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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans
Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V), 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
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V)

Author: Alexander Maclaren

Release Date: October 5, 2004 [EBook #13601]

Language: English

Character set encoding: TeX

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***




Produced by Charles Franks, John Hagerson, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team





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\frontmatter

\begin{center}
\huge EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

\bigskip\bigskip\bigskip
\large ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D. \\
\bigskip\bigskip
ROMANS \\
\bigskip CORINTHIANS \textit{(To II Corinthians, Chap. V)}
\end{center}

\tableofcontents

%% THE WITNESS OF THE RESURRECTION (Romans i. 4, R. V.)
%% PRIVILEGE AND OBLIGATION (Romans i. 7)
%% PAUL'S LONGING (Romans i. 11, 12)
%% DEBTORS TO ALL MEN (Romans i. 14)
%% THE GOSPEL THE POWER OF GOD (Romans i. 16)
%% WORLD-WIDE SIN AND WORLD-WIDE REDEMPTION (Romans iii. 19-26)
%% NO DIFFERENCE (Romans iii. 22)
%% `LET US HAVE PEACE' (Romans v. 1, R. V.)
%% ACCESS INTO GRACE (Romans v. 2)
%% THE SOURCES OF HOPE (Romans v. 2-4)
%% A THREEFOLD CORD (Romans v. 5)
%% WHAT PROVES GOD'S LOVE (Romans v. 8)
%% THE WARRING QUEENS (Romans v. 21)
%% `THE FORM OF TEACHING' (Romans vi. 17)
%% `THY FREE SPIRIT' (Romans viii. 2)
%% CHRIST CONDEMNING SIN (Romans viii. 8)
%% THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT (Romans viii. 16)
%% SONS AND HEIRS (Romans viii. 17)
%% SUFFERING WITH CHRIST, A CONDITION OF GLORY WITH CHRIST (Romans viii. 17)
%% THE REVELATION OF SONS (Romans viii. 19)
%% THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY (Romans viii. 23)
%% THE INTERCEDING SPIRIT (Romans viii. 26)
%% THE GIFT THAT BRINGS ALL GIFTS (Romans viii. 32)
%% MORE THAN CONQUERORS (Romans viii. 37)
%% LOVE'S TRIUMPH (Romans viii. 38, 39)
%% THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY (Romans xii. 1)
%% TRANSFIGURATION (Romans xii. 2)
%% SOBER THINKING (Romans xii. 3)
%% MANY AND ONE (Romans xii. 4, 5)
%% GRACE AND GRACES (Romans xii. 6-8)
%% LOVE THAT CAN HATE (Romans xii. 9, 10, R. V.)
%% A TRIPLET OF GRACES (Romans xii. 11)
%% ANOTHER TRIPLET OF GRACES (Romans xii. 12)
%% STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii. 13-15)
%% STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii. 16, R. V.)
%% STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii, 17, 18, R. V.)
%% STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii. 19-21)
%% LOVE AND THE DAY (Romans xiii. 8-14)
%% SALVATION NEARER (Romans xiii. 11)
%% THE SOLDIER'S MORNING-CALL (Romans xiii. 12)
%% THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY (Romans xiv. 12-23)
%% TWO FOUNTAINS, ONE STREAM (Romans xv. 4, 13)
%% JOY AND PEACE IN BELIEVING (Romans xv. 13)
%% PH\OE{}BE (Romans xvi. 1, 2, R. V.)
%% PRISCILLA AND AQUILA (Romans xvi. 3-5)
%% TWO HOUSEHOLDS (Romans xvi. 10,11)
%% TRYPHENA AND TRYPHOSA (Romans xvi. 12)
%% PERSIS (Romans xvi. 12)
%% A CRUSHED SNAKE (Romans xvi. 20)
%% TERTIUS (Romans xvi. 22, R. V.)
%% QUARTUS A BROTHER (Romans xvi. 23)

\mainmatter

\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{ROMANS}

\chapter{The Witness of the Resurrection}
\markright{ROMANS i. 4}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Declared to be the Son of God with power, ... by the resurrection
of the dead.'---\textsc{Romans} i. 4 (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

It is a great mistake to treat Paul's writings, and especially
this Epistle, as mere theology. They are the transcript of his
life's experience. As has been well said, the gospel of Paul is an
interpretation of the significance of the life and work of Jesus
based upon the revelation to him of Jesus as the risen Christ. He
believed that he had seen Jesus on the road to Damascus, and it
was that appearance which revolutionised his life, turned him from
a persecutor into a disciple, and united him with the Apostles as
ordained to be a witness with them of the Resurrection. To them
all the Resurrection of Jesus was first of all a historical fact
appreciated chiefly in its bearing on Him. By degrees they
discerned that so transcendent a fact bore in itself a revelation
of what would become the experience of all His followers beyond
the grave, and a symbol of the present life possible for them. All
three of these aspects are plainly declared in Paul's writings. In
our text it is chiefly the first which is made prominent. All that
distinguishes Christianity; and makes it worth believing, or
mighty, is inseparably connected with the Resurrection.

I. The Resurrection of Christ declares His Sonship.

Resurrection and Ascension are inseparably connected. Jesus does
not rise to share again in the ills and weariness of humanity.
Risen, `He dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.'
`He died unto sin once'; and His risen humanity had nothing in it
on which physical death could lay hold. That He should from some
secluded dimple on Olivet ascend before the gazing disciples until
the bright cloud, which was the symbol of the Divine Presence,
received Him out of their sight, was but the end of the process
which began unseen in morning twilight. He laid aside the garments
of the grave and passed out of the sepulchre which was made sure
by the great stone rolled against its mouth. The grand avowal of
faith in His Resurrection loses meaning, unless it is completed as
Paul completed his `yea rather that was raised from the dead,'
with the triumphant `who is at the right hand of God.' Both are
supernatural, and the Virgin Birth corresponds at the beginning to
the supernatural Resurrection and Ascension at the close. Both
such an entrance into the world and such a departure from it,
proclaim at once His true humanity, and that `this is the Son of
God.'

Still further, the Resurrection is God's solemn `Amen' to the
tremendous claims which Christ had made. The fact of His
Resurrection, indeed, would not declare His divinity; but the
Resurrection of One who had spoken such words does. If the Cross
and a nameless grave had been the end, what a \textit{reductio ad
absurdum} that would have been to the claims of Jesus to have ever
been with the Father and to be doing always the things that
pleased Him. The Resurrection is God's last and loudest
proclamation, `This is My beloved Son: hear ye Him.' The Psalmist
of old had learned to trust that his sonship and consecration to
the Father made it impossible that that Father should leave his
soul in Sheol, or suffer one who was knit to Him by such sacred
bonds to see corruption; and the unique Sonship and perfect
self-consecration of Jesus went down into the grave in the assured
confidence, as He Himself declared, that the third day He would
rise again. The old alternative seems to retain all its sharp
points: Either Christ rose again from the dead, or His claims are
a series of blasphemous arrogances and His character irremediably
stained.

But we may also remember that Scripture not only represents
Christ's Resurrection as a divine act but also as the act of
Christ's own power. In His earthly life He asserted that His
relation both to physical death and to resurrection was an
entirely unique one. `I have power,' said He, `to lay down my
life, and I have power to take it again'; and yet, even in this
tremendous instance of self-assertion, He remains the obedient
Son, for He goes on to say, `This commandment have I received of
My Father.' If these claims are just, then it is vain to stumble
at the miracles which Jesus did in His earthly life. If He could
strip it off and resume it, then obviously it was not a life like
other men's. The whole phenomenon is supernatural, and we shall
not be in the true position to understand and appreciate it and
Him until, like the doubting Thomas, we fall at the feet of the
risen Son, and breathe out loyalty and worship in that rapturous
exclamation, `My Lord and my God.'

II. The Resurrection interprets Christ's Death.

There is no more striking contrast than that between the absolute
non-receptivity of the disciples in regard to all Christ's plain
teachings about His death and their clear perception after
Pentecost of the mighty power that lay in it. The very fact that
they continued disciples at all, and that there continued to be
such a community as the Church, demands their belief in the
Resurrection as the only cause which can account for it. If He did
not rise from the dead, and if His followers did not know that He
did so by the plainest teachings of common-sense, they ought to
have scattered, and borne in isolated hearts the bitter memories
of disappointed hopes; for if He lay in a nameless grave, and they
were not sure that He was risen from the dead, His death would
have been a conclusive showing up of the falsity of His claims. In
it there would have been no atoning power, no triumph over sin. If
the death of Christ were not followed by His Resurrection and
Ascension, the whole fabric of Christianity falls to pieces. As
the Apostle puts it in his great chapter on resurrection, `Ye are
yet in your sins.' The forgiveness which the Gospel holds forth to
men does not depend on the mercy of God or on the mere penitence
of man, but upon the offering of the one sacrifice for sins in His
death, which is justified by His Resurrection as being accepted by
God. If we cannot triumphantly proclaim `Christ is risen indeed,'
we have nothing worth preaching.

We are told now that the ethics of Christianity are its vital
centre, which will stand out more plainly when purified from these
mystical doctrines of a Death as the sin-offering for the world,
and a Resurrection as the great token that that offering avails.
Paul did not think so. To him the morality of the Gospel was all
deduced from the life of Christ the Son of God as our Example, and
from His death for us which touches men's hearts and makes
obedience to Him our joyful answer to what He has done for us.
Christianity is a new thing in the world, not as moral teaching,
but as moral power to obey that teaching, and that depends on the
Cross interpreted by the Resurrection. If we have only a dead
Christ, we have not a living Christianity.

III. Resurrection points onwards to Christ's coming again.

Paul at Athens declared in the hearing of supercilious Greek
philosophers, that the Jesus, whom he proclaimed to them, was `the
Man whom God had ordained to judge the world in righteousness,'
and that `He had given assurance thereof unto all men, in that He
raised Him from the dead.' The Resurrection was the beginning of
the process which, from the human point of view, culminated in the
Ascension. Beyond the Ascension stretches the supernatural life of
the glorified Son of God. Olivet cannot be the end, and the words
of the two men in white apparel who stood amongst the little group
of the upward gazing friends, remain as the hope of the Church:
`This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him
go into heaven.' That great assurance implies a visible corporeal
return locally defined, and having for its purpose to complete the
work which Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, each
advanced a stage. The Resurrection is the corner-stone of the
whole Christian faith. It seals the truths that Jesus is the Son
of God with power, that He died for us, that He has ascended on
high to prepare a place for us, that He will come again and take
us to Himself. If we, by faith in Him, take for ours the women's
greeting on that Easter morning, `The Lord hath risen indeed,' He
will come to us with His own greeting, `Peace be unto you.'

\chapter{Privilege and Obligation}
\markright{ROMANS i. 7}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be
saints.'---\textsc{Romans} i. 7.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

 This is the address of the Epistle. The first thing to
be noticed about it, by way of introduction, is the universality
of this designation of Christians. Paul had never been in Rome,
and knew very little about the religious stature of the converts
there. But he has no hesitation in declaring that they are all
`beloved of God' and `saints.' There were plenty of imperfect
Christians amongst them; many things to rebuke; much deadness,
coldness, inconsistency, and yet none of these in the slightest
degree interfered with the application of these great designations
to them. So, then, `beloved of God' and `saints' are not
distinctions of classes within the pale of Christianity, but
belong to the whole community, and to each member of the body.

The next thing to note, I think, is how these two great terms,
`beloved of God' and `saints,' cover almost the whole ground of
the Christian life. They are connected with each other very
closely, as I shall have occasion to show presently, but in the
meantime it may be sufficient to mark how the one carries us deep
into the heart of God and the other extends over the whole ground
of our relation to Him. The one is a statement of a universal
prerogative, the other an enforcement of a universal obligation.
Let us look, then, at these two points, the universal privilege
and the universal obligation of the Christian life.

I. The universal privilege of the Christian life.

`Beloved of God.' Now we are so familiar with the juxtaposition of
the two ideas, `love' and `God,' that we cease to feel the
wonderfulness of their union. But until Jesus Christ had done His
work no man believed that the two thoughts could be brought
together.

Does God love any one? We think the question too plain to need to
be put, and the answer instinctive. But it is not by any means
instinctive, and the fact is that until Christ answered it for us,
the world stood dumb before the question that its own heart
raised, and when tortured spirits asked, `Is there care in heaven,
and is there love?' there was `no voice, nor answer, nor any that
regarded.' Think of the facts of life; think of the facts of
nature. Think of sorrows and miseries and pains, and sins, and
wasted lives and storms, and tempests, and diseases, and
convulsions; and let us feel how true the grim saying is, that
\begin{verse}
`Nature, red in tooth and claw, \\
 With rapine, shrieks against the creed'
\end{verse}
\noindent that God is love.

And think of what the world has worshipped, and of all the
varieties of monstrosity, not the less monstrous because sometimes
beautiful, before which men have bowed. Cruel, lustful, rapacious,
capricious, selfish, indifferent deities they have adored. And
then, `God hath established,' proved, demonstrated `His love to us
in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.'

Oh, brethren, do not let us kick down the ladder by which we have
climbed; or, in the name of a loving God, put away the Christian
teaching which has begotten the conception in humanity of a God
that loves. There are men to-day who would never have come within
sight of that sunlight truth, even as a glimmering star, away down
upon the horizon, if it had not been for the Gospel; and who now
turn round upon that very Gospel which has given them the
conception, and accuse it of narrow and hard thoughts of the love
of God.

One of the Scripture truths against which the assailant often
turns his sharpest weapons is that which is involved in my text,
the Scripture answer to the other question, `Does not God love
all?' Yes! yes! a thousand times, yes! But there is another
question, Does the love of God, to all, make His special
designation of Christian men as His beloved the least unlikely?
Surely there is no kind of contradiction between the broadest
proclamation of the universality of the love of God and Paul's
decisive declaration that, in a very deep and real manner, they
who are in Christ are the beloved of God. Surely special affection
is not in its nature, inconsistent with universal beneficence and
benevolence. Surely it is no exaltation, but rather a degradation
of the conception of the divine love, if we proclaim its utter
indifference to men's characters. Surely you are not honouring God
when you say, `It is all the same to Him whether a man loves Him
and serves Him, or lifts himself up in rebellion against Him, and
makes himself his own centre, and earth his aim and his all.'
Surely to imagine a God who not only makes His sun to shine and
His rains and dews to fall on the unthankful and the evil, that He
may draw them to love Him, but who also is conceived as taking the
sinful creature who yet cleaves to his sins to His heart, as He
does the penitent soul that longs for His image to be produced in
it, is to blaspheme, and not to honour the love, the universal
love of God.

God forbid that any words that ever drop from my lips should seem
to cast the smallest shadow of doubt on that great truth, `God so
loved the world that He gave His Son!' But God forbid, equally,
that any words of mine should seem to favour the, to me, repellent
idea that the infinite love of God disregards the character of the
man on whom it falls. There are manifestations of that loving
heart which any man can receive; and each man gets as much of the
love of God as it is possible to pour upon him. But granite rock
does not drink in the dew as a flower does; and the nature of the
man on whom God's love falls determines how much, and what manner
of its manifestations shall pass into his true possession, and
what shall remain without.

So, on the whole, we have to answer the questions, `Does God love
any? Does not God love all? Does God specially love some?' with
the one monosyllable, `Yes.'

And so, dear brethren, let us learn the path by which we can pass
into that blessed community of those on whom the fullness and
sweetness and tenderest tenderness of the Father's heart will
fall. `If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will
love him.' Myths tell us that the light which, at the beginning,
had been diffused through a nebulous mass, was next gathered into
a sun. So the universal love of God is concentrated in Jesus
Christ; and if we have Him we have it; and if we have faith we
have Him, and can say, `Neither life, nor death, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

II. Then, secondly, mark the universal obligation of the Christian
life.

`Called to be saints,' says my text. Now you will observe that the
two little words `to be' are inserted here as a supplement. They may
be correct enough, but they are open to the possibility of
misunderstanding, as if the saintship, to which all Christian people
are `called' was something future, and not realised at the moment.
Now, in the context, the Apostle employs the same form of expression
with regard to himself in a clause which illuminates the meaning of
my text. `Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ' says he, in the first
verse, `called to be an Apostle' or, more correctly, `a called
Apostle.' The apostleship coincided in time with the call, was
contemporaneous with that which was its cause. And if Paul was an
Apostle since he was called, saints are saints since \textit{they}
are called. `The beloved of God' are `the called saints.'

I need only observe, further, that the word `called' here does not
mean `named' or `designated' but `summoned.' It describes not the
name by which Christian men are known, but the thing which they
are invited, summoned, `called' by God to be. It is their
vocation, not their designation. Now, then, I need not, I suppose,
remind you that `saint' and `holy' convey precisely the same idea:
the one expressing it in a word of Teutonic, and the other in one
of classic derivation.

We notice that the true idea of this universal holiness which,
\textit{ipso facto}, belongs to all Christian people, is
consecration to God. In the old days temple, altars, sacrifices,
sacrificial vessels, persons such as priests, periods like
Sabbaths and feasts, were called `holy.' The common idea running
through all these uses of the word is \textit{belonging to God},
and that is the root notion of the New Testament `saint' a man who
is God's. God has claimed us for Himself when He gave us Jesus
Christ. We respond to the claim when we accept Christ. Henceforth
we are not our own, but `consecrated'---that is, `saints.'

Now the next step is purity, which is the ordinary idea of
sanctity. Purity will follow consecration, and would not be worth
much without it, even if it was possible to be attained. Now, look
what a far deeper and nobler idea of the service and conditions of
moral goodness this derivation of it from surrender to God gives,
than does a God-ignoring morality which talks and talks about acts
and dispositions, and never goes down to the root of the whole
matter; and how much nobler it is than a shallow religion which in
like manner is ever straining after acts of righteousness, and
forgets that in order to be right there must be prior surrender to
God. Get a man to yield himself up to God and no fear about the
righteousness. Virtue, goodness, purity, righteousness, all these
synonyms express very noble things; but deep down below them all
lies the New Testament idea of holiness, consecration of myself to
God, which is the parent of them all.

And then the next thing to remind you of is that this consecration
is to be applied all through a man's nature. Yielding yourselves
to God is the talismanic secret of all righteousness, as I have
said; and every part of our complex, manifold being is capable of
such consecration. I hallow my heart if its love twines round His
heart. I hallow my thoughts if I take His truth for my guide, and
ever seek to be led thereby in practice and in belief. I hallow my
will when it bows and says, `Speak, Lord! Thy servant heareth!' I
hallow my senses when I use them as from Him, with recognition of
Him and for Him. In fact, there are two ways of living in the
world; and, narrow as it sounds, I venture to say there are only
two. Either God is my centre, and that is holiness; or self is my
centre, in more or less subtle forms, and that is sin.

Then the next step is that this consecration, which will issue in
all purity, and will cover the whole ground of a human life, is
only possible when we have drunk in the blessed thought `beloved
of God.' My yielding of myself to Him can only be the echo of His
giving of Himself to me. He must be the first to love. You cannot
argue a man into loving God, any more than you can hammer a
rosebud open. If you do you spoil its petals. But He can love us
into loving Him, and the sunshine, falling on the closed flower,
will expand it, and it will grow by its reception of the light,
and grow sunlike in its measure and according to its nature. So a
God who has only claims upon us will never be a God to whom we
yield ourselves. A God who has love for us will be a God to whom
it is blessed that we should be consecrated, and so saints.

Then, still further, this consecration, thus built upon the
reception of the divine love, and influencing our whole nature,
and leading to all purity, is a universal characteristic of
Christians. There is no faith which does not lead to surrender.
There is no aristocracy in the Christian Church which deserves to
have the family name given especially to it. `Saint' this, and
`Saint' that, and `Saint' the other---these titles cannot be used
without darkening the truth that this honour and obligation of
being saints belong equally to all that love Jesus Christ. All the
men whom thus God has drawn to Himself, by His love in His Son,
they are all, if I may so say, objectively holy; they belong to
God. But consecration may be cultivated, and must be cultivated
and increased. There is a solemn obligation laid upon every one of
us who call ourselves Christians, to be saints, in the sense that
we have consciously yielded up our whole lives to Him; and are
trying, body, soul, and spirit, `to perfect holiness in the fear
of the Lord.'

Paul's letter, addressed to the `beloved in God,' the `called
saints' that are in Rome, found its way to the people for whom it
was meant. If a letter so addressed were dropped in our streets,
do you think anybody would bring it to you, or to any Christian
society as a whole, recognising that we were the people for whom
it was meant? The world has taunted us often enough with the name
of saints; and laughed at the profession which they thought was
included in the word. Would that their taunts had been undeserved,
and that it were not true that `saints' in the Church sometimes
means less than `good men' out of the Church! `Seeing that we have
these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all
filthiness of flesh and spirit; perfecting holiness in the fear of
the Lord.'

\chapter{Paul's Longing}
\markright{ROMANS i. 11, 12}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual
gift, to the end ye may be established; 12.\ That is, that I may
be comforted together with you, by the mutual faith both of you
and me.'---\textsc{Romans} i. 11, 12.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

I am not wont to indulge in personal references in the pulpit, but
I cannot but yield to the impulse to make an exception now, and to
let our happy circumstances mould my remarks.\footnote{Preached
after long absence on account of illness.} I speak mainly to mine
own people, and I must trust that other friends who may hear or
read my words will forgive my doing so.

In taking such a text as this, I desire to shelter myself behind
Paul, and in expounding his feelings to express my own, and to
draw such lessons as may be helpful and profitable to us all. And
so there are three things in this text that I desire to note: the
manly expression of Christian affection; the lofty consciousness
of the purpose of their meeting; and the lowly sense that there
was much to be received as well as much to be given. A word or two
about each of these things is all on which I can venture.

I. First, then, notice the manly expression of Christian affection
which the Apostle allows himself here.

Very few Christian teachers could or should venture to talk so
much about themselves as Paul did. The strong infusion of the
personal element in all his letters is so transparently simple, so
obviously sincere, so free from any jarring note of affectation or
unctuous sentiment that it attracts rather than repels. If I might
venture upon a paradox, his personal references are instances of
self-oblivion in the midst of self-consciousness.

He had never been in Rome when he wrote these words; he had no
personal relations with the believers there; he had never looked
them in the face; there were no sympathy and confidence between
them, as the growth of years. But still his heart went out towards
them, and he was not ashamed to show it. `I \textit{long} to see
you,'---in the original the word expresses a very intense amount
of yearning blended with something of regret that he had been so
long kept from them.

Now it is not a good thing for people to make many professions of
affection, and I think a public teacher has something better to do
than to parade such feelings before his audiences. But there are
exceptions to all rules, and I suppose I may venture to let my
heart speak, and to say how gladly I come back to the old place,
dear to me by so many sacred memories and associations, and how
gladly I reknit the bonds of an affection which has been unbroken,
and deepening on both sides through thirty long years.

Dear friends! let us together thank God to-day if He has knit our
hearts together in mutual affection; and if you and I can look
each other, as I believe we can, in the eyes, with the assurance
that I see only the faces of friends, and that you see the face of
one who gladly resumes the old work and associations.

But now, dear brethren, let us draw one lesson. Unless there be
this manly, honest, though oftenest silent, Christian affection,
the sooner you and I part the better. Unless it be in my heart I
can do you no good. No man ever touched another with the sweet
constraining forces that lie in Christ's Gospel unless the heart
of the speaker went out to grapple the hearts of the hearers. And
no audience ever listen with any profit to a man when they come in
the spirit of carping criticism, or of cold admiration, or of
stolid indifference. There must be for this simple relationship
which alone binds a Nonconformist preacher to his congregation, as
a \textit{sine qua non} of all higher things and of all spiritual
good, a real, though oftenest it be a concealed, mutual affection
and regard. We have to thank God for much of it; let us try to get
more. That is all I want to say about the first point here.

II. Note the lofty consciousness of the purpose of their
meeting.

`I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift.'
Paul knew that he had something which he could give to these people,
and he calls it by a very comprehensive term, `some spiritual
gift'---a gift of some sort which, coming from the Divine Spirit,
was to be received into the human spirit.

Now that expression---a spiritual gift---in the New Testament has
a variety of applications. Sometimes it refers to what we call
miraculous endowments, sometimes it refers to what we may call
official capacity; but here it is evidently neither the one nor
the other of these more limited and special things, but the
general idea of a divine operation upon the human spirit which
fills it with Christian graces---knowledge, faith, love. Or, in
simpler words, what Paul wanted to give them was a firmer grasp
and fuller possession of Jesus Christ, His love and power, which
would secure a deepening and strengthening of their whole
Christian life. He was quite sure he had this to give, and that he
could impart it, if they would listen to what he would say to
them. But whilst thus he rises into the lofty conception of the
purpose and possible result of his meeting the Roman Christians,
he is just as conscious of the limitations of his power in the
matter as he is of the greatness of his function. These are
indicated plainly. The word which he employs here, `gift' is never
used in the New Testament for a thing that one man can give to
another, but is always employed for the concrete results of the
grace of God bestowed upon men. The very expression, then, shows
that Paul thought of himself, not as the original giver, but
simply as a channel through which was communicated what God had
given. In the same direction points the adjective which
accompanies the noun---a `\textit{spiritual} gift'---which
probably describes the origin of the gift as being the Spirit of
God, rather than defines the seat of it when received as being the
spirit of the receiver. Notice, too, as bearing on the limits of
Paul's part in the gift, the propriety and delicacy of the
language in his statement of the ultimate purpose of the gift. He
does not say `that I may strengthen you,' which might have sounded
too egotistical, and would have assumed too much to himself, but
he says `that ye may be strengthened,' for the true strengthener
is not Paul, but the Spirit of God.

So, on the one hand, the Christian teacher is bound to rise to the
height of the consciousness of his lofty vocation as having in
possession a gift that he can bestow; on the other hand, he is
bound ever to remember the limitations within which that is
true---viz. that the gift is not his, but God's, and that the
Spirit of the Lord is the true Giver of all the graces which may
blossom when His word, ministered by human agents, is received
into human hearts.

And, now, what are the lessons that I take from this? Two very
simple ones. First, no Christian teacher has any business to open
his mouth, unless he is sure that he has received something to
impart to men as a gift from the Divine Spirit. To preach our
doubts, to preach our own opinions, to preach poor platitudes, to
talk about politics and morals and taste and literature and the
like in the pulpit, is profanation and blasphemy. Let no man open
his lips unless he can say: `The Lord hath showed me this; and
this I bring to you as His word.' Nor has a Christian organisation
any right to exist, unless it recognises the communication and
reception and further spreading of this spiritual gift as its
great function. Churches which have lost that consciousness, and,
instead of a divine gift, have little more to offer than formal
worship, or music, or entertainments, or mere intellectual
discourse, whether orthodox or `advanced,' have no right to be;
and by the law of the survival of the fittest will not long be.
The one thing that warrants such a relationship as subsists
between you and me is this, my consciousness that I have a message
from God, and your belief that you hear such from my lips. Unless
that be our bond the sooner these walls crumble, and this voice
ceases, and these pews are emptied, the better. `I have,' says,
Paul, `a gift to impart; and I long to see you that I may impart
it to you.' Oh! for more, in all our pulpits, of that burdened
consciousness of a divine message which needs the relief of
speech, and longs with a longing caught from Christ to impart its
richest treasures.

That is the one lesson. And the other one is this. Have you, dear
friends, received the gift that I have, under the limitations
already spoken of, to bestow? There are some of you who have
listened to my voice ever since you were children---some of you,
though not many, have heard it for well on to thirty years. Have
you taken the thing that all these years I have been---God knows
how poorly, but God knows how honestly---trying to bring to you?
That is, have you taken Christ, and have you faith in Him? And, as
for those of you who say that you are Christians, many blessings
have passed between you and me through all these years; but, dear
friends, has the chief blessing been attained? Are you being
strengthened day by day for the burdens and the annoyances and the
sorrows of life by your coming here? Do I do you any good in that
way; are you better men than when we first met together? Is Christ
dearer, and more real and nearer to you; and are your lives more
transparently consecrated, more manifestly the result of a hidden
union with Him? Do you walk in the world like the Master, because
you are members of this congregation? If so, its purpose has been
accomplished. If not, it has miserably failed.

I have said that I have to thank God for the unbroken affection
that has knit us together. But what is the use of such love if it
does not lead onwards to this? I have had enough, and more than
enough, of what you call popularity and appreciation, undeserved
enough, but rendered unstintedly by you. I do not care the snap of
a finger for it by comparison with this other thing. And oh, dear
brethren! if all that comes of our meeting here Sunday after
Sunday is either praise or criticism of my poor words and ways,
our relationship is a curse, and not a blessing, and we come
together for the worse and not for the better. The purpose of the
Church, and the purpose of the ministry, and the meaning of our
assembling are, that spiritual gifts may be imparted, not by me
alone, but by you, too, and by me in my place and measure, and if
that purpose be not accomplished, all other purposes, that are
accomplished, are of no account, and worse than nothing.

III. And now, lastly, note the lowly consciousness that much was
to be received as well as much to be given.

The Apostle corrects himself after he has said `that I may impart
unto you some spiritual gift,' by adding, `that is, that I may be
comforted (or rather, encouraged) together with you by the mutual
faith both of you and me.' If his language were not so
transparently sincere, and springing from deep interest in the
relationship between himself and these people, we should say that
it was exquisite courtesy and beautiful delicacy. But it moves in
a region far more real than the region of courtesy, and it speaks
the inmost truth about the conditions on which the Roman
Christians should receive---viz. that they should also give. There
is only one Giver who is only a Giver, and that is God. All other
givers are also receivers. Paul desired to see his Roman brethren
that he might be encouraged; and when he did see them, as he
marched along the Appian Way, a shipwrecked prisoner, the Acts of
the Apostles tells us, `He thanked God and took courage.' The
sight of them strengthened him and prepared him for what lay
before him.

Paul's was a richly complicated nature---firm as a rock in its
will, tremulously sensitive in its sympathies; like some
strongly-rooted tree with its stable stem and a green cloud of
fluttering foliage that moves in the lightest air. So his spirit
rose and fell according to the reception that he met from his
brethren, and the manifestation of their faith quickened and
strengthened his.

And he is but one instance of a universal law. All teachers, the
more genuine they are, the more sympathetic they are, are the more
sensitive of their environment. The very oratorical temperament
places a man at the mercy of surroundings. All earnest work has
ever travelling with it as its shadow seasons of deep depression;
and the Christian teacher does not escape these. I am not going to
speak about myself, but this is unquestionably true, that every
Elijah, after the mightiest effort of prophecy, is apt to cover
his head in his mantle and to say, `Take me away; I am not better
than my fathers.' And when a man for thirty years, amidst all the
changes incident to a great city congregation in that time, has to
stand up Sunday after Sunday before the same people, and mark how
some of them are stolidly indifferent, and note how others are
dropping away from their faithfulness, and see empty places where
loving forms used to sit---no wonder that the mood comes ever and
anon, `Then, said I, surely I have laboured in vain and spent my
strength for nought.' The hearer reacts on the speaker quite as
much as the speaker does on the hearer. If you have ice in the
pews, that brings down the temperature up here. It is hard to be
fervid amidst people that are all but dead. It is difficult to
keep a fire alight when it is kindled on the top of an iceberg.
And the unbelief and low-toned religion of a congregation are
always pulling down the faith and the fervour of their minister,
if he be better and holier, as they expect him to be, than they
are.

`He did not many works because of their unbelief.' Christ knew the
hampering and the restrictions of His power which came from being
surrounded by a chill, unsympathetic environment. My strength and
my weakness are largely due to you. And if you want your minister
to preach better, and in all ways to do his work more joyfully and
faithfully, the means lie largely in your own hands. Icy
indifference, ill-natured interpretations, carping criticisms,
swift forgetfulness of one's words, all these things kill the
fervour of the pulpit.

On the other hand, the true encouragement to give a man when he is
trying to do God's will, to preach Christ's Gospel, is not to pat
him on the back and say, `What a remarkable sermon that was of
yours! what a genius! what an orator!' not to go about praising
it, but to come and say, `Thy words have led me to Christ, and
from thee I have taken the gift of gifts.'

Dear brethren, the encouragement of the minister is in the
conversion and the growth of the hearers. And I pray that in this
new lease of united fellowship which we have taken out, be it
longer or shorter---and advancing years tell me that at the
longest it must be comparatively short---I may come to you ever
more and more with the lofty and humbling consciousness that I
have a message which Christ has given to me, and that you may come
more and more receptive---not of \textit{my} words, God
forbid---but of Christ's truth; and that so we may be helpers one
of another, and encourage each other in the warfare and work to
which we all are called and consecrated.

\chapter{Debtors to all Men}
\markright{ROMANS i. 14}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to
the wise and to the unwise.'---\textsc{Romans} i. 14.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

No doubt Paul is here referring to the special obligation laid
upon him by his divine call to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. He
was entrusted with the Gospel as a steward, and was therefore
bound to carry it to all sorts and conditions of men. But the
principle underlying the statement applies to all Christians. The
indebtedness referred to is no peculiarity of the Apostolic order,
but attaches to every believer. Every servant of Jesus Christ, who
has received the truth for himself, has received it as a steward,
and is, as such, indebted to God, from whom he got the trust, and
to the men for whom he got it. The only limit to the obligation
is, as Paul says in the context, `as much as in me is.' Capacity,
determined by faculties, opportunities, and circumstances,
prescribes the kind and the degree of the work to be done in
discharge of the obligation; but the obligation is universal. We
are not at liberty to choose whether we shall do our part in
spreading the name of Jesus Christ. It is a debt that we owe to
God and to men. Is that the view of duty which the average
Christian man takes? I am afraid it is not. If it were, our
treasuries would be full, and great would be the multitude of them
that preached the Word.

It is no very exalted degree of virtue to pay our debts. We do not
expect to be praised for that; and we do not consider that we are
at liberty to choose whether we shall do it or not. We are
dishonest if we do not. It is no merit in us to be honest. Would
that all Christian people applied that principle to their
religion. The world would be different, and the Church would be
different, if they did.

Let me try, then, to enforce this thought of indebtedness and of
common honesty in discharging the indebtedness, which underlies
these words. Paul thought that he went a long way to pay his debts
to humanity by carrying to everybody whom he could reach the `Name
that is above every name.'

I. Now, first, let me say that we Christians are debtors to all
men by our common manhood.

It is not the least of the gifts which Christianity has brought to
the world, that it has introduced the new thought of the
brotherhood of mankind. The very word `humanity' is a Christian
coinage, and it was coined to express the new thought that began
to throb in men's hearts, as soon as they accepted the message
that Jesus Christ came to give, the message of the Fatherhood of
God. For it is on that belief of God's Fatherhood that the belief
of man's brotherhood rests, and on it alone can it be secured and
permanently based.

Here is a Jew writing to Latins in the Greek language. The
phenomenon itself is a sign of a new order of things, of the
rising of a flood that had surged over, and in the course of ages
would sap away and dissolve, the barriers between men. The Apostle
points to two of the widest gulfs that separated men, in the words
of my text. `Greeks and Barbarians' divides mankind, according to
race and language. `Wise and unwise' divides them according to
culture and intellectual capacity. Both gulfs exist still, though
they have been wonderfully filled up by the influence, direct and
indirect, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The fiercest antagonisms
of race which still subsist are felt to belong to a decaying
order, and to be sure, sooner or later, to pass away. I suppose
that the gulf made by the increased culture of modern society
between civilised and the savage peoples, and, within the limits
of our own land, the gulf made by education between the higher and
the lower layers of our community---I speak not of higher and
lower in regard to wealth or station, but in regard to
intellectual acquirement and capacity---are greater than, perhaps,
they ever were in the past. But yet over the gulf a bridge is
thrown, and the gulf itself is being filled up. High above all the
superficial distinctions which separate Jew and Gentile, Greek and
Barbarian, educated and illiterate, scientific and unscientific,
wise and unwise, there stretches the great rainbow of the truth
that all are one in Christ Jesus. Fraternity without Fatherhood is
a ghastly mockery that ended a hundred years ago in the
guillotine, and to-day will end in disappointment; and it is
little more than cant. But when Christianity comes and tells us
that we have one Father and one Redeemer, then the unity of the
race is secured.

And that oneness which makes us debtors to all men is shown to be
real by the fact that, beneath all superficial distinctions of
culture, race, age, or station, there are the primal necessities
and yearnings and possibilities that lie in every human soul. All
men, savage or cultivated, breathe the same air, see by the same
light, are fed by the same food and drink, have the same yearning
hearts, the same lofty aspirations that unfulfilled are torture;
the same experience of the same guilt, and, blessed be God! the
same Saviour and the same salvation.

Because, then, we are all members of the one family, every man is
bound to regard all that he possesses, and is, and can do, as
committed to him in stewardship to be imparted to his fellows. We
are not sponges to absorb, but we are pipes placed in the spring,
that we may give forth the precious water of life.

Cain is not a very good model, but his question is the world's
question, and it implies the expectation of a negative
answer---`Am I my brother's keeper?' Surely, the very language
answers itself, and, although Cain thinks that the only answer is
`No,' wisdom sees that the only answer is `Yes.' For if I am my
brother's brother, then surely I am my brother's keeper. We have a
better example. There is another Elder Brother who has come to
give to His brethren all that Himself possessed, and we but poorly
follow our Master's pattern unless we feel that the mystic tie
which binds us in brotherhood to every man makes us every man's
debtor to the extent of our possessions. That is the Christian
truth that underlies the modern Socialistic idea, and, whatever
the form in which it is ultimately brought into practice as the
rule of mankind, the principle will triumph one day; and we are
bound, as Christian men, to hasten the coming of its victory. We
are debtors by reason of our common humanity.

II. We are debtors by our possession of the universal
salvation.

The principle which I have already been laying down applies all
round, to everything that we have, are, or can do. But its most
stringent obligation, and the noblest field for its operations,
are found in reference to the Christian man's possession of the
Gospel for the joy of his own heart, and to the duties that are
therein involved. Christ draws men to Himself for their own sakes,
blessed be His name! but not for their own sakes only. He draws
them to Himself, that they, in their turn, may draw others with
whose hands theirs are linked, and so may swell the numbers of the
flock that gathers round the one Shepherd. He puts the dew of His
blessing into the chalice of the tiniest flower, that it may
`share its dewdrop with another near.' Just as every particle of
inert dough as it is leavened becomes in its turn leaven, and the
medium for leavening the particle contiguous to it, so every
Christian is bound, or, to use the metaphor of my text, is a
debtor to God and man, to impart the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
`Greek and Barbarian,' says Paul, `wise or unwise'; all
distinctions vanish. If I can get at a man, no matter what colour,
his race, his language, his capacity, his acquirements, he is my
creditor, and I am defrauding him of what he has a right to expect
from me if I do not do my best to bring him to Jesus Christ.

This obligation receives additional weight from the proved
adaptation of the Gospel to all sorts and conditions of men. Alone
of all religions has Christianity proved itself capable of
dominating every type of character, of influencing every stage of
civilisation, of assuming the speech of every tongue, and of
wearing the garb of every race. There are other religions which
are evidently destined only to a narrow field of operations, and
are rigidly limited by geographical conditions, or by stages of
civilisation. There are wines that are ruined by a sea voyage, and
can only be drunk in the land where the vintage was gathered; and
that is the condition of all the ethnic religions. Christianity
alone passes through the whole earth, and influences all men. The
history of missions shows us that. There has yet to be found the
race that is incapable of receiving, or is beyond the need of
possessing, or cannot be elevated by the operation of, the Gospel
of Jesus Christ.

So to all men we are bound, as much as in us is, to carry the
Gospel. The distinction that is drawn so often by the people who
never move a finger to help the heathen either at home or abroad,
between the home and the foreign field of work, vanishes
altogether when we stand at the true Christian standpoint. Here is
a man who wants the Gospel; I have it; I can give it to him. That
constitutes a summons as imperative as if we were called by name
from Heaven, and bade to go, and as much as in us is to preach the
Gospel. Brethren! we do not obey the command, `Owe no man
anything,' unless, to the extent of our ability, or over the whole
field which we can influence at home or abroad, we seek to spread
the name of Christ and the salvation that is in Him.

III. We are debtors by benefits received.

I am speaking to men and women a very large proportion of whom get
their living, and some of whom amass their wealth, by trade with
lands that need the Gospel. It is not for nothing that England has
won the great empire that she possesses---won it, alas! far too
often by deeds that will not bear investigation in the light of
Christian principle, but won it.

What do we owe to the lands that we call `heathen'? The very
speech by which we communicate with one another; the beginning of
our civilisation; wide fields for expanding population and
emigration; treasures of wisdom of many kinds; an empire about
which we are too fond of crowing and too reluctant to recognise
its responsibilities---and Manchester its commerce and prosperity!
Did God put us where we are as a nation only in order that we
might carry the gifts of our literature, great as that is; of our
science, great as that is; of our law, blessed as that is; of our
manufactures, to those distant lands? The best thing that we can
give is the thing that all of us can help to give---the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. `Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom
for such a time as this?'

IV. Lastly, we are debtors by injuries inflicted.

Many subject-races seem destined to fade away by contact with our
race; and if we think of the nameless cruelties, and the iliad of
woes which England's possession of this great Colonial Empire has
had accompanying it, we may feel that the harm in many aspects
outweighs the good, and that it had been better for these men to
be left suckled in creeds outworn, and ignorant of our
civilisation, than to receive from us the fatal gifts that they
often have received. I do not wish to exaggerate, but if you will
take the facts of the case as brought out by people that have no
Christian prejudices to serve, I think you will acknowledge that
we as a nation owe a debt of reparation to the barbarians and the
unwise.

What about killing African tribes by the thousand with the vile
stuff that we call rum, and send to them in exchange for their
poor commodities? What about introducing new diseases, the
offspring of vice, into the South Sea Islands, decimating and all
but destroying the population? Is it not true that, as the prophet
wailed of old about a degenerate Israel, we may wail about the
beach-combers and other loafers that go amongst savage lands from
England---`Through you the name of God is blasphemed among the
Gentiles.' A Hindoo once said to a missionary, `Your Book is very
good. If you were as good as your Book you would conquer India in
five years.' That may be true or it may not, but it gives us the
impression that is produced by godless Englishmen on heathen
peoples. We are taking away their religion from them, necessarily,
as the result of education and contact with European thought. And
if we do not substitute for it the one faith that elevates and
saves, the last state of that man will be worse than the
first.

We can almost hear the rattle of the guns on the north-west
frontier of India to-day. There is another specimen of the
injuries inflicted. This is not the place to talk politics, but I
feel that this is the place to ask this question, `Are Christian
principles to have anything to do in determining national
actions?' Is it Christian to impose our yoke on unwilling tribes
who have as deep a love for independence as the proudest
Englishmen of us all, and as good a right to it? Are punitive
expeditions and Maxim guns instalments of our debt to all men? I
wonder what Jesus Christ, who died for Afridis and Orakzais and
all the rest of them, thinks about such conduct?

Brethren, we are debtors to all men. Let us do our best to
influence national action in accordance with the brotherhood which
has been revealed to us by the Elder Brother of us all; and let
us, at least for our own parts, recognise, and, as much as in us
is, discharge the debt which, by our common humanity, and by our
possession of the universal Gospel we owe to all men, and which is
made more weighty by the benefits we receive from many, and by the
injuries which England has inflicted on not a few. Else shall we
hear rise above all the voices that palliate crime, on the plea of
`State necessity,' the stern words of the Master, `In thy skirts
is found the blood of the souls of poor innocents.' We are
debtors; let us pay our debts.

\chapter{The Gospel the Power of God}
\markright{ROMANS i. 16}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of
God unto salvation to every one that believeth.'---\textsc{Romans}
i. 16.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

To preach the Gospel in Rome had long been the goal of Paul's
hopes.\footnote{Preached before Baptist Union.} He wished to do in
the centre of power what he had done in Athens, the home of
wisdom; and with superb confidence, not in himself, but in his
message, to try conclusions with the strongest thing in the world.
He knew its power well, and was not appalled. The danger was an
attraction to his chivalrous spirit. He believed in flying at the
head when you are fighting with a serpent, and he knew that
influence exerted in Rome would thrill through the Empire. If we
would understand the magnificent audacity of these words of my
text we must try to listen to them with the ears of a Roman. Here
was a poor little insignificant Jew, like hundreds of his
countrymen down in the Ghetto, one who had his head full of some
fantastic nonsense about a young visionary whom the procurator of
Syria had very wisely put an end to a while ago in order to quiet
down the turbulent province; and he was going into Rome with the
notion that his word would shake the throne of the C\ae{}sars.
What proud contempt would have curled their lips if they had been
told that the travel-stained prisoner, trudging wearily up the
Appian Way, had the mightiest thing in the world entrusted to his
care! Romans did not believe much in ideas. Their notion of power
was sharp swords and iron yokes on the necks of subject peoples.
But the history of Christianity, whatever else it has been, has
been the history of the supremacy and the revolutionary force of
ideas. Thought is mightier than all visible forces. Thought
dissolves and reconstructs. Empires and institutions melt before
it like the carbon rods in an electric lamp; and the little
hillock of Calvary is higher than the Palatine with its regal
homes and the Capitoline with its temples: `I am not ashamed of
the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto
salvation.'

Now, dear friends, I have ventured to take these great words for
my text, though I know, better than any of you can tell me, how
sure my treatment of them is to enfeeble rather than enforce them,
because I, for my poor part, feel that there are few things which
we, all of us, people and ministers, need more than to catch some
of the infection of this courageous confidence, and to be fired
with some spark of Paul's enthusiasm for, and glorying in, the
Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I ask you, then, to consider three things: (1) what Paul thought
was the Gospel? (2) what Paul thought the Gospel was? and (3) what
he felt about the Gospel?

I. What Paul thought was the Gospel?

He has given to us in his own rapid way a summary statement,
abbreviated to the very bone, and reduced to the barest elements,
of what he meant by the Gospel. What was the irreducible minimum?
The facts of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, as you
will find written in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to
the Corinthians. So, then, to begin with, the Gospel is not a
statement of principles, but a record of facts, things that have
happened in this world of ours. But the least part of a fact is
the visible part of it, and it is of no significance unless it has
explanation, and so Paul goes on to bind up with the facts an
explanation of them. The mere fact that Jesus, a young Nazarene,
was executed is no more a gospel than the other one, that two
brigands were crucified beside Him. But the fact that could be
seen, plus the explanation which underlies and interprets it,
turns the chronicle into a gospel, and the explanation begins with
the name of the Sufferer; for if you want to understand His death
you must understand who it was that died. His death is a thought
pathetic in all aspects, and very precious in many. But when we
hear `Christ died according to the Scriptures,' the whole
symbolism of the ancient ritual and all the glowing anticipations
of the prophets rise up before us, and that death assumes an
altogether different aspect. If we stop with `Jesus died,' then
that death may be a beautiful example of heroism, a sweet,
pathetic instance of innocent suffering, a conspicuous example of
the world's wages to the world's teachers, but it is little more.
If, however, we take Paul's words upon our lips, `Brethren, I
declare unto you the Gospel which I preached ... how that Christ
died ... according to the Scriptures,' the fact flashes up into
solid beauty, and becomes the Gospel of our salvation. And the
explanation goes on, `How that Christ died for our sins.' Now, I
may be very blind, but I venture to say that I, for my part,
cannot see in what intelligible sense the Death of Christ can be
held to have been for, or on behalf of, our sins---that is, that
they may be swept away and we delivered from them---unless you
admit the atoning nature of His sacrifice for sins. I cannot stop
to enlarge, but I venture to say that any narrower interpretation
evacuates Paul's words of their deepest significance. The
explanation goes on, `And that He was buried.' Why that trivial
detail? Partly because it guarantees the fact of His Death, partly
because of its bearing on the evidences of His Resurrection. `And
that He rose from the dead according to the Scriptures.' Great
fact, without which Christ is a shattered prop, and `ye are yet in
your sins.'

But, further, notice that my text is also Paul's text for this
Epistle, and that it differs from the condensed summary of which I
have been speaking only as a bud with its petals closed differs
from one with them expanded in their beauty. And now, if you will
take the words of my text as being the keynote of this letter, and
read over its first eight chapters, what is the Apostle talking
about when he in them fulfils his purpose and preaches `the
Gospel' to them that are at Rome also? Here is, in the briefest
possible words, his summary---the universality of sin, the awful
burden of guilt, the tremendous outlook of penalty, the
impossibility of man rescuing himself or living righteously, the
Incarnation, and Life, and Death of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice
for the sins of the world, the hand of faith grasping the offered
blessing, the indwelling in believing souls of the Divine Spirit,
and the consequent admission of man into a life of sonship, power,
peace, victory, glory, the child's place in the love of the Father
from which nothing can separate. These are the teachings which
make the staple of this Epistle. These are the explanations of the
weighty phrases of my text. These are at least the essential
elements of the Gospel according to Paul.

But he was not alone in this construction of his message. We hear
a great deal to-day about Pauline Christianity, with the
implication, and sometimes with the assertion, that he was the
inventor of what, for the sake of using a brief and easily
intelligible term, I may call Evangelical Christianity. Now, it is
a very illuminating thought for the reading of the New Testament
that there are the three sets of teaching, roughly, the Pauline,
Petrine, and Johannine, and you cannot find the distinctions
between these three in any difference as to the fundamental
contents of the Gospel; for if Paul rings out, `God commendeth His
love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for
us,' Peter declares, `Who His own self bare our sins in His own
body on the tree,' and John, from his island solitude, sends
across the waters the hymn of praise, `Unto Him that loved us and
washed us from our sins in His own blood.' And so the proud
declaration of the Apostle, which he dared not have ventured upon
in the face of the acrid criticism he had to front unless he had
known he was perfectly sure of his ground, is natural and
warranted---`Therefore, whether it were I or they, so we
preach.'

We are told that we must go back to the Christ of the Gospels, the
historical Christ, and that He spoke nothing concerning all these
important points that I have mentioned as being Paul's conception
of the Gospel. Back to the Christ of the Gospels by all means, if
you will go to the Christ of all the Gospels and of the whole of
each Gospel. And if you do, you will go back to the Christ who
said, `The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.' You will go
back to the Christ who said, `And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto Me.' You will go back to the Christ
who said, `The bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will
give for the life of the world.' You will go back to the Christ
who bade His followers hold in everlasting memory, not the
tranquil beauty of His life, not the persuasive sweetness of His
gracious words, not the might of His miracles of blessing, but the
mysterious agonies of His last hours, by which He would have us
learn that there lie the secret of His power, the foundation of
our hopes, the stimulus of our service.

Now, brethren, I have ventured to dwell so long upon this matter,
because it is no use talking about the Gospel unless we understand
what we mean by it, and I, for my part, venture to say that that
is what Paul meant by it, and that is what I mean by it. I plead
for no narrow interpretation of the phrases of my text. I would
not that they should be used to check in the smallest degree the
diversities of representation which, according to the differences
of individual character, must ever prevail in the conceptions
which we form and which we preach of this Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I want no parrot-like repetition of a certain set of phrases
embodied, however great may be their meanings, in every sermon.
And I would that the people to whom those truths are true would
make more allowance than they sometimes do for the differences to
which I have referred, and would show a great deal more sympathy
than they often do to those, especially those young men, who, with
their faces toward Christ, have not yet grown to the full
acceptance of all that is implied in those gracious words. There
is room for a whole world of thought in the Gospel of Christ as
Paul conceived it, with all the deep foundations of implication
and presupposition on which it rests, and with all the, as yet,
undiscovered range of conclusions to which it may lead. Remember
that the Cross of Christ is the key to the universe, and sends its
influence into every region of human thought.

II. What Paul thought the Gospel was.

`The power of God unto salvation.' There was in the background of
the Apostle's mind a kind of tacit reference to the antithetical
power that he was going up to meet, the power of Rome, and we may
trace that in the words of my text. Rome, as I have said, was the
embodiment of physical force, with no great faith in ideas. And
over against this carnal might Paul lifts the undissembled
weakness of the Cross, and declares that it is stronger than man,
`the power of God unto salvation.' Rome is high in force; Athens
is higher; the Cross is highest of all, and it comes shrouded in
weakness having a poor Man hanging dying there. That is a strange
embodiment of divine power. Yes, and because so strange, it is so
touching, and so conquering. The power that is draped in weakness
is power indeed. Though Rome's power did make for righteousness
sometimes, yet its stream of tendency was on the whole a power to
destruction and grasped the nations of the earth as some rude hand
might do rich clusters of grapes and squeeze them into a formless
mass. The tramp of the legionary meant death, and it was true in
many respects of them what was afterwards said of later invaders
of Europe, that where their horses' hoofs had once stamped no
grass ever grew. Over against this terrific engine of destruction
Paul lifts up the meek forces of love which have for their sole
object the salvation of man.

Then we come to another of the keywords about which it is very
needful that people should have deeper and wider notions than they
often seem to cherish. What is salvation? Negatively, the removal
and sweeping away of all evil, physical and moral, as the schools
speak. Positively, the inclusion of all good for every part of the
composite nature of a man which the man can receive and which God
can bestow. And that is the task that the Gospel sets to itself.
Now, I need not remind you how, for the execution of such a
purpose, it is plain that something else than man's power is
absolutely essential. It is only God who can alter my relation to
His government. It is only God who can trammel up the inward
consequences of my sins and prevent them from scourging me. It is
only God who can bestow upon my death a new life, which shall grow
up into righteousness and beauty, caught of, and kindred to, His
own. But if this be the aim of the Gospel, then its diagnosis of
man's sickness is a very much graver one than that which finds
favour amongst so many of us now. Salvation is a bigger word than
any of the little gospels that we hear clamouring round about us
are able to utter. It means something a great deal more than
either social or intellectual, or still more, material or
political betterment of man's condition. The disease lies so deep,
and so great are the destruction and loss partly experienced, and
still more awfully impending over every soul of us, that something
else than tinkering at the outsides, or dealing, as self-culture
does, with man's understanding or, as social gospels do, with
man's economical and civic condition, should be brought to bear.
Dear brethren, especially you Christian ministers, preach a social
Christianity by all means, an applied Christianity, for there does
lie in the Gospel of Jesus Christ a key to all the problems that
afflict our social condition. But be sure first that there is a
Christianity before you talk about applying it. And remember that
the process of salvation begins in the deep heart of the
individual and transforms him first and foremost. The power is `to
every one that believeth.' It is power in its most universal
sweep. Rome's Empire was wellnigh ubiquitous, but, blessed be God,
the dove of Christ flies farther than the Roman eagle with beak
and claw ready for rapine, and wherever there are men here is a
Gospel for them. The limitation is no limitation of its
universality. It is no limitation of the claim of a medicine to be
a panacea that it will only do good to the man who swallows it.
And that is the only limitation of which the Gospel is
susceptible, for we have all the same deep needs, the same
longings; we are fed by the same bread, we are nourished by the
same draughts of water, we breathe the same air, we have the same
sins, and, thanks be to God, we have the same Saviour. `The power
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.'

