience and
+longsuffering.' These are not instances of being obsessed with a word,
+but each of them has its own appropriate force, and here the
+comprehensive completeness of the strength available for our many-sided
+weakness is marvellously revealed. There is 'infinite riches in a narrow
+room.' All power means every kind of power, be it bodily or mental, for
+all variety of circumstances, and, Protean, to take the shape of all
+exigencies. Most of us are strong only at points, and weak in others. In
+all human experience there is a vulnerable spot on the heel. The most
+glorious image, though it has a head of gold, ends in feet, 'part of
+iron and part of clay.'
+
+And if this ideal of many-sided power stands in contrast with the
+limitations of human strength, how does it rebuke and condemn the very
+partial manifestations of a very narrow and one-sided power which we who
+profess to have received it set forth! We have access to a source which
+can fill our whole nature, can flower into all gracious forms, can cope
+with all our exigencies, and make us all-round men, complete in Jesus
+Christ, and, having this, what do we make of it, what do we show for it?
+Does not God say to us, 'Ye are not straitened in me, ye are straitened
+in yourselves; I beseech you be ye enlarged.'
+
+The conditions on our part requisite for possessing 'all might' are
+plain enough. The earlier portion of the prayer plainly points to them.
+The knowledge of God's Will and the 'walk worthy of the Lord' are the
+means whereby the power which is ever eager to make its dwelling in us,
+can reach its end. If _we_ keep the channel unchoked, no doubt 'the
+river of the water of life which proceedeth from the throne of God and
+the Lamb' will rejoice to fill it to the brim with its flashing waters.
+If we do not wrench away ourselves from contact with Him, He will
+'strengthen us with all might.' If we keep near Him we may have calm
+confidence that power will be ours that shall equal our need and
+outstrip our desires.
+
+II. The measure of the strength.
+
+It is 'according to the power of His glory.' The Authorised Version but
+poorly represents the fulness of the Apostle's thought, which is more
+adequately and accurately expressed in the Revised Version. 'His glory'
+is the flashing brightness of the divine self-manifestation, and in that
+Light resides the strength which is the standard or measure of the gift
+to us. The tremendous force of the sunbeam which still falls so gently
+on a sleeper's face as not to disturb the closed eyes is but a parable
+of the strength which characterises the divine glory. And wonderful and
+condemnatory as the thought is, that power is the unlimited limit of the
+possibilities of our possession. His gifts are proportioned to His
+resources. While He is rich, can I be poor? The only real limit to His
+bestowal is His own fulness. Of course, at each moment, our capacity of
+receiving is for the time being the practical limit of our possession,
+but that capacity varies indefinitely, and may be, and should be,
+indefinitely and continuously increasing. It is an elastic boundary, and
+hence we may go on making our own as much as we will, and progressively
+more and more, of God's strength. He gives it all, but there is a
+tragical difference between the full cup put into our hands and the few
+drops carried to our lips. The key of the treasure-chamber is in our
+possession, and on each of us His gracious face smiles the permission
+which His gracious lips utter in words, 'Be it unto thee even as thou
+wilt.' If we are conscious of defect, if our weakness is beaten by the
+assaults of temptation, or crushed by sorrows that ride it down in a
+fierce attack, the fault is our own. We have, if we choose to make it
+our own and to use it as ours, more than enough to make us 'more than
+conquerors' over all sins and all sorrows.
+
+But when we contrast what we have by God's gift and what we have in our
+personal experience and use in our daily life, the contrast may well
+bring shame, even though the contrast brings to us hope to lighten the
+shame. The average experience of present-day Christians reminds one of
+the great tanks that may be seen in India, that have been suffered to go
+to ruin, and so an elaborate system of irrigation comes to nothing, and
+the great river that should have been drawn off into them runs past
+them, all but unused. Repair them and keep the sluices open, and all
+will blossom again.
+
+III. The great purpose of this strength.
+
+'Patience and longsuffering with joyfulness' seems at first but a poor
+result of such a force, but it comes from a heart that was under no
+illusions as to the facts of human life, and it finds a response in us
+all. It may be difficult to discriminate 'patience' from
+'longsuffering,' but the general notion here is that one of the highest
+uses for which divine strength is given to us, is to make us able to
+meet the antagonism of evil without its shaking our souls. He who
+patiently endures without despondency or the desire to 'recompense evil
+for evil,' and to whom by faith even 'the night is light about him,' is
+far on the way to perfection. God is always near us, but never nearer
+than when our hearts are heavy and our way rough and dark. Our sorrows
+make rents through which His strength flows. We can see more of heaven
+when the leaves are off the trees. It is a law of the Divine dealings
+that His strength is 'made perfect in weakness.' God leads us in to a
+darkened room to show us His wonders.
+
+That strength is to be manifested by us in 'patience and longsuffering,'
+both of which are to have blended with them a real though apparently
+antagonistic joy. True and profound grief is not opposed to such
+patience, but the excess of it, the hopeless and hysterical outbursts
+certainly are. We are all like the figures in some old Greek temples
+which stand upright with their burdens on their heads. God's strength is
+given that we may bear ours calmly, and upright like these fair forms
+that hold up the heavy architecture as if it were a feather, or like
+women with water-jars on their heads, which only make their carriage
+more graceful and their step more firm.
+
+How different the patience which God gives by His own imparted strength,
+from the sullen submission or hysterical abandonment to sorrow, or the
+angry rebellion characterising Godless grief! Many of us think that we
+can get on very well in prosperity and fine weather without Him. We had
+better ask ourselves what we are going to do when the storm comes, which
+comes to all some time or other.
+
+The word here rendered 'patience' is more properly 'perseverance.' It is
+not merely a passive but an active virtue. We do not receive that great
+gift of divine strength to bear only, but also to work, and such work is
+one of the best ways of bearing and one of the best helps to doing so.
+So in our sorrows and trials let us feel that God's strength is not all
+given us to be expended in our own consolation, but also to be used in
+our plain duties. These remain as imperative though our hearts are
+beating like hammers, and there is no more unwise and cowardly surrender
+to trouble than to fling away our tools and fold our hands idly on our
+laps.
+
+But Paul lays a harder duty on us even in promising a great gift to us,
+when he puts before us an ideal of joy mingling with patience and
+longsuffering. The command would be an impossible one if there were not
+the assurance that we should be 'strengthened with all might.' We
+plainly need an infusion of diviner strength than our own, if that
+strange marriage of joy and sorrow should take place, and they should at
+once occupy our hearts. Yet if His strength be ours we shall be strong
+to submit and acquiesce, strong to look deep enough to see His will as
+the foundation of all and as ever busy for our good, strong to hope,
+strong to discern the love at work, strong to trust the Father even when
+He chastens. And all this will make it possible to have the paradox
+practically realised in our own experience, 'As sorrowful yet always
+rejoicing.' One has seen potassium burning underwater. Our joy may burn
+under waves of sorrow. Let us bring our weakness to Jesus Christ and
+grasp Him as did the sinking Peter. He will breathe His own grace into
+us, and speak to our feeble and perchance sorrowful hearts, as He had
+done long before Paul's words to the Colossians, 'My grace is sufficient
+for thee, and my strength is made perfect in weakness.'
+
+
+
+
+THANKFUL FOR INHERITANCE
+
+          'Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet
+          to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
+          in light.'--COL. i. 12 (R.V.)
+
+
+It is interesting to notice how much the thought of inheritance seems to
+have been filling the Apostle's mind during his writing of Ephesians and
+Colossians. Its recurrence is one of the points of contact between them.
+For example, in Ephesians, we read, 'In whom also were made a heritage'
+(i. 11); 'An earnest of our inheritance' (i. 14); 'His inheritance in
+the saints' (i. 18); 'Inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ' (v. 5). We
+notice too that in the address to the Elders of the Church at Ephesus,
+we read of 'the inheritance among all them that are sanctified' (Acts
+20-32).
+
+In the text the climax of the Apostle's prayer is presented as
+thankfulness, the perpetual recognition of the Divine hand in all that
+befalls us, the perpetual confidence that all which befalls us is good,
+and the perpetual gushing out towards Him of love and praise. The
+highest diligence, the most strenuous fruit-bearing, and the most
+submissive patience and longsuffering would be incomplete without the
+consecration of a grateful heart, and the noblest beauty of a Christian
+character would lack its rarest lustre. This crown of Christian
+perfectness the Apostle regards as being called into action mainly by
+the contemplation of that great act and continuous work of God's
+Fatherly love by which he makes us fit for our portion of the
+inheritance which the same love has prepared for us. That inheritance is
+the great cause for Christian thankfulness; the more immediate cause is
+His preparation of us for it. So we have three points here to consider;
+the inheritance; God's Fatherly preparation of His children for it; the
+continual temper of thankfulness which these should evoke.
+
+I. The Inheritance.
+
+The frequent recurrence of this idea in the Old Testament supplies Paul
+with a thought which he uses to set forth the most characteristic
+blessings of the New. The promised land belonged to Israel, and each
+member of each tribe had his own little holding in the tribal territory.
+Christians have in common the higher spiritual blessings which Christ
+brings, and Himself is, and each individual has his own portion of, the
+general good.
+
+We must begin by dismissing from our minds the common idea, which a
+shallow experience tends to find confirmed by the associations
+ordinarily attached to the word 'inheritance,' that it is entered upon
+by death. No doubt, that great change does effect an unspeakable change
+in our fitness for, and consequently in our possession of, the gifts
+which we receive from Christ's pierced hands, and, as the Apostle has
+told us, the highest of these possessed on earth is but the 'earnest of
+the inheritance'; but we must ever bear in mind that the distinction
+between a Christian life on earth and one in heaven is by no means so
+sharply drawn in Scripture as it generally is by us, and that death has
+by no means so great importance as we faithlessly attribute to it. The
+life here and hereafter is like a road which passes the frontiers of two
+kingdoms divided by a bridged river, but runs on in the same direction
+on both sides of the stream. The flood had to be forded until Jesus
+bridged it. The elements of the future and the present are the same, as
+the apostolic metaphor of the 'earnest of the inheritance' teaches us.
+The handful of soil which constitutes the 'arles' is part of the broad
+acres made over by it.
+
+We should be saved from many unworthy conceptions of the future life, if
+we held more steadfastly to the great truth that God Himself is the
+portion of the inheritance. The human spirit is too great and too
+exacting to be satisfied with anything less than Him, and the possession
+of Him opens out into every blessedness, and includes all the minor joys
+and privileges that can gladden and enrich the soul. We degrade the
+future if we think of it only, or even chiefly, as a state in which
+faculties are enlarged, and sorrows and sins are for ever ended. Neither
+such negatives as 'no night there,' 'neither sorrow nor crime,' 'no more
+pain,' nor such metaphors as 'white robes' and 'golden crowns' and
+'seats on thrones' are enough. We are 'heirs of God,' and only as we
+possess Him, and know that we are His, and He is ours, are we 'rich to
+all intents of bliss.' That inheritance is here set forth as being 'in
+light' and as belonging to saints. Light is the element and atmosphere
+of God. He is in light. He is the fountain of all light. He is light;
+perfect in wisdom, perfect in purity. The sun has its spots, but in Him
+is no darkness at all. Moons wax and wane, shadows of eclipse fall,
+stars have their time to set, but 'He is the Father of lights with whom
+can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.' All that
+light is focussed in Jesus the Light of the world. That Light fills the
+earth, but here it shineth in darkness that obstructs its rays. But
+there must be a place and a time where the manifestation of God
+corresponds with the reality of God, where His beams pour out and there
+is nothing hid from the heat thereof, nothing which they do not bless,
+nothing which does not flash them back rejoicing. There is a land
+whereof the Lord God is the Light. In it is the inheritance of the
+'saints,' and in its light live the nations of the saved, and have God
+for their companion. All darkness of ignorance, of sorrow, and of sin
+will fade away as the night flees and ceases to be, before the rising
+sun.
+
+The phrase 'to be partakers' is accurately rendered 'for the portion,'
+and carries a distinct allusion to the partition of the promised land to
+Israel by which each man had his lot or share in the common inheritance.
+So the one word inheritance brings with it blessed thoughts of a common
+possession of a happy society in which no man's gain is another's loss,
+and all envyings, rivalries, and jealousies have ceased to be, and the
+other word, 'the portion,' suggests the individual possession by each of
+his own vision and experience. Each man's 'portion' is capable of
+growth; each has as much of God as he can hold. The measure of his
+desire is the measure of his capacity. There are infinite differences in
+the 'portions' of the saints on earth, and heaven is robbed of one of
+its chief charms unless we recognise that there are infinite differences
+among the saints there. For both states the charter by which the
+portion is held is 'Be it unto thee even as thou wilt,' and in both the
+law holds 'To him that hath shall be given.'
+
+II. The Fatherly preparation for the Inheritance.
+
+It is obvious from all which we have been saying that without holiness
+no man shall see the Lord. The inheritance being what it is, the
+possession, the enjoyment of communion with a Holy God, it is absolutely
+incapable of being entered upon by any who are unholy. That is true
+about both the partial possession of the earnest of it here and of its
+fulness hereafter. In the present life all tolerated sin bars us out
+from enjoying God, and in the future nothing can enter that defileth nor
+whatsoever worketh or maketh a lie. There are many people who think that
+they would like 'to go to heaven,' but who would find it difficult to
+answer such questions as these: Do you like to think of God? Do you find
+any joy in holy thoughts? What do you feel about prayer? Does the name
+of Christ make your heart leap? Is righteousness your passion? If you
+have to answer these questions with a silence which is the saddest
+negative, what do you think you would do in heaven? I remember that the
+Greenlanders told the Moravian missionaries who were trying to move them
+by conventional pictures of its delights, that the heaven which these
+pious souls had painted would not do for them, for there were no seals
+there. There are thousands of us who, if we spoke the truth, would say
+the same thing, with the necessary variations arising from our
+environment. There is not a spinning-mill in it all. How would some of
+us like that? There is not a ledger, nor a theatre, no novels, no
+amusements. Would it not be intolerable ennui to be put down in such an
+order of things? You would be like the Israelites, loathing 'this light
+bread' and hungering for the strong-smelling and savoury-tasting leeks
+and garlic, even if in order to taste them you had to be slaves again.
+
+Heaven would be no heaven to you if you could go there and be thus
+minded. But you could not. God Himself cannot carry men thither but by
+fitting them for it. It is not a place so much as a state, and the
+mighty hand that works on one side of the thick curtain preparing the
+inheritance in light for the saints, is equally busy on this side making
+the saints meet for the inheritance.
+
+I do not wish to enter here on grammatical niceties, but I must point
+out that the form of the word which the Apostle employs to express it
+points to an act in the past which still runs on.
+
+The Revised Version's rendering, 'made us meet,' is preferable to the
+Authorised Version's, because of its omission of the 'hath' which
+relegates the whole process of preparation to the past. And it is of
+importance to recognise that the difference between these two
+representations of the divine preparation is not a piece of pedantry,
+for that preparation has indeed its beginnings in the past of every
+Christian soul, but is continuous throughout its whole earthly
+experience. There is the great act of forgiveness and justifying which
+is cotemporaneous with the earliest and most imperfect faith, and there
+is the being born again, the implanting of a new life which is the life
+of Christ Himself, and has no spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing. That
+new life is infantile, but it is there, the real man, and it will grow
+and conquer. Take an extreme case and suppose a man who has just
+received forgiveness for his past and the endowment of a new nature.
+Though he were to die at that moment he would still in the basis of his
+being and real self be meet for the inheritance. He who truly trusts in
+Jesus is passed from death unto life, though the habits of sins which
+are forgiven still cling to him, and his new life has not yet exercised
+a controlling power or begun to build up character. So Christians ought
+not to think that, because they are conscious of much unholiness, they
+are not ready for the inheritance. The wild brigand through whose
+glazing eyeballs faith looked out to his fellow-sufferer on the central
+cross was adjudged meet to be with him in Paradise, and if all his deeds
+of violence and wild outrages on the laws of God and man did not make
+him unmeet, who amongst us need write bitter things against himself? The
+preparation is further effected through all the future earthly life. The
+only true way to regard everything that befalls us here is to see in it
+the Fatherly discipline preparing us for a fuller possession of a richer
+inheritance. Gains and losses, joys and sorrows, and all the endless
+variety of experiences through which we all have to pass, are an
+unintelligible mystery unless we apply to them this solution, 'He for
+our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness.' It is not a
+blind Fate or a still blinder Chance that hurtles sorrows and changes at
+us, but a loving Father; and we do not grasp the meaning of our lives
+unless we feel, even about their darkest moments, that the end of them
+all is to make us more capable of possessing more of Himself.
+
+III. The thankfulness which these thoughts should evoke.
+
+Thankfulness ought to be a sweet duty. It is a joy to cherish gratitude.
+Generous hearts do not need to be told to be thankful, and they who are
+only thankful to order are not thankful at all. In nothing is the
+ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian more defective, and
+significant of the deficiencies of their faith, than in the tepidness
+and interruptedness of their gratitude. The blessings bestowed are
+continuous and unspeakable. The thanks returned are grudging and scanty.
+The river that flows from God is 'full of water' and pours out
+unceasingly, and all that we return is a tiny trickle, often choked and
+sometimes lost in the sands.
+
+Our thankfulness ought to be constant. The fire on the altar should
+never be quenched. The odour of the sweet-smelling incense should ever
+ascend. Why is it that we have so little of this grace which the Apostle
+in our text regards as the precious stone that binds all Christian
+graces together, the sparkling crest of the wave of a Christian life?
+Mainly because we have so little of the habit of regarding all things as
+God's Fatherly discipline and meditating on that for which they are
+making us meet. We need a far more habitual contemplation of our
+inheritance, of our experience as lovingly given by God to fit us for it
+and of the darkest hours which would otherwise try our faith and silence
+our praise as necessary parts of that preparation. If this be our
+habitual attitude of mind, and these be ever present to us, our song
+will be always of His mercy and our whole lives a thank-offering.
+
+The text is a prophecy describing the inheritance in its perfect form.
+Earthly life must be ended before it is fully understood. Down in the
+valleys we praised God, but tears and mysteries sometimes saddened our
+songs; but now on the summit surveying all behind, and knowing by a
+blessed eternity of experience to what it has led, even an inheritance
+incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, we shall praise
+Him with a new song for ever.
+
+Thankfulness is the one element of worship common to earth and heaven,
+to angels and to us. Whilst they sing, 'Bless the Lord all ye His
+hosts,' redeemed men have still better reason to join in the chorus and
+answer, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul.'
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR
+
+          'I also labour, striving according to His working,
+          which worketh in me mightily.'--COL. i. 29.
+
+
+I have chosen this text principally because it brings together the two
+subjects which are naturally before us to-day. All 'Western
+Christendom,' as it is called, is to-day commemorating the Pentecostal
+gift. My text speaks about that power that 'worketh in us mightily.'
+True, the Apostle is speaking in reference to the fiery energy and
+persistent toil which characterised him in proclaiming Christ, that he
+might present men perfect before Him. But the same energy which he
+expended on his apostolic office he expended on his individual
+personality. And he would not have discharged the one unless he had
+first laboured on the other. And although in a letter contemporary with
+this one from which my text is taken he speaks of himself as no longer
+young, but 'such an one as Paul the aged, and likewise, also a prisoner
+of Jesus Christ,' the young spirit was in him, and the continual
+pressing forward to unattained heights. And that is the spirit, not only
+of a section of the Church divided from the rest by youth and by special
+effort, but of the whole Church if it is worth calling a Church, and
+unless it is thus instinct, it is a mere dead organisation.
+
+So I hope that what few things I have to say may apply to, and be felt
+to be suitable by all of us, whether we are nominally Christian
+Endeavourers or not. If we are Christian people, we are such. If we are
+not endeavouring, shall I venture to say we are not Christians? At any
+rate, we are very poor ones.
+
+Now here, then, are two plain things, a great universal Christian duty
+and a sufficient universal Christian endowment. 'I work striving'; that
+is the description of every true Christian. 'I work striving, according
+to His working, who worketh in me mightily': there is the great gift
+which makes the work and the striving possible. Let me briefly deal,
+then, with these two.
+
+I. The solemn universal Christian obligation.
+
+Now the two words which the Apostle employs here are both of them very
+emphatic. 'His words were half battles,' was said about Luther. It may
+be as truly said about Paul. And that word 'work' which he employs,
+means, not work with one hand, or with a delicate forefinger, but it
+means toil up to the verge of weariness. The notion of fatigue is
+almost, I might say, uppermost in the word as it is used in the New
+Testament. Some people like to 'labour' so as never to turn a hair, or
+bring a sweat-drop on to their foreheads. That is not Christian
+Endeavour. Work that does not 'take it out of you' is not worth doing.
+The other word 'striving' brings up the picture of the arena with the
+combatants' strain of muscle, their set teeth, their quick, short
+breathing, their deadly struggle. That is Paul's notion of Endeavour.
+Now 'Endeavour,' like a great many other words, has a baser and a nobler
+side to it. Some people, when they say, 'I will endeavour,' mean that
+they are going to try in a half-hearted way, with no prospect of
+succeeding. That is not Christian Endeavour. The meaning of the
+word--for the expression in my text might just as well be rendered
+'endeavouring' as 'striving'--is that of a buoyant confident effort of
+all the concentrated powers, with the certainty of success. That is the
+endeavour that we have to cultivate as Christian men. And there is only
+one field of human effort in which that absolute confidence that it
+shall not be in vain is anything but presumptuous arrogance; namely, in
+the effort after making ourselves what God means us to be, what Jesus
+Christ longs for us to be, what the Spirit of God is given to us in
+order that we should be. 'We shall _not_ fail,' ought to be the word of
+every man and woman when they set themselves to the great task of
+working out, in their own characters and personalities, the Divine
+intention which is made a Divine possibility by the sacrifice of Jesus
+Christ and the gift of the Divine Spirit.
+
+So then what we come to is just this, dear brethren, if we are
+Christians at all, we have to make a business of our religion; to go
+about it as if we meant work. Ah! what a contrast there is between the
+languid way in which Christian men pursue what the Bible designates
+their 'calling' and that in which men with far paltrier aims pursue
+theirs! And what a still sadder contrast there is between the way in
+which we Christians go about our daily business, and the way in which we
+go about our Christian life! Why, a man will take more pains to learn
+some ornamental art, or some game, than he will ever take to make
+himself a better Christian. The one is work. What is the other? To a
+very large extent dawdling and make-believe.
+
+You remember the old story,--it may raise a smile, but there should be a
+deep thought below the smile,--of the little child that said as to his
+father that 'he was a Christian, but he had not been working much at it
+lately.' Do not laugh. It is a great deal too true of--I will not
+venture to say what percentage of--the professing Christians of this
+day. Work at your religion. That is the great lesson of my text.
+Endeavour with confidence of success. The Book of Proverbs says: 'He
+that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster,'
+and that is true. A man that does 'the work of the Lord negligently' is
+scarcely to be credited with doing it at all. Dear friends, young or
+old, if you name the name of Christ, be in earnest, and make earnest
+work of your Christian character.
+
+And now may I venture two or three very plain exhortations? First, I
+would say--if you mean to make your Christian life a piece of genuine
+work and striving, the first thing that you have to do is to endeavour
+in the direction of keeping its aim very clear before you. There are
+many ways in which we may state the goal of the Christian life, but let
+us put it now into the all-comprehensive form of likeness to Jesus
+Christ, by entire conformity to His Example and full interpretation of
+His life. I do not say 'Heaven'; I say 'Christ.'
+
+That is our aim, the loftiest idea of development that any human spirit
+can grasp, and rising high above a great many others which are noble but
+incomplete. The Christian ideal is the greatest in the universe. There
+is no other system of thought that paints man as he is, so darkly; there
+is none that paints man as he is meant to be, in such radiant colours.
+The blacks upon the palette of Christianity are blacker, and the whites
+are whiter, and the golden is more radiant, than any other painter has
+ever mixed. And so just because the aim which lies before the least and
+lowest of us, possessing the most imperfect and rudimentary
+Christianity, is so transcendent and lofty, it is hard to keep it clear
+before our eyes, especially when all the shabby little necessities of
+daily life come in to clutter up the foreground, and hide the great
+distance. Men may live up at Darjeeling there on the heights for weeks,
+and never see the Himalayas towering opposite. The lower hills are
+clear; the peaks are wreathed in cloud. So the little aims, the nearer
+purposes, stand out distinct and obtrusive, and force themselves, as it
+were, upon our eyeballs, and the solemn white Throne of the Eternal away
+across the marshy levels, is often hid, and it needs an effort for us to
+keep it clear before us. One of the main reasons for much that is
+unsatisfactory in the spiritual condition of the average Christian of
+this day is precisely that he has not burning ever before him there, the
+great aim to which he ought to be tending. So he gets loose and
+diffused, and vague and uncertain. That is what Paul tells you when he
+proposes himself as an example: 'So run I, not as uncertainly,' The man
+who knows where he is running makes a bee-line for the goal. If he is
+not sure of his destination, of course he zigzags. 'So fight I, not as
+one that beateth the air'--if I see my antagonist I can hit him. If I do
+not see him clearly I strike like a swordsman in the dark, at random,
+and my sword comes back unstained. If you want to make the harbour, keep
+the harbour lights always clear before you, or you will go yawing about,
+and washing here and there, in the trough of the wave, and the tempest
+will be your master. If you do not know where you are going you will
+have to say, like the men in the old story in the Old Book, 'Thy servant
+went no whither.' If you are going to endeavour, endeavour first to keep
+the goal clear before you.
+
+And endeavour next to keep up communion with Jesus Christ, which is the
+secret of all peaceful and of all noble living. And endeavour next after
+concentration. And what does that mean? It means that you have to detach
+yourself from hindrances. It means that you have to prosecute the
+Christian aim all through the common things of Christian life. If it
+were not possible to be pursuing the great aim of likeness to Jesus
+Christ, in the veriest secularities of the most insignificant and
+trivial occupations, then it would be no use talking about that being
+our aim. If we are not making ourselves more like Jesus Christ by the
+way in which we handle our books, or our pen, or our loom, or our
+scalpel, or our kitchen utensils, then there is little chance of our
+ever making ourselves like Jesus Christ. For it is these trifles that
+make life, and to concentrate ourselves on the pursuit of the Christian
+aim is, in other words, to carry that Christian aim into every
+triviality of our daily lives.
+
+There are three Scripture passages which set forth various aspects of
+the aim that we have before us, and from each of these aspects deduce
+the one same lesson. The Apostle says 'giving all diligence, add to your
+faith virtue,' etc., 'for if ye do these things ye shall never fail.' He
+also exhorts: 'Give diligence to make your calling and election sure.'
+And finally he says: 'Be diligent, that ye may be found of Him in peace,
+without spot, blameless.' _There_ are three aspects of the Christian
+course, and the Christian aim, the addition to our faith of all the
+clustering graces and virtues and powers that can be hung upon it, like
+jewels on the neck of a queen; the making our calling and election sure,
+and the being found at last tranquil, spotless, stainless, and being
+found so by Him. These great aims are incumbent on all Christians, they
+require diligence, and ennoble the diligence which they require.
+
+So, brethren, we have all to be Endeavourers if we are Christians, and
+that to the very end of our lives. For our path is the only path on
+which men tread that has for its goal an object so far off that it never
+can be attained, so near that it can ever be approached. This infinite
+goal of the Christian Endeavour means inspiration for youth, and
+freshness for old age, and that man is happy who can say: 'Not as though
+I had already attained' at the end of a long life, and can say it, not
+because he has failed, but because in a measure he has succeeded. Other
+courses of life are like the voyages of the old mariners which were
+confined within the narrow limits of the Mediterranean, and steered from
+headland to headland. But the Christian passes through the jaws of the
+straits, and comes out on a boundless sunlit ocean where, though he sees
+no land ahead, he knows there is a peaceful shore, beyond the western
+waves. 'I work striving.'
+
+Now one word as to the other thought that is here, and that is
+
+II. The all-sufficient Christian gift.
+
+'According to His working, which worketh in me mightily.' I need not
+discuss whether 'His' in my text refers to God or to Christ. The thing
+meant is the operation upon the Christian spirit, of that Divine Spirit
+whose descent the Church to-day commemorates. At this stage of my sermon
+I can only remind you in a word, first of all, that the Apostle here is
+arrogating to himself no special or peculiar gift, is not egotistically
+setting forth something which he possessed and other Christian people
+did not--that power which, 'working in him mightily,' worked in all his
+brethren as well. It was his conviction and his teaching--would that it
+were more operatively and vitally the conviction of all professing
+Christians to-day, and would that it were more conspicuously, and in due
+proportion to the rest of Christian truth, the teaching of all Christian
+teachers to-day!--that that Divine power is in the very act of faith
+received and implanted in every believing soul. 'Know ye not,' the
+Apostle could say to his hearers, 'that ye have the Spirit of God,
+except ye be reprobates.' I doubt whether the affirmative response would
+spring to the lips of all professing or real Christians to-day as
+swiftly as it would have done then. And I cannot help feeling, and
+feeling with increasing gravity of pressure as the days go on, that the
+thing that our churches, and we as individuals, perhaps need most
+to-day, is the replacing of that great truth--I do not call it a
+'doctrine,' that is cold, it is experience--in its proper place. They
+who believe on Him do receive a new life, a supernatural communication
+of the new Spirit, to be the very power that rules in their lives.
+
+It is an inward gift. It is not like the help that men can render us,
+given from without and apprehended and incorporated with ourselves
+through the medium of the understanding or of the heart. There is an old
+story in the history of Israel about a young king that was bid by the
+prophet to bend his bow against the enemies of Israel, as a symbol; and
+the old prophet put his withered, skinny brown hand on the young man's
+fleshy one, and then said to him, 'Shoot.' But this Divine Spirit comes
+to strengthen us in a more intimate and blessed fashion than that, for
+it glides into our hearts and dwells in our spirits, and our work, as
+my text says, is His working. This 'working within' is stated in the
+original of my text most emphatically, for it is literally 'the
+inworking which inworketh in me mightily.'
+
+So, dear brethren, the first direct aim of all our endeavour ought to be
+to receive and to keep and to increase our gift of that Divine Spirit.
+The work and the striving of which my text speaks would be sheer slavery
+unless we had that help. It would be impossible of accomplishment unless
+we had it.
+
+          'If any power we have, it is to ill,
+           And all the power is Thine, to do and eke to will.'
+
+Let us, then, begin our endeavour, not by working, but by receiving. Is
+not that the very meaning of the doctrine that we are always talking
+about, that men are saved, not by works but by faith? Does not that mean
+that the first step is reception, and the first requisite is
+receptiveness, and that then, and after that, second and not first, come
+working and striving? To keep our hearts open by desire, to keep them
+open by purity, are the essentials. The dove will not come into a fouled
+nest. It is said that they forsake polluted places. But also we have to
+use the power which is inwrought. Use is the way to increase all gifts,
+from the muscle in your arm to the Christian life in your spirit. Use
+it, and it grows. Neglect it, and it vanishes, and like the old Jewish
+heroes, a man may go forth to exercise himself as of old time, and know
+not that the Spirit of God hath departed from him. Dear friends, do not
+bind yourselves to the slavery of Endeavour, until you come into the
+liberty and wealth of receiving. He gives first, and then says to you,
+'Now go to work, and keep that good thing which is committed unto
+thee.'
+
+There is but one thought more in this last part of my text, which I must
+not leave untouched, and that is that this sufficient and universal gift
+is not only the means by which the great universal duty can be
+discharged, but it ought to be the measure in which it is discharged. 'I
+work according to the working in me.' That is, all the force that came
+into Paul by that Divine Spirit, came out of Paul in his Christian
+conduct, and the gift was not only the source, but also the measure, of
+this man's Christian Endeavour. Is that true about us? They say that the
+steam-engine is a most wasteful application of power, that a great deal
+of the energy which is generated goes without ever doing any work. They
+tell us that one of the great difficulties in the way of economic
+application of electricity is the loss which comes through using
+accumulators. Is not that like a great many of us? So much power poured
+into us; so little coming out from us and translated into actual work!
+Such a 'rushing mighty wind,' and the air about us so heavy and stagnant
+and corrupt! Such a blaze of fire, and we so cold! Such a cataract of
+the river of the water of life, and our lips parched and our crops
+seared and worthless! Ah, brethren! when we look at ourselves, and when
+we think of the condition of so many of the churches to which we belong,
+the old rebuke of the prophet comes back to us in this generation, 'Thou
+that art named the House of Israel, is the Spirit of the Lord
+straitened? Are these His doings?' We have an all-sufficient power. May
+our working and striving be according to it, and may we work mightily,
+being 'strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!'
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIAN PROGRESS
+
+          'As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord,
+          so walk in Him, rooted and builded up in
+          Him.'--COL. ii. 6, 7 (R.V.).
+
+
+It is characteristic of Paul that he should here use three figures
+incongruous with each other to express the same idea, the figures of
+walking, being rooted, and built up. They, however, have in common that
+they all suggest an initial act by which we are brought into connection
+with Christ, and a subsequent process flowing from and following on it.
+Receiving Christ, being rooted in Him, being founded on Him, stand for
+the first; walking in Him, growing up from the root in Him, being built
+up on Him as foundation, stand for the second. Fully expressed then, the
+text would run, 'As ye have received Christ, so walk in Him; as ye have
+been rooted in Him, so grow up in Him; as ye have been founded on Him,
+so be builded up.' These three clauses present the one idea in slightly
+different forms. The first expresses Christian progress as the
+manifestation before the world of an inward possession, the exhibition
+in the outward life of a treasure hid in the heart. The second expresses
+the same progress as the development by its own vital energy of the life
+of Christ in the soul. The third expresses the progress as the addition,
+by conscious efforts, of portion after portion to the character, which
+is manifestly incomplete until the headstone crowns the structure. We
+may then take the passage before us as exhibiting the principles of
+Christian progress.
+
+I. The origin of all, or how Christian progress begins.
+
+These three figures, receiving, rooted, founded, all express a great
+deal more than merely accepting certain truths about Him. The acceptance
+of truths is the means by which we come to what is more than any belief
+of truths. We possess Christ when we believe with a true faith in Him.
+We are rooted in Him. His life flows into us. We draw nourishment from
+that soil. We are built on Him, and in our compact union find a real
+support to a life which is otherwise baseless and blown about like
+thistledown by every breath. The union which all these metaphors
+presupposes is a vital connection; the possession which is the first
+step in the Christian life is a real possession.
+
+There is no progress without that initial step. Our own experience tells
+us but too plainly and loudly that we need the impartation of a new
+life, and to be set on a new foundation, if we are ever to be anything
+else than failures and blots.
+
+There is sure to be progress if the initial step has been taken. If
+Christ has been received, the life possessed will certainly manifest
+itself. It will go on to perfection. The union effected will work on
+through the whole character and nature. It is the beginning of all; it
+is only the beginning.
+
+II. The manner of Christian progress or in what it consists.
+
+It consists in a more complete possession of Him, in a more constant
+approximation to Him, and a more entire appropriation of Him. Christian
+progress is not a growing up from Christ as starting-point, but into
+Christ as goal. All is contained in the first act by which He is first
+received; the remainder is but the working out of that. All our growth
+in knowledge and wisdom consists in our knowing what we have when we
+receive Christ. We grow in proportion as we learn to see in Him the
+centre of all truth, as the Revealer of God, as the Teacher of man, as
+the Interpreter of nature, as the meaning and end of history, as the
+Lord of life and death. Morals, politics, and philosophy flow from Him.
+His lips and His life and death proclaim all truth, human and divine.
+
+As in wisdom so in character, all progress consists in coming closer to
+Jesus and receiving more and more of His many-sided grace. He is the
+pattern of all excellence, the living ideal of whatsoever things are
+pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
+report, virtue incarnate, praise embodied. He is the power by which we
+become gradually and growingly moulded into His likeness. Every part of
+our nature finds its best stimulus in Jesus for individuals and for
+societies. Christ and growth into Him is progress, and the only way by
+which men can be presented perfect, is that they shall be presented
+'perfect in Christ,' whereunto every man must labour who would that his
+labour should not be in vain. That progress must follow the threefold
+direction in the text. There must first be the progressive manifestation
+in act and life of the Christ already possessed, 'As ye received Christ
+Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.' There must also be the completer growth
+in the soul of the new life already received. As the leaf grows green
+and broad, so a Christlike character must grow not altogether by effort.
+And there must be a continual being builded up in Him by constant
+additions to the fabric of graces set on that foundation.
+
+III. The means, or how it is accomplished.
+
+The first words of our text tell us that 'Ye have received Christ Jesus
+as Lord,' and all depends on keeping the channels of communication open
+so that the reception may be continuous and progressive. We must live
+near and ever nearer to the Lord, and seek that our communion with Him
+may be strengthened. On the other hand, it is not only by the
+spontaneous development of the implanted life, but by conscious and
+continuous efforts which sometimes involve vigorous repression of the
+old self that progress is realised. The two metaphors of our text have
+to be united in our experience. Neither the effortless growth of the
+tree nor the toilsome work of the builder suffice to represent the whole
+truth. The two sides of deep and still communion, and of strenuous
+effort based on that communion, must be found in the experience of every
+Christian who has received Christ, and is advancing through the
+imperfect manifestations of earth to the perfect union with, and perfect
+assimilation to, the Lord.
+
+To all men who are ready to despair of themselves, here is the way to
+realise the grandest hopes. Nothing is too great to be attained by one
+who, having received Christ Jesus as Lord, walks in Him, rooted and
+builded up in Him, 'a holy temple to the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST
+
+          'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those
+          things which are above, where Christ sitteth on
+          the right hand of God. 2. Set your affection on
+          things above, not on things on the earth. 3. For
+          ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
+          God. 4. When Christ, who is our life, shall
+          appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in
+          glory. 5. Mortify therefore your members which are
+          upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness,
+          inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and
+          covetousness, which is idolatry: 6. For which
+          things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the
+          children of disobedience. 7. In the which ye also
+          walked sometime, when ye lived in them. 8. But now
+          ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice,
+          blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
+          9. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put
+          off the old man with his deeds; 10. And have put
+          on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge
+          after the image of Him that created him: 11. Where
+          there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
+          uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
+          free: but Christ is all, and in all. 12. Put on
+          therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved,
+          bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
+          meekness, longsuffering; 13. Forbearing one
+          another, and forgiving one another, if any man
+          have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave
+          you, so also do ye. 14. And above all these things
+          put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
+          15. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts,
+          to the which also ye are called in one body; and
+          be ye thankful.'--COL. iii. 1-15.
+
+
+The resurrection is regarded in Scripture in three aspects--as a fact
+establishing our Lord's Messiahship, as a prophecy of our rising from
+the dead, and as a symbol of the Christian life even now. The last is
+the aspect under which Paul deals with it here.
+
+I. Verses 1-4 set forth the wonderful but most real union of the
+believer with the risen Christ. We have said that the Lord's
+resurrection is regarded as a symbol, but that is an incomplete
+representation of the truth here taught, for Paul believed that the
+Christian is so joined to Jesus as that he has, not in symbol only, but
+in truth, risen with him. Mark the emphasis and depth of the expressions
+setting forth the believer's unity with his Lord: 'Ye were raised
+together with Christ'; 'Ye died, and your life is hid with Christ.' And
+these wonderful statements do not go to the bottom of the fact, for Paul
+goes beyond even them, and does not scruple to say that Christ '_is_ our
+life.'
+
+The ground of these great declarations is found in the fact that faith
+joins us in most real and close union to Jesus Christ, so that in His
+death we die to sin and the world, and that, even while we live the
+bodily life of men here, we have in us another life, derived from Jesus.
+Unless our Christianity has grasped that great truth, it has not risen
+to the height of New Testament teaching and Christian privilege. We
+cannot make too much of 'Christ our sacrifice,' but some of us make too
+little of 'Christ our life,' and thereby fail to understand in all its
+fulness that other truth on which they fasten so exclusively. Union with
+Christ in the possession of His life in us, and the consequent rooting
+of our lives in Him, is a truth which much of the evangelical
+Christianity of this day needs to see more clearly.
+
+The life is 'hid,' as being united with Jesus, and consequently
+withdrawn from the world, which neither comprehends nor sustains it. A
+Christian man is bound to manifest to the utmost of his power what is
+the motive and aim of his life; but the devout life is, like the divine
+life, a mystery, unrevealed after all revelation.
+
+The practical conclusion from this blessed union with Jesus is that we
+are, as Christians, bound to be true in our conduct to the facts of our
+spiritual life, and to turn away from the world, which is now not our
+home, and set our mind (not only our 'affections') on things above.
+Surely the Christ, 'seated on the right hand of God,' will be as a
+magnet to draw our conscious being upwards to Himself. Surely union with
+Him in His death will lead us to die to the world which is alien to us,
+and to live in aspiration, thought, desire, love, and obedience with Him
+in His calm abode, whence He rules and blesses the souls whom, through
+their faith, He has made to live the new life of heaven on earth.
+
+II. The first consequence of the risen life is negative, the death or
+'putting off' of the old nature, the life which belongs to and is ruled
+by earth. Verses 5-9 solemnly lay on the Christian the obligation to put
+this to death. The 'therefore' in verse 5 teaches a great lesson, for it
+implies that the union with Jesus by faith must precede all self-denial
+which is true to the spirit of the Gospel. Asceticism of any sort which
+is not built on the evangelical foundation is thereby condemned,
+whether it is practised by Buddhist, or monk, or Protestant. First be
+partaker of the new life, and then put off the old man with his deeds.
+The withered fronds of last year are pushed off the fern by the new ones
+as they uncurl. That doctrine of life in Christ is set down as mystical;
+but it is mysticism of the wholesome sort, which is intensely practical,
+and comes down to the level of the lowest duties,--for observe what
+homely virtues are enjoined, and how the things prohibited are no
+fantastic classifications of vices, but the things which all the world
+owns to be ugly and wrong.
+
+We cannot here enlarge on Paul's grim catalogue, but only point out that
+it is in two parts, the former (verses 5, 6) being principally sins of
+impurity and unregulated passion, to which is added 'covetousness,' as
+the other great vice to which the old nature is exposed. Lust and greed
+between them are the occasions of most of the sins of men. Stop these
+fountains, and the streams of evil would shrink to very small trickles.
+These twin vices attract the lightning of God's wrath, which 'cometh' on
+their perpetrators, not only in some final future judgment, but here and
+now. If we were not blind, we should see that thundercloud steadily
+drawing nearer, and ready to launch its terrors on impure and greedy
+men. They have set it in motion, and they are right in the path of the
+avalanche which they have loosened.
+
+The possessors of the risen life are exhorted to put off these things,
+not only because of the coming wrath, but because continuance in them is
+inconsistent with their present standing and life (v. 7). They do not
+now 'live in them,' but in the heavenly places with the risen Lord,
+therefore to walk in them is a contradiction. Our conduct should
+correspond to our real affinities, and the surface of our lives should
+be true to their depths and roots.
+
+The second class of vices are those which mar our intercourse with our
+fellows,--the more passionate anger and wrath and the more cold-blooded
+and deadly malice, with the many sins of speech.
+
+III. In verse 9 Paul appends the great reason for all the preceding
+injunctions; namely, the fact, already enlarged on in verses 1-4, of the
+Christian's death and new life by union with Jesus. He need only have
+stated the one-half of the fact here, but he never can touch one member
+of the antithesis without catching fire, as it were, and so he goes on
+to dwell on the new life in Christ, and thus to prepare for the
+transition to the exhortation to 'put on' its characteristic
+excellences. We note how true to fact, though apparently illogical, his
+representation is. He bases the command to put off the old man on the
+fact that Christians have put it off. They are to be what they are, to
+work out in daily acts what they did in its full ideal completeness when
+by faith they died to self and were made alive in and to Christ. A
+strong motive for a continuous Christian life is the recollection of the
+initial Christian act.
+
+But Paul's fervent spirit blazes up as he thinks of that new nature
+which union with Jesus has brought, and he turns aside from his
+exhortations to gaze on that great sight. He condenses volumes into a
+sentence. That new man is not only new, but is perpetually being renewed
+with a renovation penetrating more and more deeply, and extending more
+and more widely, in the Christian's nature. It is continually advancing
+in knowledge, and tending towards perfect knowledge of Christ. It is
+being fashioned, by a better creation than that of Adam, into a more
+perfect likeness of God than our first father bore in his sinless
+freshness. The possession of it gathers all Christians into a unity in
+which all distinctions of nationality, religious privilege, culture, or
+social condition, are lost. Paul the Pharisee and the Colossian
+brethren, Onesimus the slave and Philemon his master, are one in Jesus.
+The new life is one in all its recipients, and makes them one. The
+phenomena of the lowest forms of life are almost repeated in the
+highest, and, just as in a coral reef the myriads of workers are not
+individuals so much as parts of one living whole, 'so also is Christ.'
+The union is the closest possible without destruction of our
+individuality.
+
+IV. The final, positive consequence of the risen life follows in verses
+12-15. Again the Apostle reminds Christians of what they are, as the
+great motive for putting on the new man. The contemplation of privileges
+may tend to proud isolation and neglect of duty to our fellows, but the
+true effect of knowing that we are 'God's elect, holy and beloved,' is
+to soften our hearts, and to lead us to walk among men as mirrors and
+embodiments of God's mercy to us. The only virtues touched on here are
+the various manifestations of love, such as quick susceptibility to
+others' sorrows; readiness to help by act as well as to pity in word;
+lowliness in estimating one's own claims, which will lead to bearing
+evils without resentment or recompensing the like; and patient
+forgiveness, after the pattern and measure of the forgiveness we have
+received. All these graces, which would make earth an Eden, and our
+hearts temples, and our lives calm, are outcomes of love, and must
+never be divorced from it. Paul uses a striking image to express this
+thought of their dependence on it. He likens them to the various
+articles of dress, and bids us hold them all in place with love as a
+girdle, which keeps together all the various graces that make up
+'perfectness.'
+
+Thus living in love, we shall be free from the tumult of spirit which
+ever attends a selfish life; for nothing is more certain to stuff a
+man's pillow with thorns, and to wreck his tranquillity, than to live in
+hate and suspicion, or self-absorbed. 'The peace of Christ' is ours in
+the measure in which we live the risen life and put on the new man, and
+that peace in our hearts will rule, that is, will sit there as umpire;
+for it will instinctively draw itself into itself, as it were, like the
+leaves of a sensitive plant, at the approach of evil, and, if we will
+give heed to its warnings, and have nothing to do with what disturbs it,
+we shall be saved from falling into many a sin. That peace gathers all
+the possessors of the new life into blessed harmony. It is peace with
+God, with ourselves, and with all our brethren; and the fact that all
+Christians are, by their common life, members of the one body, lays on
+them all the obligation to keep the unity in the bond of peace. And for
+all these great blessings, especially for that union with Jesus which
+gives us a share in his risen life, thankfulness should ever fill our
+hearts and make all our days and deeds the sacrifice of praise unto him
+continually.
+
+
+
+
+RISEN WITH CHRIST
+
+          'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those
+          things which are above, where Christ sitteth on
+          the right hand of God. Set your affection on
+          things above, not on things on the earth.'--COL.
+          iii. 1, 2.
+
+
+There are three aspects in which the New Testament treats the
+Resurrection, and these three seem to have successively come into the
+consciousness of the Church. First, as is natural, it was considered
+mainly in its bearing on the person and work of our Lord. We may point
+for illustration to the way in which the Resurrection is treated in the
+earliest of the apostolic discourses, as recorded in the Acts of the
+Apostles. Then it came, with further reflection and experience, to be
+discerned that it had a bearing on the hope of the immortality of man.
+And last of all, as the Christian life deepened, it came to be discerned
+that the Resurrection was the pattern of the life of the Christian
+disciples. It was regarded first as a witness, then as a prophecy, then
+as a symbol. Three fragments of Scripture express these three phases:
+for the first, 'Declared to be the Son of God with power by the
+Resurrection from the dead'; for the second, 'Now is Christ risen from
+the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept'; for the
+third, 'God hath raised us up together with Him, and made us sit
+together in the heavenly places.' I have considered incidentally the two
+former aspects in the course of previous sermons; I wish to turn at
+present to that final third one.
+
+One more observation I must make by way of introduction, and that is,
+that the way in which the Apostle here glides from 'being risen with
+Christ' to where 'Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God,'
+confirms what I have pointed out in former discourses, that the
+Ascension of Jesus Christ is always considered in Scripture as being
+nothing more than the necessary outcome and issue of the process which
+began in the Resurrection. They are not separate facts, but they are two
+ends of one process. And so with these thoughts, that Resurrection
+develops into Ascension, and that in both Jesus Christ is the pattern
+for His followers, let us turn to the words before us.
+
+Then we have here
+
+I. The Christian life considered as a risen life.
+
+Now, we are all familiar with the great evangelical point of view from
+which the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ are usually
+contemplated. To many of us Christ's sacrifice is nothing more or less
+than the means by which the world is reconciled to God, and Christ's
+Resurrection nothing more than the seal which was set by Divinity upon
+that work. 'Crucified for our offences, and raised again for our
+justification,' as Paul has it--that is the point of view from which
+most evangelical or orthodox Christian people are contented to regard
+the solemn fact of the Death and the radiant fact of the Resurrection.
+You cannot be too emphatic about these truths, but you may be too
+exclusive in your contemplation of them. You do well when you say that
+they are the Gospel; you do not well when you say, as some of you do,
+that they are the whole Gospel. For there is another stream of teaching
+in the New Testament, of which my text is an example, and a multitude of
+other passages that I cannot refer to now are equally conspicuous
+instances, in which that death and that Resurrection are regarded, not
+so much in respect to the power which they exercise in the
+reconciliation of the world to God, as in their aspect as the type of
+all noble and true Christian life. You remember how, when our Lord
+Himself touched upon the fruitful issues of His death, and said: 'Except
+a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if
+it die it bringeth forth much fruit,' He at once went on to say that a
+man that loved his life would lose it; and that a man that lost his life
+would find it, and proceeded to point, even then, and in that
+connection, to His Cross as our pattern, declaring: 'If any man serve
+Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be.'
+
+          'Made like Him, like Him we rise;
+           Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.'