Now before I pass from this part of my subject there is only one
thing more that I want to say, and that is, that you cannot apply
that glowing language about `the power of God unto salvation' to
anything but the Gospel that Paul preached. Forms of Christianity
which have lost the significance of the Incarnation and Death of
Jesus Christ, and which have struck out or obscured the central
facts with which I have been dealing, are not, never were, and, I
may presumptuously venture to say, never will be, forces of large
account in this world. Here is a clock, beautiful, chased on the
back, with a very artistic dial-plate, and works modelled
according to the most approved fashion, but, somehow or other, the
thing won't go. Perhaps the mainspring is broken. And so it is
only the Gospel, as Paul expounds it and expands it in this
Epistle, that is `the power of God unto salvation.' Dear brethren,
in the course of a sermon like this, of course, one must lay
himself open to the charge of dogmatising. That cannot be helped
under the conditions of my space. But let me say as my own solemn
conviction---I know that that is not worth much to you, but it is
my justification for speaking in such a fashion---let me say as my
solemn conviction that you may as well take the keystone out of an
arch, with nothing to hold the other stones together or keep them
from toppling in hideous ruin on your unfortunate head, as take
the doctrine that Paul summed up in that one word out of your
conception of Christianity and expect it to work. And be sure of
this, that there is only one Name that lords it over the demons of
afflicted humanity, and that if a man goes and tries to eject them
with any less potent charm than Paul's Gospel, they will turn upon
him with `Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?'

III. What Paul felt about this Gospel.

His restrained expression, `I am not ashamed,' is the stronger for
its very moderation. It witnesses to the fixed purpose of his
heart and attitude of his mind, whilst it suggests that he was
well aware of all the temptations in Rome to being ashamed of it
there. Think of what was arrayed against him---venerable religion,
systematised philosophies, bitter hatred and prejudice, material
power and wealth. These were the brazen armour of Goliath, and
this little David went cheerily down into the valley with five
pebble stones in a leathern wallet, and was quite sure how it was
going to end. And it ended as he expected. His Gospel shook the
kingdom of the Roman, and cast it in another mould.

And there are temptations, plenty of them, for us, dear friends,
to-day, to bate our confidence. The drift of what calls itself
influential opinion is anti-supernatural, and we all are conscious
of the presence of that element all round about us. It tells with
special force upon our younger men, but it affects us all. In this
day, when a large portion of the periodical press, which does the
thinking for most of us, looks askance at these truths, and when, on
the principle that in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is
the king, popular novelists become our theological tutors, and when
every new publishing season brings out a new conclusive destruction
of Christianity, which supersedes last season's equally complete
destruction, it is hard for some of us to keep our flags flying. The
ice round about us will either bring down the temperature, or, if it
stimulates us to put more fuel on the fire, perhaps the fire may
melt it. And so the more we feel ourselves encompassed by these
temptations, the louder is the call to Christian men to cast
themselves back on the central verities, and to draw at first hand
from them the inspiration which shall be their safety. And how is
that to be done? Well, there are many ways by which thoughtful, and
cultivated, students may do it. But may I venture to deal here
rather with ways which all Christian people have open before them?
And I am bold to say that the way to be sure of `the power of God
unto salvation' is to submit ourselves continually to its cleansing
and renewing influence. This certitude, brethren, may be contributed
to by books of apologetics, and by other sources of investigation
and study which I should be sorry indeed to be supposed in any
degree to depreciate. But the true way to get it is, by deep
communion with the living God, to realise the personality of Jesus
Christ as present with us, our Friend, our Saviour, our Sanctifier
by His Holy Spirit. Why, Paul's Gospel was, I was going to say,
altogether---that would be an exaggeration---but it was to a very
large extent simply the generalisation of his own experience. That
is what all of us will find to be the Gospel that we have to preach.
`We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen.' And it was
because this man could say so assuredly---because the depths of his
own conscience and the witness within him bore testimony to it---`He
loved me and gave Himself for me,' that he could also say, `The
power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.' Go down
into the depths, brother and friend; cry to Him out of the depths.
Then you will feel His strong, gentle grip lifting you to the
heights, and that will give power that nothing else will, and you
will be able to say, `I have heard Him myself, and I know that this
is the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'

But there is yet another source of certitude open to us all, and
that is the history of the centuries. Our modern sceptics,
attacking the truth of Christianity mostly from the physical side,
are strangely blind to the worth of history. It is a limitation of
faculty that besets them in a good many directions, but it does
not work anywhere more fatally than it does in their attitude
towards the Gospel. After all, Jesus Christ spoke the ultimate
word when He said, `By their fruits ye shall know them.' And it is
so, because just as what is morally wrong cannot be politically
right, so what is intellectually false cannot be morally good.
Truth, goodness, beauty, they are but three names for various
aspects of one thing, and if it be that the difference between
\textsc{b.c.} and \textsc{a.d.} has come from a Gospel which is
not the truth of God, then all I can say is, that the richest
vintage that ever the world saw, and the noblest wine of which it
ever drank, did grow upon a thorn. I know that the Christian
Church has sinfully and tragically failed to present Christ
adequately to the world. But for all that, `Ye are My witnesses,
saith the Lord'; and nobler manners and purer laws have come in
the wake of this Gospel of Jesus Christ. And as I look round about
upon what Christianity has done in the world, I venture to say,
`Show us any system of religion or of no religion that has done
that or anything the least like it, and then we will discuss with
you the other evidences of the Gospel.'

In closing these words, may I venture relying on the melancholy
privilege of seniority, to drop for a minute or two into a tone of
advice? I would say, do not be frightened out of your confidence
either by the premature paean of victory from the opposite camp,
or by timid voices in our own ranks. And that you may not be so
frightened, be sure to keep clear in your mind the distinction
between the things that can be shaken and the kingdom that cannot
be moved. It is bad strategy to defend an elongated line. It is
cowardice to treat the capture of an outpost as involving the
evacuation of the key of the position. It is a mistake, to which
many good Christian people are sorely tempted in this day, to
assert such a connection between the eternal Gospel and our
deductions from the principles of that Gospel as that the
refutation of the one must be the overthrow of the other. And if
it turns out to be so in any case, a large part of the blame lies
upon those good and mistaken people who insist that everything
must be held or all must be abandoned. The burning questions of
this day about the genuineness of the books of Scripture,
inspiration, inerrancy, and the like, are not so associated with
this word, `God so loved the world ... that whosoever believeth in
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,' as that the
discovery of errors in the Second Book of Chronicles shakes the
foundations of the Christian certitude. In a day like this truth
must change its vesture. Who believes that the Dissenting Churches
of England are the highest, perfect embodiment of the Kingdom of
God? And who believes that any creed of man's making has in it all
and has in it only the everlasting Gospel? So do not be
frightened, and do not think that when the things that can be
shaken are removed, the things that cannot be shaken are at all
less likely to remain. Depend upon it, the Gospel, whose outline I
have imperfectly tried to set before you now, will last as long as
men on earth know they are sinners and need a Saviour. Did you
ever see some mean buildings that have by degrees been gathered
round the sides of some majestic cathedral, and do you suppose
that the sweeping away of those shanties would touch the solemn
majesty of the medi\ae{}val glories of the building that rises
above them? Take them away if need be, and it, in its proportion,
beauty, strength, and heavenward aspiration, will stand more
glorious for the sweeping away. Preach positive truth. Do not
preach doubts. You remember Mr.\ Kingsley's book \textit{Yeast}.
Its title was its condemnation. Yeast is not meant to be drunk; it
is meant to be kept in the dark till the process of fermentation
goes on and it works itself clear, and then you may bring it out.
Do not be always arguing with the enemy. It is a great deal better
to preach the truth. Remember what Jesus said: `Let them alone,
they are blind leaders of the blind, they will fall into the
ditch.' It is not given to every one of us to conduct
controversial arguments in the pulpit. There are some much wiser
and abler brethren amongst us than you or I who can do it. Let us
be contented with, not the humbler but the more glorious, office
of telling what we have known, leaving it, as it will do, to prove
itself. You remember what the old woman, who had been favoured by
her pastor with an elaborate sermon to demonstrate the existence
of God, said when he had finished; `Well, I believe there is a
God, for all the gentleman says.'

As one who sees the lengthening shadows falling over the darkening
field, may I say one word to my junior brethren, with all whose
struggles and doubts and difficulties I, for one, do most tenderly
sympathise? I beseech them---though, alas! the advice condemns the
giver of it as he looks back over long years of his ministry---to
be faithful to the Gospel how that `Jesus Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures.' Dear young friends, if you only go
where Paul went, and catch the inspiration that he caught there,
your path will be clear. It was in contact with Christ, whose
passion for soul-winning brought Him from heaven, that Paul
learned his passion for soul-winning. And if you and I are touched
with the divine enthusiasm, and have that aim clear before us, we
shall soon find out that there is only one power, one name given
under heaven among men whereby we can accomplish what we
desire---the name of `Jesus Christ that died, yea, rather, that is
risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, and also maketh
intercession for us.' If our aim is clear before us it will
prescribe our methods, and if the inspiration of our ministry is,
`I determine not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified,' then, whether men will hear or whether they will
forbear, they shall know that there hath been a Prophet among
them.

\chapter{World-Wide Sin and World-Wide Redemption}
\markright{ROMANS iii. 19--26}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Now we know, that what things soever the law saith, it saith to
them who are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and
all the world may become guilty before God. 20.\ Therefore by the
deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight:
for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 21.\ But now the
righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being
witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22.\ Even the righteousness
of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all
them that believe; for there is no difference: 23.\ For all have
sinned, and come short of the glory of God: 24.\ Being justified
freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus; 25.\ Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission
of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26.\ To
declare, I say, at this time His righteousness; that He might be
just, and the justifier of him which believeth in
Jesus.'---\textsc{Romans} iii. 19--26.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Let us note in general terms the large truths which this passage
contains. We may mass these under four heads:

I. Paul's view of the purpose of the law.

He has been quoting a mosaic of Old Testament passages from the
Psalms and Isaiah. He regards these as part of `the law,' which
term, therefore, in his view, here includes the whole previous
revelation, considered as making known God's will as to man's
conduct. Every word of God, whether promise, or doctrine, or
specific command, has in it some element bearing on conduct. God
reveals nothing only in order that we may know, but all that,
knowing, we may do and be what is pleasing in His sight. All His
words are law.

But Paul sets forth another view of its purpose here; namely, to
drive home to men's consciences the conviction of sin. That is not
the only purpose, for God reveals duty primarily in order that men
may do it, and His law is meant to be obeyed. But, failing
obedience, this second purpose comes into action, and His law is a
swift witness against sin. The more clearly we know our duty, the
more poignant will be our consciousness of failure. The light
which shines to show the path of right, shines to show our
deviations from it. And that conviction of sin, which it was the
very purpose of all the previous Revelation to produce, is a
merciful gift; for, as the Apostle implies, it is the prerequisite
to the faith which saves.

As a matter of fact, there was a far profounder and more inward
conviction of sin among the Jews than in any heathen nation.
Contrast the wailings of many a psalm with the tone in Greek or
Roman literature. No doubt there is a law written on men's hearts
which evokes a lower measure of the same consciousness of sin.
There are prayers among the Assyrian and Babylonian tablets which
might almost stand beside the Fifty-first Psalm; but, on the
whole, the deep sense of sin was the product of the revealed law.
The best use of our consciousness of what we ought to be, is when
it rouses conscience to feel the discordance with it of what we
are, and so drives us to Christ. Law, whether in the Old
Testament, or as written in our hearts by their very make, is the
slave whose task is to bring us to Christ, who will give us power
to keep God's commandments.

Another purpose of the law is stated in verse 21, as being to bear
witness, in conjunction with the prophets, to a future more
perfect revelation of God's righteousness. Much of the law was
symbolic and prophetic. The ideal it set forth could not always
remain unfulfilled. The whole attitude of that system was one of
forward-looking expectancy. There is much danger lest, in modern
investigations as to the authorship, date, and genesis of the Old
Testament revelation, its central characteristic should be lost
sight of; namely, its pointing onwards to a more perfect
revelation which should supersede it.

II. Paul's view of universal sinfulness.

He states that twice in this passage (vs.\ 20 to 24), and it
underlies his view of the purpose of law. In verse 20 he asserts
that `by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified,' and in
verses 23 and 24 he advances from that negative statement to the
positive assertion that all have sinned. The impossibility of
justification by the works of the law may be shown from two
considerations: one, that, as a matter of fact, no flesh has ever
done them all with absolute completeness and purity; and, second,
that, even if they had ever been so done, they would not have
availed to secure acquittal at a tribunal where motive counts for
more than deed. The former is the main point with Paul.

In verse 23 the same fact of universal experience is contemplated
as both positive sin and negative falling short of the `glory'
(which here seems to mean, as in John v.\ 44, xii.\ 43,
approbation from God). `There is no distinction,' but all
varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this,
that the fatal taint is upon them all. `We have, all of us, one
human heart.' We are alike in physical necessities, in primal
instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common experience
of sinfulness.

Paul does not mean to bring all varieties of character down to one
dead level, but he does mean to assert that none is free from the
taint. A man need only be honest in self-examination to endorse
the statement, so far as he himself is concerned. The Gospel would
be better understood if the fact of universal sinfulness were more
deeply felt. Its superiority to all schemes for making everybody
happy by rearrangements of property, or increase of culture, would
be seen through; and the only cure for human misery would be
discerned to be what cures universal sinfulness.

III. So we have next Paul's view of the remedy for man's sin. That
is stated in general terms in verses 21, 22. Into a world of
sinful men comes streaming the light of a `righteousness of God.'
That expression is here used to mean a moral state of conformity
with God's will, imparted by God. The great, joyful message, which
Paul felt himself sent to proclaim, is that the true way to reach
the state of conformity which law requires, and which the
unsophisticated, universal conscience acknowledges not to have
been reached, is the way of faith.

The message is so familiar to us that we may easily fail to
realise its essential greatness and wonderfulness when first
proclaimed. That God should give righteousness, that it should be
`of God,' not only as coming from Him, but as, in some real way,
being kindred with His own perfection; that it should be brought
to men by Jesus Christ, as ancient legends told that a beneficent
Titan brought from heaven, in a hollow cane, the gift of fire; and
that it should become ours by the simple process of trusting in
Jesus Christ, are truths which custom has largely robbed of their
wonderfulness. Let us meditate more on them till they regain, by
our own experience of their power, some of the celestial light
which belongs to them.

Observe that in verse 22 the universality of the redemption which
is in Christ is deduced from the universality of sin. The remedy
must reach as far as the disease. If there is no difference in
regard to sin, there can be none in regard to the sweep of
redemption. The doleful universality of the covering spread over
all nations, has corresponding to it the blessed universality of
the light which is sent forth to flood them all. Sin's empire
cannot stretch farther than Christ's kingdom.

IV. Paul's view of what makes the Gospel the remedy.

In verses 21 and 22 it was stated generally that Christ was the
channel, and faith the condition, of righteousness. The personal
object of faith was declared, but not the special thing in Christ
which was to be trusted in. That is fully set forth in verses
24--26. We cannot attempt to discuss the great words in these
verses, each of which would want a volume. But we may note that
`justified' here means to be accounted or declared righteous, as a
judicial act; and that justification is traced in its ultimate
source to God's `grace,'---His own loving disposition---which
bends to unworthy and lowly creatures, and is regarded as having
for the medium of its bestowal the `redemption' that is in Christ
Jesus. That is the channel through which grace comes from God.

`Redemption' implies captivity, liberation, and a price paid. The
metaphor of slaves set free by ransom is exchanged in verse 25 for
a sacrificial reference. A propitiatory sacrifice averts
punishment from the offerer. The death of the victim procures the
life of the worshipper. So, a propitiatory or atoning sacrifice is
offered by Christ's blood, or death. That sacrifice is the
ransom-price through which our captivity is ended, and our liberty
assured. As His redemption is the channel `through' which God's
grace comes to men, so faith is the condition `through' which
(ver. 25) we make that grace ours.

Note, then, that Paul does not merely point to Jesus Christ as
Saviour, but to His death as the saving power. We are to have
faith in Jesus Christ (ver. 22). But that is not a complete
statement. It must be faith in His propitiation, if it is to bring
us into living contact with His redemption. A gospel which says
much of Christ, but little of His Cross, or which dilates on the
beauty of His life, but stammers when it begins to speak of the
sacrifice in His death, is not Paul's Gospel, and it will have
little power to deal with the universal sickness of sin.

The last verses of the passage set forth another purpose attained
by Christ's sacrifice; namely, the vindication of God's
righteousness in forbearing to inflict punishment on sins
committed before the advent of Jesus. That Cross rayed out its
power in all directions---to the heights of the heavens; to the
depths of Hades (Col.\ i.\ 20); to the ages that were to come, and
to those that were past. The suspension of punishment through all
generations, from the beginning till that day when the Cross was
reared on Calvary, was due to that Cross having been present to
the divine mind from the beginning. `The judge is condemned when
the guilty is acquitted,' or left unpunished. There would be a
blot on God's government, not because it was so severe, but
because it was so forbearing, unless His justice was vindicated,
and the fatal consequences of sin shown in the sacrifice of
Christ. God could not have shown Himself just, in view either of
age-long forbearance, or of now justifying the sinner, unless the
Cross had shown that He was not immorally indulgent toward
sin.

\chapter{No Difference}
\markright{ROMANS iii. 22}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`There is no difference.'---\textsc{Romans} iii. 22.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The things in which all men are alike are far more important than
those in which they differ. The diversities are superficial, the
identities are deep as life. Physical processes and wants are the
same for everybody. All men, be they kings or beggars, civilised
or savage, rich or poor, wise or foolish, cultured or illiterate,
breathe the same breath, hunger and thirst, eat and drink, sleep,
are smitten by the same diseases, and die at last the same death.
We have all of us one human heart. Tears and grief, gladness and
smiles, move us all. Hope, fear, love, play the same music upon
all heart-strings. The same great law of duty over-arches every
man, and the same heaven of God bends above him.

Religion has to do with the deep-seated identities and not with
the superficial differences. And though there have been many
aristocratic religions in the world, it is the great glory of
Christianity that it goes straight to the central similarities,
and brushes aside, as of altogether secondary importance, all the
subordinate diversities, grappling with the great facts which are
common to humanity, and with the large hopes which all may
inherit.

Paul here, in his grand way, triumphs and rises above all these
small differences between man and man, more pure or less pure, Jew
or Gentile, wise or foolish, and avers that, in regard of the
deepest and most important things, `there is no difference,' and
so his Gospel is a Gospel for the world, because it deals with all
men on the same level. Now I wish to work out this great glory and
characteristic of the Gospel system in a few remarks, and to point
out to you the more important of these things in which all men, be
they what or who they may, stand in one category and have
identical experiences and interests.

I. First, there is no difference in the fact of sin.

Now let us understand that the Gospel does not assert that there
is no difference in the degrees of sin. Christianity does not
teach, howsoever some of its apostles may seem to have taught, or
unconsciously lent themselves to representations which imply the
view that there was no difference between a man who `did by nature
the things contained in the law,' as Paul says, and the man who
set himself to violate law. There is no such monstrous teaching in
the New Testament as that all blacks are the same shade, all sin
of the same gravity, no such teaching as that a man that tries
according to his light to do what is right stands on exactly the
same level as the man who flouts all such obligations, and has
driven the chariots of his lusts and passions through every law
that may stand in his way.

But even whilst we have to insist upon that, that the teaching of
my text is not of an absolute identity of criminality, but only an
universal participation in criminality, do not let us forget that,
if you take the two extremes, and suppose it possible that there
were a best man in all the world, and a worst man in all the
world, the difference between these two is not perhaps so great as
at first sight it looks. For we have to remember that motives make
actions, and that you cannot judge of these by considering those,
that `as a man thinketh in his heart,' and not as a man does with
his hands, `so is he.' We have to remember, also, that there may
be lives, sedulously and immaculately respectable and pure, which
are white rather with the unwholesome leprosy of disease than with
the wholesome purity of health.

In Queen Elizabeth's time, the way in which they cleaned the hall
of a castle, the floor of which might be covered with remnants of
food and all manner of abominations, was to strew another layer of
rushes over the top of the filth, and then they thought themselves
quite neat and respectable. And that is what a great many of you
do, cover the filth well up with a sweet smelling layer of
conventional proprieties, and think yourselves clean, and the
pinks of perfection. God forbid that I should say one word that
would seem to cast any kind of slur upon the effort that any man
makes to do what he knows to be right, but this I proclaim, or
rather my text proclaims for me, that, giving full weight and
value to all that, and admitting the existence of variations in
degree, the identity is deeper than the diversity; and there is
`not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not.'

Oh, dear friends! it is not a question of degree, but of
direction; not how far the ship has gone on her voyage, but how
she heads. Good and evil are the same in essence, whatever be
their intensity and whatever be their magnitude. Arsenic is
arsenic, whether you have a ton of it or a grain; and a very small
dose will be enough to poison. The Gospel starts with the
assertion that there is no difference in the fact of sin. The
assertion is abundantly confirmed. Does not conscience assent? We
all admit `faults,' do we not? We all acknowledge `imperfections.'
It is that little word `sin' which seems to bring in another order
of considerations, and to command the assent of conscience less
readily. But sin is nothing except fault considered in reference
to God's law. Bring the notion of God into the life, and `faults'
and `slips' and `weaknesses,' and all the other names by which we
try to smooth down the ugliness of the ugly thing, start up at
once into their tone, magnitude, and importance, and stand avowed
as \textit{sins}.

Well now, if there be, therefore, this universal consciousness of
imperfection, and if that consciousness of imperfection has only
need to be brought into contact with God, as it were, to flame
thus, let me remind you, too, that this fact of universal
sinfulness puts us all in one class, no matter what may be the
superficial difference. Shakespeare and the Australian savage, the
biggest brain and the smallest, the loftiest and the lowest of us,
the purest and the foulest of us, we all come into the same order.
It is a question of classification. `The Scripture hath concluded
all under sin,' that is to say, has shut all men up as in a
prison. You remember in the French Revolution, all manner of
people were huddled indiscriminately into the same dungeon of the
Paris prisons. You would find a princess and some daughter of
shame from the gutters; a boor from the country and a landlord, a
count, a marquis, a \textit{savant}, a philosopher and an
illiterate workman, all together in the dungeons. They kept up the
distinctions of society and of class with a ghastly mockery, even
to the very moment when the tumbrils came for them. And so here
are we all, in some sense inclosed within the solemn cells of this
great prison-house, and whether we be wise or foolish, we are
prisoners, whether we have titles or not, we are prisoners. You
may be a student, but you are a sinner: you may be a rich
Manchester merchant, but you are a sinner; you may be a man of
rank, but you are a sinner. Naaman went to Elisha and was very
much offended because Elisha treated him as a leper who happened
to be a nobleman. He wanted to be treated as a nobleman who
happened to be a leper. And that is the way with a great many of
us; we do not like to be driven into one class with all the crowd
of evildoers. But, my friend, `there is no difference.' `All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God.'

II. Again, there is no difference in the fact of God's love to
us.

God does not love men because of what they are, therefore He does
not cease to love them because of what they are. His love to the
sons of men is not drawn out by their goodness, their morality,
their obedience, but it wells up from the depths of His own heart,
because `it is His nature and property,' and if I may so say, He
cannot help loving. You do not need to pump up that great
affection by any machinery of obedience and of merits; it rises
like the water in an Artesian well, of its own impulse, with
ebullient power from the central heat, and spreads its great
streams everywhere. And therefore, though our sin may awfully
disturb our relations with God, and may hurt and harm us in a
hundred ways, there is one thing it cannot do, it cannot stop Him
from loving us. It cannot dam back His great love, which flows out
for ever towards all His creatures, and laves them all in its
gentle, strong flood, from which nothing can draw them away. `In
Him we live, and move, and have our being,' and to live in Him,
whatever else it may mean---and it means a great deal more---is
most certainly to live in His love. A man can as soon pass out of
the atmosphere in which he breathes as he can pass out of the love
of God. We can no more travel beyond that great over-arching
firmament of everlasting love which spans all the universe than a
star set in the blue heavens can transcend the liquid arch and get
beyond its range. `There is no difference' in the fact that all
men, unthankful and evil as they are, are grasped and held in the
love of God.

But there \textit{is} a difference. Sin cannot dam God's love
back, but sin has a terrible power in reference to the love of
God. Two things it can do. It can make us incapable of receiving
the highest blessings of that love. There are many mercies which
God pours `upon the unthankful and the evil.' These are His least
gifts; His highest and best cannot be given to the unthankful and
the evil. They would if they could, but they cannot, because they
cannot be received by them. You can shut the shutters against the
light; you can close the vase against the stream. You cannot
prevent its shining, you cannot prevent its flowing, but you can
prevent yourself from receiving its loftiest and best
blessings.

And another awful power that my sin has in reference to God's love
is, that it can modify the form which God's love takes in its
dealings with me. We may force Him to do `His work,' `His strange
work,' as Isaiah calls it, and to punish when He would fain only
succour and comfort and bless. Just as a fog in the sky does not
touch the sun, but turns it to our eyes into a fiery ball, red and
lurid, so the mist of my sin coming between me and God, may, to my
apprehension and to my capacity of reception, solemnly make
different that great love of His. But yet there is no difference
in the fact of God's love to us.

III. Thirdly, there is no difference in the purpose and power of
Christ's Cross for us all.

`He died for all.' The area over which the purpose and the power
of Christ's death extend is precisely conterminous with the area
over which the power of sin extends. It cannot be---blessed be
God!---that the raven Sin shall fly further than the dove with the
olive branch in its mouth. It cannot be that the disease shall go
wider than the cure. And so, dear friends, I have to come to you
now with this message. No matter what a man is, how far he has
gone, how sinful he has been, how long he has stayed away from the
sweetness and grace of that great sacrifice on the Cross, that
death was for him. The power of Christ's sacrifice makes possible
the forgiveness of all the sins of all the world, past, present,
and to come. The worth of that sacrifice, which was made by the
willing surrender of the Incarnate Son of God to the death of the
Cross, is sufficient for the ransom price of all the sins of all
men.

Nor is it only the power of the Cross which is all embracing, but
its purpose also. In the very hour of Christ's death, there stood,
clear and distinct, before His divine omniscience, each man,
woman, and child of the race. And for them all, grasping them all
in the tenderness of His sympathy and in the clearness of His
knowledge, in the design of His sufferings for them all, He died,
so that every human being may lay his hand on the head of the
sacrifice, and \textit{know} `his guilt was there,' and may say,
with as triumphant and appropriating faith as Paul did, `He loved
\textit{me},' and in that hour of agony and love `gave Himself for
\textit{me}.'

To go back to a metaphor already employed, the prisoners are
gathered together in the prison, not that they may be slain, but
`God hath included them all,' shut them all up, `that He might
have mercy upon all.' And so, as it was in the days of Christ's
life upon earth, so is it now, and so will it be for ever. All the
crowd may come to Him, and whosoever comes `is made whole of
whatsoever disease he had.' There are no incurables nor outcasts.
`There is no difference.'

IV. Lastly, there is no difference in the way which we must take
for salvation.

The only thing that unites men to Jesus Christ is faith. You must
trust Him, you must trust the power of His sacrifice, you must
trust the might of His living love. You must trust Him with a
trust which is self-distrust. You must trust Him out and out. The
people with whom Paul is fighting, in this chapter, were quite
willing to admit that faith was the thing that made Christians,
but they wanted to tack on something besides. They wanted to tack
on the rites of Judaism and obedience to the moral law. And ever
since men have been going on in that erroneous rut. Sometimes it
has been that people have sought to add a little of their own
morality; sometimes to add ceremonies and sacraments. Sometimes it
has been one thing and sometimes it has been another; but there
are not two ways to the Cross of Christ, and to the salvation
which He gives. There is only one road, and all sorts of men have
to come by it. You cannot lean half upon Christ and half upon
yourselves, like the timid cripple that is not quite sure of the
support of the friendly arm. You cannot eke out the robe with
which He will clothe you with a little bit of stuff of your own
weaving. It is an insult to a host to offer to pay for
entertainment. The Gospel feast that Christ provides is not a
social meal to which every guest brings a dish. Our part is simple
reception, we have to bring empty hands if we would receive the
blessing.

We must put away superficial differences. The Gospel is for the
world, therefore the act by which we receive it must be one which
all men can perform, not one which only some can do. Not wisdom,
nor righteousness, but faith joins us to Christ. And, therefore,
people who fancy themselves wise or righteous are offended that
`special terms' are not made with them. They would prefer to have
a private portion for themselves. It grates against the pride of
the aristocratic class, whether it be aristocratic by
culture---and that is the most aristocratic of all---or by
position, or anything else---it grates against their pride to be
told: `You have to go in by that same door that the beggar is
going in at'; and `there is no difference.' Therefore, the very
width of the doorway, that is wide enough for all the world, gets
to be thought narrowness, and becomes a hindrance to our entering.
As Naaman's servant put a common-sense question to him, so may I
to you. `If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest
thou not have done it?' Ay! that you would! `How much more when He
says ``Wash and be clean!''\,' There is only one way of getting
dirt off, and that is by water. There is only one way of getting
sin off, and that is by the blood of Jesus Christ. There is only
one way of having that blood applied to your heart, and that is
trusting Him. `The common salvation' becomes ours when we exercise
`the common faith.' `There is no difference' in our sins. Thank
God! `there is no difference' in the fact that He grasps us with
His love. There is no difference in the fact that Jesus Christ has
died for us all. Let there be no difference in our faith, or there
will be a difference, deep as the difference between Heaven and
Hell; the difference between them that believe and them that
believe not, which will darken and widen into the difference
between them that are saved and them that perish.

\chapter{Let Us Have Peace}
\markright{ROMANS v. 1}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ.'---\textsc{Romans} v. 1. (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

In the rendering of the Revised Version, `Let us have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ,' the alteration is very slight,
being that of one letter in one word, the substitution of a long
`o' for a short one. The majority of manuscripts of authority read
`let us have,' making the clause an exhortation and not a
statement. I suppose the reason why, in some inferior MSS., the
statement takes the place of the exhortation is because it was
felt to be somewhat of a difficulty to understand the Apostle's
course of thought. But I shall hope to show you that the true
understanding of the context, as well as of the words I have taken
for my text, requires the exhortation and not the affirmation.

One more remark of an introductory character: is it not very
beautiful to see how the Apostle here identifies himself, in all
humility, with the Christians whom he is addressing, and feels
that he, Apostle as he is, has the same need for the same counsel
and stimulus that the weakest of those to whom he is writing have?
It would have been so easy for him to isolate himself, and say,
`Now you have peace with God; see that you keep it.' But he puts
himself into the same class as those whom he is exhorting, and
that is what all of us have to do who would give advice that will
be worth anything or of any effect. He does not stand upon a
little molehill of superiority, and look down upon the Roman
Christians, and imply that they have needs that he has not, but he
exhorts himself too, saying, `Let all of us who have obtained like
precious faith, which is alike in an Apostle and in the humblest
believer, have peace with God.'

Now a word, first, about the meaning of this somewhat singular
exhortation.

There is a theory of man and his relation to God underlying it,
which is very unfashionable at present, but which corresponds to
the deepest things in human nature, and the deepest mysteries in
human history, and that is, that something has come in to produce
the totally unnatural and monstrous fact that between God and man
there is not amity or harmony. Men, on their side, are alienated,
because their wills are rebellious and their aims diverse from
God's purpose concerning them. And---although it is an awful thing
to have to say, and one from which the sentimentalism of much
modern Christianity weakly recoils---on God's side, too, the
relation has been disturbed, and `we are by nature the children of
wrath, even as others'; not of a wrath which is unloving, not of a
wrath which is impetuous and passionate, not of a wrath which
seeks the hurt of its objects, but of a wrath which is the
necessary antagonism and recoil of pure love from such creatures
as we have made ourselves to be. To speak as if the New Testament
taught that `reconciliation' was lop-sided---which would be a
contradiction in terms, for reconciliation needs two to make
it---to talk as if the New Testament taught that reconciliation
was only man's putting away his false relation to God, is, as I
humbly think, to be blind to its plainest teaching. So, there
being this antagonism and separation between God and man, the
Gospel comes to deal with it, and proclaims that Jesus Christ has
abolished the enmity, and by His death on the Cross has become our
peace; and that we, by faith in that Christ, and grasping in faith
His death, pass from out of the condition of hostility into the
condition of reconciliation.

With this by way of basis, let us come back to my text. It sounds
strange; `Therefore, being justified by faith, let up have peace.'
`Well,' you will say, `but is not all that you have been saying
just this, that to be justified by faith, to be declared righteous
by reason of faith in Him who makes us righteous, is to have peace
with God? Is not your exhortation an entirely superfluous one?' No
doubt that is what the old scribe thought who originated the
reading which has crept into our Authorised Version. The two
things do seem to be entirely parallel. To be justified by faith
is a certain process, to have peace with God is the inseparable
and simultaneous result of that process itself. But that is going
rather too fast. `Being justified by faith let us have peace with
God,' really is just this---see that you abide where you are; keep
what you have. The exhortation is not to attain peace, but retain
it. `Hold fast that thou hast; let no man take thy crown.' `Being
justified by faith' cling to your treasure and let nothing rob you
of it---`let us have peace with God.'

Now a word, in the next place, as to the necessity and importance
of this exhortation.

There underlies it, this solemn thought, which Christian people,
and especially some types of Christian doctrine, do need to have
hammered into them over and over again, that we hold the blessed
life itself, and all its blessings, only on condition of our own
cooperation in keeping them; and that just as physical life dies,
unless by reception of food we nourish and continue it, so a man
that is in this condition of being justified by faith, and having
peace with God, needs, in order to the permanence of that
condition, to give his utmost effort and diligence. It will all go
if he do not. All the old state will come back again if we are
slothful and negligent. We cannot keep the treasure unless we
guard it. And just because we have it, we need to put all our
mind, the earnestness of our will, and the concentration of our
efforts, into the specific work of retaining it.

For, consider how manifold and strong are the forces which are
always working against our continual possession of this
justification by faith, and consequent peace with God. There are
all the ordinary cares and duties and avocations and fortunes of
our daily life, which, indeed, may be so hallowed in their motives
and in their activities, as that they may be turned into helps
instead of hindrances, but which require a great deal of diligence
and effort in order that they should not work like grains of dust
that come between the parts of some nicely-fitting engine, and so
cause friction and disaster. There are all the daily tasks that
tempt us to forget the things that we only know by faith, and to
be absorbed in the things that we can touch and taste and handle.
If a man is upon an inclined plane, unless he is straining his
muscles to go upwards, gravitation will make short work of him,
and bring him down. And unless Christian men grip hard and
continually that sense of having fellowship and peace with God, as
sure as they are living they will lose the clearness of that
consciousness, and the calm that comes from it. For we cannot go
into the world and do the work that is laid upon us all without
there being possible hostility to the Christian life in everything
that we meet. Thank God there is possible help, too, and whether
our daily calling is an enemy or a friend to our religion depends
upon the earnestness and continuousness of our own efforts. But
there is a worse force than these external distractions working to
draw us away, one that we carry within, in our own vacillating
wills and wayward hearts and treacherous affections and passions
that usually lie dormant, but wake up sometimes at the most
inopportune periods. Unless we keep a very tight hand upon
ourselves, certainly these will rob us of this consciousness of
being justified by faith which brings with it peace with God that
passes understanding.

In the Isle of Wight massive cliffs rise hundreds of feet above the
sea, and seem as if they were as solid as the framework of the earth
itself. But they rest upon a sharply inclined plane of clay, and the
moisture trickles through the rifts in the majestic cliffs above,
and gets down to that slippery substance and makes it like the
greased ways down which they launch a ship; and away goes the cliff
one day, with its hundreds of feet of buttresses that have fronted
the tempest for centuries, and it lies toppled in hideous ruin on
the beach below. We have all a layer of `blue slipper' in ourselves,
and unless we take care that no storm-water finds its way down
through the chinks in the rocks above they will slide into awful
ruin. `Being justified, let us have peace with God,' and remember
that the exhortation is enforced not only by a consideration of the
many strong forces which tend to deprive us of this peace, but also
by a consideration of the hideous disaster that comes upon a man's
whole nature if he loses peace with God. For there is no peace with
ourselves, and there is no peace with man, and there is no peace in
face of the warfare of life and the calamities that are certainly
before us all, unless, in the deepest sanctuary of our being, there
is the peace of God because in our consciences there is peace with
God. If I desire to be at rest---and there is no blessedness but
rest---if I desire to know the sovereign joy of tranquillity,
undisturbed by my own stormy passions or by any human enmity, and to
have even the `beasts of the field at peace with' me, and all things
my helpers and allies, there is but one way to realise the desire,
and that is the retention of peace with God that comes with being
justified by faith.

Lastly, a word or two as to the ways by which this exhortation can
be carried into effect.

I have tried to explain how the peace of which my text speaks
comes originally through Christ's work laid hold of by my faith,
and now I would say only three things.

Retain the peace by the exercise of that same faith which at first
brought it. Next, retain it by union with that same Lord from whom
you at first received it. Very significantly, in the immediate
context, we have the Apostle drawing a broad distinction between
the benefits which we have received from Christ's death, and those
which we shall receive through His life. And that is the best
commentary on the words of my text. `If when we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being
reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.' So let our faith grasp
firmly the great twin facts of the Christ who died that He might
abolish the enmity, and bring us peace; and of the Christ who
lives in order that He may pour into our hearts more and more of
His own life, and so make us more and more in His own image. And
the last word that I would say, in addition to these two plain,
practical precepts is, let your conduct be such as will not
disturb your peace with God. For if a man lets his own will rise
up in rebellion against God's, whether that divine will command
duty or impose suffering, away goes all his peace. There is no
possibility of the tranquil sense of union and communion with my
Father in heaven lasting when I am in rebellion against Him. The
smallest sin destroys, for the time being, our sense of
forgiveness and our peace with God. The blue surface of the lake,
mirroring in its unmoved tranquillity the sky and the bright sun,
or the solemn stars, loses all that reflected heaven in its heart
when a cat's paw of wind ruffles its surface. If we would keep our
hearts as mirrors, in their peace, of the peace in the heavens
that shine down on them, we must fence them from the winds of evil
passions and rebellious wills. `Oh! that thou wouldest hearken
unto Me, then had thy peace been like a river.'

\chapter{Access into Grace}
\markright{ROMANS v. 2}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we
stand.'---\textsc{Romans} v. 2.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

I may be allowed to begin with a word or two of explanation of the
terms of this passage. Note then, especially, that \textit{also}
which sends us back to the previous clause, and tells us that our
text adds something to what was spoken of there. What was spoken
of there? `The peace of God' which comes to a man by Jesus Christ
through faith, the removal of enmity, and the declaration of
righteousness. But that peace with God, which is the beginning of
everything in the Christian view, is only the beginning, and there
is much to follow. While, then, there is a progress clearly marked
in the words of our text, and `access into this grace wherein we
stand' is something more than, and after, the `peace with God,'
mark next the similarity of the text and the preceding verse. The
two great truths in the latter, Christ's mediation or
intervention, and our faith as the condition by which we receive
the blessings which are brought to us in and through Him, are both
repeated, with no unmeaning tautology, but with profound
significance in our text---`By whom also we have access'---as well
as---`the peace of God'---`access \textit{by faith} into this
grace.' So then, for the initial blessing, and for all the
subsequent blessings of the Christian life, the way is the same.
The medium and channel is one, and the act by which we avail
ourselves of the blessings coming through that one medium is the
same. Now the language of my text, with its talking about access,
faith, and grace, sounds to a great many of us, I am afraid, very
hard and remote and technical. And there are not wanting people
who tell us that all that terminology in the New Testament is like
a dying brand in the fire, where the little kernel of glowing heat
is getting covered thicker and thicker with grey ashes. Yes; but
if you blow the ashes off, the fire is there all the same. Let us
try if we can blow the ashes off.

This text seems to me in its archaic phraseology, only to need to
be pondered in order to flash up into wonderful beauty. It carries
in it a magnificent ideal of the Christian life, in three things:
the Christian place, `access into grace'; the Christian attitude,
`wherein we stand'; and the Christian means of realising that
ideal, `through Christ' and `by faith.' Now let us look at these
three points.

I. The Christian Place.

There is clearly a metaphor here, both in the word `access' and in
that other one `stand.' `The grace' is supposed as some ample
space into which a man is led, and where he can continue, stand,
and expatiate. Or, we may say, it is regarded as a palace or
treasure-house into which we can enter. Now, if we take that great
New Testament word `grace,' and ponder its meanings, we find that
they run something in this fashion. The central thought, grand and
marvellous, which is enshrined in it, and which often is buried
for careless ears, is that of the active love of God poured out
upon inferiors who deserve something very different. Then there
follows a second meaning, which covers a great part of the ground
of the use of the phrase in the New Testament, and that is the
communication of that love to men, the specific and individualised
gifts which come out of that great reservoir of patient,
pardoning, condescending, and bestowing love. Then there may be
taken into view a meaning which is less prominent in Scripture but
not absent, namely, the resulting beauty of character. A gracious
soul ought to be, and is, a graceful soul; a supreme loveliness is
imparted to human nature by the communication to it of the gifts
which are the results of the undeserved, free, and infinite love
of God.

Now if we take all these three thoughts as blended together in the
grand metaphor of the Apostle, of the ample space into which the
Christian man passes, we get such lessons as this. A Christian
life may, and therefore should, be suffused with a continual
consciousness of the love of God. That would change everything in
it. Here is some great sweep of rolling country, perhaps a
Highland moor: the little tarns on it are grey and cold, the
vegetation is gloomy and dark, dreariness is over all the scene,
because there is a great pall of cloud drawn beneath the blue. But
the sun pierces with his lances through the grey, and crumples up
the mists, and sends them flying beneath the horizon. Then what a
change in the landscape! All the tarns that looked black and
wicked are now infantile in their innocent blue and sunny
gladness, and every dimple in the heights shows, and all the
heather burns with the sunshine that falls upon it. So my lonely
doleful life, if that light from God, the beam of His love, shines
down upon it, rises into nobility, and flashes into beauty, and is
calm and fair and great, as nothing else can make it. You may
dwell in love by dwelling in God, and then your lives will be
fair. You have access into the grace; see that you go there. They
tell us that nightingales sing by the wayside by preference, and
we may have in our lives, singing a quiet tune, the continual
thought of the love of God, even whilst life's highway is dusty
and rough, and our feet are often weary in treading it. A
Christian life may be, and therefore should be, suffused with the
sense of the abiding love of God.

Take the other meaning of the word, the secondary and derived
meaning, the communication of that love to us, and that leads us
to say that a Christian life may, and therefore should, be
enriched with continual gifts from God's fullness. I said that the
Apostle was using a metaphor here, regarding the grace as being an
ample space into which a man was admitted, or we may say that he
is thinking of it as a great treasure-house. We have the right of
entrance there, where on every side, as it were, lie ingots of
uncoined gold, and masses of treasure, and we may have just as
much or as little as we choose. It is entirely in our own
determination how much of the wealth of God we shall possess. We
have access to the treasure-house; and this permit is put into our
hands: `Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.' The size of the sack
that the man brings, in the old story, determined the amount of
wealth that he carried away. Some of you bring very tiny baskets
and expect little and desire little; you get no more than you
desired and expected.

That wealth, the fullness of God, takes the shape of, as well as
is determined in its measure by the magnitude of, the vessel into
which it is put. It is multiform, and we get whatever we desire,
and whatever either our characters or our circumstances require.
The one gift assumes all forms, just as water poured into a vase
takes the shape of the vase into which it is poured. The same gift
unfolds itself in an infinite variety of manners, according to the
needs of the man to whom it is given; just as the writer's pen,
the carpenter's hammer, the farmer's ploughshare, are all made out
of the same metal. So God's grace comes to you in a different
shape from that in which it comes to me, according to our
different callings and needs, as fixed by our circumstances, our
duties, our sorrows, our temptations.

So, brethren, how shameful it is that, having the possibility of so
much, we should have the actuality of so little. There is an old
story about one of our generals in India long ago, who, when he came
home, was accused of rapacity because he had brought away so much
treasure from the Rajahs whom he had conquered, and his answer to
the charge was, `I was surprised at my own moderation.' Ah! there
are a great many Christian people who ought to be ashamed of their
moderation. They have gone into the treasure-house; stacks of
jewels, jars of gold on all sides of them---and they have been
content to come away with some one poor little coin, when they might
have been `rich beyond the dreams of avarice.' Brethren, you have
`access' to the fullness of God. Whose fault is it if you are empty?

Then, further, I said there was another meaning in these great
words. The love which may suffuse our lives, the gifts, the
consequence of that love, which may enrich our lives, should, and
in the measure in which they are received will, adorn and make
beautiful our lives. For `grace' means loveliness as well as
goodness, and the God who is the fountain of it all is the
fountain of `whatsoever things are fair,' as well as of whatsoever
things are good. That suggests two considerations on which I have
no time to dwell. One is that the highest beauty is goodness, and
unless the art of a nation learns that, its art will become filthy
and a minister of sin. They talk about `Art for Art's sake.' Would
that all these poets and painters who are trying to find beauty in
corruption---and there is a phosphorescent glimmer in rotting
wood, and a prismatic colouring on the scum of a stagnant
pond---would that all those men who are seeking to find beauty
apart from goodness, and so are turning a divine instinct into a
servant of evil, would learn that the true gracefulness comes from
the grace which is the fullness of God given unto men.

But there is another lesson, and that is that Christian people who
say that they have their lives irradiated by the love of God, and
who profess to be receiving gifts from His full hand, are bound to
take care that their goodness is not `harsh and crabbed,' as not
only `dull fools suppose' it to be, but as it sometimes is, but is
musical and fair. You are bound to make your goodness attractive,
and to show that the things that are `of good report' are likewise
the `things that are lovely.'

II. And so, now, turn to the second point here, viz. the Christian
attitude.

`The grace wherein ye \textit{stand}'; that word is very emphatic
here, and does not merely mean `continue,' but it suggests what I
have put into that phrase, the Christian attitude.

Two things are implied. One is that a life thus suffused by the
love, and enriched by the gifts, and adorned by the loveliness
that come from God, will be stable and steadfast. Resistance and
stability are implied in the words. One very important item in
determining a man's power of resistance, and of standing firm
against whatever assaults may be hurled against him, is the sort
of footing that he has. If you stand on slippery mud, or on the
ice of a glacier, you will find it hard to stand firm; but if you
plant your foot on the grace of God, then you will be able to
`withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.' And how
does a man plant his foot on the grace of God? simply by trusting
in God, and not in himself. So that the secret of all
steadfastness of life, and of all successful resistance to the
whirling onrush of temptations and of difficulties, is to set your
foot upon that rock, and then your `goings' will be
established.

Jesus Christ brings to us, in the gift of life in Him, stability
which will check the vacillations of our own hearts. We go up and
down, we yield when pressure is brought to bear against us, we are
carried off our feet often by the sudden swirl of the stream, and
the fitful blast of the wind. But His grace comes in, and will make
us able to stand against all assaults. Our poor natures, necessarily
changeable, and sinfully vacillating and weak, will be uniform, in
the measure in which the grace of God comes into our hearts. Just as
in these so-called petrifying wells, they take a bit of cloth, a
bird's nest, a billet of wood, and plunge it into the water, and the
mineral held in solution there infiltrates into the substance of the
thing plunged in, and makes it firm and inflexible: so let us plunge
our poor, changeful, vacillating resolutions, our wayward, wandering
hearts, our passions, so easily excited by temptation, into that
great fountain, and there will filter into our flexibility what will
make it firm, and into our changefulness what will give in us some
faint copy of the divine immutability, and we shall stand fast in
the Lord and in the power of His might.

Further, in regard to this attitude, which is the result of the
possession of grace, we may say that it indicates not only
stability and steadfastness, but erectness, as in opposition to
crouching or bowing. A man's independence is guaranteed by his
dependence upon, and his possession of, that communicated grace of
God. And so you have the fact that the phase of the Christian
teaching which has laid most stress on the decrees and sovereign
will of God, on divine grace in fact, and too little upon the
human side---the phase which is roughly described as
Calvinism---has underlain the liberties of Europe, and has
stiffened men into the rejection of all priestly and civic
domination. `Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,'
and if a man has in his heart the grace of God, then he stands
erect as a man. `Ye are bought with a price; be ye not the
servants of men.' The Christian democracy, the Christian rejection
of all sacerdotal and other domination, flows from the access of
each individual Christian to the fountain of all wisdom, the only
source of law and command, the inspirer of all strength, the giver
of all grace. By faith ye stand. `Stand fast therefore in the
liberty wherewith Christ has made you free.'

III. Lastly, and only a word; we have here the Christian way of
entrance into grace.

I have already remarked on the emphasis with which, both in my
text and in the preceding clause, there are laid down the two
conditions of possessing this grace, or the peace which precedes
it: `By Christ---through faith.' Notice, too, that Jesus Christ
gives us `access.' Now that expression is but an imperfect
rendering of the original. If it were not for its trivial
associations, one might read instead of `access,' introduction,
`by whom we have introduction into this grace wherein we stand.'
The thought is that Jesus Christ secures us entry into this ample
space, this treasure-house, as some court officer might take by
the hand a poor rustic, standing on the threshold of the palace,
and lead him through all the glittering series of unfamiliar
splendour, and present him at last in the central ring around the
king. The reality that underlies the metaphor is plain. We sinners
can never pass into that central glory, nor ever possess those
gifts of grace, unless the barrier that stands between us and God,
between us and His highest gifts of love, is swept away.

I recall an old legend where two knights are represented as
seeking to enter a palace, where there is a mysterious fire
burning in the middle of the portal. One of them tries to pass
through, and recoils scorched; but when the other essays an
entrance the fierce fire sinks, and the path is cleared. Jesus
Christ has died, and I say it with all reverence, as His blood
touches the fire it flickers down and the way is opened `into the
holiest of all, whither the Forerunner is for us entered.' He both
brings the grace and makes it possible that we should go in where
the grace is.

But Jesus Christ's work is nothing to you unless your personal
faith comes in, and so that is pointed to in the second of the
clauses here: `\textit{By faith} we have access.' That is no
arbitrary appointment. It lies in the very nature of the gift and
of the recipient. How can God give access into that grace to a man
who shrinks from being near Him; who does not want `access,' and
who could not use the grace if he had it? How can God bestow
inward and spiritual gifts upon any man who closes his heart
against them, and will not have them? My faith is the condition;
Christ is the Giver. If I ally myself to Him by my faith, He gives
to me. If I do not, with all the will to do it, He cannot bestow
His best gifts any more than a man who stretches out his hand to
another sinking in the flood can lift him out, and set him on the
safe shore, if the drowning man's hand is not stretched out to
grasp the rescuer's outstretched hand.

Brethren, God is infinitely willing to give the choicest gifts of
His love to us all, to gladden, to enrich, to adorn, to make
stable and erect. But He cannot give them unless you will trust
Him. `It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness
dwell.' That alabaster box is brought to earth. It was broken on
the Cross that `the house' might be `filled with the odour of the
ointment.' Our faith is the only condition; it is only the
condition, but it is the indispensable condition, of our being
anointed with that fragrant anointing. He, and He only, can give
us the fullness of God.

\chapter{The Sources of Hope}
\markright{ROMANS v. 2--4}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3.\ And not only so, but
we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh
patience; 4.\ And patience, experience; and experience,
hope.'---\textsc{Romans} v. 2--4.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We have seen in a previous sermon that the Apostle in the
foregoing context is sketching a grand outline of the ideal
Christian life, as all rooted in `being justified by faith,' and
flowering into `peace with God,' `access into grace,' and a firm
stand against all antagonists and would-be masters. In our text he
advances to complete the outline by sketching the true Christian
attitude towards the future. I have ventured to take so pregnant
and large a text, because there is a very striking and close
connection throughout the verses, which is lost unless we take
them together. Note, then, `we rejoice in hope,' `we glory in
tribulation.' Now, it is one word in the original which is
diversely rendered in these two clauses by `rejoice' and `glory.'
The latter is a better rendering than the former, because the
original expression designates not only the emotion of joy, but
the expression of it, especially in words. So it is frequently
rendered in the New Testament by the word `boast,' which, of
course, has unpleasant associations, which scarcely fit it for use
here. So then you see Paul regards it as possible for, and more
than possibly characteristic of, a Christian, that the very same
emotion should he excited by that great bright future hope, and by
the blackness of present sorrow. That is strong meat; and so he
goes on to explain how he thinks it can and must be so, and points
out that trouble, through a series of results, arrives at last at
this, that if it is rightly borne, it flashes up into greater
brightness the hope which has grasped the glory of God. So then we
have here, not only a wonderful designation of the object around
which Christian hope twines its tendrils, but of the double source
from which that hope may come, and of the one emotion with which
Christian people should front the darkness of the present and the
brightness of the future. Ah! how different our lives would be if
that ideal of a steadfast hope and an untroubled joy were realised
by each of us. It may be. It should be. So I ask you to look at
these three points which I have suggested.

I. That wonderful designation of the one object of Christian hope
which should fill, with an uncoruscating and unflickering light,
all that dark future.

`We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' Now, I suppose I need
not remind you that that phrase `the glory of God' is, in the Old
Testament, used especially to mean the light that dwelt between
the cherubim above the mercy-seat; the symbol of the divine
perfections and the token of the Divine Presence. The reality of
which it was a symbol is the total splendour, so to speak, of that
divine nature, as it rays itself out into all the universe. And,
says Paul, the true hope of the Christian man is nothing less than
that of that glory he shall be, in some true sense, and in an
eternally growing degree, the real possessor. It is a tremendous
claim, and one which leads us into deep places that I dare not
venture into now, as to the resemblance between the human person
and the Divine Person, notwithstanding all the differences which
of course exist, and which only a presumptuous form of religion
has ventured to treat as transitory or insignificant. Let me use a
technical word, and say that it is no pantheistic absorption in an
impersonal Light, no Nirvana of union with a vague whole, which
the Apostle holds out here, but it is the closest possible union,
personality being saved and individual consciousness being
intensified. It is the clothing of humanity with so much of that
glory as can be imparted to a finite creature. That means perfect
knowledge, perfect purity, perfect love, and that means the
dropping away of all weaknesses and the access of strange new
powers, and that means the end of the schism between `will' and
`ought,' and of the other schism between `will' and `can.' It
means what this Apostle says: `Whom He justified them He also
glorified,' and what He says again, `We all, beholding as in a
glass'---or rather, perhaps, mirroring as a glass does---`the
glory, are changed into the same image.'

The very heart of Christianity is that the Divine Light of which
that Shekinah was but a poor and transitory symbol has
`tabernacled' amongst men in the Christ, and has from Him been
communicated, and is being communicated in such measure as earthly
limitations and conditions permit, and that these do point on
assuredly to perfect impartation hereafter, when `we shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' The Three could walk in the
furnace of fire, because there was One with them, `like unto the
Son of God.' `Who among us shall dwell with the everlasting fire,'
the fire of that divine perfection? They who have had introduction
by Christ into the grace, and who will be led by Him into the
glory.

Now, brethren, it seems to me to be of great importance that this,
the loftiest of conceptions of that future life, should be the
main aspect under which we think of it. It is well to speak of
rest from toil; it is well to speak of all the negations of
present unfavourable, afflictive conditions which that future
presents to us. And perhaps there is none of the aspects of it
which appeals to deeper feelings in ourselves, than those which
say `there shall be no night there,' `there shall be no tears
there, neither sorrow nor sighing'; `there shall be no toil
there.' But we must rise above all that, for our heaven is to live
in God, and to be possessors of His glory. Do not let us dwell
upon the symbols instead of the realities. Do not let us dwell
only on the oppositions and contradictions to earth. Let us rather
rise high above symbols, high above negations, to the positive
truth, and not contented with saying `We shall be full of
blessedness; we shall be full of purity; we shall be full of
knowledge,' let us rather think of that which embraces them
all---we shall be full of God.

So much, then, for the one object of Christian hope. We have
here---

II. The double source of that hope.

Observe that the first clause of my text comes as the last term in
a sequence. It began with `being justified by faith.' The second
round of the ladder was, `we have peace with God.' The third, `we
have access into this grace.' The fourth, `we stand,' and then
comes, `we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' That is to say,
to put it into general words, and, of course, presupposing the
revelation in Jesus Christ as the basis of all, without which
there is no assured hope of a future beyond the grave, then the
facts of a Christian man's life are for him the best brighteners
of the hope beyond. Of course, that is so. `Justified by
faith'---`peace with God'---`access into grace'; what, in the name
of common-sense, can death do with these things? How can its
blunted sword cut the bond that unites a soul that has had such
experiences as these with the source of them all? Nothing can be
more grotesque, nothing more incongruous, than to think that that
subordinate and accidental fact, whose region is the physical, has
anything whatever to do with this higher region of
consciousness.

And, further than that, it is absolutely unthinkable to a man in
the possession of these spiritual gifts, that they should ever
come to a close; and the fact that in the precise degree in which
we realise as our very own possession, here and now, these
Christian emotions and blessings, we instinctively rise to the
belief that they are `not for an age, but for all time,' and not
for all time, but for eternity, is itself, if not a proof, yet a
very strong presumption, if you believe in God, that a man who
thus `feels he was not made to die' because he has grasped the
Eternal, is right in so feeling. If, too, we look at the
experiences themselves, they all have the stamp of incompleteness,
and suggest completeness by their own incompleteness. The new moon
with its ragged edge not more surely prophesies its completed
silver round, than do the experiences of the Christian life here,
in their greatness and in their smallness, declare that there come
a time and an order of things in which what was thwarted tendency
shall be accomplished result. The tender green spikelet, pushing
up through the brown clods, does not more surely prophesy the
waving yellow ear, nor the broad highway on which a man comes in
the wilderness more surely declare that there is a village at the
end of it, than do the facts of the Christian life, here and now,
attest the validity of the hope of the glory of God.

And so, brethren, if you wish to brighten that great light that
fills the future, see to it that your present Christianity is
fuller of `peace with God,' `access into grace,' and the firm,
erect standing which flows from these. When the springs in the
mountains dry up, the river in the valley shrinks; and when they
are full, it glides along level with the top of its banks. So when
our Christian life in the present is richest, our Christian hope
of the future will be the brighter. Look into yourselves. Is there
anything there that witnesses to that great future; anything there
that is obviously incipient, and destined to greater power;
anything there which is like a tropical plant up here in 45
degrees of north latitude, managing to grow, but with dwarfed
leaves and scanty flowers and half shrivelled and sourish fruit,
and that in the cold dreams of the warm native land? Reflecting
telescopes show the stars in a mirror, and the observer looks down
to see the heavens. Look into yourselves, and see whether, on the
polished plate within, there are any images of the stars that move
around the Throne of God.

But let us turn for a moment to the second source to which the
Apostle traces the Christian hope here. I must not be tempted to
more than just a word of explanation, but perhaps you will
tolerate that. Paul says that trouble works patience, that is to
say, not only passive endurance, but brave persistence in a
course, in spite of antagonisms. That is what trouble does to a
man when it is rightly borne. Of course the Apostle is speaking
here of its ideal operation, and not of the reality which alas!
often is seen when our tribulations lash us into impatience, or
paralyse our efforts. Tribulation worketh patience, `and patience
\textit{experience}.' That is a difficult word to put into
English. There underlies it the frequent thought which is familiar
in Scripture, of trouble of all kinds as testing a man, whether as
the refiner's fire or the winnower's fan. It tests a man, and if
he bears the trouble with patient persistence, then he has passed
the test and is approved. Patient perseverance thus works
approval, or proof of the man's Christianity, and, still more,
proof of the reality and power of the Christ whom his Christianity
grasps. And so from out of that approval or proof which comes,
through perseverance, from tribulation, there rises, of course, in
that heart that has been tested and has stood, a calm hope that
the future will be as the past, and that, having fought through
six troubles, by God's help the seventh will be vanquished also,
till at last troubles will end, and heaven be won.

Brethren, there is the true point of view from which to look, not
only at tribulations, but at all the trials, for they too bring
trials, that lie in duty and in enjoyment, and in earthly things.
They are meant to work in us a conviction, by our experience of
having been able to meet them aright, of the reality of our grasp
of God, and of the reality and power of the God whom we grasp. If
we took that point of view in regard to all the changes of this
changeful life, we should not so often be bewildered and upset by
the darkest of our sorrows. The shining lancets and cruel cutting
instruments that the surgeon lays out on his table before he
begins the operation are very dreadful. But the way to think of
them is that they are there in order to remove from a man what it
does him harm to keep, and what, if it is not taken away, will
kill him. So life, with its troubles, great and small, is all
meant for this, to make us surer of, and bring us closer to, our
God, and to brace and strengthen us in our own personal character.
And if it does that, then blessed be everything that produces
these results, and leads us thereby to glorying in the troubles by
which shines out on us a brighter hope.

So there are the two sources, you see: the one is the blessedness
of the Christian life, the other the sorrows of the outward life,
and both may converge upon the brightening of our Christian hope.
Our rainbow is the child of the marriage of the sun and the rain.
The Christian hope comes from being `justified by faith, having
peace with God ... and access into grace,' and it comes from
tribulation, which `worketh patience,' and patience which `worketh
approval.' The one spark is struck from the hard flint by the cold
steel, and the other is kindled by the sun itself, but they are
both fire.

And so, lastly, we have here---

III. The one emotion with which the Christian should front all the
facts, inward and outward, of his earthly life.

`We glory in the hope,' `we glory in tribulation,' I need not
dwell upon the lesson which is taught us here by the fact that the
Apostle puts as one in a series of Christian characteristics this
of a steadfast and all-embracing joy. I do not believe that we
Christian people half enough realise how imperative a Christian
duty, as well as how great a Christian privilege, it is to be glad
always. You have no right to be anxious; you are wrong to be
hypochondriac and depressed, and weary and melancholy. True; there
are a great many occasions in our Christian life which minister
sadness. True; the Christian joy looks very gloomy to a worldly
eye. But there are far more occasions which, if we were right,
would make joy instinctive, and which, whether we are right or
not, make it obligatory upon us. I need not speak of how, if that
hope were brighter than it commonly is with us, and if it were
more constantly present to our minds and hearts, we should sing
with gladness. I need not dwell upon that great and wonderful
paradox by which the co-existence of sorrow and of joy is
possible. The sorrows are on the surface; beneath there may be
rest. All the winds of heaven may rave across the breast of ocean,
and fret it into clouds of spume against a storm-swept sky. But
deep down there is stillness, and yet not stagnation, because
there is the great motion that brings life and freshness; and so,
though there will be wind-vexed surfaces on our too-often agitated
spirits, there ought to be deeper than these the calm setting of
the whole ocean of our nature towards God Himself. It is possible,
as this Apostle has it, to be `sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.'
It is possible, as his brother Apostle has it, to `rejoice
greatly, though now for a season we are in sorrow through manifold
temptations.' Look back upon your lives from the point of view
that your tribulation is an instrument to produce hope, and you
will be able to thank God for all the way by which He has led
you.

Now, brethren, the plain lesson of all this is just that we have
here, in these texts, a linked chain, one end of which is wrapped
around our sinful hearts, and the other is fastened to the Throne of
God. You cannot drop any of the links, and you must begin at the
beginning, if you are to be carried on to the end. If we are to have
a joy immovable, we must have a `steadfast hope.' If we are to have
a `steadfast hope,' we must have a present `grace.' If we are to
have a present `grace,' and `access' to the fullness of God, we must
have `peace with God.' If we are to have `peace with God,' we must
have the condemnation and the guilt taken away. If we are to have
the condemnation and the guilt taken away, Jesus Christ must take
them. If Jesus Christ is to take them away, we must have faith in
Him. Then you can work it backward, and begin at your own end, and
say, `If I have faith in Jesus Christ, then every link of the chain
in due succession will pass through my hand, and I shall have
justifying, peace, access, the grace, erectness, hope, and
exultation, and at last He will lead me by the hand into the glory
for which I dare to hope, the glory which the Father gave to Him
before the foundation of the world, and which He will give to me
when the world has passed away in fervent heat.'

\chapter{A Threefold Cord}
\markright{ROMANS v. 5}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto
us.'---\textsc{Romans} v. 5.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We have seen in former sermons that, in the previous context, the
Apostle traces Christian hope to two sources: one, the series of
experiences which follow `being justified by faith' and the other,
those which follow on trouble rightly borne. Those two golden
chains together hold up the precious jewel of hope. But a chain
that is to bear a weight must have a staple, or it will fall to
the ground. And so Paul here turns to yet another thought, and,
going behind both our inward experiences and our outward
discipline, falls back on that which precedes all. After all is
said and done, the love of God, eternal, self-originated, the
source of all Christian experiences because of the work of Christ
which originates them all, is the root fact of the universe, and
the guarantee that our highest anticipations and desires are not
unsubstantial visions, but morning dreams, which are proverbially
sure to be fulfilled. God is love; therefore the man who trusts
Him shall not be put to shame.

But you will notice that here the Apostle not only adduces the
love of God as the staple, so to speak, from which these golden
chains hang, but that he traces the heart's being suffused with
that love to its source, and as, of course, is always the case in
the order of analysis, that which was last in time comes first in
statement. We begin at the surface, and go down and down and down
from effect to cause, and yet again to the cause of that cause
which is itself effect. We strip off, as it were, layer after
layer, until we get to the living centre---hope comes from the
love, the love comes from the Spirit in the heart. And so to get
at the order of time and of manifestation, we must reverse the
order of analysis in my text, and begin where it ends. So we have
here three things---the Spirit given, the love shed abroad by that
Spirit, and the hope established by that love. Now just look at
them for a moment.

I. The Spirit given.

Now, the first point to notice here is that the Revised Version
presents the meaning of our text more accurately than the
Authorised Version, because, instead of reading `is given,' it
correctly reads `was given.' And any of you that can consult the
original will see that the form of the language implies that the
Apostle is thinking, not so much of a continuous bestowment, as of
a definite moment when this great gift was bestowed upon the man
to whom he is speaking.

So the first question is, when was that Spirit given to these
Roman Christians? The Christian Church has been split in two by
its answers to that question. One influential part, which has
taken a new lease of life amongst us to-day, says `in baptism,'
and the other says `at the moment of faith.' I am not going to be
tempted into controversial paths now, for my purpose is a very
different one, but I cannot help just a word about the former of
these two answers. `Given in baptism,' say our friends, and I
venture to think that they thereby degrade Christianity into a
system of magic, bringing together two entirely disparate things,
an external physical act and a spiritual change. I do not say
anything about the disastrous effects that have followed from such
a conception of the medium by which this greatest of all Christian
gifts is effected upon men. Since the Spirit who is given is life,
the result of the gift of that Spirit is a new life, and we all
know what disastrous and debasing consequences have followed from
that dogma of regeneration by baptism. No doubt it is perfectly
true that normally, in the early Church, the Divine Spirit was
given at baptism; but for one thing, that general rule had
exceptions, as in the case of Cornelius, and, for another thing,
though it was given \textit{at} baptism, it was not given
\textit{in} baptism, but it was given through faith, of which in
those days baptism was the sequel and the sign.

But I pass altogether from this, and fall back on the great words
which, to me at least, if there were no other, would determine the
whole answer to this question as to when the Spirit was given:
`This spake He of the Holy Ghost, which they that \textit{believe}
on Him should receive'; and I would ask the modern upholders of
the other theory the indignant question which the Apostle Paul
fired off out of his heavy artillery at their ancient analogues,
the circumcisers in the Galatian Church: `This only would I know
of you: Received ye the Holy Spirit by the works of the law, or by
the hearing of faith?'

The answer which the evangelical Christian gives to this ancient
question suggested by my text, `When was that Divine Spirit
bestowed?' is congruous with the spirituality of the Christian
faith, and is eminently reasonable. For the condition required is
the opening of the whole nature in willing welcome to the entrance
of the Divine Spirit, and as surely as, wherever there is an
indentation of the land, and a concavity of a receptive bay, the
ocean will pour into it and fill it, so surely where a heart is
open for God, God in His Divine Spirit will enter into that heart,
and there will shed His blessed influences.

So, dear brethren, and this is the main point to which I wish to
direct your attention, the Apostle here takes it for granted that
all these Roman Christians knew in themselves the truth of what he
was saying, and had an experience which confirmed his assertion
that the Divine Spirit of God was given to them when they
believed. Ah! I wonder if that is true about us professing
Christians; if we are aware in any measure of a higher life than
our own having been breathed into us; if we are aware in any
measure of a Divine Spirit dwelling in our spirits, moulding,
lifting, enlightening, guiding, constraining, and yet not
coercing? We ought to be, `Know ye not that the Spirit dwelleth in
you, except ye be rejected?' Brethren, it seems to me to be of the
very last importance, in this period of the Church's history, that
the proportion between the Church's teaching as to the work of
Christ on the Cross, and as to the consequent work of the Spirit
of Christ in our hearts and spirits, should be changed. We must
become more mystical if we are not to become less Christian. And
the fact that so many of us seem to imagine that the whole Gospel
lies in this, that `He died for our sins according to the
Scriptures,' and have relegated the teaching that He, by His
Spirit, lives in us, if we are His disciples, to a less prominent
place, has done enormous harm, not only to the type of Christian
life, but to the conception of what Christianity is, both amongst
those who receive it, and amongst those who do not accept it,
making it out to be nothing more than a means of escape from the
consequences of our transgression, instead of recognising it for
what it is, the impartation of a new life which will flower into
all beauty, and bear fruit in all goodness.

There was a question put once to a group of disciples, in
astonishment and incredulity, by this Apostle, when he said to the
twelve disciples in Ephesus, `Did you receive the Holy Ghost when
you believed?' The question might well be put to a multitude of
professing Christians amongst us, and I am afraid a great many of
them, if they answered truly, would answer as those disciples did,
`We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy
Ghost.'

And now for the second point in my text---

II. The love which is shed abroad by that Spirit.

Now, I suppose I do not need to do more than point out that `the
love of God' here means His to us, and not ours to Him, and that
the metaphor employed is but partially represented by that
rendering `shed abroad.' `Poured out' would better convey Paul's
image, which is that of a flood sent coursing through the heart,
or, perhaps, rather lying there, as a calm deep lake on whose
unruffled surface the heavens, with all their stars, are
reflected. Of course, if God's love to us thus suffuses a heart,
then there follows the consciousness of that love; though it is
not the consciousness of the love that the Apostle is primarily
speaking of, but that which lies behind it, the actual flowing
into the human heart of that sweet and all-satisfying Love. This
Divine Spirit that dwells in us, if we are trusting in Christ,
will pour it in full streams into our else empty hearts. Surely
there is nothing incongruous with the nature either of God or of
man, in believing that thus a real communication is possible
between them, and that by thoughts the occasions of which we
cannot trace, by moments of elevation, by swift, piercing
convictions, by sudden clear illuminations, God may speak, and
will speak, in our waiting hearts.

\begin{verse}
`Such rebounds the inmost ear \\
\ \ Catches often from afar. \\
Listen, prize them, hold them dear; \\
\ \ For of God, of God, they are.'
\end{verse}

\noindent But we must not forget, too, that, according to the
whole strain of New Testament thinking, the means by which that
Divine Spirit does pour out the flashing flood of the love of God
into a man's heart is, as Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, by
taking the things of Christ and showing them to us.

Now, as I said about a former point of my sermon, that the Apostle
was taking for granted that this gift of the Spirit belonged to
all Christian people; so here again he takes for granted that in
every Christian heart there is, by a divine operation, the
presence of the love, and of the consciousness of the love, of
God. And, again, the question comes to some of us stunningly, to
all of us warningly, Is that a transcript of our experience? It is
the ideal of a Christian life; it is meant that it should be so,
and should be so continuously. The stream that is poured out is
intended to run summer and winter, not to be dried up in drought,
nor made turbid and noisy in flood, but with equable flow
throughout. I fear me that the experience of most good people is
rather like one of those tropical wadies, or nullahs in Eastern
lands, where there alternate times of spate and times of drought;
and instead of a flashing stream, pouring life everywhere, and
full to the top of its banks, there is for long periods a dismal
stretch of white sun-baked stones, and a chaos of tumbled rocks
with not a drop of water in the channel. The Spirit pours God's
love into men's spirits, but there may be dams and barriers, so
that no drop of the water comes into the empty heart.

Our Quaker friends have a great deal to say about `waiting for the
springing of the life within us.' Never mind about the
phraseology: what is meant is profoundly true, that no Christian
man will realise this blessing unless he knows how to sit still
and meditate, and let the gracious influence soak into him. Thus
being quiet, he may, he will, find rising in his heart the
consciousness of the love of God. You will not, if you give only
broken momentary sidelong glances; you will not, if you do not lie
still. If you hold up a cup in a shaking hand beneath a fountain,
and often twitch it aside, you will get little water in it; and
unless we `wait on the Lord,' we shall not `renew our strength.'
You can build a dam as they do in Holland that will keep out, not
only the waters of a river, but the waters of an ocean, and not a
drop will come through the dike. Brethren, we must keep ourselves
in the love of God.

Lastly, we have here---

III. The hope that is established by the love poured out.

I need not dwell at any length upon this point, because, to a
large extent, it has been anticipated in former sermons, but just
a word or two may be permitted me. That love, you may be very
sure, is not going to lose its objects in the dust. The old
Psalmist who knew so much less than we do as to the love of God,
and knew nothing of the whispers of a Divine Spirit within his
heart charged with the message of the love as it was manifested in
Jesus Christ, had risen to a height of confidence, the beauty of
the expression of which is often lost sight of, because we insist
upon dealing with it as merely being a Messianic prophecy, which
it is, but not merely: `Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol,
neither wilt Thou suffer Thy beloved' (for that is the real
meaning of the word translated `thy Holy One')---`Thou wilt not
suffer the child of Thy love to see corruption.' Death's bony
fingers can untie all true lover's knots but one; and they fumble
at that one in vain. God will not lose His child in the grave.

That love, we may be very sure, will not foster in us hopes that are
to be disappointed. Now, it is a fact that the more a man feels that
God loves him, the less is it possible for him to believe that that
love will ever terminate, or that he shall `all die.' In the lock of
a canal, as the water pours in, the vessel rises. In our hearts, as
the flood of the full love of God pours in, our hopes are borne up
and up, nearer and nearer to the heavens. Since it is so, we must
find in the fact that the constant and necessary result of communion
with Him here on earth is a conviction of the immortality of that
communion, a very, very strong guarantee for ourselves that the hope
is not in vain. And if you say that that is all merely subjective,
yet I think that the universality of the experience is a fact to be
taken into account even by those who doubt the reality of the hope,
and for ourselves, at all events, is a sufficient ground on which to
rest. We have the historical fact of the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. We have the fact that wherever there has been earthly
experience of true communion with God, there, and in the measure in
which it has been realised, the thermometer of our hopes of
immortality, so to speak, has risen. `God is love,' and God will not
bring the man that trusts Him to confusion.

And may we not venture to say that, contemplating the analogous
earthly love, we are permitted to believe that that divine Lover
of our souls desires to have His beloved with Him, and desires
that there be no separation between Him and them, either, if I
might so say, in place or in disposition? As certainly as husband
and wife, lover and friend, long to be together, and need it for
perfection and for rest, so surely will that divine love not be
satisfied until it has gathered all its children to its breast and
made them partakers of itself.

There are many, many hopes that put the men who cherish them to
shame, partly because they are never fulfilled, partly because,
though fulfilled, they are disappointed, since the reality is so
much less than the anticipation. Who does not know that the spray
of blossom on the tree looks far more lovely hanging above our
heads than when it is grasped by us? Who does not know that the
fish struggling on the hook seems heavier than it turns out to be
when lying on the bank? We go to the rainbow's end, and we find,
not a pot of gold, but a huddle of cold, wet mist. There is one
man that is entitled to say: `To-morrow shall be as this day, and
much more abundant.' Who is he? Only the man whose hope is in the
Lord his God. If we open our hearts by faith, then these three
lines of sequence of which we have been speaking will converge,
and we shall have the hope that is the shining apex of `being
justified by faith,' and the hope that is the calm result of
trouble and agitation, and the hope that, travelling further and
higher than anything in our inward experience or our outward
discipline, grasps the key-word of the universe, `God is love,'
and triumphantly makes sure that `neither death nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.'

\chapter{What Proves God's Love}
\markright{ROMANS v. 8}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.'---\textsc{Romans} v. 8.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We have seen in previous sermons on the preceding context that the
Apostle has been tracing various lines of sequence, all of which
converge upon Christian hope. The last of these pointed to the
fact that the love of God, poured into a heart like oil into a
lamp, brightened that flame; and having thus mentioned the great
Christian revelation of God as love, Paul at once passes to
emphasise the historical fact on which the conviction of that love
rests, and goes on to say that `the love of God is shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us, \textit{for}
when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the
ungodly.' Then there rises before him the thought of how
transcendent and unparalleled a love is that which pours its whole
preciousness on unworthy and unresponsive hearts. He thinks to
himself---`We are all ungodly; without strength---yet, He died for
us. Would any man do that? No! for,' says he, `it will be a hard
thing to find any one ready to die for a righteous man---a man
rigidly just and upright, and because rigidly just, a trifle hard,
and therefore not likely to touch a heart to sacrifice; and even
for a good man, in whom austere righteousness has been softened
and made attractive, and become graciousness and beneficence,
well! it is just within the limits of possibility that somebody
might be found even to die for a man that had laid such a strong
hand upon his affections. But God commendeth His love in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.' Now, when Paul says
`commend,' he uses a very significant word which is employed in
two ways in the New Testament. It sometimes means to establish, or
to prove, or to make certain. But `prove' is a cold word, and the
expression also means to recommend, to set forth in such a way as
to appeal to the heart, and God does both in that great act. He
establishes the fact, and He, as it were, sweeps it into a man's
heart, on the bosom of that full tide of self-sacrifice.

So there are two or three points that arise from these words, on
which I desire to dwell now---to lay them upon our hearts, and not
only upon our understandings. For it is a poor thing to prove the
love of God, and we need that not only shall we be sure of it, but
that we shall be softened by it. So now let me ask you to look
with me, first, at this question---

I. What Paul thought Jesus Christ died for.

`Died \textit{for} us.' Now that expression plainly implies two
things: first, that Christ died of His own accord, and being
impelled by a great motive, beneficence; and, second, that that
voluntary death, somehow or other, is for our behoof and
advantage. The word in the original, `for,' does not define in
what way that death ministers to our advantage, but it does assert
that for those Roman Christians who had never seen Jesus Christ,
and by consequence for you and me nineteen centuries off the
Cross, there is benefit in the fact of that death. Now, suppose we
quote an incident in the story of missionary martyrdom. There was
a young lady, whom some of us knew and loved, in a Chinese mission
station, who, with the rest of the missionary band, was flying.
Her life was safe. She looked back, and saw a Chinese boy that her
heart twined round, in danger. She returned to save him; they laid
hold of her and flung her into the burning house, and her charred
remains have never been found. That was a death for another, but
`Jesus died for us' in a deeper sense than that. Take another
case. A man sets himself to some great cause, not his own, and he
sees that in order to bless humanity, either by the proclamation
of some truth, or by the origination of some great movement, or in
some other way, if he is to carry out his purpose, he must give
his life. He does so, and dies a martyr. What he aimed at could
only be done by the sacrifice of his life. The death was a means
to his end, and he died for his fellows. That is not the depth of
the sense in which Paul meant that Jesus Christ died for us. It
was not that He was true to His message, and, like many another
martyr, died. There is only one way, as it seems to me, in which
any beneficial relation can be established between the Death of
Christ and us, and it is that when He died He died for us, because
`He bare our sins in His own body on the tree.'

Dear brethren, I dare say some of you do not take that view, but I
know not how justice can be done to the plain words of Scripture
unless this is the point of view from which we look at the Cross
of Calvary---that there the Lamb of Sacrifice was bearing, and
bearing away, the sins of the whole world. I know that Christian
men who unite in the belief that Christ's death was a sacrifice
and an atonement diverge from one another in their interpretations
of the way in which that came to be a fact, and I believe, for my
part, that the divergent interpretations are like the divergent
beams of light that fall upon men who stand round the same great
luminary, and that all of them take their origin in, and are part
of the manifestation of, the one transcendent fact, which passes
all understanding, and gathers into itself all the diverse
conceptions of it which are formed by limited minds. He died for
us because, in His death, our sins are taken away and we are
restored to the divine favour.

I know that Jesus Christ is said to have made far less of that
aspect of His work in the Gospels than His disciples have done in
the Epistles, and that we are told that, if we go back to Jesus,
we shall not find the doctrine which for some of us is the first
form in which the Gospel finds its way into the hearts of men. I
admit that the fully-developed teaching followed the fact, as was
necessarily the case. I do not admit that Jesus Christ `spake
nothing concerning Himself' as the sacrifice for the world's sins.
For I hear from His lips---not to dwell upon other sayings which I
could quote---I hear from His lips, `The Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister'---that is only half His
purpose---`and to give His life a ransom instead of the many.' You
cannot strike the atoning aspect of His death out of that
expression by any fair handling of the words.

And what does the Lord's Supper mean? Why did Jesus Christ select
that one point of His life as the point to be remembered? Why did
He institute the double memorial, the body parted from the blood
being a sign of a violent death? I know of no explanation that
makes that Lord's Supper an intelligible rite except the
explanation which says that He came, to live indeed, and in that
life to be a sacrifice, but to make the sacrifice complete by
Himself bearing the consequences of transgression, and making
atonement for the sins of the world.

Brethren, that is the only aspect of Christ's death which makes it
of any consequence to us. Strip it of that, and what does it
matter to me that He died, any more than it matters to me that any
philanthropist, any great teacher, any hero or martyr or saint,
should have died? As it seems to me, nothing. Christ's death is
surrounded by tenderly pathetic and beautiful accompaniments. As a
story it moves the hearts of men, and `purges them, by pity and by
terror.' But the death of many a hero of tragedy does all that.
And if you want to have the Cross of Christ held upright in its
place as the Throne of Christ and the attractive power for the
whole world, you must not tamper with that great truth, but say,
`He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.'

Now, there is a second question that I wish to ask, and that is---

II. How does Christ's death `commend' God's love?

That is a strange expression, if you will think about it, that
`\textit{God} commendeth His love towards us in that
\textit{Christ} died.' If you take the interpretation of Christ's
death of which I have already been speaking, one could have
understood the Apostle if he had said, `Christ commendeth His love
towards us in that Christ died.' But where is the force of the
fact of a \textit{man's} death to prove \textit{God's} love? Do
you not see that underlying that swift sentence of the Apostle
there is a presupposition, which he takes for granted? It is so
obvious that I do not need to dwell upon it to vindicate his
change of persons, viz. that `God was in Christ,' in such fashion
as that whatsoever Christ did was the revelation of God. You
cannot suppose, at least I cannot see how you can, that there is
any force of proof in the words of my text, unless you come up to
the full belief, `God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself.'

Suppose some great martyr who dies for his fellows. Well, all
honour to him, and the race will come to his tomb for a while, and
bring their wreaths and their sorrow. But what bearing has his
death upon our knowledge of God's love towards us? None whatever,
or at most a very indirect and shadowy one. We have to dig deeper
down than that. `God commends His love ... in that Christ died.'
`He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' And we have the right
and the obligation to argue back from all that is manifest in the
tender Christ to the heart of God, and say, not only, `God so
loved the world that He' sent His Son, but to see that the love
that was in Christ is the manifestation of the love of God
Himself.

So there stands the Cross, the revelation to us, not only of a
Brother's sacrifice, but of a Father's love; and that because
Jesus Christ is the revelation of God as being the `eradiation of
His glory, and the express image of His person.' Friends! light
does pour out from that Cross, whatever view men take of it. But
the omnipotent beam, the all-illuminating radiance, the
transforming light, the heat that melts, are all dependent on our
looking at it---I do not only say, as Paul looked at it, nor do I
even say as Christ looked at it, but as the deep necessities of
humanity require that the world should look at it, as the altar
whereon is laid the sacrifice for our sins, the very Son of God
Himself. To me the great truths of the Incarnation and the
Atonement of Jesus Christ are not points in a mere speculative
theology; they are the pulsating vital centre of religion. And
every man needs them in his own experience.

I was going to have said a word or two here---but it is not
necessary---about the need that the love of God should be
irrefragably established, by some plain and undeniable and
conspicuous fact. I need not dwell upon the ambiguous oracles
which---

\begin{verse}
`Nature, red in tooth and claw, \\
 With rapine'
\end{verse}

\noindent gives forth, nor on how the facts of human life, our own
sorrows, and the world's miseries, the tears that swathe the
earth, as it rolls on its orbit, like a misty atmosphere, war
against the creed that God is love. I need not remind you, either,
of how deep, in our own hearts, when the conscience begins to
speak its \textit{not} ambiguous oracles, there does rise the
conviction that there is much in us which it is impossible should
be the object of God's love. Nor need I remind you how all these
difficulties in believing in a God who is love, based on the
contradictory aspects of nature, and the mysteries of providence,
and the whisperings of our own consciousness, are proved to have
been insuperable by the history of the world, where we find
mythologies and religions of all types and gods of every sort, but
nowhere in all the pantheon a God who is Love.

Only let me press upon you that that conviction of the love of
God, which is found now far beyond the limits of Christian faith,
and amongst many of us who, in the name of that conviction itself,
reject Christianity, because of its sterner aspects, is
historically the child of the evangelical doctrine of the
Incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And if it still
subsists, as I know it does, especially in this generation,
amongst many men who reject what seems to me to be the very kernel
of Christianity---subsists like the stream cut off from its
source, but still running, that only shows that men hold many
convictions the origin of which they do not know. God is love. You
will not permanently sustain that belief against the pressure of
outward mysteries and inward sorrows, unless you grasp the other
conviction that Christ died for our sins. The two are
inseparable.

And now lastly---

III. What kind of love does Christ's death declare to us as
existing in God?

A love that is turned away by no sin---that is the thing that
strikes the Apostle here, as I have already pointed out. The
utmost reach of human affection might be that a man would die for
the good---he would scarcely die for the righteous. But God sends
His Son, and comes Himself in His Son, and His Son died for the
ungodly and the sinner. That death reveals a love which is its own
origin and motive. We love because we discern, or fancy we do,
something lovable in the object. God loves under the impulse, so
to speak, of His own welling-up heart.

And yet it is a love which, though not turned away by any sin, is
witnessed by that death to be rigidly righteous. It is no mere
flaccid, flabby laxity of a loose-girt affection, no mere foolish
indulgence like that whereby earthly parents spoil their children.
God's love is not lazy good-nature, as a great many of us think it
to be and so drag it in the mud, but it is rigidly righteous, and
therefore Christ died. That Death witnesses that it is a love
which shrinks from no sacrifices. This Isaac was not `spared.' God
gave up His Son. Love has its very speech in surrender, and God's
love speaks as ours does. It is a love which, turned away by no
sin, and yet rigidly righteous and shrinking from no sacrifices,
embraces all ages and lands. `God commendeth'---not `commended.'
The majestic present tense suggests that time and space are
nothing to the swift and all-filling rays of that great Light.
That love is `towards us,' you and me and all our fellows. The
Death is an historical fact, occurring in one short hour. The
Cross is an eternal power, raying out light and love over all
humanity and through all ages.

God lays siege to all hearts in that great sacrifice. Do you
believe that Jesus Christ died for \textit{your} sins `according
to the Scriptures'? Do you see there the assurance of a love which
will lift you up above all the cross-currents of earthly life, and
the mysteries of providence, into the clear ether where the
sunshine is unobscured? And above all, do you fling back the
reverberating ray from the mirror of your own heart that directs
again towards heaven the beam of love which heaven has shot down
upon you? `Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He
loved us, and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'
Is it true of us that we love God because He first loved us?

\chapter{The Warring Queens}
\markright{ROMANS v. 21}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`As sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord.'---\textsc{Romans} v. 21.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

I am afraid this text will sound to some of you rather
unpromising. It is full of well-worn terms, `sin,' `death,'
`grace,' `righteousness,' `eternal life,' which suggest dry
theology, if they suggest anything. When they welled up from the
Apostle's glowing heart they were like a fiery lava-stream. But
the stream has cooled, and, to a good many of us, they seem as
barren and sterile as the long ago cast out coils of lava on the
sides of a quiescent volcano. They are so well-worn and familiar
to our ears that they create but vague conceptions in our minds,
and they seem to many of us to be far away from a bearing upon our
daily lives. But you much mistake Paul if you take him to be a
mere theological writer. He is an earnest evangelist, trying to
draw men to love and trust in Jesus Christ. And his writings,
however old-fashioned and doctrinally hard they may seem to you,
are all throbbing with life---instinct with truths that belong to
all ages and places, and which fit close to every one of us.

I do not know if I can give any kind of freshness to these words,
but I wish to try. To begin with, I notice the highly-imaginative
and picturesque form into which the Apostle casts his thoughts
here. He, as it were, draws back a curtain, and lets us see two
royal figures, which are eternally opposed and dividing the
dominion between them. Then he shows us the issues to which these
two rulers respectively conduct their subjects; and the question
that is trembling on his lips is `Under which of them do you
stand?' Surely that is not fossil theology, but truths that are of
the highest importance, and ought to be of the deepest interest,
to every one of us. They are to you the former, whether they are
the latter or not.

I. So, first, look at the two Queens who rule over human life.

Sin and Grace are both personified; and they are both conceived of
as female figures, and both as exercising dominion. They stand
face to face, and each recognises as her enemy the other. The one
has established her dominion: `Sin \textit{hath} reigned.' The
other is fighting to establish hers: `That Grace \textit{might}
reign.' And the struggle is going on between them, not only on the
wide field of the world; but in the narrow lists of the heart of
each of us.

Sin reigns. The truths that underlie that solemn picture are plain
enough, however unwelcome they may be to some of us, and however
remote from the construction of the universe which many of us are
disposed to take.

Now, let us understand our terms. Suppose a man commits a theft.
You may describe it from three different points of view. He has
thereby broken the law of the land; and when we are thinking about
that we call it crime. He has also broken the law of `morality,'
as we call it; and when we are looking at his deed from that point
of view, we call it vice. Is that all? He has broken something
else. He has broken the law of God; and when we look at it from
that point of view we call it sin. Now, there are a great many
things which are sins that are not crimes; and, with due
limitations, I might venture to say that there are some things
which are sins that are not to be qualified as vices. Sin implies
God. The Psalmist was quite right when he said; `Against Thee,
Thee only have I sinned'; although he was confessing a foul injury
he had done to Bathsheba, and a glaring crime that he had
committed against Uriah. It was as to God, and in reference to Him
only, that his crime and his vice darkened and solidified into
sin.

And what is it, in our actions or in ourselves considered in
reference to God, that makes our actions sins and ourselves
sinners? Remember the prodigal son. `Father! Give me the portion
of goods that falleth to me.' There you have it all. He went away,
and `wasted his substance in riotous living.' To claim myself for
my own; to act independently of, or contrary to, the will of God;
to try to shake myself clear of Him; to have nothing to do with
Him, even though it be by mere forgetfulness and negligence, and,
in all my ways to comport myself as if I had no relations of
dependence on and submission to him---that is sin. And there may
be that oblivion or rebellion, not only in the gross vulgar acts
which the law calls crimes, or in those which conscience declares
to be vices, but also in many things which, looked at from a lower
point of view, may be fair and pure and noble. If there is this
assertion of self in them, or oblivion of God and His will in
them, I know not how we are to escape the conclusion that even
these fall under the class of sins. For there can be no act or
thought, truly worthy of a man, situated and circumstanced as we
are, which has not, for the very core and animating motive of it,
a reference to God.

Now, when I come and say, as my Bible teaches me to say, that this
is the deepest view of the state of humanity that sin reigns, I do
not wish to fall into the exaggerations by which sometimes that
statement has been darkened and discredited; but I do want to
press upon you, dear brethren, this, as a matter of
\textit{personal} experience, that wherever there is a heart that
loves, and leaves God out, and wherever there is a will that
resolves, determines, impels to action, and does not bow itself
before Him, and wherever there are hands that labour, or feet that
run, at tasks and in paths self-chosen and unconsecrated by
reference to our Father in heaven, no matter how great and
beautiful subsidiary lustres may light up their deeds, the very
heart of them all is transgression of the law of God. For this,
and nothing else or less, is His law: `Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy strength, and with all thy mind.' I do not charge you with
crimes. You know how far it would be right to charge you with
vices. \textit{I} do not charge you with anything; but I pray you
to come with me and confess: `We all have sinned, and come short
of the glory of God.'

I suppose I need not dwell upon the difficulty of getting a
lodgment for this conviction in men's hearts. There is no sadder,
and no more conclusive proof, of the tremendous power of sin over
us, than that it has lulled us into unconsciousness, hard to be
broken, of its own presence and existence. You remember the old
stories---I suppose there is no truth in them, but they will do
for an illustration---about some kind of a blood-sucking animal
that perched upon a sleeping man, and with its leathern wings
fanned him into deeper drowsiness whilst it drew from him his
life-blood. That is what this hideous Queen does for men. She
robes herself in a dark cloud, and sends out her behests from
obscurity. And men fancy that they are free whilst all the while
they are her servants. Oh, dear brethren! you may call this
theology, but it is a simple statement of the facts of our
condition. `Sin hath reigned.'

And now turn to the other picture, `Grace might reign.' Then there
is an antagonistic power that rises up to confront the widespread
dominion of this anarch of old. And this Queen comes with twenty
thousand to war against her that has but ten thousand on her
side.

Again I say, let us understand our terms. I suppose, there are few
of the keywords of the New Testament which have lost more of their
radiance, like quicksilver, by exposure in the air during the
centuries than that great word Grace, which is always on the lips
of this Apostle, and to him had music in its sound, and which to
us is a piece of dead doctrine, associated with certain high
Calvinistic theories which we enlightened people have long ago
grown beyond, and got rid of. Perhaps Paul was more right than we
when his heart leaped up within him at the very thought of all
which he saw to lie palpitating and throbbing with eager desire to
bless men, in that great word. What does he mean by it? Let me put
it into the shortest possible terms. This antagonist Queen is
nothing but the love of God raying out for ever to us inferior
creatures, who, by reason of our sinfulness, have deserved
something widely different. Sin stands there, a hideous hag,
though a queen; Grace stands here, `in all her gestures dignity
and love,' fair and self-communicative, though a sovereign. The
love of God in exercise to sinful men: that is what the New
Testament means by grace. And is it not a great thought?

Notice, for further elucidation of the Apostle's conception, how
he sacrifices the verbal correctness of his antithesis in order to
get to the real opposition. What is the opposite of Sin?
Righteousness. Why does he not say, then, that `as Sin hath
reigned unto death, even so might Righteousness reign unto life'?
Why? Because it is not man, or anything in man, that can be the
true antagonist of, and victor over, the regnant Sin of humanity;
but God Himself comes into the field, and only He is the foe that
Sin dreads. That is to say, the only hope for a sin-tyrannised
world is in the out-throb of the love of the great heart of God.
For, notice the weapon with which He fights man's transgression,
if I may vary the figure for a moment. It is only subordinately
punishment, or law, or threatening, or the revelation of the
wickedness of the transgression. All these have their places, but
they are secondary places. The thing that will conquer a world's
wickedness is nothing else but the manifested love of God. Only
the patient shining down of the sun will ever melt the icebergs
that float in all our hearts. And wonderful and blessed it is to
think that, in whatsoever aspects man's sin may have been an
interruption and a contradiction of the divine purpose, out of the
evil has come a good; that the more obdurate and universal the
rebellion, the more has it evoked a deeper and more wondrous
tenderness. The blacker the thundercloud, the brighter glows the
rainbow that is flung across it. So these two front each other,
the one settled in her established throne---

\begin{verse}
`Fierce as ten furies, \\
 terrible as hell---'
\end{verse}

\noindent the other coming on her adventurous errand to conquer
the world to herself, and to banish the foul tyranny under which
men groan. `Sin hath reigned.' Grace is on her way to her
dominion.

II. Notice the gifts of these two Queens to their subjects.

`Sin hath reigned in death' (as the accurate translation has it);
`Grace reigns unto eternal life.' The one has established her
dominion, and its results are wrought out, her reign is, as it
were, a reign in a cemetery; and her subjects are dead. If you
want a modern instance to illustrate an ancient saw, think of
Armenia. There is a reign whose gifts to its subjects are death.
Sin reigns, says Paul, and for proof points to the fact that men
die.

Now, I am not going to enter into the question here, and now,
whether physical death passes over mankind because of the fact of
transgression. I do not suppose that this is so. But I ask you to
remember that when the Bible says that `Death passed upon all men,
for all have sinned,' it does not merely mean the physical fact of
dissolution, but it means that fact along with the accompaniments
of it, and the forerunners of it, in men's consciences. `The sting
of death is sin,' says Paul, in another place. By which he
implies, I presume, that, if it were not for the fact of
alienation from God and opposition to His holy will, men might lie
down and die as placidly as an animal does, and might strip
themselves for it `as for a bed, that longing they'd been sick
for.' No doubt, there was death in the world long before there
were men in it. No doubt, also, the complex whole phenomenon gets
its terror from the fact of men's sin.

But it is not so much that physical fact with its accompaniments
which Paul is thinking about when he says that `sin reigns in
death,' as it is that solemn truth which he is always reiterating,
and which I pray you, dear friends, to lay to heart, that,
whatever activity there may be in the life of a man who has rent
himself away from dependence upon God---however vigorous his
brain, however active his hand, however full charged with other
interests his life, in the very depth of it is a living death, and
the right name for it is death. So this is Sin's gift---that over
our whole nature there come mortality and decay, and that they who
live as her subjects are dead whilst they live. Dear brethren,
that may be figurative, but it seems to me that it is absurd for
you to turn away from such thoughts, shrug your shoulders, and
say, `Old-fashioned Calvinistic theology!' It is simply putting
into a vivid form the facts of your life and of your condition in
relation to God, if you are subjects of Sin.

Then, on the other hand, the other queenly figure has her hands
filled with one great gift which, like the fatal bestowment which
Sin gives to her subjects, has two aspects, a present and a future
one. Life, which is given in our redemption from Death and Sin,
and in union with God; that is the present gift that the love of
God holds out to every one of us. That life, in its very
incompleteness here, carries in itself the prophecy of its own
completion hereafter, in a higher form and world, just as truly as
the bud is the prophet of the flower and of the fruit; just as
truly as a half-reared building is the prophecy of its own
completion when the roof tree is put upon it. The men that here
have, as we all may have if we choose, the gift of life eternal in
the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ His Son, must
necessarily tend onwards and upwards to a region where Death is
beneath the horizon, and Life flows and flushes the whole heaven.
Brother! do you put out your whole hand to take the poisoned gift
from the claw-like hand of that hideous Queen; or do you turn and
take the gift of life eternal from the hands of the queenly
Grace?

III. How this queenly Grace gives her gifts.

You observe that the Apostle, as is his wont---I was going to
say---gets himself entangled in a couple of almost parenthetical
or, at all events, subsidiary sentences. I suppose when he began
to write he meant to say, simply, `as Sin hath reigned unto death,
so Grace might reign unto life.' But notice that he inserts two
qualifications: `through righteousness,' `through Jesus Christ our
Lord.' What does he mean by these?

He means this, first, that even that great love of God, coming
throbbing straight from His heart, cannot give eternal life as a
mere matter of arbitrary will. God can make His sun to shine and
His rain to fall, `on the unthankful and on the evil,' and if God
could, God would give eternal life to everybody, bad and good; but
He cannot. There must be righteousness if there is to be life.
Just as sin's fruit is death, the fruit of righteousness is
life.

He means, in the next place, that whilst there is no life without
righteousness, there is no righteousness without God's gift. You
cannot break away from the dominion of Sin, and, as it were,
establish yourselves in a little fortress of your own, repelling
her assaults by any power of yours. Dear brethren, we cannot undo
the past; we cannot strip off the poisoned garment that clings to
our limbs; we can mend ourselves in many respects, but we cannot
of our own volition and motion clothe ourselves with that
righteousness of which the wearers shall be worthy to `pass
through the gate into the city.' There is no righteousness without
God's gift.

And the other subsidiary clause completes the thought: `through
Christ.' In Him is all the grace, the manifest love, of God
gathered together. It is not diffused as the nebulous light in
some chaotic incipient system, but it is gathered into a sun that
is set in the centre, in order that it may pour down warmth and
life upon its circling planets. The grace of God is in Christ
Jesus our Lord. In Him is life eternal; therefore, if we desire to
possess it we must possess Him. In Him is righteousness;
therefore, if we desire our own foulness to be changed into the
holiness which shall see God, we must go to Jesus Christ. Grace
reigns in life, but it is life through righteousness, which is
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So, then, brother, my message and my petition to each of you
are---knit yourself to Him by faith in Him. Then He who is `full
of grace and truth' will come to you; and, coming, will bring in
His hands righteousness and life eternal. If only we rest
ourselves on Him, and keep ourselves close in touch with Him; then
we shall be delivered from the tyranny of the darkness, and
translated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.

\chapter{`The Form of Teaching'}
\markright{ROMANS vi. 17}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`... Ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was
delivered you.'---\textsc{Romans} vi. 17.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There is room for difference of opinion as to what Paul precisely
means by `form' here. The word so rendered appears in English as
\textit{type}, and has a similar variety of meaning. It signifies
originally a mark made by pressure or impact; and then, by natural
transitions, a \textit{mould}, or more generally a
\textit{pattern} or \textit{example}, and then the copy of such an
example or pattern, or the cast from such a mould. It has also the
other meaning which its English equivalent has taken on very
extensively of late years, such as, for instance, you find in
expressions like `An English type of face,' meaning thereby the
general outline which preserves the distinguishing characteristics
of a thing. Now we may choose between these two meanings in our
text. If the Apostle means type in the latter sense of the word,
then the rendering `form' is adequate, and he is thinking of the
Christian teaching which had been given to the Roman Christians as
possessing certain well-defined characteristics which
distinguished it from other kinds of teaching---such, for
instance, as Jewish or heathen.

But if we take the other meaning, then he is, in true Pauline
fashion, bringing in a vivid and picturesque metaphor to enforce
his thought, and is thinking of the teaching which the Roman
Christians had received as being a kind of mould into which they
were thrown, a pattern to which they were to be conformed. And
that that is his meaning seems to me to be made a little more
probable by the fact that the last words of my text would be more
accurate if inverted, and instead of reading, as the Authorised
Version does, `that form of doctrine which was delivered you,' we
were to read, as the Revised Version does, `that form whereunto ye
were delivered.'

If this be the general meaning of the words before us, there are
three thoughts arising from them to which I turn briefly. First,
Paul's Gospel was a definite body of teaching; secondly, that
teaching is a mould for conduct and character; lastly, that
teaching therefore demands obedience. Take, then, these three
thoughts.

I. First, Paul's Gospel was a definite body of teaching.

Now the word `doctrine,' which is employed in my text, has, in the
lapse of years since the Authorised Version was made, narrowed its
significance. At the date of our Authorised translation `doctrine'
was probably equivalent to `teaching,' of whatever sort it might
be. Since then it has become equivalent to a statement of abstract
principles, and that is not at all what Paul means. He does not
mean to say that his gospel was a form of doctrine in the sense of
being a theological system, but he means to say that it was a body
of teaching, the nature of the teaching not being defined at all
by the word.

Therefore we have to notice that the great, blessed peculiarity of
the Gospel is that it is a teaching, not of abstract dry
principles, but of concrete historical facts. From these
principles in plenty may be gathered, but in its first form as it
comes to men fresh from God it is not a set of propositions, but a
history of deeds that were done upon earth. And, therefore, is it
fitted to be the food of every soul and the mould of every
character.

Jesus Christ did not come and talk to men about God, and say to
them what His Apostles afterwards said, `God is love,' but He
lived and died, and that mainly was His teaching about God. He did
not come to men and lay down a theory of atonement or a doctrine
of propitiation, or theology about sin and its relations to God,
but He went to the Cross and gave Himself for us, and that was His
teaching about sacrifice. He did not say to men `There is a future
life, and it is of such and such a sort,' but He came out of the
grave and He said `Touch Me, and handle Me. A spirit hath not
flesh and bones,' and \textit{therefore} He brought life and
immortality to light, by no empty words but by the solid realities
of facts. He did not lecture upon ethics, but He lived a perfect
human life out of which all moral principles that will guide human
conduct may be gathered. And so, instead of presenting us with a
\textit{hortus siccus}, with a botanic collection of
scientifically arranged and dead propositions, He led us into the
meadow where the flowers grow, living and fair. His life and
death, with all that they imply, are the teaching.

Let us not forget, on the other hand, that the history of a fact
is not the mere statement of the outward thing that has happened.
Suppose four people, for instance, standing at the foot of
Christ's Cross; four other `evangelists' than the four that we
know. There is a Roman soldier; there is a Pharisee; there is one
of the weeping crowd of poor women, not disciples; and there is a
disciple. The first man tells the fact as he saw it: `A Jewish
rebel was crucified this morning.' The second man tells the fact:
`A blaspheming apostate suffered what he deserved to-day.' The
woman tells the fact: `A poor, gentle, fair soul was martyred
to-day.' And the fourth one tells the fact: `Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, died for our sins.' The three tell the same fact; the
fourth preaches the Gospel---that is to say, Christian teaching is
the facts plus their explanation; and it is that which
differentiates it from the mere record which is of no avail to
anybody. So Paul himself in one of his other letters puts it. This
is his gospel: Jesus of Nazareth `died for \textit{our} sins
according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, and rose again the
third day, according to the Scriptures.' That is what turns the
bald story of the facts into teaching, which is the mould for
life.

So on the one hand, dear brethren, do not let us fall into the
superficial error of fancying that our religion is a religion of
emotion and morality only. It is a religion with a basis of divine
truth, which, being struck away, all the rest goes. There is a
revolt against dogma to-day, a revolt which in large measure is
justified as an essential of progress, and in large measure as an
instance of progress; but human nature is ever prone to extremes,
and in the revolt from man's dogma there is danger of casting away
God's truth. Christianity is not preserved when we hold by the
bare facts of the outward history, unless we take with these facts
the interpretation of them, which declares the divinity and the
sacrifice of the Son of God.

And on the other hand, let us keep very clear in our minds the
broad and impassable gulf of separation between the Christian
teaching as embodied in the Scripture and the systems which
Christianity has evolved therefrom. Men's intellects must work
upon the pabulum that is provided for them, and a theology in a
systematised form is a necessity for the intellectual and
reasonable life of the Christian Church. But there is all the
difference between man's inferences from and systematising of the
Christian truth and the truth that lies here. The one is the
golden roof that is cast over us; the other is too often but the
spiders' webs that are spun across and darken its splendour. It is
a sign of a wholesome change in the whole sentiment and attitude
of the modern Christian mind that the word `doctrine,' which has
come to mean men's inferences from God's truth, should have been
substituted as it has been in our Revised Version of my text, by
the wholesome Christian word `teaching.' The teaching is the facts
with the inspired commentary on them.