+
+So, then, a risen life is the type of all noble life, and before there
+can be a risen life there must have been a death. True, we may say that
+the spiritual facts in a man's experience, which are represented by
+these two great symbols of a death and a rising, are but like the
+segment of a circle which, seen from the one side is convex and from the
+other is concave. But however loosely we may feel that the metaphors
+represent the facts, this is plain, that unless a man dies to flesh, to
+self-will, to the world, he never will live a life that is worth calling
+life. The condition of all nobleness and all growth upwards is that we
+shall die daily, and live a life that has sprung victorious from the
+death of self. All lofty ethics teach that; and Christianity teaches it,
+with redoubled emphasis, because it says to us, that the Cross and the
+Resurrection are not merely imaginative emblems of the noble and the
+Christian life, but are a great deal more than that. For, brethren, do
+not forget--if you do, you will be hopelessly at sea as to large tracts
+of blessed Christian truth--that by faith in Jesus Christ we are brought
+into such a true deep union with Him as that, in no mere metaphorical or
+analogous sense, but in most blessed reality, there comes into the
+believing heart a spark of the life that is Christ's own, so that with
+Him we do live, and from Him we do live a life cognate with His, who,
+having risen from the dead, dieth no more, and over whom death hath no
+dominion. So it is not a metaphor only, but a spiritual truth, when we
+speak of being risen with Christ, seeing that our faith, in the measure
+of its genuineness, its depth and its operative power upon our
+characters, will be the gate through which there shall pass into our
+deadness the life that truly is, the life that has nought to do with
+death or sin. And this unity with Jesus, brought about by faith, brings
+about that the depths of the Christian life are hid with Christ in God,
+and that we, risen with Him, do even now sit 'at the right hand in
+heavenly places,' whilst our feet, dusty and sometimes blood-stained,
+are journeying along the paths of life. This is the great teaching of my
+text, and of a multitude of other places; and this is the teaching which
+modern Christianity, in its exclusive, or all but exclusive,
+contemplation of the Cross as the sacrifice for sin, has far too much
+forgotten. 'Ye are risen with Christ.'
+
+Let me remind you that this veritable death and rising again, which
+marks the Christian life, is set forth before us in the initial rite of
+the Christian Church. Some of you do not agree with me in my view,
+either of what is the mode or of who are the subjects of that ordinance,
+but if you know anything about the question, you know that everybody
+that has a right to give a judgment agrees with us Baptists in
+saying--although they may not think that it carries anything obligatory
+upon the practice of to-day--that the primitive Church baptized by
+immersion. Now, the meaning of baptism is to symbolise these two
+inseparable moments, dying to sin, to self, to the world, to the old
+past, and rising again to newness of life. Our sacramentarian friends
+say that, in my text, it was in baptism that these Colossian Christians
+rose again with Christ. I, for my part, do not believe that, but that
+baptism was the speaking sign of what lies at the gate of a true
+Christian life I have no manner of doubt.
+
+So the first thought of our text is not only taught us in words, but it
+stands manifest in the ritual of the Church as it was from the
+beginning. We die, and we rise again, through faith and by union through
+faith, with Christ 'that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is
+even at the right hand of God.'
+
+Let me turn, secondly, to
+
+II. The consequent aims of the Christian life.
+
+'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.'
+'To seek' implies the direction of the external life toward certain
+objects. It is not to seek as if perhaps we might not find; it is not
+even to seek in the sense of searching for, but it is to seek in the
+sense of aiming at. And now do you not think that if we had burning in
+our hearts, and conscious to our experiences, the sense of union with
+Jesus Christ the risen Saviour, that would shape the direction and
+dictate the aims of our earthly life? As surely as the elevation of the
+rocket tube determines the flight of the projectile that comes from it,
+so surely would the inward consciousness, if it were vivid as it ought
+to be in all Christian people, of that risen life throbbing within the
+heart, shape all the external conduct. It would give us wings and make
+us soar. It would make us buoyant, and lift us above the creeping aims
+that constitute the objects of life for so many men.
+
+But you say, 'Things above: that is an indefinite phrase. What do you
+mean by it?' I will tell you what the Bible means by it. It means Jesus
+Christ. All the nebulous splendours of that firmament are gathered
+together into one blazing sun. It is a vague direction to tell a man to
+shoot up, into an empty heaven. It is not a vague direction to tell him
+to seek the 'things above'; for they are all gathered into a person.
+'Where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God,'--that is the
+meaning of 'things above,' which are to be the continual aim of the man
+who is conscious of a risen life. And of course they will be, for if we
+feel, as we ought to feel habitually, though with varying clearness,
+that we do carry within us a spark, if I might use that phrase, of the
+very life of Jesus Christ, so surely as fire will spring upwards, so
+surely as water will rise to the height of its source, so surely will
+our outward lives be directed towards Him, who is the life of our inward
+lives, and the goal therefore of our outward actions?
+
+Jesus Christ is the summing up of 'the things that are above'; therefore
+there stands out clear this one great truth, that the only aim for a
+Christian soul, consistent with the facts of its Christian life, is to
+be like Christ, to be with Christ, to please Christ.
+
+Now, how does that aim--'whether present or absent we labour that we may
+be well pleasing to Him'--how does that aim bear upon the multitude of
+inferior and nearer aims which men pursue, and which Christians have to
+pursue along with other men? How does it bear upon them?--Why thus--as
+the culminating peak of a mountain-chain bears on the lower hills that
+for miles and miles buttress it, and hold it up, and aspire towards it,
+and find their perfection in its calm summit that touches the skies. The
+more we have in view, as our aim in life, Christ who is 'at the right
+hand of God,' and assimilation, communion with Him, approbation from
+Him, the more will all immediate aims be ennobled and delivered from the
+evils that else cleave to them. They are more when they are second than
+when they are first. 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,' and all your
+other aims--as students, as thinkers, as scientists, as men of business,
+as parents, as lovers, or anything else--will be greatened by being
+subordinated to the conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should
+persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden-down, diapason note,
+through all our lives. Perfume can be diffused into the air, and
+dislodge no atom of that which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can
+be pursued through, and by means of, all nearer ones, and is
+inconsistent with nothing but sin. 'Seek the things that are above.'
+
+Lastly, we have here--
+
+III. The discipline which is needed to secure the right direction of the
+life.
+
+The Apostle does not content himself with pointing out the aims. He adds
+practical advice as to how these aims can be made dominant in our
+individual cases, when he says, 'Set your affections on things above.'
+Now, many of you will know that 'affections' is not the full sense of
+the word that is here employed, and that the Revised Version gives a
+more adequate rendering when it says, 'Set your _minds_ on the things
+that are above.' A man cannot do with his love according to his will. He
+cannot say: '_Resolved_, that I love So-and-So'; and then set himself to
+do it. But though you cannot act on the emotions directly by the will,
+you _can_ act directly on your understandings, on your thoughts, and
+your thoughts will act on your affections. If a man wants to love Jesus
+Christ he must think about Him. That is plain English. It is vain for a
+man to try to coerce his wandering affections by any other course than
+by concentrating his thoughts. Set your minds on the things that are
+above, and that will consolidate and direct the emotions; and the
+thoughts and the emotions together will shape the outward efforts.
+Seeking the things that are above will come, and will only come, when
+mind and heart and inward life are occupied with Him. There is no other
+way by which the externals can be made right than by setting a watch on
+the door of our hearts and minds, and this inward discipline must be put
+in force before there will be any continuity or sureness in the outward
+aim. We want, for that direction of the life of which I have been
+speaking, a clear perception and a concentrated purpose, and we shall
+not get either of these unless we fall back, by thought and meditation,
+upon the truths which will provide them both.
+
+Brethren, there is another aspect of the connection between these two
+parts of our text, which I can only touch. Not only is the setting of
+our thoughts on the things above, the way by which we can make these the
+aim of our lives. They are not only aims to be reached at some future
+stage of our progress, but they are possessions to be enjoyed at the
+present. We may have a present Christ and a present Heaven. The
+Christian life is not all aspiration; it is fruition as well. We have to
+seek, but even whilst we seek, we should be conscious that we possess
+what we are seeking, even whilst we seek it. Do you know anything of
+that double experience of having the things that are above, here and
+now, as well as reaching out towards them?
+
+I am afraid that the Christian life of this generation suffers at a
+thousand points, because it is more concerned with the ordering of the
+outward life, and the manifold activities which this busy generation has
+struck out for itself, than it is with the quiet setting of the mind, in
+silent sunken depths of contemplation, on the things that are above. Oh,
+if we would think more about them we should aim more at them; and if we
+were sure that we possessed them to-day we should be more eager for a
+larger possession to-morrow.
+
+Dear brethren, we may all have the risen life for ours, if we will knit
+ourselves, in humble dependence and utter self-surrender, to the Christ
+who died for us that we might be dead to sin, and rose again that we
+might rise to righteousness. And if we have Him, in any deep and real
+sense, as the life of our lives, then we shall be blessed, amid all the
+divergent and sometimes conflicting nearer aims, which we have to
+pursue, by seeing clear above them that to which they all may tend, the
+one aim which corresponds to a man's nature, which meets his condition,
+which satisfies his needs, which can always be attained if it is
+followed, and which, when secured, never disappoints. God help us all to
+say, 'This one thing I do, and all else I count but dung, that I may
+know Him, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His
+sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means I may
+attain unto the Resurrection from the dead!'
+
+
+
+
+WITHOUT AND WITHIN
+
+          'Them that are without.'--COL. iv. 5.
+
+
+That is, of course, an expression for the non-Christian world; the
+outsiders who are beyond the pale of the Church. There was a very broad
+line of distinction between it and the surrounding world in the early
+Christian days, and the handful of Christians in a heathen country felt
+a great gulf between them and the society in which they lived. That
+distinction varies in form, and varies somewhat in apparent magnitude
+according as Christianity has been rooted in a country for a longer or a
+shorter time, but it remains, and is as real to-day as it ever was, and
+there is neither wisdom nor kindness in ignoring the distinction.
+
+The phrase of our text may sound harsh, and might be used, as it was by
+the Jews, from whom it was borrowed, in a very narrow and bitter spirit.
+Close corporations of any sort are apt to generate, not only a wholesome
+_esprit de corps_, but a hostile contempt for outsiders, and
+Christianity has too often been misrepresented by its professors, who
+have looked down upon those that are without with supercilious and
+unchristian self-complacency.
+
+There is nothing of that sort in the words themselves; the very opposite
+is in them. They sound to me like the expression of a man conscious of
+the security and comfort and blessedness of the home where he sat, and
+with his heart yearning for all the houseless wanderers that were
+abiding the pelting of the pitiless storm out in the darkness there. The
+spirit and attitude of Christianity to such is one of yearning pity and
+urgent entreaty to come in and share in the blessings. There is deep
+pathos in the words, as well as solemn earnestness, and in such a spirit
+I wish to dwell upon them now for a short time.
+
+I. I begin with the question: Who are they that are outside? And what is
+it of which they are outside?
+
+As I have already remarked, the phrase was apparently borrowed from
+Judaism, where it meant, 'outside the Jewish congregation,' and its
+primary application, as used here, is no doubt to those who are outside
+the Christian Church. But do not let us suppose that that explanation
+gets to the bottom of the meaning of the words. It may stand as a
+partial answer, but only as partial. The evil tendency which attends all
+externalising of truth in the concrete form of institutions works in
+full force on the Church, and ever tempts us to substitute outward
+connection with the institution for real possession of the truth of
+which the institution is the outgrowth. Therefore I urge upon you very
+emphatically--and all the more earnestly because of the superstitious
+overestimate of outward connection with the outward institution of the
+Church which is eagerly proclaimed all around us to-day--that connection
+with any organised body of believing men is not 'being within,' and that
+isolation from all these is not necessarily 'being without.' Many a man
+who is within the organisation is not 'in the truth,' and, blessed be
+God, a man may be outside all churches, and yet be one of God's hidden
+ones, and may dwell safe and instructed in the very innermost shrine of
+the secret place of the Most High. We hear from priestly lips, both
+Roman Catholic and Anglican, that there is 'no safety outside the
+Church.' The saying is true when rightly understood. If by the Church be
+meant the whole company of those who are trusting to Jesus Christ, of
+course there is no safety outside, because to trust in Jesus is the one
+condition of safety, and unless we belong to those who so trust we shall
+not possess the blessing. So understood, the phrase may pass, and is
+only objectionable as a round-about and easily misunderstood way of
+saying what is much better expressed by 'Whosoever shall call on the
+name of the Lord shall be saved.'
+
+But that is not the meaning of the phrase in the mouths of those who use
+it most frequently. To them the Church is a visible corporation, and not
+only so, but as one of the many organisations into which believers are
+moulded, it is distinguished from the others by certain offices and
+rites, bishops, priests, and sacraments, through whom and which certain
+grace is supposed to flow, no drop of which can reach a community
+otherwise shaped and officered!
+
+Nor is it only Roman Catholics and Anglicans who are in danger of
+externalising personal Christianity into a connection with a church. The
+tendency has its roots deep in human nature, and may be found
+flourishing quite as rankly in the least sacerdotal of the 'sects' as in
+the Vatican itself. There is very special need at present for those who
+understand that Christianity is an immensely deeper thing than
+connection with any organised body of Christians, to speak out the truth
+that is in them, and to protest against the vulgar and fleshly notion
+which is forcing itself into prominence in this day when societies of
+all sorts are gaining such undue power, and religion, like much else, is
+being smothered under forms, as was the maiden in the old story, under
+the weight of her ornaments. External relationships and rites cannot
+determine spiritual conditions. It does not follow because you have
+passed through certain forms, and stand in visible connection with any
+visible community, that you are therefore within the pale and safe.
+Churches are appointed by Christ. Men who believe and love naturally
+draw together. The life of Christ is in them. Many spiritual blessings
+are received through believing association with His people. Illumination
+and stimulus, succour and sympathy pass from one to another, each in
+turn experiencing the blessedness of receiving, and the greater
+blessedness of giving. No wise man who has learned of Christ will
+undervalue the blessings which come through union with the outward body
+which is a consequence of union with the unseen Head. But men may be in
+the Church and out of Christ. Not connection with it, but connection
+with Him, brings us 'within.' 'Those that are without' may be either in
+or out of the pale of any church.
+
+We may put the answer to this question in another form, and going deeper
+than the idea of being within a visible church, we may say, 'those that
+are without' are they who are outside the Kingdom of Christ.
+
+The Kingdom of Christ is not a visible external community. The Kingdom
+of Christ, or of God, or of Heaven, is found wherever human wills obey
+the Law of Christ, which is the will of God, the decrees of Heaven; as
+Christ himself put it, in profound words--profound in all their
+simplicity--when He said, 'Not every man that saith unto Me Lord! Lord!
+shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My
+Father, which is in Heaven.' 'Them that are without' are they whose
+wills are not bent in loving obedience to the Lord of their spirit.
+
+But we must go deeper than that. In the Church? Yes! In the Kingdom?
+Yes! But I venture to take another Scripture phrase as being the one
+satisfactory fundamental answer to the question: What is it that these
+people are outside of? and I say Christ, Christ. If you will take your
+New Testament as your guide, you will find that the one question upon
+which all is suspended is the, Am I, or Am I not, in Jesus Christ? Am I
+in Him, or Am I outside of Him? And the answer to that question is the
+answer to this other: Who are they that are without?
+
+They that are outside are not the 'non-Christian world' who are not
+church members; they that are inside are not the 'Christian world' who
+make an outward profession of being in the Kingdom. It is not going down
+to the foundation to explain the antithesis so; but 'those that are
+within' are those who have simple trust upon Jesus Christ as the sole
+and all-sufficient Saviour of their sinful spirits and the life of their
+life, and having entered into that great love, have plunged themselves,
+as it were, into the very heart of Jesus; have found in Him
+righteousness and peace, forgiveness and love, joy and salvation. Are
+you in Christ because you love Him and trust your soul to Him? If not,
+if not, you are amongst those 'that are without,' though you be ever so
+much joined to the visible Church of the living God.
+
+And then there is one more remark that I must drop in here before I go
+on, namely, that whilst I thankfully admit, and joyfully preach, that
+the most imperfect, rudimentary faith knits a man to Jesus Christ, even
+if in this life it may be found covered over with a great deal that is
+contradictory and inconsistent; on the other hand there are some people
+who stand like the angel in the Apocalypse, with one foot on the solid
+land and one upon the restless sea, half in and half out, undecided,
+halting--that is, 'limping'--between two opinions. Some people of that
+sort are listening to me now, who have been like that for years. Now I
+want them to remember this plain piece of common-sense--half in is
+altogether out! So that is my answer to the first question: Who are they
+that are outside, and what is it that they are outside of?
+
+I cannot carry round these principles and lay them upon the conscience
+of each hearer, but I pray you to listen to your own inmost voice
+speaking, and I am mistaken if many will not hear it saying: 'Thou art
+the man!' Do not stop your ears to that voice!
+
+II. Notice next the force of this phrase as implying the woeful
+condition of those without.
+
+I have said that it is full of pathos. It is the language of a man whose
+heart yearns as, in the midst of his own security, he thinks of the
+houseless wanderers in the dark and the storm. He thinks pityingly of
+what they lose, and of that to which they are exposed.
+
+There are two or three ways in which I may illustrate that condition,
+but perhaps the most graphic and impressive may be just to recall for a
+moment three or four of the Scripture metaphors that fit into this
+representation: 'Those that are without'; and thus to gain some
+different pictures of what the inside and the outside means in these
+varying figures.
+
+First, then, there is a figure drawn from the Old Testament which is
+often applied, and correctly applied, to this subject--Noah's Ark.
+
+Think of that safe abode floating across the waters, whilst all without
+it was a dreary waste. Without were death and despair, but those that
+were within sat warm and dry and safe and fed and living. The men that
+were without, high as they might climb upon rocks and hills, strong as
+they might be--when the dreary rainstorm wept itself dry, 'they were all
+dead corpses.' To be in was life, to be out was death.
+
+That is the first metaphor. Take another. That singular institution of
+the old Mosaic system, in which the man who inadvertently, and therefore
+without any guilt or crime of his own, had been the cause of death to
+his brother, had provided for him, half on one side Jordan and half on
+the other, and dotted over the land, so that it should not be too far to
+run to one of them, Cities of Refuge. And when the wild vendetta of
+those days stirred up the next of kin to pursue at his heels, if he
+could get inside the nearest of these he was secure. They that were
+within could stand at the city gates and look out upon the plain, and
+see the pursuer with his hate glaring from his eyes, and almost feel his
+hot breath on their cheeks, and know that though but a yard from him,
+his arm durst not touch them. To be inside was to be safe, to be outside
+was certain bloody death.
+
+That is the second figure; take a third; one which our Lord Himself has
+given us. Here is the picture--a palace, a table abundantly spread,
+lights and music, delight and banqueting, gladness and fulness, society
+and sustenance. The guests sit close and all partake. To be within means
+food, shelter, warmth, festivity, society; to be without, like Lear on
+the moor, is to stand the pelting of the storm, weary, stumbling in the
+dark, starving, solitary, and sad. Within is brightness and good cheer;
+without is darkness, hunger, death.
+
+That is the third figure. Take a fourth, another of our Master's.
+Picture a little rude, stone-built enclosure with the rough walls piled
+high, and a narrow aperture at one point, big enough for one creature to
+pass through at a time. Within, huddled together, are the innocent
+sheep; without, the lion and the bear. Above, the vault of night with
+all its stars, and watching all, the shepherd, with unslumbering eye. In
+the fold is rest for the weary limbs that have been plodding through
+valleys of the shadow of death, and dusty ways; peace for the panting
+hearts that are trembling at every danger, real and imaginary. Inside
+the fold is tranquillity, repose for the wearied frame, safety, and the
+companionship of the Shepherd; and without, ravening foes and a dreary
+wilderness, and flinty paths and sparse herbage and muddy pools. Inside
+is life; without is death. That is the fourth figure.
+
+In the Ark no Deluge can touch; in the City of Refuge no avenger can
+smite; in the banqueting-hall no thirst nor hunger but can be satisfied;
+in the fold no enemy can come and no terror can live.
+
+Brethren! are you amongst 'them that are without,' or are you within?
+
+III. Lastly--why is anybody outside? Why? It is no one's fault but their
+own. It is not God's. He can appeal with clean hands and ask us to judge
+what more could have been done for His vineyard that He has not done for
+it. The great parable which represents Him as sending out His summons to
+the feast in His palace puts the wonderful words in the mouth of the
+master of the house, after his call by his servants had been refused.
+'Go out into the highways and hedges,' beneath which the beggars squat,
+'and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.' 'Nature abhors
+a vacuum,' the old natural philosophers used to say. So does grace; so
+does God's love. It hates to have His house empty and His provisions
+unconsumed. And so He has done all that He could do to bring you and me
+inside. He has sent His Son, He beckons us, He draws us by countless
+mercies day by day. He appeals to our hearts, and would have us gathered
+into the fold. And if we are outside it is not because He has neglected
+to do anything which He can do in order to bring us in.
+
+But why is it that any of us resist such drawing, and make the wretched
+choice of perishing without, rather than find safety within? The deepest
+reason is an alienated heart, a rebellious will. But the reason for
+alienation and rebellion lie among the inscrutable mysteries of our
+awful being. All sin is irrational. The fact is plain, the temptations
+are obvious; excuses there are in plenty, but reasons there are none.
+Still we may touch for a moment on some of the causes which operate with
+many hearers of God's merciful call to enter in, and keep them without.
+
+Many remain outside because they do not really believe in the danger. No
+doubt there was a great deal of brilliant sarcasm launched at Noah for
+his folly in thinking that there was anything coming that needed an ark.
+It seemed, no doubt, food for much laughter, and altogether impossible
+to think of gravely, that this flood which he talked about should ever
+come. So they had their laughter out as they saw him working away at his
+ludicrous task 'until the day when the flood came and swept them all
+away,' and the laughter ended in gurgling sobs of despair.
+
+If a manslayer does not believe that the next of kin is on his track, he
+will not flee to the City of Refuge. If the sheep has no fear of wolves,
+it will choose to be outside the fold among the succulent herbage. Did
+you ever see how, in a Welsh slate-quarry, before a blast, a horn is
+blown, and at its sound all along the face of the quarry the miners run
+to their shelters, where they stay until the explosion is over? What do
+you suppose would become of one of them who stood there after the horn
+had blown, and said: 'Nonsense! There is nothing coming! I will take my
+chance where I am!' Very likely a bit of slate would end him before he
+had finished his speech. At any rate, do not you, dear friend, trifle
+with the warning that says: 'Flee for refuge to Christ and shelter
+yourself in Him.'
+
+There are some people, too, who stop outside because they do not much
+care for the entertainment that they will get within. It does not strike
+them as being very desirable. They have no appetite for it. We preachers
+seek to draw hearts to Jesus by many motives--and among others by
+setting forth the blessings which he bestows. But if a man does not care
+about pardon, does not fear judgment, does not want to be good, has no
+taste for righteousness, is not attracted by the pure and calm pleasures
+which Christ offers, the invitation falls flat upon his ear. Wisdom
+cries aloud and invites the sons of men to her feast, but the fare she
+provides is not coarse and high spiced enough, and her table is left
+unfilled, while the crowd runs to the strong-flavoured meats and foaming
+drinks which her rival, Folly, offers. Many of us say, like the
+Israelites 'Our souls loathe this light bread,' this manna, white and
+sweet, and Heaven-descended, and angels' food though it be, and we
+hanker after the reeking garlic and leeks and onions of Egypt.
+
+Some of us again, would like well enough to be inside, if that would
+keep us from dangers which we believe to be real, but we do not like the
+doorway. You may see in some remote parts of the country strange,
+half-subterranean structures which are supposed to have been the houses
+of a vanished race. They have a long, narrow, low passage, through which
+a man has to creep with his face very near the ground. He has to go low
+and take to his knees to get through; and at the end the passage opens
+out into ampler, loftier space, where the dwellers could sit safe from
+wild weather and wilder beasts and wildest men. That is like the way
+into the fortress home which we have in Jesus Christ. We must stoop very
+low to enter there. And some of us do not like that. We do not like to
+fall on our knees and say, I am a sinful man, O Lord. We do not like to
+bow ourselves in penitence. And the passage is narrow as well as low. It
+is broad enough for you, but not for what some of you would fain carry
+in on your back. The pack which you bear, of earthly vanities and loves,
+and sinful habits, will be brushed off your shoulders in that narrow
+entrance, like the hay off a cart in a country lane bordered by high
+hedges. And some of us do not like that. So, because the way is narrow,
+and we have to stoop, our pride kicks at the idea of having to confess
+ourselves sinners, and of having to owe all our hope and salvation to
+God's undeserved mercy, therefore we stay outside. And because the way
+is narrow, and we have to put off some of our treasures, our
+earthward-looking desires shrink from laying these aside, and therefore
+we stop outside. There was room in the boat for the last man who stood
+on the deck, but he could not make up his mind to leave a bag of gold.
+There was no room for that. Therefore he would not leap, and went down
+with the ship.
+
+The door is open. The Master calls. The feast is spread. Dangers
+threaten. The flood comes. The avenger of blood makes haste. 'Why
+standest thou without?' Enter in, before the door is shut. And if you
+ask, How shall I pass within?--the answer is plain: 'They could not
+enter in because of unbelief. We which have believed do enter into
+rest.'
+
+
+
+
+I. THESSALONIANS
+
+
+
+
+FAITH, LOVE, HOPE, AND THEIR FRUITS
+
+          'Your work of faith, and labour of love, and
+          patience of hope.'--1 THESS. i. 3.
+
+
+This Epistle, as I suppose we all know, is Paul's first letter. He had
+been hunted out of Thessalonica by the mob, made the best of his way to
+Athens, stayed there for a very short time, then betook himself to
+Corinth, and at some point of his somewhat protracted residence there,
+this letter was written. So that we have in it his first attempt, so far
+as we know, to preach the Gospel by the pen. It is interesting to notice
+how, whatever changes and developments there may have been in him
+thereafter, all the substantial elements of his latest faith beam out in
+this earliest letter, and how even in regard to trifles we see the germs
+of much that came afterwards. This same triad, you remember, 'faith,
+hope, charity,' recurs in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, though
+with a very significant difference in the order, which I shall have to
+dwell upon presently.
+
+The letter is interesting on another account. Remembering that it was
+only a very short time since these Thessalonians had turned from idols
+to serve the living God, there is something very beautiful in the
+overflowing generosity of commendation, which never goes beyond
+veracity, with which he salutes them. Their Christian character, like
+seeds sown in some favoured tropical land, had sprung up swiftly; yet
+not with the dangerous kind of swiftness which presages decay of the
+growth. It was only a few days since they had been grovelling before
+idols, but now he can speak of 'your work of faith, and labour of love,
+and patience of hope' . . . and declare that the Gospel 'sounded out' from
+them--the word which he employs is that which is technically used for
+the blast of a trumpet--'so that we need not to speak anything.' Rapid
+growth is possible for us all, and is not always superficial.
+
+I desire now to consider that pair of triads--the three
+foundation-stones, and the three views of the fair building that is
+reared upon them.
+
+I. The three foundation-stones.
+
+That is a natural metaphor to use, but it is not quite correct, for
+these three--faith, love, hope--are not to be conceived of as lying side
+by side. Rather than three foundations we have three courses of the
+building here; the lowest one, faith; the next one, love; and the top
+one, hope. The order in 1 Corinthians is different, 'faith, hope,
+charity,' and the alteration in the sequence is suggested by the
+difference of purpose. The Apostle intended in 1 Corinthians to dwell at
+some length thereafter on 'charity,' or 'love.' So he puts it last to
+make the link of connection with what he is going to say. But here he is
+dealing with the order of production, the natural order in which these
+three evolve themselves. And his thought is that they are like the
+shoots that successive springs bring upon the bough of a tree, where
+each year has its own growth, and the summit of last year's becomes the
+basis of next. Thus we have, first, faith; then, shooting from that,
+love; and then, sustained by both, hope. Now let us look at that order.
+
+It is a well-worn commonplace, which you may think it not needful for me
+to dwell upon here, that in the Christian theory, both of salvation and
+of morals, the basis of everything is trust. And that is no arbitrary
+theological arrangement, but it is the only means by which the life that
+is the basis both of salvation and of righteousness can be implanted in
+men. There is no other way by which Jesus Christ can come into our
+hearts than by what the New Testament calls 'trust,' which we have
+turned into the hard, theological concept which too often glides over
+people's minds without leaving any dint at all--'faith.' Distrust is
+united with trust. There is no trust without, complementary to it,
+self-distrust. Just as the sprouting seed sends one little radicle
+downwards, and that becomes the root, and at the same time sends up
+another one, white till it reaches the light, and it becomes the stem,
+so the underside of faith is self-distrust, and you must empty
+yourselves before you can open your hearts to be filled by Jesus. That
+being so, this self-distrustful trust is the beginning of everything.
+That is the _alpha_ of the whole alphabet, however glorious and manifold
+may be the words into which its letters are afterwards combined. Faith
+is the hand that grasps. It is the means of communication, it is the
+channel through which the grace which is the life, or, rather, I should
+say, the life which is the grace, comes to us. It is the open door by
+which the angel of God comes in with his gifts. It is like the petals of
+the flowers, opening when the sunshine kisses them, and, by opening,
+laying bare the depths of their calyxes to be illuminated and coloured,
+and made to grow by the sunshine which itself has opened them, and
+without the presence of which, within the cup, there would have been
+neither life nor beauty. So faith is the basis of everything; the first
+shoot from which all the others ascend. Brethren, have you that initial
+grace? I leave the question with you. If you have not that, you have
+nothing else.
+
+Then again, out of faith rises love. No man can love God unless he
+believes that God loves him. I, for my part, am old-fashioned and narrow
+enough not to believe that there is any deep, soul-cleansing or
+soul-satisfying love of God which is not the answer to the love that
+died on the Cross. But you must believe that, and more than believe it;
+you must have trusted and cast yourselves on it, in the utter
+abandonment of self-distrust and Christ-confidence, before there will
+well up in your heart the answering love to God. First faith, then love.
+My love is the reverberation of the primeval voice, the echo of God's.
+The angle at which the light falls on the mirror is the same as the
+angle at which it is reflected from it. And though my love at its
+highest is low, at its strongest is weak: yet, like the echo that is
+faint and far, feeble though it be, it is pitched on the same key, and
+is the prolongation of the same note as the mother-sound. So my love
+answers God's love, and it will never answer it unless faith has brought
+me within the auditorium, the circle wherein the voice that proclaims 'I
+love thee, my child,' can be heard.
+
+Now, we do not need to ask ourselves whether Paul is here speaking of
+love to God or love to man. He is speaking of both, because the New
+Testament deals with the latter as being a part of the former, and sure
+to accompany it. But there is one lesson that I wish to draw. If it be
+true that love in us is thus the result of faith in the love of God, let
+us learn how we grow in love. You cannot say, 'Now I will make an effort
+to love.' The circulation of the blood, the pulsations of the heart, are
+not within the power of the will. But you can say, 'Now I will make an
+effort to trust.' For faith is in the power of the will, and when the
+Master said, 'Ye will not come unto me,' He taught us that unbelief is
+not a mere intellectual deficiency or perversity, but that it is the
+result, in the majority of cases--I might almost say in all-of an
+alienated will. Therefore, if you wish to love, do not try to work
+yourself into a hysteria of affection, but take into your hearts and
+minds the Christian facts, and mainly the fact of the Cross, which will
+set free the frozen and imprisoned fountains of your affections, and
+cause them to flow out abundantly in sweet water. First faith, then
+love; and get at love through faith. That is a piece of practical wisdom
+that it will do us all good to keep in mind.
+
+Then the third of the three, the topmost shoot, is hope. Hope is faith
+directed to the future. So it is clear enough that, unless I have that
+trust of which I have been speaking, I have none of the hope which the
+Apostle regards as flowing from it. But love has to do with hope quite
+as much, though in a different way, as faith has to do with it. For in
+the direct proportion in which we are taking into our hearts Christ and
+His truth, and letting our hearts go out in love towards Him and
+communion with Him, will the glories beyond brighten and consolidate and
+magnify themselves in our eyes. The hope of the Christian man is but the
+inference from his present faith, and the joy and sweetness of his
+present love. For surely when we rise to the heights which are possible
+to us all, and on which I suppose most Christian people have been
+sometimes, though for far too brief seasons; when we rise to the heights
+of communion with God, anything seems more possible to us than that
+death, or anything that lies in the future, should have power over a tie
+so sweet, so strong, so independent of externals, and so all-sufficing
+in its sweetness. Thus we shall be sure that God is our portion for
+ever, in the precise degree in which, by faith and love, we feel that
+'He is the strength of our hearts,' to-day and now. So, then, we have
+the three foundation-stones.
+
+And now a word or two, in the second place, about
+
+II. The fair building which rises on them.
+
+I have already half apologised for using the metaphor of a foundation
+and a building. I must repeat the confession that the symbol is an
+inadequate one. For the Apostle does not conceive of the work and labour
+and patience which are respectively allocated to these three graces as
+being superimposed upon them, as it were, by effort, so much as he
+thinks of them as growing out of them by their inherent nature. The work
+is 'the work of faith,' that which characterises faith, that which
+issues from it, that which is its garment, visible to the world, and the
+token of its reality and its presence. Faith works. It is the foundation
+of all true work; even in the lowest sense of the word we might almost
+say that. But in the Christian scheme it is eminently the underlying
+requisite for all work which God does not consider as busy idleness. I
+might here make a general remark, which, however, I need not dwell upon,
+that we have here the broad thought which Christian people in all
+generations need to have drummed into their heads over and over again,
+and that is that inward experiences and emotions, and states of mind and
+heart, however good and precious, are so mainly as being the necessary
+foundations of conduct. What is the good of praying and feeling
+comfortable within, and having 'a blessed assurance,' a 'happy
+experience,' 'sweet communion,' and so on? What is the good of it all,
+if these things do not make us 'live soberly, righteously, and godly in
+this present world'? What is the good of the sails of a windmill going
+whirling round, if the machinery has been thrown out of gear, and the
+great stones which it ought to actuate are not revolving? What is the
+good of the screw of a steamer revolving, when she pitches, clean above
+the waves? It does nothing then to drive the vessel onwards, but will
+only damage the machinery. And Christian emotions and experiences which
+do not drive conduct are of as little use, often as perilous, and as
+injurious. If you want to keep your 'faith, love, hope,' sound and
+beneficial, set them to work. And do not be too sure that you have them,
+if they do not crave for work, whether you set them to it or not.
+
+'Your work of faith.' There is the whole of the thorny subject of the
+relation of faith and works packed into a nutshell. It is exactly what
+James said and it is exactly what a better than James said. When the
+Jews came to Him with their externalism, and thought that God was to be
+pleased by a whole rabble of separate good actions, and so said, 'What
+shall we do that we might work the works of God?' Jesus said, 'Never
+mind about _works_. This is _the work_ of God, that ye believe on Him
+whom He hath sent,' and out of that will come all the rest. That is the
+mother-tincture; everything will flow from that. So Paul says, 'Your
+work of faith.'
+
+Does your faith work? Perhaps I should ask other people rather than you.
+Do men see that your faith works; that its output is different from the
+output of men who are not possessors of a 'like precious faith'? Ask
+yourselves the question, and God help you to answer it.
+
+Love labours. Labour is more than work, for it includes the notion of
+toil, fatigue, difficulty, persistence, antagonism. Ah! the work of
+faith will never be done unless it is the toil of love. You remember how
+Milton talks about the immortal garland that is to be run for, 'not
+without dust and sweat.' The Christian life is not a leisurely
+promenade. The limit of our duty is not ease of work. There must be
+toil. And love is the only principle that will carry us through the
+fatigues, and the difficulties, and the oppositions which rise against
+us from ourselves and from without. Love delights to have a hard task
+set it by the beloved, and the harder the task the more poignant the
+satisfaction. Loss is gain when it brings us nearer the beloved. And
+whether our love be love to God, or its consequence, love to man, it is
+the only foundation on which toil for either God or man will ever
+permanently be rested. Do not believe in philanthropy which has not a
+bottom of faith, and do not believe in work for Christ which does not
+involve in toil. And be sure that you will do neither, unless you have
+both these things: the faith and the love.
+
+And then comes the last. Faith works, love toils, hope is patient. Is
+that all that 'hope' is? Not if you take the word in the narrow meaning
+which it has in modern English; but that was not what Paul meant. He
+meant something a great deal more than passive endurance, great as that
+is. It is something to be able to say, in the pelting of a pitiless
+storm, 'Pour on! I will endure.' But it is a great deal more to be able,
+in spite of all, not to bate one jot of heart or hope, but 'still bear
+up and steer right onward'; and that is involved in the true meaning of
+the word inadequately rendered 'patience' in the New Testament. For it
+is no passive virtue only, but it is a virtue which, in the face of the
+storm, holds its course; brave persistence, active perseverance, as well
+as meek endurance and submission.
+
+'Hope' helps us both to bear and to do. They tell us nowadays that it is
+selfish for a Christian man to animate himself, either for endurance or
+for activity, by the contemplation of those great glories that lie
+yonder. If that is selfishness, God grant we may all become a great deal
+more selfish than we are! No man labours in the Christian life, or
+submits to Christian difficulty, for the sake of going to heaven. At
+least, if he does, he has got on the wrong tack altogether. But if the
+motive for both endurance and activity be faith and love, then hope has
+a perfect right to come in as a subsidiary motive, and to give strength
+to the faith and rapture to the love. We cannot afford to throw away
+that hope, as so many of us do--not perhaps, intellectually, though I am
+afraid there is a very considerable dimming of the clearness, and a
+narrowing of the place in our thoughts, of the hope of a future
+blessedness, in the average Christian of this day--but practically we
+are all apt to lose sight of the recompense of the reward. And if we do,
+the faith and love, and the work and toil, and the patience will suffer.
+Faith will relax its grasp, love will cool down its fervour; and there
+will come a film over Hope's blue eye, and she will not see the land
+that is very far off. So, dear brethren, remember the sequence, 'faith,
+love, hope,' and remember the issues, 'work, toil, patience.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S TRUMPET
+
+          'From you sounded out the word of God.'--1 THESS.
+          i. 8.
+
+
+This is Paul's first letter. It was written very shortly after his first
+preaching of the Gospel in the great commercial city of Thessalonica.
+But though the period since the formation of the Thessalonian Church was
+so brief, their conversion had already become a matter of common
+notoriety; and the consistency of their lives, and the marvellous change
+that had taken place upon them, made them conspicuous in the midst of
+the corrupt heathen community in which they dwelt. And so says Paul, in
+the text, by reason of their work of faith and labour of love and
+patience of hope, they had become ensamples to all that believe, and
+loud proclaimers and witnesses of the Gospel which had produced this
+change.
+
+The Apostle employs a word never used anywhere else in the New Testament
+to describe the conspicuous and widespread nature of this testimony of
+theirs. He says, 'The word of the Lord _sounded out_' from them. That
+phrase is one most naturally employed to describe the blast of a
+trumpet. So clear and ringing, so loud, penetrating, melodious, rousing,
+and full was their proclamation, by the silent eloquence of their lives,
+of the Gospel which impelled and enabled them to lead such lives. A
+grand ideal of a community of believers! If our churches to-day were
+nearer its realisation there would be less unbelief, and more attraction
+of wandering prodigals to the Father's house. Would that this saying
+were true of every body of professing believers! Would that from each
+there sounded out one clear accordant witness to Christ, in the purity
+and unworldliness of their Christlike lives!
+
+I. This metaphor suggests the great purpose of the Church.
+
+It is God's trumpet, His means of making His voice heard through all the
+uproar of the world. As the captain upon the deck in the gale will use
+his speaking-trumpet, so God's voice needs your voice. The Gospel needs
+to be passed through human lips in order that it may reach deaf ears.
+The purpose for which we have been apprehended of Christ is not merely
+our own personal salvation, whether we understand that in a narrow and
+more outward, or in a broader and more spiritual sense. No man is an end
+in himself, but every man, though he be partially and temporarily an
+end, is also a means. And just as, according to the other metaphor, the
+Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, each particle of the dead dough, as
+soon as it is leavened and vitalised, becoming the medium for
+transmitting the strange, transforming, and living influence to the
+particle beyond, so all of us, if we are Christian people, have received
+that grace into our hearts, for our own sakes indeed, but also that
+through us might be manifested to the darkened eyes beyond, and through
+us might drop persuasively on the dull, cold ears that are further away
+from the Divine Voice, the great message of God's mercy. The Church is
+God's trumpet, and the purpose that He has in view in setting it in the
+world is to make all men know the fellowship of the mystery, and that
+through it there may ring out, as by some artificial means a poor human
+voice will be flung to a greater distance than it would otherwise reach,
+the gentle entreaties, and the glorious proclamation, and the solemn
+threatenings of the Word, the Incarnate as well as the written Word, of
+God.
+
+Of course all this is true, not only about communities, but it is true
+of a community, just because it is true of each individual member of it.
+The Church is worse than as 'sounding brass,' it is as _silent_ brass
+and an _untinkling_ cymbal, unless the individuals that belong to it
+recognise God's meaning in making them His children, and do their best
+to fulfil it. 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith the Lord. You are put into
+the witness-box; see that you speak out when you are there.
+
+II. Another point that this figure may suggest is, the _sort_ of sound
+that should come from the trumpet.
+
+A trumpet note is, first of all, clear. There should be no hesitation in
+our witness; nothing uncertain in the sound that we give. There are
+plenty of so-called Christian people whose lives, if they bear any
+witness for the Master at all, are like the notes that some bungling
+learner will bring out of a musical instrument: hesitating, uncertain,
+so that you do not know exactly what note he wants to produce. How many
+of us, calling ourselves Christian people, testify on both sides;
+sometimes bearing witness for Christ; and alas! alas! oftener bearing
+witness against Him. Will the trumpet, the instrument of clear, ringing,
+unmistakable sounds, be the emblem of your Christian testimony? Would
+not some poor scrannel-pipe, ill-blown, be nearer the mark? The note
+should be clear.
+
+The note should be penetrating. There is no instrument, I suppose, that
+carries further than the ringing clarion that is often heard on the
+field of battle, above all the strife; and this little church at
+Thessalonica, a mere handful of people, just converted, in the very
+centre of a strong, compact, organised, self-confident, supercilious
+heathenism, insisted upon being heard, and got itself made audible,
+simply by the purity and the consistency of the lives of its members. So
+that Paul, a few weeks, or at most a few months, after the formation of
+the church, could say, 'From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not
+only in Macedonia and Achaia,' your own province and the one next door
+to it, 'but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad.'
+No man knows how far his influence will go. No man can tell how far his
+example may penetrate. Thessalonica was a great commercial city. So is
+Manchester. Hosts of people of all sorts came into it as they come here.
+There were many different circles which would be intersected by the
+lives of this Christian church, and wherever its units went they carried
+along with them the conviction that they had turned from idols to serve
+the living God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.
+
+And so, dear brethren, if our witness is to be worth anything it must
+have this penetrating quality. There is a difference in sounds as there
+is a difference in instruments. Some of them carry further than others.
+A clear voice will fling words to a distance that a thick, mumbling one
+never can attain. One note will travel much further than another. Do you
+see to it that your notes are of the penetrating sort.
+
+And then, again, the note should be a musical one. There is nothing to
+be done for God by harshness; nothing to be done by discords and
+gangling; nothing to be done by scolding and rebuke. The ordered
+sequence of melodious sound will travel a great deal further than
+unmusical, plain speech. You can hear a song at a distance at which a
+saying would be inaudible. Which thing is an allegory, and this is its
+lesson,--Music goes further than discord; and the witness that a
+Christian man bears will travel in direct proportion as it is
+harmonious, and gracious and gentle and beautiful.
+
+And then, again, the note should be rousing. You do not play on a
+trumpet when you want to send people to sleep; dulcimers and the like
+are the things for that purpose. The trumpet means strung-up intensity,
+means a call to arms, or to rejoicing; means at any rate, vigour, and is
+intended to rouse. Let your witness have, for its utmost signification,
+'Awake! thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead; and Christ shall
+give thee light.'
+
+III. Then, still further, take another thought that may be suggested
+from this metaphor, the silence of the loudest note.
+
+If you look at the context, you will see that all the ways in which the
+word of the Lord is represented as sounding out from the Thessalonian
+Church were deeds, not words. The context supplies a number of them.
+Such as the following are specified in it: their work; their toil, which
+is more than work; their patience; their assurance; their reception of
+the word, in much affliction with joy in the Holy Ghost; their faith to
+Godward; their turning to God from idols, to serve and to wait.
+
+That is all. So far as the context goes there might not have been a man
+amongst them who ever opened his mouth for Jesus Christ. We know not, of
+course, how far they were a congregation of silent witnesses, but this
+we know, that what Paul meant when he said, 'The whole world is ringing
+with the voice of the word of God sounding from you,' was not their
+going up and down the world shouting about their Christianity, but their
+quiet living like Jesus Christ. That is a louder voice than any other.
+
+Ah! dear friends! it is with God's Church as it is with God's heavens;
+the 'stars in Christ's right hand' sparkle in the same fashion as the
+stars that He has set in the firmament. Of them we read: 'There is
+neither voice nor language, their speech is not heard'; and yet, as man
+stands with bared head and hushed heart beneath the violet abysses of
+the heavens, 'their line' (or chord, the metaphor being that of a
+stringed instrument) 'is gone out through all the earth, and their words
+to the end of the world.' Silent as they shine, they declare the glory
+of God, and proclaim His handiwork. And so you may speak of Him without
+speaking, and though you have no gift of tongues the night may be filled
+with music, and your lives be eloquent of Christ.
+
+I do not mean to say that Christian men and women are at liberty to lock
+their lips from verbal proclamation of the Saviour they have found, but
+I do mean to say that if there was less talk and more living, the
+witness of God's Church would be louder and not lower; 'and men would
+take knowledge of us, that we had been with Jesus'; and of Jesus, that
+He had made us like Himself.
+
+IV. And so, lastly, let me draw one other thought from this metaphor,
+which I hope you will not think fanciful playing with a figure; and that
+is the breath that makes the music.
+
+If the Church is the trumpet, who blows it? God! It is by His Divine
+Spirit dwelling within us, and breathing through us, that the harsh
+discords of our natural lives become changed into melody of praise and
+the music of witness for Him. Keep near Christ, live in communion with
+God, let Him breathe through you, and when His Spirit passes through
+your spirits their silence will become harmonious speech; and from you
+'will sound out the word of the Lord.'
+
+In a tropical country, when the sun goes behind a cloud, all the insect
+life that was cheerily chirping is hushed. In the Christian life, when
+the Son of Righteousness is obscured by the clouds born of our own
+carelessness and sin, all the music in our spirit ceases, and no more
+can we witness for Him. A scentless substance lying in a drawer, with a
+bit of musk, will become perfumed by contact, and will bring the
+fragrance wherever it is carried. Live near God, and let Him speak to
+you and in you; and then He will speak through you. And if He be the
+breath of your spiritual lives, and the soul of your souls, then, and
+only then, will your lives be music, the music witness, and the witness
+conviction. And only then will there be fulfilled what I pray there may
+be more and more fulfilled in us as a Christian community, this great
+word of our text, 'from you sounded out,' clear, rousing, penetrating,
+melodious, 'the word of the Lord,' so that we, with our poor preaching,
+need not to speak anything.
+
+
+
+
+WALKING WORTHILY
+
+          'Walk worthy of God.'--1 THESS. ii. 12.
+
+
+Here we have the whole law of Christian conduct in a nutshell. There may
+be many detailed commandments, but they can all be deduced from this
+one. We are lifted up above the region of petty prescriptions, and
+breathe a bracing mountain air. Instead of regulations, very many and
+very dry, we have a principle which needs thought and sympathy in order
+to apply it, and is to be carried out by the free action of our own
+judgments.
+
+Now it is to be noticed that there are a good many other passages in the
+New Testament in which, in similar fashion, the whole sum of Christian
+conduct is reduced to a 'walking worthy' of some certain thing or other,
+and I have thought that it might aid in appreciating the many-sidedness
+and all-sufficiency of the great principles into which Christianity
+crystallises the law of our life, if we just gather these together and
+set them before you consecutively.
+
+They are these: we are told in our text to 'walk worthy of God.' Then
+again, we are enjoined, in other places, to 'walk worthy of the Lord,'
+who is Christ. Or again, 'of the Gospel of Christ.' Or again, 'of the
+calling wherewith we were called.' Or again, of the name of 'saints.'
+And if you put all these together, you will get many sides of one
+thought, the rule of Christian life as gathered into a single
+expression--correspondence with, and conformity to, a certain standard.
+
+I. And first of all, we have this passage of my text, and the other one
+to which I have referred, 'Walking worthy of the Lord,' by whom we are
+to understand Christ. We may put these together and say that the whole
+sum of Christian duty lies in conformity to the character of a Divine
+Person with whom we have loving relations.
+
+The Old Testament says: 'Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.'
+The New Testament says: 'Be ye imitators of God, and walk in love.' So
+then, whatever of flashing brightness and infinite profundity in that
+divine nature is far beyond our apprehension and grasp, there are in
+that divine nature elements--and those the best and divinest in
+it--which it is perfectly within the power of every man to copy.
+
+Is there anything in God that is more Godlike than righteousness and
+love? And is there any difference in essence between a man's
+righteousness and God's;--between a man's love and God's? The same gases
+make combustion in the sun and on the earth, and the spectroscope tells
+you that it is so. The same radiant brightness that flames burning in
+the love, and flashes white in the purity of God, even that may be
+reproduced in man.
+
+Love is one thing, all the universe over. Other elements of the bond
+that unites us to God are rather correspondent in us to what we find in
+Him. Our concavity, so to speak, answers to His convexity; our
+hollowness to His fulness; our emptiness to His all-sufficiency. So our
+faith, for instance, lays hold upon His faithfulness, and our obedience
+grasps, and bows before, His commanding will. But the love with which I
+lay hold of Him is like the love with which He lays hold on me; and
+righteousness and purity, howsoever different may be their
+accompaniments in an Infinite and uncreated Nature from what they have
+in our limited and bounded and progressive being, in essence are one.
+So, 'Be ye holy, for I am holy'; 'Walk in the light as He is in the
+light,' is the law available for all conduct; and the highest divine
+perfections, if I may speak of pre-eminence among them, are the imitable
+ones, whereby He becomes our Example and our Pattern.
+
+Let no man say that such an injunction is vague or hopeless. You must
+have a perfect ideal if you are to live at all by an ideal. There cannot
+be any flaws in your pattern if the pattern is to be of any use. You aim
+at the stars, and if you do not hit them you may progressively approach
+them. We need absolute perfection to strain after, and one day--blessed
+be His name--we shall attain it. Try to walk worthy of God and you will
+find out how tight that precept grips, and how close it fits.
+
+The love and the righteousness which are to become the law of our lives,
+are revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Whatever may sound impracticable in
+the injunction to imitate God assumes a more homely and possible shape
+when it becomes an injunction to follow Jesus. And just as that form of
+the precept tends to make the law of conformity to the divine nature
+more blessed and less hopelessly above us, so it makes the law of
+conformity to the ideal of goodness less cold and unsympathetic. It
+makes all the difference to our joyfulness and freedom whether we are
+trying to obey a law of duty, seen only too clearly to be binding, but
+also above our reach, or whether we have the law in a living Person whom
+we have learned to love. In the one case there stands upon a pedestal
+above us a cold perfection, white, complete, marble; in the other case
+there stands beside us a living law in pattern, a Brother, bone of our
+bone and flesh of our flesh; whose hand we can grasp; whose heart we can
+trust, and of whose help we can be sure. To say to me: 'Follow the ideal
+of perfect righteousness,' is to relegate me to a dreary, endless
+struggling; to say to me, 'Follow your Brother, and be like your
+Father,' is to bring warmth and hope and liberty into all my effort.
+The word that says, 'Walk worthy of God,' is a royal law, the perfect
+law of perfect freedom.
+
+Again, when we say, 'Walk worthy of God,' we mean two things--one, 'Do
+after His example,' and the other, 'Render back to Him what He deserves
+for what He has done to you.' And so this law bids us measure, by the
+side of that great love that died on the Cross for us all, our poor
+imperfect returns of gratitude and of service. He has lavished all His
+treasure on you; what have you brought him back? He has given you the
+whole wealth of His tender pity, of His forgiving mercy, of His infinite
+goodness. Do you adequately repay such lavish love? Has He not 'sown
+much and reaped little' in all our hearts? Has He not poured out the
+fulness of His affection, and have we not answered Him with a few
+grudging drops squeezed from our hearts? Oh! brethren! 'Walk worthy of
+the Lord,' and neither dishonour Him by your conduct as professing
+children of His, nor affront Him by the wretched refuse and remnants of
+your devotion and service that you bring back to Him in response to His
+love to you.
+
+II. Now a word about the next form of this all-embracing precept. The
+whole law of our Christian life may be gathered up in another
+correspondence, 'Walk worthy of the Gospel' (Phil. i. 27), in a manner
+conformed to that great message of God's love to us.
+
+That covers substantially the same ground as we have already been going
+over, but it presents the same ideas in a different light. It presents
+the Gospel as a rule of conduct. Now people have always been apt to
+think of it more as a message of deliverance than as a practical guide,
+as we all need to make an effort to prevent our natural indolence and
+selfishness from making us forget that the Gospel is quite as much a
+rule of conduct as a message of pardon.
+
+It is both by the same act. In the very facts on which our redemption
+depends lies the law of our lives.
+
+What was Paul's Gospel? According to Paul's own definition of it, it was
+this: 'How that Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the
+Scriptures.' And the message that I desire now to bring to all you
+professing Christians is this: Do not always be looking at Christ's
+Cross only as your means of acceptance. Do not only be thinking of
+Christ's Passion as that which has barred for you the gates of
+punishment, and has opened for you the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven.
+It has done all that; but if you are going to stop there you have only
+got hold of a very maimed and imperfect edition of the Gospel. The Cross
+is your _pattern_, as well as the anchor of your hope and the ground of
+your salvation, if it is anything at all to you. And it is not the
+ground of your salvation and the anchor of your hope unless it is your
+pattern. It is the one in exactly the same degree in which it is the
+other.
+
+So all self-pleasing, all harsh insistence on your own claims, all
+neglect of suffering and sorrow and sin around you, comes under the lash
+of this condemnation: 'They are not worthy of the Gospel.' And all
+unforgivingness of spirit and of temper in individuals and in nations,
+in public and in private matters, that, too, is in flagrant
+contradiction to the principles that are taught on the Cross to which
+you say you look for your salvation. Have you got forgiveness, and are
+you going out from the presence-chamber of the King to take your brother
+by the throat for the beggarly coppers that he owes you, and say: 'Pay
+me what thou owest!' when the Master has forgiven you all that great
+mountain of indebtedness which you owe Him? Oh, my brother! if Christian
+men and women would only learn to take away the scales from their eyes
+and souls; not looking at Christ's Cross with less absolute
+trustfulness, as that by which all their salvation comes, but also
+learning to look at it as closely and habitually as yielding the pattern
+to which their lives should be conformed, and would let the
+heart-melting thankfulness which it evokes when gazed at as the ground
+of our hope prove itself true by its leading them to an effort at
+imitating that great love, and so walking worthy of the Gospel, how
+their lives would be transformed! It is far easier to fetter your life
+with yards of red-tape prescriptions--do this, do not do that--far
+easier to out-pharisee the Pharisees in punctilious scrupulosities, than
+it is honestly, and for one hour, to take the Cross of Christ as the
+pattern of your lives, and to shape yourselves by that.
+
+One looks round upon a lethargic, a luxurious, a self-indulgent, a
+self-seeking, a world-besotted professing Church, and asks: 'Are these
+the people on whose hearts a cross is stamped?' Do these men--or rather
+let us say, do _we_ live as becometh the Gospel which proclaims the
+divinity of self-sacrifice, and that the law of a perfect human life is
+perfect self-forgetfulness, even as the secret of the divine nature is
+perfect love? 'Walk worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'
+
+III. Then again, there is another form of this same general prescription
+which suggests to us a kindred and yet somewhat different standard. We
+are also bidden to bring our lives into conformity to, and
+correspondence with, or, as the Bible has it, 'to walk worthy of the
+calling wherewith we are called' (Eph. iv. 1).
+
+God summons or invites us, and summons us to what? The words which
+follow our text answer, 'Who calleth you into His own kingdom and
+glory.' All you Christian people have been invited, and if you are
+Christians you have accepted the invitation; and all you men and women,
+whether you are Christians or not, have been and are being invited and
+summoned into a state and a world (for the reference is to the future
+life), in which God's will is supreme, and all wills are moulded into
+conformity with that, and into a state and a world in which all
+shall--because they submit to His will--partake of His glory, the
+fulness of His uncreated light.
+
+That being the aim of the summons, that being the destiny that is held
+out before us all, ought not that destiny and the prospect of what we
+may be in the future, to fling some beams of guiding brightness on to
+the present?
+
+Men that are called to high functions prepare themselves therefor. If
+you knew that you were going away to Australia in six months, would you
+not be beginning to get your outfit ready? You Christian men profess to
+believe that you have been called to a condition in which you will
+absolutely obey God's will, and be the loyal subjects of His kingdom,
+and in which you will partake of God's glory. Well then, obey His will
+here, and let some scattered sparklets of that uncreated light that is
+one day going to flood your soul lie upon your face to-day. Do not go
+and cut your lives into two halves, one of them all contradictory to
+that which you expect in the other, but bring a harmony between the
+present, in all its weakness and sinfulness, and that great hope and
+certain destiny that blazes on the horizon of your hope, as the joyful
+state to which you have been invited. 'Walk worthy of the calling to
+which you are called.'
+
+And again, that same thought of the destiny should feed our hope, and
+make us live under its continual inspiration. A walk worthy of such a
+calling and such a caller should know no despondency, nor any weary,
+heartless lingering, as with tired feet on a hard road. Brave good
+cheer, undimmed energy, a noble contempt of obstacles, a confidence in
+our final attainment of that purity and glory which is not depressed by
+consciousness of present failure--these are plainly the characteristics
+which ought to mark the advance of the men in whose ears such a summons
+from such lips rings as their marching orders.
+
+And a walk worthy of our calling will turn away from earthly things. If
+you believe that God has summoned you to His kingdom and glory, surely,
+surely, that should deaden in your heart the love and the care for the
+trifles that lie by the wayside. Surely, surely, if that great voice is
+inviting, and that merciful hand is beckoning you into the light, and
+showing you what you may possess there, it is not walking according to
+that summons if you go with your eyes fixed upon the trifles at your
+feet, and your whole heart absorbed in this present fleeting world.
+Unworldliness, in its best and purest fashion--by which I mean not only
+a contempt for material wealth and all that it brings, but the sitting
+loose by everything that is beneath the stars--unworldliness is the only
+walk that is 'worthy of the calling wherewith ye are called.'
+
+And if you hear that voice ringing like a trumpet call, or a commander's
+shout on the battlefield, into your ears, ever to stimulate you, to
+rebuke your lagging indifference; if you are ever conscious in your
+inmost hearts of the summons to His kingdom and glory, then, no doubt,
+by a walk worthy of it, you will make your calling sure; and there shall
+'an entrance be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting
+kingdom.'
+
+IV. And the last of the phases of this prescription which I have to deal
+with is this. The whole Christian duty is further crystallised into the
+one command, to walk in a manner conformed to, and corresponding with,
+the character which is impressed upon us.
+
+In the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (verse 2), we read
+about a very small matter, that it is to be done 'worthily of the
+saints.' It is only about the receiving of a good woman who was
+travelling from Corinth to Rome, and extending hospitality to her in
+such a manner as became professing Christians; but the very minuteness
+of the details to which the great principle is applied points a lesson.
+The biggest principle is not too big to be brought down to the narrowest
+details, and that is the beauty of principles as distinguished from
+regulations. Regulations try to be minute, and, however minute you make
+them, some case always starts up that is not exactly provided for in
+them, and so the regulations come to nothing. A principle does not try
+to be minute, but it casts its net wide and it gathers various cases
+into its meshes. Like the fabled tent in the old legend that could
+contract so as to have room for but one man, or expand wide enough to
+hold an army, so this great principle of Christian conduct can be
+brought down to giving 'Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the
+church at Cenchrea,' good food and a comfortable lodging, and any other
+little kindnesses, when she comes to Rome. And the same principle may be
+widened out to embrace and direct us in the largest tasks and most
+difficult circumstances.
+
+'Worthily of saints'--the name is an omen, and carries in it rules of
+conduct. The root idea of 'saint' is 'one separated to God,' and the
+secondary idea which flows from that is 'one who is pure.'
+
+All Christians are 'saints.' They are consecrated and set apart for
+God's service, and in the degree in which they are conscious of and live
+out that consecration, they are pure.
+
+So their name, or rather the great fact which their name implies, should
+be ever before them, a stimulus and a law. We are bound to remember that
+we are consecrated, separated as God's possession, and that therefore
+purity is indispensable. The continual consciousness of this relation
+and its resulting obligations would make us recoil from impurity as
+instinctively as the sensitive plant shuts up its little green fingers
+when anything touches it; or as the wearer of a white robe will draw it
+up high above the mud on a filthy pavement. Walk 'worthily of saints' is
+another way of saying, Be true to your own best selves. Work up to the
+highest ideal of your character. That is far more wholesome than to be
+always looking at our faults and failures, which depress and tempt us to
+think that the actual is the measure of the possible, and the past or
+present of the future. There is no fear of self-conceit or of a mistaken
+estimate of ourselves. The more clearly we keep our best and deepest
+self before our consciousness, the more shall we learn a rigid judgment
+of the miserable contradictions to it in our daily outward life, and
+even in our thoughts and desires. It is a wholesome exhortation, when it
+follows these others of which we have been speaking (and not else),
+which bids Christians remember that they are saints and live up to their
+name.
+
+A Christian's inward and deepest self is better than his outward life.
+We have all convictions in our inmost hearts which we do not work out,
+and beliefs that do not influence us as we know they ought to do, and
+sometimes wish that they did. By our own fault our lives but imperfectly
+show their real inmost principle. Friction always wastes power before
+motion is produced.
+
+So then, we may well gather together all our duties in this final form
+of the all-comprehensive law, and say to ourselves, 'Walk worthily of
+saints.' Be true to your name, to your best selves, to your deepest
+selves. Be true to your separation for God's service, and to the purity
+which comes from it. Be true to the life which God has implanted in you.
+That life may be very feeble and covered by a great deal of rubbish, but
+it is divine. Let it work, let it out. Do not disgrace your name.
+
+These are the phases of the law of Christian conduct. They reach far,
+they fit close, they penetrate deeper than the needle points of minute
+regulations. If you will live in a manner corresponding to the
+character, and worthy of the love of God, as revealed in Christ, and in
+conformity with the principles that are enthroned upon His Cross, and in
+obedience to the destiny held forth in your high calling, and in
+faithfulness to the name that He Himself has impressed upon you, then
+your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the painful and
+punctilious pharisaical obedience to outward commands, and all things
+lovely and of good report will spring to life in your hearts and bear
+fruit in your lives.
+
+One last word--all these exhortations go on the understanding that you
+are a Christian, that you have taken Christ for your Saviour, and are
+resting upon Him, and recognising in Him the revelation of God, and in
+His Cross the foundation of your hope; that you have listened to, and
+yielded to, the divine summons, and that you have a right to be called a
+saint. Is that presumption true about you, my friend? If it is not,
+Christianity thinks that it is of no use wasting time talking to you
+about conduct.
+
+It has another word to speak to you first, and after you have heard and
+accepted it, there will be time enough to talk to you about rules for
+living. The first message which Christ sends to you by my lips is, Trust
+your sinful selves to Him as your only all-sufficient Saviour. When you
+have accepted Him, and are leaning on Him with all your weight of sin
+and suffering, and loving Him with your ransomed heart, then, and not
+till then, will you be in a position to hear His law for your life, and
+to obey it. Then, and not till then, will you appreciate the divine
+simplicity and breadth of the great command to walk worthy of God, and
+the divine tenderness and power of the motive which enforces it, and
+prints it on yielding and obedient hearts, even the dying love and Cross
+of His Son. Then, and not till then, will you know how the voice from
+heaven that calls you to His kingdom stirs the heart like the sound of a
+trumpet, and how the name which you bear is a perpetual spur to heroic
+service and priestly purity. Till then, the word which we would plead
+with you to listen to and accept is that great answer of our Lord's to
+those who came to Him for a rule of conduct, instead of for the gift of
+life: 'This is the work of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He
+hath sent.'
+
+
+
+
+SMALL DUTIES AND THE GREAT HOPE
+
+          'But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that
+          I write unto you; for ye yourselves are taught of
+          God to love one another. 10. And indeed ye do it
+          toward all the brethren which are in all
+          Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye
+          increase more and more; 11. And that ye study to
+          be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work
+          with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12. That
+          ye may walk honestly toward them that are without,
+          and that ye may have lack of nothing. 13. But I
+          would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,
+          concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow
+          not, even as others which have no hope. 14. For if
+          we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even
+          so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring
+          with Him. 15. For this we say unto you by the word
+          of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain
+          unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent
+          them which are asleep. 16. For the Lord Himself
+          shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the
+          voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:
+          and the dead in Christ shall rise first; 17. Then
+          we which are alive and remain shall be caught up
+          together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord
+          in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
+          18. Wherefore comfort one another with these
+          words.'--1 THESS. iv. 9-18.
+
+          'But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye
+          have no need that I write unto you. 2. For
+          yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the
+          Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.'--1 THESS.
+          v. 1-2.
+
+
+This letter was written immediately on the arrival of Silas and Timothy
+in Corinth (1 Thess. iii. 6, 'even now'), and is all flushed with the
+gladness of relieved anxiety, and throbs with love. It gains in pathetic
+interest when we remember that, while writing it, the Apostle was in the
+thick of his conflict with the Corinthian synagogue. The thought of his
+Thessalonian converts came to him like a waft of pure, cool air to a
+heated brow.
+
+The apparent want of connection in the counsels of the two last chapters
+is probably accounted for by supposing that he takes up, as they
+occurred to him, the points reported by the two messengers. But we may
+note that the plain, prosaic duties enjoined in verses 7-12 lead on to
+the lofty revelations of the rest of the context without any sense of a
+gap, just because to Paul the greatest truths had a bearing on the
+smallest duties, and the vision of future glory was meant to shape the
+homely details of present work.
+
+I. We need to make an effort to realise the startling novelty of 'love
+of the brethren' when this letter was written. The ancient world was
+honeycombed with rents and schisms, scarcely masked by political union.
+In the midst of a world of selfishness this new faith started up, and by
+some magic knit warring nationalities and hostile classes and wide
+diversities of culture and position into a strange whole, transcending
+all limits of race and language. The conception of brotherhood was new,
+and the realisation of it in Christian love was still more astonishing.
+The world wondered; but to the Christians the new affection was, we
+might almost say, instinctive, so naturally and spontaneously did it
+fill their hearts.
+
+Paul's graceful way of enjoining it here is no mere pretty compliment.
+The Thessalonians did not need to be bidden to love the brethren, for
+such love was a part of their new life, and breathed into their hearts
+by God Himself. They were drawn together by common relation to Jesus,
+and driven together by common alienation from the world. Occasions of
+divergence had not yet risen. The world had not yet taken on a varnish
+of Christianity. The new bond was still strong in its newness. So, short
+as had been the time since Paul landed at Neapolis, the golden chain of
+love bound all the Macedonian Christians together, and all that Paul had
+to exhort was the strengthening of its links and their tightening.
+
+That fair picture faded soon, but it still remains true that the deeper
+our love to Jesus, the warmer will be our love to all His lovers. The
+morning glow may not come back to the prosaic noonday, but love to the
+brethren remains as an indispensable token of the Christian life. Let us
+try ourselves thereby.
+
+II. What have exhortations to steady work to do with exhortations to
+increasing love? Not much, apparently; but may not the link be, 'Do not
+suppose that your Christianity is to show itself only in emotions,
+however sweet; the plain humdrum tasks of a working man's life are quite
+as noble a field as the exalted heights of brotherly love.' A loving
+heart is good, but a pair of diligent hands are as good. The
+juxtaposition of these two commands preaches a lesson which we need
+quite as much as the Thessalonians did. Possibly, too, as we see more
+fully in the second Epistle, the new truths, which had cut them from
+their old anchorage, had set some of them afloat on a sea of unquiet
+expectation. So much of their old selves had been swept away, that it
+would be hard for some to settle down to the old routine. That is a
+common enough experience in all 'revivals,' and at Thessalonica it was
+intensified by speculations about Christ's coming.
+
+The 'quiet' which Paul would have us cultivate is not only external, but
+the inward tranquillity of a spirit calm because fixed on God and filled
+with love. The secret place of the Most High is ever still, and, if we
+dwell there, our hearts will not be disturbed by any tumults without. To
+'do our own business' is quite a different thing from selfish 'looking
+on our own things,' for a great part of our business is to care for
+others, and nothing dries up sympathy and practical help more surely
+than a gossiping temper, which is perpetually buzzing about other
+people's concerns, and knows everybody's circumstances and duties
+better than its own. This restless generation, whose mental food is so
+largely the newspaper, with its floods of small-talk about people, be
+they politicians, ministers, or murderers, sorely needs these precepts.
+We are all so busy that we have no time for quiet meditation, and so
+much occupied with trivialities about others that we are strangers to
+ourselves. Therefore religious life is low in many hearts.
+
+The dignity of manual labour was a new doctrine to preach to Greeks, but
+Paul lays stress on it repeatedly in his letters to Thessalonica.
+Apparently most of the converts there were of the labouring class, and
+some of them needed the lesson of Paul's example as well as his precept.
+A Christian workman wielding chisel or trowel for Christ's sake will
+impress 'them that are without.' Dignity depends, not on the nature, but
+on the motive, of our work. 'A servant with this clause makes drudgery
+divine.' It is permissible to take the opinion of those who are not
+Christians into account, and to try to show them what good workmen
+Christ can turn out. It is right, too, to cultivate a spirit of
+independence, and to prefer a little earned to abundance given as a gift
+or alms. Perhaps some of the Thessalonians were trying to turn brotherly
+love to profit, and to live on their richer brethren. Such people infest
+the Church at all times.
+
+III. With what ease, like a soaring song-bird, the letter rises to the
+lofty height of the next verses, and how the note becomes more musical,
+and the style richer, more sonorous and majestic, with the changed
+subject! From the workshop to the descending Lord and the voice of the
+trumpet and the rising saints, what a leap, and yet how easily it is
+made! Happy we if we keep the future glory and the present duty thus
+side by side, and pass without jar from the one to the other!
+
+The special point which Paul has in view must be kept well in mind. Some
+of the Thessalonians seem to have been troubled, not by questions about
+the Resurrection, as the Corinthians afterwards were, but by a curious
+difficulty, namely, whether the dead saints would not be worse off at
+Christ's coming than the living, and to that one point Paul addresses
+himself. These verses are not a general revelation of the course of
+events at that coming, or of the final condition of the glorified
+saints, but an answer to the question, What is the relation between the
+two halves of the Church, the dead and the living, in regard to their
+participation in Christ's glory when He comes again? The question is
+answered negatively in verse 15, positively in verses 16 and 17.
+
+But, before considering them, note some other precious lessons taught
+here. That sweet and consoling designation for the dead, 'them who sleep
+in Jesus,' is Christ's gift to sorrowing hearts. No doubt, the idea is
+found in pagan thinkers, but always with the sad addition, 'an eternal
+sleep.' Men called death by that name in despair. The Christian calls it
+so because he knows that sleep implies continuous existence, repose,
+consciousness, and awaking. The sleepers are not dead, they will be
+roused to refreshed activity one day.
+
+We note how emphatically verse 14 brings out the thought that Jesus
+died, since He suffered all the bitterness of death, not only in
+physical torments, but in that awful sense of separation from God which
+is the true death in death, and that, because He did, the ugly thing
+wears a softened aspect to believers, and is but sleep. He died that we
+might never know what the worst sting of death is.
+
+We note further that, in order to bring out the truth of the gracious
+change which has passed on death physical for His servants, the
+remarkable expression is used, in verse 14, 'fallen asleep through
+Jesus'; His mediatorial work being the reason for their death becoming
+sleep. Similarly, it is only in verse 16 that the bare word 'dead' is
+used about them, and there it is needed for emphasis and clearness. When
+we are thinking of Resurrection we can afford to look death in the face.
+
+We note that Paul here claims to be giving a new revelation made to him
+directly by Christ. 'By (or, "in") the word of the Lord' cannot mean
+less than that. The question arises, in regard to verse 15, whether Paul
+expected that the advent would come in his lifetime. It need not startle
+any if he were proved to have cherished such a mistaken expectation; for
+Christ Himself taught the disciples that the time of His second coming
+was a truth reserved, and not included in His gifts to them. But two
+things may be noted. First, that in the second Epistle, written very
+soon after this, Paul sets himself to damp down the expectation of the
+nearness of the advent, and points to a long course of historical
+development of incipient tendencies which must precede it; and, second,
+that his language here does not compel the conclusion that he expected
+to be alive at the second coming. For he is distinguishing between the
+two classes of the living and the dead, and he naturally puts himself in
+the class to which, at that time, he and his hearers belonged, without
+thereby necessarily deciding, or even thinking about, the question
+whether he and they would or would not belong to that class at the
+actual time of the advent.
+
+The revelation here reveals much, and leaves much unrevealed. It is
+perfectly clear on the main point. Negatively, it declares that the
+sleeping saints lose nothing, and are not anticipated or hindered in any
+blessedness by the living. Positively, it declares that they precede the
+living, inasmuch as they 'rise first'; that is, before the living
+saints, who do not sleep, but are changed (1 Cor. xv. 51), are thus
+transfigured. Then the two great companies shall unitedly rise to meet
+the descending Lord; and their unity in Him, and, therefore, their
+fellowship with one another, shall be eternal.
+
+That great hope helps us to bridge the dark gorge of present separation.
+It leaves unanswered a host of questions which our lonely hearts would
+fain have cleared up; but it is enough for hope to hold by, and for
+sorrow to be changed into submission and anticipation. As to the many
+obscurities that still cling to the future, the meaning and the nature
+of the accompaniments, the shout, the trumpet, and the like, the way of
+harmonising the thought that the departed saints attend the descending
+Lord, with whom they dwell now, with the declaration here that they rise
+from the earth to meet Him, the question whether these who are thus
+caught up from earth to meet the Lord in the air come back again with
+Him to earth,--all these points of curious speculation we may leave. We
+know enough for comfort, for assurance of the perfect reunion of the
+saints who sleep in Jesus and of the living, and of the perfect
+blessedness of both wings of the great army. We may be content with what
+is clearly revealed, and be sure that, if what is unrevealed would have
+been helpful to us, He would have told us. We are to use the revelation
+for comfort and for stimulus, and we are to remember that 'times and
+seasons' are not told us, nor would the knowledge of them profit us.
+
+Paul took for granted that the Thessalonians remembered the Lord's word,
+which he had, no doubt, told them, that He would come 'as a thief in the
+night.' So he discourages a profitless curiosity, and exhorts to a
+continual vigilance. When He comes, it will be suddenly, and will wake
+some who live from a sinful sleep with a shock of terror, and the dead
+from a sweet sleep in Him with a rush of gladness, as in body and spirit
+they are filled with His life, and raised to share in His triumph.
+
+
+
+
+SLEEPING THROUGH JESUS
+
+          ' . . . Them also which sleep in Jesus . . .'--1
+          THESS. iv. 14.
+
+
+That expression is not unusual, in various forms, in the Apostle's
+writings. It suggests a very tender and wonderful thought of closeness
+and union between our Lord and the living dead, so close as that He is,
+as it were, the atmosphere in which they move, or the house in which
+they dwell. But, tender and wonderful as the thought is, it is not
+exactly the Apostle's idea here. For, accurately rendered--and accuracy
+in regard to Scripture language is not pedantry--the words run, 'Them
+which sleep _through_ Jesus.'
+
+Now, that is a strange phrase, and, I suppose, its strangeness is the
+reason why our translators have softened it down to the more familiar
+and obvious 'in Jesus.' We can understand living through Christ, on
+being sacred through Christ, but what can _sleeping_ through Christ
+mean? I shall hope to answer the question presently, but, in the
+meantime, I only wish to point out what the Apostle does say, and to
+plead for letting him say it, strange though it sounds. For the strange
+and the difficult phrases of Scripture are like the hard quartz reefs in
+which gold is, and if we slur them over we are likely to loose the
+treasure. Let us try if we can find what the gold here may be.
+
+Now, there are only two thoughts that I wish to dwell upon as suggested
+by these words. One is the softened aspect of death, and of the state of
+the Christian dead; and the other is the ground or cause of that
+softened aspect.
+
+I. First, then, the softened aspect of death, and of the state of the
+Christian dead.
+
+It is to Jesus primarily that the New Testament writers owe their use of
+this gracious emblem of sleep. For, as you remember, the word was twice
+upon our Lord's lips; once when, over the twelve-years-old maid from
+whom life had barely ebbed away, He said, 'She is not dead, but
+sleepeth'; and once when in regard of the man Lazarus, from whom life
+had removed further, He said, 'Our friend sleepeth, but I go that I may
+awake him out of sleep.' But Jesus was not the originator of the
+expression. You find it in the Old Testament, where the prophet Daniel,
+speaking of the end of the days and the bodily Resurrection, designates
+those who share in it as 'them that sleep in the dust of the earth.' And
+the Old Testament was not the sole origin of the phrase. For it is too
+natural, too much in accordance with the visibilities of death, not to
+have suggested itself to many hearts, and been shrined in many
+languages. Many an inscription of Greek and Roman date speaks of death
+under this figure; but almost always it is with the added, deepened note
+of despair, that it is a sleep which knows no waking, but lasts through
+eternal night.
+
+Now, the Christian thought associated with this emblem is the precise
+opposite of the pagan one. The pagan heart shrank from naming the ugly
+thing because it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled round the
+man, as he contemplated it, that he sought to drape the dreadfulness in
+some kind of thin, transparent veil, and to put the buffer of a word
+between him and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive for the use
+of the word is the precise opposite. He uses the gentler expression
+because the thing has become gentler.
+
+It is profoundly significant that throughout the whole of the New
+Testament the plain, naked word 'death' is usually applied, not to the
+physical fact which we ordinarily designate by the name, but to the grim
+thing of which that physical fact is only the emblem and the parable,
+viz., the true death which lies in the separation of the soul from God;
+whilst predominately the New Testament usage calls the physical fact by
+some other gentler form of expression, because, as I say, the gentleness
+has enfolded the thing to be designated.
+
+For instance, you find one class of representations which speak of death
+as being a departing and a being with Christ; or which call it, as one
+of the apostles does, an 'exodus,' where it is softened down to be
+merely a change of environment, a change of locality. Then another class
+of representations speak of it as 'putting off this my tabernacle,' or,
+the dissolution of the 'earthly house'--where there is a broad, firm
+line of demarcation drawn between the inhabitant and the habitation, and
+the thing is softened down to be a mere change of dwelling. Again,
+another class of expressions speak of it as being an 'offering,' where
+the main idea is that of a voluntary surrender, a sacrifice or libation
+of myself, and my life poured out upon the altar of God. But sweetest,
+deepest, most appealing to all our hearts, is that emblem of my text,
+'them that sleep.' It is used, if I count rightly, some fourteen times
+in the New Testament, and it carries with it large and plain lessons, on
+which I touch but for a moment. What, then, does this metaphor say to
+us?
+
+Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether an attractive
+conception to some of us. If it be taken exclusively it is by no means
+wholesome. I suppose that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and
+the ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the notion of their
+activities being stiffened into slumber. But, dear friends, there are
+some of us like tired children in a fair, who would fain have done with
+the weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and
+bewildering changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts
+are heavy with loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of
+shuffling off this weary coil of responsibilities and duties and tasks
+and sorrows, and of passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I
+believe, for my part, that, after all, the deepest longing of
+men--though they search for it through toil and effort--is for repose.
+As the poet has taught us, 'there is no joy but calm.' Every heart is
+weary enough, and heavy laden, and labouring enough, to feel the
+sweetness of a promise of rest:--
+
+          'Sleep, full of rest from head to foot,
+             Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.'
+
+Yes! but the rest of which our emblem speaks is, as I believe, only
+applicable to the bodily frame. The word 'sleep' is a transcript of what
+sense enlightened by faith sees in that still form, with the folded
+hands and the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us remember that
+this repose, deep and blessed as it is, is not, as some would say, the
+repose of unconsciousness. I do not believe, and I would have you not
+believe, that this emblem refers to the vigorous, spiritual life, or
+that the passage from out of the toil and moil of earth into the calm of
+the darkness beyond has any power in limiting or suspending the vital
+force of the man.
+
+Why, the very metaphor itself tells us that the sleeper is not
+unconscious. He is parted from the outer world, he is unaware of
+externals. When Stephen knelt below the old wall, and was surrounded by
+howling fanatics that slew him, one moment he was gashed with stones and
+tortured, and the next 'he fell on sleep.' They might howl, and the
+stones fly as they would, and he was all unaware of it. Like Jonah
+sleeping in the hold, what mattered the roaring of the storm to him? But
+separation from externals does not mean suspense of life or of
+consciousness, and the slumberer often dreams, and is aware of himself
+persistently throughout his slumber. Nay! some of his faculties are set
+at liberty to work more energetically, because his connection with the
+outer world is for the time suspended.
+
+And so I say that what on the hither side is sleep, on the further side
+is awaking, and that the complex whole of the condition of the sainted
+dead may be described with equal truth by either metaphor; 'they sleep
+in Jesus'; or, 'when I awake I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness.'
+
+Scripture, as it seems to me, distinctly carries this limitation of the
+emblem. For what does it mean when the Apostle says that to depart and
+to be with Christ is far better? Surely he who thus spoke conceived that
+these two things were contemporaneous, the departing and the being with
+Him. And surely he who thus spoke could not have conceived that a
+millennium-long parenthesis of slumberous unconsciousness was to
+intervene between the moment of his decease and the moment of his
+fellowship with Jesus. How could a man prefer that dormant state to the
+state here, of working for and living with the Lord? Surely, being with
+Him must mean that we know where we are, and who is our companion.
+
+And what does that text mean: 'Ye are come unto the spirits of just men
+made perfect,' unless it means that of these two classes of persons who
+are thus regarded as brought into living fellowship, each is aware of
+the other? Does perfecting of the spirit mean the smiting of the spirit
+into unconsciousness? Surely not, and surely in view of such words as
+these, we must recognise the fact that, however limited and imperfect
+may be the present connection of the disembodied dead, who sleep in
+Christ, with external things, they know themselves, they know their home
+and their companion, and they know the blessedness in which they are
+lapped.
+
+But another thought which is suggested by this emblem is, as I have
+already said, most certainly the idea of awaking. The pagans said, as
+indeed one of their poets has it, 'Suns can sink and return, but for us,
+when our brief light sinks, there is but one perpetual night of
+slumber.' The Christian idea of death is, that it is transitory as a
+sleep in the morning, and sure to end. As St. Augustine says somewhere,
+'Wherefore are they called sleepers, but because in the day of the Lord
+they will be reawakened?'
+
+And so these are the thoughts, very imperfectly spoken, I know, which
+spring like flowers from this gracious metaphor 'them that sleep'--rest
+and awaking; rest and consciousness.
+
+II. Note the ground of this softened aspect.
+
+They 'sleep through Him.' It is by reason of Christ and His work, and by
+reason of that alone, that death's darkness is made beautiful, and
+death's grimness is softened down to this. Now, in order to grasp the
+full meaning of such words as these of the Apostle, we must draw a broad
+distinction between the physical fact of the ending of corporeal life
+and the mental condition which is associated with it by us. What we call
+death, if I may so say, is a complex thing--a bodily phenomenon _plus_
+conscience, the sense of sin, the certainty of retribution in the dim
+beyond. And you have to take these elements apart. The former remains,
+but if the others are removed, the whole has changed its character and
+is become another thing, and a very little thing.
+
+The mere physical fact is a trifle. Look at it as you see it in the
+animals; look at it as you see it in men when they actually come to it.
+In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is painless and easy, and men
+sink into slumber. Strange, is it not, that so small a reality should
+have power to cast over human life so immense and obscuring a shadow!
+Why? Because, as the Apostle says, 'the sting of death is sin,' and if
+you can take the sting out of it, then there is very little to fear, and
+it comes down to be an insignificant and transient element in our
+experience.
+
+Now, the death of Jesus Christ takes away, if I may so say, the _nimbus_
+of apprehension and dread arising from conscience and sin, and the
+forecast of retribution. There is nothing left for us to face except the
+physical fact, and any rough soldier, with a coarse, red coat upon him,
+will face that for eighteenpence a day, and think himself well paid.
+Jesus Christ has abolished death, leaving the mere shell, but taking all
+the substance out of it. It has become a different thing to men, because
+in that death of His He has exhausted the bitterness, and has made it
+possible that we should pass into the shadow, and not fear either
+conscience or sin or judgment.
+
+In this connection I cannot but notice with what a profound meaning the
+Apostle, in this very verse, uses the bare, naked word in reference to
+Him, and the softened one in reference to us. 'If we believe that Jesus
+Christ _died_ and rose again, even so them also which sleep.' Ah! yes!
+He died indeed, bearing all that terror with which men's consciences
+have invested death. He died indeed, bearing on Himself the sins of the
+world. He died that no man henceforward need ever die in that same
+fashion. His death makes our deaths sleep, and His Resurrection makes
+our sleep calmly certain of a waking.
+
+So, dear 'brethren, I would not have you ignorant concerning them which
+are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope.' And I
+would have you to remember that, whilst Christ by His work has made it
+possible that the terror may pass away, and death may be softened and
+minimised into slumber, it will not be so with you--unless you are
+joined to Him, and by trust in the power of His death and the
+overflowing might of His Resurrection, have made sure that what He has
+passed through, you will pass through, and where He is, and what He is,
+you will be also.
+
+Two men die by one railway accident, sitting side by side upon one seat,
+smashed in one collision. But though the outward fact is the same about
+each, the reality of their deaths is infinitely different. The one falls
+asleep through Jesus, in Jesus; the other dies indeed, and the death of
+his body is only a feeble shadow of the death of his spirit. Do you knit
+yourself to the Life, which is Christ, and then 'he that believeth on Me
+shall never die.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WORK AND ARMOUR OF THE CHILDREN OF THE DAY
+
+          'Let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on
+          the breastplate of faith and love; and for a
+          helmet the hope of salvation.'--1 THESS. v. 8.
+
+
+This letter to the Thessalonians is the oldest book of the New
+Testament. It was probably written within something like twenty years of
+the Crucifixion; long, therefore, before any of the Gospels were in
+existence. It is, therefore, exceedingly interesting and instructive to
+notice how this whole context is saturated with allusions to our Lord's
+teaching, as it is preserved in these Gospels; and how it takes for
+granted that the Thessalonian Christians were familiar with the very
+words.
+
+For instance: 'Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so
+cometh as a thief in the night' (ver. 2). How did these people in
+Thessalonica know that? They had been Christians for a year or so only;
+they had been taught by Paul for a few weeks only, or a month or two at
+the most. How did they know it? Because they had been told what the
+Master had said: 'If the goodman of the house had known at what hour the
+thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his
+house to be broken up.'
+
+And there are other allusions in the context almost as obvious: 'The
+children of the light.' Who said that? Christ, in His words: 'The
+children of this world are wiser than the children of light.' 'They that
+sleep, sleep in the night, and if they be drunken, are drunken in the
+night.' Where does that metaphor come from? 'Take heed lest at any time
+ye be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this
+life, and so that day come upon you unawares.' 'Watch, lest coming
+suddenly He find you sleeping!'
+
+So you see all the context reposes upon, and presupposes the very words,
+which you find in our present existing Gospels, as the words of the Lord
+Jesus. And this is all but contemporaneous, and quite independent,
+evidence of the existence in the Church, from the beginning, of a
+traditional teaching which is now preserved for us in that fourfold
+record of His life.
+
+Take that remark for what it is worth; and now turn to the text itself
+with which I have to deal in this sermon. The whole of the context may
+be said to be a little dissertation upon the moral and religious uses of
+the doctrine of our Lord's second coming. In my text these are summed
+up in one central injunction which has preceding it a motive that
+enforces it, and following it a method that ensures it. 'Let us be
+sober'; that is the centre thought; and it is buttressed upon either
+side by a motive and a means. 'Let us who are of the day,' or 'since we
+are of the day,--be sober.' And let us _be_ it by 'putting on the
+breastplate and helmet of faith, love, and hope.' These, then, are the
+three points which we have to consider.
+
+I. First, this central injunction, into which all the moral teaching
+drawn from the second coming of Christ is gathered--'Let us be sober.'
+Now, I do not suppose we are altogether to omit any reference to the
+literal meaning of this word. The context seems to show that, by its
+reference to night as the season for drunken orgies. Temperance is
+moderation in regard not only to the evil and swinish sin of
+drunkenness, which is so manifestly contrary to all Christian integrity
+and nobility of character, but in regard to the far more subtle
+temptation of another form of sensual indulgence--gluttony. The
+Christian Church needed to be warned of that, and if these people in
+Thessalonica needed the warning I am quite sure that we need it. There
+is not a nation on earth which needs it more than Englishmen. I am no
+ascetic, I do not want to glorify any outward observance, but any doctor
+in England will tell you that the average Englishman eats and drinks a
+great deal more than is good for him. It is melancholy to think how many
+professing Christians have the edge and keenness of their intellectual
+and spiritual life blunted by the luxurious and senseless
+table-abundance in which they habitually indulge. I am quite sure that
+water from the spring and barley-bread would be a great deal better for
+their souls, and for their bodies too, in the case of many people who
+call themselves Christians. Suffer a word of exhortation, and do not let
+it be neglected because it is brief and general. Sparta, after all, is
+the best place for a man to live in, next to Jerusalem.
+
+But, passing from that, let us turn to the higher subject with which the
+Apostle is here evidently mainly concerned. What is the meaning of the
+exhortation 'Be sober'? Well, first let me tell you what I think is not
+the meaning of it. It does not mean an unemotional absence of fervour in
+your Christian character.
+
+There is a kind of religious teachers who are always preaching down
+enthusiasm, and preaching up what they call a 'sober standard of
+feeling' in matters of religion. By which, in nine cases out of ten,
+they mean precisely such a tepid condition as is described in much less
+polite language, when the voice from heaven says, 'Because thou art
+neither cold nor hot I will spue thee out of My mouth.' That is the real
+meaning of the 'sobriety' that some people are always desiring you to
+cultivate. I should have thought that the last piece of furniture which
+any Christian Church in the twentieth century needed was a refrigerator!
+A poker and a pair of bellows would be very much more needful for them.
+For, dear brethren, the truths that you and I profess to believe are of
+such a nature, so tremendous either in their joyfulness and beauty, or
+in their solemnity and awfulness, that one would think that if they once
+got into a man's head and heart, nothing but the most fervid and
+continuous glow of a radiant enthusiasm would correspond to their
+majesty and overwhelming importance. I venture to say that the only
+consistent Christian is the enthusiastic Christian; and that the only
+man who will ever do anything in this world for God or man worth doing
+is the man who is not _sober_, according to that cold-blooded definition
+which I have been speaking about, but who is all ablaze with an
+enkindled earnestness that knows no diminution and no cessation.
+
+Paul, the very man that is exhorting here to sobriety, was the very type
+of an enthusiast all his life. So Festus thought him mad, and even in
+the Church at Corinth there were some to whom in his fervour, he seemed
+to be 'beside himself' (2 Cor. v. 13).
+
+Oh! for more of that insanity! You may make up your minds to this; that
+any men or women that are in thorough earnest, either about Christianity
+or about any other great, noble, lofty, self-forgetting purpose, will
+have to be content to have the old Pentecostal charge flung at
+them:--'These men are full of new wine!' Well for the Church, and well
+for the men who deserve the taunt; for it means that they have learned
+something of the emotion that corresponds to such magnificent and awful
+verities as Christian faith converses with.
+
+I did not intend to say so much about that; I turn now for a moment to
+the consideration of what this exhortation really means. It means, as I
+take it, mainly this: the prime Christian duty of self-restraint in the
+use and the love of all earthly treasures and pleasures.
+
+I need not do more than remind you how, in the very make of a man's
+soul, it is clear that unless there be exercised rigid self-control he
+will go all to pieces. The make of human nature, if I may say so, shows
+that it is not meant for a democracy but a monarchy.
+
+Here are within us many passions, tastes, desires, most of them rooted
+in the flesh, which are as blind as hunger and thirst are. If a man is
+hungry, the bread will satisfy him all the same whether he steals it or
+not; and it will not necessarily be distasteful even if it be poisoned.
+And there are other blind impulses and appetites in our nature which ask
+nothing except this:--'Give me my appropriate gratification, though all
+the laws of God and man be broken in order to get it!'
+
+And so there has to be something like an eye given to these blind
+beasts, and something like a directing hand laid upon these instinctive
+impulses. The true temple of the human spirit must be built in stages,
+the broad base laid in these animal instincts; above them, and
+controlling them, the directing and restraining will; above it the
+understanding which enlightens it and them; and supreme over all the
+conscience with nothing between it and heaven. Where that is not the
+order of the inner man you get wild work. You have set 'beggars on
+horseback,' and we all know where they go! The man who lets passion and
+inclination guide is like a steam-boat with all the furnaces banked up,
+with the engines going full speed, and nobody at the wheel. It will
+drive on to the rocks, or wherever the bow happens to point, no matter
+though death and destruction lie beyond the next turn of the screw. That
+is what you will come to unless you live in the habitual exercise of
+rigid self-control.
+
+And that self-control is to be exercised mainly, or at least as one very
+important form of it, in regard to our use and estimate of the pleasures
+of this present life. Yes! it is not only from the study of a man's make
+that the necessity for a very rigid self-government appears, but the
+observation of the conditions and circumstances in which he is placed
+points the same lesson. All round about him are hands reaching out to
+him drugged cups. The world with all its fading sweet comes tempting
+him, and the old fable fulfils itself--Whoever takes that Circe's cup
+and puts it to his lips and quaffs deep, turns into a swine, and sits
+there imprisoned at the feet of the sorceress for evermore!
+
+There is only one thing that will deliver you from that fate, my
+brother. 'Be sober,' and in regard to the world and all that it offers
+to us--all joy, possession, gratification--'set a knife to thy throat if
+thou be a man given to appetite.' There is no noble life possible on any
+other terms--not to say there is no Christian life possible on any other
+terms--but suppression and mortification of the desires of the flesh and
+of the spirit. You cannot look upwards and downwards at the same moment.
+Your heart is only a tiny room after all, and if you cram it full of the
+world, you relegate your Master to the stable outside. 'Ye cannot serve
+God and Mammon.' 'Be sober,' says Paul, then, and cultivate the habit of
+rigid self-control in regard to this present. Oh! what a melancholy,
+solemn thought it is that hundreds of professing Christians in England,
+like vultures after a full meal, have so gorged themselves with the
+garbage of this present life that they cannot fly, and have to be
+content with moving along the ground, heavy and languid. Christian men
+and women, are you keeping yourselves in spiritual health by a very
+sparing use of the dainties and delights of earth? Answer the question
+to your own souls and to your Judge.
+
+II. And now let me turn to the other thoughts that lie here. There is,
+secondly, a motive which backs up and buttresses this exhortation. 'Let
+us who are of the day'--or as the Revised Version has it a little more
+emphatically and correctly, 'Let us, since we are of the day, be sober.'
+'The day'; what day? The temptation is to answer the question by
+saying--'of course the specific day which was spoken about in the
+beginning of the section, "the day of the Lord," that coming judgment by
+the coming Christ.' But I think that although, perhaps, there may be
+some allusion here to that specific day, still, if you will look at the
+verses which immediately precede my text, you will see that in them the
+Apostle has passed from the thought of 'the day of the Lord' to that of
+day in general. That is obvious, I think, from the contrast he draws
+between the 'day' and the 'night,' the darkness and the light. If so,
+then, when he says 'the children of the day' he does not so much
+mean--though that is quite true--that we are, as it were, akin to that
+day of judgment, and may therefore look forward to it without fear, and
+in quiet confidence, lifting up our heads because our redemption draws
+nigh; but rather he means that Christians are the children of that which
+expresses knowledge, and joy, and activity. Of these things the day is
+the emblem, in every language and in every poetry. The day is the time
+when men see and hear, the symbol of gladness and cheer all the world
+over.
+
+And so, says Paul, you Christian men and women belong to a joyous realm,
+a realm of light and knowledge, a realm of purity and righteousness. You
+are children of the light; a glad condition which involves many glad and
+noble issues. Children of the light should be brave, children of the
+light should not be afraid of the light, children of the light should be
+cheerful, children of the light should be buoyant, children of the
+light should be transparent, children of the light should be hopeful,
+children of the light should be pure, and children of the light should
+walk in this darkened world, bearing their radiance with them; and
+making things, else unseen, visible to many a dim eye.
+
+But while these emblems of cheerfulness, hope, purity, and illumination
+are gathered together in that grand name--'Ye are the children of the
+day,' there is one direction especially in which the Apostle thinks that
+that consideration ought to tell, and that is the direction of
+self-restraint. '_Noblesse oblige!_'--the aristocracy are bound to do
+nothing low or dishonourable. The children of the light are not to stain
+their hands with anything foul. Chambering and wantonness, slumber and
+drunkenness, the indulgence in the appetites of the flesh,--all that may
+be fitting for the night, it is clean incongruous with the day.
+
+Well, if you want that turned into pedestrian prose--which is no more
+clear, but a little less emotional--it is just this: You Christian men
+and women belong--if you are Christians--to another state of things from
+that which is lying round about you; and, therefore, you ought to live
+in rigid abstinence from these things that are round about you.
+
+That is plain enough surely, nor do I suppose that I need to dwell on
+that thought at any length. We belong to another order of things, says
+Paul; we carry a day with us in the midst of the night. What follows
+from that? Do not let us pursue the wandering lights and treacherous
+will-o'-the-wisps that lure men into bottomless bogs where they are
+lost. If we have light in our dwellings whilst Egypt lies in darkness,
+let it teach us to eat our meat with our loins girded, and our staves
+in our hands, not without bitter herbs, and ready to go forth into the
+wilderness. You do not belong to the world in which you live, if you are
+Christian men and women; you are only camped here. Your purposes,
+thoughts, hopes, aspirations, treasures, desires, delights, go up
+higher. And so, if you are children of the day, be self-restrained in
+your dealings with the darkness.
+
+III. And, last of all, my text points out for us a method by which this
+great precept may be fulfilled:--'Putting on the breastplate of faith
+and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation.'
+
+That, of course, is the first rough draft occurring in Paul's earliest
+Epistle, of an image which recurs at intervals, and in more or less
+expanded form in other of his letters, and is so splendidly worked out
+in detail in the grand picture of the Christian armour in the Epistle to
+the Ephesians.
+
+I need not do more than just remind you of the difference between that
+finished picture and this outline sketch. Here we have only defensive
+and not offensive armour, here the Christian graces are somewhat
+differently allocated to the different parts of the armour. Here we have
+only the great triad of Christian graces, so familiar on our
+lips--faith, hope, charity. Here we have faith and love in the closest
+possible juxtaposition, and hope somewhat more apart. The breastplate,
+like some of the ancient hauberks, made of steel and gold, is framed and
+forged out of faith and love blended together, and faith and love are
+more closely identified in fact than faith and hope, or than love and
+hope. For faith and love have the same object--and are all but
+contemporaneous. Wherever a man lays hold of Jesus Christ by faith,
+there cannot but spring up in his heart love to Christ; and there is no
+love without faith. So that we may almost say that faith and love are
+but the two throws of the shuttle, the one in the one direction and the
+other in the other; whereas hope comes somewhat later in a somewhat
+remoter connection with faith, and has a somewhat different object from
+these other two. Therefore it is here slightly separated from its sister
+graces. Faith, love, hope--these three form the defensive armour that
+guard the soul; and these three make self-control possible. Like a diver
+in his dress, who is let down to the bottom of the wild, far-weltering
+ocean, a man whose heart is girt by faith and charity, and whose head is
+covered with the helmet of hope, may be dropped down into the wildest
+sea of temptation and of worldliness, and yet will walk dry and unharmed
+through the midst of its depths, and breathe air that comes from a world
+above the restless surges.
+
+And in like manner the cultivation of faith, charity, and hope is the
+best means for securing the exercise of sober self-control.
+
+It is an easy thing to say to a man, 'Govern yourself!' It is a very
+hard thing with the powers that any man has at his disposal to do it. As
+somebody said about an army joining the rebels, 'It's a bad job when the
+extinguisher catches fire!' And that is exactly the condition of things
+in regard to our power of self-government. The powers that should
+control are largely gone over to the enemy, and become traitors.
+
+'Who shall keep the very keepers?' is the old question, and here is the
+answer:--You cannot execute the gymnastic feat of 'erecting yourself
+above yourself' any more than a man can take himself by his own coat
+collar and lift himself up from the ground with his own arms. But you
+can cultivate faith, hope, and charity, and these three, well cultivated
+and brought to bear upon your daily life, will do the governing for you.