II. Secondly, notice that this teaching is in Paul's judgment a
mould or pattern according to which men's lives are to be
conformed.

There can be no question but that, in that teaching as set forth
in Scripture, there does lie the mightiest formative power for
shaping our lives, and emancipating us from our evil.

Christ is \textit{the} type, the mould into which men are to be
cast. The Gospel, as presented in Scripture, gives us three
things. It gives us the perfect mould; it gives us the perfect
motive; it gives us the perfect power. And in all three things
appears its distinctive glory, apart from and above all other
systems that have ever tried to affect the conduct or to mould the
character of man.

In Jesus Christ we have in due combination, in perfect proportion,
all the possible excellences of humanity. As in other cases of
perfect symmetry, the very precision of the balanced proportions
detracts from the apparent magnitude of the statue or of the fair
building, so to a superficial eye there is but little beauty there
that we should desire Him, but as we learn to know Him, and live
nearer to Him, and get more familiar with all His sweetness, and
with all His power, He towers before us in ever greater and yet
never repellent or exaggerated magnitude, and never loses the
reality of His brotherhood in the completeness of His perfection.
We have in the Christ the one type, the one mould and pattern for
all striving, the `glass of form,' the perfect Man.

And that likeness is not reproduced in us by pressure or by a
blow, but by the slow and blessed process of gazing until we
become like, beholding the glory until we are changed into the
glory.

It is no use having a mould and metal unless you have a fire. It
is no use having a perfect Pattern unless you have a motive to
copy it. Men do not go to the devil for want of examples; and
morality is not at a low ebb by reason of ignorance of what the
true type of life is. But nowhere but in the full-orbed teaching
of the New Testament will you find a motive strong enough to melt
down all the obstinate hardness of the `northern iron' of the
human will, and to make it plastic to His hand. If we can say, `He
loved me and gave Himself for me' then the sum of all morality,
the old commandment that `ye love one another' receives a new
stringency, and a fresh motive as well as a deepened
interpretation, when His love is our pattern. The one thing that
will make men willing to be like Christ is their faith that Christ
is their Sacrifice and their Saviour. And sure I am of this, that
no form of mutilated Christianity, which leaves out or falteringly
proclaims the truth that Christ died on the Cross for the sins of
the world, will ever generate heat enough to mould men's wills, or
kindle motives powerful enough to lead to a life of growing
imitation of and resemblance to Him. The dial may be all right,
the hours most accurately marked in their proper places, every
minute registered on the circle, the hands may be all right,
delicately fashioned, truly poised, but if there is no main-spring
inside, dial and hands are of little use, and a Christianity which
says, `Christ is the Teacher; do you obey Him?' is as impotent as
the dial face with the broken main-spring. What we need, and what,
thank God, in `the teaching' we have, is the pattern brought near
to us, and the motive for imitating the pattern, set in motion by
the great thought, `He loved me and gave Himself for me.'

Still further, the teaching is a power to fashion life, inasmuch
as it brings with it a gift which secures the transformation of
the believer into the likeness of his Lord. Part of `the teaching'
is the fact of Pentecost; part of the teaching is the fact of the
Ascension; and the consequence of the Ascension and the sure
promise of the Pentecost is that all who love Him, and wait upon
Him, shall receive into their hearts the `Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus' which shall make them free from the law of sin and
death.

So, dear friends, on the one hand, let us remember that our
religion is meant to work, that we have nothing in our creed that
should not be in our character, that all our \textit{credenda} are
to be our \textit{agenda}; everything \textit{believed} to be
something \textit{done}; and that if we content ourselves with the
simple acceptance of the teaching, and make no effort to translate
that teaching into life, we are hypocrites or self-deceivers.

And, on the other hand, do not let us forget that religion is the
soul of which morality is the body, and that it is impossible in
the nature of things that you shall ever get a true, lofty, moral
life which is not based upon religion. I do not say that men
cannot be sure of the outlines of their duty without Christianity,
though I am free to confess that I think it is a very maimed and
shabby version of human duty, which is supplied, minus the special
revelation of that duty which Christianity makes; but my point is,
that the knowledge will not work without the Gospel.

The Christian type of character is a distinct and manifestly
separate thing from the pagan heroism or from the virtues and the
righteousnesses of other systems. Just as the musician's ear can
tell, by half a dozen bars, whether that strain was Beethoven's,
or Handel's, or Mendelssohn's, just as the trained eye can see
Raffaelle's magic in every touch of his pencil, so Christ, the
Teacher, has a style; and all the scholars of His school carry
with them a certain mark which tells where they got their
education and who is their Master, if they are scholars indeed.
And that leads me to the last word.

III. This mould demands obedience.

By the very necessity of things it is so. If the `teaching' was
but a teaching of abstract truths it would be enough to assent to
them. I believe that the three angles of a triangle are equal to
two right angles, and I have done my duty by that proposition when
I have said `Yes! it is so.' But the `teaching' which Jesus Christ
gives and \textit{is}, needs a good deal more than that. By the
very nature of the teaching, assent drags after it submission. You
can please yourself whether you let Jesus Christ into your minds
or not, but if you do let Him in, He will be Master. There is no
such thing as taking Him in and not obeying.

And so the requirement of the Gospel which we call faith has in it
quite as much of the element of obedience as of the element of
trust. And the presence of that element is just what makes the
difference between a sham and a real faith. `Faith which has not
works is dead, being alone.' A faith which is all trust and no
obedience is neither trust nor obedience.

And that is why so many of us do not care to yield ourselves to
the faith that is in Jesus Christ. If it simply came to us and
said, `If you will trust Me you will get pardon,' I fancy there
would be a good many more of us honest Christians than are so. But
Christ comes and says, `Trust Me, follow Me, and take Me for your
Master; and be like Me,' and one's will kicks, and one's passions
recoil, and a thousand of the devil's servants within us prick
their ears up and stiffen their backs in remonstrance and
opposition. `Submit' is Christ's first word; submit by faith,
submit in love.

That heart obedience, which is the requirement of Christianity,
means freedom. The Apostle draws a wonderful contrast in the
context between the slavery to lust and sin, and the freedom which
comes from obedience to God and to righteousness. Obey the Truth,
and the Truth, in your obeying, shall make you free, for freedom
is the willing submission to the limitations which are best. `I
will walk at liberty for I keep Thy precepts.' Take Christ for
your Master, and, being His servants, you are your own masters,
and the world's to boot. For `all things are yours if ye are
Christ's.' Refuse to bow your necks to that yoke which is easy,
and to take upon your shoulders that burden which is light, and
you do not buy liberty, though you buy licentiousness, for you
become the slaves and downtrodden vassals of the world and the
flesh and the devil, and while you promise yourselves liberty, you
become the bondsmen of corruption. Oh! then, let us obey from the
heart that mould of teaching to which we are delivered, and so
obeying, we shall be free indeed.

\chapter{`Thy Free Spirit'}
\markright{ROMANS vii. 2}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free
from the law of sin and death.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 2.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We have to distinguish two meanings of law. In the stricter sense,
it signifies the authoritative expressions of the will of a ruler
proposed for the obedience of man; in the wider, almost figurative
sense, it means nothing more than the generalised expression of
constant similar facts. For instance, objects attract one another
in certain circumstances with a force which in the same
circumstances is always the same. When that fact is stated
generally, we get the law of gravitation. Thus the word comes to
mean little more than a regular process. In our text the word is
used in a sense much nearer the latter than the former of these
two. `The law of sin and of death' cannot mean a series of
commandments; it certainly does not mean the Mosaic law. It must
either be entirely figurative, taking sin and death as two great
tyrants who domineer over men; or it must mean the continuous
action of these powers, the process by which they work. These two
come substantially to the same idea. The law of sin and of death
describes a certain constancy of operation, uniform and fixed,
under the dominion of which men are struggling. But there is
another constancy of operation, uniform and fixed too, a mighty
antagonistic power, which frees from the dominion of the former:
it is `the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.'

I. The bondage.

The Apostle is speaking about himself as he was, and we have our
own consciousness to verify his transcript of his own personal
experience. Paul had found that, by an inexorable iron sequence,
sin worked in himself the true death of the soul, in separation
from God, in the extinction of good and noble capacities, in the
atrophying of all that was best in himself, in the death of joy
and peace. And this iron sequence he, with an eloquent paradox,
calls a `law,' though its very characteristic is that it is
lawless transgression of the true law of humanity. He so describes
it, partly, because he would place emphasis on its dominion over
us. Sin rules with iron sway; men madly obey it, and even when
they think themselves free, are under a bitter tyranny. Further,
he desires to emphasise the fact that sin and death are parts of
one process which operates constantly and uniformly. This dark
anarchy and wild chaos of disobedience and transgression has its
laws. All happens there according to rule. Rigid and inevitable as
the courses of the stars, or the fall of the leaf from the tree,
is sin hurrying on to its natural goal in death. In this fatal
dance, sin leads in death; the one fair spoken and full of
dazzling promises, the other in the end throws off the mask, and
slays. It is true of all who listen to the tempting voice, and the
deluded victim `knows not that the dead are there, and that her
guests are in the depth of hell.'

II. The method of deliverance.

The previous chapter sounded the depths of human impotence, and
showed the tragic impossibility of human efforts to strip off the
poisoned garment. Here the Apostle tells the wonderful story of
how he himself was delivered, in the full rejoicing confidence
that what availed for his emancipation would equally avail for
every captived soul. Because he himself has experienced a divine
power which breaks the dreadful sequence of sin and of death, he
knows that every soul may share in the experience. No mere outward
means will be sufficient to emancipate a spirit; no merely
intellectual methods will avail to set free the passions and
desires which have been captured by sin. It is vain to seek
deliverance from a perverted will by any republication, however
emphatic, of a law of duty. Nothing can touch the necessities of
the case but a gift of power which becomes an abiding influence in
us, and develops a mightier energy to overcome the evil tendencies
of a sinful soul.

That communicated power must impart life. Nothing short of a
Spirit of life, quick and powerful, with an immortal and intense
energy, will avail to meet the need. Such a Spirit must give the
life which it possesses, must quicken and bring into action
dormant powers in the spirit that it would free. It must implant
new energies and directions, new motives, desires, tastes, and
tendencies. It must bring into play mightier attractions to
neutralise and deaden existing ones; as when to some chemical
compound a substance is added which has a stronger affinity for
one of the elements, a new thing is made.

Paul's experience, which he had a right to cast into general terms
and potentially to extend to all mankind, had taught him that such
a new life for such a spirit had come to him by union with Jesus
Christ. Such a union, deep and mystical as it is, is, thank God,
an experience universal in all true Christians, and constitutes
the very heart of the Gospel which Paul rejoiced to believe was
entrusted to his hands for the world. His great message of `Christ
in us' has been wofully curtailed and mangled when his other
message of `Christ for us' has been taken, as it too often has
been, to be the whole of his Gospel. They who take either of these
inseparable elements to be the whole, rend into two imperfect
halves the perfect oneness of the Gospel of Christ.

We are often told that Paul was the true author of Christian
doctrine, and are bidden to go back from him to Jesus. If we do
so, we hear His grave sweet voice uttering in the upper-room the
deep words, `I am the Vine, ye are the branches'; and, surely,
Paul is but repeating, without metaphor, what Christ, once for
all, set forth in that lovely emblem, when he says that `the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of
sin and of death.' The branches in their multitude make the Vine
in its unity, and the sap which rises from the deep root through
the brown stem, passes to every tremulous leaf, and brings bloom
and savour into every cluster. Jesus drew His emblem from the
noblest form of vegetative life; Paul, in other places, draws his
from the highest form of bodily life, when he points to the many
members in one body, and the Head which governs all, and says, `So
also is Christ.' In another place he points to the noblest form of
earthly love and unity. The blessed fellowship and sacred oneness
of husband and wife are an emblem sweet, though inadequate, of the
fellowship in love and unity of spirit between Christ and His
Church.

And all this mysterious oneness of life has an intensely practical
side. In Jesus, and by union with Him, we receive a power that
delivers from sin and arrests the stealthy progress of sin's
follower, death. Love to Him, the result of fellowship with Him,
and the consequence of life received from Him, becomes the motive
which makes the redeemed heart delight to do His will, and takes
all the power out of every temptation. We are in Him, and He in
us, on condition, and by means, of our humble faith; and because
my faith thus knits me to Him it is `the victory that overcomes
the world' and breaks the chains of many sins. So this communion
with Jesus Christ is the way by which we shall increase that
triumphant spiritual life, which is the only victorious antagonist
of the else inevitable consequence which declares that the `soul
that sinneth it shall die,' and die even in sinning.

III. The process of the deliverance.

Following the R.\ V.\ we read `made me free,' not `hath made me.'
The reference is obviously, as the Greek more clearly shows, to a
single historical event, which some would take to be the Apostle's
baptism, but which is more properly supposed to be his conversion.
His strong bold language here does not mean that he claims to be
sinless. The emancipation is effected, although it is but begun.
He holds that at that moment when Jesus appeared to him on the
road to Damascus, and he yielded to Him as Lord, his deliverance
was real, though not complete. He was conscious of a real change
of position in reference to that law of sin and of death. Paul
distinguishes between the true self and the accumulation of
selfish and sensual habits which make up so much of ourselves. The
deeper and purer self may be vitalised in will and heart, and set
free even while the emancipation is not worked out in the life.
The parable of the leaven applies in the individual renewal; and
there is no fanaticism, and no harm, in Paul's point of view, if
only it be remembered that sins by which passion and externals
overbear my better self are mine in responsibility and in
consequences. Thus guarded, we may be wholly right in thinking of
all the evils which still cleave to the renewed Christian soul as
not being part of it, but destined to drop away.

And this bold declaration is to be vindicated as a prophetic
confidence in the supremacy and ultimate dominion of the new power
which works even through much antagonism in an imperfect
Christian. Paul, too, calls `things that are not as though they
were.' If my spirit of life is the `Spirit of life in Christ,' it
will go on to perfection. It is Spirit, therefore it is informing
and conquering the material; it is a divine Spirit, therefore it
is omnipotent; it is the Spirit of life, leading in and imparting
life like itself, which is kindred with it and is its source; it
is the Spirit of life in Christ, therefore leading to life like
His, bringing us to conformity with Him because the same causes
produce the same effects; it is a life in Christ having a law and
regular orderly course of development. So, just as if we have the
germ we may hope for fruit, and can see the infantile oak in the
tightly-shut acorn, or in the egg the creature which shall
afterwards grow there, we have in this gift of the Spirit, the
victory. If we have the cause, we have the effects implicitly
folded in it; and we have but to wait further development.

The Christian life is to be one long effort, partial, and gradual,
to unfold the freedom possessed. Paul knew full well that his
emancipation was not perfect. It was, probably, after this
triumphant expression of confidence that he wrote, `Not as though
I had already attained, either were already perfect.' The first
stage is the gift of power, the appropriation and development of
that power is the work of a life; and it ought to pass through a
well-marked series and cycle of growing changes. The way to
develop it is by constant application to the source of all
freedom, the life-giving Spirit, and by constant effort to conquer
sins and temptations. There is no such thing in the Christian
conflict as a painless development. We must mortify the deeds of
the body if we are to live in the Spirit. The Christian progress
has in it the nature of a crucifixion. It is to be effort,
steadily directed for the sake of Christ, and in the joy of His
Spirit, to destroy sin, and to win practical holiness. Homely
moralities are the outcome and the test of all pretensions to
spiritual communion.

We are, further, to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord, by
`waiting for the Redemption,' which is not merely passive waiting,
but active expectation, as of one who stretches out a welcoming
hand to an approaching friend. Nor must we forget that this
accomplished deliverance is but partial whilst upon earth. `The
body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of
righteousness.' But there may be indefinite approximation to
complete deliverance. The metaphors in Scripture under which
Christian progress is described, whether drawn from a conflict or
a race, or from a building, or from the growth of a tree, all
suggest the idea of constant advance against hindrances, which
yet, constant though it is, does not reach the goal here. And this
is our noblest earthly condition---not to be pure, but to be
tending towards it and conscious of impurity. Hence our tempers
should be those of humility, strenuous effort, firm hope. We are
as slaves who have escaped, but are still in the wilderness, with
the enemies' dogs baying at our feet; but we shall come to the
land of freedom, on whose sacred soil sin and death can never
tread.

\chapter{Christ Condemning Sin}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 3}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the
flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.'---\textsc{Romans} viii.
3.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

In the first verse of this chapter we read that `There is no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.' The reason of that
is, that they are set free from the terrible sequence of cause and
effect which constitutes `the law of sin and death'; and the
reason why they are freed from that awful sequence by the power of
Christ is, because He has `condemned sin in the flesh.' The
occurrence of the two words `condemnation' (ver.\ 1) and
`condemned' (ver.\ 3) should be noted. Sin is personified as
dwelling in the flesh, which expression here means, not merely the
body, but unregenerate human nature. He has made his fortress
there, and rules over it all. The strong man keeps his house and
his goods are in peace. He laughs to scorn the attempts of laws
and moralities of all sorts to cast him out. His dominion is death
to the human nature over which he tyrannises. Condemnation is
inevitable to the men over whom he rules. They or he must perish.
If he escape they die. If he could be slain they might live.
Christ comes, condemns the tyrant, and casts him out. So, he being
condemned, we are acquitted; and he being slain there is no death
for us. Let us try to elucidate a little further this great
metaphor by just pondering the two points prominent in it---Sin
tyrannising over human nature and resisting all attempts to
overcome it, and Christ's condemnation and casting out of the
tyrant.

I. Sin tyrannising over human nature, and resisting all attempts
to overcome it.

Paul is generalising his own experience when he speaks of the
condemnation of an intrusive alien force that holds unregenerate
human nature in bondage. He is writing a page of his own
autobiography, and he is sure that all the rest of us have like
pages in ours. Heart answereth unto heart as in a mirror. If each
man is a unity, the poison must run through all his veins and
affect his whole nature. Will, understanding, heart, must all be
affected and each in its own way by the intruder; and if men are a
collective whole, each man's experience is repeated in his
brother's.

The Apostle is equally transcribing his own experience when in the
text he sadly admits the futility of all efforts to shake the
dominion of sin. He has found in his own case that even the
loftiest revelation in the Mosaic law utterly fails in the attempt
to condemn sin. This is true not only in regard to the Mosaic law
but in regard to the law of conscience, and to moral teachings of
any kind. It is obvious that all such laws do condemn sin in the
sense that they solemnly declare God's judgment about it, and His
sentence on it; but in the sense of real condemnation, or casting
out, and depriving sin of its power, they all are impotent. The
law may deter from overt acts or lead to isolated acts of
obedience; it may stir up antagonism to sin's tyranny, but after
that it has no more that it can do. It cannot give the purity
which it proclaims to be necessary, nor create the obedience which
it enjoins. Its thunders roll terrors, and no fruitful rain
follows them to soften the barren soil. There always remains an
unbridged gulf between the man and the law.

And this is what Paul points to in saying that it `was weak
through the flesh.' It is good in itself, but it has to work
through the sinful nature. The only powers to which it can appeal
are those which are already in rebellion. A discrowned king whose
only forces to conquer his rebellious subjects are the rebels
themselves, is not likely to regain his crown. Because law brings
no new element into our humanity, its appeal to our humanity has
little more effect than that of the wind whistling through an
archway. It appeals to conscience and reason by a plain
declaration of what is right; to will and understanding by an
exhibition of authority; to fears and prudence by plainly setting
forth consequences. But what is to be done with men who know what
is right but have no wish to do it, who believe that they ought
but will not, who know the consequences but `choose rather the
pleasures of sin for a season,' and shuffle the future out of
their minds altogether? This is the essential weakness of all law.
The tyrant is not afraid so long as there is no one threatening
his reign, but the unarmed herald of a discrowned king. His
citadel will not surrender to the blast of the trumpet blown from
Sinai.

II. Christ's condemnation and casting out of the tyrant.

The Apostle points to a triple condemnation.

`In the likeness of sinful flesh,' Jesus condemns sin by His own
perfect life. That phrase, `the likeness of the flesh of sin,'
implies the real humanity of Jesus, and His perfect sinlessness;
and suggests the first way in which He condemns sin in the flesh.
In His life He repeats the law in a higher fashion. What the one
spoke in words the other realised in `loveliness of perfect
deeds'; and all men own that example is the mightiest preacher of
righteousness, and that active goodness draws to itself reverence
and sways men to imitate. But that life lived in human nature
gives a new hope of the possibilities of that nature even in us.
The dream of perfect beauty `in the flesh' has been realised. What
the Man Christ Jesus was, He was that we may become. In the very
flesh in which the tyrant rules, Jesus shows the possibility and
the loveliness of a holy life.

But this, much as it is, is not all. There is another way in which
Christ condemns sin in the flesh, and that is by His perfect
sacrifice. To this also Paul points in the phrase, `the flesh of
sin.' The example of which we have been speaking is much, but it
is weak for the very same reason for which law is weak---that it
operates only through our nature as it is; and that is not enough.
Sin's hold on man is twofold---one that it has perverted his
relation to God, and another that it has corrupted his nature.
Hence there is in him a sense of separation from God and a sense
of guilt. Both of these not only lead to misery, but positively
tend to strengthen the dominion of sin. The leader of the
mutineers keeps them true to him by reminding them that the mutiny
laws decree death without mercy. Guilt felt may drive to
desperation and hopeless continuance in wrong. The cry, `I am so
bad that it is useless to try to be better,' is often heard. Guilt
stifled leads to hardening of heart, and sometimes to desire and
riot. Guilt slurred over by some easy process of absolution may
lead to further sin. Similarly separation from God is the root of
all evil, and thoughts of Him as hard and an enemy, always lead to
sin. So if the power of sin in the past must be cancelled, the
sense of guilt must be removed, and the wall of partition between
man and God thrown down. What can law answer to such a demand? It
is silent; it can only say, `What is written is written.' It has
no word to speak that promises `the blotting out of the
handwriting that is against us'; and through its silence one can
hear the mocking laugh of the tyrant that keeps his castle.

But Christ has come `for sin'; that is to say His Incarnation and
Death had relation to, and had it for their object to remove,
human sin. He comes to blot out the evil, to bring God's pardon.
The recognition of His sacrifice supplies the adequate motive to
copy His example, and they who see in His death God's sacrifice
for man's sin, cannot but yield themselves to Him, and find in
obedience a delight. Love kindled at His love makes likeness and
transmutes the outward law into an inward `spirit of life in
Christ Jesus.'

Still another way by which God `condemns sin in the flesh' is
pointed to by the remaining phrase of our text, `sending His own
Son.' In the beginning of this epistle Jesus is spoken of as
`being declared to be the Son of God with power according to the
Spirit of holiness'; and we must connect that saying with our
text, and so think of Christ's bestowal of His perfect gift to
humanity of the Spirit which sanctifies as being part of His
condemnation of sin in the flesh. Into the very region where the
tyrant rules, the Son of God communicates a new nature which
constitutes a real new power. The Spirit operates on all our
faculties, and redeems them from the bondage of corruption. All
the springs in the land are poisoned; but a new one, limpid and
pure, is opened. By the entrance of the Spirit of holiness into a
human spirit, the usurper is driven from the central fortress: and
though he may linger in the outworks and keep up a guerilla
warfare, that is all that he can do. We never truly apprehend
Christ's gift to man until we recognise that He not merely `died
for our sins,' but lives to impart the principle of holiness in
the gift of His Spirit. The dominion of that imparted Spirit is
gradual and progressive. The Canaanite may still be in the land,
but a growing power, working in and through us, is warring against
all in us that still owns allegiance to that alien power, and
there can be no end to the victorious struggle until the whole
body, soul, and spirit, be wholly under the influence of the
Spirit that dwelleth in us, and nothing shall hurt or destroy in
what shall then be all God's holy mountain.

Such is, in the most general terms, the statement of what Christ
does `for us'; and the question comes to be the all-important one
for each, Do I let Him do it for me? Remember the alternative.
There must either be condemnation for us, or for the sin that
dwelleth in us. There is no condemnation for them who are in
Christ Jesus, because there is condemnation for the sin that
dwells in them. It must he slain, or it will slay us. It must be
cast out, or it will cast us out from God. It must be separated
from us, or it will separate us from Him. We need not be
condemned, but if it be not condemned, then we shall be.

\chapter{The Witness of the Spirit}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 18}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are
the children of God.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 18.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The sin of the world is a false confidence, a careless, complacent
taking for granted that a man is a Christian when he is not. The
fault, and sorrow, and weakness of the Church is a false
diffidence, an anxious fear whether a man be a Christian when he
is. There are none so far away from false confidence as those who
tremble lest they be cherishing it. There are none so inextricably
caught in its toils as those who are all unconscious of
\textit{its} existence and of \textit{their} danger. The two
things, the false confidence and the false diffidence, are perhaps
more akin to one another than they look at first sight. Their
opposites, at all events---the true confidence, which is faith in
Christ; and the true diffidence, which is utter distrust of
myself---are identical. But there may sometimes be, and there
often is, the combination of a real confidence and a false
diffidence, the presence of faith, and the doubt whether it be
present. Many Christians go through life with this as the
prevailing temper of their minds---a doubt sometimes arising
almost to agony, and sometimes dying down into passive patient
acceptance of the condition as inevitable---a doubt whether, after
all, they be not, as they say, `deceiving themselves'; and in the
perverse ingenuity with which that state of mind is constantly
marked, they manage to distil for themselves a bitter vinegar of
self-accusation out of grand words in the Bible, that were meant
to afford them but the wine of gladness and of consolation.

Now this great text which I have ventured to take---not with the
idea that I can exalt it or say anything worthy of it, but simply
in the hope of clearing away some misapprehensions---is one that
has often and often tortured the mind of Christians. They say of
themselves, `I know nothing of any such evidence: I am not
conscious of any Spirit bearing witness with my spirit.' Instead
of looking to other sources to answer the question whether they
are Christians or not---and then, having answered it, thinking
thus, `That text asserts that \textit{all} Christians have this
witness, therefore certainly I have it in some shape or other,'
they say to themselves, `I do not feel anything that corresponds
with my idea of what such a grand, supernatural voice as the
witness of God's Spirit in my spirit must needs be; and therefore
I doubt whether I am a Christian at all.' I should be thankful if
the attempt I make now to set before you what seems to me to be
the true teaching of the passage, should be, with God's help, the
means of lifting some little part of the burden from some hearts
that are right, and that only long to know that they are, in order
to be at rest.

`The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are
the children of God.' The general course of thought which I wish
to leave with you may be summed up thus: Our cry `Father' is the
witness that we are sons. That cry is not simply ours, but it is
the voice of God's Spirit. The divine Witness in our spirits is
subject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.

Let us take these three thoughts, and dwell on them for a little
while.

I. Our cry `Father' is the witness that we are sons.

Mark the terms of the passage: `The Spirit itself beareth witness
\textit{with} our spirit---.' It is not so much a revelation made
to my spirit, considered as the recipient of the testimony, as a
revelation made in or with my spirit considered as co-operating in
the testimony. It is not that my spirit says one thing, bears
witness that I am a child of God; and that the Spirit of God comes
in by a distinguishable process, with a separate evidence, to say
Amen to my persuasion; but it is that there is one testimony which
has a conjoint origin---the origin from the Spirit of God as true
source, and the origin from my own soul as recipient and
co-operant in that testimony. From the teaching of this passage,
or from any of the language which Scripture uses with regard to
the inner witness, it is not to be inferred that there will rise
up in a Christian's heart, from some origin consciously beyond the
sphere of his own nature, a voice with which he has nothing to do;
which at once, by its own character, by something peculiar and
distinguishable about it, by something strange in its nature, or
out of the ordinary course of human thinking, shall certify itself
to be not his voice at all, but \textit{God's} voice. That is not
the direction in which you are to look for the witness of God's
Spirit. It is evidence borne, indeed, by the Spirit of God; but it
is evidence borne not only to our spirit, but through it, with it.
The testimony is one, the testimony of a man's own emotion, and
own conviction, and own desire, the cry, Abba, Father! So far,
then, as the form of the evidence goes, you are not to look for it
in anything ecstatic, arbitrary, parted off from your own
experience by a broad line of demarcation; but you are to look
into the experience which at first sight you would claim most
exclusively for your own, and to try and find out whether
\textit{there} there be not working with your soul, working
through it, working beneath it, distinct from it but not
distinguishable from it by anything but its consequences and its
fruitfulness---a deeper voice than yours---a `still small
voice,'---no whirlwind, nor fire, nor earthquake---but the voice
of God speaking in secret, taking the voice and tones of your own
heart and your own consciousness, and saying to you, `Thou art my
child, inasmuch as, operated by My grace, and Mine inspiration
alone, there rises, tremblingly but truly, in thine own soul the
cry, Abba, Father.'

So much, then, for the form of this evidence---my own conviction.
Then with regard to the substance of it: conviction of what? The
text itself does not tell us what is the evidence which the Spirit
bears, and by reason of which we have a right to conclude that we
are the children of God. The previous verse tells us. I have
partially anticipated what I have to say on that point, but it
will bear a little further expansion. `Ye have not received the
spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit
of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.' `The Spirit itself,' by
this means of our cry, Abba, Father, `beareth witness with our
spirit, that we are the children of God.' The substance, then, of
the conviction which is lodged in the human spirit by the
testimony of the Spirit of God is not primarily directed to our
relation or feelings to God, but to a far grander thing than
that---to God's feelings and relation to us. Now I want you to
think for one moment, before I pass on, how entirely different the
whole aspect of this witness of the Spirit of which Christian men
speak so much, and sometimes with so little understanding, becomes
according as you regard it mistakenly as being the direct
testimony to you that you are a child of God, or rightly as being
the direct testimony to you that God is your Father. The two
things seem to be the same, but they are not. In the one case, the
false case, the mistaken interpretation, we are left to this, that
a man has no deeper certainty of his condition, no better
foundation for his hope, than what is to be drawn from the
presence or absence of certain emotions within his own heart. In
the other case, we are admitted into this `wide place,' that all
which is our own is second and not first, and that the true basis
of all our confidence lies not in the thought of what we are and
feel to God, but in the thought of what God is and feels to us.
And instead, therefore, of being left to labour for ourselves,
painfully to search amongst the dust and rubbish of our own
hearts, we are taught to sweep away all that crumbled, rotten
surface, and to go down to the living rock that lies beneath it;
we are taught to say, in the words of the book of Isaiah,
`Doubtless Thou art our Father---we are all an unclean thing; our
iniquities, like the wind, have carried us away'; there is nothing
stable in us; our own resolutions, they are swept away like the
chaff of the summer threshing-floor, by the first gust of
temptation; but what of that?---`in those is continuance, and we
shall be saved!' Ah, brethren! expand this thought of the
conviction that God is my Father, as being the basis of all my
confidence that I am His child, into its widest and grandest form,
and it leads us up to the blessed old conviction, I am nothing, my
holiness is nothing, my resolutions are nothing, my faith is
nothing, my energies are nothing; I stand stripped, and barren,
and naked of everything, and I fling myself out of myself into the
merciful arms of my Father in heaven! There is all the difference
in the world between searching for evidence of my sonship, and
seeking to get the conviction of God's Fatherhood. The one is an
endless, profitless, self-tormenting task; the other is the light
and liberty, the glorious liberty, of the children of God.

And so the \textit{substance} of the Spirit's evidence is the
direct conviction based on the revelation of God's infinite love
and fatherhood in Christ the Son, that God is my Father; from
which direct conviction I come to the conclusion, the inference,
the second thought, Then I may trust that I am His son. But why?
Because of anything in me? No: because of Him. The very emblem of
fatherhood and sonship might teach us that \textit{that} depends
upon the Father's will and the Father's heart. The Spirit's
testimony has for form my own conviction: and for substance my
humble cry, `Oh Thou, my Father in heaven!' Brethren, is not that
a far truer and nobler kind of thing to preach than saying, Look
into your own heart for strange, extraordinary, distinguishable
signs which shall mark you out as God's child---and which are
proved to be His Spirit's, because they are separated from the
ordinary human consciousness? Is it not far more blessed for us,
and more honouring to Him who works the sign, when we say, that it
is to be found in no out-of-rule, miraculous evidence, but in the
natural (which is in reality supernatural) working of His Spirit
in the heart which is its recipient, breeding there the conviction
that God is my Father? And oh, if I am speaking to any to whom
that text, with all its light and glory, has seemed to lift them
up into an atmosphere too rare and a height too lofty for their
heavy wings and unused feet, if I am speaking to any Christian man
to whom this word has been like the cherubim and flaming sword,
bright and beautiful, but threatening and repellent when it speaks
of a Spirit that bears witness with our spirit---I ask you simply
to take the passage for yourself, and carefully and patiently to
examine it, and see if it be not true what I have been saying,
that your trembling conviction---sister and akin as it is to your
deepest distrust and sharpest sense of sin and unworthiness---that
your trembling conviction of a love mightier than your own,
everlasting and all-faithful, is indeed the selectest sign that
God can give you that you \textit{are} His child. Oh, brethren and
sisters! be confident; for it is not false confidence: be
confident if up from the depths of that dark well of your own
sinful heart there rises sometimes, through all the bitter waters,
unpolluted and separate, a sweet conviction, forcing itself
upward, that God hath love in His heart, and that God is
\textit{my} Father. Be confident; `the Spirit itself beareth
witness with your spirit.'

II. And now, secondly, That cry is not simply ours, but it is the
voice of God's Spirit.

Our own convictions are ours because they are God's. Our own souls
possess these emotions of love and tender desire going out to
God---our own spirits possess them; but our own spirits did not
originate them. They are ours by property; they are His by source.
The spirit of a Christian man has no good thought in it, no true
thought, no perception of the grace of God's Gospel, no holy desire,
no pure resolution, which is not stamped with the sign of a higher
origin, and is not the witness of God's Spirit in his spirit. The
passage before us tells us that the sense of Fatherhood which is in
the Christian's heart, and becomes his cry, comes from God's Spirit.
This passage, and that in the Epistle to the Galatians which is
almost parallel, put this truth very forcibly, when taken in
connection. `Ye have received,' says the text before us, `the Spirit
of adoption, whereby \textit{we} cry, Abba, Father.' The variation
in the Epistle to the Galatians is this: `Because ye are sons, God
hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
\textit{crying} (the Spirit crying), Abba, Father.' So in the one
text, the cry is regarded as the voice of the believing heart; and
in the other the same cry is regarded as the voice of God's Spirit.
And these two things are both true; the one would want its
foundation if it were not for the other; the cry of the Spirit is
nothing for me unless it be appropriated by me. I do not need to
plunge here into metaphysical speculation of any sort, but simply to
dwell upon the plain practical teaching of the Bible---a teaching
verified, I believe, by every Christian's experience, if he will
search into it---that everything in him which makes the Christian
life, is not his, but is God's by origin, and his only by gift and
inspiration. And the whole doctrine of my text is built on this one
thought---without the Spirit of God in your heart, you never can
recognise God as your Father. That in us which runs, with love, and
childlike faith, and reverence, to the place `where His honour
dwelleth,' that in us which says `Father,' is kindred with God, and
is not the simple, unhelped, unsanctified human nature. There is no
ascent of human desires above their source. And wherever in a heart
there springs up heavenward a thought, a wish, a prayer, a trembling
confidence, it is because that came down first from heaven, and
rises to seek its level again. All that is divine in man comes from
God. All that tends towards God in man is God's voice in the human
heart; and were it not for the possession and operation, the
sanctifying and quickening, of a living divine Spirit granted to us,
our souls would for ever cleave to the dust and dwell upon earth,
nor ever rise to God and live in the light of His presence. Every
Christian, then, may be sure of this, that howsoever feeble may be
the thought and conviction in his heart of God's Fatherhood,
\textit{he} did not work it, he received it only, cherished it,
thought of it, watched over it, was careful not to quench it; but in
origin it was God's, and it is now and ever the voice of the Divine
Spirit in the child's heart.

But, my friends, if this principle be true, it does not apply only
to this one single attitude of the believing soul when it cries,
Abba, Father; it must be widened out to comprehend the whole of a
Christian's life, outward and inward, which is not sinful and
darkened with actual transgression. To all the rest of his being,
to everything in heart and life which is right and pure, the same
truth applies. `The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit'
in every perception of God's word which is granted, in every
revelation of His counsel which dawns upon our darkness, in every
aspiration after Him which lifts us above the smoke and dust of
this dim spot, in every holy resolution, in every thrill and throb
of love and desire. Each of these is mine---inasmuch as in my
heart it is experienced and transacted; it is mine, inasmuch as I
am not a mere dead piece of matter, the passive recipient of a
magical and supernatural grace; but it is God's; and therefore,
and therefore only, has it come to be mine!

And if it be objected, that this opens a wide door to all manner
of delusion, and that there is no more dangerous thing than for a
man to confound his own thoughts with the operations of God's
Spirit, let me just give you (following the context before us) the
one guarantee and test which the Apostle lays down. He says,
`There is a witness from God in your spirits.' You may say, That
witness, if it come in the form of these convictions in my own
heart, I may mistake and falsely read. Well, then, here is an
outward guarantee. `As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they
are the sons of God'; and so, on the regions both of heart and of
life the consecrating thought,---God's work, and God's Spirit's
work---is stamped. The heart with its love, the head with its
understanding, the conscience with its quick response to the law
of duty, the will with its resolutions,---these are all, as
sanctified by Him, the witness of His Spirit; and the life with
its strenuous obedience, with its struggles against sin and
temptation, with its patient persistence in the quiet path of
ordinary duty, as well as with the times when it rises into heroic
stature of resignation or allegiance, the martyrdom of death and
the martyrdom of life, this too is all (in so far as it is pure
and right) the work of that same Spirit. The test of the inward
conviction is the outward life; and they that have the witness of
the Spirit within them have the light of their life lit by the
Spirit of God, whereby they may read the handwriting on the heart,
and be sure that it is God's and not their own.

III. And now, lastly, this divine Witness in our spirits is
subject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.

The notion often prevails that if there be in the heart this
divine witness of God's Spirit, it must needs be perfect, clearly
indicating its origin by an exemption from all that besets
ordinary human feelings, that it must be a strong, uniform, never
flickering, never darkening, and perpetual light, a kind of vestal
fire burning always on the altar of the heart! The passage before
us, and all others that speak about the matter, give us the
directly opposite notion. The Divine Spirit, when it enters into
the narrow room of the human spirit, condescends to submit itself,
not wholly, but to such an extent as practically for our present
purpose \textit{is} wholly to submit itself to the ordinary laws
and conditions and contingencies which befall and regulate our own
human nature. Christ came into the world divine: He was `found in
fashion as a man,' in form a servant; the humanity that He wore
limited (if you like), regulated, modified, the manifestation of
the divinity that dwelt in it. And not otherwise is the operation
of God's Holy Spirit when it comes to dwell in a human heart.
There too, working through man, \textit{it} `is found in fashion
as a man'; and though the origin of the conviction be of God, and
though the voice in my heart be not only my voice, but God's voice
there, it will obey those same laws which make human thoughts and
emotions vary, and fluctuate, flicker and flame up again, burn
bright and burn low, according to a thousand circumstances. The
witness of the Spirit, if it were yonder in heaven, would shine
like a perpetual star; the witness of the Spirit, here in the
heart on earth, burns like a flickering flame, never to be
extinguished, but still not always bright, wanting to be trimmed,
and needing to be guarded from rude blasts. Else, brother, what
does an Apostle mean when he says to you and me, `Quench not the
Spirit'? what does he mean when he says to us, `Grieve not the
Spirit'? What does the whole teaching which enjoins on us, `Let
your loins be girded about, and your lights burning,' and `What I
say to you, I say to all, Watch!' mean, unless it means this, that
God-given as (God be thanked!) that conviction of Fatherhood is,
it is not given in such a way as that, irrespective of our
carefulness, irrespective of our watching, it shall burn on---the
same and unchangeable? The Spirit's witness comes from God,
therefore it is veracious, divine, omnipotent; but the Spirit's
witness from God is in man, therefore it may be wrongly read, it
may be checked, it may for a time be kept down, and prevented from
showing itself to be what it is.

And the practical conclusion that comes from all this, is just the
simple advice to you all: Do not wonder, in the first place, if
that evidence of which we speak, vary and change in its clearness
and force in your own hearts. `The flesh lusteth against the
spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.' Do not think that it
cannot be genuine, because it is changeful. There is a sun in the
heavens, but there are heavenly lights too that wax and wane; they
\textit{are} lights, they \textit{are} in the heavens though they
change. You have no reason, Christian man, to be discouraged, cast
down, still less despondent, because you find that the witness of
the Spirit changes and varies in your heart. Do not despond
because it does; watch it, and guard it, lest it do; live in the
contemplation of the Person and the fact that calls it forth, that
it may not. You will never `brighten your evidences' by polishing
at them. To polish the mirror ever so assiduously does not secure
the image of the sun on its surface. The only way to do that is to
carry the poor bit of glass out into the sunshine. It will shine
then, never fear. It is weary work to labour at self-improvement
with the hope of drawing from our own characters evidences that we
are the sons of God. To have the heart filled with the light of
Christ's love to us is the only way to have the whole being full
of light. If you would have clear and irrefragable, for a
perpetual joy, a glory and a defence, the unwavering confidence,
`I am Thy child,' go to God's throne, and lie down at the foot of
it, and let the first thought be, `My Father in heaven,' and
\textit{that} will brighten, that will stablish, that will make
omnipotent in your life the witness of the Spirit that you are the
child of God.

\chapter{Sons and Heirs}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 17}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
Christ.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 17.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

God Himself is His greatest gift. The loftiest blessing which we
can receive is that we should be heirs, possessors of God. There
is a sublime and wonderful mutual possession of which Scripture
speaks much wherein the Lord is the inheritance of Israel, and
Israel is the inheritance of the Lord. `The Lord hath taken you to
be to Him a people of inheritance,' says Moses; `Ye are a people
for a possession,' says Peter. And, on the other hand, `The Lord
is the portion of my inheritance,' says David; `Ye are heirs of
God,' echoes Paul. On earth and in heaven the heritage of the
children of the Lord is God Himself, inasmuch as He is with them
for their delight, in them to make them `partakers of the divine
nature,' and for them in all His attributes and actions.

This being clearly understood at the outset, we shall be prepared
to follow the Apostle's course of thought while he points out the
conditions upon which the possession of that inheritance depends.
It is children of God who are heirs of God. It is by union with
Christ Jesus, the Son, to whom the inheritance belongs, that they
who believe on His name receive power to become the sons of God,
and with that power the possession of the inheritance. Thus, then,
in this condensed utterance of the text there appear a series of
thoughts which may perhaps be more fully unfolded in some such
manner as the following, that there is no inheritance without
sonship, that there is no sonship without a spiritual birth, that
there is no spiritual birth without Christ, and that there is no
Christ for us without faith.

I. First, then, the text tells us, no inheritance without
sonship.

In general terms, spiritual blessings can only be given to those
who are in a certain spiritual condition. Always and necessarily
the capacity or organ of reception precedes and determines the
bestowment of blessings. The light falls everywhere, but only the
eye drinks it in. The lower orders of creatures are shut out from
all participation in the gifts which belong to the higher forms of
life, simply because they are so made and organised as that these
cannot find entrance into their nature. They are, as it were,
walled up all round; and the only door they have to communicate
with the outer world is the door of sense. Man has higher gifts
simply because he has higher capacities. All creatures are plunged
in the same boundless ocean of divine beneficence and bestowment,
and into each there flows just that, and no more, which each, by
the make and constitution that God has given it, is capable of
receiving. In the man there are more windows and doors opened out
than in the animal He is capable of receiving intellectual
impulses, spiritual emotions; he can think, and feel, and desire,
and will, and resolve: and so he stands on a higher level than the
beast below him.

Not otherwise is it in regard to God's kingdom, `which is
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' The gift and
blessing of salvation is primarily a spiritual gift, and only
involves outward consequences secondarily and subordinately. It
mainly consists in the heart being at peace with God, in the whole
soul being filled with divine affections, in the weight and
bondage of transgression being taken away, and substituted by the
impulse and the life of the new love. Therefore, neither God can
give, nor man can receive, that gift upon any other terms, than
just this, that the heart and nature be fitted and adapted for it.
Spiritual blessings require a spiritual capacity for the reception
of them; or, as my text says, you cannot have the inheritance
unless you are sons. If salvation consisted simply in a change of
place; if it were merely that by some expedient or arrangement, an
outward penalty, which was to fall or not to fall at the will of
an arbitrary judge, were prevented from coming down, why then, it
would be open to Him who held the power of letting the sword fall,
to decide on what terms He might choose to suspend its infliction.
But inasmuch as God's deliverance is not a deliverance from a mere
arbitrary and outward punishment: inasmuch as God's salvation,
though it be deliverance from the penalty as well as from the
guilt of sin, is by no means chiefly a deliverance from outward
consequences, but mainly a removal of the nature and disposition
that makes these outward consequences certain,---therefore a man
cannot be saved, God's love cannot save him, God's justice will
not save him, God's power stands back from saving him, upon any
other condition than this that his soul shall be adapted and
prepared for the reception and enjoyment of the blessing of a
spiritual salvation.

But the inheritance which my text speaks about is also that which
a Christian hopes to receive and enter upon in heaven. The same
principle precisely applies there. There is no inheritance of
heaven without sonship; because all the blessings of that future
life are of a spiritual character. The joy and the rapture and the
glory of that higher and better life have, of course, connected
with them certain changes of bodily form, certain changes of local
dwelling, certain changes which could perhaps be granted equally
to a man, of whatever sort he was. But, friends, it is not the
golden harps, not the pavement of `glass mingled with fire,' not
the cessation from work, not the still composure, and changeless
indwelling, not the society even, that makes the heaven of heaven.
All these are but the embodiments and rendering visible of the
inward facts, a soul at peace with God in the depths of its being,
an eye which gazes upon the Father, and a heart which wraps itself
in His arms. Heaven is no heaven except in so far as it is the
possession of God. That saying of the Psalmist is not an
exaggeration, nor even a forgetting of the other elements of
future blessedness, but it is a simple statement of the literal
fact of the case, `I have none in heaven but Thee!' God is the
heritage of His people. To dwell in His love, and to be filled
with His light, and to walk for ever in the glory of His sunlit
face, to do His will, and to bear His character stamped upon our
foreheads---\textit{that} is the glory and the perfectness to
which we are aspiring. Do not then rest in the symbols that show
us, darkly and far off, what that future glory is. Do not forget
that the picture is a shadow. Get beneath all these figurative
expressions, and feel that whilst it may be true that for us in
our present earthly state, there can be no higher, no purer, no
more spiritual nor any truer representations of the blessedness
which is to come, than those which couch it in the forms of
earthly experience, and appeal to sense as the minister of
delight---yet that all these things are representations, and not
adequate presentations. The inheritance of the servants of the
Lord is the Lord Himself, and they dwell in Him, and
\textit{there} is their joy.

Well then, if that be even partially true---admitting all that you
may say about circumstances which go to make some portion of the
blessedness of that future life---if it be true that God is the
true blessing given by His Gospel upon earth, that He Himself is
the greatest gift that can be bestowed, and that He is the true
Heaven of heaven---what a flood of light does it cast upon that
statement of my text, `If children, then heirs'; no inheritance
without sonship! For who can possess God but they who love Him?
who can love, but they who know His love? who can have Him working
in their hearts a blessed and sanctifying change, except the souls
that lie thankfully quiet beneath the forming touch of His
invisible hand, and like flowers drink in the light of His face in
their still joy? How can God dwell in any heart except a heart
which has in it a love of purity? Where can He make His temple
except in the `upright heart and pure'? How can there be
fellowship betwixt Him and any one except the man who is a son
because he hath received of the divine nature, and in whom that
divine nature is growing up into a divine likeness? `What
fellowship hath Christ with Belial?' is not only applicable as a
guide for our practical life, but points to the principle on which
God's inheritance belongs to God's sons alone. `Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God'; and those only who love,
and are children, to them alone does the Father come and does the
Father belong.

So much, then, for the first principle: No inheritance without
sonship.

II. Secondly, the text leads us to the principle that there is no
sonship without a spiritual birth.

The Apostle John in that most wonderful preface to his Gospel,
where all deepest truths concerning the Eternal Being in itself
and in the solemn march of His progressive revelations to the
world are set forth in language simple like the words of a child
and inexhaustible like the voice of a god, draws a broad
distinction between the relation to the manifestations of God
which every human soul by virtue of his humanity sustains, and
that into which some, by virtue of their faith, enter. Every man
is lighted by the true light because he is a man. They who believe
in His name receive from Him the prerogative to become the sons of
God. Whatever else may be taught in John's words, surely they do
teach us this, that the sonship of which he speaks does not belong
to man as man, is not a relation into which we are born by natural
birth, that we \textit{become} sons after we \textit{are} men,
that those who become sons do not include all those who are
lighted by the Light, but consist of so many of that greater
number as receive Him, and that such become sons by a divine act,
the communication of a spiritual life, whereby they are born of
God.

The same Apostle, in his Epistles, where the widest love is
conjoined with the most firmly drawn lines of moral demarcation
between the great opposites---life, light, love---death, darkness,
hate---contrasts in the most unmistakable antithesis the sons of
God who are known for such because they do righteousness, and the
world which knew not Christ, nor knows those who, dimly beholding,
partially resemble Him. Nay, he goes further, and says in strange
contradiction to the popular estimate of his character, but in
true imitation of that Incarnate love which hated iniquity, `In
this the children of God are manifested and the children of the
devil'---echoing thus the words of Him whose pitying tenderness
had sometimes to clothe itself in sharpest words, even as His hand
of powerful love had once to grasp the scourge of small cords. `If
God were your Father, ye would love Me: ye are of your father, the
devil.'

These are but specimens of a whole cycle of Scripture statements
which in every form of necessary implication, and of direct
statement, set forth the principle that he who is born again of
the Spirit, and he only, is a son of God.

Nothing in all this contradicts the belief that all men are the
children of God, inasmuch as they are shaped by His divine hand
and He has breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. They
who hold that sonship is obtained on the condition which these
passages seem to assert, do also rejoice to believe and to preach
that the Father's love broods over every human heart as the
dovelike Spirit over the primeval chaos. They rejoice to proclaim
that Christ has come that all, that each, may receive the adoption
of sons. They do not feel that their message to, nor their hope
for, the world is less blessed, less wide, because while they call
on all to come and take the things that are freely given to them
of God, they believe that those only who do come and take possess
the blessing. Every man may become a son and heir of God by faith
in Jesus Christ.

But notwithstanding all the mercies that belong to us all,
notwithstanding the divine beneficence, which, like the air and
the light, pervades all nature, and underlies all our lives,
notwithstanding the universal adaptation and intention of Christ's
work, notwithstanding the wooing of His tender voice and the
unceasing beckoning of His love, it still remains true that there
are men in the world, created by God, loved and cared for by Him,
for whom Christ died, who might be, but are not, sons of God.

Fatherhood! what does that word itself teach us? It speaks of the
communication of a life, and the reciprocity of love. It rests upon
a divine act, and it involves a human emotion. It involves that the
father and the child shall have kindred life---the father bestowing
and the child possessing a life which is derived; and because
derived, kindred; and because kindred, unfolding itself in likeness
to the father that gave it. And it requires that between the
father's heart and the child's heart there shall pass, in blessed
interchange and quick correspondence, answering love, flashing
backwards and forwards, like the lightning that touches the earth
and rises from it again. A simple appeal to your own consciousness
will decide if that be the condition of all men. Are you, my
brother, conscious of anything within you higher than the common
life that belongs to you because you are an immortal soul? Can you
say, `From God's hand I have received the granting and implantation
of a new and better life?' Is your claim verified by this, that you
are kindred with God in holy affections, in like purposes, loving
what He loves, hating what He hates, doing what He wills, accepting
what He sends, longing for Himself, and blessed in His presence? Is
your sonship proved by the depth and sincerity, the simplicity and
power, of your throbbing heart of love to your Father in heaven? Or
are all these emotions empty words to you, things that are spoken in
pulpits, but to which you have nothing in your life corresponding?
Oh then, my friend, what am I to say to you? What but this? no
sonship except by that spiritual birth; and if not such sonship,
then the spirit of bondage. If not such sonship, why then, by all
the tendencies of your nature, and by all the affinities of your
moral being, if you are not holding of heaven, you are holding of
hell; if you are not drawing your life, your character, your
emotions, your affections, from the sacred well that lies up yonder,
you are drawing them from the black one that lies down there. There
are heaven, hell, and the earth that lies between, ever influenced
either from above or from below. You are sons because born again, or
slaves and `enemies by wicked works.' It is a grim alternative, but
it is a fact.

III. Thirdly, no spiritual birth without Christ.

We have seen that the sonship which gives power of possessing the
inheritance and which comes by spiritual birth, rests upon the
giving of life, spiritual life, from God; and unfolds itself in
certain holy characters, and affections, and desires, the
throbbing of the whole soul in full accord and harmony with the
divine character and will. Well then, it looks very clear that a
man cannot make that new life for himself, cannot do it because of
the habit of sin, and cannot do it because of the guilt and
punishment of sin. If for sonship there must be a birth again,
why, surely, the very symbol might convince you that such a
process does not lie within our own power. There must come down a
divine leaven into the mass of human nature, before this new being
can be evolved in any one. There must be a gift of God. A divine
energy must be the source and fountain of all holy and of all
Godlike life. Christ comes, comes to make you and me live again as
we never lived before; live possessors of God's love; live
tenanted and ruled by a divine Spirit; live with affections in our
hearts which \textit{we} never could kindle there; live with
purposes in our souls which \textit{we} never could put there.

And I want to urge this thought, that the centre point of the
Gospel is this regeneration; because if we understand, as we are
too much disposed to do, that the Gospel simply comes to make men
live better, to work out a moral reformation,---why, there is no
need for a Gospel at all. If the change were a simple change of
habit and action on the part of men, we could do without a Christ.
If the change simply involved a bracing ourselves up to behave
better for the future, we could manage somehow or other about as
well as or better than we have managed in the past. But if
redemption be the giving of life from God; and if redemption be
the change of position in reference to God's love and God's law as
well, neither of these two changes can a man effect for himself.
You cannot gather up the spilt water; you cannot any more gather
up and re-issue the past life. The sin remains, the guilt remains.
The inevitable law of God will go on its crashing way in spite of
all penitence, in spite of all reformation, in spite of all
desires after newness of life. There is but one Being who can make
a change in our position in regard to God, and there is but one
Being who can make the change by which man shall become a `new
creature.' The Creative Spirit that shaped the earth must shape
its new being in my soul; and the Father against whose law I have
offended, whose love I have slighted, from whom I have turned
away, must effect the alteration that I can never effect---the
alteration in my position to His judgments and justice, and to the
whole sweep of His government. No new birth without Christ; no
escape from the old standing-place, of being `enemies to God by
wicked works,' by anything that we can do: no hope of the
inheritance unless the Lord and the Man, the `second Adam from
heaven,' have come! He \textit{has} come, and He has `dwelt with
us,' and He has worn this life of ours, and He has walked in the
midst of this world, and He knows all about our human condition,
and He has effected an actual change in the possible aspect of the
divine justice and government to us; and He has carried in the
golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and a new life which He
has set down in the midst of the race; and the urn was broken on
the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out, and whithersoever
that water comes there is life, and whithersoever it comes not
there is death!

IV. Last of all, no Christ without faith.

It is not enough, brethren, that we should go through all these
previous steps, if we then go utterly astray at the end, by
forgetting that there is only one way by which we become partakers
of any of the benefits and blessings that Christ has wrought out.
It is much to say that for inheritance there must be sonship. It
is much to say that for sonship there must be a divine
regeneration. It is much to say that the power of this
regeneration is all gathered together in Christ Jesus. But there
are plenty of people that would agree to all that, who go off at
that point, and content themselves with \textit{this} kind of
thinking---that in some vague mysterious way, they know not how,
in a sort of half-magical manner, the benefit of Christ's death
and work comes to all in Christian lands, whether there be an act
of faith or not! Now I am not going to talk theology at present,
at this stage of my sermon; but what I want to leave upon all your
hearts is this profound conviction,---Unless we are wedded to
Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His
power, Christ is nothing to us. Do not let us, my friends, blink
that deciding test of the whole matter. We may talk about Christ
for ever; we may set forth aspects of His work, great and
glorious. He may be to us much that is very precious; but the one
question, the question of questions, on which everything else
depends, is, Am I trusting to Him as my divine Redeemer? am I
resting in Him as the Son of God? Some of us here now have a sort
of nominal connection with Christ, who have a kind of imaginative
connection with Him; traditional, ceremonial, by habit of thought,
by attendance on public worship, and by I know not what other
means. Ceremonies are nothing, notions are nothing, beliefs are
nothing, formal participation in worship is nothing. Christ is
everything to him that trusts Him. Christ is nothing but a judge
and a condemnation to him who trusts Him not. And here is the
turning-point, Am I resting upon that Lord for my salvation? If
so, you can begin upon that step, the low one on which you can put
your foot, the humble act of faith, and with the foot there, can
climb up. If faith, then new birth; if new birth, then sonship; if
sonship, then an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ.' But
if you have not got your foot upon the lowest round of the ladder,
you will never come within sight of the blessed face of Him who
stands at the top of it, and who looks down to you at this moment,
saying to you, `My child, \textit{wilt} thou not cry unto Me
``Abba, Father?''\,'

\chapter[Suffering with Christ... Glory with Christ]{Suffering with Christ, A Condition of Glory with Christ}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 17}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`...Joint heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with Him,
that we may be also glorified together.'---\textsc{Romans} viii.
17.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

In the former part of this verse the Apostle tells us that in
order to be heirs of God, we must become sons through and
joint-heirs with Christ. He seems at first sight to add in these
words of our text another condition to those already specified,
namely, that of suffering with Christ.

Now, of course, whatever may be the operation of suffering in
fitting for the possession of the Christian inheritance, either
here or in another world, the sonship and the sorrows do not stand
on the same level in regard to that possession. The one is the
indispensable condition of all; the other is but the means for the
operation of the condition. The one---being sons, `joint-heirs
with Christ,'---is the root of the whole matter; the other---the
`suffering with Him,'---is but the various process by which from
the root there come `the blade, and the ear, and the full corn in
the ear.' Given the sonship---if it is to be worked out into power
and beauty, there must be suffering with Christ. But unless there
be sonship, there is no possibility of inheriting God; discipline
and suffering will be of no use at all.

The chief lesson which I wish to gather from this text now is that
all God's sons must suffer with Christ; and in addition to this
principle, we may complete our considerations by adding briefly,
that the inheritance must be won by suffering, and that if we
suffer with Him, we certainly shall receive the inheritance.

I. First, then, sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering
with Him.

I think that we entirely misapprehend the force of this passage
before us, if we suppose it to refer principally or merely to the
outward calamities, what you call trials and afflictions, which
befall people, and see in it only the teaching, that the sorrows
of daily life may have in them a sign of our being children of
God, and some power to prepare us for the glory that is to come.
There is a great deal more in the thought than that, brethren.
This is not merely a text for people who are in affliction, but
for all of us. It does not merely contain a law for a certain part
of life, but it contains a law for the whole of life. It is not
merely a promise that in all our afflictions Christ will be
afflicted, but it is a solemn injunction that we seek to know `the
fellowship of His sufferings, and be made conformable to the
likeness of His death,' if we expect to be `found in the likeness
of His Resurrection,' and to have any share in the community of
His glory. In other words, the foundation of it is not that Christ
shares in our sufferings; but that we, as Christians, in a deep
and real sense do necessarily share and participate in Christ's.
We `suffer with Him'; \textit{not} He suffers with us.

Now, do not let us misunderstand each other, or the Apostle's
teaching. Do not suppose that I am forgetting, or wishing you to
account as of small importance, the awful sense in which Christ's
suffering stands as a thing by itself and unapproachable, a
solitary pillar rising up, above the waste of time, to which all
men everywhere are to turn with the one thought, `I can do nothing
like that; I need to do nothing like it; it has been done once,
and once for all; and what I have to do is, simply to lie down
before Him, and let the power and the blessings of that death and
those sufferings flow into my heart.' The Divine Redeemer makes
eternal redemption. The sufferings of Christ---the sufferings of
His life, and the sufferings of His death---both because of the
nature which bore them, and of the aspect which they wore in
regard to us, are in their source, in their intensity, in their
character, and consequences, unapproachable, incapable of
repetition, and needing no repetition whilst the world shall
stand. But then, do not let us forget that the very books and
writers in the New Testament that preach most broadly Christ's
sole, all-sufficient, eternal redemption for the world by His
sufferings and death, turn round and say to us too, `\,``Be
planted together in the likeness of His death''; you are
``crucified to the world'' by the Cross of Christ; you are to
``fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ.''\,'
He Himself speaks of our drinking of the cup that He drank of, and
being baptized with the baptism that He was baptized with, if we
desire to sit yonder on His throne, and share with Him in His
glory.

Now what do the Apostles, and what does Christ Himself, in that
passage that I have quoted, mean, by such solemn words as these?
Some people shrink from them, and say that it is trenching upon the
central doctrine of the Gospel, when we speak about drinking of the
cup which Christ drank of. They ask, Can it be? Yes, it can be, if
you will think thus:---If a Christian has the Spirit and life of
Christ in him, his career will be moulded, imperfectly but really,
by the same Spirit that dwelt in his Lord; and similar causes will
produce corresponding effects. The life of Christ which---divine,
pure, incapable of copy and repetition---in one aspect has ended for
ever for men, remains to be lived, in another view of it, by every
Christian, who in like manner has to fight with the world; who in
like manner has to resist temptation; who in like manner has to
stand, by God's help, pure and sinless, in so far as the new nature
of him is concerned, in the midst of a world that is full of evil.
For were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings that were
wrought upon Calvary? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the
sufferings which came from the contradiction of sinners against
Himself? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings which
were connected with His bodily afflictions and pain, precious and
priceless as they were, and operative causes of our redemption as
they were? Oh no. Conceive of that perfect, sinless, really human
life, in the midst of a system of things that is all full of
corruption and of sin; coming ever and anon against misery, and
wrong-doing, and rebellion; and ask yourselves whether part of His
sufferings did not spring from the contact of the sinless Son of man
with a sinful world, and the apparently vain attempt to influence
and leaven that sinful world with care for itself and love for the
Father. If there had been nothing more than that, yet Christ's
sufferings as the Son of God in the midst of sinful men would have
been deep and real. `O faithless generation, how long shall I be
with you? how long shall I suffer you?' was wrung from Him by the
painful sense of want of sympathy between His aims and theirs. `Oh
that I had wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at
rest,' must often be the language of those who are like Him in
spirit, and in consequent sufferings.

And then again, another branch of the `sufferings of Christ' is to
be found in that deep and mysterious fact on which I durst not
venture to speak beyond what the actual words of Scripture put into
my lips---the fact that Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as
a man, through temptation and by suffering. There was no sin
\emph{within} Him, no tendency to sin, no yielding to the evil that
assailed. `The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.'
But yet, when that dark Power stood by His side, and said, `If thou
be the Son of God, cast Thyself down,' it was a real temptation and
not a sham one. There was no wish to do it, no faltering for a
moment, no hesitation. There was no rising up in that calm will of
even a moment's impulse to do the thing that was presented;---but
yet it was presented, and, when Christ triumphed, and the tempter
departed for a season, there had been a temptation and there had
been a conflict. And though obedience be a joy, and the doing of His
Father's will was His delight, as it must needs be in pure and in
purified hearts; yet obedience which is sustained in the face of
temptation, and which never fails, though its path lead to bodily
pains and the `contradiction of sinners,' may well be called
suffering. We cannot speak of our Lord's obedience as the surrender
of His own will to the Father's, with the implication that these two
wills ever did or could move except in harmony. There was no place
in Christ's obedience for that casting out of sinful self which
makes our submission a surrender joined with suffering, but He knew
temptation. Flesh, and sense, and the world, and the prince of this
world, presented it to Him; and therefore His obedience too was
suffering, even though to do the will of His Father was His meat and
His drink, His sustenance and His refreshment.

But then, let me remind you still further, that not only does the
life of Christ, as sinless in the midst of sinful men, and the
life of Christ, as sinless whilst yet there was temptation
presented to it---assume the aspect of being a life of suffering,
and become, in that respect, the model for us; but that also the
Death of Christ, besides its aspect as an atonement and sacrifice
for sin, the power by which transgression is put away and God's
love flows out upon our souls, has another power given to it in
the teaching of the New Testament. The Death of Christ is a type
of the Christian's life, which is to be one long, protracted, and
daily dying to sin, to self, to the world. The crucifixion of the
old manhood is to be the life's work of every Christian, through
the power of faith in that Cross by which `the world is crucified
unto Me, and I unto the world.' That thought comes over and over
again in all forms of earnest presentation in the Apostle's
teaching. Do not slur it over as if it were a mere fanciful
metaphor. It carries in its type a most solemn reality. The truth
is, that, if a Christian, you have a double life. There is Christ,
with His power, with His Spirit, giving you a nature which is pure
and sinless, incapable of transgression, like His own. The new
man, that which is born of God, sinneth not, cannot sin. But side
by side with it, working through it, working in it, leavening it,
indistinguishable from it to your consciousness, by anything but
this that the one works righteousness and the other works
transgression, there is the `old man,' `the flesh,' `the old
Adam,' your own godless, independent, selfish, proud being. And
the one is to slay the other! Ah, let me tell you, these
words---crucifying, casting out the old man, plucking out the
right eye, maiming self of the right hand, mortifying the deeds of
the body---they are something very much deeper and more awful than
poetical symbols and metaphors. They teach us this, that there is
no growth without sore sorrow. Conflict, not progress, is the word
that defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is
won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain
day by day, and hour by hour. In long lingering agony often, with
the blood of the heart pouring out at every quivering vein, you
are to cut right through the life and being of that sinful self;
to do what the Word does, pierce to the dividing asunder of the
thoughts and intents of the heart, and get rid by crucifying and
slaying---a long process, a painful process---of your own sinful
self. And not until you can stand up and say, `I live, yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me,' have you accomplished that to which you
are consecrated and vowed by your sonship---`being conformed unto
the likeness of His death,' and `knowing the fellowship of His
sufferings.'

It is this process, the inward strife and conflict in getting rid
of evil, which the Apostle designates here with the name of
`suffering with Christ, that we may be also glorified together.'
On this high level, and not upon the lower one of the
consideration that Christ will help us to bear outward infirmities
and afflictions, do we find the true meaning of all that Scripture
teaching which says indeed, `Yes, our sufferings are
\textit{His}'; but lays the foundation of it in this, `His
sufferings are \textit{ours}.' It begins by telling us that Christ
has done a work and borne a sorrow that no second can ever do.
Then it tells us that Christ's life of obedience---which, because
it \textit{was} a life of obedience, was a life of suffering, and
brought Him into a condition of hostility to the men around
Him---is to be repeated in us. It sets before us the Cross of
Calvary, and the sorrows and pains that were felt there;---and it
says to us, Christian men and women, if you want the power for
holy living, have fellowship in that atoning death; and if you
want the pattern of holy living, look at that Cross and feel, `I
am crucified to the world by it; and the life that I live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.'

Such considerations as these, however, do not necessarily exclude
the other one (which we may just mention and dwell on for a
moment), namely, that where there is this spiritual participation
in the sufferings of Christ, and where His death is reproduced and
perpetuated, as it were, in our daily mortifying ourselves in the
present evil world---there Christ is with us in our afflictions.
God forbid that I should try to strike away any word of
consolation that has come, as these words of my text have come, to
so many sorrowing hearts in all generations, like music in the
night and like cold waters to a thirsty soul. We need not hold
that there is no reference here to that comforting thought, `In
all our affliction He is afflicted.' Brethren, you and I have,
each of us---one in one way, and one in another, all in some way,
all in the right way, none in too severe a way, none in too slight
a way---to tread the path of sorrow; and is it not a blessed
thing, as we go along through that dark valley of the shadow of
death down into which the sunniest paths go sometimes, to come,
amidst the twilight and the gathering clouds, upon tokens that
Jesus has been on the road before us? They tell us that in some
trackless lands, when one friend passes through the pathless
forests, he breaks a twig ever and anon as he goes, that those who
come after may see the traces of his having been there, and may
know that they are not out of the road. Oh, when we are journeying
through the murky night, and the dark woods of affliction and
sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or
a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of
His hand as He passed, and to remember that the path He trod He
has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrances and hidden
strengths in the remembrance of Him as `in all points tempted like
as we are,' bearing grief \textit{for} us, bearing grief
\textit{with} us, bearing grief \textit{like} us.

Oh, do not, do not, my brethren, keep these sacred thoughts of
Christ's companionship in sorrow, for the larger trials of life.
If the mote in the eye be large enough to annoy you, it is large
enough to bring out His sympathy; and if the grief be too small
for Him to compassionate and share, it is too small for you to be
troubled by it. If you are ashamed to apply that divine thought,
`Christ bears this grief with me,' to those petty molehills that
you sometimes magnify into mountains, think to yourselves that
then it is a shame for you to be stumbling over them. But on the
other hand, never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the
thought that Christ is willing to bear, and help you to bear, the
pettiest, the minutest, and most insignificant of the daily
annoyances that may come to ruffle you. Whether it be a poison
from one serpent sting, or whether it be poison from a million of
buzzing tiny mosquitoes, if there be a smart, go to Him, and He
will help you to endure it. He will do more, He will bear it with
you, for if so be that we suffer with Him, He suffers with us, and
our oneness with Christ brings about a community of possessions
whereby it becomes true of each trusting soul in its relations to
Him, that `all mine (joys and sorrows alike) are thine, and all
thine are mine.'

II. There remain some other considerations which may be briefly
stated, in order to complete the lessons of this text. In the
second place, this community of suffering is a necessary
preparation for the community of glory.

I name this principally for the sake of putting in a caution. The
Apostle does not mean to tell us, of course, that if there were such
a case as that of a man becoming a son of God, and having no
occasion or opportunity afterwards, by brevity of life or other
causes, for passing through the discipline of sorrow, his
inheritance would be forfeited. We must always take such passages as
this---which seem to make the discipline of the world an essential
part of the preparing of us for glory---in conjunction with the
other undeniable truth which completes them, that when a man has the
love of God in his heart, however feebly, however newly, there and
then he is fit for the inheritance. I think that Christian people
make vast mistakes sometimes in talking about `being made meet for
the inheritance of the saints in light,' about being `ripe for
glory,' and the like. One thing at any rate is very certain, it is
not the discipline that fits. That which fits goes before the
discipline, and the discipline only develops the fitness. `God hath
made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,' says the
Apostle. That is a past act. The preparedness for heaven comes at
the moment---if it be a momentary act---when a man turns to Christ.
You may take the lowest and most abandoned form of human character,
and in one moment (it is possible, and it is often the case) the
entrance into that soul of the feeble germ of that new affection
shall at once change the whole moral habitude of that man. Though it
be true, then, that heaven is only open to those who are
capable---by holy aspirations and divine desires---of entering into
it, it is equally true that such aspirations and desires may be the
work of an instant, and may be superinduced in a moment in a heart
the most debased and the most degraded. `This day shalt thou be with
Me in Paradise,'---\textit{fit} for the inheritance!

And, therefore, let us not misunderstand such words as this text,
and fancy that the necessary discipline, which we have to go
through before we are ready for heaven, is necessary in anything
like the same sense in which it is necessary that a man should
have faith in Christ in order to be saved. The one may be
dispensed with, the other cannot. A Christian at any period of his
Christian experience, if it please God to take him, is fit for the
kingdom. The life \textit{is} life, whether it be the budding
beauty and feebleness of childhood, or the strength of manhood, or
the maturity and calm peace of old age. But `add to your faith,'
that `an entrance may be ministered unto you \textit{abundantly}.'
Remember that though the root of the matter, the seed of the
kingdom, may be in you; and that though, therefore, you have a
right to feel that, at any period of your Christian experience, if
it please God to take you out of this world, you are fit for
heaven---yet in His mercy He is leaving you here, training you,
disciplining you, cleansing you, making you to be polished shafts
in His quiver; and that all the glowing furnaces of fiery trial
and all the cold waters of affliction are but the preparation
through which the rough iron is to be passed before it becomes
tempered steel, a shaft in the Master's hand.

And so learn to look upon all trial as being at once the seal of
your sonship, and the means by which God puts it within your power
to win a higher place, a loftier throne, a nobler crown, a closer
fellowship with Him `who hath suffered, being tempted,' and who
will receive into His own blessedness and rest them that are
tempted. `The child, though he be an heir, differeth nothing from
a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and
governors.' God puts us in the school of sorrow under that stern
tutor and governor here, and gives us the opportunity of
`suffering with Christ,' that by the daily crucifixion of our old
nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamities and
change, there may grow up in us a still nobler and purer, and
perfecter divine life; and that we may so be made capable---more
capable, and capable of more---of that inheritance for which the
only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness
is faith in His name.

III. Finally, that inheritance is the necessary result of the
suffering that has gone before.

The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must
needs culminate in glory. It is not only because the joy hereafter
seems required in order to vindicate God's love to His children,
who here reap sorrow from their sonship, that the discipline of
life cannot but end in blessedness. That ground of mere
compensation is a low one on which to rest the certainty of future
bliss. But the inheritance is sure to all who here suffer with
Christ, because the one cause---union with the Lord---produces
both the present result of fellowship in His sorrows, and the
future result of joy in His joy, of possession of His possessions.
The inheritance is sure because Christ possesses it now. The
inheritance is sure because earth's sorrows not merely require to
be repaid by its peace, but because they have an evident design to
fit us for it, and it would be destructive to all faith in God's
wisdom, and God's knowledge of His own purposes, not to believe
that what He has wrought us for will be given to us. Trials have
no meaning, unless they are means to an end. The end is the
inheritance, and sorrows here, as well as the Spirit's work here,
are the earnest of the inheritance. Measure the greatness of the
glory by what has preceded it. God takes all these years of life,
and all the sore trials and afflictions that belong inevitably to
an earthly career, and works them in, into the blessedness that
\textit{shall} come. If a fair measure of the greatness of any
result of productive power be the length of time that was taken
for getting it ready, we can dimly conceive what that joy must be
for which seventy years of strife and pain and sorrow are but a
momentary preparation; and what must be the weight of that glory
which is the counterpoise and consequence to the afflictions of
this lower world. The further the pendulum swings on the one side,
the further it goes up on the other. The deeper God plunges the
comet into the darkness out yonder, the closer does it come to the
sun at its nearest distance, and the longer does it stand basking
and glowing in the full blaze of the glory from the central orb.
So in \textit{our} revolution, the measure of the distance from
the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow, \textit{to} the
throne, may help us to the measure of the closeness of the bright,
perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are \textit{on} the
throne: for if so be that we are sons, we \textit{must} suffer
with Him; if so be that we suffer, we \textit{must} be glorified
together!

\chapter{The Revelation of Sons}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 19}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 19.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The Apostle has been describing believers as `sons' and `heirs.'
He drops from these transcendent heights to contrast their present
apparent condition with their true character and their future
glory. The sad realities of suffering darken his lofty hopes, even
although these sad realities are to his faith tokens of
joint-heirship with Jesus, and pledges that if our inheritance is
here manifested by suffering with him, that very fact is a
prophecy of common glory hereafter. He describes that future as
the revealing of a glory, to which the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared; and then, in our text he
varies the application of that thought of revealing and thinks of
the subjects of it as being the `sons of God.' They will be
revealed when the glory which they have as joint-heirs with Christ
is revealed in them. They walk, as it were, compassed with mist
and cloud, but the splendour which will fall on them will scatter
the envious darkness, and `when Christ who is our life shall
appear, then shall His co-heirs also appear with Him in
glory.'

We may consider---

I. The present veil over the sons of God.

There is always a difference between appearance and reality,
between the ideal and its embodiments. For all men it is true that
the full expression of oneself is impossible. Each man's deeds
fall short of disclosing the essential self in the man. Every will
is hampered by the fleshly screen of the body. `I would that my
tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,' is the yearning
of every heart that is deeply moved. Contending principles
successively sway every personality and thwart each other's
expression. For these, and many other reasons, the sum-total of
every life is but a shrouded representation of the man who lives
it; and we, all of us, after all efforts at self-revelation,
remain mysteries to our fellows and to ourselves. All this is
eminently true of the sons of God. They have a life-germ hidden in
their souls, which in its very nature is destined to fill and
expand their whole being, and to permeate with its triumphant
energy every corner of their nature. But it is weak and often
overborne by its opposite. The seed sown is to grow in spite of
bad weather and a poor soil and many weeds, and though it is
destined to overcome all these, it may to-day only be able to show
on the surface a little patch of pale and struggling growth. When
we think of the cost at which the life of Christ was imparted to
men, and of the divine source from which it comes, and of the
sedulous and protracted discipline through which it is being
trained, we cannot but conclude that nothing short of its
universal dominion over all the faculties of its imperfect
possessors can be the goal of its working. Hercules in his cradle
is still Hercules, and strangles snakes. Frost and sun may
struggle in midwinter, and the cold may seem to predominate, but
the sun is steadily enlarging its course in the sky, and
increasing the fervour of its beams, and midsummer day is as sure
to dawn as the shortest day was.

The sons of God, even more truly than other men, have contending
principles fighting within them. It was the same Apostle who with
oaths denied that he `knew the man,' and in a passion of clinging
love and penitence fell at His feet; but for the mere onlooker it
would be hard to say which was the true man and which would
conquer. The sons of God, like other men, have to express
themselves in words which are never closely enough fitted to their
thoughts and feelings. David's penitence has to be contented with
groans which are not deep enough; and John's calm raptures on his
Saviour's breast can only be spoken by shut eyes and silence. The
sons of God never fully correspond to their character, but always
fall somewhat beneath their desire, and must always be somewhat
less than their intention. The artist never wholly embodies his
conception. It is only God who `rests from His works' because the
works fully embody His creative design and fully receive the
benediction of His own satisfaction with them.

From all such thoughts there arises a piece of plain practical
wisdom, which warns Christian men not to despond or despair if
they do not find themselves living up to their ideal. The sons of
God are `veiled' because the world's estimate of them is untrue.
The old commonplace that the world knows nothing of its greatest
men is verified in the opinions which it holds about the sons of
God. It is not for their Christianity that they get any of the
world's honours and encomiums, if such fall to their share. They
are \textit{un}known and yet \textit{well}-known. They live for
the most part veiled in obscurity. `The light shineth in darkness,
and the darkness comprehendeth it not.' They are God's hidden
ones. If they are wise, they will look for no recognition nor
eulogy from the world, and will be content to live, as unknown by
the princes of this world as was the Lord of glory, whom they slew
because their dim eyes could not see the flashing of the glory
`through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.' But no
consciousness of imperfection in our revelation of an indwelling
Christ must ever be allowed to diminish our efforts to live out
the life that is in us, and to shine as lights in the world; nor
must the consciousness that we walk as `veiled,' lead us to add to
the thick folds the criminal one of voluntary silence and cowardly
hiding in dumb hearts the secret of our lives.

II. The unveiling of the sons of God.

That unveiling is in the text represented as coming along with the
glory which shall be revealed to usward, and as being
contemporaneous with the deliverance of the creation itself from
the bondage of corruption, and its passing into the liberty of the
glory of the children of God. It coincides with the vanishing of
the pain in which the whole creation now groans and travails, and
with the adoption---that is, the redemption of our body. Then hope
will be seen and will pass into still fruition. All this points to
the time when Jesus Christ is revealed, and His servants are
revealed with Him in glory. That revelation brings with it of
necessity the manifestation of the sons of God for what they
are---the making visible in the life of what God sees them to
be.

That revelation of the sons of God is the result of the entire
dominion and transforming supremacy of the Spirit of God in them.
In the whole sweep of their consciousness there will in that day
be nothing done from other motives; there will be no sidelights
flashing in and disturbing the perfect illumination from the
candle of the Lord set on high in their being; there will be no
contradictions in the life. It will be one and simple, and
therefore perfectly intelligible. Such is the destined issue of
the most imperfect Christian life. The Christian man who has in
his experience to-day the faintest and most interrupted operation
of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has therein a pledge of
immortality, because nothing short of an endless life of
progressive and growing purity will be adequate to receive and
exemplify the power which can never terminate until it is made
like Him and perfectly seeing Him as He is.

But that unveiling further guarantees the possession of fully
adequate means of expression. The limitations and imperfections of
our present bodily life will all drop away in putting on `the body
of glory' which shall be ours. The new tongue will perfectly utter
the new knowledge and rapture of the new life; new hands will
perfectly realise our ideals; and on every forehead will be
stamped Christ's new name.

That unveiling will be further realised by a divine act indicating
the characters of the sons of God by their position. Earth's
judgments will be reversed by that divine voice, and the great
promise, which through weary ages has shone as a far-off
star,---`I will set him on high because he hath known my
name'---will then be known for the sun near at hand. Many names
loudly blown through the world's trumpet will fall silent then.
Many stars will be quenched, but `they that be wise shall shine as
the brightness of the firmament.'

That revelation will be more surprising to no one than to those
who are its subjects, when they see themselves mirrored in that
glass, and so unlike what they are here. Their first impulse will
be to wonder at the form they see, and to ask, almost with
incredulity, `Lord, is it I?' Nor will the wonder be less when
they recognise many whom they knew not. The surprises when the
family of God is gathered together at last will be great. The
Israel of Captivity lifts up her wondering eyes as she sees the
multitudes flocking to her side as the doves to their windows,
and, half-ashamed of her own narrow vision, exclaims, `I was left
alone; these, where had they been?' Let us rejoice that in the day
when the sons of God are revealed, many hidden ones from many dark
corners will sit at the Father's table. That revelation will be
made to the whole universe; we know not how, but we know that it
shall be; and, as the text tells us, that revelation of the sons
of God is the hope for which `the earnest expectation of the
creature waits' through the weary ages.

\chapter{The Redemption of the Body}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 23}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The adoption, to wit, the redemption of our
body.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 23.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

In a previous verse Paul has said that all true Christians have
received `the Spirit of adoption.' They become sons of God through
Christ the Son. They receive a new spiritual and divine life from
God through Christ, and that life is like its source. In so far as
that new life vitalises and dominates their nature, believers have
received `the Spirit of adoption,' and by it they cry `Abba,
Father.' But the body still remains a source of weakness, the seat
of sin. It is sluggish and inapt for high purposes; it still
remains subject to `the law of sin and death'; and so is not like
the Father who breathed into it the breath of life. It remains in
bondage, and has not yet received the adoption. This text, in
harmony with the Apostle's whole teaching, looks forward to a
change in the body and in its relations to the renewed spirit, as
the crown and climax of the work of redemption, and declares that
till that change is effected, the condition of Christian men is
imperfect, and is a waiting, and often a groaning.

In dealing with some of the thoughts that arise from this text, we
note---

I. That a future bodily life is needed in order to give
definiteness and solidity to the conception of immortality.

Before the Gospel came men's belief in a future life was vague and
powerless, mainly because it had no Gospel of the Resurrection,
and so nothing tangible to lay hold on. The Gospel has made the
belief in a future state infinitely easier and more powerful,
mainly because of the emphasis with which it has proclaimed an
actual resurrection and a future bodily life. Its great proof of
immortality is drawn, not merely from ethical considerations of
the manifest futility of earthly life which has no sequel beyond
the grave, nor from the intuitions and longings of men's souls,
but from the historical fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,
and of His Ascension in bodily form into heaven. It proclaims
these two facts as parts of His experience, and asserts that when
He rose from the dead and ascended up on high, He did so as `the
first-born among many brethren,' their forerunner and their
pattern. It is this which gives the Gospel its power, and thus
transforms a vague and shadowy conception of immortality into a
solid faith, for which we have already an historical guarantee.
Stupendous mysteries still veil the nature of the resurrection
process, though these are exaggerated into inconceivabilities by
false notions of what constitutes personal identity; but if the
choice lies between accepting the Christian doctrine of a
resurrection and the conception of a finite spirit disembodied and
yet active, there can be no doubt as to which of these two is the
more reasonable and thinkable. Body, soul, and spirit make the
complete triune man.

The thought of the future life as a bodily life satisfies the
longings of the heart. Much natural shrinking from death comes
from unwillingness to part company with an old companion and
friend. As Paul puts it in 2nd Corinthians, `Not for that we would
be unclothed, but clothed upon.' All thoughts of the future which
do not give prominence to the idea of a bodily life open up but a
ghastly and uninviting mode of existence, which cannot but repel
those who are accustomed to the fellowship of their bodies, and
they feel that they cannot think of themselves as deprived of that
which was their servant and instrument, through all the years of
their earthly consciousness.

II. `The body that shall be' is an emancipated body.

The varied gifts of the Spirit bestowed upon the Christian Church
served to quicken the hope of the yet greater gifts of that
indwelling Spirit which were yet to come. Chief amongst these our
text considers the transformation of the earthly into a spiritual
body. This transformation our text regards as being the
participation by the body in the redemption by which Christ has
bought us with the great price of His blood. We have to interpret
the language here in the light of the further teaching of Paul in
the great Resurrection chapter of 1st Corinthians, which
distinctly lays stress, not on the identity of the corporeal frame
which is laid in the grave with `the body of glory,' but upon the
entire contrast between the `natural body,' which is fit organ for
the lower nature, and is informed by it, and the `spiritual body,'
which is fit organ for the spirit. We have to interpret `the
resurrection of the body' by the definite apostolic declaration,
`Thou sowest not that body that shall be... but God giveth it a
body as it hath pleased Him'; and we have to give full weight to
the contrasts which the Apostle draws between the characteristics
of that which is `sown' and of that which is `raised.' The one is
`sown in corruption and raised in incorruption.' Natural decay is
contrasted with immortal youth. The one is `sown in dishonour,'
the other is `raised in glory.' That contrast is ethical, and
refers either to the subordinate position of the body here in
relation to the spirit, or to the natural sense of shame, or to
the ideas of degradation which are attached to the indulgence of
the appetites. The one is `sown in weakness,' the other is `raised
in power'; the one is `sown a natural body,' the other is `raised
a spiritual body.' Is not Paul in this whole series of contrasts
thinking primarily of the vision which he saw on the road to
Damascus when the risen Christ appeared before him? And had not
the years which had passed since then taught him to see in the
ascended Christ the prophecy and the pattern of what His servants
should become? We have further to keep in view Paul's other
representation in 2nd Corinthians v., where he strongly puts the
contrast between the corporeal environment of earth and `the body
of glory,' which belongs to the future life, in his two images:
`the earthly house of this tabernacle'---a clay hut which lasts
but for a time,---and `the building of God, the house not made
with hands and eternal.' The body is an occasion of separation
from the Lord.

These considerations may well lead us to, at least, general
outlines on which a confident and peaceful hope may fix. For
example, they lead us to the thought that that redeemed body is no
more subject to decay and death, is no more weighed upon by
weakness and weariness, has no work beyond its strength, needs no
sustenance by food, and no refreshment of sleep. `The Lamb which
is in the midst of the throne shall feed them,' suggests strength
constantly communicated by a direct divine gift. And from all
these negative characteristics there follows that there will be in
that future bodily life no epochs of age marked by bodily changes.
The two young men who were seen sitting in the sepulchre of Jesus
had lived before Adam, and would seem as young if we saw them
to-day.

Similarly the redeemed body will be a more perfect instrument for
communication with the external universe. We know that the present
body conditions our knowledge, and that our senses do not take
cognisance of all the qualities of material things. Microscopes
and telescopes have enlarged our field of vision, and have brought
the infinitely small and the infinitely distant within our range.
Our ear hears vibrations at a certain rate per second, and no
doubt if it were more delicately organised we could hear sounds
where now is silence. Sometimes the creatures whom we call
`inferior' seem to have senses that apprehend much of which we are
not aware. Balaam's ass saw the obstructing angel before Balaam
did. Nor is there any reason to suppose that all the powers of the
mind find tools to work with in the body. It is possible that that
body which is the fit instrument of the spirit may become its
means of knowing more deeply, thinking more wisely, understanding
more swiftly, comprehending more widely, remembering more firmly
and judging more soundly. It is possible that the contrast between
then and now may be like the contrast between telegraph and slow
messenger in regard to the rapidity, between photograph and poor
daub in regard to the truthfulness, between a full-orbed circle
and a fragmentary arc in regard to the completeness of the
messages which the body brings to the indwelling self.

But, once more, the body unredeemed has appetites and desires
which may lead to their own satisfaction, which do lead to sordid
cares and weary toil. `The flesh lusts against the spirit and the
spirit against the flesh.' The redeemed body will have in it
nothing to tempt and nothing to clog, but will be a helper to the
spirit and a source of strength. Glorious work of God as the body
is, it has its weaknesses, its limitations, and its tendencies to
evil. We must not be tempted into brooding over unanswered
questions as to `How do the dead rise, and with what body do they
come?' But we can lift our eyes to the mountain-top where Jesus
went up to pray. `And as He prayed the fashion of His countenance
was altered, and His raiment became white and dazzling'; and He
was capable of entering into the Shekinah cloud and holding
fellowship therein with the Father, who attested His Sonship and
bade us listen to His voice. And we can look to Olivet and follow
the ascending Jesus as He lets His benediction drop on the
upturned faces of His friends, until He again passes into the
Shekinah cloud, and leaving the world, goes to the Father. And
from both His momentary transfiguration and His permanent
Ascension we can draw the certain assurance that `He 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 subdue all things unto Himself.'

III. The redeemed body is a consequence of Christ's indwelling
Spirit.

It is no natural result of death or resurrection, but is the
outcome of the process begun on earth, by which, `through faith
and the righteousness of faith,' the spirit is life. The context
distinctly enforces this view by its double use of `adoption,'
which in one aspect has already been received, and is manifested
by the fact that `now are we the sons of God,' and in another
aspect is still `waited' for. The Christian man in his regenerated
spirit has been born again; the Christian man still waits for the
completion of that sonship in a time when the regenerated spirit
will no longer dwell in the clay cottage of `this tabernacle,' but
will inhabit a congruous dwelling in `the building of God not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens.'

Scripture is too healthy and comprehensive to be contented with a
merely spiritual regeneration, and is withal too spiritual to be
satisfied with a merely material heaven. It gives full place to
both elements, and yet decisively puts all belonging to the latter
second. It lays down the laws that for a complete humanity there
must be body as well as spirit; that there must be a
correspondence between the two, and as is the spirit so must the
body be, and further, that the process must begin at the centre
and work outwards, so that the spirit must first be transformed,
and then the body must be participant of the transformation.

All that Scripture says about `rising in glory' is said about
believers. It is represented as a spiritual process. They who have
the Spirit of God in their spirits because they have it receive
the glorified body which is like their Saviour's. It is not enough
to die in order to `rise glorious.' `If the Spirit of Him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up
Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His
Spirit that dwelleth in you.' The resurrection is promised for all
mankind, but it may be a resurrection in which there shall be
endless living and no glory, nor any beauty and no blessedness.
But the body may be `sown in weakness,' and in weakness raised; it
may be `sown in dishonour' and in dishonour raised; it may be sown
dead, and raised a living death. `Many of them that sleep in the
dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some
to shame and everlasting contempt.' Does that mean nothing? `They
that have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.' Does
that mean nothing? There are dark mysteries in these and similar
words of Scripture which should make us all pause and solemnly
reflect. The sole way which leads to the resurrection of glory is
the way of faith in Jesus Christ. If we yield ourselves to Him, He
will plant His Spirit in our spirits, will guide and growingly
sanctify us through life, will deliver us by the indwelling of the
Spirit of life in Him from the law of sin and death. Nor will His
transforming power cease till it has pervaded our whole being with
its fiery energy, and we stand at the last men like Christ,
redeemed in body, soul, and spirit, `according to the mighty
working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.'

\chapter{The Interceding Spirit}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 26}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which
cannot be uttered.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 26.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Pentecost was a transitory sign of a perpetual gift. The tongues
of fire and the rushing mighty wind, which were at first the most
conspicuous results of the gifts of the Spirit, tongues, and
prophecies, and gifts of healing, which were to the early Church
itself and to onlookers palpable demonstrations of an indwelling
power, were little more lasting than the fire and the wind. Does
anything remain? This whole great chapter is Paul's triumphant
answer to such a question. The Spirit of God dwells in every
believer as the source of his true life, is for him `the Spirit of
adoption' and witnesses with his spirit that he is a child of God,
and a joint-heir with Christ. Not only does that Spirit co-operate
with the human spirit in this witness-bearing, but the verse, of
which our text is a part, points to another form of co-operation:
for the word rendered in the earlier part of the verse `helpeth'
in the original suggests more distinctly that the Spirit of God in
His intercession for us works in association with us.

First, then---

I. The Spirit's intercession is not carried on apart from us.

Much modern hymnology goes wrong in this point, that it represents
the Spirit's intercession as presented in heaven rather than as
taking place within the personal being of the believer. There is a
broad distinction carefully observed throughout Scripture between
the representations of the work of Christ and that of the Spirit
of Christ. The former in its character and revelation and
attainment was wrought upon earth, and in its character of
intercession and bestowment of blessings is discharged at the
right hand of God in heaven; the whole of the Spirit's work, on
the other hand, is wrought in human spirits here. The context
speaks of intercession expressed in `groanings which cannot be
uttered,' and which, unexpressed though they are, are fully
understood `by Him who searches the heart.' Plainly, therefore,
these groanings come from human hearts, and as plainly are the
Divine Spirit's voicing them.

II. The Spirit's intercession in our spirits consists in our own
divinely-inspired longings.

The Apostle has just been speaking of another groaning within
ourselves, which is the expression of `the earnest expectation' of
`the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body'; and he says
that that longing will be the more patient the more it is full of
hope. This, then, is Paul's conception of the normal attitude of a
Christian soul; but that attitude is hard to keep up in one's own
strength, because of the distractions of time and sense which are
ever tending to disturb the continuity and fixity of that onward
look, and to lead us rather to be satisfied with the gross, dull
present. That redemption of the body, with all which it implies
and includes, ought to be the supreme object to which each
Christian heart should ever be turning, and Christian prayers
should be directed. But our own daily experience makes us only too
sure that such elevation above, and remoteness from earthly
thoughts, with all their pettinesses and limitations, is
impossible for us in our own strength. As Paul puts it here, `We
know not what to pray for'; nor can we fix and focus our desires,
nor present them `as we ought.' It is to this weakness and
incompleteness of our desires and prayers that the help of the
Spirit is directed. He strengthens our longings by His own direct
operation. The more vivid our anticipations and the more steadfast
our hopes, and the more our spirits reach out to that future
redemption, the more are we bound to discern something more than
human imaginings in them, and to be sure that such visions are too
good not to be true, too solid to be only the play of our own
fancy. The more we are conscious of these experiences as our own,
the more certain we shall be that in them it is not we that speak,
but `the Spirit of the Father that speaketh in us.'

III. These divinely-inspired longings are incapable of full
expression.

They are shallow feelings that can be spoken. Language breaks down
in the attempt to express our deepest emotions and our truest
love. For all the deepest things in man, inarticulate utterance is
the most self-revealing. Grief can say more in a sob and a tear
than in many weak words; love finds its tongue in the light of an
eye and the clasp of a hand. The groanings which rise from the
depths of the Christian soul cannot be forced into the narrow
frame-work of human language; and just because they are
unutterable are to be recognised as the voice of the Holy
Spirit.

But where amidst the Christian experience of to-day shall we find
anything in the least like these unutterable longings after the
redemption of the body which Paul here takes it for granted are
the experience of all Christians? There is no more startling
condemnation of the average Christianity of our times than the
calm certainty with which through all this epistle the Apostle
takes it for granted that the experience of the Roman Christians
will universally endorse his statements. Look for a moment at what
these statements are. Listen to the briefest summary of them: `We
cry, Abba, Father'; `We are children of God'; `We suffer with Him
that we may be glorified with Him'; `Glory shall be revealed to
usward'; `We have the first-fruits of the Spirit'; `We ourselves
groan within ourselves'; `By hope were we saved'; `We hope for
that which we see not'; `Then do we with patience wait for it';
`We know that to them that love God all things work together for
good'; `In all these things we are more than conquerors'; `Neither
death nor life... nor any other creature shall be able to separate
us from the love of God.' He believed that in these rapturous and
triumphant words he was gathering together the experience of every
Roman Christian, and would evoke from their lips a confident
`Amen.' Where are the communities to-day in whose hearing these
words could be reiterated with the like assurance? How few among
us there are who know anything of these `groanings which cannot be
uttered!' How few among us there are whose spirits are stretching
out eager desires towards the land of perpetual summer, like
migratory birds in northern latitudes when the autumn days are
shortening and the temperature is falling!

But, however we must feel that our poor experience falls far short
of the ideal in our text, an ideal which was to some extent
realised in the early Christian Church, we must beware of taking
the imperfections of our experience as any evidence of the
unreality of our Christianity. They are a proof that we have
limited and impeded the operation of the Spirit within us. They
teach us that He will not intercede `with groanings which cannot
be uttered' unless we let Him speak through our voices. Therefore,
if we find that in our own consciousness there is little to
correspond to those unuttered groanings, we should take the
warning: `Quench not the Spirit.' `Grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.'

IV. The unuttered longings are sure to be answered.

He that searcheth the heart knows the meaning of the Spirit's
unspoken prayers; and looking into the depths of the human spirit
interprets its longings, discriminating between the mere human and
partial expression and the divinely-inspired desire which may be
unexpressed. If our prayers are weak, they are answered in the
measure in which they embody in them, though perhaps mistaken by
us, a divine longing. Apparent disappointment of our petitions may
be real answers to our real prayer. It was because Jesus loved
Mary and Martha and Lazarus that He abode still in the same place
where He was, to let Lazarus die that He might be raised again.
That was the true answer to the sisters' hope of His immediate
coming. God's way of giving to us is to breathe within us a
desire, and then to answer the desire inbreathed. So, longing is
the prophecy of fulfilment when it is longing according to the
will of God. They who `hunger and thirst after righteousness' may
ever be sure that their bread shall be given them, and their water
will be made sure. The true object of our desires is often not
clear to us, and so we err in translating it into words. Let us be
thankful that we pray to a God who can discern the prayer within
the prayer, and often gives the substance of our petitions in the
very act of refusing their form.

\chapter{The Gift That Brings All Gifts}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 32}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,
how shall He not with Him also freely give us all
things?'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 32.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We have here an allusion to, if not a distinct quotation from, the
narrative in Genesis, of Abraham's offering up of Isaac. The same
word which is employed in the Septuagint version of the Old
Testament, to translate the Hebrew word rendered in our Bible as
`withheld,' is employed here by the Apostle. And there is
evidently floating before his mind the thought that, in some
profound and real sense, there is an analogy between that wondrous
and faithful act of giving up and the transcendent and stupendous
gift to the world, from God, of His Son.

If we take that point of view, the language of my text rises into
singular force, and suggests many very deep thoughts, about which,
perhaps, silence is best. But led by that analogy, let us deal
with these words.

I. Consider this mysterious act of divine surrender.

The analogy seems to suggest to us, strange as it may be, and
remote from the cold and abstract ideas of the divine nature which
it is thought to be philosophical to cherish, that something
corresponding to the pain and loss that shadowed the patriarch's
heart flitted across the divine mind when the Father sent the Son
to be the Saviour of the world. Not merely to give, but to give
up, is the highest crown and glory of love, as we know it. And who
shall venture to say that we so fully apprehend the divine nature
as to be warranted in declaring that some analogy to that is
impossible for Him? Our language is, `I will not offer unto God
that which doth cost me nothing.' Let us bow in silence before the
dim intimation that seems to flicker out of the words of my text,
that so He says to us, `I will not offer unto you that which doth
cost Me nothing.' `He \textit{spared} not His own Son'; withheld
Him not from us.

But passing from that which, I dare say, many of you may suppose
to be fanciful and unwarranted, let us come upon the surer ground
of the other words of my text. And notice how the reality of the
surrender is emphasised by the closeness of the bond which, in the
mysterious eternity, knits together the Father and the Son. As
with Abraham, so in this lofty example, of which Abraham and Isaac
were but as dim, wavering reflections in water, the Son is His own
Son. It seems to me impossible, upon any fair interpretation of
the words before us, to refrain from giving to that epithet here
its very highest and most mysterious sense. It cannot be any mere
equivalent for Messiah, it cannot merely mean a man who was like
God in purity of nature and in closeness of communion. For the
force of the analogy and the emphasis of that word which is even
more emphatic in the Greek than in the English `His \textit{own}
Son,' point to a community of nature, to a uniqueness and
singleness of relation, to a closeness of intimacy, to which no
other is a parallel. And so we have to estimate the measure of the
surrender by the tenderness and awfulness of the bond. `Having one
Son, His well-beloved, He sent Him.'

Notice, again, how the greatness of the surrender is made more
emphatic by the contemplation of it in its double negative and
positive aspect, in the two successive clauses. `He spared not His
Son, but delivered Him up,' an absolute, positive giving of Him
over to the humiliation of the life and to the mystery of the
death.

And notice how the tenderness and the beneficence that were the
sole motive of the surrender are lifted into light in the last
words, `for us all.' The single, sole reason that bowed, if I may
so say, the divine purpose, and determined the mysterious act, was
a pure desire for our blessing. No definition is given as to the
manner in which that surrender wrought for our good. The Apostle
does not need to dwell upon that. His purpose is to emphasise the
entire unselfishness, the utter simplicity of the motive which
moved the divine will. One great throb of love to the whole of
humanity led to that transcendent surrender, before which we can
only bow and say, `Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable
gift.'

And now, notice how this mysterious act is grasped by the Apostle
here as what I may call the illuminating fact as to the whole
divine nature. From it, and from it alone, there falls a blaze of
light on the deepest things in God. We are accustomed to speak of
Christ's perfect life of unselfishness, and His death of pure
beneficence, as being the great manifestation to us all that in
His heart there is an infinite fountain of love to us. We are,
further, accustomed to speak of Christ's mission and death as
being the revelation to us of the love of God as well as of the
Man Christ Jesus, because we believe that `God was in Christ
reconciling the world,' and that He has so manifested and revealed
the very nature of divinity to us, in His life and in His person,
that, as He Himself says, `He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father.' And every conclusion that we draw as to the love of
Christ is, \textit{ipso facto}, a conclusion as to the love of
God. But my text looks at the matter from rather a different point
of view, and bids us see, in Christ's mission and sacrifice, the
great demonstration of the love of God, not only because `God was
in Christ,' but because the Father's will, conceived of as
distinct from, and yet harmonious with, the will of the Son, gives
Him up for us. And we have to say, not only that we see the love
of God in the love of Christ, but `God so loved the world that He
sent His only begotten Son' that we might have life through
Him.

These various phases of the love of Christ as manifesting the
divine love, may not be capable of perfect harmonising in our
thoughts, but they do blend into one, and by reason of them all,
`God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.' We have to think not only of Abraham
who gave up, but of the unresisting, innocent Isaac, bearing on
his shoulders the wood for the burnt offering, as the Christ bore
the Cross on His, and suffering himself to be bound upon the pile,
not only by the cords that tied his limbs, but by the cords of
obedience and submission, and in both we have to bow before the
Apocalypse of divine love.

II. So, secondly, look at the power of this divine surrender to
bring with it all other gifts.

`How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' The
Apostle's triumphant question requires for its affirmative answer
only the belief in the unchangeableness of the Divine heart, and
the uniformity of the Divine purpose. And if these be recognised,
their conclusion inevitably follows. `With Him He will freely give
us all things.'

It is so, because the greater gift implies the less. We do not
expect that a man who hands over a million of pounds to another,
to help him, will stick at a farthing afterwards. If you give a
diamond you may well give a box to keep it in. In God's gift the
lesser will follow the lead of the greater; and whatsoever a man
can want, it is a smaller thing for Him to bestow, than was the
gift of His Son.

There is a beautiful contrast between the manners of giving the
two sets of gifts implied in words of the original, perhaps
scarcely capable of being reproduced in any translation. The
expression that is rendered `freely give,' implies that there is a
grace and a pleasantness in the act of bestowal. God gave in
Christ, what we may reverently say it was something like pain to
give. Will He not give the lesser, whatever they may be, which it
is the joy of His heart to communicate? The greater implies the
less.

Farther, this one great gift draws all other gifts after it,
because the purpose of the greater gift cannot be attained without
the bestowment of the lesser. He does not begin to build being
unable to finish; He does not miscalculate His resources, nor
stultify Himself by commencing upon a large scale, and having to
stop short before the purpose with which He began is accomplished.
Men build great palaces, and are bankrupt before the roof is put
on. God lays His plans with the knowledge of His powers, and
having first of all bestowed this large gift, is not going to have
it bestowed in vain for want of some smaller ones to follow it up.
Christ puts the same argument to us, beginning only at the other
end of the process. Paul says, `God has laid the foundation in
Christ.' Do you think He will stop before the headstone is put on?
Christ said, `It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the
Kingdom.' Do you think He will not give you bread and water on the
road to it? Will He send out His soldiers half-equipped; will it
be found when they are on their march that they have been started
with a defective commissariat, and with insufficient trenching
tools? Shall the children of the King, on the road to their
thrones, be left to scramble along anyhow, in want of what they
need to get there? That is not God's way of doing. He that hath
begun a good work will also perfect the same, and when He gave to
you and me His Son, He bound Himself to give us every subsidiary
and secondary blessing which was needed to make that Son's work
complete in each of us.

Again, this great blessing draws after it, by necessary
consequence, all other lesser and secondary gifts, inasmuch as, in
every real sense, everything is included and possessed in the
Christ when we receive Him. `With Him,' says Paul, as if that gift
once laid in a man's heart actually enclosed within it, and had
for its indispensable accompaniment the possession of every
smaller thing that a man can need, Jesus Christ is, as it were, a
great Cornucopia, a horn of abundance, out of which will pour,
with magic affluence, all manner of supplies according as we
require. This fountain flows with milk, wine, and water, as men
need. Everything is given us when Christ is given to us, because
Christ is the Heir of all things, and we possess all things in
Him; as some poor village maiden married to a prince in disguise,
who, on the morrow of her wedding finds that she is lady of broad
lands, and mistress of a kingdom. `He that spared not His own
Son,' not only `with Him will give,' but in Him has `given us all
things.'

And so, brethren, just as that great gift is the illuminating fact
in reference to the divine heart, so is it the interpreting fact
in reference to the divine dealings. Only when we keep firm hold
of Christ as the gift of God, and the Explainer of all that God
does, can we face the darkness, the perplexities, the torturing
questions that from the beginning have harassed men's minds as
they looked upon the mysteries of human misery. If we recognise
that God has given us His Son, then all things become, if not
plain, at least lighted with some gleam from that great gift; and
we feel that the surrender of Christ is the constraining fact
which shapes after its own likeness, and for its own purpose, all
the rest of God's dealings with men. That gift makes anything
believable, reasonable, possible, rather than that He should spare
not His own Son, and then should counterwork His own act by
sending the world anything but good.