+Faith will bring you into communication with all the power of God. Love
+will lead you into a region where all the temptations round you will be
+touched as by an Ithuriel spear, and will show their foulness. And hope
+will turn away your eyes from looking at the tempting splendours around,
+and fix them upon the glories that are above.
+
+And so the reins will come into your hands in an altogether new manner,
+and you will be able to be king over your own nature in a fashion that
+you did not dream of before, if only you will trust in Christ, and love
+Him, and fix your desires on the things above.
+
+Then you will be able to govern yourself when you let Christ govern you.
+The glories that are to be done away, that gleam round you like foul,
+flaring tallow-candles, will lose all their fascination and brightness,
+by reason of the glory that excelleth, the pure starlike splendour of
+the white inextinguishable lights of heaven.
+
+And when by faith, charity, and hope you have drunk of the new wine of
+the kingdom, the drugged and opiate cup which a sorceress world
+presents, jewelled though it be, will lose its charms, and it will not
+be hard to turn from it and dash it to the ground.
+
+God help you, brother, to be 'sober,' for unless you are 'you cannot see
+the kingdom of God!'
+
+
+
+
+WAKING AND SLEEPING
+
+          'Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we
+          wake or sleep, we should live together with
+          Him.'--1 THESS. v. 10.
+
+
+In these words the Apostle concludes a section of this, his earliest
+letter, in which he has been dealing with the aspect of death in
+reference to the Christian. There are two very significant usages of
+language in the context which serve to elucidate the meaning of the
+words of our text, and to which I refer for a moment by way of
+introduction.
+
+The one is that throughout this portion of his letter the Apostle
+emphatically reserves the word 'died' for Jesus Christ, and applies to
+Christ's followers only the word 'sleep.' Christ's death makes the
+deaths of those who trust Him a quiet slumber. The other is that the
+antithesis of waking and sleep is employed in two different directions
+in this section, being first used to express, by the one term, simply
+physical life, and by the other, physical death; and secondly, to
+designate respectively the moral attitude of Christian watchfulness and
+that of worldly apathy to things unseen and drowsy engrossment with the
+present.
+
+So in the words immediately preceding my text, we read, 'let us not
+sleep, as do others, but let us watch and be sober.' The use of the
+antithesis in our text is chiefly the former, but there cannot be
+discharged from one of the expressions, 'wake,' the ideas which have
+just been associated with it, especially as the word which is translated
+'wake' is the same as that just translated in the sixth verse, 'let us
+watch.' So that here there is meant by it, not merely the condition of
+life but that of Christian life--sober-minded vigilance and
+wide-awakeness to the realities of being. With this explanation of the
+meanings of the words before us, we may now proceed to consider them a
+little more minutely.
+
+I. Note the death which is the foundation of life.
+
+Recalling what I have said as to the precision and carefulness with
+which the Apostle varies his expressions in this context; speaking of
+Christ's death only by that grim name, and of the death of His servants
+as being merely a slumber, we have for the first thought suggested in
+reference to Christ's death, that it exhausted all the bitterness of
+death. Physically, the sufferings of our Lord were not greater, they
+were even less, than that of many a man. His voluntary acceptance of
+them was peculiar to Himself. But His death stands alone in this, that
+on His head was concentrated the whole awfulness of the thing. So far as
+the mere external facts go, there is nothing special about it. But I
+know not how the shrinking of Jesus Christ from the Cross can be
+explained without impugning His character, unless we see in His death
+something far more terrible than is the common lot of men. To me
+Gethsemane is altogether mysterious, and that scene beneath the olives
+shatters to pieces the perfectness of His character, unless we recognise
+that there it was the burden of the world's sin, beneath which, though
+His will never faltered, His human power tottered. Except we understand
+that, it seems to me that many who derived from Jesus Christ all their
+courage, bore their martyrdom better than He did; and that the servant
+has many a time been greater than his Lord. But if we take the Scripture
+point of view, and say, 'The Lord has made to meet upon Him the iniquity
+of us all,' then we can understand the agony beneath the olives, and
+the cry from the Cross, 'Why hast Thou forsaken Me?'
+
+Further, I would notice that this death is by the Apostle set forth as
+being the main factor in man's redemption. This is the first of Paul's
+letters, dating long before the others with which we are familiar.
+Whatever may have been the spiritual development of St. Paul in certain
+directions after his conversion--and I do not for a moment deny that
+there was such--it is very important to notice that the fundamentals of
+his Christology and doctrine of salvation were the same from the
+beginning to the end, and that in this, his first utterance, he lays
+down, as emphatically and clearly as ever afterwards he did, the great
+truth that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on the Cross, thereby
+secured man's redemption. Here he isolates the death from the rest of
+the history of Christ, and concentrates the whole light of his thought
+upon the Cross, and says, There! that is the power by which men have
+been redeemed. I beseech you to ask yourselves whether these
+representations of Christian truth adhere to the perspective of
+Scripture, which do not in like manner set forth in the foreground of
+the whole the atoning death of Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+Then note, further, that this death, the fountain of life, is a death
+for us. Now I know, of course, that the language here does not
+necessarily involve the idea of one dying instead of, but only of one
+dying on behalf of, another. But then I come to this question, In what
+conceivable sense, except the sense of bearing the world's sins, and,
+therefore, mine, is the death of Jesus Christ of advantage to me? Take
+the Scripture narratives. He died by the condemnation of the Jewish
+courts as a blasphemer; by the condemnation of the supercilious Roman
+court--cowardly in the midst of its superciliousness--as a possible
+rebel, though the sentencer did not believe in the reality of the
+charges. I want to know what good that is to me? He died, say some
+people, as the victim of a clearer insight and a more loving heart than
+the men around Him could understand. What advantage is that to me?
+
+Oh, brethren! there is no meaning in the words 'He died for us' unless
+we understand that the benefit of His death lies in the fact that it was
+the sacrifice and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; and
+that, therefore, He died for us.
+
+But then remember, too, that in this expression is set forth, not only
+the objective fact of Christ's death for us, but much in reference to
+the subjective emotions and purposes of Him who died. Paul was writing
+to these Thessalonians, of whom none, I suppose, except possibly a few
+Jews who might be amongst them, had ever seen Jesus Christ in the flesh,
+or known anything about Him. And yet he says to them, 'Away across the
+ocean there, Jesus Christ died for you men, not one of whom had ever
+appealed to His heart through His eyes.'
+
+The principle involved is capable of the widest possible expansion. When
+Christ went to the Cross there was in His heart, in His purposes, in His
+desires, a separate place for every soul of man whom He embraced, not
+with the dim vision of some philanthropist, who looks upon the masses of
+unborn generations as possibly beneficially affected by some of his
+far-reaching plans, but with the individualising and separating
+knowledge of a divine eye, and the love of a divine heart. Jesus Christ
+bore the sins of the world because He bore in His sympathies and His
+purposes the sins of each single soul. Yours and mine and all our
+fellows' were there. Guilt and fear and loneliness, and all the other
+evils that beset men because they have departed from the living God, are
+floated away
+
+          'By the water and the blood
+           From Thy wounded side which flowed';
+
+and as the context teaches us, it is because He died for us that He is
+our Lord, and because He died for every man that He is every man's
+Master and King.
+
+II. Note, secondly, the transformation of our lives and deaths affected
+thereby.
+
+You may remember that, in my introductory remarks, I pointed out the
+double application of that antithesis of waking or sleeping in the
+context as referring in one case to the fact of physical life or death,
+and in the other to the fact of moral engrossment with the slumbering
+influences of the present, or of Christian vigilance. I carry some
+allusion to both of these ideas in the remarks that I have to make.
+
+Through Jesus Christ life may be quickened into watchfulness. It is not
+enough to take waking as meaning living, for you may turn the metaphor
+round and say about a great many men that living means dreamy sleeping.
+Paul speaks in the preceding verses of 'others' than Christians as being
+asleep, and their lives as one long debauch and slumber in the night.
+Whilst, in contrast with physical death, physical life may be called
+'waking'; the condition of thousands of men, in regard to all the higher
+faculties, activities, and realities of being, is that of
+somnambulists--they are walking indeed, but they are walking in their
+sleep. Just as a man fast asleep knows nothing of the realities round
+him; just as he is swallowed up in his own dreams, so many walk in a
+vain show. Their highest faculties are dormant; the only real things do
+not touch them, and their eyes are closed to these. They live in a
+region of illusions which will pass away at cock-crowing, and leave them
+desolate. For some of us here living is only a distempered sleep,
+troubled by dreams which, whether they be pleasant or bitter, equally
+lack roots in the permanent realities to which we shall wake some day.
+But if we hold by Jesus Christ, who died for us, and let His love
+constrain us, His Cross quicken us, and the might of His great sacrifice
+touch us, and the blood of sprinkling be applied to our eyeballs as an
+eye-salve, that we may see, we shall wake from our opiate sleep--though
+it may be as deep as if the sky rained soporifics upon us--and be
+conscious of the things that are, and have our dormant faculties roused,
+and be quickened into intense vigilance against our enemies, and brace
+ourselves for our tasks, and be ever looking forward to that joyful
+hope, to that coming which shall bring the fulness of waking and of
+life. So, you professing Christians, do you take the lessons of this
+text? A sleeping Christian is on the high road to cease to be a
+Christian at all. If there be one thing more comprehensively imperative
+upon us than another, it is this, that, belonging, as we do by our very
+profession, to the day, and being the children of the light, we shall
+neither sleep nor be drunken, but be sober, watching as they who expect
+their Lord. You walk amidst realities that will hide themselves unless
+you gaze for them; therefore, watch. You walk amidst enemies that will
+steal subtly upon you, like some gliding serpent through the grass, or
+some painted savage in the forest; therefore, watch. You expect a Lord
+to come from heaven with a relieving army that is to raise the siege
+and free the hard-beset garrison from its fears and its toilsome work;
+therefore, watch. 'They that sleep, sleep in the night.' They who are
+Christ's should be like the living creatures in the Revelation, all eyes
+round about, and every eye gazing on things unseen and looking for the
+Master when He comes.
+
+On the other hand, the death of Christ will soften our deaths into
+slumber. The Apostle will not call what the senses call death, by that
+dread name, which was warranted when applied to the facts of Christ's
+death. The physical fact remaining the same, all that is included under
+the complex whole called death which makes its terrors, goes, for a man
+who keeps fast hold of Christ who died and lives. For what makes the
+sting of death? Two or three things. It is like some poisonous insect's
+sting, it is a complex weapon. One side of it is the fear of
+retribution. Another side of it is the shrinking from loneliness.
+Another side of it is the dread of the dim darkness of an unknown
+future. And all these are taken clean away. Is it guilt, dread of
+retribution? 'Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.' Is it loneliness? In the
+valley of darkness 'I will be with thee. My rod and My staff will
+comfort thee.' Is it a shrinking from the dim unknown and all the
+familiar habitudes and occupations of the warm corner where we have
+lived? 'Jesus Christ has brought immortality to light by the Gospel.' We
+do _not_, according to the sad words of one of the victims of modern
+advanced thought, pass by the common road into the great darkness, but
+by the Christ-made living Way into the everlasting light. And so it is a
+misnomer to apply the same term to the physical fact plus the
+accompaniment of dread and shrinking and fear of retribution and
+solitude and darkness, and to the physical fact invested with the direct
+and bright opposites of all these.
+
+Sleep is rest; sleep is consciousness; sleep is the prophecy of waking.
+We know not what the condition of those who sleep in Jesus may be, but
+we know that the child on its mother's breast, and conscious somehow, in
+its slumber, of the warm place where its head rests, is full of repose.
+And they that sleep in Jesus will be _so_. Then, whether we wake or
+sleep does not seem to matter so very much.
+
+III. The united life of all who live with Christ.
+
+Christ's gift to men is the gift of life in all senses of that word,
+from the lowest to the highest. That life, as our text tells us, is
+altogether unaffected by death. We cannot see round the sharp angle
+where the valley turns, but we know that the path runs straight on
+through the gorge up to the throat of the pass--and so on to the
+'shining table-lands whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon.' There are
+some rivers that run through stagnant lakes, keeping the tinge of their
+waters, and holding together the body of their stream undiverted from
+its course, and issuing undiminished and untarnished from the lower end
+of the lake. And so the stream of our lives may run through the Dead
+Sea, and come out below none the worse for the black waters through
+which it has forced its way. The life that Christ gives is unaffected by
+death. Our creed is a risen Saviour, and the corollary of that creed is,
+that death touches the circumference, but never gets near the man. It is
+hard to believe, in the face of the foolish senses; it is hard to
+believe, in the face of aching sorrow. It is hard to-day to believe, in
+the face of passionate and ingenious denial, but it is true all the
+same. Death is sleep, and sleep is life.
+
+And so, further, my text tells us that this life is life with Christ. We
+know not details, we need not know them. Here we have the presence of
+Jesus Christ, if we love Him, as really as when He walked the earth. Ay!
+more really, for Jesus Christ is nearer to us who, having not seen Him,
+love Him, and somewhat know His divinity and His sacrifice, than He was
+to the men who companied with Him all the time that He went in and out
+amongst them, whilst they were ignorant of who dwelt with them, and
+entertained the Lord of angels and men unawares. He is with us, and it
+is the power and the privilege and the joy of our lives to realise His
+presence. That Lord who, whilst He was on earth, was the Son of Man
+which is in heaven, now that He is in heaven in His corporeal humanity
+is the Son of God who dwells with us. And as He dwells with us, if we
+love Him and trust Him, so, but in fashion incapable of being revealed
+to us, now does He dwell with those of whose condition this is the only
+and all-sufficing positive knowledge which we have, that they are
+'absent from the body; present with the Lord.'
+
+Further, that united life is a social life. The whole force of my text
+is often missed by English readers, who run into one idea the two words
+'together with.' But if you would put a comma after 'together,' you
+would understand better what Paul meant. He refers to two forms of
+union. Whether we wake or sleep we shall live all aggregated together,
+and all aggregated 'together' because each is 'with Him.' That is to
+say, union with Jesus Christ makes all who partake of that union,
+whether they belong to the one side of the river or the other, into a
+mighty whole. They are together because they are with the Lord.
+
+Suppose a great city, and a stream flowing through its centre. The
+palace and all pertaining to the court are on one side of the water;
+there is an outlying suburb on the other, of meaner houses, inhabited by
+poor and humble people. But yet it is one city. 'Ye are come unto the
+heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, and to the spirits of
+just men made perfect.' We are knit together by one life, one love, one
+thought; and the more we fix our hearts on the things which those above
+live among and by, the more truly are we knit to them. As a quaint old
+English writer says, 'They are gone but into another pew in the same
+church.'
+
+We are one in Him, and so there will be a perfecting of union in
+reunion; and the inference so craved for by our hearts seems to be
+warranted to our understandings, that that society above, which is the
+perfection of society, shall not be lacking in the elements of mutual
+recognition and companionship, without which we cannot conceive of
+society at all. 'And so we shall ever be with the Lord.'
+
+Dear friends, I beseech you to trust your sinful souls to that dear Lord
+who bore you in His heart and mind when He bore His cross to Calvary and
+completed the work of your redemption. If you will accept Him as your
+sacrifice and Saviour, when He cried 'It is finished,' united to Him
+your lives will be quickened into intense activity and joyful vigilance
+and expectation, and death will be smoothed into a quiet falling asleep.
+'The shadow feared of man,' that strikes threateningly across every
+path, will change as we approach it, if our hearts are anchored on Him
+who died for us, into the Angel of Light to whom God has given charge
+concerning us to bear up our feet upon His hands, and land us in the
+presence of the Lord and in the perfect society of those who love Him.
+And so shall we live together, and all together, with Him.
+
+
+
+
+EDIFICATION
+
+          'Edify one another.'--1 THESS. v. 11.
+
+
+I do not intend to preach about that clause only, but I take it as
+containing, in the simplest form, one of the Apostle's favourite
+metaphors which runs through all his letters, and the significance of
+which, I think, is very little grasped by ordinary readers.
+
+'Edify one another.' All metaphorical words tend to lose their light and
+colour, and the figure to get faint, in popular understanding. We all
+know that 'edifice' means a building; we do not all realise that 'edify'
+means _to build up_. And it is a great misfortune that our Authorised
+Version, in accordance with the somewhat doubtful principle on which its
+translators proceeded, varies the rendering of the one Greek word so as
+to hide the frequent recurrence of it in the apostolic teaching. The
+metaphor that underlies it is the notion of building up a structure. The
+Christian idea of the structure to be built up is that it is a temple. I
+wish in this sermon to try to bring out some of the manifold lessons and
+truths that lie in this great figure, as applied to the Christian life.
+
+Now, glancing over the various uses of the phrase in the New Testament,
+I find that the figure of 'building,' as the great duty of the Christian
+life, is set forth under three aspects; self-edification, united
+edification, and divine edification. And I purpose to look at these in
+order.
+
+I. First, self-edification.
+
+According to the ideal of the Christian life that runs through the New
+Testament, each Christian man is a dwelling-place of God's, and his work
+is to build himself up into a temple worthy of the divine indwelling.
+Now, I suppose that the metaphor is such a natural and simple one that
+we do not need to look for any Scriptural basis of it. But if we did, I
+should be disposed to find it in the solemn antithesis with which the
+Sermon on the Mount is closed, where there are the two houses pictured,
+the one built upon the rock and standing firm, and the other built upon
+the sand. But that is perhaps unnecessary.
+
+We are all builders; building up--what? Character, ourselves. But what
+sort of a thing is it that we are building? Some of us pigsties, in
+which gross, swinish lusts wallow in filth; some of us shops; some of us
+laboratories, studies, museums; some of us amorphous structures that
+cannot be described. But the Christian man is to be building himself up
+into a temple of God. The aim which should ever burn clear before us,
+and preside over even our smallest actions, is that which lies in this
+misused old word, 'edify' yourselves.
+
+The first thing about a structure is the foundation. And Paul was narrow
+enough to believe that the one foundation upon which a human spirit
+could be built up into a hallowed character is Jesus Christ. He is the
+basis of all our certitude. He is the anchor for all our hopes. To Him
+should be referred all our actions; for Him and by Him our lives should
+be lived. On Him should rest, solid and inexpugnable, standing
+four-square to all the winds that blow, the fabric of our characters.
+Jesus Christ is the pattern, the motive which impels, and the power
+which enables, me to rear myself into a habitation of God through the
+Spirit. Whilst I gladly acknowledge that very lovely structures may be
+reared upon another foundation than Him, I would beseech you all to lay
+this on your hearts and consciences, that for the loftiest, serenest
+beauty of character there is but one basis upon which it can be rested.
+'Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
+Christ.'
+
+Then there is another aspect of this same metaphor, not in Paul's
+writings but in another part of the New Testament, where we read: 'Ye,
+beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith.' So that, in a
+subordinate sense, a man's faith is the basis upon which he can build
+such a structure of character; or, to put it into other words--in regard
+to the man himself, the first requisite to the rearing of such a fabric
+as God will dwell in is that he, by his own personal act of faith,
+should have allied himself to Jesus Christ, who is the foundation; and
+should be in a position to draw from Him all the power, and to feel
+raying out from Him all the impulses, and lovingly to discern in Him all
+the characteristics, which make Him a pattern for all men in their
+building.
+
+The first course of stone that we lay is Faith; and that course is, as
+it were, mortised into the foundation, the living Rock. He that builds
+on Christ cannot build but by faith. The two representations are
+complementary to one another, the one, which represents Jesus Christ as
+the foundation, stating the ultimate fact, and the other, which
+represents faith as the foundation, stating the condition on which we
+come into vital contact with Christ Himself.
+
+Then, further, in this great thought of the Christian life being
+substantially a building up of oneself on Jesus is implied the need for
+continuous labour. You cannot build up a house in half an hour. You
+cannot do it, as the old fable told us that Orpheus did, by music, or by
+wishing. There must be dogged, hard, continuous, life-long effort if
+there is to be this building up. No man becomes a saint _per saltum_. No
+man makes a character at a flash. The stones are actions; the mortar is
+that mystical, awful thing, habit; and deeds cemented together by custom
+rise into that stately dwelling-place in which God abides. So, there is
+to be a life-long work in character, gradually rearing it into His
+likeness.
+
+The metaphor also carries with it the idea of orderly progression. There
+are a number of other New Testament emblems which set forth this notion
+of the true Christian ideal as being continual growth. For instance,
+'first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,'
+represents it as resembling vegetable growth, while elsewhere it is
+likened to the growth of the human body. Both of these are beautiful
+images, in that they suggest that such progressive advancement is the
+natural consequence of life; and is in one aspect effortless and
+instinctive.
+
+But then you have to supplement that emblem with others, and there comes
+in sharp contrast to it the metaphor which represents the Christian
+progress as being warfare. There the element of resistance is
+emphasised, and the thought is brought out that progress is to be made
+in spite of strong antagonisms, partly to be found in external
+circumstances, and partly to be found in our own treacherous selves. The
+growth of the corn or of the body does not cover the whole facts of the
+case, but there must be warfare in order to growth.
+
+There is also the other metaphor by which this Christian progress, which
+is indispensable to the Christian life, and is to be carried on,
+whatever may oppose it, is regarded as a race. There the idea of the
+great, attractive, but far-off future reward comes into view, as well as
+the strained muscles and the screwed-up energy with which the runner
+presses towards the mark. But we have not only to fling the result
+forward into the future, and to think of the Christian life as all
+tending towards an end, which end is not realised here; but we have to
+think of it, in accordance with this metaphor of my text, as being
+continuously progressive, so as that, though unfinished, the building is
+there; and much is done, though all is not accomplished, and the courses
+rise slowly, surely, partially realising the divine Architect's ideal,
+long before the headstone is brought out with shoutings and tumult of
+acclaim. A continuous progress and approximation towards the perfect
+ideal of the temple completed, consecrated, and inhabited by God, lies
+in this metaphor.
+
+Is that _you_, Christian man and woman? Is the notion of progress a part
+of _your_ working belief? Are _you_ growing, fighting, running, building
+up yourselves more and more in your holy faith? Alas! I cannot but
+believe that the very notion of progress has died out from a great many
+professing Christians.
+
+There is one more idea in this metaphor of self-edification, viz., that
+our characters should be being modelled by us on a definite plan, and
+into a harmonious whole. I wonder how many of us in this chapel this
+morning have ever spent a quiet hour in trying to set clearly before
+ourselves what we want to make of ourselves, and how we mean to go
+about it. Most of us live by haphazard very largely, even in regard to
+outward things, and still more entirely in regard to our characters.
+Most of us have not consciously before us, as you put a pattern-line
+before a child learning to write, any ideal of ourselves to which we are
+really seeking to approximate. Have you? And could you put it into
+words? And are you making any kind of intelligent and habitual effort to
+get at it? I am afraid a great many of us, if we were honest, would have
+to say, No! If a man goes to work as his own architect, and has a very
+hazy idea of what it is that he means to build, he will not build
+anything worth the trouble. If your way of building up yourselves is, as
+Aaron said his way of making the calf was, putting all into the fire,
+and letting chance settle what comes out, nothing will come out better
+than a calf. Brother! if you are going to build, have a plan, and let
+the plan be the likeness of Jesus Christ. And then, with continuous
+work, and the exercise of continuous faith, which knits you to the
+foundation, 'build up yourselves for an habitation of God.'
+
+II. We have to consider united edification.
+
+There are two streams of representation about this matter in the Pauline
+Epistles, the one with which I have already been dealing, which does not
+so often appear, and the other which is the habitual form of the
+representation, according to which the Christian community, as a whole,
+is a temple, and building up is a work to be done reciprocally and in
+common. We have that representation with special frequency and detail in
+the Epistle to the Ephesians, where perhaps we may not be fanciful in
+supposing that the great prominence given to it, and to the idea of the
+Church as the temple of God, may have been in some degree due to the
+existence, in that city, of one of the seven wonders of the world, the
+Temple of Diana of the Ephesians.
+
+But, be that as it may, what I want to point out is that united building
+is inseparable from the individual building up of which I have been
+speaking.
+
+Now, it is often very hard for good, conscientious people to determine
+how much of their efforts ought to be given to the perfecting of their
+own characters in any department, and how much ought to be given to
+trying to benefit and help other people. I wish you to notice that one
+of the most powerful ways of building up myself is to do my very best to
+build up others. Some, like men in my position, for instance, and others
+whose office requires them to spend a great deal of time and energy in
+the service of their fellows, are tempted to devote themselves too much
+to building up character in other people, and to neglect their own. It
+is a temptation that we need to fight against, and which can only be
+overcome by much solitary meditation. Some of us, on the other hand, may
+be tempted, for the sake of our own perfecting, intellectual
+cultivation, or improvement in other ways, to minimise the extent to
+which we are responsible for helping and blessing other people. But let
+us remember that the two things cannot be separated; and that there is
+nothing that will make a man more like Christ, which is the end of all
+our building, than casting himself into the service of his fellows with
+self-oblivion.
+
+Peter said, 'Master! let us make here three tabernacles.' Ay! But there
+was a demoniac boy down below, and the disciples could not cast out the
+demon. The Apostle did not know what he said when he preferred building
+up himself, by communion with God and His glorified servants, to
+hurrying down into the valley, where there were devils to fight and
+broken hearts to heal. Build up yourselves, by all means; if you do you
+will have to build up your brethren. 'The edifying of the body of
+Christ' is a plain duty which no Christian man can neglect without
+leaving a tremendous gap in the structure which he ought to rear.
+
+The building resulting from united edification is represented in
+Scripture, not as the agglomeration of a number of little shrines, the
+individuals, but as one great temple. That temple grows in two respects,
+both of which carry with them imperative duties to us Christian people.
+It grows by the addition of new stones. And so every Christian is bound
+to seek to gather into the fold those that are wandering far away, and
+to lay some stone upon that sure foundation. It grows, also, by the
+closer approximation of all the members one to another, and the
+individual increase of each in Christlike characteristics. And we are
+bound to help one another therein, and to labour earnestly for the
+advancement of our brethren, and for the unity of God's Church. Apart
+from such efforts our individual edifying of ourselves will become
+isolated, the results one-sided, and we ourselves shall lose much of
+what is essential to the rearing in ourselves of a holy character. 'What
+God hath joined together let not man put asunder.' Neither seek to build
+up yourselves apart from the community, nor seek to build up the
+community apart from yourselves.
+
+III. Lastly, the Apostle, in his writings, sets forth another aspect of
+this general thought, viz., divine edification.
+
+When he spoke to the elders of the church of Ephesus he said that Christ
+was able 'to build them up.' When he wrote to the Corinthians he said,
+'Ye are _God's_ building.' To the Ephesians he wrote, 'Ye are built for
+an habitation of God _through the Spirit_.' And so high above all our
+individual and all our united effort he carries up our thoughts to the
+divine Master-builder, by whose work alone a Paul, when he lays the
+foundation, and an Apollos, when he builds thereupon, are of any use at
+all.
+
+Thus, dear brethren, we have to base all our efforts on this deeper
+truth, that it is God who builds us into a temple meet for Himself, and
+then comes to dwell in the temple that He has built.
+
+So let us keep our hearts and minds expectant of, and open for, that
+Spirit's influences. Let us be sure that we are using all the power that
+God does give us. His work does not supersede mine. My work is to avail
+myself of His. The two thoughts are not contradictory. They correspond
+to, and fill out, each other, though warring schools of one-eyed
+theologians and teachers have set them in antagonism. 'Work _out_ . . .
+for it is God that worketh _in_.' That is the true reconciliation. 'Ye
+are God's building; build up yourselves in your most holy faith.'
+
+If God is the builder, then boundless, indomitable hope should be ours.
+No man can look at his own character, after all his efforts to mend it,
+without being smitten by a sense of despair, if he has only his own
+resources to fall back upon. Our experience is like that of the monkish
+builders, according to many an old legend, who found every morning that
+yesterday's work had been pulled down in the darkness by demon hands.
+There is no man whose character is anything more than a torso, an
+incomplete attempt to build up the structure that was in his mind--like
+the ruins of half-finished palaces and temples which travellers came
+across sometimes in lands now desolate, reared by a forgotten race who
+were swept away by some unknown calamity, and have left the stones
+half-lifted to their courses, half-hewed in their quarries, and the
+building gaunt and incomplete. But men will never have to say about any
+of God's architecture, He 'began to build and was not able to finish.'
+As the old prophecy has it, 'His hands have laid the foundation of the
+house, His hands shall also finish it.' Therefore, we are entitled to
+cherish endless hope and quiet confidence that we, even we, shall be
+reared up into an habitation of God through the Spirit.
+
+What are you building? 'Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone.'
+Let every man take heed _what_ and _how_ and _that_ he buildeth thereon.
+
+
+
+
+CONTINUAL PRAYER AND ITS EFFECTS
+
+          'Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In
+          everything give thanks.'--1 THESS. v. 16-18.
+
+
+The peculiarity and the stringency of these three precepts is the
+unbroken continuity which they require. To rejoice, to pray, to give
+thanks, are easy when circumstances favour, as a taper burns steadily in
+a windless night; but to do these things always is as difficult as for
+the taper's flame to keep upright when all the winds are eddying round
+it. 'Evermore'--'without ceasing'--'in everything'--these qualifying
+words give the injunctions of this text their grip and urgency. The
+Apostle meets the objections which he anticipates would spring to the
+lips of the Thessalonians, to the effect that he was requiring
+impossibilities, by adding that, hard and impracticable as they might
+think such a constant attitude of mind and heart, 'This is the will of
+God in Christ Jesus concerning you.' So, then, a Christian life may be
+lived continuously on the high level; and more than that, it is our duty
+to try to live ours thus.
+
+We need not fight with other Christian people about whether absolute
+obedience to these precepts is possible. It will be soon enough for us
+to discuss whether a completely unbroken uniformity of Christian
+experience is attainable in this life, when we have come a good deal
+nearer to the attainable than we have yet reached. Let us mend our
+breaches of continuity a good deal more, and then we may begin to
+discuss the question whether an absolute absence of any cessation of the
+continuity is consistent with the conditions of Christian life here.
+
+Now it seems to me that these three exhortations hold together in a very
+striking way, and that Paul knew what he was about when he put in the
+middle, like the strong central pole that holds up a tent, that
+exhortation, 'Pray without ceasing.' For it is the primary precept, and
+on its being obeyed the possibility of the fulfilment of the other two
+depends. If we pray without ceasing, we shall rejoice evermore and in
+everything give thanks. So, then, the duty of continual prayer, and the
+promise, as well as the precept, that its results are to be continual
+joy and continual thanksgiving, are suggested by these words.
+
+I. The duty of continual prayer.
+
+Roman Catholics, with their fatal habit of turning the spiritual into
+material, think that they obey that commandment when they set a priest
+or a nun on the steps of the altar to repeat _Ave Marias_ day and night.
+That is a way of praying without ceasing which we can all see to be
+mechanical and unworthy. But have we ever realised what this commandment
+necessarily reveals to us, as to what real prayer is? For if we are told
+to do a thing uninterruptedly, it must be something that can run
+unbroken through all the varieties of our legitimate duties and
+necessary occupations and absorptions with the things seen and temporal.
+Is that your notion of prayer? Or do you fancy that it simply means
+dropping down on your knees, and asking God to give you some things that
+you very much want? Petition is an element in prayer, and that it shall
+be crystallised into words is necessary sometimes; but there are prayers
+that never get themselves uttered, and I suppose that the deepest and
+truest communion with God is voiceless and wordless. 'Things which it
+was not possible for a man to utter,' was Paul's description of what he
+saw and felt, when he was most completely absorbed in, and saturated
+with, the divine glory. The more we understand what prayer is, the less
+we shall feel that it depends upon utterance. For the essence of it is
+to have heart and mind filled with the consciousness of God's presence,
+and to have the habit of referring everything to Him, in the moment when
+we are doing it, or when it meets us. That, as I take it, is prayer. The
+old mystics had a phrase, quaint, and in some sense unfortunate, but
+very striking, when they spoke about 'the practice of the presence of
+God.' God is here always, you will say; yes, He is, and to open the
+shutters, and to let the light always in, into every corner of my heart,
+and every detail of my life--that is what Paul means by 'Praying
+without ceasing.' Petitions? Yes; but something higher than
+petitions--the consciousness of being in touch with the Father, feeling
+that He is all round us. It was said about one mystical thinker that he
+was a 'God-intoxicated man.' It is an ugly word, but it expresses a very
+deep thing; but let us rather say a _God-filled_ man. He who is such
+'prays always.'
+
+But how may we maintain that state of continual devotion, even amidst
+the various and necessary occupations of our daily lives? As I said, we
+need not trouble ourselves about the possibility of complete attainment
+of that ideal. We know that we can each of us pray a great deal more
+than we do, and if there are regions in our lives into which we feel
+that God will not come, habits that we have dropped into which we feel
+to be a film between us and Him, the sooner we get rid of them the
+better. But into all our daily duties, dear friends, however absorbing,
+however secular, however small, however irritating they may be, however
+monotonous, into all our daily duties it is possible to bring Him.
+
+          'A servant with this clause
+           Makes drudgery divine,
+           Who sweeps a room, as by Thy laws,
+           Makes that and the calling fine.'
+
+But if that is our aim, our conscious aim, our honest aim, we shall
+recognise that a help to it is _words of_ prayer. I do not believe in
+silent adoration, if there is nothing but silent; and I do not believe
+in a man going through life with the conscious presence of God with him,
+unless, often, in the midst of the stress of daily life, he shoots
+little arrows of two-worded prayers up into the heavens, 'Lord! be with
+me.' 'Lord! help me.' 'Lord! stand by me now'; and the like. 'They
+cried unto God in the battle,' when some people would have thought they
+would have been better occupied in trying to keep their heads with their
+swords. It was not a time for very elaborate supplications when the
+foemen's arrows were whizzing round them, but 'they cried unto the Lord,
+and He was entreated of them.' 'Pray without ceasing.'
+
+Further, if we honestly try to obey this precept we shall more and more
+find out, the more earnestly we do so, that set seasons of prayer are
+indispensable to realising it. I said that I do not believe in silent
+adoration unless it sometimes finds its tongue, nor do I believe in a
+diffused worship that does not flow from seasons of prayer. There must
+be, away up amongst the hills, a dam cast across the valley that the
+water may be gathered behind it, if the great city is to be supplied
+with the pure fluid. What would become of Manchester if it were not for
+the reservoirs at Woodhead away among the hills? Your pipes would be
+empty. And that is what will become of you Christian professors in
+regard to your habitual consciousness of God's presence, if you do not
+take care to have your hours of devotion sacred, never to be interfered
+with, be they long or short, as may have to be determined by family
+circumstances, domestic duties, daily avocations, and a thousand other
+causes. But, unless we pray at set seasons, there is little likelihood
+of our praying without ceasing.
+
+II. The duty of continual rejoicing.
+
+If we begin with the central duty of continual prayer, then these other
+two which, as it were, flow from it on either side, will be possible to
+us; and of these two the Apostle sets first, 'Rejoice evermore.' This
+precept was given to the Thessalonians, in Paul's first letter, when
+things were comparatively bright with him, and he was young and buoyant;
+and in one of his later letters, when he was a prisoner, and things were
+anything but rosy coloured, he struck the same note again, and in spite
+of his 'bonds in Christ' bade the Philippians 'Rejoice in the Lord
+always, and again I say, Rejoice.' Indeed, that whole prison-letter
+might be called the Epistle of Joy, so suffused with sunshine of
+Christian gladness is it. Now, no doubt, joy is largely a matter of
+temperament. Some of us are constitutionally more buoyant and cheerful
+than others. And it is also very largely a matter of circumstances.
+
+I admit all that, and yet I come back to Paul's command: 'Rejoice
+evermore.' For if we are Christian people, and have cultivated what I
+have called 'the practice of the presence of God' in our lives, then
+that will change the look of things, and events that otherwise would be
+'at enmity with joy' will cease to have a hostile influence over it.
+There are two sources from which a man's gladness may come, the one his
+circumstances of a pleasant and gladdening character; the other his
+communion with God. It is like some river that is composed of two
+affluents, one of which rises away up in the mountains, and is fed by
+the eternal snows; the other springs on the plain somewhere, and is but
+the drainage of the surface-water, and when hot weather comes, and
+drought is over all the land, the one affluent is dry, and only a chaos
+of ghastly white stones litters the bed where the flashing water used to
+be. What then? Is the stream gone because one of its affluents is dried
+up, and has perished or been lost in the sands? The gushing fountains
+away up among the peaks near the stars are bubbling up all the same,
+and the heat that dried the surface stream has only loosened the
+treasures of the snows, and poured them more abundantly into the other's
+bed. So 'Rejoice in the Lord always'; and if earth grows dark, lift your
+eyes to the sky, that is light. To one walking in the woods at nightfall
+'all the paths are dim,' but the strip of heaven above the trees is the
+brighter for the green gloom around. The organist's one hand may be
+keeping up one sustained note, while the other is wandering over the
+keys; and one part of a man's nature may be steadfastly rejoicing in the
+Lord, whilst the other is feeling the weight of sorrows that come from
+earth. The paradox of the Christian life may be realised as a blessed
+experience of every one of us: a surface troubled, a central calm; an
+ocean tossed with storm, and yet the crest of every wave flashing in the
+sunshine. 'Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.'
+
+III. Lastly, the duty of continual thankfulness.
+
+That, too, is possible only on condition of continual communion with
+God. As I said in reference to joy, so I say in reference to
+thankfulness; the look of things in this world depends very largely on
+the colour of the spectacles through which you behold them.
+
+          'There's nothing either good or bad
+           But thinking makes it so.'
+
+And if a man in communion with God looks at the events of his life as he
+might put on a pair of coloured glasses to look at a landscape, it will
+be tinted with a glory and a glow as he looks. The obligation to
+gratitude, often neglected by us, is singularly, earnestly, and
+frequently enjoined in the New Testament. I am afraid that the average
+Christian man does not recognise its importance as an element in his
+Christian experience. As directed to the past it means that we do not
+forget, but that, as we look back, we see the meaning of these old days,
+and their possible blessings, and the loving purposes which sent them, a
+great deal more clearly than we did whilst we were passing through them.
+The mountains that, when you are close to them, are barren rock and cold
+snow, glow in the distance with royal purples. And so if we, from our
+standing point in God, will look back on our lives, losses will disclose
+themselves as gains, sorrows as harbingers of joy, conflict as a means
+of peace, the crooked things will be straight, and the rough places
+plain; and we may for every thing in the past give thanks, if only we
+'pray without ceasing.' The exhortation as applied to the present means
+that we bow our wills, that we believe that all things are working
+together for our good, and that, like Job in his best moments, we shall
+say, 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the Name of
+the Lord.' Ah, that is hard. It is possible, but it is only possible if
+we 'pray without ceasing,' and dwell beside God all the days of our
+lives, and all the hours of every day. Then, and only then, shall we be
+able to thank Him for all the way by which He hath led us these many
+years in the wilderness, that has been brightened by the pillar of cloud
+by day, and the fire by night.
+
+
+
+
+PAUL'S EARLIEST TEACHING
+
+          'I charge you, by the Lord, that this epistle be
+          read unto all the holy brethren,'--1 THESS. v. 27.
+
+
+If the books of the New Testament were arranged according to the dates
+of their composition, this epistle would stand first. It was written
+somewhere about twenty years after the Crucifixion, and long before any
+of the existing Gospels. It is, therefore, of peculiar interest, as
+being the most venerable extant Christian document, and as being a
+witness to Christian truth quite independent of the Gospel narratives.
+
+The little community at Thessalonica had been gathered together as the
+result of a very brief period of ministration by Paul. He had spoken for
+three successive Sabbaths in the synagogue, and had drawn together a
+Christian society, mostly consisting of heathens, though with a
+sprinkling of Jews amongst them. Driven from the city by a riot, he had
+left it for Athens, with many anxious thoughts, of course, as to whether
+the infant community would be able to stand alone after so few weeks of
+his presence and instruction. Therefore he sent back one of his
+travelling companions, Timothy by name, to watch over the young plant
+for a little while. When Timothy returned with the intelligence of their
+steadfastness, it was good news indeed, and with a sense of relieved
+anxiety, he sits down to write this letter, which, all through, throbs
+with thankfulness, and reveals the strain which the news had taken off
+his spirit.
+
+There are no such definite doctrinal statements in it as in the most of
+Paul's longer letters; it is simply an outburst of confidence and love
+and tenderness, and a series of practical instructions. It has been
+called the least doctrinal of the Pauline Epistles. And in one sense,
+and under certain limitations, that is perfectly true. But the very fact
+that it is so makes its indications and hints and allusions the more
+significant; and if this letter, not written for the purpose of
+enforcing any special doctrinal truth, be so saturated as it is with the
+facts and principles of the Gospel, the stronger is the attestation
+which it gives to the importance of these. I have, therefore, thought it
+might be worth our while now, and might, perhaps, set threadbare truth
+in something of a new light, if we put this--the most ancient Christian
+writing extant, which is quite independent of the four Gospels--into the
+witness-box, and see what it has to say about the great truths and
+principles which we call the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is my simple
+design, and I gather the phenomena into three or four divisions for the
+sake of accuracy and order.
+
+I. First of all, then, let us hear its witness to the divine Christ.
+
+Look how the letter begins. 'Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the
+church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father, and in the Lord
+Jesus Christ.' What is the meaning of that collocation, putting these
+two names side by side, unless it means that the Lord Jesus Christ sits
+on the Father's throne, and is divine?
+
+Then there is another fact that I would have you notice, and that is
+that more than twenty times in this short letter that great name is
+applied to Jesus, 'the Lord.' Now mark that that is something more than
+a mere title of human authority. It is in reality the New Testament
+equivalent of the Old Testament Jehovah, and is the transference to Him
+of that incommunicable name.
+
+And then there is another fact which I would have you weigh, viz., that
+in this letter direct prayer is offered to our Lord Himself. In one
+place we read the petition, 'May our God and Father Himself and our Lord
+Jesus direct our way unto you,' where the petition is presented to both,
+and where both are supposed to be operative in the answer. And more than
+that, the word 'direct,' following upon this _plural_ subject, is itself
+a _singular_ verb. Could language more completely express than that
+grammatical solecism does, the deep truth of the true and proper
+divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? There is nothing in any
+part of Scripture more emphatic and more lofty in its unfaltering
+proclamation of that fundamental truth of the Gospel than this
+altogether undoctrinal Epistle.
+
+The Apostle does not conceive himself to be telling these men, though
+they were such raw and recent Christians, anything new when he
+presupposes the truth that to Him desires and prayers may go. Thus the
+very loftiest apex of revealed religion had been imparted to that
+handful of heathens in the few weeks of the Apostle's stay amongst them.
+And nowhere upon the inspired pages of the fourth Evangelist, nor in
+that great Epistle to the Colossians, which is the very citadel and
+central fort of that doctrine in Scripture, is there more emphatically
+stated this truth than here, in these incidental allusions.
+
+This witness, at any rate, declares, apart altogether from any other
+part of Scripture, that so early in the development of the Church's
+history, and to people so recently dragged from idolatry, and having
+received but such necessarily partial instruction in revealed truth,
+this had not been omitted, that the Christ in whom they trusted was the
+Everlasting Son of the Father. And it takes it for granted that, so
+deeply was that truth embedded in their new consciousness that an
+allusion to it was all that was needed for their understanding and their
+faith. That is the first part of the testimony.
+
+II. Now, secondly, let us ask what this witness has to say about the
+dying Christ.
+
+There is no doctrinal theology in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, they
+tell us. Granted that there is no articulate argumentative setting forth
+of great doctrinal truths. But these are implied and involved in almost
+every word of it; and are definitely stated thus incidentally in more
+places than one. Let us hear the witness about the dying Christ.
+
+First, as to the fact, 'The Jews killed the Lord Jesus.' The historical
+fact is here set forth distinctly. And then, beyond the fact, there is
+as distinctly, though in the same incidental fashion, set forth the
+meaning of that fact--'God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain
+salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us.'
+
+Here are at least two things--one, the allusion, as to a well-known and
+received truth, proclaimed before now to them, that Jesus Christ in His
+death had died for them; and the other, that Jesus Christ was the medium
+through whom the Father had appointed that men should obtain all the
+blessings which are wrapped up in that sovereign word 'salvation.' I
+need but mention in this connection another verse, from another part of
+the letter, which speaks of Jesus as 'He that delivereth us from the
+wrath to come.' Remark that there our Authorised Version fails to give
+the whole significance of the words, because it translates _delivered_,
+instead of, as the Revised Version correctly does, _delivereth_. It is a
+continuous deliverance, running all through the life of the Christian
+man, and not merely to be realised away yonder at the far end; because
+by the mighty providence of God, and by the automatic working of the
+consequences of every transgression and disobedience, that 'wrath' is
+ever coming, coming, coming towards men, and lighting on them, and a
+continual Deliverer, who delivers us by His death, is what the human
+heart needs. This witness is distinct that the death of Christ is a
+sacrifice, that the death of Christ is man's deliverance from wrath,
+that the death of Christ is a present deliverance from the consequences
+of transgression.
+
+And was that Paul's peculiar doctrine? Is it conceivable that, in a
+letter in which he refers--once, at all events--to the churches in Judea
+as their 'brethren,' he was proclaiming any individual or schismatic
+reading of the facts of the life of Jesus Christ? I believe that there
+has been a great deal too much made of the supposed divergencies of
+types of doctrine in the New Testament. There are such types, within
+certain limits. Nobody would mistake a word of John's calm, mystical,
+contemplative spirit for a word of Paul's fiery, dialectic spirit. And
+nobody would mistake either the one or the other for Peter's impulsive,
+warm-hearted exhortations. But whilst there are diversities in the way
+of apprehending, there are no diversities in the declaration of what is
+the central truth to be apprehended. These varyings of the types of
+doctrine in the New Testament are one in this, that all point to the
+Cross as the world's salvation, and declare that the death there was the
+death for all mankind.
+
+Paul comes to it with his reasoning; John comes to it with his adoring
+contemplation; Peter comes to it with his mind saturated with Old
+Testament allusions. Paul declares that the 'Christ died for us'; John
+declares that He is 'the Lamb of God'; Peter declares that 'Christ bare
+our sins in His own body on the tree.' But all make one unbroken phalanx
+of witness in their proclamation, that the Cross, because it is a cross
+of sacrifice, is a cross of reconciliation and peace and hope. And this
+is the Gospel that they all proclaim, 'how that Jesus Christ died for
+our sins according to the Scriptures,' and Paul could venture to say,
+'Whether it were they or I, so we preach, and so ye believed.'
+
+That was the Gospel that took these heathens, wallowing in the mire of
+sensuous idolatry, and lifted them up to the elevation and the
+blessedness of children of God.
+
+And if you will read this letter, and think that there had been only a
+few weeks of acquaintance with the Gospel on the part of its readers,
+and then mark how the early and imperfect glimpse of it had transformed
+them, you will see where the power lies in the proclamation of the
+Gospel. A short time before they had been heathens; and now says Paul,
+'From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and
+Achaia, but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad;
+so that we need not to speak anything.' We do not need to talk to you
+about 'love of the brethren,' for 'yourselves are taught of God to love
+one another, and my heart is full of thankfulness when I think of your
+work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope.' The men had been
+transformed. What transformed them? The message of a divine and dying
+Christ, who had offered up Himself without spot unto God, and who was
+their peace and their righteousness and their power.
+
+III. Thirdly, notice what this witness has to say about the risen and
+ascended Christ. Here is what it has to say: 'Ye turned unto God . . . to
+wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead.' And again:
+'The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.' The risen
+Christ, then, is in the heavens, and Paul assumes that these people,
+just brought out of heathenism, have received that truth into their
+hearts in the love of it, and know it so thoroughly that he can take for
+granted their entire acquiescence in and acceptance of it.
+
+Remember, we have nothing to do with the four Gospels here. Remember,
+not a line of them had yet been written. Remember, that we are dealing
+here with an entirely independent witness. And then tell us what
+importance is to be attached to this evidence of the Resurrection of
+Jesus Christ. Twenty years after His death here is this man speaking
+about that Resurrection as being not only something that he had to
+proclaim, and believed, but as being the recognised and notorious fact
+which all the churches accepted, and which underlay all their faith.
+
+I would have you remember that if, twenty years after this event, this
+witness was borne, that necessarily carries us back a great deal nearer
+to the event than the hour of its utterance, for there is no mark of
+its being new testimony at that instant, but every mark of its being the
+habitual and continuous witness that had been borne from the instant of
+the alleged Resurrection to the present time. It at least takes us back
+a good many years nearer the empty sepulchre than the twenty which mark
+its date. It at least takes us back to the conversion of the Apostle
+Paul; and that necessarily involves, as it seems to me, that if that
+man, believing in the Resurrection, went into the Church, there would
+have been an end of his association with them, unless he had found there
+the same faith. The fact of the matter is, there is not a place where
+you can stick a pin in, between the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the
+date of this letter, wide enough to admit of the rise of the faith in a
+Resurrection. We are necessarily forced by the very fact of the
+existence of the Church to the admission that the belief in the
+Resurrection was contemporaneous with the alleged Resurrection itself.
+
+And so we are shut up--in spite of the wriggling of people that do not
+accept that great truth--we are shut up to the old alternative, as it
+seems to me, that either Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or the noblest
+lives that the world has ever seen, and the loftiest system of morality
+that has ever been proclaimed, were built upon a lie. And we are called
+to believe that at the bidding of a mere unsupported, bare, dogmatic
+assertion that miracles are impossible. Believe it who will, I decline
+to be coerced into believing a blank, staring psychological
+contradiction and impossibility, in order to be saved the necessity of
+admitting the existence of the supernatural. I would rather believe in
+the supernatural than the ridiculous. And to me it is unspeakably
+ridiculous to suppose that anything but the fact of the Resurrection
+accounts for the existence of the Church, and for the faith of this
+witness that we have before us.
+
+And so, dear friends, we come back to this, the Christianity that flings
+away the risen Christ is a mere mass of tatters with nothing in it to
+cover a man's nakedness, an illusion with no vitality in it to quicken,
+to comfort, to ennoble, to raise, to teach aspiration or hope or effort.
+The human heart needs the 'Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen
+again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh
+intercession for us.' And this independent witness confirms the Gospel
+story: 'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits
+of them that slept.'
+
+IV. Lastly, let us hear what this witness has to say about the returning
+Christ.