III. And now, lastly, take one or two practical issues from these
thoughts, in reference to our own belief and conduct.

First, I would say, Let us correct our estimates of the relative
importance of the two sets of gifts. On the one side stands the
solitary Christ; on the other side are massed all delights of sense,
all blessings of time, all the things that the vulgar estimation of
men unanimously recognises to be good. These are only makeweights.
They are all lumped together into an `also.' They are but the golden
dust that may be filed off from the great ingot and solid block.
They are but the outward tokens of His far deeper and true
preciousness. They are secondary; He is the primary. What an
inversion of our notions of good! Do \emph{you} degrade all the
world's wealth, pleasantness, ease, prosperity, into an `also?' Are
you content to put it in the secondary place, as a result, if it
please Him, of Christ? Do you live as if you did? Which do you
hunger for most? Which do you labour for hardest? `Seek ye first the
Kingdom and the King, and all `these things shall be added unto
you.'

Let these thoughts teach us that sorrow too is one of the gifts of
the Christ. The words of my text, at first sight, might seem to be
simply a promise of abundant earthly good. But look what lies
close beside them, and is even part of the same triumphant burst.
`Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword?' These are some of the `all things'
which Paul expected that God would give him and his brethren. And
looking upon all, he says, `They all work together for good'; and
in them all we may be more than conquerors. It would be a poor,
shabby issue of such a great gift as that of which we have been
speaking, if it were only to be followed by the sweetnesses and
prosperity and wealth of this world. But here is the point that we
have to keep hold of---inasmuch as He gives us all things, let us
take all the things that come to us as being as distinctly the
gifts of His love, as is the gift of Christ Himself. A wise
physician, to an ignorant onlooker, might seem to be acting in
contradictory fashions when in the one moment he slashes into a
limb, with a sharp, gleaming knife, and in the next sedulously
binds the wounds, and closes the arteries, but the purpose of both
acts is one.

The diurnal revolution of the earth brings the joyful sunrise and
the pathetic sunset. The same annual revolution whirls us through
the balmy summer days and the biting winter ones. God's purpose is
one. His methods vary. The road goes straight to its goal; but it
sometimes runs in tunnels dank and dark and stifling, and
sometimes by sunny glades and through green pastures. God's
purpose is always love, brother. His withdrawals are gifts, and
sorrow is not the least of the benefits which come to us through
the Man of Sorrows.

So again, let these thoughts teach us to live by a very quiet and
peaceful faith. We find it a great deal easier to trust God for
Heaven than for earth---for the distant blessings than for the
near ones. Many a man will venture his soul into God's hands, who
would hesitate to venture to-morrow's food there. Why? Is it not
because we do not really trust Him for the greater that we find it
so hard to trust Him for the less? Is it not because we want the
less more really than we want the greater, that we can put
ourselves off with faith for the one, and want something more
solid to grasp for the other? Live in the calm confidence that God
gives all things; and gives us for to-morrow as for eternity; for
earth as for heaven.

And, last of all, make you quite sure that you have taken
\textit{the} great gift of God. He gives it to all the world, but
they only have it who accept it by faith. Have you, my brother? I
look out upon the lives of the mass of professing Christians; and
this question weighs on my heart, judging by conduct---have they
really got Christ for their own? `Wherefore do ye spend your money
for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which
satisfieth not?' Look how you are all fighting and scrambling, and
sweating and fretting, to get hold of the goods of this present
life, and here is a gift gleaming before you all the while that
you will not condescend to take. Like a man standing in a
market-place offering sovereigns for nothing, which nobody accepts
because they think the offer is too good to be true, so God
complains and wails: I have stretched out My hands all the day,
laden with gifts, and no man regarded.

\begin{verse}
`It is only heaven may be had for the asking; \\
 It is only God that is given away.'
\end{verse}

\noindent He gives His Son. Take Him by humble faith in His
sacrifice and Spirit; take Him, and with Him He freely gives you
all things.

\chapter{More Than Conquerors}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 37}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him
that loved us.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 37.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

In order to understand and feel the full force of this triumphant
saying of the Apostle, we must observe that it is a negative
answer to the preceding questions, `Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?' A heterogeneous mass
the Apostle here brigades together as an antagonistic army. They
are alike in nothing except that they are all evils. There is no
attempt at an exhaustive enumeration, or at classification. He
clashes down, as it were, a miscellaneous mass of evil things, and
then triumphs over them, and all the genus to which they belong,
as being utterly impotent to drag men away from Jesus Christ. To
ask the question is to answer it, but the form of the answer is
worth notice. Instead of directly replying, `No! no such powerless
things as these can separate us from the love of Christ,' he says,
`No! In all these things, whilst weltering amongst them, whilst
ringed round about by them, as by encircling enemies, ``we are
more than conquerors.''\,' Thereby, he suggests that there is
something needing to be done by us, in order that the foes may not
exercise their natural effect. And so, taking the words of my text
in connection with that to which they are an answer, we have three
things---the impotent enemies of love; the abundant victory of
love; `We are more than conquerors'; and the love that makes us
victorious. Let us look then at these three things briefly.

I. First of all, the impotent enemies of love.

There is contempt in the careless massing together of the foes
which the Apostle enumerates. He begins with the widest word that
covers everything---`affliction.' Then he specifies various forms
of it---`distress,' \textit{straitening}, as the word might be
rendered, then he comes to evils inflicted for Christ's sake by
hostile men---`persecution,' then he names purely physical evils,
`hunger' and `nakedness,' then he harks back again to man's
antagonism, `peril,' and `sword.' And thus carelessly, and without
an effort at logical order, he throws together, as specimens of
their class, these salient points, as it were, and crests of the
great sea, whose billows threaten to roll over us; and he laughs
at them all, as impotent and nought, when compared with the love
of Christ, which shields us from them all.

Now it must be noticed that here, in his triumphant question, the
Apostle means not our love to Christ but His to us; and not even
our sense of that love, but the fact itself. And his question is
just this:---Is there any evil in the world that can make Christ
stop loving a man that cleaves to Him? And, as I said, to ask the
question is to answer it. The two things belong to two different
regions. They have nothing in common. The one moves amongst the
low levels of earth; the other dwells up amidst the abysses of
eternity, and to suppose that anything that assails and afflicts
us here has any effect in making that great heart cease to love us
is to fancy that the mists can quench the sunlight, is to suppose
that that which lies down low in the earth can rise to poison and
to darken the heavens.

There is no need, in order to rise to the full height of the
Christian contempt for calamity, to deny any of its terrible
power. These things can separate us from much. They can separate
us from joy, from hope, from almost all that makes life desirable.
They can strip us to the very quick, but the quick they cannot
touch. The frost comes and kills the flowers, browns the leaves,
cuts off the stems, binds the sweet music of the flowing rivers in
silent chains, casts mists and darkness over the face of the
solitary grey world, but it does not touch the life that is in the
root.

And so all these outward sorrows that have power over the whole of
the outward life, and can slay joy and all but stifle hope, and
can ban men into irrevocable darkness and unalleviated solitude,
they do not touch in the smallest degree the secret bond that
binds the heart to Jesus, nor in any measure affect the flow of
His love to us. Therefore we may front them and smile at them and
say:

\begin{verse}
`Do as thou wilt, devouring time, \\
 With this wide world, and all its fading sweets';
\end{verse}

\noindent `my flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength
of my heart, and my portion for ever.'

You need not be very much afraid of anything being taken from you
as long as Christ is left you. You will not be altogether hopeless
so long as Christ, who is our hope, still speaks His faithful
promises to you, nor will the world be lonely and dark to them who
feel that they are lapt in the sweet and all-pervading
consciousness of the changeless love of the heart of Christ.
`Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution?'---in any of
these things, `we are more than conquerors through Him that loved
us.' Brethren, that is the Christian way of looking at all
externals, not only at the dark and the sorrowful, but at the
bright and the gladsome. If the withdrawal of external blessings
does not touch the central sanctities and sweetness of a life in
communion with Jesus, the bestowal of external blessedness does
not much brighten or gladden it. We can face the withdrawal of
them all, we need not covet the possession of them all, for we
have all in Christ; and the world without His love contributes
less to our blessedness and our peace than the absence of all its
joys with His love does. So let us feel that earth, in its givings
and in its withholdings, is equally impotent to touch the one
thing that we need, the conscious possession of the love of
Christ.

All these foes, as I have said, have no power over the fact of
Christ's love to us, but they have power, and a very terrible
power, over our consciousness of that love; and we may so kick
against the pricks as to lose, in the pain of our sorrows, the
assurance of His presence, or be so fascinated by the false and
vulgar sweetnesses and promises of the world as, in the eagerness
of our chase after them, to lose our sense of the all-sufficing
certitude of His love. Tribulation does not strip us of His love,
but tribulation may so darken our perceptions that we cannot see
the sun. Joys need not rob us of His heart, but joys may so fill
ours, as that there shall be no longing for His presence within
us. Therefore let us not exaggerate the impotence of these foes,
but feel that there are real dangers, as in the sorrows so in the
blessings of our outward life, and that the evil to be dreaded is
that outward things, whether in their bright or in their dark
aspects, may come between us and the home of our hearts, the love
of the loving Christ.

II. So then, note next, the abundant victory of love.

Mark how the Apostle, in his lofty and enthusiastic way, is not
content here with simply saying that he and his fellows conquer.
It would be a poor thing, he seems to think, if the balance barely
inclined to our side, if the victory were but just won by a hair's
breadth and triumph were snatched, as it were, out of the very
jaws of defeat. There must be something more than that to
correspond to the power of the victorious Christ that is in us.
And so, he says, we very abundantly conquer; we not only hinder
these things which he has been enumerating from doing that which
it is their aim apparently to do, but we actually convert them
into helpers or allies. The `\textit{more} than conquerors' seems
to mean, if there is any definite idea to be attached to it, the
conversion of the enemy conquered into a friend and a helper. The
American Indians had a superstition that every foe tomahawked sent
fresh strength into the warrior's arm. And so all afflictions and
trials rightly borne, and therefore overcome, make a man stronger,
and bring him nearer to Jesus Christ.

Note then, further, that not only is this victory more than bare
victory, being the conversion of the enemy into allies, but that
it is a victory which is won even whilst we are in the midst of
the strife. It is not that we shall be conquerors in some far-off
heaven, when the noise of battle has ceased and they hang the
trumpet in the hall, but it is here now, in the hand-to-hand and
foot-to-foot death-grapple that we do overcome. No ultimate
victory, in some far-off and blessed heaven, will be ours unless
moment by moment, here, to-day,' we \textit{are} more than
conquerors through Him that loved us.'

So, then, about this abundant victory there are these things to
say:---You conquer the world only, then, when you make it
contribute to your conscious possession of the love of Christ.
That is the real victory, the only real victory in life. Men talk
about overcoming here on earth, and they mean thereby the
accomplishment of their designs. A man has `victory,' as it is
phrased, in the world's strife, when he secures for himself the
world's goods at which he has aimed, but that is not the Christian
idea of the conquest of calamity. Everything that makes me feel
more thrillingly in my inmost heart the verity and the sweetness
of the love of Jesus Christ as my very own, is conquered by me and
compelled to subserve my highest good, and everything which slips
a film between me and Him, which obscures the light of His face to
me, which makes me less desirous of, and less sure of, and less
happy in, and less satisfied with, His love, is an enemy that has
conquered me. And all these evils as the world calls them, and as
our bleeding hearts have often felt them to be, are converted into
allies and friends when they drive us to Christ, and keep us close
to Him, in the conscious possession of His sweet and changeless
love. That is the victory, and the only victory. Has the world
helped me to lay hold of Christ? Then I have conquered it. Has the
world loosened my grasp upon Him? Then it has conquered me.

Note then, further, that this abundant victory depends on how we
deal with the changes of our outward lives, our sorrows or our
joys. There is nothing, \textit{per se}, salutary in affliction,
there is nothing, \textit{per se}, antagonistic to Christian faith
in it either. No man is made better by his sorrows, no man need be
made worse by them. That depends upon how we take the things which
come storming against us. The set of your sails, and the firmness
of your grasp upon the tiller, determine whether the wind shall
carry you to the haven or shall blow you out, a wandering waif,
upon a shoreless and melancholy sea. There are some of you that
have been blown away from your moorings by sorrow. There are some
professing Christians who have been hindered in their work, and
had their peace and their faith shattered all but irrevocably,
because they have not accepted, in the spirit in which they were
sent, the trials that have come for their good. The worst of all
afflictions is a wasted affliction, and they are all wasted unless
they teach us more of the reality and the blessedness of the love
of Jesus Christ.

III. Lastly, notice the love which makes us conquerors.

The Apostle, with a wonderful instinctive sense of fitness, names
Christ here by a name congruous to the thoughts which occupy his
mind, when he speaks of Him that loved us. His question has been,
Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? And his answer
is, So far from that being the case, that very love, by occasion
of sorrows and afflictions, tightens its grasp upon us, and, by
the communication of itself to us, makes us more than conquerors.
This great love of Jesus Christ, from which nothing can separate
us, will use the very things that seem to threaten our separation
as a means of coming nearer to us in its depth and in its
preciousness.

The Apostle says `Him that loved us,' and the words in the
original distinctly point to some one fact as being the great
instance of love. That is to say they point to His death. And so
we may say Christ's love helps us to conquer because in His death
He interprets for us all possible sorrows. If it be true that love
to each of us nailed Him there, then nothing that can come to us
but must be a love-token, and a fruit of that same love. The Cross
is the key to all tribulation, and shows it to be a token and an
instrument of an unchanging love.

Further, that great love of Christ helps us to conquer, because in
His sufferings and death He becomes the Companion of all the
weary. The rough, dark, lonely road changes its look when we see
His footprints there, not without specks of blood in them, where
the thorns tore His feet. We conquer our afflictions if we
recognise that `in all our afflictions He was afflicted,' and that
Himself has drunk to its bitterest dregs the cup which He commends
to our lips. He has left a kiss upon its margin, and we need not
shrink when He holds it out to us and says `Drink ye all of it.'
That one thought of the companionship of the Christ in our sorrows
makes us more than conquerors.

And lastly, this dying Lover of our souls communicates to us all, if
we will, the strength whereby we may coerce all outward things into
being helps to the fuller participation of His perfect love. Our
sorrows and all the other distracting externals do seek to drag us
away from Him. Is all that happens in counteraction to that pull of
the world, that we tighten our grasp upon Him, and will not let Him
go; as some poor wretch might the horns of the altar that did not
respond to his grasp? Nay! what we lay hold of is no dead thing, but
a living hand, and it grasps us more tightly than we can ever grasp
it. So because He holds us, and not because we hold Him, we shall
not be dragged away, by anything outside of our own weak and
wavering souls, and all these embattled foes may come against us,
they may shear off everything else, they cannot sever Christ from us
unless we ourselves throw Him away. `In this thou shalt conquer.'
`They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of His
testimony.'

\chapter{Love's Triumph}
\markright{ROMANS viii. 38, 39}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from
the love of God.'---\textsc{Romans} viii. 38, 39.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

These rapturous words are the climax of the Apostle's long
demonstration that the Gospel is the revelation of `the
righteousness of God from faith to faith,' and is thereby `the
power of God unto salvation.' What a contrast there is between the
beginning and the end of his argument! It started with sombre, sad
words about man's sinfulness and aversion from the knowledge of
God. It closes with this sunny outburst of triumph; like some
stream rising among black and barren cliffs, or melancholy
moorlands, and foaming through narrow rifts in gloomy ravines, it
reaches at last fertile lands, and flows calm, the sunlight
dancing on its broad surface, till it loses itself at last in the
unfathomable ocean of the love of God.

We are told that the Biblical view of human nature is too dark.
Well, the important question is not whether it is dark, but
whether it is true. But, apart from that, the doctrine of
Scripture about man's moral condition is not dark, if you will
take the whole of it together. Certainly, a part of it is very
dark. The picture, for instance, of what men are, painted at the
beginning of this Epistle, is shadowed like a canvas of
Rembrandt's. The Bible is `Nature's sternest painter but her
best.' But to get the whole doctrine of Scripture on the subject,
we have to take its confidence as to what men may become, as well
as its portrait of what they are---and then who will say that the
anthropology of Scripture is gloomy? To me it seems that the
unrelieved blackness of the view which, because it admits no fall,
can imagine no rise, which sees in all man's sins and sorrows no
token of the dominion of an alien power, and has, therefore, no
reason to believe that they can be separated from humanity, is the
true `Gospel of despair,' and that the system which looks steadily
at all the misery and all the wickedness, and calmly proposes to
cast it all out, is really the only doctrine of human nature which
throws any gleam of light on the darkness. Christianity begins
indeed with, `There is none that doeth good, no, not one,' but it
ends with this victorious p\ae{}an of our text.

And what a majestic close it is to the great words that have gone
before, fitly crowning even their lofty height! One might well
shrink from presuming to take such words as a text, with any idea
of exhausting or of enhancing them. My object is very much more
humble. I simply wish to bring out the remarkable order, in which
Paul here marshals, in his passionate, rhetorical amplification,
all the enemies that can be supposed to seek to wrench us away
from the love of God; and triumphs over them all. We shall best
measure the fullness of the words by simply taking these clauses
as they stand in the text.

I. The love of God is unaffected by the extremest changes of our
condition.

The Apostle begins his fervid catalogue of vanquished foes by a
pair of opposites which might seem to cover the whole
ground---`neither death nor life.' What more can be said? Surely,
these two include everything. From one point of view they do. But
yet, as we shall see, there is more to be said. And the special
reason for beginning with this pair of possible enemies is
probably to be found by remembering that they are a pair, that
between them they do cover the whole ground and represent the
\textit{extremes} of change which can befall us. The one stands at
the one pole, the other at the other. If these two stations, so
far from each other, are equally near to God's love, then no
intermediate point can be far from it. If the most violent change
which we can experience does not in the least matter to the grasp
which the love of God has on us, or to the grasp which we may have
on it, then no less violent a change can be of any consequence. It
is the same thought in a somewhat modified form, as we find in
another word of Paul's, `Whether we live, we live unto the Lord;
and whether we die, we die unto the Lord.' Our subordination to
Him is the same, and our consecration should be the same, in all
varieties of condition, even in that greatest of all variations.
His love to us makes no account of that mightiest of changes. How
should it be affected by slighter ones?

The distance of a star is measured by the apparent change in its
position, as seen from different points of the earth's surface or
orbit. But this great Light stands steadfast in our heaven, nor
moves a hair's-breadth, nor pours a feebler ray on us, whether we
look up to it from the midsummer day of busy life, or from the
midwinter of death. These opposites are parted by a distance to
which the millions of miles of the world's path among the stars
are but a point, and yet the love of God streams down on them
alike.

Of course, the confidence in immortality is implied in this
thought. Death does not, in the slightest degree, affect the
essential vitality of the soul; so it does not, in the slightest
degree, affect the outflow of God's love to that soul. It is a
change of condition and circumstance, and no more. He does not
lose us in the dust of death. The withered leaves on the pathway
are trampled into mud, and indistinguishable to human eyes; but He
sees them even as when they hung green and sunlit on the mystic
tree of life.

How beautifully this thought contrasts with the saddest aspect of
the power of death in our human experience! He is Death the
Separator, who unclasps our hands from the closest, dearest grasp,
and divides asunder joints and marrow, and parts soul and body,
and withdraws us from all our habitude and associations and
occupations, and loosens every bond of society and concord, and
hales us away into a lonely land. But there is one bond which his
`abhorred shears' cannot cut. Their edge is turned on \textit{it}.
One Hand holds us in a grasp which the fleshless fingers of Death
in vain strive to loosen. The separator becomes the uniter; he
rends us apart from the world that He may `bring us to God.' The
love filtered by drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood
in death; `for I am persuaded, that neither death nor life shall
be able to separate us from the love of God.'

II. The love of God is undiverted from us by any other order of
beings.

`Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,' says Paul. Here we
pass from conditions affecting ourselves to living beings beyond
ourselves. Now, it is important for understanding the precise
thought of the Apostle to observe that this expression, when used
without any qualifying adjective, seems uniformly to mean good
angels, the hierarchy of blessed spirits before the throne. So
that there is no reference to `spiritual wickedness in high
places' striving to draw men away from God. The supposition which
the Apostle makes is, indeed, an impossible one, that these
ministering spirits, who are sent forth to minister to them who
shall be heirs of salvation, should so forget their mission and
contradict their nature as to seek to bar us out from the love
which it is their chiefest joy to bring to us. He knows it to be
an impossible supposition, and its very impossibility gives energy
to his conclusion, just as when in the same fashion he makes the
other equally impossible supposition about an angel from heaven
preaching another gospel than that which he had preached to
them.

So we may turn the general thought of this second category of
impotent efforts in two different ways, and suggest, first, that
it implies the utter powerlessness of any third party in regard to
the relations between our souls and God.

We alone have to do with Him alone. The awful fact of
individuality, that solemn mystery of our personal being, has its
most blessed or its most dread manifestation in our relation to
God. There no other Being has any power. Counsel and stimulus,
suggestion or temptation, instruction or lies, which may tend to
lead us nearer to Him or away from Him, they may indeed give us;
but after they have done their best or their worst, all depends on
the personal act of our own innermost being. Man or angel can
affect that, but from without. The old mystics called prayer `the
flight of the lonely soul to the only God.' It is the name for all
religion. These two, God and the soul, have to `transact,' as our
Puritan forefathers used to say, as if there were no other beings
in the universe but only they two. Angels and principalities and
powers may stand beholding with sympathetic joy; they may minister
blessing and guardianship in many ways; but the decisive act of
union between God and the soul they can neither effect nor
prevent.

And as for them, so for men around us; the limits of their power
to harm us are soon set. They may shut us out from human love by
calumnies, and dig deep gulfs of alienation between us and dear
ones; they may hurt and annoy us in a thousand ways with
slanderous tongues, and arrows dipped in poisonous hatred, but one
thing they cannot do. They may build a wall around us, and
imprison us from many a joy and many a fair prospect, but they
cannot put a roof on it to keep out the sweet influences from
above, or hinder us from looking up to the heavens. Nobody can
come between us and God but ourselves.

Or, we may turn this general thought in another direction, and
say, These blessed spirits around the throne do not absorb and
intercept His love. They gather about its steps in their `solemn
troops and sweet societies'; but close as are their ranks, and
innumerable as is their multitude, they do not prevent that love
from passing beyond them to us on the outskirts of the crowd. The
planet nearest the sun is drenched and saturated with fiery
brightness, but the rays from the centre of life pass on to each
of the sister spheres in its turn, and travel away outwards to
where the remotest of them all rolls in its far-off orbit, unknown
for millenniums to dwellers closer to the sun, but through all the
ages visited by warmth and light according to its needs. Like that
poor, sickly woman who could lay her wasted fingers on the hem of
Christ's garment, notwithstanding the thronging multitude, we can
reach our hands through all the crowd, or rather He reaches His
strong hand to us and heals and blesses us. All the guests are fed
full at that great table. One's gain is not another's loss. The
multitudes sit on the green grass, and the last man of the last
fifty gets as much as the first. `They did all eat, and were
filled'; and more remains than fed them all. So all beings are
`nourished from the King's country,' and none jostle others out of
their share. This healing fountain is not exhausted of its
curative power by the early comers. `I will give unto this last,
even as unto thee.' `Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God.'

III. The love of God is raised above the power of time.

`Nor things present, nor things to come,' is the Apostle's next
class of powers impotent to disunite us from the love of God. The
rhythmical arrangement of the text deserves to be noticed, as
bearing not only on its music and rhetorical flow, but as
affecting its force. We had first a pair of opposites, and then a
triplet; `death and life: angels, principalities, and powers.' We
have again a pair of opposites; `things present, things to come,'
again followed by a triplet, `height nor depth, nor any other
creature.' The effect of this is to divide the whole into two, and
to throw the first and second classes more closely together, as
also the third and fourth. Time and Space, these two mysterious
ideas, which work so fatally on all human love, are powerless
here.

The great revelation of God, on which the whole of Judaism was
built, was that made to Moses of the name `I Am that I Am.' And
parallel to the verbal revelation was the symbol of the Bush,
burning and unconsumed, which is so often misunderstood. It
appears wholly contrary to the usage of Scriptural visions, which
are ever wont to express in material form the same truth which
accompanies them in words, that the meaning of that vision should
be, as it is frequently taken as being, the continuance of Israel
unharmed by the fiery furnace of persecution. Not the continuance
of Israel, but the eternity of Israel's God is the teaching of
that flaming wonder. The burning Bush and the Name of the Lord
proclaimed the same great truth of self-derived, self-determined,
timeless, undecaying Being. And what better symbol than the bush
burning, and yet not burning out, could be found of that God in
whose life there is no tendency to death, whose work digs no pit
of weariness into which it falls, who gives and is none the
poorer, who fears no exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in
His continual shining?

And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. It
is eternity of love, for God is love. That great stream, the
pouring out of His own very inmost Being, knows no pause, nor does
the deep fountain from which it flows ever sink one hair's-breadth
in its pure basin.

We know of earthly loves which cannot die. They have entered so
deeply into the very fabric of the soul, that like some cloth dyed
in grain, as long as two threads hold together they will retain
the tint. We have to thank God for such instances of love stronger
than death, which make it easier for us to believe in the
unchanging duration of His. But we know, too, of love that can
change, and we know that all love must part. Few of us have
reached middle life, who do not, looking back, see our track
strewed with the gaunt skeletons of dead friendships, and dotted
with `oaks of weeping,' waving green and mournful over graves, and
saddened by footprints striking away from the line of march, and
leaving us the more solitary for their departure.

How blessed then to know of a love which cannot change or die! The
past, the present, and the future are all the same to Him, to whom
`a thousand years,' that can corrode so much of earthly love, are
in their power to change `as one day,' and `one day,' which can
hold so few of the expressions of our love, may be `as a thousand
years' in the multitude and richness of the gifts which it can be
expanded to contain. The whole of what He has been to any past, He
is to us to-day. `The God of Jacob is our refuge.' All these
old-world stories of loving care and guidance may be repeated in
our lives.

So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into the present,
and calmly face the misty future, sure that it cannot rob us of
His love.

Whatever may drop out of our vainly-clasping hands, it matters
not, if only our hearts are stayed on His love, which neither
things present nor things to come can alter or remove. Looking on
all the flow of ceaseless change, the waste and fading, the
alienation and cooling, the decrepitude and decay of earthly
affection, we can lift up with gladness, heightened by the
contrast, the triumphant song of the ancient Church: `Give thanks
unto the Lord: for He is good: because His mercy endureth for
ever!'

IV. The love of God is present everywhere.

The Apostle ends his catalogue with a singular trio of
antagonists; `nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,' as
if he had got impatient of the enumeration of impotencies, and
having named the outside boundaries in space of the created
universe, flings, as it were, with one rapid toss, into that large
room the whole that it can contain, and triumphs over it all.

As the former clause proclaimed the powerlessness of Time, so this
proclaims the powerlessness of that other great mystery of
creatural life which we call Space, Height or depth, it matters
not. That diffusive love diffuses itself equally in all
directions. Up or down, it is all the same. The distance from the
centre is the same to Zenith or to Nadir.

Here, we have the same process applied to that idea of
Omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to the idea of
Eternity. That thought, so hard to grasp with vividness, and not
altogether a glad one to a sinful soul, is all softened and
glorified, as some solemn Alpine cliff of bare rock is when the
tender morning light glows on it, when it is thought of as the
Omnipresence of Love. `Thou, God, seest me,' may be a stern word,
if the God who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteous Judge. As
reasonably might we expect a prisoner in his solitary cell to be
glad when he thinks that the jailer's eye is on him from some
unseen spy-hole in the wall, as expect any thought of God but one
to make a man read that grand one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm
with joy: `If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my
bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.' So may a man say
shudderingly to himself, and tremble as he asks in vain, `Whither
shall I flee from Thy Presence?' But how different it all is when
we can cast over the marble whiteness of that solemn thought the
warm hue of life, and change the form of our words into this of
our text: `Nor height, nor depth, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God.'

In that great ocean of the divine love we live and move and have
our being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads its
filmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of
mid-ocean. The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above,
beneath, around us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not
cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking on us
unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle
hands on their laps, and wide-open lidless eyes gazing out across
the sands. We need not fear the Omnipresence of Love, nor the
Omniscience which knows us altogether, and loves us even as it
knows. Rather we shall be glad that we are ever in His Presence,
and desire, as the height of all felicity and the power for all
goodness, to walk all the day long in the light of His
countenance, till the day come when we shall receive the crown of
our perfecting in that we shall be `ever with the Lord.'

The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love over all
these real and supposed antagonists makes us, too, lords over
them, and delivers us from the temptations which some of them
present us to separate ourselves from the love of God. They all
become our servants and helpers, uniting us to that love. So we
are set free from the dread of death and from the distractions
incident to life. So we are delivered from superstitious dread of
an unseen world, and from craven fear of men. So we are
emancipated from absorption in the present and from careful
thought for the future. So we are at home everywhere, and every
corner of the universe is to us one of the many mansions of our
Father's house. `All things are yours, ... and ye are Christ's;
and Christ is God's.'

I do not forget the closing words of this great text. I have not
ventured to include them in our present subject, because they
would have introduced another wide region of thought to be laid
down on our already too narrow canvas.

But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is explained by
our Apostle to be `in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Love illimitable,
all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but a love which has a channel and a
course; love which has a method and a process by which it pours
itself over the world. It is not, as some representations would make
it, a vague, nebulous light diffused through space as in a chaotic
half-made universe, but all gathered in that great Light which rules
the day---even in Him who said: `I am the Light of the world.' In
Christ the love of God is all centred and embodied, that it may be
imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning coals are
gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth to all that are in
the house. `God \textit{so} loved the world'---not merely \textit{so
much}, but in \textit{such a fashion}---`that'---that what? Many
people would leap at once from the first to the last clause of the
verse, and regard eternal life for all and sundry as the only
adequate expression of the universal love of God. Not so does Christ
speak. Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and
desire for every man He inserts two conditions, one on God's part,
one on man's. God's love reaches its end, namely, the bestowal of
eternal life, by means of a divine act and a human response. `God
\emph{so} loved the world, that He \textit{gave} His only begotten
Son, that whosoever \textit{believeth} in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life.' So all the universal love of God for you and
me and for all our brethren is `in Christ Jesus our Lord,' and faith
in Him unites us to it by bonds which no foe can break, no shock of
change can snap, no time can rot, no distance can stretch to
breaking. `For I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord.'

\chapter{The Sacrifice of the Body}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 1}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto
God, which is your reasonable service.`---\textsc{Romans} xii. 1.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

In the former part of this letter the Apostle has been building up
a massive fabric of doctrine, which has stood the waste of
centuries, and the assaults of enemies, and has been the home of
devout souls. He now passes to speak of practice, and he binds the
two halves of his letter indissolubly together by that significant
`therefore,` which does not only look back to the thing last said,
but to the whole of the preceding portion of the letter. `What God
hath joined together let no man put asunder.' Christian living is
inseparably connected with Christian believing. Possibly the error
of our forefathers was in cutting faith too much loose from
practice, and supposing that an orthodox creed was sufficient,
though I think the extent to which they did suppose that has been
very much exaggerated. The temptation of this day is precisely the
opposite. `Conduct is three-fourths of life,' says one of our
teachers. Yes. But what about the \textit{fourth} fourth which
underlies conduct? Paul's way is the right way. Lay broad and deep
the foundations of God's facts revealed to us, and then build upon
that the fabric of a noble life. This generation superficially
tends to cut practice loose from faith, and so to look for grapes
from thorns and figs from thistles. Wrong thinking will not lead
to right doing. `I beseech you, \textit{therefore}, brethren, that
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.'

The Apostle, in beginning his practical exhortations, lays as the
foundations of them all two companion precepts: one, with which we
have to deal, affecting mainly the outward life; its twin sister,
which follows in the next verse, affecting mainly the inward life.
He who has drunk in the spirit of Paul's doctrinal teaching will
present his body a living sacrifice, and be renewed in the spirit
of his mind; and thus, outwardly and inwardly, will be
approximating to God's ideal, and all specific virtues will be his
in germ. Those two precepts lay down the broad outline, and all
that follow in the way of specific commandments is but filling in
its details.

I. We observe that we have here, first, an all-inclusive directory
for the outward life.

Now, it is to be noticed that the metaphor of sacrifice runs
through the whole of the phraseology of my text. The word rendered
`present' is a technical expression for the sacerdotal action of
offering. A tacit contrast is drawn between the sacrificial
ritual, which was familiar to Romans as well as Jews, and the true
Christian sacrifice and service. In the former a large portion of
the sacrifices consisted of animals which were slain. Ours is to
be `a living sacrifice.' In the former the offering was presented
to the Deity, and became His property. In the Christian service,
the gift passes, in like manner, from the possession of the
worshipper, and is set apart for the uses of God, for that is the
proper meaning of the word `holy.' The outward sacrifice gave an
odour of a sweet smell, which, by a strong metaphor, was declared
to be fragrant in the nostrils of Deity. In like manner, the
Christian sacrifice is `acceptable unto God.' These other
sacrifices were purely outward, and derived no efficacy from the
disposition of the worshipper. Our sacrifice, though the material
of the offering be corporeal, is the act of the inner man, and so
is called `rational' rather than `reasonable,' as our Version has
it, or as in other parts of Scripture, `spiritual.' And the last
word of my text, `service,' retains the sacerdotal allusion,
because it does not mean the service of a slave or domestic, but
that of a priest.

And so the sum of the whole is that the master-word for the
outward life of a Christian is sacrifice. That, again, includes
two things---self-surrender and surrender to God.

Now, Paul was not such a superficial moralist as to begin at the
wrong end, and talk about the surrender of the outward life,
unless as the result of the prior surrender of the inward, and
that priority of the consecration of the man to his offering of
the body is contained in the very metaphor. For a priest needs to
be consecrated before he can offer, and we in our innermost wills,
in the depths of our nature, must be surrendered and set apart to
God ere any of our outward activities can be laid upon His altar.
The Apostle, then, does not make the mistake of substituting
external for internal surrender, but he presupposes that the
latter has preceded. He puts the sequence more fully in the
parallel passage in this very letter: `Yield yourselves unto God,
and your bodies as instruments of righteousness unto Him.' So,
then, first of all, we must be priests by our inward consecration,
and then, since `a priest must have somewhat to offer,' we must
bring the outward life and lay it upon His altar.

Now, of the two thoughts which I have said are involved in this
great keyword, the former is common to Christianity, with all
noble systems of morality, whether religious or irreligious. It is
a commonplace, on which I do not need to dwell, that every man who
will live a man's life, and not that of a beast, must sacrifice
the flesh, and rigidly keep it down. But that commonplace is
lifted into an altogether new region, assumes a new solemnity, and
finds new power for its fulfilment when we add to the moralist's
duty of control of the animal and outward nature the other
thought, that the surrender must be to God.

There is no need for my dwelling at any length on the various
practical directions in which this great exhortation must be
wrought out. It is of more importance, by far, to have well fixed
in our minds and hearts the one dominant thought that sacrifice is
the keyword of the Christian life than to explain the directions
in which it applies. But still, just a word or two about these.
There are three ways in which we may look at the body, which the
Apostle here says is to be yielded up unto God.

It is the recipient of impressions from without. \textit{There} is
a field for consecration. The eye that looks upon evil, and by the
look has rebellious, lustful, sensuous, foul desires excited in
the heart, breaks this solemn law. The eye that among the things
seen dwells with complacency on the pure, and turns from the
impure as if a hot iron had been thrust into its pupil; that in
the things seen discerns shimmering behind them, and manifested
through them, the things unseen and eternal, is the consecrated
eye. `Art for Art's sake,' to quote the cant of the day, has too
often meant art for the flesh's sake. And there are pictures and
books, and sights of various sorts, flashed before the eyes of you
young men and women which it is pollution to dwell upon, and
should be pain to remember. I beseech you all to have guard over
these gates of the heart, and to pray, `Turn away mine eyes from
viewing vanity.' And the other senses, in like manner, have need
to be closely connected with God if they are not to rush us down
to the devil.

The body is not only the recipient of impressions. It is the
possessor of appetites and necessities. See to it that these are
indulged, with constant reference to God. It is no small
attainment of the Christian life `to eat our meat with gladness
and singleness of heart, praising God.' In a hundred directions
this characteristic of our corporeal lives tends to lead us all
away from supreme consecration to Him. There is the senseless
luxury of this generation. There is the exaggerated care for
physical strength and completeness amongst the young; there is the
intemperance in eating and drinking, which is the curse and the
shame of England. There is the provision for the flesh, the
absorbing care for the procuring of material comforts, which
drowns the spirit in miserable anxieties, and makes men
bond-slaves. There is the corruption which comes from drunkenness
and from lust. There is the indolence which checks lofty
aspirations and stops a man in the middle of noble work. And there
are many other forms of evil on which I need not dwell, all of
which are swept clean out of the way when we lay to heart this
injunction: `I beseech you present your bodies a living
sacrifice,' and let appetites and tastes and corporeal needs be
kept in rigid subordination and in conscious connection with Him.
I remember a quaint old saying of a German schoolmaster, who
apostrophised his body thus: `I go with you three times a day to
eat; you must come with me three times a day to pray.' Subjugate
the body, and let it be the servant and companion of the devout
spirit.

It is also, besides being the recipient of impressions, and the
possessor of needs and appetites, our instrument for working in
the world. And so the exhortation of my text comes to include
this, that all our activities done by means of brain and eye and
tongue and hand and foot shall be consciously devoted to Him, and
laid as a sacrifice upon His altar. That pervasive, universally
diffused reference to God, in all the details of daily life, is
the thing that Christian men and women need most of all to try to
cultivate. `Pray without ceasing,' says the Apostle. This
exhortation can only be obeyed if our work is indeed worship,
being done by God's help, for God's sake, in communion with
God.

So, dear friends, sacrifice is the keynote---meaning thereby
surrender, control, and stimulus of the corporeal frame, surrender
to God, in regard to the impressions which we allow to be made
upon our senses, to the indulgence which we grant to our
appetites, and the satisfaction which we seek for our needs, and
to the activities which we engage in by means of this wondrous
instrument with which God has trusted us. These are the plain
principles involved in the exhortation of my text. `He that soweth
to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption.' `I keep under
my body, and bring it into subjection.' It is a good servant; it
is a bad master.

II. Note, secondly, the relation between this priestly service and
other kinds of worship.

I need only say a word about that. Paul is not meaning to
depreciate the sacrificial ritual, from which he drew his emblem.
But he is meaning to assert that the devotion of a life,
manifested through bodily activity, is higher in its nature than
the symbolical worship of any altar and of any sacrifice. And that
falls in with prevailing tendencies in this day, which has laid
such a firm hold on the principle that daily conduct is better
than formal worship, that it has forgotten to ask the question
whether the daily conduct is likely to be satisfactory if the
formal worship is altogether neglected. I believe, as profoundly
as any man can, that the true worship is distinguishable from and
higher than the more sensuous forms of the Catholic or other
sacramentarian churches, or the more simple of the Puritan and
Nonconformist, or the altogether formless of the Quaker. I believe
that the best worship is the manifold activities of daily life
laid upon God's altar, so that the division between things secular
and things sacred is to a large extent misleading and irrelevant.
But at the same time I believe that you have very little chance of
getting this diffused and all-pervasive reference of all a man's
doings to God unless there are, all through his life, recurring
with daily regularity, reservoirs of power, stations where he may
rest, kneeling-places where the attitude of service is exchanged
for the attitude of supplication; times of quiet communion with
God which shall feed the worshipper's activities as the white
snowfields on the high summits feed the brooks that sparkle by the
way, and bring fertility wherever they run. So, dear brethren,
remember that whilst life is the field of worship there must be
the inward worship within the shrine if there is to be the outward
service.

III. Lastly, note the equally comprehensive motive and ground of
this all-inclusive directory for conduct.

`I beseech you, by the mercies of God.' That plural does not mean
that the Apostle is extending his view over the whole wide field
of the divine beneficence, but rather that he is contemplating the
one all-inclusive mercy about which the former part of his letter
has been eloquent---viz. the gift of Christ---and contemplating it
in the manifoldness of the blessings which flow from it. The
mercies of God which move a man to yield himself as a sacrifice
are not the diffused beneficences of His providence, but the
concentrated love that lies in the person and work of His Son.

And there, as I believe, is the one motive to which we can appeal
with any prospect of its being powerful enough to give the needful
impetus all through a life. The sacrifice of Christ is the ground
on which our sacrifices can be offered and accepted, for it was
the sacrifice of a death propitiatory and cleansing, and on it, as
the ancient ritual taught us, may be reared the enthusiastic
sacrifice of a life---a thankoffering for it.

Nor is it only the ground on which our sacrifice is accepted, but
it is the great motive by which our sacrifice is impelled.
\textit{There} is the difference between the Christian teaching,
`present your bodies a sacrifice,' and the highest and noblest of
similar teaching elsewhere. One of the purest and loftiest of the
ancient moralists was a contemporary of Paul's. He would have
re-echoed from his heart the Apostle's directory, but he knew
nothing of the Apostle's motive. So his exhortations were
powerless. He had no spell to work on men's hearts, and his lofty
teachings were as the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Whilst Seneca taught, Rome was a cesspool of moral putridity and
Nero butchered. So it always is. There may be noble teachings
about self-control, purity, and the like, but an evil and
adulterous generation is slow to dance to such piping.

Our poet has bid us---

\begin{verse}
`Move upwards, casting out the beast, \\
 And let the ape and tiger die.'
\end{verse}

\noindent But how is this heavy bulk of ours to `move upwards';
how is the beast to be `cast out'; how are the `ape and tiger' in
us to be slain? Paul has told us, `By the mercies of God.'
Christ's gift, meditated on, accepted, introduced into will and
heart, is the one power that will melt our obstinacy, the one
magnet that will draw us after it.

Nothing else, brethren, as your own experience has taught you, and
as the experience of the world confirms, nothing else will bind
Behemoth, and put a hook in his nose. Apart from the constraining
motive of the love of Christ, all the cords of prudence,
conscience, advantage, by which men try to bind their unruly
passions and manacle the insisting flesh, are like the chains on
the demoniac's wrists--- `And he had oftentimes been bound by
chains, and the chains were snapped asunder.' But the silken leash
with which the fair Una in the poem leads the lion, the silken
leash of love will bind the strong man, and enable us to rule
ourselves. If we will open our hearts to the sacrifice of Christ,
we shall be able to offer ourselves as thankofferings. If we will
let His love sway our wills and consciences, He will give our
wills and consciences power to master and to offer up our flesh.
And the great change, according to which He will one day change
the body of our humiliation into the likeness of the body of His
glory, will be begun in us, if we live under the influence of the
motive and the commandment which this Apostle bound together in
our text and in his other great words, `Ye are not your own; ye
are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and
spirit, which are His.'

\chapter{Transfiguration}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 2}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect will of God.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 2.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

I had occasion to point out, in a sermon on the preceding verse,
that the Apostle is, in this context, making the transition from
the doctrinal to the practical part of his letter, and that he
lays down broad principles, of which all his subsequent
injunctions and exhortations are simply the filling up of the
details. One master word, for the whole Christian life, as we then
saw, is sacrifice, self-surrender, and that to God. In like
manner, Paul here brackets, with that great conception of the
Christian life, another equally dominant and equally
comprehensive. In one aspect, it is self-surrender; in another, it
is growing transformation. And, just as in the former verse we
found that an inward surrender preceded the outward sacrifice, and
that the inner man, having been consecrated as a priest, by this
yielding of himself to God, was then called upon to manifest
inward consecration by outward sacrifice, so in this further
exhortation, an inward `renewing of the mind' is regarded as the
necessary antecedent of transformation of outward life.

So we have here another comprehensive view of what the Christian
life ought to be, and that not only grasped, as it were, in its very
centre and essence, but traced out in two directions---as to that
which must precede it within, and as to that which follows it as
consequence. An outline of the possibilities, and therefore the
duties, of the Christian, is set forth here, in these three thoughts
of my text, the renewed mind issuing in a transfigured life, crowned
and rewarded by a clearer and ever clearer insight into what we
ought to be and do.

I. Note, then, that the foundation of all transformation of
character and conduct is laid deep in a renewed mind.

Now it is a matter of world-wide experience, verified by each of
us in our own case, if we have ever been honest in the attempt,
that the power of self-improvement is limited by very narrow
bounds. Any man that has ever tried to cure himself of the most
trivial habit which he desires to get rid of, or to alter in the
slightest degree the set of some strong taste or current of his
being, knows how little he can do, even by the most determined
effort. Something may be effected, but, alas! as the proverbs of
all nations and all lands have taught us, it is very little
indeed. `You cannot expel nature with a fork,' said the Roman.
`What's bred in the bone won't come out of the flesh,' says the
Englishman. `Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his
spots?' says the Hebrew. And we all know what the answer to that
question is. The problem that is set before a man when you tell
him to effect self-improvement is something like that which
confronted that poor paralytic lying in the porch at the pool: `If
you can walk you will be able to get to the pool that will make
you able to walk. But you have got to be cured before you can do
what you need to do in order to be cured.' Only one knife can cut
the knot. The Gospel of Jesus Christ presents itself, not as a
mere republication of morality, not as merely a new stimulus and
motive to do what is right, but as an actual communication to men
of a new power to work in them, a strong hand laid upon our poor,
feeble hand with which we try to put on the brake or to apply the
stimulus. It is a new gift of a life which will unfold itself
after its own nature, as the bud into flower, and the flower into
fruit; giving new desires, tastes, directions, and renewing the
whole nature. And so, says Paul, the beginning of transformation
of character is the renovation in the very centre of the being,
and the communication of a new impulse and power to the inward
self.

Now, I suppose that in my text the word `mind' is not so much
employed in the widest sense, including all the affections and
will, and the other faculties of our nature, as in the narrower
sense of the perceptive power, or that faculty in our nature by
which we recognise, and make our own, certain truths. `The
renewing of the mind,' then, is only, in such an interpretation, a
theological way of putting the simpler English thought, a change
of estimates, a new set of views; or if that word be too shallow,
as indeed it is, a new set of convictions. It is profoundly true
that `As a man thinketh, so is he.' Our characters are largely
made by our estimates of what is good or bad, desirable or
undesirable. And what the Apostle is thinking about here is, as I
take it, principally how the body of Christian truth, if it
effects a lodgment in, not merely the brain of a man, but his
whole nature, will modify and alter it all. Why, we all know how
often a whole life has been revolutionised by the sudden dawning
or rising in its sky, of some starry new truth, formerly hidden
and undreamed of. And if we should translate the somewhat archaic
phraseology of our text into the plainest of modern English, it
just comes to this: If you want to change your characters, and God
knows they all need it, change the deep convictions of your mind;
and get hold, as living realities, of the great truths of Christ's
Gospel. If you and I really believed what we say we believe, that
Jesus Christ has died for us, and lives for us, and is ready to
pour out upon us the gift of His Divine Spirit, and wills that we
should be like Him, and holds out to us the great and wonderful
hopes and prospects of an absolutely eternal life of supreme and
serene blessedness at His right hand, should we be, could we be,
the sort of people that most of us are? It is not the much that
you say you believe that shapes your character; it is the little
that you habitually realise. Truth professed has no transforming
power; truth received and fed upon can revolutionise a man's whole
character.

So, dear brethren, remember that my text, though it is an analysis
of the methods of Christian progress, and though it is a wonderful
setting forth of the possibilities open to the poorest, dwarfed,
blinded, corrupted nature, is also all commandment. And if it is
true that the principles of the Gospel exercise transforming power
upon men's lives, and that in order for these principles to effect
their natural results there must be honest dealing with them, on
our parts, take this as the practical outcome of all this first
part of my sermon---let us all see to it that we keep ourselves in
touch with the truths which we say we believe; and that we
thorough-goingly apply these truths in all their searching,
revealing, quickening, curbing power, to every action of our daily
lives. If for one day we could bring everything that we do into
touch with the creed that we profess, we should be different men
and women. Make of your every thought an action; link every action
with a thought. Or, to put it more Christianlike, let there be
nothing in your creed which is not in your commandments; and let
nothing be in your life which is not moulded by these. The
beginning of all transformation is the revolutionised conviction
of a mind that has accepted the truths of the Gospel.

II. Well then, secondly, note the transfigured life.

The Apostle uses in his positive commandment, `Be ye transformed,'
the same word which is employed by two of the Evangelists in their
account of our Lord's transfiguration. And although I suppose it
would be going too far to assert that there is a distinct
reference intended to that event, it may be permissible to look
back to it as being a lovely illustration of the possibilities
that open to an honest Christian life---the possibility of a
change, coming from within upwards, and shedding a strange
radiance on the face, whilst yet the identity remains. So by the
rippling up from within of the renewed mind will come into our
lives a transformation not altogether unlike that which passed on
Him when His garments did shine `so as no fuller on earth could
white them'; and His face was as the sun in his strength.

The life is to be transfigured, yet it remains the same, not only
in the consciousness of personal identity, but in the main trend
and drift of the character. There is nothing in the Gospel of
Jesus Christ which is meant to obliterate the lines of the
strongly marked individuality which each of us receives by nature.
Rather the Gospel is meant to heighten and deepen these, and to
make each man more intensely himself, more thoroughly individual
and unlike anybody else. The perfection of our nature is found in
the pursuit, to the furthest point, of the characteristics of our
nature, and so, by reason of diversity, there is the greater
harmony, and, all taken together, will reflect less inadequately
the infinite glories of which they are all partakers. But whilst
the individuality remains, and ought to be heightened by Christian
consecration, yet a change should pass over our lives, like the
change that passes over the winter landscape when the summer sun
draws out the green leaves from the hard black boughs, and flashes
a fresh colour over all the brown pastures. There should be such a
change as when a drop or two of ruby wine falls into a cup, and so
diffuses a gradual warmth of tint over all the whiteness of the
water. Christ in us, if we are true to Him, will make us more
ourselves, and yet new creatures in Christ Jesus.

And the transformation is to be into His likeness who is the
pattern of all perfection. We must be moulded after the same type.
There are two types possible for us: this world; Jesus Christ. We
have to make our choice which is to be the headline after which we
are to try to write. `They that make them are like unto them.' Men
resemble their gods; men become more or less like their idols.
What you conceive to be desirable you will more and more
assimilate yourselves to. Christ is the Christian man's pattern;
is He not better than the blind, corrupt world?

That transformation is no sudden thing, though the revolution
which underlies it may be instantaneous. The working \textit{out}
of the new motives, the working \textit{in} of the new power, is
no mere work of a moment. It is a lifelong task till the lump be
leavened. Michael Angelo, in his mystical way, used to say that
sculpture effected its aim by the removal of parts; as if the
statue lay somehow hid in the marble block. We have, day by day,
to work at the task of removing the superfluities that mask its
outlines. Sometimes with a heavy mallet, and a hard blow, and a
broad chisel, we have to take away huge masses; sometimes, with
fine tools and delicate touches, to remove a grain or two of
powdered dust from the sparkling block, but always to seek more
and more, by slow, patient toil, to conform ourselves to that
serene type of all perfectness that we have learned to love in
Jesus Christ.

And remember, brethren, this transformation is no magic change
effected whilst men sleep. It is a commandment which we have to
brace ourselves to perform, day by day to set ourselves to the
task of more completely assimilating ourselves to our Lord. It
comes to be a solemn question for each of us whether we can say,
`To-day I am liker Jesus Christ than I was yesterday; to-day the
truth which renews the mind has a deeper hold upon me than it ever
had before.'

But this positive commandment is only one side of the
transfiguration that is to be effected. It is clear enough that if a
new likeness is being stamped upon a man, the process may be looked
at from the other side; and that in proportion as we become liker
Jesus Christ, we shall become more unlike the old type to which we
were previously conformed. And so, says Paul, `Be not conformed to
this world, but be ye transformed.' He does not mean to say that the
nonconformity precedes the transformation. They are two sides of one
process; both arising from the renewing of the mind within.

Now, I do not wish to do more than just touch most lightly upon
the thoughts that are here, but I dare not pass them by
altogether. `This world' here, in my text, is more properly `this
age,' which means substantially the same thing as John's favourite
word `world,' viz.\ the sum total of godless men and things
conceived of as separated from God, only that by this expression
the essentially fleeting nature of that type is more distinctly
set forth. Now the world is the world to-day just as much as it
was in Paul's time. No doubt the Gospel has sweetened society; no
doubt the average of godless life in England is a better thing
than the average of godless life in the Roman Empire. No doubt
there is a great deal of Christianity diffused through the average
opinion and ways of looking at things, that prevail around us. But
the World is the world still. There are maxims and ways of living,
and so on, characteristic of the Christian life, which are in as
complete antagonism to the ideas and maxims and practices that
prevail amongst men who are outside of the influences of this
Christian truth in their own hearts, as ever they were.

And although it can only be a word, I want to put in here a very
earnest word which the tendencies of this generation do very
specially require. It seems to be thought, by a great many people,
who call themselves Christians nowadays, that the nearer they can
come in life, in ways of looking at things, in estimates of
literature, for instance, in customs of society, in politics, in
trade, and especially in amusements---the nearer they can come to
the un-Christian world, the more `broad' (save the mark!) and
`superior to prejudice' they are. `Puritanism,' not only in
theology, but in life and conduct, has come to be at a discount in
these days. And it seems to be by a great many professing
Christians thought to be a great feat to walk as the mules on the
Alps do, with one foot over the path and the precipice down below.
Keep away from the edge. You are safer so. Although, of course, I
am not talking about mere conventional dissimilarities; and though
I know and believe and feel all that can be said about the
insufficiency, and even insincerity, of such, yet there is a broad
gulf between the man who believes in Jesus Christ and His Gospel
and the man who does not, and the resulting conducts cannot be the
same unless the Christian man is insincere.

III. And now lastly, and only a word, note the great reward and
crown of this transfigured life.

Paul puts it in words which, if I had time, would require some
commenting upon. The issue of such a life is, to put it into plain
English, an increased power of perceiving, instinctively and
surely, what it is God's will that we should do. And that is the
reward. Just as when you take away disturbing masses of metal from
near a compass, it trembles to its true point, so when, by the
discipline of which I have been speaking, there are swept away
from either side of us the things that would perturb our judgment,
there comes, as blessing and reward, a clear insight into that
which it is our duty to do.