+
+That is the characteristic doctrinal subject of the letter. We all know
+that wonderful passage of unsurpassed tenderness and majesty, which has
+soothed so many hearts and been like a gentle hand laid upon so many
+aching spirits, about the returning Jesus 'coming in the clouds,' with
+the dear ones that are asleep along with Him, and the reunion of them
+that sleep and them that are alive and remain, in one indissoluble
+concord and concourse, when we shall ever be with the Lord, and 'clasp
+inseparable hands with joy and bliss in over-measure for ever.' The
+coming of the Master does not appear here with emphasis on its judicial
+aspect. It is rather intended to bring hope to the mourners, and the
+certainty that bands broken here may be re-knit in holier fashion
+hereafter. But the judicial aspect is not, as it could not be, left out,
+and the Apostle further tells us that 'that day cometh as a thief in the
+night.' That is a quotation of the Master's own words, which we find in
+the Gospels; and so again a confirmation, so far as it goes, from an
+independent witness, of the Gospel story. And then he goes on, in
+terrible language, to speak of 'sudden destruction, as of travail upon a
+woman with child; and they shall not escape.'
+
+These, then, are the points of this witness's testimony as to the
+returning Lord--a personal coming, a reunion of all believers in Him, in
+order to eternal felicity and mutual gladness, and the destruction that
+shall fall by His coming upon those who turn away from Him.
+
+What a revelation that would be to men who had known what it was to
+grope in the darkness of heathendom, and to have new light upon the
+future!
+
+I remember once walking in the long galleries of the Vatican, on the one
+side of which there are Christian inscriptions from the catacombs, and
+on the other heathen inscriptions from the tombs. One side is all dreamy
+and hopeless; one long sigh echoing along the line of white
+marbles--'Vale! vale! in aeternum vale!' (Farewell, farewell, for ever
+farewell.) On the other side--'In Christo, in pace, in spe.' (In Christ,
+in peace, in hope.) That is the witness that we have to lay to our
+hearts. And so death becomes a passage, and we let go the dear hands,
+believing that we shall clasp them again.
+
+My brother! this witness is to a gospel that is the gospel for
+Manchester as well as for Thessalonica. You and I want just the same as
+these old heathens there wanted. We, too, need the divine Christ, the
+dying Christ, the risen Christ, the ascended Christ, the returning
+Christ. And I beseech you to take Him for _your_ Christ, in all the
+fulness of His offices, the manifoldness of His power, and the sweetness
+of His love, so that of you it may be said, as this Apostle says about
+these Thessalonians, 'Ye received it not as the word of man, but, as it
+is in truth, as the word of God.'
+
+
+
+
+II. THESSALONIANS
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST GLORIFIED IN GLORIFIED MEN
+
+          'He shall come to be glorified in His saints; and
+          to be admired in all them that believe.'--2 THESS.
+          i. 10.
+
+
+The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the Apostle's earliest
+letters, both give very great prominence to the thought of the second
+coming of our Lord to judgment. In the immediate context we have that
+coming described, with circumstances of majesty and of terror. He 'shall
+be revealed . . . with the angels of His power.' 'Flaming fire' shall
+herald His coming; vengeance shall be in His hands, punishment shall
+follow His sentence; everlasting destruction shall be the issue of evil
+confronted with 'the face of the Lord'--for so the words in the previous
+verse rendered 'the presence of the Lord' might more accurately be
+translated.
+
+And all these facts and images are, as it were, piled up in one half of
+the Apostle's sky, as in thunderous lurid masses; and on the other side
+there is the pure blue and the peaceful sunshine. For all this terror
+and destruction, and flashing fire, and punitive vengeance come to pass
+in the day when 'He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be
+wondered at in all them that believe.'
+
+There be the two halves--the aspect of that day to those to whom it is
+the revelation of a stranger, and the aspect of that day to those to
+whom it is the glorifying of Him who is their life.
+
+I. The remarkable words which I have taken for my text suggest to us,
+first of all, some thoughts about that striking expression that Christ
+is glorified in the men who are glorified in Christ.
+
+If you look on a couple of verses you will find that the Apostle returns
+to this thought, and expresses in the clearest fashion the reciprocal
+character of that 'glorifying' of which he has been speaking. 'The name
+of our Lord Jesus Christ,' says he, 'may be glorified in you, and ye in
+Him.'
+
+So, then, glorifying has a double meaning. There is a double process
+involved. It means either 'to make glorious' or 'to manifest as being
+glorious.' And men are glorified in the former sense in Christ, that
+Christ in them may, in the latter sense, be glorified. He makes them
+glorious by imparting to them of the lustrous light and flashing beauty
+of His own perfect character, in order that that light, received into
+their natures, and streaming out at last conspicuously manifest from
+their redeemed perfectness, may redound to the praise and the honour,
+before a whole universe, of Him who has thus endued their weakness with
+His own strength, and transmuted their corruptibility into His own
+immortality. We are glorified in Christ in some partial, and, alas!
+sinfully fragmentary, manner here; we shall be so perfectly in that day.
+And when we are thus glorified in Him, then--wondrous thought!--even we
+shall be able to manifest Him as glorious before some gazing eyes, which
+without us would have seen Him as less fair. Dim, and therefore great
+and blessed thoughts about what men may become are involved in such
+words. The highest end, the great purpose of the Gospel and of all
+God's dealings with us in Christ Jesus is to make us like our Lord. As
+we have borne the image of the earthly we shall also bear the image of
+the heavenly. 'We, beholding the glory, are changed into the glory.'
+
+And that glorifying of men in Christ, which is the goal and highest end
+of Christ's Cross and passion and of all God's dealings, is accomplished
+only because Christ dwells in the men whom He glorifies. We read words
+applying to His relation to His Father which need but to be transferred
+to our relation to Him, in order to teach us high and blessed things
+about this glorifying. The Father dwelt in Christ, therefore Christ was
+glorified by the indwelling divinity, in the sense that His humanity was
+made partaker of the divine glory, and thereby He glorified the divinity
+that dwelt in Him, in the sense that He conspicuously displayed it
+before the world as worthy of all admiration and love.
+
+And, in like manner, as is the Son with the Father, participant of
+mutual and reciprocal glorification, so is the Christian with Christ,
+glorified in Him and therefore glorifying Him.
+
+What may be involved therein of perfect moral purity, of enlarged
+faculties and powers, of a bodily frame capable of manifesting all the
+finest issues of a perfect spirit, it is not for us to say. These things
+are great, being hidden; and are hidden because they are great. But
+whatever may be the lofty heights of Christlikeness to which we shall
+attain, all shall come from the indwelling Lord who fills us with His
+own Spirit.
+
+And, then, according to the great teaching here, this glorified
+humanity, perfected and separated from all imperfection, and helped into
+all symmetrical unfolding of dormant possibilities, shall be the
+highest glory of Christ even in that day when He comes in His glory and
+sits upon the throne of His glory with His holy angels with Him. One
+would have thought that, if the Apostle wanted to speak of the
+glorifying of Jesus Christ, he would have pointed to the great white
+throne, His majestic divinity, the solemnities of His judicial office;
+but he passes by all these, and says, 'Nay! the highest glory of the
+Christ lies here, in the men whom He has made to share His own nature.'
+
+The artist is known by his work. You stand in front of some great
+picture, or you listen to some great symphony, or you read some great
+book, and you say, 'This is the glory of Raphael, Beethoven,
+Shakespeare.' Christ points to His saints, and He says, 'Behold My
+handiwork! Ye are my witnesses. This is what I can do.'
+
+But the relation between Christ and His saints is far deeper and more
+intimate than simply the relation between the artist and his work, for
+all the flashing light of moral beauty, of intellectual perfectness
+which Christian men can hope to receive in the future is but the light
+of the Christ that dwells in them, 'and of whose fulness all they have
+received.' Like some poor vapour, in itself white and colourless, which
+lies in the eastern sky there, and as the sun rises is flushed up into a
+miracle of rosy beauty, because it has caught the light amongst its
+flaming threads and vaporous substance, so we, in ourselves pale,
+ghostly, colourless as the mountains when the Alpine snow passes off
+them, being recipient of an indwelling Christ, shall blush and flame in
+beauty. 'Then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in my
+Father's kingdom.' Or, rather they are not suns shining by their own
+light, but moons reflecting the light of Christ, who is their light.
+
+And perchance some eyes, incapable of beholding the sun, may be able to
+look undazzled upon the sunshine in the cloud, and some eyes that could
+not discern the glory of Christ as it shines in His face as the sun
+shineth in its strength, may not be too weak to behold and delight in
+the light as it is reflected from the face of His servants. At all
+events, He shall come to be glorified in the saints whom He has made
+glorious.
+
+II. And now, notice again, out of these full and pregnant words the
+other thought, that this transformation of men is the great miracle and
+marvel of Christ's power.
+
+'He shall come to be admired'--which word is employed in its old English
+signification, 'to be wondered at'--'in all them that believe.' So fair
+and lovely is He that He needs but to be recognised for what He is in
+order to be glorified. So great and stupendous are His operations in
+redeeming love that they need but to be beheld to be the object of
+wonder. 'His name shall be called Wonderful,' and wonderfully the energy
+of His redeeming and sanctifying grace shall then have wrought itself
+out to its legitimate end. There you get the crowning marvel of marvels,
+and the highest of miracles. He did wonderful works upon earth which we
+rightly call miraculous,--things to be wondered at--but the highest of
+all His wonders is the wonder that takes such material as you and me,
+and by such a process, and on such conditions, simply because we trust
+Him, evolves such marvellous forms of beauty and perfectness from us.
+'He is to be wondered at in all them that believe.'
+
+Such results from such material! Chemists tell us that the black bit of
+coal in your grate and the diamond on your finger are varying forms of
+the one substance. What about a power that shall take all the black
+coals in the world and transmute them into flashing diamonds, prismatic
+with the reflected light that comes from His face, and made gems on His
+strong right hand? The universe will wonder at such results from such
+material.
+
+And it will wonder, too, at the process by which they were accomplished,
+wondering at the depth of His pity revealed all the more pathetically
+now from the great white throne which casts such a light on the Cross of
+Calvary; wondering at the long, weary path which He who is now declared
+to be the Judge humbled Himself to travel in the quest of these poor
+sinful souls whom He has redeemed and glorified. The miracle of miracles
+is redeeming love; and the high-water mark of Christ's wonders is
+touched in this fact, that out of men He makes saints; and out of saints
+He makes perfect likenesses of Himself.
+
+III. And now a word about what is _not_ expressed, but is necessarily
+implied in this verse, viz., the spectators of this glory.
+
+The Apostle does not tell us what eyes they are before which Christ is
+thus to be glorified. He does not summon the spectators to look upon
+this wonderful exhibition of divine judgment and divine glory; but we
+may dwell for a moment on the thought that to whomsoever in the whole
+universe Christ at that great day shall be manifested, to them, whoever
+they be, will His glory, in His glorified saints, be a revelation beyond
+what they have known before. 'Every eye shall see Him.' And whatsoever
+eyes look upon Him, then on His throne, they shall behold the attendant
+courtiers and the assessors of His judgment, and see in them the
+manifestation of His own lustrous light.
+
+We read that 'unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places
+shall be made known' in future days, 'by the Church, the manifold wisdom
+of God.' We hear that, after the burst of praise which comes from
+redeemed men standing around the throne, every creature in the earth and
+in the heavens, and in the sea and all that are therein were heard
+saying, 'Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that
+sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'
+
+We need not speculate, it is better not to enter into details, but this,
+at least, is clear, that that solemn winding up of the long, mysterious,
+sad, blood and tear-stained history of man upon the earth is to be an
+object of interest and a higher revelation of God to other creatures
+than those that dwell upon the earth; and we may well believe that for
+that moment, at all events, the centre of the universe, which draws the
+thoughts of all thinking, and the eyes of all seeing, creatures to it,
+shall be that valley of judgment wherein sits the Man Christ and judges
+men, and round Him the flashing reflectors of His glory in the person of
+His saints.
+
+IV. And lastly, look at men's path to this glorifying.
+
+'He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in
+all them that _believed_'; as that word ought to be rendered. That is to
+say, they who on earth were His, consecrated and devoted to Him, and in
+some humble measure partaking even here of His reflected beauty and
+imparted righteousness--these are they in whom He shall be glorified.
+They who 'believed'; poor, trembling, struggling, fainting souls, that
+here on earth, in the midst of many doubts and temptations, clasped His
+hand; and howsoever tremulously, yet truly put their trust in Him, these
+are they in whom He shall 'be wondered at.'
+
+The simple act of faith knits us to the Lord. If we trust Him He comes
+into our hearts here, and begins to purify us, and to make us like
+Himself; and, if that be so, and we keep hold of Him, we shall finally
+share in His glory.
+
+What a hope, what an encouragement, what a stimulus and exhortation to
+humble and timorous souls there is in that great word, 'In _all_ them
+that believed'! Howsoever imperfect, still they shall be kept by the
+power of God unto that final salvation. And when He comes in His glory,
+not one shall be wanting that put their trust in Him.
+
+It will take them all, each in his several way reflecting it, to set
+forth adequately the glory. As many diamonds round a central light,
+which from each facet give off a several ray and a definite colour; so
+all that circle round Christ and partaking of His glory, will each
+receive it, transmit it, and so manifest it in a different fashion. And
+it needs the innumerable company of the redeemed, each a several
+perfectness, to set forth all the fulness of the Christ that dwells in
+us.
+
+So, dear brethren, beginning with simple faith in Him, partially
+receiving the beauty of His transforming spirit, seeking here on earth
+by assimilation to the Master in some humble measure to adorn the
+doctrine and to glorify the Christ, we may hope that each blackness will
+be changed into brightness, our limitations done away with, our weakness
+lifted into rejoicing strength; and that we shall be like Him, seeing
+Him as He is, and glorified in Him, shall glorify Him before the
+universe.
+
+You and I will be there. Choose which of the two halves of that sky that
+I was speaking about in my introductory remarks will be your sky;
+whether He shall be revealed, and the light of His face be to you like a
+sword whose flashing edge means destruction, or whether the light of His
+face shall fall upon your heart because you love Him and trust Him, like
+the sunshine on the Alpine snow, lifting it to a more lustrous
+whiteness, and tingeing it with an ethereal hue of more than earthly
+beauty, which no other power but an indwelling Christ can give. He shall
+come with 'everlasting destruction from the face'; and 'He shall come to
+be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in all them that
+believed.' Do you choose which of the two shall be your portion in that
+day.
+
+
+
+
+WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING
+
+          'We pray always for you, that our God would count
+          you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the
+          good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of
+          faith with power; 12. That the name of our Lord
+          Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in
+          Him.'--2 THESS. i. 11, 12.
+
+
+In the former letter to the Church of Thessalonica, the Apostle had
+dwelt, in ever-memorable words--which sound like a prelude of the trump
+of God--on the coming of Christ at the end to judge the world, and to
+gather His servants into His rest. That great thought seems to have
+excited some of the hotter heads in Thessalonica, and to have led to a
+general feverishness of unwholesome expectancy of the near approach or
+actual dawn of the day. This letter is intended as a supplement to the
+former Epistle, and to damp down the fire which had been kindled. It,
+therefore, dwells with emphasis on the necessary preliminaries to the
+dawning of that day of the Lord, and throughout seeks to lead the
+excited spirits to patience and persistent work, and to calm their
+feverish expectations. This purpose colours the whole letter.
+
+Another striking characteristic of it is the frequent gushes of short
+prayer for the Thessalonians with which the writer turns aside from the
+main current of his thoughts. In its brief compass there are four of
+these prayers, which, taken together, present many aspects of the
+Christian life, and hold out much for our hopes and much for our
+efforts. The prayer which I have read for our text is the first of
+these. The others, the consideration of which will follow on subsequent
+occasions, are these:--'Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our
+Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation
+and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and stablish you in
+every good word and work.' And, again, 'The Lord direct your hearts into
+the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.' And, finally,
+summing up all, 'The Lord of peace Himself give you peace always, by all
+means.' So full, so tender, so directed to the highest blessings, and to
+those only, are the wishes of a true Christian teacher, and of a true
+Christian friend, for those to whom He ministers and whom He loves. It
+is a poor love that cannot express itself in prayer. It is an earthly
+love which desires for its objects anything less than the highest of
+blessings.
+
+I. Notice, first, here, the divine test for Christian lives: 'We pray
+for you, that God would count you worthy of your calling.'
+
+Now, it is to be observed that this 'counting worthy' refers mainly to a
+future estimate to be made by God of the completed career and permanent
+character brought out of earth into another state by Christian souls.
+That is obvious from the whole strain of the letter, which I have
+already pointed out as mainly being concerned with the future coming to
+judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is also, I think, made probable by
+the fact that the same expression, 'counting worthy,' occurs in an
+earlier verse of this chapter, where the reference is exclusively to the
+future judgment.
+
+So, then, we are brought face to face with this thought of an actual,
+stringent judgment which God will apply in the future to the lives and
+characters of professing Christians. Now, that is a great deal too much
+forgotten in our popular Christian teaching and in our average Christian
+faith. It is perfectly true that he who trusts in Jesus Christ will 'not
+come into condemnation, but has passed from death unto life.' But it is
+just as true that 'judgment shall begin at the house of God,' and that,
+'the Lord will judge His people.' And therefore, it becomes us to lay to
+heart this truth, that we, just because, if we are Christians, we stand
+nearest to God, are surest to be searched through and through by the
+light that streams from Him, and to have every flaw and corrupt speck
+and black spot brought out into startling prominence. Let no Christian
+man fancy that he shall escape the righteous judgment of God. The great
+doctrine of forgiveness does not mean that He suffers our sin to remain
+upon us unjudged, ay! or unavenged. But just as, day by day, there is an
+actual estimate in the divine mind, according to truth, of what we
+really are, so, at the last, God's servants will be gathered before His
+throne. 'They that have made a covenant with Him by sacrifice' shall be
+assembled there--as the Psalm has it--'that the Lord may judge His
+people.'
+
+Then, if the actual passing of a divine judgment day by day, and a
+future solemn act of judgment after we have done with earth, and our
+characters are completed, and our careers rounded into a whole, is to be
+looked for by Christians, what is the standard by which their worthiness
+is to be judged?
+
+'Your calling.' The 'this' of my text in the Authorised Version is a
+supplement, and a better supplement is that of the Revised Version,
+'your calling.' Now _calling_ does not mean 'avocation' or 'employment,'
+as I perhaps need scarcely explain, but the divine fact of our having
+been summoned by Him to be His. Consider who calls. God Himself.
+Consider how He calls. By the Gospel, by Jesus Christ, or, as another
+apostle has it, 'by His own glory and virtue' manifested in the world.
+That great voice which is in Jesus Christ, so tender, so searching, so
+heart-melting, so vibrating with the invitation of love and the yearning
+of a longing heart, summons or calls us. Consider, also, what this
+calling is to. 'God hath not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness,'
+or, as this letter has it, in another part, 'unto salvation through
+sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.' By all the
+subduing and animating and restraining and impelling tones in the
+sacrifice and life of Jesus Christ we are summoned to a life of
+self-crucifixion, of subjection of the flesh, of aspiration after God,
+of holy living according to the pattern that was showed us in Him. We
+are summoned here and now to a life of purity and righteousness and
+self-sacrifice. But also 'He hath called us to His everlasting kingdom
+and glory.' That voice sounds from above now. From the Cross it said to
+us, 'I die that ye may live'; from the throne it says to us, 'Live
+because I live, and come to live where I live.' The same invitation,
+which calls us to a life of righteousness and self-suppression and
+purity, also calls us, with the sweet promise that is firm as the throne
+of God, to the everlasting felicities of that perfect kingdom in which,
+because the obedience is entire, the glory shall be untremulous and
+unstained. Therefore, considering who summons, by what He summons, and
+to what He calls us, do there not lie in the fact of that divine call to
+which we Christians say that we have yielded, the solemnest motives, the
+loftiest standard, the most stringent obligations for life? What sort of
+a life will that be which is worthy of that voice? Is yours? Is mine?
+Are there not the most flagrant examples of professing Christians, whose
+lives are in the most outrageous discordance with the lofty obligations
+and mighty motives of the summons which they profess to have obeyed?
+'Worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called!' Have I made my own the
+things which I am invited to possess? Have I yielded to the obligations
+which are enwrapped in that invitation? Does my life correspond to the
+divine purpose in calling me to be His? Can I say, 'Lord, Thou art mine,
+and I am Thine, and here my life witnesses to it, because self is
+banished from it, and I am full of God, and the life which I live in
+the flesh I live not to myself, but to Him that died for me?'
+
+An absolute correspondence, a complete worthiness or perfect desert, is
+impossible for us all, but a worthiness which His merciful judgment who
+makes allowance for us all may accept, as not too flagrantly
+contradictory of what He meant us to be, is possible even for our poor
+attainments and our stained lives. If it were Paul's supreme prayer,
+should it not be our supreme aim, that we may be worthy of Him that hath
+called us, and 'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called'?
+
+II. Note, here, the divine help to meet the test.
+
+If it were a matter of our own effort alone, who of us could pretend to
+reach to the height of conformity with the great design of the loving
+Father in summoning us, or with the mighty powers that are set in motion
+by the summons for the purifying of men's lives? But here is the great
+characteristic and blessing of God's Gospel, that it not only summons us
+to holiness and to heaven, but reaches out a hand to help us thither.
+Therein it contrasts with all other voices--and many of them are noble
+and pathetic in their insistence and vehemence--which call men to lofty
+lives. Whether it be the voice of conscience, or of human ethics, or of
+the great ones, the elect of the race, who, in every age, have been as
+voices crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'--all
+these call us, but reach no hand out to draw us. They are all as voices
+from the heights and are of God, but they are voices only; they summon
+us to noble deeds, and leave us floundering in the mire.
+
+But we have not a God who tells us to be good, and then watches to see
+if we will obey, but we have a God who, with all His summonses, brings
+to us the help to keep His commandments. Our God has more than a voice
+to enjoin, He has a hand to lift, 'Give what Thou commandest, and
+command what Thou wilt,' said Augustine. There is the blessing and glory
+of the Gospel, that its summons has in it an impelling power which makes
+men able to be what it enjoins them to become. My text, therefore,
+follows the prayer 'that God would count you worthy,' which contemplates
+God simply as judging men's correspondence with the ideal revealed in
+their calling, and is the cry of faith to the giving God, who works in
+us, if we will let Him, that which He enjoins on us. There are two
+directions of that divine working specified in the text. Paul asks that
+God would fulfil 'every desire of goodness and every work of faith,' as
+the Revised Version renders the words. Two things, then, we may hope
+that God will do for us--He will fulfil every yearning after
+righteousness and purity in our hearts, and will perfect the active
+energy which faith puts forth in our lives.
+
+Paul says, in effect, first, that God will fulfil every desire that
+longs for goodness. He is scarcely deserving of being called good who
+does not desire to be better. Aspiration must always be ahead of
+performance in a growing life, such as every Christian life ought to be.
+To long for any righteousness and beauty of goodness is, in some
+imperfect and incipient measure, to possess the good for which we long.
+This is the very signature of a Christian life--yearning after
+unaccomplished perfection. If you know nothing of that desire that
+stings and impels you onwards; if you do not know what it is to say,
+'Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
+death?' if you do not know what it is to follow the fair ideal realised
+in Jesus Christ with infinite longing, what right have you to call
+yourself a Christian? The very essence of the Christian life is yearning
+for completeness, and restlessness as long as sin has any power over us.
+We live not only by admiration, faith, and love, but we live by hope;
+and he who does not hunger and thirst after righteousness has yet to
+learn what are the first principles of the Gospel of Christ.
+
+If there be not the desire after goodness, the restlessness and
+dissatisfaction with every present good, the brave ambition that says,
+'Forgetting the things that are behind, I reach forth unto the things
+that are before,' there is nothing in a man to which God's grace can
+attach itself. God cannot make you better if you do not wish to be
+better. There is no point upon which His hallowing and ennobling grace
+can lay hold in your hearts without such desire. 'Open thy mouth wide
+and I will fill it.' If, as is too often the case with hosts of
+professing Christians, you shut your mouths tight and lock your teeth,
+how can God put any food between your lips? There must, first of all, be
+the aspiration, and then there will be the satisfaction.
+
+I look out upon my congregation, or, better still, I look into my own
+heart, and I say, If I, if you, dear brethren, are not worthy of the
+vocation wherewith we are called, we have not because we ask not. If
+there be no desire after goodness in our hearts, God cannot make us
+good. Our wishes are the mould into which the molten metal from the
+great furnace of His love will run. If we bring but a little vessel we
+cannot get a large supply. The manna lies round our tents; it is for us
+to determine how much we will gather.
+
+And in like manner, says Paul, God will fulfil every work of faith. Our
+faith in Jesus Christ will naturally tend to influence our lives, and to
+manifest itself as a driving power which will set all the wheels of
+conduct in motion. Paul is quite sure that if we trust ourselves to God,
+all the beneficent and holy work that flows from such confidence will by
+Him be fully perfected.
+
+God's fulfilment is to be done _with power_. That is to say, He will fit
+us to be worthy of our calling, He will answer our desires, He will give
+energy to our faith, and complete in number and in quality its
+operations in our lives, by reason of His dwelling with us and in us by
+that spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind which works all
+righteousness in believing hearts, and sheds divine beauty and goodness
+over character and life.
+
+III. Lastly, note the divine glory of the worthy.
+
+This fulfilment of every desire of goodness and work of faith is in
+order 'that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you
+and ye in Him.'
+
+Here, again, as in the first clause of our text, I take, in accordance
+with the prevailing tone of this letter, the reference to be mainly,
+though perhaps not exclusively, to a future transcendent glorifying of
+the name of Christ in perfected saints, and glorifying of perfected
+saints in Jesus Christ.
+
+We have, then, set forth, first, as the result of the fulfilling of
+Christian men's desires after goodness, and the work of their faith, the
+glory that accrues to Christ from perfected saints. They are His
+workmanship. You remember the old story of the artist who went into a
+fellow-artist's studio and left upon the easel one complete circle,
+swept with one master-whirl of the brush. Jesus Christ presents
+perfected men to an admiring universe as specimens of what He can do.
+His highest work is the redeeming of poor creatures like you and me, and
+the making of us perfect in goodness and worthy of our calling. We are
+His _chefs-d'oeuvre_, the master work of the great divine artist.
+
+Think, then, brethren, how, here and now, Christ's reputation is in our
+hands. Men judge of Him by us. The name of the Lord Jesus is glorified
+in you if you live 'worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,' and
+people will think better of the Master if His disciples are faithful.
+Depend upon it, if we of this church, for instance, and the Christian
+people within these walls now, lived the lives that they ought to do,
+and manifested the power of the Gospel as they might, there would be
+many who would say, 'They have been with Jesus, and the Jesus that has
+made them what they are must be mighty and great.' The best evidence of
+the power of the Gospel is your consistent lives.
+
+Think, too, of that strange dignity that in the future, in manners and
+in regions all undiscernible by us, Christians, who have been made out
+of stones into children of God, will make known 'unto principalities and
+powers in heavenly places' the wisdom and the love and the energy of the
+redeeming God. Who knows to what regions the commission of the perfected
+saints to make Christ known may carry them? Light travels far, and we
+cannot tell into what remote corners of the universe this may penetrate.
+This only we know, that they who shall be counted worthy to attain that
+life and the Resurrection from the dead shall bear the image of the
+heavenly, and perhaps to creations yet uncreated, and still to be
+evolved through the ages of eternity, it may be their part to carry the
+lustre of the light of the glory of God who redeemed and purified them.
+
+On the other hand, there is glory accruing to perfected saints in
+Christ. 'And ye in Him.' There will be a union so close as that nothing
+closer is possible, personality being preserved, between Christ and the
+saints above, who trust Him and love Him and serve Him there. And that
+union will lead to a participation in His glory which shall exalt their
+limited, stained, and fragmentary humanity into 'the measure of the
+stature of the fulness of Christ.' Astronomers tell us that dead, cold
+matter falls from all corners of the system into the sun, drawn by its
+magic magnetism from farthest space, and, plunging into that great
+reservoir of fire, the deadest and coldest matter glows with fervid heat
+and dazzling light. So you and I, dead, cold, dull, opaque, heavy
+fragments, drawn into mysterious oneness with Christ, the Sun of our
+souls, shall be transformed into His own image, and like Him be light
+and heat which shall radiate through the universe.
+
+Brethren, meditate on your calling, the fact, its method, its aim, its
+obligations, and its powers. Cherish hopes and desires after goodness,
+the only hopes and desires that are certain to be fulfilled. Cultivate
+the life of faith working by love, and let us all live in the light of
+that solemn expectation that the Lord will judge His people. Then we may
+hope that the voice which summoned us will welcome us, and proclaim even
+of us, stained and undeserving as we rightly feel ourselves to be:
+'They have not defiled their garments, therefore they shall walk with Me
+in white, for they are worthy.'
+
+
+
+
+EVERLASTING CONSOLATION AND GOOD HOPE
+
+          'Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even
+          our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us
+          everlasting consolation, and good hope through
+          grace. 17. Comfort your hearts, and stablish you
+          in every good word and work.'--2 THESS. ii. 16,
+          17.
+
+
+This is the second of the four brief prayers which, as I pointed out in
+my last sermon, break the current of Paul's teaching in this letter, and
+witness to the depth of his affection to his Thessalonian converts. We
+do not know the special circumstances under which these then were, but
+there are many allusions, both in the first and second epistles, which
+seem to indicate that they specially needed the gift of consolation.
+
+They were a young Church, just delivered from paganism. Like lambs in
+the midst of wolves, they stood amongst bitter enemies, their teacher
+had left them alone, and their raw convictions needed to be consolidated
+and matured in the face of much opposition. No wonder then that over and
+over again, in both letters, we have references to the persecutions and
+tribulations which they endured, and to the consolations which would
+much more abound.
+
+But whatever may have been their specific circumstances, the prayer
+which puts special emphasis on comfort is as much needed by each of us
+as it could ever have been by any of them. For there are no eyes that
+have not wept, or will not weep; no breath that has not been, or will
+not be, drawn in sighs; and no hearts that have not bled, or will not
+bleed. So, dear friends, the prayer that went up for these long since
+comforted brothers, in their forgotten obscure sorrows, is as needful
+for each of us--that the God who has given everlasting consolation may
+apply the consolations which He has supplied, and 'comfort our hearts
+and stablish them in every good word and work.'
+
+The prayer naturally falls, as all true prayer will, into three
+sections--the contemplation of Him to whom it is addressed, the grasping
+of the great act on which it is based, and the specification of the
+desires which it includes. These three thoughts may guide us for a few
+moments now.
+
+I. First of all, then, note the divine hearers of the prayer.
+
+The first striking thing about this prayer is its emphatic recognition
+of the divinity of Jesus Christ as a truth familiar to these
+Thessalonian converts. Note the solemn accumulation of His august
+titles, 'Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.' Note, further, that
+extraordinary association of His name with the Father's. Note, still
+further, the most remarkable order in which these two names occur--Jesus
+first, God second. If we were not so familiar with the words, and with
+their order, which reappears in Paul's well-known and frequently-used
+Benediction, we should be startled to find that Jesus Christ was put
+before God in such a solemn address. The association and the order of
+mention of the names are equally outrageous, profane, and inexplicable,
+except upon one hypothesis, and that is that Jesus Christ is divine.
+
+The reason for the order may be found partly in the context, which has
+just been naming Christ, but still more in the fact that whilst he
+writes, the Apostle is realising the mediation of Christ, and that the
+order of mention is the order of our approach. The Father comes to us in
+the Son; we come to the Father by the Son; and, therefore, it is no
+intercepting of our reverence, nor blasphemously lifting the creature to
+undue elevation, when in one act the Apostle appeals to 'our Lord Jesus
+Christ Himself, and God our Father.'
+
+Note, still further, the distinct address to Christ as the Hearer of
+Prayer. And, note, last of all, about this matter, the singular
+grammatical irregularity in my text, which is something much more than a
+mere blunder or slip of the pen. The words which follow, viz., 'comfort'
+and 'stablish,' are in the singular, whilst these two mighty and august
+names are their nominatives, and would therefore, by all regularity,
+require a plural to follow them. That this peculiarity is no mere
+accident, but intentional and deliberate, is made probable by the two
+instances in our text, and is made certain, as it seems to me, by the
+fact that the same anomalous and eloquent construction occurs in the
+previous epistle to the same church, where we have in exact parallelism
+with our text, 'God Himself, our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ,'
+with the singular verb, 'direct our way unto you.' The phraseology is
+the expression, in grammatical form, of the great truth, 'Whatsoever
+things the Father doeth, these also doth the Son likewise.' And from it
+there gleam out unmistakably the great principles of the unity of action
+and the distinction of person between Father and Son, in the depths of
+that infinite and mysterious Godhead.
+
+Now all this, which seems to me to be irrefragable, is made the more
+remarkable and the stronger as a witness of the truth, from the fact
+that it occurs in this perfectly incidental fashion, and without a word
+of explanation or apology, as taking for granted that there was a
+background of teaching in the Thessalonian Church which had prepared the
+way for it, and rendered it intelligible, as well as a background of
+conviction which had previously accepted it.
+
+And, remember, these two letters, thus full-toned in their declaration,
+and taking for granted the previous acceptance of the great doctrine of
+the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, are the earliest
+portions of the New Testament, and are often spoken about as being
+singularly undogmatic. So they are, and therefore all the more eloquent
+and all the more conclusive is such a testimony as this to the sort of
+teaching which from the beginning the Apostle addressed to his converts.
+
+Now is that your notion of Jesus Christ? Do you regard Him as the sharer
+in the divine attributes and in the divine throne? It was a living
+Christ that Paul was thinking about when he wrote these words, who could
+hear him praying in Corinth, and could reach a helping hand down to
+these poor men in Thessalonica. It was a divine Christ that Paul was
+thinking about when he dared to say, 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, and God our
+Father.' And I beseech you to ask yourself the question whether your
+faith accepts that great teaching, and whether to you He is far more
+than 'the Man Christ Jesus'; and just because He is _the_ man, is
+therefore the Son of God. Brethren! either Jesus lies in an unknown
+grave, ignorant of all that is going on here, and the notion that He can
+help is a delusion and a dream, or else He is the ever-living because He
+is the divine Christ, to whom we poor men can speak with the certainty
+that He hears us, and who wields the energies of Deity, and works the
+same works as the Father, for the help and blessing of the souls that
+trust Him.
+
+II. Secondly, note the great fact on which this prayer builds itself.
+
+The form of words in the original, 'loved' and 'given,' all but
+necessarily requires us to suppose that their reference is to some one
+definite historical act in which the love was manifested, and, as love
+always does, found voice in giving. Love is the infinite desire to
+bestow, and its language is always a gift. Then, according to the
+Apostle's thought, there is some one act in which all the fulness of the
+divine love manifests itself; some one act in which all the treasures
+which God can bestow upon men are conveyed and handed over to a world.
+
+The statement that there is such renders almost unnecessary the question
+what such an act is. For there can be but one in all the sweep of the
+magnificent and beneficent divine deeds, so correspondent to His love,
+and so inclusive of all His giving, as that it shall be the ground of
+our confidence and the warrant for our prayers. The gift of Jesus Christ
+is that in which everlasting consolation and good hope are bestowed upon
+men. When our desires are widened out to the widest they must be based
+upon the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ; and when we would think most
+confidently and most desiringly of the benefits that we seek, for
+ourselves or for our fellows, we must turn to the Cross. My prayer is
+then acceptable and prevalent when it foots itself on the past divine
+act, and looking to the life and death of Jesus Christ, is widened out
+to long for, ask for, and in the very longing and asking for to begin
+to possess, the fulness of the gifts which then were brought to men in
+Him.
+
+'Everlasting consolation and good hope.' I suppose the Apostle's
+emphasis is to be placed quite as much on the adjectives as on the
+nouns; for there are consolations enough in the world, only none of them
+are permanent; and there are hopes enough that amuse and draw men, but
+one of them only is 'good.' The gift of Christ, thinks Paul, is the gift
+of a comfort which will never fail amidst all the vicissitudes and
+accumulated and repeated and prolonged sorrows to which flesh is heir,
+and is likewise the gift of a hope which, in its basis and in its
+objects, is equally noble and good.
+
+Look at these two things briefly. Paul thinks that in Jesus Christ you
+and I, and all the world, if it will have it, has received the gift of
+an everlasting comfort. Ah! sorrow is more persistent than consolation.
+The bandaged wounds bleed again; the fire damped down for a moment
+smoulders, even when damped, and bursts out again. But there is one
+source of comfort which, because it comes from an unchangeable Christ,
+and because it communicates unfailing gifts of patience and insight, and
+because it leads forward to everlasting blessedness and recompenses, may
+well be called 'eternal consolation.' Of course, consolation is not
+needed when sorrow has ceased; and when the wiping away of all tears
+from off all faces, and the plunging of grief into the nethermost fires,
+there to be consumed, have come about, there is no more need for
+comfort. Yet that which made the comfort while sorrow lasts, makes the
+triumph and the rapture when sorrow is dead, and is everlasting, though
+its office of consolation determines with earth.
+
+'Good hope through grace.' This is the weakness of all the hopes which
+dance like fireflies in the dark before men, and are often like
+will-o'-the-wisps in the night tempting men into deep mire, where there
+is no standing--that they are uncertain in their basis and inadequate in
+their range. The prostitution of the great faculty of hope is one of the
+saddest characteristics of our feeble and fallen manhood; for the bulk
+of our hopes are doubtful and akin to fears, and are mean and low, and
+disproportioned to the possibilities, and therefore the obligations, of
+our spirits. But in that Cross which teaches us the meaning of sorrows,
+and in that Christ whose presence is light in darkness, and the very
+embodied consolation of all hearts, there lie at once the foundation and
+the object of a hope which, in consideration both of object and
+foundation, stands unique in its excellence and sufficient in its
+firmness. 'A good hope'; good because well founded; and good because
+grasping worthy objects; eternal consolation outlasting all
+sorrows--these things were given once for all, to the whole world when
+Jesus Christ came and lived and died. The materials for a comfort that
+shall never fail me, and for the foundation and the object of a hope
+that shall never be ashamed, are supplied in Jesus Christ our Lord. And
+so these gifts, already passed under the great seal of heaven, and
+confirmed to us all, if we choose to take them for ours, are the ground
+upon which the largest prayers may be rested, and the most ardent
+desires may be unblamably cherished, in the full confidence that no
+petitions of ours can reach to the greatness of the divine purpose, and
+that the widest and otherwise wildest of our hopes and wishes are sober
+under-estimates of what God has already given to us. For if He has
+given the material, He will apply what He has supplied. And if He has
+thus in the past bestowed the possibilities of comfort and hope upon the
+world, He will not slack His hand, if we desire the possibility to be in
+our hearts turned into the actuality.
+
+God has given, therefore God will give. That in heaven's logic, but it
+does not do for men. It presupposes inexhaustible resources,
+unchangeable purposes of kindness, patience that is not disgusted and
+cannot be turned away by our sin. These things being presupposed it is
+true; and the prayer of my text, that God would comfort, can have no
+firmer foundation than the confidence of my text, that God has given
+'everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.' 'Thou hast helped
+us; leave us not, neither forsake us, O God of our salvation.'
+
+III. The last thing here is the petitions based upon the contemplation
+of the divine hearers of the prayer, and of the gift already bestowed by
+God.
+
+May He 'comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and
+work.' I have already said all that perhaps is necessary in regard to
+the connection between the past gift of everlasting consolation and the
+present and future comforting of hearts which is here desired. It seems
+to me that the Apostle has in his mind the distinction between the great
+work of Christ, in which are supplied for us the materials for comfort
+and hope, and the present and continuous work of that Divine Spirit, by
+which God dwelling in our hearts in Jesus Christ makes real for each of
+us the universal gift of consolation and of hope. God has bestowed the
+materials for comfort; God will give the comfort for which He has
+supplied the materials. It were a poor thing if all that we could
+expect from our loving Father in the heavens were that He should
+contribute to us what might make us peaceful and glad and calm in
+sorrow, if we chose to use it. Men comfort from without; God steals into
+the heart, and there diffuses the aroma of His presence. Christ comes
+into the ship before He says, 'Peace! be still!' It is not enough for
+our poor troubled heart that there should be calmness and consolation
+twining round the Cross if we choose to pluck the fruit. We need, and
+therefore we have, an indwelling God who, by that Spirit which is the
+Comforter, will make for each of us the everlasting consolation which He
+has bestowed upon the world our individual possession. God's husbandry
+is not merely broadcast sowing of the seed, but the planting in each
+individual heart of the precious germ. And the God who has given
+everlasting consolation to a whole world will comfort _thy_ heart.
+
+Then, again, the comforted heart will be a stable heart. Our fixedness
+and stability are not natural immobility, but communicated
+steadfastness. There must be, first, the consolation of Christ before
+there can be the calmness of a settled heart. We all know how
+vacillating, how driven to and fro by gusts of passion and winds of
+doctrine and forces of earth our resolutions and spirits are. But
+thistledown glued to a firm surface will be firm, and any light thing
+lashed to a solid one will be solid; and reeds shaken with the wind may
+be turned into brazen pillars that cannot be moved. If we have Christ in
+our hearts, He will be our consolation first and our stability next. Why
+should it be that we are spasmodic and fluctuating, and the slaves of
+ups and downs, like some barometer in stormy weather; now at 'set
+fair,' and then away down where 'much rain' is written? There is no need
+for it. Get Christ into your heart, and your mercury will always stand
+at one height. Why should it be that at one hour the flashing waters
+fill the harbour, and that six hours afterwards there is a waste of ooze
+and filth? It need not be. Our hearts may be like some landlocked lake
+that knows no tide. 'His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.'
+
+The comforted and stable heart will be a fruitful heart. 'In _every_
+good word and work.' Ah! how fragmentary is our goodness, like the
+broken torsos of the statues of fair gods dug up in some classic land.
+There is no reason why each of us should not appropriate and make our
+own the forms of goodness to which we are least naturally inclined, and
+cultivate and possess a symmetrical, fully-developed, all-round
+goodness, in some humble measure after the pattern of Jesus Christ our
+Lord. Practical righteousness, 'in every good word and work,' is the
+outcome of all the sacred and secret consolations and blessings that
+Jesus Christ imparts. There are many Christian people who are like those
+swallow-holes, as they call them, characteristic of limestone countries,
+where a great river plunges into a cave and is no more heard of. You do
+not get your comforts and your blessing for that, brother, but in order
+that all the joy and peace, all the calmness and the communion, which
+you realise in the secret place of the Most High, may be translated into
+goodness and manifest righteousness in the market-place and the street.
+We get our goodness where we get our consolation, from Jesus Christ and
+His Cross.
+
+And so, dear friends, all your comforts will die, and your sorrows will
+live, unless you have Christ for your own. The former will be like some
+application that is put on a poisoned bite, which will soothe it for a
+moment, but as soon as the anodyne dries off the skin, the poison will
+tingle and burn again, and will be working in the blood, whilst the
+remedy only touched the surface of the flesh. All your hopes will be
+like a child's castles on the sand, which the next tide will smooth out
+and obliterate, unless your hope is fixed on Him. You may have
+everlasting consolation, you may have a hope which will enable you to
+look serenely on the ills of life, and on the darkness of death, and on
+what darkly looms beyond death. You may have a calmed and steadied
+heart; you may have an all-round, stable, comprehensive goodness. But
+there is only one way to get these blessings, and that is to grasp and
+make our own, by simple faith and constant clinging, that great gift,
+given once for all in Jesus Christ, the gift of comfort that never dies,
+and of hope that never deceives, and then to apply that gift day by day,
+through God's good Spirit, to sorrows and trials and duties as they
+emerge.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART'S HOME AND GUIDE
+
+          'The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God,
+          and into the patient waiting for Christ.'--2
+          THESS. iii. 5.
+
+
+A word or two of explanation of terms may preface our remarks on this,
+the third of the Apostle's prayers for the Thessalonians in this letter.
+The first point to be noticed is that by 'the Lord' here is meant, as
+usually in the New Testament, Jesus Christ. So that here again we have
+the distinct recognition of His divinity, and the direct address of
+prayer to Him.
+
+The next thing to notice is that by 'the love of God' is here meant, not
+God's to us, but ours to Him; and that the petition, therefore, respects
+the emotions and sentiments of the Thessalonians towards the Father in
+heaven.
+
+And the last point is that the rendering of the Authorised Version,
+'patient waiting for Christ,' is better exchanged for that of the
+Revised Version, 'the patience of Christ,' meaning thereby the same
+patience as He exhibited in His earthly life, and which He is ready to
+bestow upon us.
+
+It is not usual in the New Testament to find Jesus Christ set forth as
+the great Example of patient endurance; but still there are one or two
+instances in which the same expression is applied to Him. For example,
+in two contiguous verses in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read of His
+'enduring contradiction of sinners against Himself,' and 'enduring the
+Cross, despising the shame,' in both of which cases we have the verb
+employed of which the noun is here used. Then in the Apocalypse we have
+such expressions as 'the patience of Christ,' of which John says that he
+and his brethren whom he is addressing are 'participators,' and, again,
+'thou hast kept the word of my patience.'
+
+So, though unusual, the thought of our text as presented in the amended
+version is by no means singular. These things, then, being premised, we
+may now look at this petition as a whole.
+
+I. The first thought that it suggests to me is, the home of the heart.
+
+'The Lord direct you _into_ the love of God and the patience of Christ.'
+The prayers in this letter with which we have been occupied for some
+Sundays present to us Christian perfection under various aspects. But
+this we may, perhaps, say is the most comprehensive and condensed of
+them all. The Apostle gathers up the whole sum of his desires for his
+friends, and presents to us the whole aim of our efforts for ourselves,
+in these two things, a steadfast love to God, and a calm endurance of
+evil and persistence in duty, unaffected by suffering or by pain. If we
+have these two we shall not be far from being what God wishes to see us.
+
+Now the Apostle's thought here, of 'leading us into' these two seems to
+suggest the metaphor of a great home with two chambers in it, of which
+the inner was entered from the outer. The first room is 'the love of
+God,' and the second is 'the patience of Christ.' It comes to the same
+thing whether we speak of the heart as dwelling in love, or of love as
+dwelling in the heart. The metaphor varies, the substance of the thought
+is the same, and that thought is that the heart should be the sphere and
+subject of a steadfast, habitual, all-pleasing love, which issues in
+unbroken calmness of endurance and persistence of service, in the face
+of evil.
+
+Let us look, then, for a moment at these two points. I need not dwell
+upon the bare idea of love to God as being the characteristic of the
+Christian attitude towards Him, or remind you of how strange and
+unexampled a thing it is that all religion should be reduced to this one
+fruitful germ, love to the Father in heaven. But it is more to the
+purpose for me to point to the constancy, the unbrokenness, the depth,
+which the Apostle here desires should be the characteristics of
+Christian love to God. We sometimes cherish such emotion; but, alas, how
+rare it is for us to dwell in that calm home all the days of our lives!
+We visit that serene sanctuary at intervals, and then for the rest of
+our days we are hurried to and fro between contending affections, and
+wander homeless amidst inadequate loves. But what Paul asked, and what
+should be the conscious aim of the Christian life, is, that we should
+'dwell all our days in the house of the Lord, to behold the beauty of
+the Lord and to enquire in His temple.'
+
+Alas, when we think of our own experiences, how fair and far seems that
+other, contemplated as a possibility in my text, that our hearts should
+'abide in the love of God'!
+
+Let me remind you, too, that steadfastness of habitual love all round
+our hearts, as it were, is the source and germ of all perfectness of
+life and conduct. 'Love and do as Thou wilt,' is a bold saying, but not
+too bold. For the very essence of love is the smelting of the will of
+the lover into the will of the beloved. And there is nothing so certain
+as that, in regard to all human relations, and in regard to the
+relations to God which in many respects follow, and are moulded after
+the pattern of, our earthly relations of love, to have the heart fixed
+in pure affection is to have the whole life subordinated in glad
+obedience. Nothing is so sweet as to do the beloved's will. The germ of
+all righteousness, as well as the characteristic spirit of every
+righteous deed, lies in love to God. This is the mother tincture which,
+variously coloured and with various additions, makes all the different
+precious liquids which we can pour as libations on His altar. The one
+saving salt of all deeds in reference to Him is that they are the
+outcome and expression of a loving heart. He who loves is righteous,
+and doeth righteousness. So, 'love is the fulfilling of the law.'
+
+That the heart should be fixed in its abode in love to God is the secret
+of all blessedness, as it is the source of all righteousness. Love is
+always joy in itself; it is the one deliverance from self-bondage to
+which self is the one curse and misery of man. The emancipation from
+care and sorrow and unrest lies in that going out of ourselves which we
+call by the name of love. There be things masquerading about the world,
+and profaning the sacred name of love by taking it to themselves, which
+are only selfishness under a disguise. But true love is the
+annihilation, and therefore the apotheosis and glorifying, of self; and
+in that annihilation lies the secret charm which brings all blessedness
+into a life.
+
+But, then, though love in itself be always bliss, yet, by reason of the
+imperfections of its objects, it sometimes leads to sorrow. For
+limitations and disappointments and inadequacies of all sorts haunt our
+earthly loves whilst they last; and we have all to see them fade, or to
+fade away from them. The thing you love may change, the thing you love
+must die; and therefore love, which in itself is blessedness, hath
+often, like the little book that the prophet swallowed, a bitter taste
+remaining when the sweetness is gone. But if we set our hearts on God,
+we set our hearts on that which knows no variableness, neither the
+shadow of turning. _There_ are no inadequate responses, no changes that
+we need fear. On that love the scythe of death, which mows down all
+other products of the human heart, hath no power; and its stem stands
+untouched by the keen edge that levels all the rest of the herbage. Love
+God, and thou lovest eternity; and therefore the joy of the love is
+eternal as its object. So he who loves God is building upon a rock, and
+whosoever has this for his treasure carries his wealth with him
+whithersoever he goes. Well may the Apostle gather into one potent word,
+and one mighty wish, the whole fulness of his desires for his friends.
+And wise shall we be if we make this the chiefest of our aims, that our
+hearts may have their home in the love of God.
+
+Still further, there is another chamber in this house of the soul. The
+outer room, where the heart inhabits that loves God, leads into another
+compartment, 'the patience of Christ.'