There may be many difficulties left, many perplexities. There is
no promise here, nor is there anything in the tendencies of
Christ-like living, to lead us to anticipate that guidance in
regard to matters of prudence or expediency or temporal advantage
will follow from such a transfigured life. All such matters are
still to be determined in the proper fashion, by the exercise of
our own best judgment and common-sense. But in the higher region,
the knowledge of good and evil, surely it is a blessed reward, and
one of the highest that can be given to a man, that there shall be
in him so complete a harmony with God that, like God's Son, he
`does always the things that please Him,' and that the Father will
show him whatsoever things Himself doeth; and that these also will
the son do likewise. To know beyond doubt what I ought to do, and
knowing, to have no hesitation or reluctance in doing it, seems to
me to be heaven upon earth, and the man that has it needs but
little more. This, then, is the reward. Each peak we climb opens
wider and clearer prospects into the untravelled land before
us.

And so, brethren, here is the way, the only way, by which we can
change ourselves, first let us have our minds renewed by contact
with the truth, then we shall be able to transform our lives into
the likeness of Jesus Christ, and our faces too will shine, and
our lives will be ennobled, by a serene beauty which men cannot
but admire, though it may rebuke them. And as the issue of all we
shall have clearer and deeper insight into that will, which to
know is life, in keeping of which there is great reward. And thus
our apostle's promise may be fulfilled for each of us. `We all
with unveiled faces reflecting'---as a mirror does---`the glory of
the Lord, are changed ... into the same image.'

\chapter{Sober Thinking}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 3}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For I say, through the grace that is given unto me, to every man
that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he
ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt
to every man the measure of faith.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 3.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

It is hard to give advice without seeming to assume superiority;
it is hard to take it, unless the giver identifies himself with
the receiver, and shows that his counsel to others is a law for
himself. Paul does so here, led by the delicate perception which
comes from a loving heart, compared with which deliberate `tact'
is cold and clumsy. He wishes, as the first of the specific duties
to which he invites the Roman Christians, an estimate of
themselves based upon the recognition of God as the Giver of all
capacities and graces, and leading to a faithful use for the
general good of the `gifts differing according to the grace given
to us.' In the first words of our text, he enforces his counsel by
an appeal to his apostolic authority; but he so presents it that,
instead of separating himself from the Roman Christians by it, he
unites himself with them. He speaks of `the grace given to
\textit{me},' and in verse 6 of `the grace given to \textit{us}.'
He was made an Apostle by the same giving God who has bestowed
varying gifts on each of \textit{them}. He knows what is the grace
which he possesses as he would have them know; and in these
counsels he is assuming no superiority, but is simply using the
special gift bestowed on him for the good of all. With this
delicate turn of what might else have sounded harshly
authoritative, putting prominently forward the divine gift and
letting the man Paul to whom it was given fall into the
background, he counsels as the first of the social duties which
Christian men owe to one another, a sober and just estimate of
themselves. This sober estimate is here regarded as being
important chiefly as an aid to right service. It is immediately
followed by counsels to the patient and faithful exercise of
differing gifts. For thus we may know what our gifts are; and the
acquisition of such knowledge is the aim of our text.

I. What determines our gifts.

Paul here gives a precise standard, or `measure' as he calls it,
according to which we are to estimate ourselves. `Faith' is the
measure of our gifts, and is itself a gift from God. The strength
of a Christian man's faith determines his whole Christian
character. Faith is trust, the attitude of receptivity. There are
in it a consciousness of need, a yearning desire and a confidence
of expectation. It is the open empty hand held up with the
assurance that it will be filled; it is the empty pitcher let down
into the well with the assurance that it will be drawn up filled.
It is the precise opposite of the self-dependent isolation which
shuts us out from God. The law of the Christian life is ever,
`according to your faith be it unto you'; `believe that ye receive
and ye have them.' So then the more faith a man exercises the more
of God and Christ he has. It is the measure of our capacity, hence
there may be indefinite increase in the gifts which God bestows on
faithful souls. Each of us will have as much as he desires and is
capable of containing. The walls of the heart are elastic, and
desire expands them.

The grace given by faith works in the line of its possessor's
natural faculties; but these are supernaturally reinforced and
strengthened while, at the same time, they are curbed and
controlled, by the divine gift, and the natural gifts thus dealt
with become what Paul calls \textit{charisms}. The whole nature of
a Christian should be ennobled, elevated, made more delicate and
intense, when the `Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus' abides
in and inspires it. Just as a sunless landscape is smitten into
sudden beauty by a burst of sunshine which heightens the colouring
of the flowers on the river's bank, and is flashed back from every
silvery ripple on the stream, so the faith which brings the life
of Christ into the life of the Christian makes him more of a man
than he was before. So, there will be infinite variety in the
resulting characters. It is the same force in various forms that
rolls in the thunder or gleams in the dewdrops, that paints the
butterfly's feathers or flashes in a star. All individual
idiosyncrasies should be developed in the Christian Church, and
will be when its members yield themselves fully to the indwelling
Spirit, and can truly declare that the lives which they live in
the flesh they live by the faith of the Son of God.

But Paul here regards the measure of faith as itself `dealt to
every man'; and however we may construe the grammar of this
sentence there is a deep sense in which our faith is God's gift to
us. We have to give equal emphasis to the two conceptions of faith
as a human act and as a divine bestowal, which have so often been
pitted against each other as contradictory when really they are
complementary. The apparent antagonism between them is but one
instance of the great antithesis to which we come to at last in
reference to all human thought on the relations of man to God. `It
is He that worketh in us both to will and to do of His own good
pleasure'; and all our goodness is God-given goodness, and yet it
is our goodness. Every devout heart has a consciousness that the
faith which knits it to God is God's work in it, and that left to
itself it would have remained alienated and faithless. The
consciousness that his faith was his own act blended in full
harmony with the twin consciousness that it was Christ's gift, in
the agonised father's prayer, `Lord, I believe, help Thou mine
unbelief.'

II. What is a just estimate of our gifts.

The Apostle tells us, negatively, that we are not to think more
highly than we ought to think, and positively that we are to
`think soberly.'

To arrive at a just estimate of ourselves the estimate must ever
be accompanied with a distinct consciousness that all is God's
gift. That will keep us from anything in the nature of pride or
over-weening self-importance. It will lead to true humility, which
is not ignorance of what we can do, but recognition that we, the
doers, are of ourselves but poor creatures. We are less likely to
fancy that we are greater than we are when we feel that, whatever
we are, God made us so. `What hast thou that thou didst not
receive? Now, if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if
thou hadst not received it?'

Further, it is to be noted that the estimate of gifts which Paul
enjoins is an estimate with a view to service. Much
self-investigation is morbid, because it is self-absorbed; and
much is morbid because it is undertaken only for the purpose of
ascertaining one's `spiritual condition.' Such self-examination is
good enough in its way, and may sometimes be very necessary; but a
testing of one's own capacities for the purpose of ascertaining
what we are fit for, and what therefore it is our duty to do, is
far more wholesome. Gifts are God's summons to work, and our first
response to the summons should be our scrutiny of our gifts with a
distinct purpose of using them for the great end for which we
received them. It is well to take stock of the loaves that we
have, if the result be that we bring our poor provisions to Him,
and put them in His hands, that He may give them back to us so
multiplied as to be more than adequate to the needs of the
thousands. Such just estimate of our gifts is to be attained
mainly by noting ourselves at work. Patient self-observation may
be important, but is apt to be mistaken; and the true test of what
we can do is what we \textit{do} do.

The just estimate of our gifts which Paul enjoins is needful in
order that we may ascertain what God has meant us to be and do,
and may neither waste our strength in trying to be some one else,
nor hide our talent in the napkin of ignorance or false humility.
There is quite as much harm done to Christian character and
Christian service by our failure to recognise what is in our
power, as by ambitious or ostentatious attempts at what is above
our power. We have to be ourselves as God has made us in our
natural faculties, and as the new life of Christ operating on
these has made us new creatures in Him not by changing but by
enlarging our old natures. It matters nothing what the special
form of a Christian man's service may be; the smallest and the
greatest are alike to the Lord of all, and He appoints His
servants' work. Whether the servant be a cup-bearer or a
counsellor is of little moment. `He that is faithful in that which
is least, is faithful also in much.'

The positive aspect of this right estimate of one's gifts is, if
we fully render the Apostle's words, as the Revised Version does,
`so to think as to think soberly.' There is to be self-knowledge
in order to `sobriety,' which includes not only what we mean by
sober-mindedness, but self-government; and this aspect of the
apostolic exhortation opens out into the thought that the gifts,
which a just estimate of ourselves pronounces us to possess, need
to be kept bright by the continual suppression of the mind of the
flesh, by putting down earthly desires, by guarding against a
selfish use of them, by preventing them by rigid control from
becoming disproportioned and our masters. All the gifts which
Christ bestows upon His people He bestows on condition that they
bind them together by the golden chain of self-control.

\chapter{Many and One}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 4, 5}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For we have many members in one body, and all members have not
the same office: 5.\ So we, being many, are one body in Christ,
and every one members one of another.`---\textsc{Romans} xii. 4,
5.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

To Paul there was the closest and most vital connection between
the profoundest experiences of the Christian life and its plainest
and most superficial duties. Here he lays one of his most mystical
conceptions as the very foundation on which to rear the great
structure of Christian conduct, and links on to one of his
profoundest thoughts, the unity of all Christians in Christ, a
comprehensive series of practical exhortations. We are accustomed
to hear from many lips: `I have no use for these dogmas that Paul
delights in. Give me his practical teaching. You may keep the
Epistle to the Romans, I hold by the thirteenth of First
Corinthians.' But such an unnatural severance between the doctrine
and the ethics of the Epistle cannot be effected without the
destruction of both. The very principle of this Epistle to the
Romans is that the difference between the law and the Gospel is,
that the one preaches conduct without a basis for it, and that the
other says, First believe in Christ, and in the strength of that
belief, do the right and be like Him. Here, then, in the very
laying of the foundation for conduct in these verses we have in
concrete example the secret of the Christian way of making good
men.

I. The first point to notice here is, the unity of the derived
life. Many are one, because they are each in Christ, and the
individual relationship and derivation of life from Him makes them
one whilst continuing to be many. That great metaphor, and
nowadays much forgotten and neglected truth, is to Paul's mind the
fact which ought to mould the whole life and conduct of individual
Christians and to be manifested therein. There are three most
significant and instructive symbols by which the unity of
believers in Christ Jesus is set forth in the New Testament. Our
Lord Himself gives us the one of the vine and its branches, and
that symbol suggests the silent, effortless process by which the
life-giving sap rises and finds its way from the deep root to the
furthest tendril and the far-extended growth. The same symbol
loses indeed in one respect its value if we transfer it to growths
more congenial to our northern climate, and instead of the vine
with its rich clusters, think of some great elm, deeply rooted,
and with its firm bole and massive branches, through all of which
the mystery of a common life penetrates and makes every leaf in
the cloud of foliage through which we look up participant of
itself. But, profound and beautiful as our Lord's metaphor is, the
vegetative uniformity of parts and the absence of individual
characteristics make it, if taken alone, insufficient. In the tree
one leaf is like another; it `grows green and broad and takes no
care.' Hence, to express the whole truth of the union between
Christ and us we must bring in other figures. Thus we find the
Apostle adducing the marriage tie, the highest earthly example of
union, founded on choice and affection. But even that sacred bond
leaves a gap between those who are knit together by it; and so we
have the conception of our text, the unity of the body as
representing for us the unity of believers with Jesus. This is a
unity of life. He is not only head as chief and sovereign, but He
is soul or life, which has its seat, not in this or that organ as
old physics teach, but pervades the whole and `filleth all in
all.' The mystery which concerns the union of soul and body, and
enshrouds the nature of physical life, is part of the felicity of
this symbol in its Christian application. That commonest of all
things, the mysterious force which makes matter live and glow
under spiritual emotion, and changes the vibrations of a nerve, or
the undulations of the grey brain, into hope and love and faith,
eludes the scalpel and the microscope. Of man in his complex
nature it is true that `clouds and darkness are round about him,'
and we may expect an equally solemn mystery to rest upon that
which makes out of separate individuals one living body, animated
with the life and moved by the Spirit of the indwelling Christ. We
can get no further back, and dig no deeper down, than His own
words, `I am ... the life.'

But, though this unity is mysterious, it is most real. Every
Christian soul receives from Christ the life of Christ. There is a
real implantation of a higher nature which has nothing to do with
sin and is alien from death. There is a true regeneration which is
supernatural, and which makes all who possess it one, in the
measure of their possession, as truly as all the leaves on a tree
are one because fed by the same sap, or all the members in the
natural body are one, because nourished by the same blood. So the
true bond of Christian unity lies in the common participation of
the one Lord, and the real Christian unity is a unity of derived
life.

The misery and sin of the Christian Church have been, and are,
that it has sought to substitute other bonds of unity. The whole
weary history of the divisions and alienations between Christians
has surely sufficiently, and more than sufficiently, shown the
failure of the attempts to base Christian oneness upon uniformity
of opinion, or of ritual, or of purpose. The difference between
the real unity, and these spurious attempts after it, is the
difference between bundles of faggots, dead and held together by a
cord, and a living tree lifting its multitudinous foliage towards
the heavens. The bundle of faggots may be held together in some
sort of imperfect union, but is no exhibition of unity. If visible
churches must be based on some kind of agreement, they can never
cover the same ground as that of `the body of Christ.'

That oneness is independent of our organisations, and even of our
will, since it comes from the common possession of a common life.
Its enemies are not divergent opinions or forms, but the evil
tempers and dispositions which impede, or prevent, the flow into
each Christian soul of the uniting `Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus' which makes the many who may be gathered into separate
folds one flock clustered around the one Shepherd. And if that
unity be thus a fundamental fact in the Christian life and
entirely apart from external organisation, the true way to
increase it in each individual is, plainly, the drawing nearer to
Him, and the opening of our spirits so as to receive fuller,
deeper, and more continuous inflows from His own inexhaustible
fullness. In the old Temple stood the seven-branched candlestick,
an emblem of a formal unity; in the new the seven candlesticks are
one, because Christ stands in the midst. He makes the body one;
without Him it is a carcase.

II. The diversity.

`We have many members in one body, but all members have not the
same office.' Life has different functions in different organs. It
is light in the eye, force in the arm, music on the tongue,
swiftness in the foot; so also is Christ. The higher a creature
rises in the scale of life, the more are the parts differentiated.
The lowest is a mere sac, which performs all the functions that
the creature requires; the highest is a man with a multitude of
organs, each of which is definitely limited to one office. In like
manner the division of labour in society measures its advance; and
in like manner in the Church there is to be the widest diversity.
What the Apostle designates as `gifts' are natural characteristics
heightened by the Spirit of Christ; the effect of the common life
in each ought to be the intensifying and manifestation of
individuality of character. In the Christian ideal of humanity
there is place for every variety of gifts. The flora of the
Mountain of God yields an endless multiplicity of growths on its
ascending slopes which pass through every climate. There ought to
be a richer diversity in the Church than anywhere besides; that
tree should `bear twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit
every month for the healing of the nations.' `All flesh is not the
same flesh.' `Star differeth from star in glory.'

The average Christian life of to-day sorely fails in two things:
in being true to itself, and in tolerance of diversities. We are
all so afraid of being ticketed as `eccentric,' `odd,' that we
oftentimes stifle the genuine impulses of the Spirit of Christ
leading us to the development of unfamiliar types of goodness, and
the undertaking of unrecognised forms of service. If we trusted in
Christ in ourselves more, and took our laws from His whispers, we
should often reach heights of goodness which tower above us now,
and discover in ourselves capacities which slumber undiscerned.
There is a dreary monotony and uniformity amongst us which
impoverishes us, and weakens the testimony that we bear to the
quickening influence of the Spirit that is in Christ Jesus; and we
all tend to look very suspiciously at any man who `puts all the
others out' by being himself, and letting the life that he draws
from the Lord dictate its own manner of expression. It would
breathe a new life into all our Christian communities if we
allowed full scope to the diversities of operation, and realised
that in them all there was the one Spirit. The world condemns
originality: the Church should have learned to prize it. `One
after this fashion, and one after that,' is the only wholesome law
of the development of the manifold graces of the Christian
life.

III. The harmony.

`We being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one
of another.' That expression is remarkable, for we might have
expected to read rather members \textit{of the body}, than
\textit{of each other}; but the bringing in of such an idea
suggests most emphatically that thought of the mutual relation of
each part of the great whole, and that each has offices to
discharge for the benefit of each. In the Christian community, as
in an organised body, the active co-operation of all the parts is
the condition of health. All the rays into which the spectrum
breaks up the pure white light must be gathered together again in
order to produce it; just as every instrument in the great
orchestra contributes to the volume of sound. The Lancashire
hand-bell ringers may illustrate this point for us. Each man picks
up his own bell from the table and sounds his own note at the
moment prescribed by the score, and so the whole of the composer's
idea is reproduced. To suppress diversities results in monotony;
to combine them is the only sure way to secure harmony. Nor must
we forget that the indwelling life of the Church can only be
manifested by the full exhibition and freest possible play of all
the forms which that life assumes in individual character. It
needs all, and more than all, the types of mental characteristics
that can be found in humanity to mirror the infinite beauty of the
indwelling Lord. `There are diversities of operations,' and all
those diversities but partially represent that same Lord `who
worketh all in all,' and Himself is more than all, and, after all
manifestation through human characters, remains hinted at rather
than declared, suggested but not revealed.

Still further, only by the exercise of possible diversities is the
one body nourished, for each member, drawing life directly and
without the intervention of any other from Christ the Source,
draws also from his fellow-Christian some form of the common life
that to himself is unfamiliar, and needs human intervention in
order to its reception. Such dependence upon one's brethren is not
inconsistent with a primal dependence on Christ alone, and is a
safeguard against the cultivating of one's own idiosyncrasies till
they become diseased and disproportionate. The most slenderly
endowed Christian soul has the double charge of giving to, and
receiving from, its brethren. We have all something which we can
contribute to the general stock. We have all need to supplement
our own peculiar gifts by brotherly ministration. The prime
condition of Christian vitality has been set forth for ever by the
gracious invitation, which is also an imperative command, `Abide
in Me and I in you'; but they who by such abiding are recipients
of a communicated life are not thereby isolated, but united to all
who like them have received `the manifestation of the Spirit to do
good with.'

\chapter{Grace and Graces}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 6--8}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that is given
to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the
proportion of faith; 7.\ Or ministry, let us wait on our
ministering; or he that teacheth, on teaching; 8.\ Or he that
exhorteth, on exhortation; he that giveth, let him do it with
simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy,
with cheerfulness.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 6--8.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The Apostle here proceeds to build upon the great thought of the
unity of believers in the one body a series of practical
exhortations. In the first words of our text, he, with
characteristic delicacy, identifies himself with the Roman
Christians as a recipient, like them, of `the grace that is given
to us,' and as, therefore, subject to the same precepts which he
commends to them. He does not stand isolated by the grace that is
given to him; nor does he look down as from the height of his
apostleship on the multitude below, saying to them,---Go. As one
of themselves he stands amongst them, and with brotherly
exhortation says,---Come. If that had been the spirit in which all
Christian teachers had besought men, their exhortations would less
frequently have been breath spent in vain.

We may note

I. The grace that gives the gifts.

The connection between these two is more emphatically suggested by
the original Greek, in which the word for `gifts' is a derivative
of that for `grace.' The relation between these two can scarcely
be verbally reproduced in English; but it may be, though
imperfectly, suggested by reading `graces' instead of `gifts.' The
gifts are represented as being the direct product of, and cognate
with, the grace bestowed. As we have had already occasion to
remark, they are in Paul's language a designation of natural
capacities strengthened by the access of the life of the Spirit of
Christ. As a candle plunged in a vase of oxygen leaps up into more
brilliant flame, so all the faculties of the human soul are made a
hundred times themselves when the quickening power of the life of
Christ enters into them.

It is to be observed that the Apostle here assumes that every
Christian possesses, in some form, that grace which gives graces.
To him a believing soul without Christ-given gifts is a
monstrosity. No one is without some graces, and therefore no one
is without some duties. No one who considers the multitude of
professing Christians who hamper all our churches to-day, and
reflects on the modern need to urge on the multitude of idlers
forms of Christian activity, will fail to recognise signs of
terribly weakened vitality. The humility, which in response to all
invitations to work for Christ pleads unfitness is, if true, more
tragical than it at first seems, for it is a confession that the
man who alleges it has no real hold of the Christ in whom he
professes to trust. If a Christian man is fit for no Christian
work, it is time that he gravely ask himself whether he has any
Christian life. `Having gifts' is the basis of all the Apostle's
exhortations. It is to him inconceivable that any Christian should
not possess, and be conscious of possessing, some endowment from
the life of Christ which will fit him for, and bind him to, a
course of active service.

The universality of this possession is affirmed, if we note that,
according to the Greek, it was `given' at a special time in the
experience of each of these Roman Christians. The rendering `was
given' might be more accurately exchanged for `has been given,'
and that expression is best taken as referring to a definite
moment in the history of each believer namely, his conversion.
When we `yield ourselves to God,' as Paul exhorts us to do in the
beginning of this chapter, as the commencement of all true life of
conformity to His will, Christ yields Himself to us. The
possession of these gifts of grace is no prerogative of officials;
and, indeed, in all the exhortations which follow there is no
reference to officials, though of course such were in existence in
the Roman Church. They had their special functions and special
qualifications for these. But what Paul is dealing with now is the
grace that is inseparable from individual surrender to Christ, and
has been bestowed upon all who are His. To limit the gifts to
officials, and to suppose that the universal gifts in any degree
militate against the recognition of officials in the Church, are
equally mistakes, and confound essentially different subjects.

II. The graces that flow from the grace.

The Apostle's catalogue of these is not exhaustive, nor logically
arranged; but yet a certain loose order may be noted, which may be
profitable for us to trace. They are in number seven---the sacred
number; and are capable of being divided, as so many of the series
of sevens are, into two portions, one containing four and the other
three. The former include more public works, to each of which a man
might be specially devoted as his life work for and in the Church.
Three are more private, and may be conceived to have a wider
relation to the world. There are some difficulties of construction
and rendering in the list, which need not concern us here; and we
may substantially follow the Authorised Version.

The first group of four seems to fall into two pairs, the first of
which, `prophecy' and `ministry,' seem to be bracketed together by
reason of the difference between them. Prophecy is a very high
form of special inspiration, and implies a direct reception of
special revelation, but not necessarily of future events. The
prophet is usually coupled in Paul's writings with the apostle,
and was obviously amongst those to whom was given one of the
highest forms of the gifts of Christ. It is very beautiful to note
that by natural contrast the Apostle at once passes to one of the
forms of service which a vulgar estimate would regard as remotest
from the special revelation of the prophet, and is confined to
lowly service. Side by side with the exalted gift of prophecy Paul
puts the lowly gift of ministry. Very significant is the
juxtaposition of these two extremes. It teaches us that the
lowliest office is as truly allotted by Jesus as the most sacred,
and that His highest gifts find an adequate field for
manifestation in him who is servant of all. Ministry to be rightly
discharged needs spiritual character. The original seven were men
`full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,' though all they had to do
was to hand their pittances to poor widows. It may be difficult to
decide for what reason other than the emphasising of this contrast
the Apostle links together ministry and prophecy, and so breaks a
natural sequence which would have connected the second pair of
graces with the first member of the first pair. We should have
expected that here, as elsewhere, `prophet,' `teacher,'
`exhorter,' would have been closely connected, and there seems no
reason why they should not have been so, except that which we have
suggested, namely, the wish to bring together the highest and the
lowest forms of service.

The second pair seem to be linked together by likeness. The
`teacher' probably had for his function, primarily, the narration
of the facts of the Gospel, and the setting forth in a form
addressed chiefly to the understanding the truths thereby
revealed; whilst the `exhorter' rather addressed himself to the
will, presenting the same truth, but in forms more intended to
influence the emotions. The word here rendered `exhort' is found
in Paul's writings as bearing special meanings, such as consoling,
stimulating, encouraging, rebuking and others. Of course these two
forms of service would often be associated, and each would be
imperfect when alone; but it would appear that in the early Church
there were persons in whom the one or the other of these two
elements was so preponderant that their office was thereby
designated. Each received a special gift from the one Source. The
man who could only say to his brother, `Be of good cheer,' was as
much the recipient of the Spirit as the man who could connect and
elaborate a systematic presentation of the truths of the
Gospel.

These four graces are followed by a group of three, which may be
regarded as being more private, as not pointing to permanent
offices so much as to individual acts. They are `giving,'
`ruling,' `showing pity,' concerning which we need only note that
the second of these can hardly be the ecclesiastical office, and
that it stands between two which are closely related, as if it
were of the same kind. The gifts of money, or of direction, or of
pity, are one in kind. The right use of wealth comes from the gift
of God's grace; so does the right use of any sway which any of us
have over any of our brethren; and so does the glow of compassion,
the exercise of the natural human sympathy which belongs to all,
and is deepened and made tenderer and intenser by the gift of the
Spirit. It would be a very different Church, and a very different
world, if Christians, who were not conscious of possessing gifts
which made them fit to be either prophets, or teachers, or
exhorters, and were scarcely endowed even for any special form of
ministry, felt that a gift from their hands, or a wave of pity
from their hearts, was a true token of the movement of God's
Spirit on their spirits. The fruit of the Spirit is to be found in
the wide fields of everyday life, and the vine bears many clusters
for the thirsty lips of wearied men who may little know what gives
them their bloom and sweetness. It would be better for both giver
and receiver if Christian beneficence were more clearly recognised
as one of the manifestations of spiritual life.

III. The exercise of the graces.

There are some difficulties in reference to the grammatical
construction of the words of our text, into which it is not
necessary that we should enter here. We may substantially follow
the Authorised and Revised Versions in supplying verbs in the
various clauses, so as to make of the text a series of
exhortations. The first of these is to `prophesy according to the
proportion of faith'; a commandment which is best explained by
remembering that in the preceding verse `the measure of faith' has
been stated as being the measure of the gifts. The prophet then is
to exercise his gifts in proportion to his faith. He is to speak
his convictions fully and openly, and to let his utterances be
shaped by the indwelling life. This exhortation may well sink into
the heart of preachers in this day. It is but the echo of
Jeremiah's strong words: `He that hath my word, let him speak my
word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.
Is not my word like as fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer
that breaketh the rock in pieces?' The ancient prophet's woe falls
with double weight on those who use their words as a veil to
obscure their real beliefs, and who prophesy, not `according to
the proportion of faith,' but according to the expectations of the
hearers, whose faith is as vague as theirs.

In the original, the next three exhortations are alike in
grammatical construction, which is represented in the Authorised
Version by the supplement `let us wait on,' and in the Revised
Version by `let us give ourselves to'; we might with advantage
substitute for either the still more simple form `be in,' after
the example of Paul's exhortation to Timothy `be in these things';
that is, as our Version has it, `give thyself wholly to them.' The
various gifts are each represented as a sphere within which its
possessor is to move, for the opportunities for the exercise of
which he is carefully to watch, and within the limits of which he
is humbly to keep. That general law applies equally to ministry,
and teaching and exhorting. We are to seek to discern our spheres;
we are to be occupied with, if not absorbed in, them. At the least
we are diligently to use the gift which we discover ourselves to
possess, and thus filling our several spheres, we are to keep
within them, recognising that each is sacred as the manifestation
of God's will for each of us. The divergence of forms is
unimportant, and it matters nothing whether `the Giver of all'
grants less or more. The main thing is that each be faithful in
the administration of what he has received, and not seek to
imitate his brother who is diversely endowed, or to monopolise for
himself another's gifts. To insist that our brethren's gifts
should be like ours, and to try to make ours like theirs, are
equally sins against the great truth, of which the Church as a
whole is the example, that there are `diversities of operations
but the same Spirit.'

The remaining three exhortations are in like manner thrown
together by a similarity of construction in which the personality
of the doer is put in the foreground, and the emphasis of the
commandment is rested on the manner in which the grace is
exercised. The reason for that may be that in these three
especially the manner will show the grace. `Giving' is to be `with
simplicity.' There are to be no sidelong looks to self-interest;
no flinging of a gift from a height, as a bone might be flung to a
dog; no seeking for gratitude; no ostentation in the gift. Any
taint of such mixed motives as these infuses poison into our
gifts, and makes them taste bitter to the receiver, and recoil in
hurt upon ourselves. To `give with simplicity' is to give as God
gives.

`Diligence' is the characteristic prescribed for the man that
rules. We have already pointed out that this exhortation includes
a much wider area than that of any ecclesiastical officials. It
points to another kind of rule, and the natural gifts needed for
any kind of rule are diligence and zeal. Slackly-held reins make
stumbling steeds; and any man on whose shoulders is laid the
weight of government is bound to feel it as a weight. The history
of many a nation, and of many a family, teaches that where the
rule is slothful all evils grow apace; and it is that natural
energy and earnestness, deepened and hallowed by the Christian
life, which here is enjoined as the true Christian way of
discharging the function of ruling, which, in some form or
another, devolves on almost all of us.

`He that showeth mercy with cheerfulness.' The glow of natural
human sympathy is heightened so as to become a `gift,' and the way
in which it is exercised is defined as being `with cheerfulness.'
That injunction is but partially understood if it is taken to mean
no more than that sympathy is not to be rendered grudgingly, or as
by necessity. No sympathy is indeed possible on such terms; unless
the heart is in it, it is nought. And that it should thus flow
forth spontaneously wherever sorrow and desolation evoke it, there
must be a continual repression of self, and a heart disengaged
from the entanglements of its own circumstances, and at leisure to
make a brother's burden its very own. But the exhortation may,
perhaps, rather mean that the truest sympathy carries a bright
face into darkness, and comes like sunshine in a shady place.

\chapter{Love That Can Hate}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 9--10}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave
to that which is good. 10.\ In love of the brethren be tenderly
affectioned one to another; in honour preferring one
another.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 9--10 (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Thus far the Apostle has been laying down very general precepts
and principles of Christian morals. Starting with the one
all-comprehensive thought of self-sacrifice as the very foundation
of all goodness, of transformation as its method, and of the clear
knowledge of our several powers and faithful stewardship of these,
as its conditions, he here proceeds to a series of more specific
exhortations, which at first sight seem to be very unconnected,
but through which there may be discerned a sequence of
thought.

The clauses of our text seem at first sight strangely
disconnected. The first and the last belong to the same subject,
but the intervening clause strikes a careless reader as out of
place and heterogeneous. I think that we shall see it is not so;
but for the present we but note that here are three sets of
precepts which enjoin, first, honest love; then, next, a healthy
vehemence against evil and for good; and finally, a brotherly
affection and mutual respect.

I. Let love be honest.

Love stands at the head, and is the fontal source of all separate
individualised duties. Here Paul is not so much prescribing love as
describing the kind of love which he recognises as genuine, and the
main point on which he insists is sincerity. The `dissimulation' of
the Authorised Version only covers half the ground. It means, hiding
what one is; but there is simulation, or pretending to be what one
is not. There are words of love which are like the iridescent scum
on the surface veiling the black depths of a pool of hatred. A
Psalmist complains of having to meet men whose words were `smoother
than butter' and whose true feelings were as `drawn swords'; but,
short of such consciously lying love, we must all recognise as a
real danger besetting us all, and especially those of us who are
naturally inclined to kindly relations with our fellows, the
tendency to use language just a little in excess of our feelings.
The glove is slightly stretched, and the hand in it is not quite
large enough to fill it. There is such a thing, not altogether
unknown in Christian circles, as benevolence, which is largely cant,
and words of conventional love about individuals which do not
represent any corresponding emotion. Such effusive love pours itself
in words, and is most generally the token of intense selfishness.
Any man who seeks to make his words a true picture of his emotions
must be aware that few harder precepts have ever been given than
this brief one of the Apostle's, `Let love be without hypocrisy.'

But the place where this exhortation comes in the apostolic
sequence here may suggest to us the discipline through which
obedience to it is made possible. There is little to be done by
the way of directly increasing either the fervour of love or the
honesty of its expression. The true method of securing both is to
be growingly transformed by `the renewing of our minds,' and
growingly to bring our whole old selves under the melting and
softening influence of `the mercies of God.' It is swollen
self-love, `thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to
think,' which impedes the flow of love to others, and it is in the
measure in which we receive into our minds `the mind that was in
Christ Jesus,' and look at men as He did, that we shall come to
love them all honestly and purely. When we are delivered from the
monstrous oppression and tyranny of self, we have hearts capable
of a Christlike and Christ-giving love to all men, and only they
who have cleansed their hearts by union with Him, and by receiving
into them the purging influence of His own Spirit, will be able to
love without hypocrisy.

II. Let love abhor what is evil, and cleave to what is good.

If we carefully consider this apparently irrelevant interruption in
the sequence of the apostolic exhortations, we shall, I think, see
at once that the irrelevance is only apparent, and that the healthy
vehemence against evil and resolute clinging to good is as essential
to the noblest forms of Christian love as is the sincerity enjoined
in the previous clause. To detest the one and hold fast by the other
are essential to the purity and depth of our love. Evil is to be
loathed, and good to be clung to in our own moral conduct, and
wherever we see them. These two precepts are not mere tautology, but
the second of them is the ground of the first. The force of our
recoil from the bad will be measured by the firmness of our grasp of
the good; and yet, though inseparably connected, the one is apt to
be easier to obey than is the other. There are types of Christian
men to whom it is more natural to abhor the evil than to cleave to
the good; and there are types of character of which the converse is
true. We often see men very earnest and entirely sincere in their
detestation of meanness and wickedness, but very tepid in their
appreciation of goodness. To hate is, unfortunately, more congenial
with ordinary characters than to love; and it is more facile to look
down on badness than to look up at goodness.

But it needs ever to be insisted upon, and never more than in this
day of spurious charity and unprincipled toleration, that a
healthy hatred of moral evil and of sin, wherever found and
however garbed, ought to be the continual accompaniment of all
vigorous and manly cleaving to that which is good. Unless we
shudderingly recoil from contact with the bad in our own lives,
and refuse to christen it with deceptive euphemisms when we meet
it in social and civil life, we shall but feebly grasp, and
slackly hold, that which is good. Such energy of moral recoil from
evil is perfectly consistent with honest love, for it is things,
not men, that we are to hate; and it is needful as the completion
and guardian of love itself. There is always danger that love
shall weaken the condemnation of wrong, and modern liberality,
both in the field of opinion and in regard to practical life, has
so far condoned evil as largely to have lost its hold upon good.
The criminal is pitied rather than blamed, and a multitude of
agencies are so occupied in elevating the wrong-doers that they
lose sight of the need of punishing.

Nor is it only in reference to society that this tendency works
harm. The effect of it is abundantly manifest in the fashionable
ideas of God and His character. There are whole schools of opinion
which practically strike out of their ideal of the Divine Nature
abhorrence of evil, and, little as they think it, are thereby
fatally impoverishing their ideal of God, and making it impossible
to understand His government of the world. As always, so in this
matter, the authentic revelation of the Divine Nature, and the
perfect pattern for the human are to be found in Jesus Christ. We
recall that wonderful incident, when on His last approach to
Jerusalem, rounding the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, He beheld
the city, gleaming in the morning sunshine across the valley, and
forgetting His own sorrow, shed tears over its approaching
desolation, which yet He steadfastly pronounced. His loathing of
evil was whole-souled and absolute, and equally intense and
complete was His cleaving to that which is good. In both, and in
the harmony between them, He makes God known, and prescribes and
holds forth the ideal of perfect humanity to men.

III. Let sincere and discriminating love be concentrated on
Christian men.

In the final exhortation of our text `the love of the brethren'
takes the place of the more diffused and general love enjoined in
the first clause. The expression `kindly affectioned' is the
rendering of a very eloquent word in the original in which the
instinctive love of a mother to her child, or the strange mystical
ties which unite members of a family together, irrespective of
their differences of character and temperament, are taken as an
example after which Christian men are to mould their relations to
one another. The love which is without hypocrisy, and is to be
diffused on all sides, is also to be gathered together and
concentrated with special energy on all who `call upon Jesus
Christ as Lord, both their Lord and ours.' The more general
precept and the more particular are in perfect harmony, however
our human weakness sometimes confuses them. It is obvious that
this final precept of our text will be the direct result of the
two preceding, for the love which has learned to be moral, hating
evil, and clinging to good as necessary, when directed to
possessors of like precious faith will thrill with the
consciousness of a deep mystical bond of union, and will
effloresce in all brotherly love and kindly affections. They who
are like one another in the depths of their moral life, who are
touched by like aspirations after like holy things, and who
instinctively recoil with similar revulsion from like
abominations, will necessarily feel the drawing of a unity far
deeper and sacreder than any superficial likenesses of race, or
circumstance, or opinion. Two men who share, however imperfectly,
in Christ's Spirit are more akin in the realities of their nature,
however they may differ on the surface, than either of them is to
another, however like he may seem, who is not a partaker in the
life of Christ.

This instinctive, Christian love, like all true and pure love, is
to manifest itself by `preferring one another in honour'; or as
the word might possibly be rendered, `anticipating one another.'
We are not to wait to have our place assigned before we give our
brother his. There will be no squabbling for the chief seat in the
synagogue, or the uppermost rooms at the feast, where brotherly
love marshals the guests. The one cure for petty jealousies and
the miserable strife for recognition, which we are all tempted to
engage in, lies in a heart filled with love of the brethren
because of its love to the Elder Brother of them all, and to the
Father who is His Father as well as ours. What a contrast is
presented between the practice of Christians and these precepts of
Paul! We may well bow ourselves in shame and contrition when we
read these clear-drawn lines indicating what we ought to be, and
set by the side of them the blurred and blotted pictures of what
we are. It is a painful but profitable task to measure ourselves
against Paul's ideal of Christ's commandment; but it will only be
profitable if it brings us to remember that Christ gives before He
commands, and that conformity with His ideal must begin, not with
details of conduct, or with emotion, however pure, but with
yielding ourselves to the God who moves us by His mercies, and
being `transformed by the renewing of our minds' and `the
indwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith.'

\chapter{A Triplet of Graces}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 11}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the
Lord.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 11.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Paul believed that Christian doctrine was meant to influence
Christian practice; and therefore, after the fundamental and
profound exhibition of the central truths of Christianity which
occupies the earlier portion of this great Epistle, he tacks on,
with a `therefore' to his theological exposition, a series of
plain, practical teachings. The place where conduct comes in the
letter is profoundly significant, and, if the significance of it
had been observed and the spirit of it carried into practice,
there would have been less of a barren orthodoxy, and fewer
attempts at producing righteous conduct without faith.

But not only is the place where this series of exhortations occur
very significant, but the order in which they appear is also
instructive. The great principle which covers all conduct, and may
be broken up into all the minutenesses of practical directions is
self-surrender. Give yourselves up to God; that is the Alpha and
the Omega of all goodness, and wherever that foundation is really
laid, on it will rise the fair building of a life which is a
temple, adorned with whatever things are lovely and of good
report. So after Paul has laid deep and broad the foundation of
all Christian virtue in his exhortation to present ourselves as
living sacrifices, he goes on to point out the several virtues in
which such self-surrender will manifest itself. There runs through
the most of these exhortations an arrangement in triplets---three
sister Graces linked together hand-in-hand as it were---and my
text presents an example of that threefoldness in grouping. `Not
slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.'

I. We have, first, the prime grace of Christian diligence.

`Not slothful in business' suggests, by reason of our modern
restriction of that word `business' to a man's daily occupation, a
much more limited range to this exhortation than the Apostle meant
to give it. The idea which is generally drawn from these words by
English readers is that they are to do their ordinary work
diligently, and, all the while, notwithstanding the cooling or
distracting influences of their daily avocations, are to keep
themselves `fervent in spirit.' That is a noble and needful
conception of the command, but it does not express what is in the
Apostle's mind. He does not mean by `business' a trade or
profession, or daily occupation. But the word means `zeal' or
`earnestness.' And what Paul says is just this---`In regard to
your earnestness in all directions, see that you are not
slothful.'

The force and drift of the whole precept is just the exhortation
to exercise the very homely virtue of diligence, which is as much
a condition of growth and maturity in the Christian as it is in
any other life. The very homeliness and obviousness of the duty
causes us often to lose sight of its imperativeness and
necessity.

Many of us, if we would sit quietly down and think of how we go
about our `business,' as we call it, and of how we go about our
Christian life, which ought to be our highest business, would have
great cause for being ashamed. We begin the one early in the
morning, we keep hard at it all day, our eyes are wide open to see
any opening where money is to be made; that is all right. We give
our whole selves to our work whilst we are at it; that is as it
should be. But why are there not the same concentration, the same
wide-awakeness, the same open-eyed eagerness to find out ways of
advancement, the same resolved and continuous and
all-comprehending and dominating enthusiasm about our Christianity
as there is about our shop, or our mill, or our success as
students? Why are we all fire in the one case and all ice in the
other? Why do we think that it is enough to lift the burden that
Christ lays upon us with one languid finger, and to put our whole
hand, or rather, as the prophet says, `both hands earnestly,' to
the task of lifting the load of daily work? `In your earnestness
be not slothful.'

Brethren, that is a very homely exhortation. I wonder how many of
us can say, `Lord! I have heard, and I have obeyed Thy
precept.'

II. Diligence must be fed by a fervent spirit.

The word translated `fervent' is literally boiling. The metaphor
is very plain and intelligible. The spirit brought into contact
with Christian truth and with the fire of the Holy Spirit will
naturally have its temperature raised, and will be moved by the
warm touch as heat makes water in a pot hung above a fire boil.
Such emotion, produced by the touch of the fiery Spirit of God, is
what Paul desires for, and enjoins on, all Christians; for such
emotion is the only way by which the diligence, without which no
Christian progress will be made, can be kept up.

No man will work long at a task that his heart is not in; or if he
does, because he is obliged, the work will be slavery. In order,
then, that diligence may neither languish and become slothfulness,
nor be felt to be a heavy weight and an unwelcome necessity, Paul
here bids us see to it that our hearts are moved because there is a
fire below which makes `the soul's depths boil in earnest.'

Now, of course, I know that, as a great teacher has told us, `The
gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul,' and I know
that there is a great deal of emotional Christianity which is
worth nothing. But it is not that kind of fervour that the Apostle
is enjoining here. Whilst it is perfectly true that mere emotion
often does co-exist with, and very often leads to, entire
negligence as to possessing and manifesting practical excellence,
the true relation between these is just the opposite---viz. that
this fervour of which I speak, this wide-awakeness and enthusiasm
of a spirit all quickened into rapidity of action by the warmth
which it has felt from God in Christ, should drive the wheels of
life. Boiling water makes steam, does it not? And what is to be
done with the steam that comes off the `boiling' spirit? You may
either let it go roaring through a waste-pipe and do nothing but
make a noise and be idly dissipated in the air, or you may lead it
into a cylinder and make it lift a piston, and then you will get
work out of it. That is what the Apostle desires us to do with our
emotion. The lightning goes careering through the sky, but we have
harnessed it to tram-cars nowadays, and made it `work for its
living,' to carry our letters and light our rooms. Fervour of a
Christian spirit is all right when it is yoked to Christian work,
and made to draw what else is a heavy chariot. It is not emotion,
but it is indolent emotion, that is the curse of much of our
`fervent' Christianity.

There cannot be too much fervour. There may be too little outlet
provided for the fervour to work in. It may all go off in
comfortable feeling, in enthusiastic prayers and `Amens!' and `So
be it, Lords!' and the like, or it may come with us into our daily
tasks, and make us buckle to with more earnestness, and more
continuity. Diligence driven by earnestness, and fervour that
works, are the true things.

And surely, surely there cannot be any genuine
Christianity---certainly there cannot be any deep
Christianity---which is not fervent.

We hear from certain quarters of the Church a great deal about the
virtue of moderation. But it seems to me that, if you take into
account what Christianity tells us, the `sober' feeling is fervent
feeling, and tepid feeling is imperfect feeling. I cannot
understand any man believing as plain matter-of-fact the truths on
which the whole New Testament insists, and keeping himself `cool,'
or, as our friends call it, `moderate.' Brethren,
enthusiasm---which properly means the condition of being dwelt in
by a god---is the wise, the reasonable attitude of Christian men,
if they believe their own Christianity and are really serving
Jesus Christ. They should be `diligent in business,
fervent'---boiling---in spirit.

III. The diligence and the fervency are both to be animated by the
thought, `Serving the Lord!'

Some critics, as many of you know, no doubt, would prefer to read
this verse in its last clause `serving the time.' But that seems
to me a very lame and incomplete climax for the Apostle's thought,
and it breaks entirely the sequence which, as I think, is
discernible in it. Much rather, he here, in the closing member of
the triplet, suggests a thought which will be stimulus to the
diligence and fuel to the fire that makes the spirit boil.

In effect he says, `Think, when your hands begin to droop, and
when your spirits begin to be cold and indifferent, and languor to
steal over you, and the paralysing influences of the commonplace
and the familiar, and the small begin to assert themselves---think
that you are serving the Lord.' Will that not freshen you up? Will
that not set you boiling again? Will it not be easy to be diligent
when we feel that we are `ever in the great Taskmaster's eye'?
There are many reasons for diligence---the greatness of the work,
for it is no small matter for us to get the whole lump of our
nature leavened with the good leaven; the continual operation of
antagonistic forces which are all round us, and are working
night-shifts as well as day ones, whether we as Christians are on
short time or not, the brevity of the period during which we have
to work, and the tremendous issues which depend upon the
completeness of our service here---all these things are reasons
for our diligence. But \textit{the} reason is: `Thou Christ hast
died for me, and livest for me; truly I am Thy slave.' That is the
thought that will make a man bend his back to his work, whatever
it be, and bend his will to his work, too, however unwelcome it
may be; and that is the thought that will stir his whole spirit to
fervour and earnestness, and thus will deliver him from the
temptations to languid and perfunctory work that ever creep over
us.

You can carry that motive---as we all know, and as we all forget
when the pinch comes---into your shop, your study, your office,
your mill, your kitchen, or wherever you go. `On the bells of the
horses there shall be written, Holiness to the Lord,' said the
prophet, and `every bowl in Jerusalem' may be sacred as the
vessels of the altar. All life may flash into beauty, and tower
into greatness, and be smoothed out into easiness, and the crooked
things may be made straight and the rough places plain, and the
familiar and the trite be invested with freshness and wonder as of
a dream, if only we write over them, `For the sake of the Master.'
Then, whatever we do or bear, be it common, insignificant, or
unpleasant, will change its aspect, and all will be sweet. Here is
the secret of diligence and of fervency, `I set the Lord always
before me.'

\chapter{Another Triplet of Graces}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 12}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in
prayer.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 12.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

These three closely connected clauses occur, as you all know, in
the midst of that outline of the Christian life with which the
Apostle begins the practical part of this Epistle. Now, what he
omits in this sketch of Christian duty seems to me quite as
significant as what he inserts. It is very remarkable that in the
twenty verses devoted to this subject, this is the only one which
refers to the inner secrets of the Christian life. Paul's notion
of `deepening the spiritual life' was `Behave yourself better in
your relation to other people.' So all the rest of this chapter is
devoted to inculcating our duties to one another. Conduct is
all-important. An orthodox creed is valuable if it influences
action, but not otherwise. Devout emotion is valuable, if it
drives the wheels of life, but not otherwise. Christians should
make efforts to attain to clear views and warm feelings, but the
outcome and final test of both is a daily life of visible
imitation of Jesus. The deepening of spiritual life should be
manifested by completer, practical righteousness in the
market-place and the street and the house, which non-Christians
will acknowledge.

But now, with regard to these three specific exhortations here, I
wish to try to bring out their connection as well as the force of
each of them.

I. So I remark first, that the Christian life ought to be joyful
because it is hopeful.

Now, I do not suppose that many of us habitually recognise it as a
Christian duty to be joyful. We think that it is a matter of
temperament and partly a matter of circumstance. We are glad when
things go well with us. If we have a sunny disposition, and are
naturally light-hearted, all the better; if we have a melancholy
or morose one, all the worse. But do we recognise this, that a
Christian who is not joyful is not living up to his duty; and that
there is no excuse, either in temperament or in circumstances, for
our not being so, and always being so? `Rejoice in the Lord
alway,' says Paul; and then, as if he thought, `Some of you will
be thinking that that is a very rash commandment, to aim at a
condition quite impossible to make constant,' he goes on---`and,
to convince you that I do not say it hastily, I will repeat
it---``and again I say, rejoice.''\,' Brethren, we shall have to
alter our conceptions of what true gladness is before we can come
to understand the full depth of the great thought that joy is a
Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a saying
in the Old Testament compares to the `crackling of thorns under a
pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it; and
very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with `whatsoever
things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish,
short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down so soon into black
ashes.

To be glad is a Christian duty. Many of us have as much religion
as makes us sombre, and impels us often to look upon the more
solemn and awful aspects of Christian truth, but we have not
enough to make us glad. I do not need to dwell upon all the
sources in Christian faith and belief, of that lofty and
imperatively obligatory gladness, but I confine myself to the one
in my text, `Rejoicing in hope.'

Now, we all know---from the boy that is expecting to go home for
his holidays in a week, up to the old man to whose eye the
time-veil is wearing thin---that hope, if it is certain, is a
source of gladness. How lightly one's bosom's lord sits upon its
throne, when a great hope comes to animate us! how everybody is
pleasant, and all things are easy, and the world looks different!
Hope, if it is certain, will gladden, and if our Christianity
grasps, as it ought to do, the only hope that is absolutely
certain, and as sure as if it were in the past and had been
experienced, then our hearts, too, will sing for joy. True joy is
\textit{not} a matter of temperament, so much as a matter of
faith. It is \textit{not} a matter of circumstances. All the
surface drainage may be dry, but there is a well in the courtyard
deep and cool and full and exhaustless, and a Christian who
rightly understands and cherishes the Christian hope is lifted
above temperament, and is not dependent upon conditions for his
joys.

The Apostle, in an earlier part of this same letter, defines for
us what that hope is, which thus is the secret of perpetual
gladness, when he speaks about `rejoicing in hope of the glory of
God.' Yes, it is that great, supreme, calm, far off, absolutely
certain prospect of being gathered into the divine glory, and
walking there, like the three in the fiery furnace, unconsumed and
at ease; it is that hope that will triumph over temperament, and
over all occasions for melancholy, and will breathe into our life
a perpetual gladness. Brethren, is it not strange and sad that
with such a treasure by our sides we should consent to live such
poor lives as we do?

But remember, although I cannot say to myself, `Now I will be
glad,' and cannot attain to joy by a movement of the will or
direct effort, although it is of no use to say to a man---which is
all that the world can ever say to him---`Cheer up and be glad,'
whilst you do not alter the facts that make him sad, there is a
way by which we can bring about feelings of gladness or of gloom.
It is just this---we can choose what we will look at. If you
prefer to occupy your mind with the troubles, losses,
disappointments, hard work, blighted hopes of this poor sin-ridden
world, of course sadness will come over you often, and a general
grey tone will be the usual tone of your lives, as it is of the
lives of many of us, broken only by occasional bursts of foolish
mirth and empty laughter. But if you choose to turn away from all
these, and instead of the dim, dismal, hard present, to sun
yourselves in the light of the yet unrisen sun, which you can do,
then, having rightly chosen the subjects to think about, the
feeling will come as a matter of course. You cannot make
yourselves glad by, as it were, laying hold of yourselves and
lifting yourselves into gladness, but you can rule the direction
of your thoughts, and so can bring around you summer in the midst
of winter, by steadily contemplating the facts---and they are
present facts, though we talk about them collectively as `the
future'---the facts on which all Christian gladness ought to be
based. We can carry our own atmosphere with us; like the people in
Italy, who in frosty weather will be seen sitting in the
market-place by their stalls with a dish of embers, which they
grasp in their hands, and so make themselves comfortably warm on
the bitterest day. You can bring a reasonable degree of warmth
into the coldest weather, if you will lay hold of the vessel in
which the fire is, and keep it in your hand and close to your
heart. Choose what you think about, and feelings will follow
thoughts.

But it needs very distinct and continuous effort for a man to keep
this great source of Christian joy clear before him. We are like the
dwellers in some island of the sea, who, in some conditions of the
atmosphere, can catch sight of the gleaming mountain-tops on the
mainland across the stormy channel between. But thick days, with a
heavy atmosphere and much mist, are very frequent in our latitude,
and then all the distant hills are blotted out, and we see nothing
but the cold grey sea, breaking on the cold, grey stones. Still, you
can scatter the mist if you will. You can make the atmosphere
bright; and it is worth an effort to bring clear before us, and to
keep high above the mists that cling to the low levels, the great
vision which will make us glad. Brethren, I believe that one great
source of the weakness of average Christianity amongst us to-day is
the dimness into which so many of us have let the hope of the glory
of God pass in our hearts. So I beg you to lay to heart this first
commandment, and to rejoice in hope.

II. Now, secondly, here is the thought that life, if full of
joyful hope, will be patient.

I have been saying that the gladness of which my text speaks is
independent of circumstances, and may persist and be continuous
even when externals occasion sadness. It is possible---I do not
say it is easy, God knows it is hard---I do not say it is
frequently attained, but I do say it is possible---to realise that
wonderful ideal of the Apostle's `As sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing.' The surface of the ocean may be tossed and fretted by
the winds, and churned into foam, but the great central depths
`hear not the loud winds when they call,' and are still in the
midst of tempest. And we, dear brethren, ought to have an inner
depth of spirit, down to the disturbance of which no
surface-trouble can ever reach. That is the height of attainment
of Christian faith, but it is a possible attainment for every one
of us.

And if there be that burning of the light under the water, like
`Greek fire,' as it was called, which many waters could not
quench---if there be that persistence of gladness beneath the
surface-sorrow, as you find a running stream coming out below a
glacier, then the joy and the hope, which co-exist with the
sorrow, will make life patient.