+
+Now, I suppose I need not remind many of you that this great New
+Testament word 'patience' has a far wider area of meaning than that
+which is ordinarily covered by that expression. For _patience_, as we
+use it, is simply a passive virtue. But the thing that is meant by the
+New Testament word which is generally so rendered has an active as well
+as a passive side. On the passive side it is the calm, unmurmuring,
+unreluctant submission of the will to whatsoever evil may come upon us,
+either directly from God's hand, or through the ministration and
+mediation of men who are His sword. On the active side it is the
+steadfast persistence in the path of duty, in spite of all that may
+array itself against us. So there are the two halves of the virtue which
+is here put before us--unmurmuring submission and bold continuance in
+well-doing, whatsoever storms may hurtle in our faces.
+
+Now, in both of these aspects, the life of Jesus Christ is the great
+pattern. As for the passive side, need I remind you how, 'as a sheep
+before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'? 'When He was
+reviled He reviled not again, but committed Himself unto Him that
+judgeth uprightly.' No anger ever flushed His cheek or contracted His
+brow. He never repaid scorn with scorn, nor hate with hate. All men's
+malice fell upon Him, like sparks upon wet timber, and kindled no
+conflagration.
+
+As for the active side, I need not remind you how 'He set His face to go
+to Jerusalem'--how the great solemn '_must_' which ruled His life bore
+Him on, steadfast and without deflection in His course, through all
+obstacles. There never was such heroic force as the quiet force of the
+meek and gentle Christ, which wasted no strength in displaying or
+boasting of itself, but simply, silently, unconquerably, like the
+secular motions of the stars, dominated all opposition, and carried Him,
+unhasting and unresting, on His path. That life, with all its surface of
+weakness, had an iron tenacity of purpose beneath, which may well stand
+for our example. Like some pure glacier from an Alpine peak, it comes
+silently, slowly down into the valley; and though to the eye it seems
+not to move, it presses on with a force sublime in its silence and
+gigantic in its gentleness, and buries beneath it the rocks that stand
+in its way. The patience of Christ is the very sublimity of persistence
+in well-doing. It is our example, and more than our example--it is His
+gift to us.
+
+Such passive and active patience is the direct fruit of love to God. The
+one chamber opens into the other. For they whose hearts dwell in the
+sweet sanctities of the love of God will ever be those who say, with a
+calm smile, as they put out their hand to the bitterest draught, 'the
+cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?'
+
+Love, and evil dwindles; love, and duty becomes supreme; and in the
+submission of the will, which is the true issue of love, lies the
+foundation of indomitable and inexhaustible endurance and perseverance.
+
+Nor need I remind you, I suppose, that in this resolve to do the will of
+God, in spite of all antagonism and opposition, lies a condition at once
+of moral perfection and of blessedness. So, dear friends, if we would
+have a home for our hearts, let us pass into that sweet, calm,
+inexpugnable fortress provided for us in the love of God and the
+patience of Christ.
+
+II. Now notice, secondly, the Guide of the heart to its home.
+
+'The Lord direct you.' I have already explained that we have here a
+distinct address to Jesus Christ as divine, and the hearer of prayer.
+The Apostle evidently expects a present, personal influence from Christ
+to be exerted upon men's hearts. And this is the point to which I desire
+to draw your attention in a word or two. We are far too oblivious of the
+present influence of Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, upon the hearts of men
+that trust Him. We have very imperfectly apprehended our privileges as
+Christians if our faith do not expect, and if our experience have not
+realised, the inward guidance of Christ moment by moment in our daily
+lives. I believe that much of the present feebleness of the Christian
+life amongst its professors is to be traced to the fact that their
+thoughts about Jesus Christ are predominantly thoughts of what He did
+nineteen centuries ago, and that the proportion of faith is not observed
+in their perspective of His work, and that they do not sufficiently
+realise that to-day, here, in you and me, if we have faith in Him, He
+is verily and really putting forth His power.
+
+Paul's prayer is but an echo of Christ's promise. The Master said, 'He
+shall guide you into all truth.' The servant prays, 'The Lord direct
+your hearts into the love of God.' And if we rightly know the whole
+blessedness that is ours in the gift of Jesus Christ, we shall recognise
+His present guidance as a reality in our lives.
+
+That guidance is given to us mainly by the Divine Spirit laying upon our
+hearts the great facts which evoke our answering love to God. 'We love
+Him because He first loved us'; and the way by which Jesus directs our
+hearts into the love of God is mainly by shedding abroad God's love to
+us in our spirits by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.
+
+But, besides that, all these movements in our hearts so often neglected,
+so often resisted, by which we are impelled to a holier life, to a
+deeper love, to a more unworldly consecration--all these, rightly
+understood, are Christ's directions. He leads us, though often we know
+not the hand that guides; and every Christian may be sure of this--and
+he is sinful if he does not live up to the height of his
+privileges--that the ancient promises are more than fulfilled in his
+experience, and that he has a present Christ, an indwelling Christ, who
+will be his Shepherd, and lead him by green pastures and still waters
+sometimes and through valleys of darkness and rough defiles sometimes,
+but always with the purpose of bringing him nearer and nearer to the
+full possession of the love of God and the patience of Christ.
+
+The vision which shone before the eyes of the father of the forerunner,
+was that 'the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to guide our feet
+into the way of peace.' It is fulfilled in Jesus who directs our hearts
+into love and patience, which are the way of peace.
+
+We are not to look for impressions and impulses distinguishable from the
+operations of our own inward man. We are not to fall into the error of
+supposing that a conviction of duty or a conception of truth is of
+divine origin because it is strong. But the true test of their divine
+origin is their correspondence with the written word, the standard of
+truth and life. Jesus guides us to a fuller apprehension of the great
+facts of the infinite love of God in the Cross. Shedding abroad a
+Saviour's love does kindle ours.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the heart's yielding to its guide.
+
+If this was Paul's prayer for his converts, it should be our aim for
+ourselves. Christ is ready to direct our hearts, if we will let Him. All
+depends on our yielding to that sweet direction, loving as that of a
+mother's hand on her child's shoulder.
+
+What is our duty and wisdom in view of these truths? The answer may be
+thrown into the shape of one or two brief counsels.
+
+First, desire it. Do you Christian people want to be led to love God
+more? Are you ready to love the world less, which you will have to do if
+you love God more? Do you wish Christ to lay His hand upon you, and
+withdraw you from much, that He may draw you into the sanctities and
+sublimities of His own experienced love? I do not think the lives of
+some of us look very like as if we should welcome that direction. And it
+is a sharp test, and a hard commandment to say to a Christian professor,
+'Desire to be led into the love of God.'
+
+Again, expect it. Do not dismiss all that I have been saying about a
+present Christ leading men by their own impulses, which are His
+monitions, as fanatical and mystical and far away from daily experience.
+Ah! it is not only the boy Samuel whose infancy was an excuse for his
+ignorance, who takes God's voice to be only white-bearded Eli's. There
+are many of us who, when Christ speaks, think it is only a human voice.
+Perhaps His deep and gentle tones are thrilling through my harsh and
+feeble voice; and He is now, even by the poor reed through which He
+breathes His breath, saying to some of you, 'Come near to Me.' Expect
+the guidance.
+
+Still your own wills that you may hear His voice. How can you be led if
+you never look at the Guide? How can you hear that still small voice
+amidst the clattering of spindles, and the roar of wagons, and the
+noises in your own heart? Be still, and He will speak.
+
+Follow the guidance, and at once, for delay is fatal. Like a man walking
+behind a guide across some morass, set your feet in the print of the
+Master's and keep close at His heels, and then you will be safe. And so,
+dear friends, if we want to have anchorage for our love, let us set our
+love on God, who alone is worthy of it, and who alone of all its objects
+will neither fail us nor change. If we would have the temper which lifts
+us above the ills of life and enables us to keep our course unaffected
+by them all, as the gentle moon moves with the same silent, equable pace
+through piled masses of cloud and clear stretches of sky, we must attain
+submission through love, and gain unreluctant endurance and steadfast
+wills from the example and source of both, the gentle and strong
+Christ. If we would have our hearts calm, we must let Him guide them,
+sway them, curb their vagrancies, stimulate their desires, and satisfy
+the desires which He has stimulated. We must abandon self, and say,
+'Lord, I cannot guide myself. Do Thou direct my wandering feet.' The
+prayer will not be in vain. He will guide us with His eye, and that
+directing of our hearts will issue in experiences of love and patience,
+whose 'very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for
+immortality.' The Guide and the road foreshadow the goal. The only
+natural end to which such a path can lead and such guidance point is a
+heaven of perfect love, where patience has done its perfect work, and is
+called for no more. The experience of present direction strengthens the
+hope of future perfection. So we may take for our own the triumphant
+confidence of the Psalmist, and embrace the nearest and the remotest
+future in one calm vision of faith that 'Thou wilt guide me with Thy
+counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.'
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF PEACE AND THE PEACE OF THE LORD
+
+          'Now the Lord of Peace Himself give you peace
+          always, by all means. The Lord be with you
+          all.'--2 THESS. iii. 16.
+
+
+We have reached here the last of the brief outbursts of prayer which
+characterise this letter, and bear witness to the Apostle's affection
+for his Thessalonian converts. It is the deepening of the ordinary
+Jewish formula of meeting and parting. We find that, in most of his
+letters, the Apostle begins with wishing 'grace and peace,' and closes
+with an echo of the wish. 'Peace be unto you' was often a form which
+meant nothing. But true religion turns conventional insincerities into
+real, heartfelt desires. It was often a wish destined to remain
+unfulfilled. But loving wishes are potent when they are changed into
+petitions.
+
+The relation between the two clauses of my text seems to be that the
+second, 'The Lord be with you all,' is not so much a separate,
+additional supplication as rather the fuller statement, in the form of
+prayer, of the means by which the former supplication is to be
+accomplished. 'The Lord of Peace' gives peace by giving His own
+presence. This, then, is the supreme desire of the Apostle, that Christ
+may be with them all, and in His presence they may find the secret of
+tranquillity.
+
+I. The deepest longing of every human soul is for peace.
+
+There are many ways in which the supreme good may be represented, but
+perhaps none of them is so lovely, and exercises such universal
+fascination of attraction, as that which presents it in the form of
+rest. It is an eloquent testimony to the unrest which tortures every
+heart that the promise of peace should to all seem so fair. It may be
+presented and aimed at in very ignoble and selfish ways. It may be
+sought for in cowardly shirking of duty, in sluggish avoidance of
+effort, in selfish absorption, apart from all the miseries of mankind.
+It may be sought for in the ignoble paths of mere pleasure, amidst the
+sanctities of human love, amidst the nobilities of intellectual effort
+and pursuit. But all men in their workings are aiming at rest of spirit,
+and only in such rest does blessedness lie. 'There is no joy but calm.'
+It is better than all the excitements of conflict, and better than the
+flush of victory. Best which is not apathy, rest which is not
+indolence, rest which is contemporaneous with, and the consequence of,
+the full wholesome activity of the whole nature in its legitimate
+directions, that is the good that we are all longing for. The sea is not
+stagnant, though it be calm. There will be the slow heave of the calm
+billow, and the wavelets may sparkle in the sunlight, though they be
+still from all the winds that rave. Deep in every human heart, in yours
+and mine, brother, is this cry for rest and peace. Let us see to it that
+we do not mistranslate the meaning of the longing, or fancy that it can
+be found in the ignoble, the selfish, the worldly ways to which I have
+referred. We want, most of all, peace in our inmost hearts.
+
+II. Then the second thing to be suggested here is that the Lord of Peace
+Himself is the only giver of peace.
+
+I suppose I may take for granted, on the part at least of the members of
+my own congregation, some remembrance of a former discourse upon another
+of these petitions, in which I pointed out how, in phraseology analogous
+to that of my text, there were the distinct reference to the divinity of
+Jesus Christ, the distinct presentation of prayer to Him, the
+implication of His present activity upon Christian hearts.
+
+And here again we have the august and majestic 'Himself.' Here again we
+have the distinct reference of the title 'Lord' to Jesus. And here again
+we have plainly prayer to Him.
+
+But the title by which He is addressed is profoundly significant, 'The
+Lord of Peace.' Now we find, in another of Paul's letters, in immediate
+conjunction with His teaching, that casting all our care upon God is
+the sure way to bring the peace of God into our hearts, the title 'the
+God of Peace'; and he employs the same phraseology in another of his
+letters, when he prays that the 'God of Peace' would fill the Roman
+Christians 'with all joy and peace in believing.'
+
+So, then, here is a title which is all but distinctively divine. 'The
+_Lord_ of Peace' is brought into parallelism and equality with 'the God
+of Peace'; which were blasphemy unless the underlying implication was
+that Jesus Christ Himself was divine.
+
+He is the 'Lord of Peace' because that tranquillity of heart and spirit,
+that unruffled calm which we all see from afar, and long to possess, was
+verily His, in His manhood, during all the calamities and changes and
+activities of His earthly life. I have said that 'peace' is not apathy,
+that it is not indifference, that it is not self-absorption. Look at the
+life of the 'Lord of Peace.' In Him there were wholesome human emotions.
+He sorrowed, He wept, He wondered, He was angry, He pitied, He loved.
+And yet all these were perfectly consistent with the unruffled calm
+which marked His whole career. So peace is not stolid indifference, nor
+is it to be found in the avoidance of difficult duties, or the cowardly
+shirking of sacrifices and pains and struggles; but rather it is 'peace
+subsisting at the heart of endless agitation,' of which the great
+example stands in Him who was 'the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with
+grief,' and who yet, in it all, was 'the Lord of Peace.'
+
+Why was Christ's manhood so perfectly tranquil? The secret lies here. It
+was a manhood in unbroken communion with the Father. And what was the
+secret of that unbroken communion with the Father? It lies here, in the
+perfect submission of His will. Resignation is peace. The surrender of
+self-will is peace. Obedience is peace. Trust is peace, and fellowship
+with the divine is peace. So Christ has taught us in His life--'The
+Father hath not left Me alone, because I do always the things that
+please Him.' And therein He has marked out for us the path of
+righteousness and communion, which is ever the path of peace. 'Thou wilt
+keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he
+trusteth in Thee.' That is the secret of the tranquillity of the
+ever-calm Christ.
+
+Being thus the Lord of Peace, inasmuch as it was His own constant and
+unbroken possession, He is the sole giver of it to others.
+
+Ah! brethren, our hearts want far more, for their stable restfulness,
+than we can find in any hand, or in any heart, except those of Jesus
+Christ Himself. For what do we need? We need, in order that we should
+know the sweetness of repose, an adequate object for every part of our
+nature. If we find something that is good and sweet and satisfying for
+some portion of this complex being of ours, all its other hungry desires
+are apt to be left unappeased. So we are shuttle-cocked from one wish to
+another, and bandied about from one partial satisfaction to another, and
+in them all it is but segments of our being that are satisfied, whilst
+all the rest of the circumference remains disquieted. We need that, in
+one attainable and single object, there shall be at once that which will
+subjugate the will, that which will illuminate and appease the
+conscience, that which will satisfy the seeking intellect, and hold
+forth the promise of endless progress in insight and knowledge, that
+which will meet all the desires of our ravenous clamant nature, and
+that which will fill every creek and cranny of our empty hearts as with
+the flashing brightness of an inflowing tide.
+
+And where shall we find all these, but in one dear heart, and where
+shall we discern the one object, whom, possessing, we have enough; and
+without whom, possessing all beside, we are mendicants and starving?
+Where, but in that dear Lord, who Himself will supply all our needs, and
+will minister to us peace, because for will and conscience and intellect
+and affections and desires He supplies the pabulum that they require,
+and gives more than enough for their satisfaction?
+
+We want, if we are to be at rest, that there shall be some absolute
+control over our passions, lusts, desires, which torture us for ever, as
+long as they are ungoverned. There is only one hand which will take the
+wild beasts of our nature, bind them in the silken leash of His love,
+and lead them along, tamed and obedient.
+
+We want, for our peace, that all our relations with circumstances and
+men around us shall be rectified. And who is there that can bring about
+such harmony between us and our surroundings that calamities shall not
+press upon us with their heaviest weight, nor opposing circumstances
+kindle angry resistance, but only patient perseverance and thankful
+persistence in the path of duty? It is only Christ that can regulate our
+relations to the things and the men around us, and make all things work
+together to our consciousness for our good.
+
+Further, if we are to be at rest, and possess any true, fundamental, and
+stable tranquillity, we want that our relations with God shall
+consciously be rectified and made blessed. And I, for my part, do not
+believe that any man comes into the full sweetness of an assured
+friendship with God, unless he comes to it by the road of faith in that
+Saviour in whom God draws near to us with tenderness in His heart, and
+blessings dropping from His open Hands. To be at peace with God is the
+beginning of all true tranquillity, and that can be secured only by
+faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+So, because He brings the reconciliation between man and God, because He
+brings the rectification of our relation to circumstances and men,
+because He brings the control of desires and passions and inclinations,
+and because He satisfies all the capacities of our natures, in Him, and
+in Him only, is there peace for us.
+
+III. So note, thirdly, that the peace of the Lord of Peace is perfect.
+
+'Give you peace always,' that points to perpetual, unbroken duration in
+time, and through all changing circumstances which might threaten a less
+stable and deeply-rooted tranquillity. And then, 'by all means,' as our
+Authorised Version has it, or, better, 'in all ways,' as the Revised
+Version reads, the reference being, not so much to the various manners
+in which the divine peace is to be bestowed, as to the various aspects
+which that peace is capable of assuming. Christ's peace, then, is
+perpetual and multiform, unbroken, and presenting itself in all the
+aspects in which tranquillity is possible for a human spirit.
+
+It is possible, then, thinks Paul, that there shall be in our hearts a
+deep tranquillity, over which disasters, calamities, sorrows, losses,
+need have no power. There is no necessity why, when my outward life is
+troubled, my inward life should be perturbed. There may be light in the
+dwellings of Goshen, while darkness lies over all the land of Egypt. The
+peace which Christ gives is no exemption from warfare, but is realised
+in the midst of warfare. It is no immunity from sorrows, but is then
+most felt when the storm of sorrow beating upon us is patiently
+accepted. The rainbow steadfastly stands spanning the tortured waters of
+the cataract. The fire may burn, like that old Greek fire, beneath the
+water. The surface may be agitated, but the centre may be calm. It is
+not calamity that breaks our peace, but it is the resistance of our
+wills to calamity which troubles us. When we can bow and submit and say,
+'Thy will be done,' 'it seemeth good to Thee, do as Thou wilt,' then
+nothing can break the peace of God in our hearts. We seek in the wrong
+quarter for peace when we seek it in the disposition of outward things
+according to our wills. We seek in the right way when we seek it in the
+disposition of our wills according to the will of the Father manifest in
+our circumstances. There may be peace always, even whilst the storms,
+efforts, and calamities of life are in full operation around us and on
+us. That peace may be uninterrupted and uniform, extended on one high
+level, as it were through all our lives. It is not so with us, dear
+brethren; there are ups and downs which are our own fault. The peace of
+God may be permanent, but, in order that it should be, there must be
+permanent communion and permanent obedience.
+
+Further, says the Apostle, Christ's peace will not manifest itself in
+one form only, but in all the shapes in which peace is possible. There
+are many enemies that beset this calmness of spirit; for them all there
+is the appropriate armour and defence in the peace of God, I have
+already enumerated in part some of the requirements for true and
+permanent tranquillity of soul. All these are met in the peace of
+Christ. Whatever it is that disturbs men, He has His anodyne that will
+soothe. If circumstances threaten, if men array themselves against us,
+if our own evil hearts rise up in rebellion, if our passions disturb us,
+if our consciences accuse: for all these Christ brings tranquillity and
+calm. In every way in which men can be disturbed, and in every way,
+therefore, in which peace can be manifest, Christ's gift avails. 'Come
+unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
+rest.'
+
+IV. Lastly, 'the Lord of Peace' gives it by giving His own presence.
+
+The Thessalonians, as they listened to Paul's first prayer, might think
+to themselves, 'Always, by all means.' That is a large petition! Can it
+be fufilled? And so the Apostle adds, 'The Lord be with you all.' You
+cannot separate Christ's gifts from Christ. The only way to get anything
+that He gives is to get Him. It is His presence that does everything. If
+He is with me, the world's annoyances will seem very small. If I hold
+His hand I shall not be much troubled. If I can only nestle close to His
+side, and come under His cloak, He will shield me from the cold blast,
+from whatever side it blows. If my heart is twined around Him it will
+partake of the stability and calm of the great heart on which it rests.
+
+The secret of tranquillity is the presence of Christ. When He is in the
+vessel the waves calm themselves. So, Christian men and women, if you
+and I are conscious of breaches of our restfulness, interruptions of
+our tranquillity by reason of surging, impatient passions, and hot
+desires within ourselves, or by reason of the pressure of outward
+circumstances, or by reason of our having fallen beneath our
+consciences, and done wrong things, let us understand that the breaches
+of our peace are not owing to Him, but only to our having let go His
+hand. It is our own faults if we are ever troubled; if we kept close to
+Him we should not be. It is our own faults if the world ever agitates us
+beyond the measure that is compatible with central calm. Sorrow should
+not have the power to touch the citadel of our lives. Effort should not
+have the power to withdraw us from our trustful repose in Him. And
+nothing here would have the power, if we did not let our hand slip out
+of His, and break our communion with Him.
+
+So, dear brethren, 'in the world ye shall have tribulation, in Me ye
+shall have peace.' Keep inside the fortress and nothing will disturb.
+'He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under
+the shadow of the Almighty.' The only place where that hungry,
+passion-ridden heart of yours, conscious of alienation from God, can
+find rest, is close by Jesus Christ. 'The Lord be with us all,' and then
+the peace of that Lord shall clothe and fill our hearts in Christ
+Jesus.
+
+
+
+
+I. TIMOTHY
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT
+
+          'Now, the end of the commandment is love, out of a
+          pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith
+          unfeigned.'--1 TIM. 1. 6.
+
+
+The Apostle has just said that he left Timothy in Ephesus, in order to
+check some tendencies there which were giving anxiety. Certain teachers
+had appeared, the effect of whose activity was to create parties, to
+foster useless speculations, and to turn the minds of the Ephesian
+Christians away from the practical and moral side of Christianity. In
+opposition to these, the Apostle here lays down the broad principle that
+God has spoken, not in order to make acute theologians, or to provide
+materials for controversy, but in order to help us to love. The whole of
+these latest letters of the Apostle breathe the mellow wisdom of old
+age, which has learned to rate brilliant intellectualism, agility,
+incontroversial fence and the like, far lower than homely goodness. And
+so, says Paul, 'the end of the commandment is love.'
+
+Now he here states, not only the purpose of the divine revelation, but
+gives us a summary, but yet sufficient, outline of the method by which
+God works towards that purpose. The commandment is the beginning, love
+is the end or aim. And between these two there are inserted three
+things, a 'pure heart,' a 'good conscience,' 'faith unfeigned.' Now of
+these three the two former are closely connected, and the third is the
+cause, or condition, of both of them. It is, therefore, properly named
+last as being first in order, and therefore last reached in analysis.
+When you track a stream from its mouth to its source, the fountain-head
+is the last thing that you come to. And here we have, as in these great
+lakes in Central Africa--out of which finally the Nile issues--the
+stages of the flow. There are the twin lakes, a 'good conscience' and a
+'pure heart.' These come from 'unfeigned faith,' which lies higher up in
+the hills of God; and they run down into the love which is the 'end of
+the commandment.' The faith lays hold on the commandment, and so the
+process is complete. Or, if you begin at the top, instead of at the
+bottom, God gives the word; faith grasps the word, and thereby nourishes
+a 'pure heart' and a 'good conscience,' and thereby produces a universal
+love. So, then, we have three steps to look at here.
+
+I. First of all, what God speaks to us for.
+
+'The end of the commandment is love.'
+
+Now, I take it that the word 'commandment' here means, not this or that
+specific precept, but the whole body of Christian revelation, considered
+as containing laws for life. And to begin with, and only to mention, it
+is something to get that point of view, that all which God says, be it
+promise, be it self-manifestation, be it threatening, or be it anything
+else, has a preceptive bearing, and is meant to influence life and
+conduct. I shall have a word or two more to say about that presently,
+but note, just as we go on, how remarkable it is, and how full of
+lessons, if we will ponder it, that one name for the Gospel on the lips
+of the man who had most to say about the contrast between Gospel and
+Law is 'commandment.' Try to feel the stringency of that aspect of
+evangelical truth and of Christian revelation.
+
+Then I need not remind you how here the indefinite expression 'love'
+must be taken, as I think is generally the case in the New Testament,
+when the object on which the love rests is not defined, as including
+both of the twin commandments, of which the second, our Master says, is
+like unto the first, love to God and love to man. In the Christian idea
+these two are one. They are shoots from the one root. The only
+difference is that the one climbs and the other grows along the levels
+of earth. There is no gulf set in the New Testament teaching, and there
+ought to be none in the practice and life of a Christian man, between
+the love of God and the love of man. They are two aspects of one thing.
+
+Then, if so, mark how, according to the Apostle's teaching here, in this
+one thought of a dual-sided love, one turned upwards, one turned
+earthwards, there lies the whole perfection of a human soul. You want
+nothing more if you are 'rooted and grounded in love.' That will secure
+all goodness, all morality, all religion, everything that is beautiful,
+and everything that is noble. And all this is meant to be the result of
+God's speech to us.
+
+So, then, two very plain practical principles may be deduced and
+enforced from this first thought. First, the purpose of all revelation
+and the test of all religion is--character and conduct.
+
+It is all very well to know about God, to have our minds filled with
+true thoughts about Him, His nature, and dealings with us. Orthodoxy is
+good, but orthodoxy is a means to an end. There should be nothing in a
+man's creed which does not act upon his life. Or, if I may put it into
+technical words, all a man's _credenda_ should be his _agenda_; and
+whatsoever he believes should come straight into his life to influence
+it, and to shape character. Here, then, is the warning against a mere
+notional orthodoxy, and against regarding Christian truth as being
+intended mainly to illuminate the understanding, or to be a subject of
+speculation and discussion. There are people in all generations, and
+there are plenty of them to-day, who seem to think that the great
+verities of the Gospel are mainly meant to provide material for
+controversy--
+
+          'As if religion were intended
+           For nothing else but to be mended';
+
+and that they have done all that can be expected when they have tried to
+apprehend the true bearing of this revelation, and to contend against
+misinterpretations. This is the curse of religious controversy, that it
+blinds men to the practical importance of the truths for which they are
+fighting. It is as if one were to take some fertile wheat-land, and sand
+it all over, and roll it down, and make it smooth for a gymnasium, where
+nothing would grow. So the temper which finds in Christian truth simply
+a 'ministration of questions,' as my text says, mars its purpose, and
+robs itself of all the power and nourishment that it might find there.
+
+No less to be guarded against is the other misconception which the clear
+grasp of our text would dismiss at once, that the great purpose for
+which God speaks to us men, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, is that
+we may, as we say, be 'forgiven,' and escape any of the temporal or
+eternal consequences of our wrongdoing. That _is_ a purpose, no doubt,
+and men will never rise to the apprehension of the loftiest purposes,
+nor penetrate to a sympathetic perception of the inmost sweetness of the
+Gospel, unless they begin with its redemptive aspect, even in the
+narrowest sense of that word. But there are a miserable number of
+so-called and of real Christians in this world, and in our churches
+to-day, who have little conception that God has spoken to them for
+anything else than to deliver them from the fear of death, and from the
+incidence on them of future condemnation. He _has_ spoken for this
+purpose, but the ultimate end of all is that we may be helped to love
+Him, and so to be like Him. The aim of the commandment is love, and if
+you ever are tempted to rest in intellectual apprehensions, or to
+pervert the truth of God into a mere arena on which you can display your
+skill of fence and your intellectual agility, or if ever you are tempted
+to think that all is done when the sweet message of forgiveness is
+sealed upon a man's heart, remember the solemn and plain words of my
+text--the final purpose of all is that we may love God and man.
+
+But then, on the other side, note that no less distinctly is the sole
+foundation of this love laid in God's speech. My text, in its elevation
+of sentiment and character and conduct above doctrine, falls in with the
+prevailing tendencies of this day; but it provides the safeguards which
+these tendencies neglect. Notice that this favourite saying of the most
+advanced school of broad thinkers, who are always talking about the
+decay of dogma, and the unimportance of doctrine as compared with love,
+is here uttered by a man who was no sentimentalist, but to whom the
+Christian system was a most distinct and definite thing, bristling all
+over with the obnoxious doctrines which are by some of us so summarily
+dismissed as of no importance. My very text protests against the modern
+attempt to wrench away the sentiments and emotions produced in men, by
+the reception of Christian truth, from the truth which it recognises as
+the only basis on which they can be produced. It declares that the
+'commandment' must come first, before love can follow; and the rest of
+the letter, although, as I say, it decisively places the end of
+revelation as being the moral and religious perfecting of men into
+assimilation with the divine love, no less decisively demands that for
+such a perfecting there shall be laid the foundation of the truth as it
+is revealed in Jesus Christ.
+
+And that is what we want to-day in order to make breadth wholesome, and
+if only we will carry with us the two thoughts, the commandment and
+love, we shall not go far wrong. But what would you think of a man that
+said, 'I do not want any foundations. I want a house to live in'? And
+pray how are you going to get your house without the foundations? Or
+would he be a wise man who said, 'Oh, never mind about putting grapes
+into the vine vat, and producing fermentation; give me the wine!' Yes!
+But you must have the fermentation first. The process is not the result,
+of course, but there is no result without the process. And according to
+New Testament teaching, which, I am bold to say, is verified by
+experience, there is no deep, all-swaying, sovereign, heart-uniting love
+to God which is not drawn from the acceptance of the truth as it is in
+Jesus Christ.
+
+II. And so I come, secondly, to note the purifying which is needed prior
+to such love.
+
+Our text, as I said, divides the process into stages; or, if I may go
+back to a former illustration, into levels. And on the level
+immediately above the love, down into which the waters of the twin lakes
+glide, are a pure heart and a good conscience. These are the requisites
+for all real and operative love. Now they are closely connected, as it
+seems to me, more closely so than with either the stage which precedes
+or that which follows. They are, in fact, two twin thoughts, very
+closely identified, though not quite identical.
+
+A pure heart is one that has been defecated and cleansed from the
+impurities which naturally attach to human affections. A 'good
+conscience' is one which is void of offence towards God and man, and
+registers the emotions of a pure heart. It is like a sheet of sensitive
+paper that, with a broken line, indicates how many hours of sunshine in
+the day there have been. We need not discuss the question as to which of
+these two great gifts and blessings which sweeten a whole life come
+first. In the initial stages of the Christian life I suppose the good
+conscience precedes the pure heart. For forgiveness which calms the
+conscience and purges it of the perilous stuff which has been injected
+into it by our corruptions--forgiveness comes before cleansing, and the
+conscience is calm before the heart is purified. But in the later stages
+of the Christian life the order seems to be reversed, and there cannot
+be in a man a conscience that is good unless there is a heart that is
+pure.
+
+But however that may be--and it does not affect the general question
+before us--mark how distinctly Paul lays down here the principle that
+you will get no real love of God or man out of men whose hearts are
+foul, and whose consciences are either torpid or stinging them. I need
+not dwell upon that, for it is plain to anybody that will think for a
+moment that all sin separates between a man and God; and that from a
+heart all seething and bubbling, like the crater of a volcano, with foul
+liquids, and giving forth foul odours, there can come no love worth
+calling so to God, nor any benevolence worth calling so to man. Wherever
+there is sin, unrecognised, unconfessed, unpardoned, there there is a
+black barrier built up between a man's heart and the yearning heart of
+God on the other side. And until that barrier is swept away, until the
+whole nature receives a new set, until it is delivered from the love of
+evil, and from its self-centred absorption, and until conscience has
+taken into grateful hands, if I might so say, the greatest of all gifts,
+the assurance of the divine forgiveness, I, for one, do not believe that
+deep, vital, and life-transforming love to God is possible. I know that
+it is very unfashionable, I know it is exceedingly narrow teaching, but
+it seems to me that it is Scriptural teaching; and it seems to me that
+if we will strip it of the exaggerations with which it has often been
+surrounded, and recognise that there may be a kind of instinctive and
+occasional recognition of a divine love, there may be a yearning after a
+clear light, and fuller knowledge of it, and yet all the while no real
+love to God, rooted in and lording over and moulding the life, we shall
+not find much in the history of the world, or in the experience of
+ourselves or of others, to contradict the affirmation that you need the
+cleansing of forgiveness, and the recognition of God's love in Jesus
+Christ, before you can get love worth calling so in return to Him in
+men's hearts.
+
+Brethren, there is much to-day to shame Christian men in the singular
+fact which is becoming more obvious daily, of a divorce between human
+benevolence and godliness. It is a scandal that there should be so many
+men in the world who make no pretensions to any sympathy with your
+Christianity, and who set you an example of benevolence, self-sacrifice,
+enthusiasm for humanity, as it is called. I believe that the one basis
+upon which there can be solidly built benevolence to men is devotion to
+God, because of God's great love to us in Jesus Christ. But I want to
+stir, if I might not say sting, you and myself into a recognition of our
+obligations to mankind, more stringent and compelling than we have ever
+felt it, by this phenomenon of modern life, that a divorce has been
+proclaimed between philanthropy and religion. The end of the commandment
+is love, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the condition of such purifying.
+
+To recur to my former illustration, we have to go up country to a still
+higher level. What feeds the two reservoirs that feed the love? What
+makes the heart pure and the conscience good? Paul answers, 'faith
+unfeigned'; not mere intellectual apprehension, not mere superficial or
+professed, but deep, genuine, and complete faith which has in it the
+element of reliance as well as the element of credence. Belief is not
+all that goes to make faith. Trust is not all that goes to make faith.
+Belief and trust are indissolubly wedded in the conception of it. Such a
+faith, which knows what it lays hold of--for it lays hold upon definite
+truth, and lays hold on what it knows, for it trusts in Him whom the
+truth reveals--such a faith makes the heart pure and the conscience
+good.
+
+And how does it do so? By nothing in itself. There is no power in my
+faith to make me one bit better than I am. There is no power in it to
+still one accusation of conscience. It is only the condition on which
+the one power that purges and that calms enters into my heart and works
+there. The power of faith is the power of that which faith admits to
+operate in my life. If we open our hearts the fire will come in, and it
+will thaw the ice, and melt out the foulness from my heart. It is
+important for practice that we should clearly understand that the great
+things which the Bible says of faith it says of it only because it is
+the channel, the medium, the condition, by and on which the real power,
+which is Jesus Christ Himself, acts upon us. It is not the window, but
+the sunshine, that floods this building with light. It is not the opened
+hand, but the gift laid in it, that enriches the pauper. It is not the
+poor leaden pipe, but the water that flows through it, that fills the
+cistern, and cleanses it, whilst it fills. It is not your faith, but the
+Christ whom your faith brings into your heart and conscience, that
+purges the one, and makes the other void of offence towards God and man.
+
+So, brethren, let us learn the secret of all nobility, of all power, of
+all righteousness of character and conduct. Put your foot on the lowest
+round of the ladder, and then aspire and climb, and you will reach the
+summit. Take the first step, and be true to it after you have taken it,
+and the last will surely come. He that can say, 'We have known and
+believed the love that God hath to us,' will also be able to say, 'We
+love Him because He first loved us.' 'And this commandment have we of
+God, that he who loves God loves his brother also.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF THE HAPPY GOD'
+
+          'The glorious gospel of the blessed God.'--1 TIM.
+          i. 11.
+
+
+Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for our
+consideration of this text. The first is, that the proper rendering is
+that which is given in the Revised Version--'the gospel of the glory,'
+not the 'glorious gospel.' The Apostle is not telling us what kind of
+thing the Gospel is, but what it is about. He is dealing not with its
+quality, but with its contents. It is a Gospel which reveals, has to do
+with, is the manifestation of, the glory of God.
+
+Then the other remark is with reference to the meaning of the word
+'blessed.' There are two Greek words which are both translated 'blessed'
+in the New Testament. One of them, the more common, literally means
+'well spoken of,' and points to the action of praise or benediction;
+describes what a man is when men speak well of him, or what God is when
+men praise and magnify His name. But the other word, which is used here,
+and is only applied to God once more in Scripture, has no reference to
+the human attribution of blessing and praise to Him, but describes Him
+altogether apart from what men say of Him, as what He is in Himself, the
+'blessed,' or, as we might almost say, the 'happy' God. If the word
+happy seems too trivial, suggesting ideas of levity, of turbulence, of
+possible change, then I do not know that we can find any better word
+than that which is already employed in my text, if only we remember that
+it means the solemn, calm, restful, perpetual gladness that fills the
+heart of God.
+
+So much, then, being premised, there are three points that seem to me to
+come out of this remarkable expression of my text. First, the revelation
+of God in Christ, of which the Gospel is the record, is the glory of
+God. Second, that revelation is, in a very profound sense, an element in
+the blessedness of God. And, lastly, that revelation is the good news
+for men. Let us look at these three points, then, in succession.
+
+I. Take, first, that striking thought that the revelation of God in
+Jesus Christ is the glory of God.
+
+The theme, or contents, or purpose of the whole Gospel, is to set forth
+and make manifest to men the glory of God.
+
+Now what do we mean by 'the glory'? I think, perhaps, that question may
+be most simply answered by remembering the definite meaning of the word
+in the Old Testament. There it designates, usually, that supernatural
+and lustrous light which dwelt between the Cherubim, the symbol of the
+presence and of the self-manifestation of God. So that we may say, in
+brief, that the glory of God is the sum-total of the light that streams
+from His self-revelation, considered as being the object of adoration
+and praise by a world that gazes upon Him.
+
+And if this be the notion of the glory of God, is it not a startling
+contrast which is suggested between the apparent contents and the real
+substance of that Gospel? Suppose a man, for instance, who had no
+previous knowledge of Christianity, being told that in it he would find
+the highest revelation of the glory of God. He comes to the book, and
+finds that the very heart of it is not about God, but about a man; that
+this revelation of the glory of God is the biography of a man; and more
+than that, that the larger portion of that biography is the story of
+the humiliations, and the sufferings, and the death of the man. Would it
+not strike him as a strange paradox that the history of a _man's_ life
+was the shining apex of all revelations of the glory of _God_? And yet
+so it is, and the Apostle, just because to him the Gospel was the story
+of the Christ who lived and died, declares that in this story of a human
+life, patient, meek, limited, despised, rejected, and at last crucified,
+lies, brighter than all other flashings of the divine light, the very
+heart of the lustre and palpitating centre and fontal source of all the
+radiance with which God has flooded the world. The history of Jesus
+Christ is the glory of God. And that involves two or three
+considerations on which I dwell briefly.
+
+One of them is this: Christ, then, is the self-revelation of God. If,
+when we deal with the story of His life and death, we are dealing simply
+with the biography of a man, however pure, lofty, inspired he may be,
+then I ask what sort of connection there is between that biography which
+the four Gospels gives us, and what my text says is the substance of the
+Gospel? What force of logic is there in the Apostle's words: 'God
+commendeth _His_ love toward us in that whilst we were yet sinners
+_Christ_ died for us,' unless there is some altogether different
+connection between the God who commends His love and the Christ who dies
+to commend it, than exists between a mere man and God? Brethren! to
+deliver my text, and a hundred other passages of Scripture, from the
+charge of being extravagant nonsense, and clear, illogical _non
+sequiturs_, you must believe that in that man Christ Jesus 'we behold
+His glory--the glory of the only begotten of the Father'; and that when
+we look--haply not without some touch of tenderness and awed admiration
+in our hearts--upon His gentleness, we have to say, 'the patient God';
+when we look upon His tears we have to say, 'the pitying God'; when we
+look upon His Cross we have to say, 'the redeeming God'; and gazing upon
+the Man, to see in Him the manifest divinity. Oh! listen to that voice,
+'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' and bow before the story of
+the human life as being the revelation of the indwelling God.
+
+And then, still further, my text suggests that this self-revelation of
+God in Jesus Christ is the very climax and highest point of all God's
+revelations to men. I believe that the loftiest exhibition and
+conception of the divine character which is possible to us must be made
+to us in the form of a man. I believe that the law of humanity, for
+ever, in heaven as on earth, is this, that the Son is the revealer of
+God; and that no loftier--yea, at bottom, no other--communication of the
+divine nature can be made to man than is made in Jesus Christ.
+
+But be that as it may, let me urge upon you this thought, that in that
+wondrous story of the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ the very
+high-water mark of divine self-communication has been touched and
+reached. All the energies of the divine nature are embodied there. The
+'riches, both of the _wisdom_ and of the _knowledge_ of God,' are in the
+Cross and Passion of our Saviour. 'To declare at this time His
+_righteousness_' Jesus Christ came to die. The Cross is 'the _power_ of
+God unto salvation.' Or, to put it into other words, and avail oneself
+of an illustration, we know the old story of the queen who, for the love
+of an unworthy human heart, dissolved pearls in the cup and gave them to
+him to drink. We may say that God comes to us, and for the love of us,
+reprobate and unworthy, has melted all the jewels of His nature into
+that cup of blessing which He offers to us, saying: 'Drink ye all of
+it.' The whole Godhead, so to speak, is smelted down to make that
+rushing river of molten love which flows from the Cross of Christ into
+the hearts of men. Here is the highest point of God's revelation of
+Himself.
+
+And my text implies, still further, that the true living, flashing
+centre of the glory of God is the love of God. Christendom is more than
+half heathen yet, and it betrays its heathenism not least in its vulgar
+conceptions of the divine nature and its glory. The majestic attributes
+which separate God from man, and make Him unlike His creatures, are the
+ones which people too often fancy belong to the glorious side of His
+character. They draw distinctions between 'grace' and 'glory,' and think
+that the latter applies mainly to what I might call the physical and the
+metaphysical, and less to the moral, attributes of the divine nature. We
+adore power, and when it is expanded to infinity we think that it is the
+glory of God. But my text delivers us from all such misconceptions. If
+we rightly understand it, then we learn this, that the true heart of the
+glory is tenderness and love. Of power that weak man hanging on the
+Cross is a strange embodiment; but if we learn that there is something
+more godlike in God than power, then we can say, as we look upon Jesus
+Christ: 'Lo! this is our God. We have waited for Him, and He will save
+us.' Not in the wisdom that knows no growth, not in the knowledge which
+has no border-land of ignorance ringing it round about, not in the
+unwearied might of His arm, not in the exhaustless energy of His being,
+not in the unslumbering watchfulness of His all-seeing eye, not in that
+awful presence wheresoever creatures are; not in any or in all of these
+lies the glory of God, but in His love. These are the fringes of the
+brightness; this is the central blaze. The Gospel is the Gospel of the
+glory of God, because it is all summed up in the one word--'God so loved
+the world that He gave His only begotten Son.'
+
+II. Now, in the next place, the revelation of God in Christ is an
+element in the blessedness of God.
+
+We are come here into places where we see but very dimly, and it becomes
+us to speak very cautiously. Only as we are led by the divine teaching
+may we affirm at all. But it cannot be unwise to accept in simple
+literality utterances of Scripture, however they may seem to strike us
+as strange. And so I would say--the philosopher's God may be
+all-sufficient and unemotional, the Bible's God 'delighteth in mercy,'
+rejoiceth in His gifts, and is glad when men accept them. It is
+something, surely, amid all the griefs and sorrows of this
+sorrow-haunted and devil-hunted world, to rise to this lofty region and
+to feel that there is a living personal joy at the heart of the
+universe. If we went no further, to me there is infinite beauty and
+mighty consolation and strength in that one thought--the happy God. He
+is not, as some ways of representing Him figure Him to be, what the
+older astronomers thought the sun was, a great cold orb, black and
+frigid at the heart, though the source and centre of light and warmth to
+the system. But He Himself is joy, or if we dare not venture on that
+word, which brings with it earthly associations, and suggests the
+possibility of alteration--He is the blessed God. And the Psalmist saw
+deeply into the divine nature, who, not contented with hymning His
+praise as the possessor of the fountain of life, and the light whereby
+we see light, exclaimed in an ecstasy of anticipation, 'Thou makest us
+to drink of the rivers of Thy pleasures.'
+
+But there is a great deal more than that here, if not in the word
+itself, at least in its connection, which connection seems to suggest
+that, howsoever the divine nature must be supposed to be blessed in its
+own absolute and boundless perfectness, an element in the blessedness of
+God Himself arises from His self-communication through the Gospel to the
+world. All love delights in imparting. Why should not God's? On the
+lower level of human affection we know that it is so, and on the highest
+level we may with all reverence venture to say, The quality of that
+mercy . . . 'is twice blest,' and that divine love 'blesseth Him that
+gives and them that take.'
+
+He created a universe because He delights in His works, and in having
+creatures on whom He can lavish Himself. He 'rests in His love, and
+rejoices over us with singing' when we open our hearts to the reception
+of His light, and learn to know Him as He has declared Himself in His
+Christ. The blessed God is blessed because He is God. But He is blessed
+too because He is the loving and, therefore, the giving God.
+
+What a rock-firmness such a thought as this gives to the mercy and the
+love that He pours out upon us! If they were evoked by our worthiness we
+might well tremble, but when we know, according to the grand words
+familiar to many of us, that it is His nature and property to be
+merciful, and that He is far gladder in giving than we can be in
+receiving, then we may be sure that His mercy endureth for ever, and
+that it is the very necessity of His being--and He cannot turn His back
+upon Himself--to love, to pity, to succour, and to bless.
+
+III. And so, lastly, the revelation of God in Christ is good news for us
+all.
+
+'The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God.' How that word 'Gospel' has
+got tarnished and enfeebled by constant use and unreflective use, so
+that it slips glibly off my tongue and falls without producing any
+effect upon your hearts! It needs to be freshened up by considering what
+really it means. It means this: here are we like men shut up in a
+beleaguered city, hopeless, helpless, with no power to break out or to
+raise the siege; provisions failing, death certain. Some of you older
+men and women remember how that was the case in that awful siege of
+Paris, in the Franco-German War, and what expedients were adopted in
+order to get some communication from without. And here to us, prisoned,
+comes, as it did to them, a despatch borne under a dove's wing, and the
+message is this:--God is love; and that you may know that He is, He has
+sent you His Son who died on the Cross, the sacrifice for a world's sin.
+Believe it, and trust it, and all your transgressions will pass away.
+
+My brother, is not that good news? Is it not _the_ good news that you
+need--the news of a Father, of pardon, of hope, of love, of strength, of
+purity, of heaven? Does it not meet our fears, our forebodings, our
+wants at every point? It comes to you. What do you do with it? Do you
+welcome it eagerly, do you clutch it to your hearts, do you say, 'This
+is _my_ Gospel'? Oh! let me beseech you, welcome the message; do not
+turn away from the word from heaven, which will bring life and
+blessedness to all your hearts! Some of you have turned away long
+enough, some of you, perhaps, are fighting with the temptation to do so
+again even now. Let me press that ancient Gospel upon your acceptance,
+that Christ the Son of God has died for you, and lives to bless and help
+you. Take it and live! So shall you find that, 'as cold water to a
+thirsty soul,' so is this best of all news from the far country.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSPEL IN SMALL
+
+          'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
+          acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
+          to save sinners.'--1 TIM. i. 15.
+
+
+Condensation is a difficult art. There are few things drier and more
+unsatisfactory than small books on great subjects, abbreviated
+statements of large systems. Error lurks in summaries, and yet here the
+whole fulness of God's communication to men is gathered into a sentence;
+tiny as a diamond, and flashing like it. My text is the one precious
+drop of essence, distilled from gardens full of fragrant flowers. There
+is an old legend of a magic tent, which could be expanded to shelter an
+army, and contracted to cover a single man. That great Gospel which
+fills the Bible and overflows on the shelves of crowded libraries is
+here, without harm to its power, folded up into one saying, which the
+simplest can understand sufficiently to partake of the salvation which
+it offers.
+
+There are five of these 'faithful sayings' in the letters of Paul,
+usually called 'the pastoral epistles.' It seems to have been a manner
+with him, at that time of his life, to underscore anything which he felt
+to be especially important by attaching to it this label. They are all,
+with one exception, references to the largest truths of the Gospel. I
+turn to this one, the first of them now, for the sake of gathering some
+lessons from it.
+
+I. Note, then, first, here the Gospel in a nutshell.
+
+'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' Now, every word
+there is weighty, and might be, not beaten out, but opened out into
+volumes. Mark who it is that comes--the solemn double name of that great
+Lord, 'Christ Jesus.' The former tells of His divine appointment and
+preparation, inasmuch as the Spirit of the Lord God is upon Him,
+anointing Him to proclaim good tidings to the poor, and to open the
+prison doors to all the captives, and asserts that it is He to whom
+prophets and ritual witnessed, and for whose coming prophets and kings
+looked wearily through the ages, and died rejoicing even to see afar off
+the glimmer of His day. The name of Jesus tells of the child born in
+Bethlehem, who knows the experience of our lives by His own, and not
+only bends over our griefs with the pity and omniscience of a God, but
+with the experience and sympathy of a man.
+
+'Christ Jesus came.' Then He _was_ before He came. His own will impelled
+His feet, and brought Him to earth.
+
+'Christ Jesus came to save.' Then there is disease, for saving is
+healing; and there is danger, for saving is making secure.
+
+'Christ Jesus came to save sinners'--the universal condition,
+co-extensive with the 'world' into which, and for which, He came. And so
+the essence of the Gospel, as it lay in Paul's mind, and had been
+verified in his experience, was this--that a divine person had left a
+life of glory, and in wonderful fashion had taken upon Himself manhood
+in order to deliver men from the universal danger and disease. That is
+the Gospel which Paul believed, and which he commends to us as 'a
+faithful saying.'
+
+Well, then, if that be so, there are two or three things very important
+for us to lay to heart. The first is the universality of sin. That is
+the thing in which we are all alike, dear friends. That is the one thing
+about which any man is safe in his estimate of another. We differ
+profoundly. The members of this congregation, gathered accidentally
+together, and perhaps never to be all together again, may be at the
+antipodes of culture, of condition, of circumstances, of modes of life;
+but, just as really below all the diversities there lies the common
+possession of the one human heart, so really and universally below all
+diversities there lies the black drop in the heart, and 'we all have
+sinned and come short of the glory of God.' It is that truth which I
+want to lay on your hearts as the first condition to understanding
+anything about the power, the meaning, the blessedness of the Gospel
+which we say we believe.
+
+And what does Paul mean by this universal indictment? If you take the
+vivid autobiographical sketch in the midst of which it is embedded, you
+will understand. He goes on to say, 'of whom I am chief.' It was the
+same man that said, without supposing that he was contradicting this
+utterance at all, 'touching the righteousness which is in the law' I was
+'blameless.' And yet, 'I am chief.' So all true men who have ever shown
+us their heart, in telling their Christian faith, have repeated Paul's
+statement; from Augustine in his wonderful _Confessions_, to John Bunyan
+in his _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_. And then prosaic men
+have said, 'What profligates they must have been, or what exaggerators
+they are now!' No. Sewer gas of the worst sort has no smell; and the
+most poisonous exhalations are only perceptible by their effects. What
+made Paul think himself the chief of sinners was not that he had broken
+the commandments, for he might have said, and in effect did say, 'All
+these have I kept from my youth up,' but that, through all the
+respectability and morality of his early life there ran this streak--an
+alienation of heart, in the pride of self-confidence, from God, and an
+ignorance of his own wretchedness and need. Ah! brethren, I do not need
+to exaggerate, nor to talk about 'splendid vices,' in the untrue
+language of one of the old saints, but this I seek to press on you: that
+the deep, universal sin does not lie in the indulgence of passions, or
+the breach of moralities, but it lies here--'thou hast left Me, the
+fountain of living water.' That is what I charge on myself, and on every
+one of you, and I beseech you to recognise the existence of this
+sinfulness beneath all the surface of reputable and pure lives.
+Beautiful they may be; God forbid that I should deny it: beautiful with
+many a strenuous effort after goodness, and charming in many respects,
+but yet vitiated by this, 'The God in whose hand thy breath is, and
+whose are all thy ways, thou hast not glorified.' That is enough to make
+a man brush away all the respectabilities and proprieties and graces,
+and look at the black reality beneath, and wail out 'of whom I am
+chief.'
+
+But, further, Paul's condensed summary of the Gospel implies the fatal
+character of this universal sin. 'He comes to save,' says he. Now what
+answers to 'save' is either disease or danger. The word is employed in
+the original in antithesis to both conditions. To save is to heal and to
+make safe. And I need not remind you, I suppose, of how truly the
+alienation from God, and the substitution for Him of self or of
+creature, is the sickness of the whole man. But the end of sickness
+uncured is death. We 'have no healing medicine,' and the 'wound is
+incurable' by the skill of any earthly chirurgeon. The notion of
+sickness passes, therefore, at once into that of danger: for unhealed
+sickness can only end in death. Oh! that my words could have the waking
+power that would startle some of my complacent hearers into the
+recognition of the bare facts of their lives and character, and of the
+position in which they stand on a slippery inclined plane that goes
+straight down into darkness!
+
+You do not hear much about the danger of sin from some modern pulpits.
+God forbid that it should be the staple of any; but God forbid that it
+should be excluded from any! Whilst fear is a low motive,
+self-preservation is not a low one; and it is to that that I now appeal.
+Brethren, the danger of every sin is, first, its rapid growth; second,
+its power of separating from God; third, the certainty of a future--ay!
+and _present_--retribution.
+
+To me, the proof of the fatal effect of sin is what God had to do in
+order to stop it. Do you think that it would be a small, superficial cut
+which could be stanched by nothing else but the pierced hand of Jesus
+Christ? Measure the intensity of danger by the cost of deliverance, and
+judge how grave are the wounds for the healing of which stripes had to
+be laid on Him. Ah! if you and I had not been in danger of death, Jesus
+Christ would not have died. And if it be true that the Son of God laid
+aside His glory, and came into the world and died on the Cross for men,
+out of the very greatness of the gift, and the marvellousness of the
+mercy, there comes solemn teaching as to the intensity of the misery and
+the reality and awfulness of the retribution from which we were
+delivered by such a death. Sin, the universal condition, brings with it
+no slight disease and no small danger.
+
+Further, we may gather from this condensed summary where the true heart
+and essence of the Christian revelation is. You will never understand it
+until you are contented to take the point of view which the New
+Testament takes, and give all weight and gravity to the fact of man's
+transgression and the consequences thereof. We shall never know what the
+power and the glory of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is until we
+recognise that, first and foremost, it is the mighty means by which
+man's ruin is repaired, man's downrush is stopped, sin is forgiven and
+capable of being cleansed. Only when we think of the Gospel of Jesus
+Christ as being, first and foremost, the redemption of the world by the
+great act of incarnation and sacrifice, do we come to be in a position
+in any measure to estimate its superlative worth.
+
+And, for my part, I believe that almost all the mistakes and errors and
+evaporations of Christianity into a mere dead nothing which have
+characterised the various ages of the Church come mainly from this, that
+men fail to see how deep and how fatal are the wounds of sin, and so
+fail to apprehend the Gospel as being mainly and primarily a system of
+redemption. There are many other most beautiful aspects about it, much
+else in it, that is lovely and of good report, and fitted to draw men's
+hearts and admiration; but all is rooted in this, the life and death of
+Jesus Christ, the sacrifice by whom we are forgiven, and in whom we are
+healed. And if you strike that out, you have a dead nothing left--an
+eviscerated Gospel.
+
+I believe that we all need to be reminded of that to-day, as we always
+do, but mainly to-day, when we hear from so many lips estimates,
+favourable or unfavourable to Christianity and its mission in the world,
+which leave out of sight, or minimise into undue insignificance, or
+shove into a backward place, its essential characteristic, that it is
+the power of God through Christ, His Son Incarnate, dying and rising
+again for the salvation of individual souls from the penalty, the guilt,
+the habit, and the love of their sins, and only secondarily is it a
+morality, a philosophy, a social lever. I take for mine the quaint
+saying of one of the old Puritans, 'When so many brethren are preaching
+to the times, it may be allowed one poor brother to preach for
+eternity.'
+
+'This is a faithful saying, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
+save sinners.'
+
+II. Now, secondly, note the reliableness of this condensed Gospel.
+
+When a man in the middle of some slight plank, thrown across a stream,
+tests it with a stamp of his foot, and calls to his comrades, 'It is
+quite firm,' there is reason for their venturing upon it too. That is
+exactly what Paul is doing here. How does he know that it is 'a faithful
+saying'? Because he has proved it in his own experience, and found that
+in his case the salvation which Jesus Christ was said to effect has been
+effected. Now there are many other grounds of certitude besides this,
+but, after all, it is worth men's while to consider how many millions
+there have been from the beginning who would be ready to join chorus
+with the Apostle here, and to say, 'One thing I know, that whereas I
+was blind, now I see.' My experience cannot be your certitude; but if
+you and I are suffering from precisely the same disease, and I have
+tested a cure, my experiences should have some weight with you. And so,
+brethren, I point you to all the thousands who are ready to say, 'This
+poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him.' Are there any
+who give counter-evidence; that say, 'We have tried it. It is all a sham
+and imagination. We have asked this Christ of yours to forgive us, and
+He has not. We have asked Him to cleanse us, and He has not. We have
+tried Him, and He is an impostor, and we will have no more to do with
+Him.' There are people, alas! who have gone back to their wallowing in
+the mire, but it was not because Christ had failed in His promises, but
+because they did not care to have them fulfilled any more. Jesus Christ
+does not promise that His salvation shall work against the will of men
+who submit themselves to it.
+
+But it is not only because of that consentient chorus of many
+voices--the testimony of which wise men will not reject--that the word
+is 'a faithful saying.' This is no place or time to enter upon anything
+like a condensation of the Christian evidence; but, in lieu of
+everything else, I point to one proof. There is no fact in the history
+of the world better attested, and the unbelief of which is more
+unreasonable, than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if Christ rose
+from the dead--and you cannot understand the history of the world unless
+He did, nor the existence of the Church either--if Jesus Christ rose
+from the dead, it seems to me that almost all the rest follows of
+necessity: the influx of the supernatural, the unique character of His
+career, the correspondence of the end with the beginning, the broad seal
+of the divine confirmation stamped upon His claims to be the Son of God
+and the Redeemer of the world. All these things seem to me to come
+necessarily from that fact. And I say, given the consentient witness of
+nineteen centuries, given the existence of the Church, given the effects
+of Christianity in the world, given that upon which they repose--the
+Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead--the conclusion is sound,
+'This is a faithful saying . . . that He came into the world to save
+sinners.'
+
+Men talk, nowadays, very often as if the progress of science and new
+views as to the evolution of creatures or of mankind had effected the
+certitude of the Gospel. It does not seem to me that they have in the
+smallest degree. 'The foundation of God standeth sure,' whatever may
+become of some of the superstructures which men have built upon it. They
+may very probably be blown away. So much the better if we get the rock
+to build upon once more. A great deal is going, but not the Gospel. Do
+not let us be afraid, or suppose that it will suffer. Do not let us
+dread every new speculation as if it was going to finish Christianity,
+but recognise this--that the fact of man's sin and, blessed be God! the
+fact of man's redemption stands untouched by them all; and to-day, as of
+old, Jesus Christ is, and is firmly manifested to be, the world's
+Saviour. Whatsoever refuge may be swept away by any storms, 'Behold, I
+lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried corner-stone, a sure
+foundation: He that believeth shall not be confounded.'
+
+III. Lastly, notice the consequent wisdom and duty of acceptance.
+
+'Worthy of all acceptation,' says Paul. Yes, of course, if it is
+reliable. That word of the Lord which is 'sure, making wise the simple,'
+deserves to be received. Now this phrase, 'all acceptation,' may mean
+either of two things: it may either mean worthy of being welcomed by all
+men, or by the whole of each man.
+
+This Gospel deserves to be welcomed by every man, for it is fitted for
+every man, since it deals with the primary human characteristic of
+transgression. Brethren! we need different kinds of intellectual
+nutriment, according to education and culture. We need different kinds
+of treatment, according to condition and circumstance. The morality of
+one age is not the morality of another. Much, even of right and wrong,
+is local and temporary; but black man and white, savage and civilised,
+philosopher and fool, king and clown, all need the same air to breathe,
+the same water to drink, the same sun for light and warmth, and all need
+the same Christ for redemption from the same sin, for safety from the
+same danger, for snatching from the same death. This Gospel is a Gospel
+for the world, and for every man in it. Have you taken it for yours? If
+it is 'worthy of all acceptation,' it is worthy of _your_ acceptation.
+If you have not, you are treating Him and it with indignity, as if it
+was a worthless letter left in the post-office for you, which you knew
+was there, but which you did not think valuable enough to take the
+trouble to go for. The gift lies at your side. It is less than truth to
+say that it is '_worthy_ of being accepted.' Oh! it is infinitely more
+than that.
+
+It is, also, 'worthy of all acceptation' in the sense of worthy of being
+accepted into all a man's nature, because it will fit it all and bless
+it all. Some of us give it a half welcome. We take it into our heads,
+and then we put a partition between them and our hearts, and keep our
+religion on the other side, so that it does not influence us at all. It
+is worthy of being received by the understanding, to which it will bring
+truth absolute; of being received by the will, to which it will bring
+the freedom of submission; of being received by the conscience, to which
+it will bring quickening; of being received by the affections, to which
+it will bring pure and perfect love. For hope, it will bring a certainty
+to gaze upon; for passions, a curb; for effort, a spur and a power; for
+desires, satisfaction; for the whole man, healing and light.
+
+Brother! take it. And, if you do, begin where it begins, with your sins;
+and be contented to be saved as a sinner in danger and sickness, who can
+neither defend nor heal yourself. And thus coming, you will test the
+rope and find it hold; you will take the medicine and know that it
+cures; and, by your own experience, you will be able to say, 'This _is_
+a faithful saying, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIEF OF SINNERS
+
+          'Of whom I am chief.'--1 TIM. i. 15.
+
+
+The less teachers of religion talk about themselves the better; and yet
+there is a kind of personal reference, far removed from egotism and
+offensiveness. Few such men have ever spoken more of themselves than
+Paul did, and yet none have been truer to his motto: 'We preach not
+ourselves, but Christ Jesus.' For the scope of almost all his personal
+references is the depreciation of self, and the magnifying of the
+wonderful mercy which drew him to Jesus Christ. Whenever he speaks of
+his conversion it is with deep emotion and with burning cheeks. Here,
+for instance, he adduces himself as the typical example of God's
+long-suffering. If _he_ were saved none need despair.
+
+I take it that this saying of the Apostle's, 'Of whom I am chief,'
+paradoxical and exaggerated as it seems to many men, is in spirit that
+which all who know themselves ought to re-echo; and without which there
+is little strength in Christian life.
+
+I. And so I ask you to note, first, what this man thinks of himself.
+
+'Of whom I am chief.' Now, if we set what we know of the character of
+Saul of Tarsus before he was a Christian by the side of that of many who
+have won a bad supremacy in wickedness, the words seem entirely strange
+and exaggerated. But, as I have often had to say, the principle of the
+Apostle's estimate is to be found in his belief that, not the outward
+manifestation of evil in specific acts of immorality, or flagrant
+breaches of commandment, but the inward principle from which the deeds
+flowed, is the measure of a man's criminality, and that, according to
+the uniform teaching of Scripture, the very root of sin, and that which
+is common to all the things that the world's conscience and ordinary
+morality designate as wrong, is to be found here, that self has become
+the centre, the aim, and the law instead of God. 'This is the
+condemnation,' said Paul's Master--_not_ that men have done so-and-so
+and so-and-so, but--'that light is come into the world, and men love
+darkness.' That is the root of evil. 'When the Comforter is come,' said
+Paul's Master, 'He will convince the world of sin.' Because they have
+broken the commandments? Because they have been lustful, ambitious,
+passionate, murderous, profligate, and so on? No! 'Because they believe
+not in Me.'
+
+The common root of all sin is alienation of heart and will from God. And
+it is by the root, and not by the black clusters of poisonous berries
+that have come from it, that men are to be judged. Here is the
+mother-tincture. You may colour it in different ways, and you may
+flavour it with different essences, and you will get a whole
+_pharmacopoeia_ of poisons out of it. But the mother-poison of them
+all is this, that men turn away from the light, which is God; and for
+you and me is God in Christ.
+
+So this man, looking back from the to-day of his present devotion and
+love to the yesterdays of his hostility, avails himself indeed of the
+palliation, 'I did it ignorantly, in unbelief,' but yet is smitten with
+the consciousness that whilst as touching the righteousness that is of
+the law he was blameless, his attitude to that incarnate love was such
+as now, he thinks, stamps him as the worst of men.
+
+Brethren, _there_ is the standard by which we have to try ourselves. If
+we get down below the mere surface of acts, and think, not of what we
+do, but of what we are, we shall then, at any rate, have in our hands
+the means by which we can truly estimate ourselves.
+
+But what have we to say about that word 'chief'? Is not that
+exaggeration? Well, yes and no. For every man ought to know the weak and
+evil places of his own heart better than he does those of any besides.
+And if he does so know them, he will understand that the ordinary
+classification of sin, according to the apparent blackness of the deed,
+is very superficial and misleading. Obviously, the worst of acts need
+not be done by the worst of men, and it does not at all follow that the
+man who does the awful deed stands out from his fellows in the same bad
+pre-eminence in which his deed stands out from theirs.
+
+Take a concrete case. Go into the slums of Manchester, and take some of
+the people there, battered almost out of the semblance of humanity, and
+all crusted over and leprous with foul-smelling evils that you and I
+never come within a thousand miles of thinking it possible that we
+should do. Did you ever think that it is quite possible that the worst
+harlot, thief, drunkard, profligate in your back streets may be more
+innocent in their profligacy than you are in your respectability; and
+that we may even come to this paradox, that the worse the act, as a
+rule, the less guilty the doer? It is not such a paradox as it looks,
+because, on the one hand, the presence of temptation, and, on the other
+hand, the absence of light, make all the difference. And these people,
+who could not have been anything else, are innocent in degradation as
+compared with you, with all your education and culture, and
+opportunities of going straight, and knowledge of Christ and His love.
+The little transgressions that you do are far greater than the gross
+ones that they do. 'But for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford,'
+said the old preacher, when he saw a man going to the scaffold. And you
+and I, if we know ourselves, will not think that we have an instance of
+exaggeration, but only of the object nearest seeming the largest, when
+Paul said 'Of whom I am chief.'
+
+Only go and look for your sin in the way they look for Guy Fawkes at the
+House of Commons before the session. Take a dark lantern, and go down
+into the cellars. And If you do not find something there that will take
+all the conceit out of you, it must be because you are very
+short-sighted, or phenomenally self-complacent.
+
+What does it matter though there be vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius,
+and bright houses nestling at its base, and beauty lying all around like
+the dream of a god, if, when a man cranes his neck over the top of the
+crater, he sees that that cone, so graceful on the outside, is seething
+with fire and sulphur? Let us look down into the crater of our own
+hearts, and what we see there may well make us feel as Paul did when he
+said, 'Of whom I am chief.'
+
+Now, such an estimate is perfectly consistent with a clear recognition
+of any good that may be in the character and manifest in life. For the
+same Paul who says, 'Of whom I am chief,' says, in the almost
+contemporaneous letter sent to the same person, 'I have fought a good
+fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith'; and he is the
+same man who asserted, 'In nothing am I behind the very chiefest
+apostles, though I be nothing.' The true Christian estimate of one's own
+evil and sin does not in the least interfere with the recognition of
+what God strengthens one to do, or of the progress which, by God's
+grace, may have been made in holiness and righteousness. The two things
+may lie side by side with perfect harmony, and ought to do so, in every
+Christian heart.
+
+But notice one more point. The Apostle does not say 'I _was_,' but 'I
+_am_ chief.' What! A man who could say, in another connection, 'If any
+man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature; old things are passed
+away'--the man who could say, in another connection, 'I live, yet not
+I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I
+live by the faith of the Son of God'--does he also say, 'I _am_ chief'?
+Is he speaking about his present? Are old sins bound round a man's neck
+for evermore? If they be, what is the meaning of the Gospel that Jesus
+Christ redeems us from our sins? Well, he means this. No lapse of time,
+nor any gift of divine pardon, nor any subsequent advancement in
+holiness and righteousness, can alter the fact that I, the very same I
+that am now rejoicing in God's salvation, am the man that did all these
+things; and, in a very profound sense, they remain mine through all
+eternity. I may be a forgiven sinner, and a cleansed sinner, and a
+sanctified sinner, but I _am_ a sinner--not I _was_. The imperishable
+connection between a man and his past, which may be so tragical, and,
+thank God, may be so blessed, even in the case of remembered and
+confessed sin, is solemnly hinted at in the words before us. We carry
+with us ever the fact of past transgression, and no forgiveness, nor any
+future 'perfecting of holiness in the fear' and by the grace 'of the
+Lord' can alter that fact. Therefore, let us beware lest we bring upon
+our souls any more of the stains which, though they be in a blessed and
+sufficient sense blotted out, do yet leave the marks where they have
+fallen for ever.
+
+II. Note how this man comes to such an estimate of himself.
+
+He did not think so deeply and penitently of his past at the beginning
+of his career, true and deep as his repentance, and valid and genuine as
+his conversion were. But as he advanced in the love of Jesus Christ, his
+former active hostility became more monstrous to him, and the higher he
+rose, the clearer was his vision of the depth from which he had
+struggled; for growth in Christian holiness deepens the conviction of
+prior imperfection.
+
+If God has forgiven my sin the more need for me to remember it. 'Thou
+shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more
+because of thy transgressions, when I am pacified towards thee for all
+that thou hast done.' If you, my brother, have any real and genuine hold
+of God's pardoning mercy, it will bow you down the more completely on
+your knees in the recognition of your own sin. The man who, as soon as
+the pressure of guilt and danger which is laid upon him seems to him to
+be lifted off, springs up like some elastic figure of indiarubber, and
+goes on his way in jaunty forgetfulness of his past evil, needs to ask
+himself whether he has ever passed from death unto life. Not to remember
+the old sin is to be blind. The surest sign that we are pardoned is the
+depth of our habitual penitence. Try yourselves, you Christian people
+who are so sure of your forgiveness, try yourselves by that test, and if
+you find that you are thinking less of your past evil, be doubtful
+whether you have ever entered into the genuine possession of the
+forgiving mercy of your God.
+
+And then, still further, this penitent retrospect is the direct result
+of advancement in Christian characteristics. We are drawn to begin some
+study or enterprise by the illusion that there is but a little way to
+go. 'Alps upon alps arise' when once we have climbed a short distance up
+the hill, and it has become as difficult to go back as to go forward.
+
+So it is in the Christian life--the sign of growing perfection is the
+growing consciousness of imperfection. A spot upon a clean palm is more
+conspicuous than a diffuse griminess over all the hand. One stain upon
+a white robe spoils it which would not be noticed upon one less
+lustrously clean. And so the more we grow towards God in Christ, and the
+more we appropriate and make our own His righteousness, the more we
+shall be conscious of our deficiencies, and the less we shall be
+prepared to assert virtues for ourselves.
+
+Thus it comes to pass that conscience is least sensitive when it is most
+needed, and most swift to act when it has least to do. So it comes to
+pass, too, that no man's acquittal of himself can be accepted as
+sufficient; and that he is a fool in self-knowledge who says, 'I am not
+conscious of guilt, therefore I am innocent.' 'I know nothing against
+myself, yet am I not hereby justified: but He that judgeth me is the
+Lord.' The more you become like Christ the more you will find out your
+unlikeness to Him.
+
+III. Lastly, note what this judgment of himself did for this man.
+
+I said in the beginning of my remarks that it seemed to me that without
+the reproduction of this estimate of ourselves there would be little
+strong Christian life in us. It seems to me that that continual
+remembrance which Paul carried with him of what he had been, and of
+Christ's marvellous love in drawing him to Himself, was the very spring
+of all that was noble and conspicuously Christian in his career. And I
+venture to say, in two or three words, what I think you and I will never
+have unless we have this lowly self-estimate.
+
+Without it there will be no intensity of cleaving to Jesus Christ. If
+you do not know that you are ill, you will not take the medicine. If you
+do not believe that the house is on fire, you will not mind the escape.
+The life-buoy lies unnoticed on the shelf above the berth as long as the
+sea is calm and everything goes well. Unless you have been down into the
+depths of your own heart, and seen the evil that is there, you will not
+care for the redeeming Christ, nor will you grasp Him as a man does who
+knows that there is nothing between him and ruin except that strong
+hand. We must be driven to the Saviour as well as drawn to Him if there
+is to be any reality or tightness in the clutch with which we hold Him.
+And if you do not hold Him with a firm clutch you do not hold Him at
+all.
+
+Further, without this lowly estimate there will be no fervour of
+grateful love. That is the reason why so much both of orthodox and
+heterodox religion amongst us to-day is such a tepid thing as it is. It
+is because men have never felt either that they need a Redeemer, or that
+Jesus Christ has redeemed them. I believe that there is only one power
+that will strike the rock of a human heart, and make the water of
+grateful devotion flow out, and that is the belief in Jesus Christ as
+the Redeemer of mankind, and as my Saviour. Unless that be your faith,
+which it will not be except you have this conviction of my text in its
+spirit and essence, there will not be in your hearts the love which will
+glow there, an all-transforming power.
+
+And is there anything in the world more obnoxious, more insipid, than
+lukewarm religion? If, with marks of quotation, I might use the coarse,
+strong expression of John Milton--'It gives a vomit to God Himself.'
+'Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my
+mouth.'
+
+And without it there will be little pity of, and love for, our fellows.
+Unless we feel the common evil, and estimate by the intensity of its
+working in ourselves how sad are its ravages in others, our charity to
+men will be as tepid as our love to God. Did you ever notice that,
+historically, the widest benevolence to men goes along with what some
+people call the 'narrowest' theology? People tell us, for instance, to
+mark the contrast between the theology which is usually called
+evangelical and the wide benevolence usually accompanying it, and ask
+how the two things agree. The 'wide' benevolence comes directly from the
+'narrow' theology. He that knows the plague of his own heart, and how
+Christ has redeemed him, will go, with the pity of Christ in his heart,
+to help to redeem others.
+
+So, dear friends, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.'
+'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,
+and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'
+
+
+
+
+A TEST CASE
+
+          'Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in
+          me first Jesus Christ might show forth all
+          long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should
+          hereafter believe.'--1 TIM. i. 16.
+
+
+The smallest of God's creatures, if it were only a gnat dancing in a
+sunbeam, has a right to have its well-being considered as an end of
+God's dealings. But no creature is so isolated or great as that it has a
+right to have its well-being regarded as the sole end of God's dealings.
+That is true about all His blessings and gifts; it is eminently true
+about His gift of salvation. He saves men because He loves them
+individually, and desires to make them blessed; but He also saves them
+because He desires that through them others shall be brought into the
+living knowledge of His love. It is most especially true about great
+religious teachers and guides.
+
+Paul's humility is as manifest as his self-consciousness when he says in
+my text, 'This is what I was saved for. Not merely, not even
+principally, for the blessings that thereby accrue to myself, but that
+in me, as a crucial instance, there should be manifested the whole
+fulness of the divine love and saving power.' So he puts his own
+experience as giving no kind of honour or glory to himself, but as
+simply showing the grace and infinite love of Jesus Christ. Paul
+disappears as but a passive recipient; and Christ strides into the front
+as the actor in his conversion and apostleship.
+
+So we may take this point of view of my text, and look at the story of
+what befell the great Apostle as being in many different ways an
+exhibition of the great verities of the Gospel. I desire to signalise,
+especially, three points here. We see in it the demonstration of the
+life of Christ; an exhibition of the love of the living Christ; and a
+marvellous proof of the power of that loving and living Lord.
+
+I. First, then, take the experience of this Apostle as a demonstration
+of the exalted life, and continuous energy in the world, of Jesus
+Christ.
+
+What was it that turned the brilliant young disciple of Gamaliel, the
+rising hope of the Pharisaic party, the hammer of the heretics, into one
+of themselves? The appearance of Jesus Christ. Paul rode out of
+Jerusalem believing Him to be dead, and His Resurrection a lie. He
+staggered into Damascus, blind but seeing, and knowing that Jesus
+Christ lived and reigned. Now if you will let the man tell you himself
+what he saw, or thought he saw, you will come to this, that it was a
+visible, audible manifestation of a corporeal Christ. For it is
+extremely noteworthy that the Apostle ranks the appearance to himself,
+on the road to Damascus, as in the same class with the appearances to
+the other apostles which he enumerates in the great chapter in the
+Epistle to the Corinthians. He draws no distinction, as far as
+evidential force goes, between the appearance to Simon and to the five
+hundred brethren and to the others, and that which flashed upon him and
+made a Christian of him. Other men that were with him saw the light. He
+saw the Christ within the blaze. Other men heard a noise; he heard
+audible and intelligible words in his own speech. This is _his_ account
+of the phenomenon. What do _you_ think of his account?
+
+There are but three possible answers! It was imposture; it was delusion;
+it was truth. The theory of imposture is out of court. 'Do men gather
+grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?' Such a life as followed is
+altogether incongruous with the notion that the man who lived it was a
+deceiver. A fanatic he may have been; self-deceived he may have been;
+but transparently sincere he undeniably was. It is not given to
+impostors to move the world, as Paul did and does.
+
+Was it delusion? Well it is a strange kind of hallucination which has
+such physical accompaniments and consequences as those in the story--not
+wanting confirmation from witnesses--which has come to us.
+
+'At midday, O king'--in no darkness; in no shut-up chamber, 'at midday,
+O king--I heard . . . I saw . . .' 'The men that were with me' partly
+shared in the vision. There was a lengthened conversation; two senses at
+least were appealed to, vision and hearing, and in both vision and
+hearing there were partial participators. Physical consequences that
+lasted for three days accompanied the hallucination; and the man 'was
+blind, not seeing the sun, and neither did eat nor drink.' There must be
+some soil beforehand in which delusions of such a sort can root
+themselves. But, if we take the story in the Acts of the Apostles, there
+is not the smallest foothold for the fashionable notion, which is
+entirely due to men's dislike of the supernatural, that there was any
+kind of misgiving in the young Pharisee, springing from the influence of
+Stephen's martyrdom, as he went forth breathing out threatenings and
+slaughter. The plain fact is that, at one moment he hated Jesus Christ
+as a bad man, and believed that the story of the Resurrection was a
+gross falsehood; and that at the next moment he knew Him to be living
+and reigning, and the Lord of his life and of the world. Hallucinations
+do not come thus, like a thunderclap on unprepared minds. Nor is there
+anything in the subsequent history of the man that seems to confirm, but
+everything that contradicts, the idea that such a revolutionary change
+as upset all his mental furniture, and changed the whole current of his
+life, and slammed in his face the door that was wide open to advancement
+and reputation, came from a delusion.
+
+I think the hallucination theory is out of court, too, and there is
+nothing left but the old-fashioned one, that what he said he saw, _he
+saw_, and did not fancy; and that which he said he heard, _he heard_;
+and that it was not a buzzing of a diseased nerve in his own ears, but
+the actual speech of the glorified Christ. Very well, then; if that be
+true, what then? The old-fashioned belief--Jesus who died on the Cross
+is living, Jesus who died on the Cross is glorified, Jesus who died on
+the Cross is exalted to the throne of the universe, puts His hand into
+the affairs of the world as a power amongst them. Paul's Christology is
+but the _rationale_ of the vision that led to Paul's conversion. It was
+in part because he 'saw that Just One, and heard the words of His
+mouth,' that he declares, 'God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a
+name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
+should bow.' I do not say that the vision to Paul is a demonstration of
+the reality of the Resurrection, but I do say that it is a very strong
+confirmatory evidence, which the opponents of that truth will have much
+difficulty in legitimately putting aside.
+
+II. Secondly, let me ask you to consider how this man's experience is an
+exhibition of the love of the living Lord.
+
+That is the main point on which the Apostle dwells in my text, in which
+he says that in him Jesus Christ 'shows forth all long-suffering.' The
+whole fulness of His patient, pitying grace was lavished upon him. He
+says this because he puts side by side his hostility and Christ's love,
+what he had believed of Jesus, and how Jesus had borne with him and
+loved him through all, and had drawn him to Himself and received him. So
+he established by his own experience this great truth, that the love of
+Jesus Christ is never darkened by one single speck of anger, that He
+'suffereth long, and is kind'; that He meets hostility with patient
+love, hatred with a larger outpouring of His affection, and that His
+only answer to men's departures from Him in heart and feeling is more
+mightily to seek to draw them to Himself. 'Long-suffering' means, in its
+true and proper sense, the patient acceptance, without the smallest
+movement of indignation, of unworthy treatment. And just as Christ on
+earth 'gave His back to the smiter, and His cheeks to them that pulled
+off the hair'; and let the lips of Judas touch His, nor withdrew His
+face from 'shame and spitting'; and was never stirred to one impatient
+or angry word by any opposition, so now, and to us all, with equal
+boundlessness of endurance, He lets men hate Him, and revile Him, and
+forget Him, and turn their backs upon Him; and for only answer has,
+'Come unto Me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give
+you rest.'
+
+Oh, dear brethren, we can weary out all loves except one. By
+carelessness, rebelliousness, the opposition of indifference, we can
+chill the affection of those to whom we are dearest. 'Can a mother
+forget? Yea, she may forget,' but you cannot provoke Jesus Christ to
+cease His love. Some of you have been trying it all your days, but you
+have not done it yet. There does come a time when 'the wrath of the
+Lamb'--which is a very terrible paradox--is kindled, and will fall, I
+fear, on some men and women who are listening now. But not yet. You
+cannot make Christ angry. 'For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me
+Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, _for a pattern_'--for
+the same long-suffering is extended to us all.
+
+And then, in like manner, I may remind you that out of Paul's
+experience, as a cardinal instance and standing example of Christ's
+heart and dealings, comes the thought that that long-suffering is always
+wooing men to itself, and making efforts to draw them away from their
+own evil. In Paul's case there was a miracle. That difference is of
+small consequence. As truly as ever Christ spoke to Paul from the
+heavens, so truly, and so tenderly, does He speak to every one of us. He
+is drawing us all--you that yield and you that do not yield to His
+attractions, by the kindliest gifts of His love, by the revelations of
+His grace, by the movements of His Spirit, by the providences of our
+days, by even my poor lips addressing you now--for, if I be speaking His
+truth, it is not I that speak, but He that speaks in me. I beseech you,
+dear friends, recognise in this old story of the persecutor turned
+apostle nothing exceptional, though there be something miraculous, but
+only an exceptional form of manifestation of the normal activity of the
+love of Christ towards every soul. He loves, He draws, He welcomes all
+that come to Him. His servant, who stood over the blind, penitent
+persecutor, and said to him, '_Brother_ Saul!' was only faintly echoing
+the glad reception which the elder Brother of the family gives to this
+and to every prodigal who comes back; because He Himself has drawn Him.
+
+If we will only recognise the undying truth for all of us that lies
+beneath the individual experience of this apostle, we, too, may share in
+the attraction of His love, in the constraining and blessed influences
+of that love received, and in the welcome with which He hails us when we
+turn. If this man were thus dealt with, no man need despair.
+
+III. Lastly, we may notice how this experience is a manifestation of the
+power of the living, loving Lord.
+
+The first and plainest thing that it teaches us about that power is that
+Jesus Christ is able in one moment to revolutionise a life. There is
+nothing more striking than the suddenness and completeness of the
+change which passed. 'One day is with the Lord as a thousand years'; and
+there come moments in every life into which there is crammed and
+condensed a whole world of experience, so as that a man looks back from
+this instant to that before, and feels that a gulf, deep as infinity,
+separates him from his old self.
+
+Now, it is very unfashionable in these days to talk about conversion at
+all. It is even more unfashionable to talk about sudden conversions. I
+venture to say that there are types of character and experience which
+will never be turned to good, unless they are turned suddenly; while
+there are others, no doubt, to whom the course is a gradual one, and you
+cannot tell where the dawn broadens into perfect day. But, in the case
+of men who have grown up to some degree of maturity of life, either in
+sensuous sin or crusted over with selfish worldliness, or in any other
+way, by reason of intellectual pursuits, or others have become forgetful
+of God and careless of religion--unless such men are in a moment
+arrested and wheeled round at once, there is very little chance of their
+ever being so at all.
+
+I am sure I am speaking to some now who, unless the truth of Christ
+comes into their minds with arresting flash, and unless they are in one
+moment, into which an eternity is condensed, changed in their purposes,
+will never be changed.
+
+Do not, my friend, listen to the talk that sudden conversion is
+impossible or unlikely. It is the only kind of conversion that some of
+you are capable of. I remember a man, one of the best Christian men in a
+humble station in life that I ever knew--he did not live in
+Manchester--he had been a drunkard up to his fortieth or fiftieth year.
+One day he was walking across an open field, and a voice, as he
+thought, spoke to him and said, naming him, 'If you don't sign the
+pledge to-day you will be damned!' He turned on his heel, and walked
+straight down the street to the house of a temperance friend, and said,
+'I have come to sign the pledge.' He signed it, and from that day to the
+day of his death 'adorned the doctrine of Jesus Christ' his Saviour. If
+that man had not been suddenly converted he would never have been
+converted. So I say that this story of the text is a crucial instance of
+Christ's power to lay hold upon a man, and wheel him right round all in
+a moment, and send him on a new path. He wants to do that with all of
+you to whom He has not already done it. I beseech you, do not stick your
+heels into the ground in resistance, nor when He puts His hand on your
+shoulder stiffen your back that He may not do what He desires with you.
+
+May we not see here, too, a demonstration of Christ's power to make a
+life nobly and blessedly new, different from all its past, and adorned
+with strange and unexpected fruits of beauty and wisdom and holiness?
+This man's account of his future, from the moment of that incident on
+the Damascus road to the headman's block outside the walls of Rome, is
+this: 'If any man be in Christ he is a new creature'; 'I live, yet not
+I, but Christ liveth in me.' Christ will do that for us all; for
+long-suffering was shown on the Apostle for a pattern to them who should
+hereafter believe.
+
+So, you Christian people, it is as much your business as it was Paul's,
+to be visible rhetoric, manifest demonstrations in your lives of the
+truth of the Gospel. Men ought to say about us, 'There must be something
+in the religion that has done that for these people.' We ought to be
+such that our characters shall induce the thought that the Christ who
+has made men like us cannot be a figment. Do you show, Christian men,
+that you are grafted upon the true Vine by the abundance of the fruit
+that you bring forth? Can you venture to say, as Paul said, If you want
+to know what Jesus Christ's love and power are, look at me? Do not
+venture adducing yourself as a specimen of His power unless you have a
+life like Paul's to look back upon.
+
+For us all the fountain to which Paul had recourse is open. Why do we
+draw so little from it? The fire which burned, refining and
+illuminating, in him may be kindled in all our hearts. Why are we so
+icy? His convictions are of some value, as subsidiary evidence to Gospel
+facts; his experience is of still more value as an attestation and an
+instance of Gospel blessings. Believe like Paul and you will be saved
+like Paul. Jesus Christ will show to you all long-suffering. For though
+Paul received it all he did not exhaust it, and the same long-suffering
+which was lavished on him is available for each of us. Only you too must
+say like him, 'I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.'
+
+
+
+
+THE GLORY OF THE KING
+
+          'Now, unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible,
+          the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever
+          and ever. Amen.'--1 TIM. i. 17.
+
+
+With this burst of irrepressible praise the Apostle ends his reference
+to his own conversion as a transcendent, standing instance of the
+infinite love and transforming power of God. Similar doxologies
+accompany almost all his references to the same fact. This one comes
+from the lips of 'Paul the aged,' looking back from almost the close of
+a life which owed many sorrows and troubles to that day on the road to
+Damascus. His heart fills with thankfulness that overflows into the
+great words of my text. He had little to be thankful for, judged
+according to the rules of sense; but, though weighed down with care,
+having made but a poor thing of the world because of that vision which
+he saw that day, and now near martyrdom, he turns with a full heart to
+God, and breaks into this song of thanksgiving. There are lives which
+bear to be looked back upon. Are ours of that kind?
+
+But my object is mainly to draw your attention to what seems to me a
+remarkable feature in this burst of thanksgiving. And perhaps I shall
+best impress the thought which it has given to me if I ask you to look,
+first, at the character of the God who is glorified by Paul's salvation;
+second, at the facts which glorify such a God; and, last, at the praise
+which should fill the lives of those who know the facts.
+
+I. First, then, notice the God who is glorified by Paul's salvation.
+
+Now what strikes me as singular about this great doxology is the
+characteristics, or, to use a technical word, the attributes, of the
+divine nature which the Apostle selects. They are all those which
+separate God from man; all those which present Him as arrayed in
+majesty, apart from human weaknesses, unapproachable by human sense, and
+filling a solitary throne. These are the characteristics which the
+Apostle thinks receive added lustre, and are lifted to a loftier height
+of 'honour and glory,' by the small fact that he, Paul, was saved from
+sins as he journeyed to Damascus.
+
+It would be easy to roll out oratorical platitudes about these specific
+characteristics of the divine nature, but that would be as unprofitable
+as it would be easy. All that I want to do now is just to note the force
+of the epithets; and, if I can, to deepen the impression of the
+remarkableness of their selection.
+
+With regard, then, to the first of them, we at once feel that the
+designation of 'the King' is unfamiliar to the New Testament. It brings
+with it lofty ideas, no doubt; but it is not a name which the writers of
+the New Testament, who had been taught in the school of love, and led by
+a Son to the knowledge of God, are most fond of using. 'The King' has
+melted into 'the Father.' But here Paul selects that more remote and
+less tender name for a specific purpose. He is 'the King'--not
+'_eternal_,' as our Bible renders it, but more correctly 'the King of
+the Ages.' The idea intended is not so much that of unending existence
+as that He moulds the epochs of the world's history, and directs the
+evolution of its progress. It is the thought of an overruling
+Providence, with the additional thought that all the moments are a
+linked chain, through which He flashes the electric force of His will.
+He is 'King of the Ages.'
+
+The other epithets are more appropriately to be connected with the word
+'God' which follows than with the word 'King' which precedes. The
+Apostle's meaning is this: 'The King of the ages, even the God who is,'
+etc. And the epithets thus selected all tend in the same direction.
+'Incorruptible.' That at once parts that mystic and majestic Being from
+all of which the law is _decay_. There may be in it some hint of moral
+purity, but more probably it is simply what I may call a physical
+attribute, that that immortal nature not only _does_ not, but _cannot_,
+pass into any less noble forms. Corruption has no share in His immortal
+being.
+
+As to 'invisible,' no word need be said to illustrate that. It too
+points solely to the separation of God from all approach by human sense.
+
+And then the last of the epithets, which, according to the more accurate
+reading of the text, should be, not as our Bible has it, 'the only
+_wise_ God,' but 'the _only_ God,' lifts Him still further above all
+comparison and contact with other beings.
+
+So the whole set forth the remote attributes which make a man feel, 'The
+gulf between Him and me is so great that thought cannot pass across it,
+and I doubt whether love can live half-way across that flight, or will
+not rather, like some poor land bird with tiny wings, drop exhausted,
+and be drowned in the abyss before it reaches the other side.' We expect
+to find a hymn to the infinite love. Instead of that we get praise,
+which might be upon the lips of many a thinker of Paul's day and of
+ours, who would laugh the idea of revelation, and especially of a
+revelation such as Paul believed in, to absolute scorn. And yet he knew
+what he was saying when he did not lift up his praise to the God of
+tenderness, of pity, of forgiveness, of pardoning love, but to 'the King
+of the ages; the incorruptible, invisible, only God'; the God whose
+honour and glory were magnified by the revelation of Himself in Jesus
+Christ.
+
+II. And so that brings me, in the second place, to ask you to look at
+the facts which glorify even such a God.
+
+Paul was primarily thinking of his own individual experience; of what
+passed when the voice spoke to him, 'Why persecutest thou Me?' and of
+the transforming power which had changed him, the wolf, with teeth red
+with the blood of the saints, into a lamb. But, as he is careful to
+point out, the personal allusion is lost in his contemplation of his own
+history, as being a specimen and test-case for the blessing and
+encouragement of all who 'should hereafter believe upon Him unto life
+everlasting.' So what we come to is this--that the work of Jesus Christ
+is that which paints the lily and gilds the refined gold of the divine
+loftinesses and magnificence, and which brings honour and glory even to
+that remote and inaccessible majesty. For, in that revelation of God in
+Jesus Christ, there is added to all these magnificent and all but
+inconceivable attributes and excellences, something that is far diviner
+and nobler than themselves.
+
+There be two great conceptions smelted together in the revelation of God
+in Jesus Christ, of which neither attains its supremest beauty except by
+the juxtaposition of the other. Power is harsh, and scarcely worthy to
+be called divine, unless it be linked with love. Love is not glorious
+unless it be braced and energised by power. And, says Paul, these two
+are brought together in Jesus; and therefore each is heightened by the
+other. It is the love of God that lifts His power to its highest height;
+it is the revelation of Him as stooping that teaches us His loftiness.
+It is because He has come within the grasp of our humanity in Jesus
+Christ that we can hymn our highest and noblest praises to 'the King
+eternal, the invisible God.'
+
+The sunshine falls upon the snow-clad peaks of the great mountains and
+flushes them with a tender pink that makes them nobler and fairer by far
+than when they were veiled in clouds. And so all the divine majesty
+towers higher when we believe in the divine condescension, and there is
+no god that men have ever dreamed of so great as the God who stoops to
+sinners and is manifest in the flesh and Cross of the Man of Sorrows.
+
+Take these characteristics of the divine nature as get forth in the text
+one by one, and consider how the Revelation in Jesus Christ, and its
+power on sinful men, raises our conceptions of them. 'The King of the
+ages'--and do we ever penetrate so deeply into the purpose which has
+guided His hand, as it moulded and moved the ages, as when we can say
+with Paul that His 'good pleasure' is that, 'in the dispensation of the
+fulness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ.'
+The intention of the epochs as they emerge, the purpose of all their
+linked intricacies and apparently diverse movements, is this one thing,
+that God in Christ may be manifest to men, a nd that humanity may be
+gathered, like sheep round the Shepherd, into the one fold of the one
+Lord. For that the world stands; for that the ages roll, and He who is
+the King of the epochs hath put into the hands of the Lamb that was
+slain the Book that contains all their events; and only His hand,
+pierced upon Calvary, is able to open the seals, to read the Book. The
+King of the ages is the Father of Christ.
+
+And in like manner, that incorruptible God, far away from us because He
+is so, and to whom we look up here doubtingly and despairingly and often
+complainingly and ask, 'Why hast Thou made us thus, to be weighed upon
+with the decay of all things and of ourselves?' comes near to us all in
+the Christ who knows the mystery of death, and thereby makes us
+partakers of an inheritance incorruptible. Brethren, we shall never
+adore, or even dimly understand, the blessedness of believing in a God
+who cannot decay nor change, unless from the midst of graves and griefs
+we lift our hearts to Him as revealed in the face of the dying Christ.
+He, though He died, did not see corruption, and we through Him shall
+pass into the same blessed immunity.
+
+'The King . . . the God invisible.' No man hath seen God 'at any time, nor
+can see Him.' Who will honour and glorify that attribute which parts Him
+wholly from our sense, and so largely from our apprehension, as will he
+who can go on to say, 'the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of
+the Father, He hath declared Him.' We look up into a waste Heaven;
+thought and fear, and sometimes desire, travel into its tenantless
+spaces. We say the blue is an illusion; there is nothing there but
+blackness. But 'he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' And we can
+lift thankful praise to Him, the King invisible, when we hear Jesus
+saying, 'thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.'
+
+'The only God.' How that repels men from His throne! And yet, if we
+apprehend the meaning of Christ's Cross and work, we understand that the
+solitary God welcomes my solitary soul into such mysteries and sacred
+sweetnesses of fellowship with Himself that, the humanity remaining
+undisturbed, and the divinity remaining unintruded upon, we yet are one
+in Him, and partakers of a divine nature. Unless we come to God through
+Jesus Christ, the awful attributes in the text spurn a man from His
+throne, and make all true fellowship impossible.
+
+So let me remind you that the religion which does not blend together in
+indissoluble union these two, the majesty and the lowliness, the power
+and the love, the God inaccessible and the God who has tabernacled with
+us in Jesus Christ, is sure to be almost an impotent religion. Deism in
+all its forms, the religion which admits a God and denies a revelation;
+the religion which, in some vague sense, admits a revelation and denies
+an incarnation; the religion which admits an incarnation and denies a
+sacrifice; all these have little to say to man as a sinner; little to
+say to man as a mourner; little power to move his heart, little power to
+infuse strength into his weakness. If once you strike out the thought of
+a redeeming Christ from your religion, the temperature will go down
+alarmingly, and all will soon be frost bound.
+
+Brethren, there is no real adoration of the loftiness of the King of the
+ages, no true apprehension of the majesty of the God incorruptible,
+invisible, eternal, until we see Him in the face and in the Cross of
+Jesus Christ. The truths of this gospel of our salvation do not in the
+smallest degree impinge upon or weaken, but rather heighten, the glory
+of God. The brightest glory streams from the Cross. It was when He was
+standing within a few hours of it, and had it full in view, that Jesus
+Christ broke out into that strange strain of triumph, 'Now is God
+glorified.' 'The King of the ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only
+God,' is more honoured and glorified in the forgiveness that comes
+through Jesus Christ, and in the transforming power which He puts forth
+in the Gospel, than in all besides.
+
+III. Lastly, let me draw your attention to the praise which should fill
+the lives of those who know these facts.
+
+I said that this Apostle seems always, when he refers to his own
+individual conversion, to have been melted into fresh outpourings of
+thankfulness and of praise. And that is what ought to be the life of all
+of you who call yourselves Christians; a continual warmth of
+thankfulness welling up in the heart, and not seldom finding utterance
+in the words, but always filling the life.
+
+Not seldom, I say, finding utterance in the words. It is a delicate
+thing for a man to speak about himself, and his own religious
+experience. Our English reticence, our social habits, and many other
+even less worthy hindrances rise in the way; and I should be the last
+man to urge Christian people to cast their pearls before swine, or too
+fully to
+
+          'Open wide the bridal chamber of the heart,'
+
+to let in the day. There is a wholesome fear of men who are always
+talking about their own religious experiences. But there are times and
+people to whom it is treason to the Master for us not to be frank in the
+confession of what we have found in Him. And I think there would be less
+complaining of the want of power in the public preaching of the Word if
+more professing Christians more frequently and more simply said to those
+to whom their words are weighty, 'Come and hear and I will tell you what
+God hath done for my soul.' 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith the Lord. It is
+a strange way that Christian people in this generation have of
+discharging their obligations that they should go, as so many of them
+do, from the cradle of their Christian lives to their graves, never
+having opened their lips for the Master who has done all for them.
+
+Only remember, if you venture to speak you will have to live your
+preaching. 'There is no speech nor language, their voice is not heard,
+their sound is gone out through all the earth.' The silent witness of
+life must always accompany the audible proclamation, and in many cases
+is far more eloquent than it. Your consistent thankfulness manifested in
+your daily obedience, and in the transformation of your character, will
+do far more than all my preaching, or the preaching of thousands like
+me, to commend the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
+
+One last word, brethren. This revelation is made to us all. What is God
+to you, friend? Is He a remote, majestic, unsympathising, terrible
+Deity? Is He dim, shadowy, unwelcome; or is He God whose love softens
+His power; Whose power magnifies his love? Oh! I beseech you, open your
+eyes and your hearts to see that that remote Deity is of no use to you,
+will do nothing for you, cannot help you, may probably judge you, but
+will never heal you. And open your hearts to see that 'the only God'
+whom men can love is God in Christ. If here we lift up grateful praise
+'unto Him that loveth us and hath loosed us from our sins in His blood,'
+we, too, shall one day join in that great chorus which at last will be
+heard saying, 'Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that
+sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'
+
+
+
+
+WHERE AND HOW TO PRAY
+
+          'I will therefore that men pray every where,
+          lifting up holy hands without wrath and
+          doubting.'--1 TIM. ii. 8.
+
+
+The context shows that this is part of the Apostle's directory for
+public worship, and that, therefore, the terms of the first clause are
+to be taken somewhat restrictedly. They teach the duty of the male
+members of the Church to take public, audible part in its worship.
+
+Everywhere, therefore, must here properly be taken in the restricted
+signification of 'every place of Christian assembly.' And from the whole
+passage there comes a picture of what sort of thing a meeting of the
+primitive Church for worship was, very different from anything that we
+see nowadays. 'Every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath an
+exhortation.' I fancy that some of the eminently respectable and utterly
+dead congregations which call themselves Christian Churches would be
+very much astonished if they could see what used to be the manner of
+Christian worship nineteen hundred years ago, and would get a new notion
+of what was meant by 'decently, and in order.'
+
+But we may fairly, I suppose, if once we confess that this is so, widen
+somewhat the scope of these words, and take them rather as expressive of
+the Apostle's desire and injunction, for the word that he used here, 'I
+will,' is a very strong one, to all Christian people, be they men or
+women, that they pray 'everywhere,' in the widest sense of that
+expression, 'lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting.'
+
+I do not attempt anything more than just to go, step by step, through
+the Apostle's words and gather up the duties which each enjoins.
+
+'I will that men pray everywhere.' That is the same in spirit as the
+Apostle's other command: 'Pray without ceasing; in everything give
+thanks.' A very high ideal, but a very reasonable one, for unless we can
+find some place where God is not, and where the telegraph between heaven
+and earth is beyond our reach, there is no place where we should not
+pray. And unless we can find a place where we do not want God, nor need
+Him, there is no place where we should not pray. Because, then,
+'everywhere' is equally near Him, and the straight road to His throne is
+of the same length from every hole and corner of the world; therefore,
+wherever men are, they ought to be clinging to His skirts, and reaching
+out their open hands for His benefits; and because, wherever a man is,
+there he utterly depends upon God, and needs the actual intervention of
+His love, and the energising of His power for everything, even for his
+physical life, so that he cannot wink his eyelashes without God's help,
+therefore, 'In every place I will that men pray.'
+
+And how is that to be done? First of all, by keeping out of all places
+where it is impossible that we should pray; for although He is
+everywhere, and we want Him everywhere, there are places--and some of us
+know the roads to them but too well, and are but too often in
+them--where prayer would be a strange incongruity. A man will not pray
+over the counter of a public-house. A man will not pray over a sharp
+bargain. A man will not pray that God may bless his outbursts of anger,
+or sensuality and the like. A man will not pray when he feels that he is
+deep down in some pit of self-caused alienation from God. The
+possibility of praying in given circumstances is a sharp test, although
+a very rough and ready one, whether we ought to be in these
+circumstances or not. Do not let us go where we cannot take God with us;
+and if we feel that it would be something like blasphemy to call to Him
+from such a place, do not let us trust ourselves there. Jonah could pray
+out of the belly of the fish, and there was no incongruity in that; but
+many a professing Christian man gets swallowed up by monsters of the
+deep, and durst not for very shame send up a prayer to God. Get out of
+all such false positions.
+
+But if the Apostle wills 'that men pray alway,' it must be possible
+while going about business, study, daily work, work at home amongst the
+children, work in the factory amongst spindles, work in the
+counting-house amongst ledgers, work in the study amongst lexicons, not
+only to pray whilst we are working, but to make work prayer, which is
+even better. The old saying that is often quoted with admiration, 'work
+is worship,' is only half true. There is a great deal of work that is
+anything but worship. But it is true that if, in all that I do, I try to
+realise my dependence on God for power; to look to Him for direction,
+and to trust to Him for issue, then, whether I eat, or drink, or pray,
+or study, or buy and sell, or marry or am given in marriage, all will be
+worship of God. 'I will that men pray everywhere.' What a noble ideal,
+and not an impossible or absurd one! This was not the false ideal of a
+man that had withdrawn himself from duty in order to cultivate his own
+soul, but the true ideal of one of the hardest workers that ever lived.
+Paul could say 'I am pressed above measure, insomuch that I despair of
+life, and that which cometh upon me daily is the care of all the
+churches,' and yet driven, harassed beyond his strength with business
+and cares as he was, he did himself what he bids us do. His life was
+prayer, therefore his life was Christ, therefore he was equal to all
+demands. None of us are as hard-worked, as heavily pressed, as much
+hunted by imperative and baying dogs of duties as Paul was. It is
+possible for us to obey this commandment and to pray everywhere. A
+servant girl down on her knees doing the doorsteps may do that task from
+such a motive, and with such accompaniments, as she dips her cloth into
+the hot-water bucket, as to make even it prayer to God. We each can lift
+all the littlenesses of our lives into a lofty region, if only we will
+link them on to the throne of God by prayer.
+
+There is another way by which this ideal can be attained, and that is to
+cultivate the habit, which I think many Christian people do not
+cultivate, of little short swallow-flights of prayer in the midst of our
+daily work. 'They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of
+them.' If a Philistine sword was hanging over the man's head, do you
+think he would have much time to drop down upon his knees, to make a
+petition, divided into all the parts which divines tell us go to make up
+the complete idea of prayer? I should think not; but he could say, 'Save
+me, O Lord!' 'They cried to God in the battle--little, sharp, short
+shrieks of prayer--and He was entreated of them.' If you would cast
+swift electric flashes of that kind more frequently up to heaven, you
+would bring down the blessings that very often do not come after the
+most elaborate and proper and formal petitions. 'Lord, save or I
+perish!' It did not take long to say that, but it made the difference
+between drowning and deliverance.
+
+Still further, notice the conditions of true prayer that are here
+required. I will that men pray everywhere 'lifting up _holy_ hands.'
+That is a piece of symbolism, of course. Apparently the Jewish attitude
+of prayer was unlike ours. They seem to have stood during devotion and
+to have elevated their hands with open, empty, upturned palms to heaven.
+We clasp ours in entreaty, or fold them as a symbol of resignation and
+submission. They lifted them, with the double idea, I suppose, of
+offering themselves to God thereby, and of asking Him to put something
+into the empty hand, just as a beggar says nothing, but holds out a
+battered hat, in order to get a copper from a passer-by. The psalmist
+desired that the lifting up of his hands might be as the 'evening
+sacrifice.'
+
+If a man stands with his open, empty palm held up to God, it is as much
+as to say 'I need, I desire, I expect.' And these elements are what we
+must have in our prayers; the sense of want, the longing for supply, the
+anticipation of an answer. What do you hold out your hand for? Because
+you expect me to drop something into it, because you want to get
+something. How do you hold out your hand? Empty. And if I am clasping my
+five fingers round some earthly good it is of no use to hold up that
+hand to God. Nothing will come into it. How can it? He must first take
+the imitation diamonds out of it or we must turn it round and shake them
+out before He can fill it with real jewels. As for him who continues to
+clutch worldly goods, 'let not that man think that he shall receive
+anything of the Lord.' Empty the palm before you lift it.
+
+Still further, says Paul, 'lifting up _holy_ hands.' That, of course,
+needs no explanation. One of the psalms, you may remember, says 'I will
+wash mine hands in innocency, so will I compass Thine altar.' The
+psalmist felt that unless there was a previous lustration and cleansing,
+it was vain for him to go round the altar. And you may remember how
+sternly and eloquently the prophet Isaiah rebukes the hypocritical
+worshippers in Jerusalem when he says to them, 'Your hands are full of
+blood. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings,' and
+_then_ come and pray. A foul hand gets nothing from God. How can it?
+God's best gift is of such a sort as cannot be laid upon a dirty palm. A
+little sin dams back the whole of God's grace, and there are too many
+men that pray, pray, pray, and never get any of the things that we pray
+for, because there is something stopping the pipe, and they do not know
+what it is, and perhaps would be very sorry to clear it out if they did.
+But all the same, the channel of communication is blocked and stopped,
+and it is impossible that any blessing should come. Geographers tell us
+that a microscopic vegetable grows rapidly in one of the upper affluents
+of the Nile, and makes a great dam across the river which keeps back the
+water, and so makes one of the lakes which have recently been explored;
+and then, when the dam breaks, the rising of the Nile fertilises Egypt.
+Some of us have growing, unchecked, and unnoticed, in the innermost
+channels of our hearts, little sins that mat themselves together and
+keep increasing until the grace of God is utterly kept from permeating
+the parched recesses of our spirits. 'I will that men pray, lifting up
+holy hands,' and unless we do, alas! for us.
+
+If these are the requirements, you will say, 'How can I pray at all?'
+Well, do you remember what the Psalmist says? 'If I regard iniquity in
+my heart, the Lord will not hear me,' but then he goes on, 'Blessed be
+God, who hath not turned away my prayer nor His mercy from me.' It is
+always true that if we regard iniquity in our hearts, if in our inmost
+nature we love the sin, that stops the prayer from being answered. But,
+blessed be God, it is not true that our having done the sin prevents our
+petitions being granted. For the sin that is not regarded in the heart,
+but is turned away from with loathing hath no intercepting power. So,
+though the uplifted hands art stained, He will cleanse them if, as we
+lift them to Him, we say, 'Lord, they are foul, if thou wilt Thou canst
+make them clean.'
+
+But the final requirement is: 'Without wrath or doubting.' I do not
+think that Christian people generally recognise with sufficient
+clearness the close and inseparable connection which subsists between
+their right feelings towards their fellow-men and the acceptance of
+their prayers with God. It is very instructive that here, alongside of
+requirements which apply to our relations to God, the Apostle should put
+so emphatically and plainly one which refers to our relations to our
+fellows. An angry man is a very unfit man to pray, and a man who
+cherishes in his heart any feelings of that nature towards anybody may
+be quite sure that he is thereby shutting himself out from blessings
+which otherwise might be his. We do not sufficiently realise, or act on
+the importance, in regard to our relations with God, of our living in
+charity with all men. 'First, go and be reconciled to thy brother,' is
+as needful to-day as when the word was spoken.
+
+'Without . . . doubting.' Have I the right to be perfectly sure that my
+prayer will be answered? Yes and no. If my prayer is, as all true prayer
+ought to be, the submission of my will to God's and not the forcing of
+my will upon God, then I have the right to be perfectly sure. But if I
+am only asking in self-will, for things that my own heart craves, that
+is not prayer; that is dictation. That is sending instructions to
+heaven; that is telling God what He ought to do. That is not the kind of
+prayer that may be offered 'without doubting.' It might, indeed, be
+offered, if offered at all, with the certainty that it will not be
+answered. For this is the assurance on which we are to rest--and some of
+us may think it is a very poor one--'we know that, if we ask anything
+_according to His will_, He heareth us.' To get what we want would often
+be our ruin. God loves His children a great deal too well to give them
+serpents when they ask for them, thinking they are fish, or to give them
+stones when they beseech Him for them, believing them to be bread. He
+will never hand you a scorpion when you ask Him to give it you, because,
+with its legs and its sting tucked under its body, it is like an egg.
+
+We make mistakes in our naming of things and in our desires after
+things, and it is only when we have learned to say 'Not my will but
+Thine be done,' that we have the right to pray, 'without doubting.' If
+we do so pray, certainly we receive. But a tremulous faith brings little
+blessing, and small answer. An unsteady hand cannot hold the cup still
+for Him to pour in the wine of His grace, but as the hand shakes, the
+cup moves, and the precious gift is spilled. The still, submissive soul
+will be filled, and the answer to its prayer will be, 'Whatsoever things
+ye desire believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'
+
+
+
+
+SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS
+
+          'Exercise thyself unto Godliness.'--1 TIM. iv. 7.
+
+
+Timothy seems to have been not a very strong character: sensitive,
+easily discouraged, and perhaps with a constitutional tendency to
+indolence. At all events, it is very touching to notice how the old
+Apostle--a prisoner, soon to be a martyr--forgot all about his own
+anxieties and burdens, and, through both of his letters to his young
+helper, gives himself to the task of bracing him up. Thus he says to
+him, in my text, amongst other trumpet-tongued exhortations, 'Exercise
+thyself unto godliness.'
+
+If I were preaching to ministers, I should have a good deal to say about
+the necessity of this precept for them, and to remind them that it was
+first spoken, not to a private member of the Church, as an injunction
+for the Christian life in general, but as having a special bearing on
+the temptations and necessities of those who stand in official positions
+in the Church. For there is nothing that is more likely to sap a man's
+devotion, and to eat out the earnestness and sincerity of a Christian
+life, than that he should be--as I, for instance, and every man in my
+position has to be--constantly occupied with presenting God's Word to
+other people. We are apt to look upon it as, in some sense, our
+stock-in-trade, and to forget to apply it to ourselves. So it was with a
+very special bearing on the particular occupation and temptation of his
+correspondent that Paul said 'Exercise thyself unto godliness' before
+you begin to talk to other people.
+
+But that would not be appropriate to my present audience. And I take
+this injunction as one of universal application.
+
+I. Notice, then, here expressed the ever-present and universal aim of
+the Christian life.
+
+Paul does not say 'be godly'; but 'exercise thyself unto'--with a view
+towards--'godliness.' In other words, to him godliness is the great aim
+which every Christian man should set before him as the one supreme
+purpose of his life.
+
+Now I am not going to spend any time on mere verbal criticism, but I
+must point to the somewhat unusual word which the Apostle here employs
+for 'godliness.' It is all but exclusively confined to these last
+letters of the Apostle. It was evidently a word that had unfolded the
+depth and fulness and comprehensiveness of its meaning to him in the
+last stage of his religious experience. For it is only once employed in
+the Acts of the Apostles, and some two or three times in the doubtful
+second Epistle of St. Peter. And all the other instances of its use lie
+in these three letters--the one to Titus and two to Timothy; and eight
+of them are in this first one. The old Apostle keeps perpetually
+recurring to this one idea of 'godliness.' What does he mean by it? The
+etymological meaning of the word is 'well-directed reverence,' but it is
+to be noticed that the context specifically points to one form of
+well-directed reverence, viz. as shown in conduct. 'Active godliness' is
+the meaning of the word; religion embodied in deeds, emotions, and
+sentiments, and creeds, put into fact.
+
+This noble and pregnant word teaches us, first of all, that all true
+religion finds its ultimate sphere and best manifestation in the conduct
+of daily life. That sounds like a platitude. I wish it were. If we
+believed that, and worked it out, we should be very different people
+from what the most of us are; and our chapels would be very different
+places, and the professing Church would have a new breath of life over
+it. Religion must have its foundation laid deep in the truths revealed
+by God for our acceptance. And does God tell us anything simply that we
+may believe it, and there an end? What is the purpose of all the
+principles and facts which make up the body of the Christian revelation?
+To enlighten us? Yes! To enlighten us only? A hundred times no! The
+destination of a principle, of a truth, is to pass out from the
+understanding into the whole nature of man.
+
+And if, as I said, the foundation of religion is laid in truths,
+principles, facts, the second story of the building is certain emotions,
+sentiments, feelings, desires, and affections, and 'experiences'--as
+people call them--which follow from the acceptance of these truths and
+principles. And is that all? A thousand times no! What do we get the
+emotions for? What does God give you a Revelation of Himself for, that
+kindles your love if you believe it? That you may love? Yes! Only that
+you may love? Certainly not. And so the top story is conduct, based upon
+the beliefs, and inspired by the emotions.
+
+In former centuries, the period between the Reformation and our fathers'
+time, the tendency of the Protestant Church was very largely to let the
+conception of religion as a body of truths overshadow everything else.
+And nowadays, amongst a great many people, the temptation is to take the
+second story for the main one, and to think that if a man loves, and has
+the glow at his heart of the conscious reception of God's love, and has
+longings and yearnings, and Christian hopes and desires, and passes into
+the sweetnesses of communion with God, in his solitary moments, and
+plunges deep into the truths of God's Word, that is godliness. But the
+true exhortation to us is--Do not stop with putting in the foundations
+of a correct creed, nor at the second stage of an emotional religion.
+Both are needful. Number one and number two are infinitely precious, but
+both exist for number three. And true religion has its sphere in
+conduct. 'Exercise thyself unto godliness.' That does not mean
+_only_--for it does include that--cultivate devout emotions, or realise
+the facts and the principles of the Gospel, but it means, take these
+along with you into your daily life, and work them out there. Bring all
+the facts and truths of your creed, and all the sweet and select, the
+secret and sacred, emotions which you have felt, to bear upon your daily
+life. The soil in which the tree grows, and the roots of the tree, its
+stem and its blossoms, are all means to the end--fruit. What is the use
+of the clearest conceptions, and of the most tender, delicate, holy
+emotions, if they do not drive the wheels of action? God does not give
+us the Gospel to make us wise, nor even to make us blessed, but He gives
+it to us to make us good men and women, working His work in our daily
+tasks. All true religion has its sphere in conduct.
+
+But then there is another side to that. All true conduct must have its
+root in religion, and I, for my part--though of course it is extremely
+'narrow' and 'antiquated' to profess it--I, for my part, do not believe
+that in the long-run, and in general, you will get noble living apart
+from the emotions and sentiments which the truths of Christianity,
+accepted and fed upon, are sure to produce. And so this day, with its
+very general depreciation of the importance of accurate conceptions of
+revealed truth, and its exaltation of conduct, is on the verge of a very
+serious error. Godliness, well-directed reverence, is the parent of all
+noble living, and the one infallible way to produce a noble life is
+faith in Christ, and love which flows from the faith.
+
+If all that is so, if godliness is, not singing psalms, not praying, not
+saying 'How sweet it is to feel the love of God,' still less saying 'I
+accept the principles of Christianity as they are laid down in the
+Bible'; but carrying out beliefs and emotions in deeds, then the true
+aim which we should have continually before us as Christians is plain
+enough. We may not reach it completely, but we can approximate
+indefinitely towards it. Aim is more important than achievement.
+Direction is more vital in determining the character of a life than
+progress actually made. Note the form of the exhortation, 'exercise
+thyself _towards_ godliness,' which involves the same thought as is
+expressed in Paul's other utterance of irrepressible aspiration and
+effort, 'Not as if I had already attained, either were already perfect,
+but I follow after,' or as he had just said, 'press towards the mark,'
+in continual approximation to the ideal. A complete penetration of all
+our actions by the principles and emotions of the Gospel is what is set
+before us here.
+
+And that is the only aim that corresponds to what and where I am and to
+what I need. I fall back upon the grandly simple old words, very dear to
+some of us, perhaps, by boyish associations, 'Man's chief end is to
+glorify God, and (so) to enjoy Him for ever.' 'Unto Godliness' is to be
+the aim of every true life, and it is the only aim which corresponds to
+our circumstances and our relations, our powers and possibilities.
+
+II. Notice the discipline which such an aim demands.
+
+'Exercise thyself.' Now, I have no doubt that the bulk of my hearers
+know that the word here rendered 'exercise' is drawn from the athlete's
+training-ground, and is, in fact, akin to the word which is transported
+into English under the form 'gymnasium.' The Apostle's notion is that,
+just as the athlete, racer, or boxer goes through a course of training,
+so there is a training as severe, necessary for the godliness which Paul
+regards as the one true aim of life.
+
+You Christian people ought to train your spirits at least as carefully
+as the athlete does his muscles. There are plenty of people, calling
+themselves Christians, who never give one-hundredth part as much
+systematic and diligent pains to fulfil the ideal of their Christian
+life as men will take to learn to ride a bicycle or to pull the stroke
+oar in a college boat. The self-denial and persistence and concentration
+which are freely spent upon excellence in athletic pursuits might well
+put to shame the way in which Christians go about the task of 'doing'
+their religion.
+
+I suppose there never was a time, in England's history at any rate,
+whatever it may have been in Greece, when modern instances might give
+more point to an old saw than to-day does for this text, when athletic
+sports of all kinds are taking up so much of the time and the energy of
+our young men. I do not want to throw cold water on that, but I do say
+it is a miserable thing to think that so many professing Christians will
+give a great deal more pains to learn to play lawn tennis than ever they
+did to learn to be good, Christian people.
+
+'Exercise thyself unto godliness.' Make a business of living your
+Christianity. Be in earnest about it. A tragically large number of
+professing Christians never were in earnest about mending themselves.
+And that is why they are so far, far behind. 'Exercise thyself.' You
+say, How?
+
+'Well, I say, first of all, concentration. 'This _one_ thing I do.' That
+does not mean narrowing, because this 'one thing' can be done by means
+of all the legitimate things that we have to do in the world. Next
+Friday, when you go on 'Change, you can be exercising yourself to
+godliness there. Whatever may be the form of our daily occupation, it is
+the _gymnasium_ where God has put us to exercise our muscles in, and so
+to gain 'the wrestling thews that throw the world.' 'Be strong in the
+Lord, and in the power of His might.' The concentration for which I
+plead does not shut us out from any place but the devil's
+wrestling-ground. All that is legitimate, all that is innocent, may be
+made a means for manifesting and for increasing our godliness. Only you
+have to take God with you into your life, and to try, more and more
+consciously, to make Him the motive-power of all that you do. Then the
+old saying which is profoundly true as it was originally meant, and has
+of late years been so misused as to become profoundly false, will be
+true again, '_Laborare est orare_.' Yes! it is; if worship underlies the
+work, but not else.
+
+Again I say, exercise yourselves by abstinence. How many things did the
+athlete at Corinth do without in his training? How many things do
+prizefighters and rowing men do without when in training to-day? How
+rigidly, for a while at any rate, they abstain--whether they recompense
+themselves afterwards or not has nothing to do with my present purpose.
+And is it not a shame that some sensual man shall, for the sake of
+winning a medal or a cup, be able gladly to abandon the delights of
+sense--eating, drinking, and the like--and content himself with a
+hermit's Spartan fare, and that Christian people so seldom, and so
+reluctantly, and so partially turn away from the poisoned cups and the
+indigestible dainties which the world provides for them? I think that
+any Christian man who complains of the things which he is shut out from
+doing if he is to cultivate the godliness which should be his life need
+only go to any place where horse-jockeys congregate to get a lesson that
+he may well lay to heart. 'Exercise thyself,' for it is unto godliness.
+
+And then what I said in a former part of this sermon about the various
+stages of religion may suggest another view of the method of discipline
+proper to the Christian life. The strenuous exercise of all our powers
+is called for. But if it is true that the godliness of my text is the
+last outcome of the emotions which spring from the reception of certain
+truths, then if we work backwards, as it were, we shall get the best way
+of producing the godliness. That is to say, the main effort for all men
+who are in earnest in regard to their own growth in Christlikeness is to
+keep themselves in touch with the truths of the Gospel, and in the
+exercise of the sentiments and emotions which flow from these. Or, to
+put it into other words, the 'gymnastic' is to be, mainly, the man's
+clinging, with all his might of mind and heart, to Christ, and the
+truths that are wrapped up in Him; and the cultivation of the habit of
+continual faith and love turned to that Lord. If I see to number
+one--the creed, and to number two--the emotions, they will see to number
+three--the conduct. Keep the truths of the Gospel well in your minds,
+and keep yourselves well in the attitude of contact with Jesus Christ,
+and power for life will come into you. But if the fountain is choked,
+the bed of the stream will be dry. They tell us that away up in
+Abyssinia there form across the bed of one of the branches of the Nile
+great fields of weed. And as long as they continue unbroken the lower
+river is shrunken. But when the stream at the back of them bursts its
+way through them, then come the inundations down in Egypt, and bring
+fertility. And there are hundreds of professing Christians whose fields
+lie barren and baked in the sunshine, because they have stopped with
+weeds, far away up amongst the hills, the stream that would water them.
+Clear out the weeds, and the water will do the rest.
+
+And 'exercise thyself unto godliness' by keeping the crown and the prize
+often and clear in view. 'Paul the aged' in this very letter says: 'I
+have finished my course, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
+glory.' He had said, in the midst of the strife: 'Not as though I had
+already attained--I press toward the mark for the prize.' And the prize
+which gleamed before him through all the dust of the arena now shone
+still more brightly when his hand had all but clasped it. If we desire
+to 'run with perseverance the race that is set before us' we must keep
+our eyes fixed on Jesus, and see in Him, not only the Rewarder, but the
+Reward, of the 'exercise unto godliness.'
+
+
+
+
+ONE WITNESS, MANY CONFESSORS
+
+          'Thou . . . hast professed a good profession before
+          many witnesses. 13. I give thee charge in the
+          sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and
+          before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate
+          witnessed a good confession, 14. That thou keep
+          this commandment. . . .'--1 TIM. vi. 12-14.
+
+
+You will observe that 'a good confession,' or rather 'the good
+confession,' is said here to have been made both by Timothy and by
+Christ. But you will observe also that whilst the subject-matter is the
+same, the action of Timothy and Jesus respectively is different. The
+former professes, or rather confesses, the good confession; the latter
+witnesses. There must be some reason for the significant variation of
+terms to indicate that the relation of Timothy and Jesus to the good
+confession which they both made was, in some way, a different one, and
+that though what they said was identical, their actions in saying it
+were different.
+
+Then there is another point of parallelism to be noticed. Timothy made
+his profession 'before many witnesses,' but the Apostle calls to his
+remembrance, and summons up before the eye of his imagination, a more
+august tribunal than that before which he had confessed his faith, and
+says that he gives him charge 'before God' (for the same word is used in
+the original in both verses), 'who quickeneth all things, and before
+Christ Jesus.' So the earthly witnesses of the man's confession dwindle
+into insignificance when compared with the heavenly ones. And upon these
+thoughts is based the practical exhortation, 'Keep the commandment
+without spot.' So, then, we have three things: the great Witness and His
+confession, the subordinate confessors who echo His witness, and the
+practical issue that comes out of both thoughts.
+
+I. We have the great Witness and His confession.
+
+Now, you will remember, perhaps, that if we turn to the Gospels, we find
+that all of them give the subject-matter of Christ's confession before
+Pilate, as being that He was the King of the Jews. But the Evangelist
+John expands that conversation, and gives us details which present a
+remarkable verbal correspondence with the words of the Apostle here, and
+must suggest to us that, though John's Gospel was not written at the
+date of this Epistle, the fact that is enshrined for us in it was
+independently known by the Apostle Paul.
+
+For, if I may for a moment recall the incident to you, you will remember
+that when Pilate put to the Saviour the question, 'Art Thou a King?'
+our Lord, before He would answer, took pains to make quite clear the
+sense in which the judge asked Him of His royal state. For He said,
+'Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me? If
+it is your Roman idea of a king, the answer must be, "No." If it is the
+Jewish Messianic idea, the answer must be, "Yes." I must know first what
+the question means, in the mind of the questioner, before I answer it.'
+And when Pilate brushes aside Christ's question, with a sort of
+impatient contempt, and returns to the charge, 'What hast Thou done?'
+our Lord, whilst He makes the claim of sovereignty, takes care to make
+it in such a way as to show that Rome need fear nothing from Him, and
+that His dominion rested not upon force. 'My Kingdom is not of this
+world.' And then, when Pilate, like a practical Roman, bewildered with
+all these fine-spun distinctions, sweeps them impatiently out of the
+field, and comes back to 'Yes, or No; are you a King?' our Lord gives a
+distinct affirmative answer, but at once soars up into the region where
+Pilate had declined to follow Him: 'To this end was I born, and for this
+cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth.'
+'Before Pontius Pilate he witnessed the good confession.' And His
+confession was His royalty, His relation to the truth, and His
+pre-existence. 'To this end was I born,' and the next clause is no mere
+tautology, nor a non-significant parallelism, 'and for this cause came I
+into the world.' Then He was before He came, and birth to Him was not
+the beginning of being, but the beginning of a new relation.
+
+So, then, out of this great word of our text, which falls into line with
+a great many other words of the New Testament, we may gather important
+and significant truths with regard to two things, the matter and the
+manner of Christ's witnessing. You remember how the same Apostle
+John--for whom that word 'witness' has a fascination in all its manifold
+applications--in that great vision of the Apocalypse, when to his
+blessed sight the vision of the Master was once given, extols Him as
+'the faithful witness, and the First-begotten from the dead, and the
+Prince of the kings of the earth.' And you may remember how our Lord
+Himself, after His conversation with Nicodemus, says, 'We speak that we
+do know, and bear witness to that we have seen,' and how again, in
+answer to the taunts of the Jews, He takes the taunt as the most
+intimate designation of the peculiarity of His person and of His work,
+when He says, 'I am one that bear witness of Myself.' So, then, we have
+to interpret his declaration before Pilate in the light of all these
+other sayings, and to remember that He who said that He came to bear
+witness to the truth, said also, 'I am the truth,' and therefore that
+his great declaration that He was the witness-bearer to the truth is
+absolutely synonymous with His other declaration that He bears witness
+of Himself.
+
+Now, here we come upon one of the great peculiarities of Christ as a
+religious teacher. The new thing, the distinctive peculiarity, the
+differentia between Him and all other teachers, lies just here, that His
+theme is not so much moral or religious principles, as His own nature
+and person. He was the most egotistical man that ever lived on the face
+of the earth, with an egotism only to be accounted for, if we believe,
+as He Himself said, that in His person was the truth that He proclaimed,
+and that when He witnessed to Himself He revealed God. And thus He
+stands, separate from all other teachers, by this, that He is His own
+theme and His own witness.
+
+So much for the matter of the good confession to which we need only add
+here its pendant in the confession before the High Priest. To the
+representative of the civil government He said, 'I am a king,' and then,
+as I remarked, He soared up into regions where no Roman official could
+rise to follow Him, and to the representative of the Theocratic
+government He said, 'Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at
+the right hand of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' These two
+truths, that He is the Son of God, who by His witness to the truth, that
+is, Himself, lays the foundations of a Monarchy which shall stretch far
+further than the pinions of the Roman eagles could ever fly, and that he
+is the Son of Man who, exalted to the right hand of God, is to be the
+Judge of mankind--these are the good confessions to which the Lord
+witnessed.
+
+Then with regard to the manner of His witness. That brings us to another
+of the peculiarities of Christ's teaching. I have said that He was the
+most egotistical of men. I would say, too, that there never was another
+who clashed down in the front of humanity such tremendous assertions,
+with not the faintest scintilla of an attempt to prove them to our
+understandings, or commend them by any other plea than this, 'Verily,
+verily, I say unto you!'
+
+A witness does not need to argue. A witness is a man who reports what he
+has seen and heard. The whole question is as to his veracity and
+competency. Jesus Christ states it for the characteristic of His work,
+'We speak that we do know, and bear witness to that we have seen.' His
+relation to the truth which He brings to us is not that of a man who has
+thought it out, who has been brought to it by experience, or by feeling,
+or by a long course of investigation; still less is it the relation
+which a man would bear to a truth that he had learnt from others
+originally, however much he had made it his own thereafter: but it is
+that of one who is not a thinker, or a learner, or a reasoner, but who
+is simply an attester, a witness. And so He stands before us, and says,
+'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life.
+Believe Me, and believe the words, for no other reason, primarily, than
+because I speak them.' In these two respects, then, the matter and the
+manner of His witness, He stands alone, and we have to bow before Him
+and say, 'Speak, Lord! for thy servant heareth.' 'Before Pontius Pilate
+He witnessed a good confession.'
+
+II. We have here suggested to us the subordinate confessors who echo the
+Lord's witness.
+
+It is a matter of no consequence when, and before whom, this Timothy
+professed his good profession. It may have been at his baptism. It may
+have been when he was installed in his office. It may have been before
+some tribunal of which we know nothing. That does not matter. The point
+is that a Christian man is to be an echo of the Lord's good confession,
+and is to keep within the lines of it, and to be sure that all of it is
+echoed in his life. Christ has told us what to say, and we are here to
+say it over again. Christ has witnessed; we are to confess. Our relation
+to that truth is different from His. We hear it; He speaks it. We accept
+it; He reveals it. We are influenced by it; He _is_ it. He brings it to
+the world on His own authority; we are to carry it to the world on His.
+
+Be sure that you Christian men are echoes of your Master. Be sure that
+you reverberate the note that He struck. Be sure that all its music is
+repeated by you And take care that you neither fall short of it, nor go
+beyond it, in your faith and in your profession. Echoes of Christ--that
+is the highest conception of a Christian life.
+
+But though there is all the difference between the Witness and the
+confessors, do not let us forget that, if we are truly Christian, there
+is a very deep and blessed sense in which we, too, may witness what we
+have seen and heard. A Christian preacher of any sort--and by that I
+mean, not merely a man who stands in a pulpit, as I do, but all
+Christian people, in their measure and degree--will do nothing by
+professing the best profession, unless that profession sounds like the
+utterance of a man who speaks that he knows, and who can say, 'that
+which our eyes have beheld, that which we have handled, of the Word of
+life, we make known unto you.' And so, by the power of personal
+experience speaking out in our lives, and by the power of it alone, as I
+believe, will victories be won, and the witness of Jesus Christ be
+repeated in the world. Christian men and women, the old saying which was
+addressed by a prophet to Israel is more true, more solemnly true of us,
+and presses on us with a heavier weight of obligation, as well as lifts
+us up into a position of greater blessedness: 'Ye are my witnesses,
+saith the Lord.' That is what you and I are here for--to bear witness,
+different and yet like to, the witness borne by the Lord. We have all to
+do that, by words, though not only by them. That is the obligation that
+a great many Christian people take very lightly. That yoke of Jesus
+Christ many of us slip our necks out of. If He has witnessed, you have
+to confess. But some of you carry your Christianity in secret, and
+button your coats over the cockade that should tell whose soldiers you
+are, and are ashamed, or too shy, or too nervous, or too afraid of
+ridicule, or not sufficiently sure of your own grip of the Master, to
+confess Him before men. I beseech you remember that a Christian man is
+no Christian unless 'with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,'
+as well as 'with the heart' belief is exercised unto righteousness.
+
+III. Lastly, we have here the practical issue of all this.
+
+'I charge thee before God, who quickeneth all things, and before Jesus
+Christ, that thou keep the commandment without spot.' The 'commandment,'
+of course, may be used in a specific sense, referring to what has just
+been enjoined, but more probably we are to regard the same thing which,
+considered in its relation to Jesus Christ, is His testimony, as being,
+in its relation to us, His commandment. For all Christ's gospel of
+revelation that He has made of Himself to the world, is meant to
+influence, not only belief and feeling, but conduct and character as
+well. All the New Testament, in so far as it is a record of what Christ
+is, and thereby a declaration of what God is, is also for us an
+injunction as to what we ought to be. The whole Gospel is law, and the
+testimony is commandment, and we have to keep it, as well as to confess
+it. Let me put the few things that I have to say, under this last
+division of my subject, the practical issue, into the shape of three
+exhortations, not for the sake of seeming to arrogate any kind of
+superiority, but for the sake of point and emphasis.
+
+Let the life bear witness to the confession. What is the use of
+Timothy's standing there, and professing himself a Christian before many
+witnesses if, when he goes out into the world, his conduct gives the lie
+to his creed, and he lives like the men that are not Christians? Back up
+your confession by your conduct, and when you say 'I believe in Jesus
+Christ,' let your life be as true an echo of His life as your confession
+is of His testimony. Else we shall come under the condemnation, 'Nothing
+but leaves,' and shall fall under the punishment of the continuance of
+unfruitfulness, which is our crime as well as our punishment. There is a
+great deal more done by consistent living for, and by inconsistent
+living against, the truth of the Gospel, than by all the words of all
+the preachers in the world. Your faults go further, and tell more, than
+my sermons, and your Christian characters will go further than all the
+eloquence of the most devoted preachers. 'There is no voice nor
+language, where their sound is not heard. Their line is gone out into
+all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.'
+
+Again, let the thought of the Great Witness stimulate us. He, too, took
+His place by our sides, though with the differences that I have pointed
+out, yet with resemblances which bring Him very near us. He, too; knew
+what it was to stand amongst those who shrugged their shoulders, and
+knit their brows at His utterances, and turned away from Him, calling
+Him sometimes 'dreamer,' sometimes 'revolutionary,' sometimes
+'blasphemer,' and now and then a messenger of good tidings and a
+preacher of the gospel of peace. He knows all our hesitations, all our
+weaknesses, all our temptations. He was the first of the martyrs, in the
+narrower sense of the word. He is the leader of the great band of
+witnesses for God. Let us stand by His side, and be like Him in our
+bearing witness in this world.
+
+Again, let the thought of the great tribunal stimulate us. 'I give thee
+charge before God, who quickeneth all things--and who therefore will
+quicken you--and before Jesus Christ, that thou keep this commandment.'
+Jesus, who witnessed to the truth, witnesses, in the sense of beholding
+and watching, us, knowing our weakness and ready to help us. 'The
+faithful witness, and the first begotten from the dead, and the Prince
+of the kings of the earth,' is by us, as we witness for Him. And so,
+though we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, the
+saints in the past who have witnessed for God, and been witnessed to by
+Him, we have to turn away from them, and 'look off' from all others,
+'unto Jesus.' And we may, like the first of the noble army of martyrs,
+see the heavens opened, and Jesus 'standing'--started to His feet, to
+see and to help Stephen--'at the right hand of God.'
+
+Brethren, let us listen to His witness, let us accept it, setting to our
+seals that God is true. Then let us try to echo it back by word, and to
+attest our confession by our conduct, and then we may comfort ourselves
+with the great word, 'He that confesseth Me before men, Him will I also
+confess before My Father which is in Heaven.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CONDUCT THAT SECURES THE REAL LIFE
+
+          'Laying up in store for themselves a good
+          foundation against the time to come, that they may
+          lay hold on eternal life.'--1 TIM. vi. 19.
+
+
+In the first flush of the sense of brotherhood, the Church of Jerusalem
+tried the experiment of having all things in common. It was not a
+success, it was soon abandoned, it never spread. In the later history of
+the Church, and especially in these last Pauline letters, we see clearly
+that distinctions of pecuniary position were very definitely marked
+amongst the believers. There were 'rich men' in the churches of which
+Timothy had charge. No doubt they were rich after a very modest fashion,
+for Paul's standard of opulence is not likely to have been a very high
+one, seeing that he himself ministered with his own hands to his
+necessities, and had only one cloak to keep him warm in winter time. But
+great or small as were the resources of these men, they were rich in
+comparison with some of their brethren. The words of my text are the
+close of the very plain things which Paul commands Timothy to tell them.
+He assures them that if they will be rich in good works, and ready to
+distribute, they will lay up for themselves a good 'foundation against
+the time to come.'
+
+The teaching in the text is, of course, a great deal wider than any
+specific application of it. It is very remarkable, especially as coming
+from Paul. 'Lay up a good foundation'--has he not said, 'Other
+foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
+Christ'? 'That they may lay hold on eternal life'--has he not said, 'The
+_gift_ of God is eternal life'? Is he not going dead in the teeth of his
+own teaching, 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by
+His mercy He saved us'? I think not. Let us see what he does say.
+
+I. First, then, he says that the real life is the future life.
+
+Those of you who use the Revised Version will see that it makes an
+alteration in the last clause of our text, and instead of 'eternal
+life' it reads 'the life which is life indeed,' the true life; not
+simply designating it as eternal, but designating it as being the only
+thing that is worth calling by the august name of life.
+
+Now it is quite clear that Paul here is approximating very closely to
+the language of his brother John, and using this great word 'life' as
+being, in substance, equivalent to his own favourite word of
+'salvation,' as including in one magnificent generalisation all that is
+necessary for the satisfaction of man's needs, the perfection of his
+blessedness, and the glorifying of his nature. Paul's notion of life,
+like John's, is that it is the one all-comprehensive good which men need
+and seek.
+
+And here he seems to relegate that 'life which is life indeed' to the
+region of the future, because he contemplates it as being realised 'in
+the time to come,' and as being the result of the conduct which is here
+enjoined. But you will find that substantially the same exhortation is
+given in the 12th verse of this chapter, 'Fight the good fight of faith;
+lay hold on the life eternal'--where the process of grasping this
+'life,' and therefore the possession of it, are evidently regarded as
+possible here, and the duty of every Christian man in this present
+world. That is to say, there is a double aspect of this august
+conception of the 'life which is life indeed.' In one aspect it is
+present, may be and ought to be ours, here and now; in another aspect it
+lies beyond the flood, and is the inheritance reserved in the heavens.
+That double aspect is parallel with the way in which the New Testament
+deals with the other cognate conception of salvation, which it sometimes
+regards as past, sometimes as present, sometimes as future. The complete
+idea is that the life of the Christian soul here and yonder, away out
+into the furthest extremities of eternity, and up to the loftiest climax
+of perfectness, is in essence one, whilst yet the differences between
+the degree in which its germinal possession here and its full-fruited
+enjoyment hereafter differ is so great as that, in comparison with the
+completion that is waiting the Christian soul beyond the grave, all of
+the same life that is here enjoyed dwindles into nothingness. It appears
+to me that these two sides of the truth, the essential identity of the
+life of the Christian soul beyond and here, and the all but infinite
+differences and progresses which separate the two, are both needful,
+very needful, to be kept in view by us.
+
+There is here on earth, amidst all our imperfections and weakness and
+sin, a root in the heart that trusts in Christ, which only needs to be
+transplanted into its congenial soil to blossom and burgeon into
+undreamed of beauty, and to bear fruit the savour of which no mortal
+lips can ever taste. The dwarfed rhododendrons in our shrubberies have
+in them the same nature as the giants that adorn the slopes of the
+Himalayas. Transplant these exotics to their native soil, and you would
+see what it was in them to be. Think of the life that is now at its
+best; its weakness, its blighted hopes, its thwarted aims, its foiled
+endeavours; think of its partings, its losses, its conflicts. Think of
+its disorders, its sins, and consequent sufferings; think of the shadow
+at its close, which flings long trails of blackness over many preceding
+years. Think of its swift disappearance, and then say if such a poor,
+fragmentary thing is worthy of the name of life, if that were all that
+the man was for.
+
+But it is not all. There is a 'life which is life indeed,' over which
+no shadow can pass, nor any sorrow darken the blessed faces or clog the
+happy hearts of those who possess it. They 'have all and abound.' They
+know all and are at rest. They dread nothing, and nothing do they
+regret. They leave nothing behind as they advance, and of their serenity
+and their growth there is no end. That is worth calling life. It lies
+beyond this dim spot of earth. It is 'hid with Christ in God.'
+
+II. Secondly, notice that conduct here determines the possession of the
+true life.
+
+Paul never cares whether he commits the rhetorical blunder of mixing up
+metaphors or not. That matters very little, except to a pedant and a
+rhetorician. In his impetuous way he blends three here, and has no time
+to stop to disentangle them. They all mean substantially the same thing
+which I have stated in the words that conduct here determines the
+possession of life hereafter; but they put it in three different
+figurative fashions which we may separate and look at one by one.
+
+The first of them is this, that by our actions here we accumulate
+treasure hereafter. 'Laying up in store for themselves' is one word in
+the original, and it contains even more than is expressed in our
+paraphrase, for it is really 'treasuring off.' And the idea is that the
+rich man is bade to take a portion of his worldly goods, and, by using
+these for beneficent purposes, out of them to store a treasure beyond
+the grave. What is employed thus, and from the right motives and in the
+right way, is not squandered, but laid up in store. You remember the old
+epitaph,
+
+          'What I spent I lost;
+           What I gave I have.'
+
+Now that is Christ's teaching, for did He not say: 'Sell all that thou
+hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven'? Did
+He not say: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, . . . but lay
+up treasures in heaven'? And if anybody's theology finds it difficult to
+incorporate these solemn teachings of our Lord with the rest of it, so
+much the worse for the theology.
+
+I have no doubt at all that Christianity has yet a great deal to teach
+the Christian Church and the world about the acquisition of money and
+the disposal of money; and, though I do not want to dwell now upon that
+specific application of the general principle of my text, I cannot help
+reminding you, dear friends, that for a very large number of us, almost
+the most important influence shaping our characters is the attitude that
+we take in regard to these things--the getting and the distribution of
+worldly wealth. For the bulk of Christian people there are few things
+more important as sharp tests of the reality of their religion, or more
+effective in either ennobling or degrading their whole character, than
+what they do about these two plain matters.
+
+But then my text goes a great deal further than that; and whilst it
+applies unflinchingly this principle to the one specific case, it
+invites us to apply it all round the circumference of our earthly
+conduct. What you are doing here is piling up for you, on the other side
+of the wall, what you will have to live with, and either get good or
+evil out of, through all eternity. A man who is going to Australia pays
+some money into a bank here, and when he gets to Melbourne it is
+punctually paid out to him across the counter. That is what we are doing
+here, lodging money on this side that we are going to draw on that. And
+it is this which gives to the present its mystical significance and
+solemnity, that all our actions are piling up for us future possessions:
+'treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath'; or, contrariwise,
+'glory, immortality, honour, eternal life.' We are like men digging a
+trench on one side of a hedge and flinging the spadefuls over to the
+other. They are all being piled up behind the barrier, and when we go
+round the end of it we shall find them all waiting for us.
+
+Then the Apostle superimposes upon this another metaphor. He does not
+care to unravel it. 'Laying up in store for themselves a store,' he
+would have said if he had been a pedant, 'which is also a good
+foundation.' Now I take it that that does not mean a basis for hope, or
+anything of that sort, but that it conveys this thought, that our
+actions here are putting in the foundations on which the eternal
+building of our future life shall be reared. When a man excavates and
+lays the first courses of the stones of his building, he thereby
+determines every successive stage of it, until the headstone is brought
+forth with rejoicing. We are laying foundations in that profound sense
+in this world. Our nature takes a set here, and I fail to see any reason
+cognisable by us why that ply of the nature should ever be taken out of
+it in any future. I do not dogmatise; but it seems to me that all that
+we do know of life and of God's dealings in regard to man leads us to
+suppose that the next world is a world of continuations, not of
+beginnings; that it is the second volume of the book, and hangs
+logically and necessarily upon the first that was finished when a man
+died. Our lives here and hereafter appear to me to be like some
+geometrical figure that wants two sheets of paper for its completion:
+on the first the lines run up to the margin, and on the second they are
+carried on in the direction which was manifest in the section that was
+visible here.
+
+And so, dear friends, let us remember that this is the reason why our
+smallest acts are so tremendous that by our actions we are making
+character, and that character is destiny, here and hereafter. You are
+putting in the foundations of the building that you have to live in; see
+that they are of such a sort as will support a house eternal in the
+heavens.
+
+The last of the metaphors under which the Apostle suggests the one idea
+is that our conduct here determines our capacity to lay hold of the
+prize. It seems to me that the same allusion is lingering in his mind
+which is definitely stated in the previous verse to which I have already
+referred, where the eternal life which Timothy is exhorted to lay hold
+of is regarded as being the prize of the good fight of faith, which he
+is exhorted to fight. And so the third metaphor here is that which is
+familiar in Paul's writings, where eternal life is regarded as a garland
+or prize, given to the victor in race or arena. It is exactly the same
+notion as he otherwise expresses when he says that he follows after if
+that he may 'lay hold of that for which also he is laid hold of by Jesus
+Christ.' This is the underlying thought, that according to a Christian
+man's acts here is his capacity of receiving the real life yonder.
+
+That is not given arbitrarily. Each man gets as much of it when he goes
+home as he can hold. The tiniest vessel is filled, the largest vessel is
+filled. But the little vessel may, and will, grow bigger if that which
+is deposited in it be rightly employed. Let us lay this to heart, that
+Christian men dare not treat it as a matter of indifference whether to
+the full they live lives consistent with their profession, and do the
+will of their Master or no. It is not all the same, and it will not be
+all the same yonder, whether we have adorned the teaching, or whether
+our lives have habitually and criminally fallen beneath the level of our
+professions. Brethren, we are too apt to forget that there is such a
+thing as being 'saved, yet so as by fire'; and that there is such a
+thing as 'having an entrance ministered abundantly into the Kingdom.' Be
+you sure of this, that if the hands of your spirits are ever to be
+capable of grasping the prize, it must be as the result of conduct here
+on earth, which has been treasuring up treasures yonder, and laying a
+foundation on which the incorruptible house may solidly rest.
+
+III. And now the last word that I have to say is that these principles
+are perfectly compatible with the great truth of salvation by faith.
+
+For observe to whom the text is spoken. It is to men who have professed
+to be believers, and it is on the ground of their faith that these rich
+men in Timothy's churches are exhorted to this conduct. There is no
+incompatibility between the doctrine that eternal life is the gift of
+God, and the placing of those who have received that gift under a strict
+law of recompense.
+
+That is the teaching of the whole New Testament. It was to _Christian_
+men that it was said: 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked, whatsoever a
+man soweth that shall he also reap.' It is the teaching of Jesus Christ
+Himself.
+
+But there is a dreadful danger that we, with our partial vision, shall
+see one side of the truth so clearly that we do not see the other; and
+so you get two antagonistic schools of Christian teaching who have torn
+the one word into halves. One of them says, 'Man is saved by faith
+only,' and forgets 'faith without works is dead'; and the other says,
+'Do your duty, and never mind about your belief,' and forgets that the
+belief--the trust--is the only sure foundation on which conduct can be
+based, and the only source from which it is certain to flow.
+
+Now, if I should not be misunderstood by that same narrow and contracted
+vision of which I have been speaking, I would venture to say that
+salvation by faith alone may be so held as to be a very dangerous
+doctrine, and that there is a very real sense in which a man is saved by
+works. And if you do not like that, go home and read the Epistle of
+James, and see what you make of his teaching: 'Ye see, brethren, how
+that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.' 'Faith wrought
+with his works, and by his works was his faith made perfect.'
+
+Only let us understand where the exhortation of the text comes in. We
+have to begin with absolute departure from all merit in work, and the
+absolute casting of ourselves on Jesus Christ. If you have not done
+that, my brother, the teaching 'Laying up in store for themselves a good
+foundation' has no application to you, but this teaching has, 'Other
+foundation can no man lay. Behold, I lay in Zion a tried corner-stone.
+Whosoever believeth in Him shall not make haste.' If you have not
+committed your souls and selves and lives and hopes to Jesus Christ, the
+teaching 'Lay hold on eternal life' has only a very modified application
+to you, because the only hand that can grasp that life is the hand of
+faith that is content to receive it from His hands with the prints of
+the nails in them. But if you have given yourselves to that Saviour, and
+received the germinal gift of eternal life from Him, then, take my text
+as absolutely imperative for you. Remember that it is for you, resting
+on Christ, to treasure up eternal life; for you to build on that sure
+foundation gold and silver and precious stones which may stand the fire;
+for you, by faithful continuance in well-doing, to lay hold of that for
+which you have been laid hold of by Jesus Christ. May it be true of all
+of us that 'our works do follow us'!
+
+          'Thy works, thine alms, and all thy good endeavour
+             Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod,
+             But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
+           Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Part I,
+
+Page 44, "transcendant" changed to "transcendent" (this one
+transcendent)
+
+Page 59, "entrace" changed to "entrance" (a private entrance)
+
+Page 72, "for for" changed to "for" (day, for one)
+
+Page 150, "roalties" changed to "royalties" (symbols for royalties)
+
+Page 269, "immoveable" changed to "immovable" (firm and immovable)
+
+Part II,
+
+Page 52, "whatsover" changed to "whatsoever" (whatsoever things are
+lovely)
+
+Page 63, "centifugal" changed to "centrifugal" (centrifugal and
+centripetal)
+
+Page 118, a bit of text was not inked in the original, the following
+words have been presumed:
+
+          clea        clear
+          an          and
+          kno         know
+          me          men
+
+  For:                                      "clear
+  before you, or you will go yawing about, and washing
+  here and there, in the trough of the wave, and
+  the tempest will be your master. If you do not know
+  where you are going you will have to say, like the men"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture, by
+Alexander Maclaren
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #21190 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21190)