Now, the Apostle means by these great words, `patient' and
`patience,' which are often upon his lips, something more than
simple endurance. That endurance is as much as many of us can
often muster up strength to exercise. It sometimes takes all our
faith and all our submission simply to say, `I opened not my
mouth, because thou didst it; and I will bear what thine hand lays
upon me.' But that is not all that the idea of Christian
`patience' includes, for it also takes in the thought of active
work, and it is \textit{perseverance} as much as
\textit{patience}.

Now, if my heart is filled with a calm gladness because my eye is
fixed upon a celestial hope, then both the passive and active
sides of Christian `patience' will be realised by me. If my hope
burns bright, and occupies a large space in my thoughts, then it
will not be hard to take the homely consolation of good John
Newton's hymn and say---

\begin{verse}
`Though painful at present, \\
\ \ `Twill cease before long; \\
And then, oh, how pleasant \\
\ \ The conqueror's song!'
\end{verse}

\noindent A man who is sailing to America, and knows that he will
be in New York in a week, does not mind, although his cabin is
contracted, and he has a great many discomforts, and though he has
a bout of sea-sickness. The disagreeables are only going to last
for a day or two. So our hope will make us bear trouble, and not
make much of it.

And our hope will strengthen us, if it is strong, for all the work
that is to be done. Persistence in the path of duty, though my
heart be beating like a smith's hammer on the anvil, is what
Christian men should aim at, and possess. If we have within our
hearts that fire of a certain hope, it will impel us to diligence
in doing the humblest duty, whether circumstances be for or
against us; as some great steamer is driven right on its course,
through the ocean, whatever storms may blow in the teeth of its
progress, because, deep down in it, there are furnaces and boilers
which supply the steam that drives the engines. So a life that is
joyful because it is hopeful will be full of calm endurance and
strenuous work. `Rejoicing in hope; patient,' persevering in
tribulation.

III. Lastly, our lives will be joyful, hopeful, and patient, in
proportion as they are prayerful.

`Continuing instant'---which, of course, just means
steadfast---`in prayer.' Paul uttered a paradox when he said,
`Rejoice in the Lord alway,' as he said long before this verse, in
the very first letter that he ever wrote, or at least the first
which has come down to us. There he bracketed it along with two
other equally paradoxical sayings. `Rejoice evermore; pray without
ceasing; in everything give thanks.' If you pray without ceasing
you can rejoice without ceasing.

But can I pray without ceasing? Not if by prayer you mean only
words of supplication and petition, but if by prayer you mean also
a mental attitude of devotion, and a kind of sub-conscious
reference to God in all that you do, such unceasing prayer is
possible. Do not let us blunt the edge of this commandment, and
weaken our own consciousness of having failed to obey it, by
getting entangled in the cobwebs of mere curious discussions as to
whether the absolute ideal of perfectly unbroken communion with
God is possible in this life. At all events it is possible to us
to approximate to that ideal a great deal more closely than our
consciences tell us that we ever yet have done. If we are trying
to keep our hearts in the midst of daily duty in contact with God,
and if, ever and anon in the press of our work, we cast a thought
towards Him and a prayer, then joy and hope and patience will come
to us, in a degree that we do not know much about yet, but might
have known all about long, long ago.

There is a verse in the Old Testament which we may well lay to
heart: `They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of
them.' Well, what sort of a prayer do you think that would be?
Suppose that you were standing in the thick of battle with the
sword of an enemy at your throat, there would not be much time for
many words of prayer, would there? But the cry could go up, and
the thought could go up, and as they went up, down would come the
strong buckler which God puts between His servants and all evil.
That is the sort of prayer that you, in the battle of business, in
your shops and counting-houses and warehouses and mills, we
students in our studies, and you mothers in your families and your
kitchens, can send up to heaven. If thus we `pray without
ceasing,' then we shall `rejoice evermore,' and our souls will be
kept in patience and filled with the peace of God.

\chapter{Still Another Triplet}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 13--15}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.
14.\ Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. 15.\
Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that
weep.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 13--15.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

In these verses we pass from the innermost region of communion
with God into the wide field of duties in relation to men. The
solitary secrecies of rejoicing hope, endurance, and prayer
unbroken, are exchanged for the publicities of benevolence and
sympathy. In the former verses the Christian soul is in `the
secret place of the Most High'; in those of our text he comes
forth with the light of God on his face, and hands laden with
blessings. The juxtaposition of the two suggests the great
principles to which the morality of the New Testament is ever
true---that devotion to God is the basis of all practical
helpfulness to man, and that practical helpfulness to man is the
expression and manifestation of devotion to God.

The three sets of injunctions in our text, dissimilar though they
appear, have a common basis. They are varying forms of one
fundamental disposition---love; which varies in its forms
according to the necessities of its objects, bringing temporal
help to the needy, meeting hostility with blessing, and rendering
sympathy to both the glad and the sorrowful. There is, further, a
noteworthy connection, not in sense but in sound, between the
first and second clauses of our text, which is lost in our English
Version. `Given to hospitality' is, as the Revised margin shows,
literally, pursuing hospitality. Now the Greek, like the English
word, has the special meaning of following with a hostile intent,
and the use of it in the one sense suggests its other meaning to
Paul, whose habit of `going off at a word,' as it has been called,
is a notable feature of his style. Hence, this second injunction,
of blessing the persecutors, comes as a kind of play upon words,
and is obviously occasioned by the verbal association. It would
come more appropriately at a later part of the chapter, but its
occurrence here is characteristic of Paul's idiosyncrasy. We may
represent the connection of these two clauses by such a rendering
as: Pursue hospitality, and as for those who pursue you, bless,
and curse not.

We may look at these three flowers from the one root of love.

I. Love that speaks in material help.

We have here two special applications of that love which Paul
regards as `the bond of perfectness,' knitting all Christians
together. The former of these two is love that expresses itself by
tangible material aid. The persons to be helped are `saints,' and
it is their `needs' that are to be aided. There is no trace in the
Pauline Epistles of the community of goods which for a short time
prevailed in the Church of Jerusalem and which was one of the
causes that led to the need for the contribution for the poor
saints in that city which occupied so much of Paul's attention at
Corinth and elsewhere. But, whilst Christian love leaves the
rights of property intact, it charges them with the duty of
supplying the needs of the brethren. They are not absolute and
unconditioned rights, but are subject to the highest principles of
stewardship for God, trusteeship for men, and sacrifice for
Christ. These three great thoughts condition and limit the
Christian man's possession of the wealth, which, in a modified
sense, it is allowable for him to call his own. His brother's need
constitutes a first charge on all that belongs to him, and ought
to precede the gratification of his own desires for superfluities
and luxuries. If we `see our brother have need and shut up our
bowels of compassion against him' and use our possessions for the
gratification of our own whims and fancies, `how dwelleth the love
of God in us?' There are few things in which Christian men of this
day have more need for the vigorous exercise of conscience, and
for enlightenment, than in their getting, and spending, and
keeping money. In that region lies the main sphere of usefulness
for many of us; and if we have not been `faithful in that which is
least,' our unfaithfulness there makes it all but impossible that
we should be faithful in that which is greatest. The honest and
rigid contemplation of our own faults in the administration of our
worldly goods, might well invest with a terrible meaning the
Lord's tremendous question, `If ye have not been faithful in that
which is another's, who shall give you that which is your
own?'

The hospitality which is here enjoined is another shape which
Christian love naturally took in the early days. When believers
were a body of aliens, dispersed through the world, and when, as
they went from one place to another, they could find homes only
amongst their own brethren, the special circumstances of the time
necessarily attached special importance to this duty; and as a
matter of fact, we find it recognised in all the Epistles of the
New Testament as one of the most imperative of Christian duties.
`It was the unity and strength which this intercourse gave that
formed one of the great forces which supported Christianity.' But
whilst hospitality was a special duty for the early Christians, it
still remains a duty for us, and its habitual exercise would go
far to break down the frowning walls which diversities of social
position and of culture have reared between Christians.

II. The love that meets hostility with blessing.

There are perhaps few words in Scripture which have been more
fruitful of the highest graces than this commandment. What a train
of martyrs, from primitive times to the Chinese Christians in
recent years, have remembered these words, and left their legacy
of blessing as they laid their heads on the block or stood circled
by fire at the stake! For us, in our quieter generation, actual
persecution is rare, but hostility of ill-will more or less may
well dog our steps, and the great principle here commended to us
is that we are to meet enmity with its opposite, and to conquer by
love. The diamond is cut with sharp knives, and each stroke brings
out flashing beauty. There are kinds of wood which are fragrant
when they burn; and there are kinds which show their veining under
the plane. It is a poor thing if a Christian character only gives
back like a mirror the expression of the face that looks at it. To
meet hate with hate, and scorn with scorn, is not the way to turn
hate into love and scorn into sympathy. Indifferent equilibrium in
the presence of active antagonism is not possible for us. As long
as we are sensitive we shall wince from a blow, or a sarcasm, or a
sneer. We must bless in order to keep ourselves from cursing. The
lesson is very hard, and the only way of obeying it fully is to
keep near Christ and drink in His spirit who prayed `Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

III. Love that flows in wide sympathy.

Of the two forms of sympathy which are here enjoined, the former
is the harder. To `rejoice with them that do rejoice' makes a
greater demand on unselfish love than to `weep with them that
weep.' Those who are glad feel less need of sympathy than do the
sorrowful, and envy is apt to creep in and mar the completeness of
sympathetic joy. But even the latter of the two injunctions is not
altogether easy. The cynic has said that there is `something not
wholly displeasing in the misfortunes of our best friends'; and,
though that is an utterly worldly and unchristian remark, it must
be confessed not to be altogether wanting in truth.

But for obedience to both of these injunctions, a heart at leisure
from itself is needed to sympathise; and not less needed is a
sedulous cultivation of the power of sympathy. No doubt
temperament has much to do with the degree of our obedience; but
this whole context goes on the assumption that the grace of God
working on temperament strengthens natural endowments by turning
them into `gifts differing according to the grace that is given to
us.' Though we live in that awful individuality of ours, and are
each, as it were, islanded in ourselves `with echoing straits
between us thrown,' it is possible for us, as the result of close
communion with Jesus Christ, to bridge the chasms, and to enter
into the joy of a brother's joy. He who groaned in Himself as He
drew near to the grave of Lazarus, and was moved to weep with the
weeping sisters, will help us, in the measure in which we dwell in
Him and He in us, that we too may look `not every man on his own
things, but every man also on the things of others.'

On the whole, love to Jesus is the basis of love to man, and love
to man is the practical worship of Christianity. As in all things,
so in the exhortations which we have now been considering, Jesus
is our pattern and power. He Himself communicates with our
necessities, and opens His heart to give us hospitable welcome
there. He Himself has shown us how to meet and overcome hatred
with love, and hurt with blessing. He shares our griefs, and by
sharing lessens them. He shares our joys, and by sharing hallows
them. The summing up of all these specific injunctions is, `Let
that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.'

\chapter{Still Another Triplet}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 16}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Be of the same mind one toward another. Set not your mind on high
things, but condescend to things that are lowly. Be not wise in
your own conceits.'---Romans xii. 16 (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We have here again the same triple arrangement which has prevailed
through a considerable portion of the context. These three
exhortations are linked together by a verbal resemblance which can
scarcely be preserved in translation. In the two former the same
verb is employed: and in the third the word for `wise' is cognate
with the verb found in the other two clauses. If we are to seek
for any closer connection of thought we may find it first in
this---that all the three clauses deal with mental attitudes,
whilst the preceding ones dealt with the expression of such; and
second in this---that the first of the three is a general precept,
and the second and third are warnings against faults which are
most likely to interfere with it.

I. We note, the bond of peace.

`Be of the same mind one toward another.' It is interesting to
notice how frequently the Apostle in many of his letters exhorts
to mutual harmonious relations. For instance, in this very Epistle
he invokes `the God of patience and of comfort' to grant to the
Roman Christians `to be of the same mind with one another
according to Christ Jesus,' and to the Corinthians, who had their
full share of Greek divisiveness, he writes, `Be of the same mind,
live in peace,' and assures them that, if so, `the God of love and
peace will be with them'; to his beloved Philippians he pours out
his heart in beseeching them by `the consolation that is in Christ
Jesus, and the comfort of love, and the fellowship of the
Spirit---' that they would `fulfil his joy, that they be of the
same mind, having the same love, being of one accord, of one
mind'; whilst to the two women in that Church who were at variance
with one another he sends the earnest exhortation `to be of the
same mind in the Lord,' and prays one whom we only know by his
loving designation of `a true yokefellow,' to help them in what
would apparently put a strain upon their Christian principle. For
communities and for individuals the cherishing of the spirit of
amity and concord is a condition without which there will be
little progress in the Christian life.

But it is to be carefully noted that such a spirit may co-exist
with great differences about other matters. It is not opposed to
wide divergence of opinion, though in our imperfect sanctification
it is hard for us to differ and yet to be in concord. We all know
the hopelessness of attempting to make half a dozen good men think
alike on any of the greater themes of the Christian religion; and
if we could succeed in such a vain attempt, there would still be
many an unguarded door through which could come the spirit of
discord, and the half-dozen might have divergence of heart even
whilst they profess identity of opinion. The true hindrances to
our having `the same mind one toward another' lie very much deeper
in our nature than the region in which we keep our creeds. The
self-regard and self-absorption, petulant dislike of
fellow-Christians' peculiarities, the indifference which comes
from lack of imaginative sympathy, and which ministers to the
ignorance which causes it, and a thousand other weaknesses in
Christian character bring about the deplorable alienation which
but too plainly marks the relation of Christian communities and of
individual Christians to one another in this day. When one thinks
of the actual facts in every corner of Christendom, and probes
one's own feelings, the contrast between the apostolic ideal and
the Church's realisation of it presents a contradiction so glaring
that one wonders if Christian people at all believe that it is
their duty `to be of the same mind one toward another.'

The attainment of this spirit of amity and concord ought to be a
distinct object of effort, and especially in times like ours, when
there is no hostile pressure driving Christian people together,
but when our great social differences are free to produce a
certain inevitable divergence and to check the flow of our
sympathy, and when there are deep clefts of opinion, growing
deeper every day, and seeming to part off Christians into camps
which have little understanding of, and less sympathy with, one
another. Even the strong individualism, which it is the glory of
true Christian faith to foster in character, and which some forms
of Christian fellowship do distinctly promote, works harm in this
matter; and those who pride themselves on belonging to `Free
churches,' and standing apart from creed-bound and clergy-led
communities, are specially called upon to see to it that they keep
this exhortation, and cultivate `the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace.'

It should not be necessary to insist that the closest mutual
concord amongst all believers is but an imperfect manifestation,
as all manifestations in life of the deepest principles must be,
of the true oneness which binds together in the most sacred unity,
and should bind together in closest friendship, all partakers of
the one life. And assuredly the more that one life flows into our
spirits, the less power will all the enemies of Christian concord
have over us. It is the Christ in us which makes us kindred with
all others in whom He is. It is self, in some form or other, that
separates us from the possessors of like precious faith. When the
tide is out, the little rock-pools on the shore lie separated by
stretches of slimy weeds, but the great sea, when it rushes up,
buries the divisions, and unites them all. Our Christian unity is
unity in Christ, and the only sure way `to be of the same mind one
toward another' is, that `the mind which was in Christ Jesus be in
us also.'

II. The divisive power of selfish ambition.

`Set not your mind on high things, but condescend to things that
are lowly.' The contrast here drawn between the high and the lowly
makes it probable that the latter as well as the former is to be
taken as referring to `things' rather than persons. The margin of
the Revised Version gives the literal rendering of the word
translated `condescend.' `To be carried away with,' is
metaphorically equivalent to surrendering one's self to; and the
two clauses present two sides of one disposition, which seeks not
for personal advancement or conspicuous work which may minister to
self-gratulation, but contentedly fills the lowly sphere, and `the
humblest duties on herself doth lay.' We need not pause to point
out that such an ideal is dead against the fashionable maxims of
this generation. Personal ambition is glorified as an element in
progress, and to a world which believes in such a proverb as
`devil take the hindmost,' these two exhortations can only seem
fanatical absurdity. And yet, perhaps, if we fairly take into
account how the seeking after personal advancement and conspicuous
work festers the soul, and how the flower of heart's-ease grows,
as Bunyan's shepherd-boy found out, in the lowly valley, these
exhortations to a quiet performance of lowly duties and a
contented filling of lowly spheres, may seem touched with a higher
wisdom than is to be found in the arenas where men trample over
each other in their pursuit of a fame `which appeareth for a
little time, and then vanisheth away.' What a peaceful world it
would be, and what peaceful souls they would have, if Christian
people really adopted as their own these two simple maxims. They
are easy to understand, but how hard they are to follow.

It needs scarcely be noted that the temper condemned here destroys
all the concord and amity which the Apostle has been urging in the
previous clause. Where every man is eagerly seeking to force
himself in front of his neighbour, any community will become a
struggling mob; and they who are trying to outrun one another and
who grasp at `high things,' will never be `of the same mind one
toward another.' But, we may observe that the surest way to keep
in check the natural selfish tendency to desire conspicuous things
for ourselves is honestly, and with rigid self-control, to let
ourselves be carried away by enthusiasm for humble tasks. If we
would not disturb our lives and fret our hearts by ambitions that,
even when gratified, bring no satisfaction, we must yield
ourselves to the impulse of the continuous stream of lowly duties
which runs through every life.

But, plainly as this exhortation is needful, it is too heavy a
strain to be ever carried out except by the power of Christ formed
in the heart. It is in His earthly life that we find the great
example of the highest stooping to the lowest duties, and elevating
them by taking them upon Himself. He did not `strive nor cry, nor
cause His voice to be heard in the streets.' Thirty years of that
perfect life were spent in a little village folded away in the
Galilean hills, with rude peasants for the only spectators, and the
narrow sphere of a carpenter's shop for its theatre. For the rest,
the publicity possible would have been obscurity to an ambitious
soul. To speak comforting words to a few weeping hearts; to lay His
hands on a few sick folk and heal them; to go about in a despised
land doing good, loved indeed by outcasts and sinners, unknown by
all the dispensers of renown, and consciously despised by all whom
the world honoured---that was the perfect life of the Incarnate God.
And that is an example which His followers seem with one consent to
set aside in their eager race after distinction and work that may
glorify their names. The difficulty of a faithful following of these
precepts, and the only means by which that difficulty can be
overcome, are touchingly taught us in another of Paul's Epistles by
the accumulation of motives which he brings to bear upon his
commandment, when he exhorts by the tender motives of `comfort in
Christ, consolation of love, fellowship of the Spirit, and tender
mercies and compassions, that ye fulfil my joy, being of the same
mind, of one accord; doing nothing through faction or vainglory, but
in lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself.' As
the pattern for each of us in our narrow sphere, he holds forth the
mind that was in Christ Jesus, and the great self-emptying which he
shrank not from, `but being in the form of God counted it not a
prize to be on an equality with God, but, being found in fashion as
a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death.'

III. The divisive power of intellectual self-conceit.

In this final clause the Apostle, in some sense, repeats the maxim
with which he began the series of special exhortations in this
chapter. He there enjoined `every one among you not to think of
himself more highly than he ought to think'; here he deals with
one especial form of such too lofty thinking, viz. intellectual
conceit. He is possibly quoting the Book of Proverbs (iii. 7),
where we read, `Be not wise in thine own eyes,' which is preceded
by, `Lean not to thine own understanding; in all thy ways
acknowledge Him'; and is followed by, `Fear the Lord and depart
from evil'; thus pointing to the acknowledgment and fear of the
Lord as the great antagonist of such over-estimate of one's own
wisdom as of all other faults of mind and life. It needs not to
point out how such a disposition breaks Christian unity of spirit.
There is something especially isolating in that form of
self-conceit. There are few greater curses in the Church than
little coteries of superior persons who cannot feed on ordinary
food, whose enlightened intelligence makes them too fastidious to
soil their dainty fingers with rough, vulgar work, and whose
supercilious criticism of the unenlightened souls that are content
to condescend to lowly Christian duties, is like an iceberg that
brings down the temperature wherever it floats. That temper
indulged in, breaks the unity, reduces to inactivity the work, and
puts an end to the progress, of any Christian community in which
it is found; and just as its predominance is harmful, so the
obedience to the exhortation against it is inseparable from the
fulfilling of its sister precepts. To know ourselves for the
foolish creatures that we are, is a mighty help to being `of the
same mind one toward another.' Who thinks of himself soberly and
according to the measure of faith which God hath dealt to him will
not hunger after high things, but rather prefer the lowly ones
that are on a level with his lowly self.

The exhortations of our text were preceded with injunctions to
distribute material help, and to bestow helpful sympathy. The
tempers enjoined in our present text are the inward source and
fountain of such external bestowments. The rendering of material
help and of sympathetic emotion are right and valuable only as
they are the outcome of this unanimity and lowliness. It is
possible to `distribute to the necessity of saints' in such a way
as that the gift pains more than a blow; it is possible to proffer
sympathy so that the sensitive heart shrinks from it. It was `when
the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one
soul' that it became natural to have all things common. As in the
aurora borealis, quivering beams from different centres stream out
and at each throb approach each other till they touch and make an
arch of light that glorifies the winter's night, so, if Christian
men were `of the same mind toward one another,' did not `set their
minds on high things, but condescended to things that were lowly,
and were not wise in their own conceits,' the Church of Christ
would shine forth in the darkness of a selfish world and would
witness to Him who came down `from the highest throne in glory' to
the lowliest place in this lowly world, that He might lift us to
His own height of glory everlasting.

\chapter{Still Another Triplet}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 17, 18}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Render to no man evil for evil. Take thought for things
honourable in the light of all men. 18. If it be possible, as much
as in you lieth, be at peace with all men.'---\textsc{Romans} xii.
17, 18 (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The closing words of this chapter have a certain unity in that
they deal principally with a Christian's duty in the face of
hostility and antagonism. A previous injunction touched on the
same subject in the exhortation to bless the persecutors; but with
that exception, all the preceding verses have dealt with duties
owing to those with whom we stand in friendly relations. Such
exhortations take no cognisance of the special circumstances of
the primitive Christians as `lambs in the midst of wolves'; and a
large tract of Christian duty would be undealt with, if we had not
such directions for feelings and actions in the face of hate and
hurt. The general precept in our text is expanded in a more
complete form in the verses which follow the text, and we may
postpone its consideration until we have to deal with them. It is
one form of the application of the `love without hypocrisy' which
has been previously recommended. The second of these three
precepts seems quite heterogeneous, but it may be noticed that the
word for `evil' in the former and that for `honourable,' in these
closely resemble each other in sound, and the connection of the
two clauses may be partially owing to that verbal resemblance;
whilst we may also discern a real link between the thoughts in the
consideration that we owe even to our enemies the exhibition of a
life which a prejudiced hostility will be forced to recognise as
good. The third of these exhortations prescribes unmoved
persistence in friendly regard to all men.

Dealing then, in this sermon only, with the second and third of
these precepts, and postponing the consideration of the first to
the following discourse, we have here the counsel that

I. Hostility is to be met with a holy and beautiful life.

The Authorised Version inadequately translates the significant
word in this exhortation by `honest.' The Apostle is not simply
enjoining honesty in our modern, narrow sense of the word, which
limits it to the rendering to every man his own. It is a
remarkable thing that `honest,' like many other words expressing
various types of goodness, has steadily narrowed in signification,
and it is very characteristic of England that probity as to money
and material goods should be its main meaning. Here the word is
used in the full breadth of its ancient use, and is equivalent to
that which is fair with the moral beauty of goodness.

A Christian man then is bound to live a life which all men will
acknowledge to be good. In that precept is implied the recognition
of even bad men's notions of morality as correct. The Gospel is
not a new system of ethics, though in some points it brings old
virtues into new prominence, and alters their perspective. It is
further implied that the world's standard of what Christians ought
to be may be roughly taken as a true one. Christian men would
learn a great deal about themselves, and might in many respects
heighten their ideal, if they would try to satisfy the
expectations of the most degraded among them as to what they ought
to be. The worst of men has a rude sense of duty which tops the
attainments of the best. Christian people ought to seek for the
good opinion of those around them. They are not to take that
opinion as the motive for their conduct, nor should they do good
in order to be praised or admired for it; but they are to `adorn
the doctrine,' and to let their light shine that men seeing their
good may be led to think more loftily of its source, and so to
`glorify their Father which is in heaven.' That is one way of
preaching the Gospel. The world knows goodness when it sees it,
though it often hates it, and has no better ground for its dislike
of a man than that his purity and beauty of character make the
lives of others seem base indeed. Bats feel the light to be light,
though they flap against it, and the winnowing of their leathery
wings and their blundering flight are witnesses to that against
which they strike. Jesus had to say, `The world hateth Me because
I testify of it that the deeds thereof are evil.' That witness was
the result of His being `the Light of the world'; and if His
followers are illuminated from Him, they will have the same
effect, and must be prepared for the same response. But none the
less is it incumbent upon them to `take thought for things
honourable in the sight of all men.'

This duty involves the others of taking care that we have goodness
to show, and that we do not make our goodness repulsive by our
additions to it. There are good people who comfort themselves when
men dislike them, or scoff at them, by thinking that their religion
is the cause, when it is only their own roughness and harshness of
character. It is not enough that we present an austere and repellent
virtue; the fair food should be set on a fair platter. This duty is
especially owing to our enemies. They are our keenest critics. They
watch for our halting. The thought of their hostile scrutiny should
ever stimulate us, and the consciousness that Argus-eyes are
watching us, with a keenness sharpened by dislike, should lead us
not only to vigilance over our own steps, but also to the prayer,
`Lead me in a plain path, because of those who watch me.' To
`provide things honest in the sight of all men' is a possible way of
disarming some hostility, conciliating some prejudice, and
commending to some hearts the Lord whom we seek to imitate.

II. Be sure that, if there is to be enmity, it is all on one
side.

`As much as in you lieth, be at peace with all.' These words are,
I think, unduly limited when they are supposed to imply that there
are circumstances in which a Christian has a right to be at
strife. As if they meant: Be peaceable as far as you can; but if
it be impossible, then quarrel. The real meaning goes far deeper
than that. `It takes two to make a quarrel,' says the old proverb;
it takes two to make peace also, does it not? We cannot determine
whether our relations with men will be peaceful or no; we are only
answerable for our part, and for that we are answerable. `As much
as lieth in you' is the explanation of `if it be possible.' Your
part is to be at peace; it is not your part up to a certain point
and no further, but always, and in all circumstances, it is your
part. It may not be possible to be at peace with all men; there
may be some who \textit{will} quarrel with you. You are not to
blame for that, but their part and yours are separate, and your
part is the same whatever they do. Be you at peace with all men
whether they are at peace with you or not. Don't you quarrel with
them even if they will quarrel with you. That seems to me to be
plainly the meaning of the words. It would be contrary to the
tenor of the context and the teaching of the New Testament to
suppose that here we had that favourite principle, `There is a
point beyond which forbearance cannot go,' where it becomes right
to cherish hostile sentiments or to try to injure a man. If there
be such a point, it is very remarkable that there is no attempt
made in the New Testament to define it. The nearest approach to
such definition is `till seventy times seven,' the two perfect
numbers multiplied into themselves. So I think that this
injunction absolutely prescribes persistent, patient peacefulness,
and absolutely proscribes our taking up the position of
antagonism, and under no circumstances meeting hate with hate. It
does not follow that there is never to be opposition. It may be
necessary for the good of the opponent himself, and for the good
of society, that he should be hindered in his actions of
hostility, but there is never to be bitterness; and we must take
care that none of the devil's leaven mingles with our zeal against
evil.

There is no need for enlarging on the enormous difficulty of
carrying out such a commandment in our daily lives. We all know
too well how hard it is; but we may reflect for a moment on the
absolute necessity of obeying this precept to the full. For their
own souls' sakes Christian men are to avoid all bitterness,
strife, and malice. Let us try to remember, and to bring to bear
on our daily lives, the solemn things which Jesus said about God's
forgiveness being measured by our forgiveness. The faithful, even
though imperfect, following of this exhortation would
revolutionise our lives. Nothing that we can only win by fighting
with our fellows is worth fighting for. Men will weary of
antagonism which is met only by the imperturbable calm of a heart
at peace with God, and seeking peace with all men. The hot fire of
hatred dies down, like burning coals scattered on a glacier, when
laid against the crystal coldness of a patient, peaceful spirit.
Watch-dogs in farmhouses will bark half the night through because
they hear another barking a mile off. It takes two to make a
quarrel; let me be sure that I am never one of the two!

\chapter{Still Another Triplet}
\markright{ROMANS xii. 19--21}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto
wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith
the Lord. 20.\ Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him: if he
thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of
fire on his head. 21.\ Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil
with good.'---\textsc{Romans} xii. 19--21.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The natural instinct is to answer enmity with enmity, and
kindliness with kindliness. There are many people of whom we think
well and like, for no other reason than because we believe that
they think well of and like us. Such a love is really selfishness.
In the same fashion, dislike, and alienation on the part of
another naturally reproduce themselves in our own minds. A dog
will stretch its neck to be patted, and snap at a stick raised to
strike it. It requires a strong effort to master this instinctive
tendency, and that effort the plainest principles of Christian
morality require from us all. The precepts in our text are in
twofold form, negative and positive; and they are closed with a
general principle, which includes both these forms, and much more
besides. There are two pillars, and a great lintel coping them,
like the trilithons of Stonehenge.

I. We deal with the negative precept.

`Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath.' Do
not take the law into your own hands, but leave God's way of
retribution to work itself out. By avenging, the Apostle means a
passionate redress of private wrongs at the bidding of personal
resentment. We must note how deep this precept goes. It prohibits
not merely external acts which, in civilised times are restrained
by law, but, as with Christian morality, it deals with thoughts
and feelings, and not only with deeds. It forbids such natural and
common thoughts as `I owe him an ill turn for that'; `I should
like to pay him off.' A great deal of what is popularly called `a
proper spirit' becomes extremely improper if tested by this
precept. There is an eloquent word in German which we can only
clumsily reproduce, which christens the ugly pleasure at seeing
misfortune and calls it `joy in others' disasters.' We have not
the word; would that we had not the thing!

A solemn reason is added for the difficult precept, in that
frequently misunderstood saying, `Give place unto wrath.' The
question is, Whose wrath? And, plainly, the subsequent words of
the section show that it is God's. That quotation comes from
Deuteronomy xxxii. 35. It is possibly unfortunate that `vengeance'
is ascribed to God; for hasty readers lay hold of the idea of
passionate resentment, and transfer it to Him, whereas His
retributive action has in it no resentment and no passion. Nor are
we to suppose that the thought here is only the base one,
\textit{they are sure to be punished, so we need not trouble}. The
Apostle points to the solemn fact of retribution as an element in
the Divine government. It is not merely automatically working laws
which recompense evil by evil, but it is the face of the Lord
which is inexorably and inevitably set `against them that do
evil.' That recompense is not hidden away in the future behind the
curtain of death, but is realised in the present, as every
evil-doer too surely and bitterly experiences.

`Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' God only has
the right to recompense the ungodly and the sinner as well as the
righteous. Dwelling in such a system as we do, how dares any one
take that work into his hands? It requires perfect knowledge of
the true evil of an action, which no one has who cannot read the
heart; it requires perfect freedom from passion; it requires
perfect immunity from evil desert on the part of the avenger; in a
word, it belongs to God, and to Him alone. We have nothing to do
with apportioning retribution to desert, either in private actions
or in the treatment of so-called criminals. In the latter our
objects should be reformation and the safety of society. If we add
to these retribution, we transcend our functions.

II. Take the positive,---Follow God's way of meeting hostility
with beneficence.

The hungry enemy is to be fed, the thirsty to be given drink; and
the reason is, that such beneficence will `heap coals of fire upon
his head.' The negative is not enough. To abstain from vengeance
will leave the heart unaffected, and may simply issue in the
cessation of all intercourse. The reason assigned sounds at first
strange. It is clear that the `coals of fire' which are to be
heaped on the head are meant to melt and soften the heart, and
cause it to glow with love. There may be also included the burning
pangs of shame felt by a man whose evil is answered by good. But
these are secondary and auxiliary to the true end of kindling the
fire of love in his alienated heart. The great object which every
Christian man is bound to have in view is to win over the enemy
and melt away misconceptions and hostility. It is not from any
selfish regard to one's own personal ease that we are so to act,
but because of the sacred regard which Christ has taught us to
cherish for the blessing of peace amongst men, and in order that
we may deliver a brother from the snare, and make him share in the
joys of fellowship with God. The only way to burn up the evil in
his heart is by heaping coals of kindness and beneficence on his
head. And for such an end it becomes us to watch for
opportunities. We have to mark the right moment, and make sure
that we time our offer for food when he is hungry and of drink
when he thirsts; for often \textit{mal-a-propos} offers of
kindness make things worse. Such is God's way. His thunderbolts we
cannot grasp, His love we can copy. Of the two weapons mercy and
judgment which He holds in His hand, the latter is emphatically
His own; the former should be ours too.

III. In all life meet and conquer evil with good.

This last precept, `Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil
with good,' is cast into a form which covers not only relations to
enemies, but all contact with evil of every kind. It involves many
great thoughts which can here be only touched. It implies that in
all our lives we have to fight evil, and that it conquers, and we
are beaten when we are led to do it. It is only conquered by being
transformed into good. We overcome our foes when we win them to be
lovers. We overcome our temptations to doing wrong when we make
them occasions for developing virtues; we overcome the evil of
sorrow when we use it to bring us nearer to God; we overcome the
men around us when we are not seduced by their example to evil,
but attract them to goodness by ours.

Evil is only thus transformed by the positive exercise of goodness
on our part. We have seen this in regard to enemies in the
preceding remarks. In regard to other forms of evil, it is often
better not to fight them directly, but to occupy the mind and
heart with positive truth and goodness, and the will and hands
with active service. A rusty knife shall not be cleaned so
effectually by much scouring as by strenuous use. Our lives are to
be moulded after the great example of Him, who at almost the last
moment of His earthly course said, `Be of good cheer: I have
overcome the world.' Jesus seeks to conquer evil in us all, and
counts that He has conquered it when He has changed it into
love.

\chapter{Love and the Day}
\markright{ROMANS xiii. 8--14}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth
another hath fulfilled the law. 9.\ For this, Thou shalt not
commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou
shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there
be any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in this
saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 10.\
Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the
fulfilling of the law. 11.\ And that, knowing the time, that now
it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation
nearer than when we believed. 12.\ The night is far spent, the day
is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and
let us put on the armour of light, 13.\ Let us walk honestly, as
in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, not in strife and envying: 14.\ But put ye on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the
lusts thereof.'---\textsc{Romans} xiii. 8--14.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The two paragraphs of this passage are but slightly connected. The
first inculcates the obligation of universal love; and the second
begins by suggesting, as a motive for the discharge of that duty,
the near approach of `the day.' The light of that dawn draws
Paul's eyes and leads him to wider exhortations on Christian
purity as befitting the children of light.

I. Verses 8--10 set forth the obligation of a love which embraces
all men, and comprehends all duties to them. The Apostle has just
been laying down the general exhortation, `Pay every man his due'
and applying it especially to the Christian's relation to civic
rulers. He repeats it in a negative form, and bases on it the
obligation of loving every man. That love is further represented
as the sum and substance of the law. Thus Paul brings together two
thoughts which are often dealt with as mutually
exclusive,---namely, love and law. He does not talk
sentimentalisms about the beauty of charity and the like, but lays
it down, as a `hard and fast rule,' that we are bound to love
every man with whom we come in contact; or, as the Greek has it,
`the other.'

That is the first plain truth taught here. Love is not an emotion
which we may indulge or not, as we please. It is not to select its
objects according to our estimate of their lovableness or
goodness. But we are bound to love, and that all round, without
distinction of beautiful or ugly, good or bad. `A hard saying; who
can hear it?' Every man is our creditor for that debt. He does not
get his due from us unless he gets love. Note, further, that the
debt of love is never discharged. After all payments it still
remains owing. There is no paying in full of all demands, and, as
Bengel says, it is an undying debt. We are apt to weary of
expending love, especially on unworthy recipients, and to think
that we have wiped off all claims, and it may often be true that
our obligations to others compel us to cease helping one; but if
we laid Paul's words to heart, our patience would be
longer-breathed, and we should not be so soon ready to shut hearts
and purses against even unthankful suitors.

Further, Paul here teaches us that this debt (\textit{debitum},
`duty') of love includes all duties. It is the fulfilling of the
law, inasmuch as it will secure the conduct which the law
prescribes. The Mosaic law itself indicates this, since it
recapitulates the various commandments of the second table, in the
one precept of love to our neighbour (Lev. xix. 18). Law enjoins
but has no power to get its injunctions executed. Love enables and
inclines to do all that law prescribes, and to avoid all that it
prohibits. The multiplicity of duties is melted into unity; and
that unity, when it comes into act, unfolds into whatsoever things
are lovely and of good report. Love is the mother tincture which,
variously diluted and manipulated, yields all potent and fragrant
draughts. It is the white light which the prism of daily life
resolves into its component colours.

But Paul seems to limit the action of love here to negative doing
no ill. That is simply because the commandments are mostly
negative, and that they are is a sad token of the lovelessness
natural to us all. But do we love ourselves only negatively, or
are we satisfied with doing ourselves no harm? That stringent
pattern of love to others not only prescribes degree, but manner.
It teaches that true love to men is not weak indulgence, but must
sometimes chastise, and thwart, and always must seek their good,
and not merely their gratification.

Whoever will honestly seek to apply that negative precept of
working no ill to others, will find it positive enough. We harm
men when we fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and
do it not, we do them ill. Non-activity for good is activity for
evil. Surely, nothing can be plainer than the bearing of this
teaching on the Christian duty as to intoxicants. If by using
these a Christian puts a stumbling-block in the way of a weak
will, then he is working ill to his neighbour, and that argues
absence of love, and that is dishonest, shirking payment of a
plain debt.

II. The great stimulus to love and to all purity is set forth as
being the near approach---of the day (verses 11--14). `The day,'
in Paul's writing, has usually the sense of the great day of the
Lord's return, and may have that meaning here; for, as Jesus has
told us, `it is not for' even inspired Apostles `to know the times
or the seasons,' and it is no dishonour to apostolic inspiration
to assign to it the limits which the Lord has assigned.

But, whether we take this as the meaning of the phrase, or regard
it simply as pointing to the time of death as the dawning of
heaven's day, the weight of the motive is unaffected. The language
is vividly picturesque. The darkness is thinning, and the
blackness turning grey. Light begins to stir and whisper. A band
of soldiers lies asleep, and, as the twilight begins to dawn, the
bugle call summons them to awake, to throw off their
night-gear,---namely, the works congenial to darkness,---and to
brace on their armour of light. Light may here be regarded as the
material of which the glistering armour is made; but, more
probably, the expression means weapons appropriate to the
light.

Such being the general picture, we note the fact which underlies
the whole representation; namely, that every life is a definite
whole which has a fixed end. Jesus said, `We must work the works
of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh.' Paul uses
the opposite metaphors in these verses. But, though the two
sayings are opposite in form, they are identical in substance. In
both, the predominant thought is that of the rapidly diminishing
space of earthly life, and the complete unlikeness to it of the
future. We stand like men on a sandbank with an incoming tide, and
every wash of the waves eats away its edges, and presently it will
yield below our feet. We forget this for the most part, and
perhaps it is not well that it should be ever present; but that it
should never be present is madness and sore loss.

Paul, in his intense moral earnestness, in verse 13, bids us
regard ourselves as already in `the day,' and shape our conduct as
if it shone around us and all things were made manifest by its
light. The sins to be put off are very gross and palpable. They
are for the most part sins of flesh, such as even these Roman
Christians had to be warned against, and such as need to be
manifested by the light even now among many professing Christian
communities.

But Paul has one more word to say. If he stopped without it, he
would have said little to help men who are crying out, `How am I
to strip off this clinging evil, which seems my skin rather than
my clothing? How am I to put on that flashing panoply?' There is
but one way,---put on the Lord Jesus Christ. If we commit
ourselves to Him by faith, and front our temptations in His
strength, and thus, as it were, wrap ourselves in Him, He will be
to us dress and armour, strength and righteousness. Our old self
will fall away, and we shall take no forethought for the flesh, to
fulfil the lusts thereof.

\chapter{Salvation Nearer}
\markright{ROMANS xiii. 11}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`... Now is our salvation nearer than when we
believed.'---\textsc{Romans} xiii. 11.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There is no doubt, I suppose, that the Apostle, in common with the
whole of the early Church, entertained more or less consistently the
expectation of living to witness the second coming of Jesus Christ.
There are in Paul's letters passages which look both in the
direction of that anticipation, and in the other one of expecting to
taste death. `We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the
Lord,' he says twice in one chapter. `I am ready to be offered, and
the hour of my departure is at hand,' he says in his last letter.

Now this contrariety of anticipation is but the natural result of
what our Lord Himself said, `It is not for you to know the times
and the seasons,' and no one, who is content to form his doctrine
of the knowledge resulting from inspiration from the words of
Jesus Christ Himself, need stumble in the least degree in
recognising the plain fact that Paul and his brother Apostles did
not know when the Master was to come. Christ Himself had told them
that there was a chamber locked against their entrance, and
therefore we do not need to think that it militates against the
authoritative inspiration of these early teachers of the Church,
if they, too, searched `what manner of time the Spirit which was
in them did signify when it testified beforehand ... the glory
that should follow.'

Now, my text is evidently the result of the former of these two
anticipations, viz. that Paul and his generation were probably to
see the coming of the Lord from heaven. And to him the thought
that' the night was far spent,' as the context says, `and the day
was at hand,' underlay his most buoyant hope, and was the
inspiration and motive-spring of his most strenuous effort.

Now, our relation to the closing moments of our own earthly lives,
to the fact of death, is precisely the same as that of the Apostle
and his brethren to the coming of the Lord. We, too, stand in that
position of partial ignorance, and for us practically the words of
my text, and all their parallel words, point to how we should
think of, and how we should be affected by, the end to which we
are coming. And this is the grand characteristic of the Christian
view of that last solemn moment. `Now is our salvation nearer than
when we believed.' So I would note, first of all, what these words
teach us should be the Christian view of our own end; and, second,
to what conduct that view should lead us.

I. The Christian view of death.

`Now is our salvation nearer.' We have to think away by faith and
hope all the grim externals of death, and to get to the heart of
the thing. And then everything that is repulsive, everything that
makes flesh and blood shrink, disappears and is evaporated, and
beneath the folds of his black garment, there is revealed God's
last, sweetest, most triumphant angel-messenger to Christian
souls, the great, strong, silent Angel of Death, and he carries in
his hand the gift of a full salvation. That is what our Apostle
rose to the rapture of beholding, when he knew that the thought of
his surviving till Christ came again must be put away, and when
close to the last moment of his life, he said, `The Lord shall
deliver me, and save me into His everlasting kingdom.' What was
the deliverance and being saved that he expected and expresses in
these words? Immunity from punishment? Escape from the headsman's
axe? Being `delivered from the mouth of the lion,' the persecuting
fangs of the bloody Nero? By no means. He knew that death was at
hand, and he said, `He will save me'---not from it, but through
it---`into His everlasting kingdom.' And so in the words of my
text we may say---though Paul did not mean them so---as we see the
distance between us, and that certain close, dwindling, dwindling,
dwindling: `Now,' as moment after moment ticks itself into the
past, `now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.'
Children, when they are getting near their holidays, take strips
of paper, and tear off a piece as each day passes. And as we tear
off the days let us feel that we are drawing closer to our home,
and that the blessedness laid up for us in it is drawing nearer to
us. `Our salvation,' not our destruction, our fuller life, not in
any true sense of the word our `death,' is `nearer than when we
believed.'

But some one may say, `Is a man not saved till after he is dead?'
Is salvation future, not coming till after the grave? No,
certainly not. There are three aspects of that word in Scripture.
Sometimes the New Testament writers treat salvation as past, and
represent a Christian as being invested with the possession of it
all at the very moment of his first faith. That is true, that
whatever is yet to be evolved from what is given to the poorest
and foulest sinner, in the moment of his initial faith in Christ,
there is nothing to be added to it. The salvation which the
penitent thief received on the cross is all the salvation that he
was ever to get. But out of it there came welling and welling and
welling, when he had passed into the region `where beyond these
voices there is peace'---there came welling out from that
inexhaustible fountain which was opened in him all the fullnesses
of an eternal progress in the heavens. And so it is with us.
Salvation is a past gift which we received when we believed.

But in another aspect, which is also emphatically stated in
Scripture, it is a progressive process, and not merely a gift
bestowed once for all in the past. I do not dwell upon that thought,
but just remind you of a turn of expression which occurs in various
connections more than once. `The Lord added to the Church daily such
as were being saved,' says Luke. Still more emphatically in the
Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle puts into antithesis the two
progressive processes, and speaks of the Gospel as being preached,
and being a savour of life unto life `to them that are being saved,'
and a savour of destruction `to them that are being lost.' No moral
or spiritual condition is stereotyped or stagnant. It is all
progressive. And so the salvation that is given once for all is ever
being unfolded, and the Christian life on earth is the unfolding of
it.

But in another aspect still, such as is presented in my text, and
in other parallel passages, that salvation is regarded as lying on
the other side of the flood, because the manifestations of it
there, the evolving there of what is in it, and the great gifts
that come then, are so transcendently above all even of our
selectest experiences here, that they are, as it were, new, though
still their roots are in the old. The salvation which culminates
in the absolute removal from our whole being of all manner of
evil, whether it be sorrow or sin, and in the conclusive bestowal
upon us of all manner of good, whether it be righteousness or joy,
and which has for its seal `the adoption, to wit, the redemption
of the body,' so that body, soul, and spirit `make one music as
before, but vaster,' is so far beyond the germs of itself which
here we experience that my text and its like are amply vindicated.
And the man who is most fully persuaded and conscious that he
possesses the salvation of God, and most fully and blessedly aware
that that salvation is gradually gaining power in his life, is the
very man who will most feel that between its highest manifestation
on earth, and its lowest in the heavens there is such a gulf as
that the wine that he will drink there at the Father's table is
indeed new wine. And so `is our salvation nearer,' though we
already possess it, `than when we believed.'

Dear brethren, if these things be true, and if to die is to be
saved into the kingdom, do not two thoughts result? The one is
that that blessed consummation should occupy more of our thoughts
than I am afraid it does. As life goes on, and the space dwindles
between us and it, we older people naturally fall into the way,
unless we are fools, of more seriously and frequently turning our
thoughts to the end. I suppose the last week of a voyage to
Australia has far more thoughts in it about the landing next week
than the two or three first days of beating down the English
Channel had. I do not want to put old heads on young shoulders in
this or in any other respect. But sure I am that it does belong
very intimately to the strength of our Christian characters that
we should, as the Psalmist says, be `wise' to `consider our latter
end.'

The other thought that follows is as plain, viz. that that
anticipation should always be buoyant, hopeful, joyous. We have
nothing to do with the sad aspects of parting from earth. They are
all but non-existent for the Christian consciousness, when it is
as vigorous and God-directed as it ought to be. They drop into the
background, and sometimes are lost to sight altogether. Remember
how this Apostle, when he does think about death, looks at it
with---I was going to quote words which may strike you as being
inappropriate---`a frolic welcome'; how, at all events, he is
neither a bit afraid of it, nor does he see in it anything from
which to shrink. He speaks of being with Christ, which is far
better; `absent from the body, present with the Lord'; `the
dissolution of the earthly house of this tabernacle'---the
tumbling down of the old clay cottage in order that a stately
palace of marble and precious stones may be reared upon its site;
`the hour of my departure is at hand; I have finished the fight.'
Peter, too, chimes in with his words: `My exodus; my departure,'
and both of the two are looking, if not longingly, at all events
without a tremor of the eyelid, into the very eyeballs of the
messenger whom most men feel so hideous. Is it not a wonderful
gift to Christian souls that by faith in Jesus Christ, the realm
in which their hope can expatiate is more than doubled, and
annexes the dim lands beyond the frontier of death? Dear friends,
if we are living in Christ, the thought of the end and that here
we are absent from home, ought to be infinitely sweet, of whatever
superficial terrors this poor, shrinking flesh may still be
conscious. And I am sure that the nearer we get to our Saviour,
and the more we realise the joyous possession of salvation as
already ours, and the more we are conscious of the expanding of
that gift in our hearts, the more we shall be delivered from that
fear of death which makes men all their `lifetime subject to
bondage.' So I beseech you to aim at this, that, when you look
forward, the furthest thing you see on the horizon of earth may be
that great Angel of Death coming to save you into the everlasting
kingdom.

Now, just a word about

II. The conduct to which such a hope should incite.

The Apostle puts it very plainly in the context, and we need but
expand in a word or two what he teaches us there. `And that
knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep,
for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.' To what
does he refer by `that'? The whole of the practical exhortations
to a Christian life which have been given before. Everything that
is duty becomes tenfold more stringent and imperative when we
apprehend the true meaning of that last moment. They tell us that
it is unwholesome to be thinking about death and the beyond,
because to do so takes away interest from much of our present
occupations and weakens energy. If there is anything from which a
man is wrenched away because he steadily contemplates the fact of
being wrenched away altogether from everything before long, it is
something that he had better be wrenched from. And if there be any
occupations which dwindle into nothingness, and into which a man
cannot for the life of him fling himself with any thoroughgoing
enthusiasm or interest, if once the thought of death stirs in him,
depend upon it they are occupations which are in themselves
contemptible and unworthy. All good aims will gain greater power
over us; we shall have a saner estimate of what is worth living
for; we shall have a new standard of what is the relative
importance of things; and if some that looked very great turn out
to be very small when we let that searching light in upon them,
and others which seemed very insignificant spring suddenly up into
dominating magnitude---that new and truer perspective will be all
clear gain. The more we feel that our salvation is sweeping
towards us, as it were, from the throne of God through the blue
abysses, the more diligently we shall `work while it is called
day,' and the more earnestly we shall seek, when the Saviour and
His salvation come, to be found with loins girt for all strenuous
work, and lamps burning in all the brightness of the light of a
Christian character.

Further, says Paul, this hopeful, cheerful contemplation of
approaching salvation should lead us to cast off the evil, and to
put on the good. You will remember the heart-stirring imagery
which the Apostle employs in the context, where he says, `The day
is at hand; let us therefore fling off the works of darkness'---as
men in the morning, when the daylight comes through the window,
and makes them lift their eyelids, fling off their
night-gear---`and let us put on the armour of light.' We are
soldiers, and must be clad in what will be bullet-proof, and will
turn a sword's edge. And where shall steel of celestial temper be
found that can resist the fiery darts shot at the Christian
soldier? His armour must be `of light.' Clad in the radiance of
Christian character he will be invulnerable. And how can we, who
have robed ourselves in the works of darkness, either cast them
off or array ourselves in sparkling armour of light? Paul tells
us, `Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for
the flesh.' The picture is of a camp of sleeping soldiers; the
night wears thin, the streaks of saffron are coming in the dawning
east. One after another the sleepers awake; they cast aside their
night-gear, and they brace on the armour that sparkles in the
beams of the morning sun. So they are ready when the trumpet
sounds the reveille, and with the morning comes the Captain of the
Lord's host, and with the Captain comes the perfecting of the
salvation which is drawing nearer and nearer to us, as our moments
glide through our fingers like the beads of a rosary. Many men
think of death and fear; the Christian should think of death---and
hope.

\chapter{The Soldier's Morning-call}
\markright{ROMANS xiii. 12}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Let us put on the armour of light.'---\textsc{Romans} xiii. 12.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

It is interesting to notice that the metaphor of the Christian
armour occurs in Paul's letters throughout his whole course. It
first appears, in a very rudimentary form, in the earliest of the
Epistles, that to the Thessalonians. It appears here in a letter
which belongs to the middle of his career, and it appears finally
in the Epistle to the Ephesians, in its fully developed and
drawn-out shape, at almost the end of his work. So we may fairly
suppose that it was one of his familiar thoughts. Here it has a
very picturesque addition, for the picture that is floating before
his vivid imagination is that of a company of soldiers, roused by
the morning bugle, casting off their night-gear because the day is
beginning to dawn, and bracing on the armour that sparkles in the
light of the rising sun. `That,' says Paul, `is what you Christian
people ought to be. Can you not hear the notes of the reveille?
The night is far spent; the day is at hand; therefore let us put
off the works of darkness---the night-gear that was fit for those
hours of slumber. Toss it away, and put on the armour that belongs
to the day.'

Now, I am not going to ask or try to answer the question of how
far this Apostolic exhortation is based upon the Apostle's
expectation that the world was drawing near its end. That does not
matter at all for us at present, for the fact which he expresses
as the foundation of this exhortation is true about us all, and
about our position in the midst of these fleeting shadows round
us. We are hastening to the dawning of the true day. And so let me
try to emphasise the exhortation here, old and threadbare and
commonplace as it is, because we all need it, at whatever point of
life's journey we have arrived.

Now, the first thing that strikes me is that the garb for the man
expectant of the day is armour.

We might have anticipated something very different in accordance
with the thoughts that Paul's imagery here suggests, about the
difference between the night which is so swiftly passing, and is
full of enemies and dangers, and the day which is going to dawn,
and is full of light and peace and joy. We might have expected
that he would have said, `Let us put on the festal robes.' But no!
`The night is far spent; the day is at hand.' But the dress that
befits the expectant of the day is not yet the robe of the feast,
but it is `the armour' which, put into plain words, means just
this, that there is fighting, always fighting, to be done. If you
are ever to belong to the day, you have to equip yourselves
\textit{now} with armour and weapons. I do not need to dwell upon
that, but I do wish to insist upon this fact, that after all that
may be truly said about growth in grace, and the peaceful
approximation towards perfection in the Christian character, we
cannot dispense with the other element in progress, and that is
fighting. We have to struggle for every step. \textit{Growth} is
not enough to define completely the process by which men become
conformed to the image of the Father, and are `made meet to be
partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.' Growth does
express part of it, but only a part. Conflict is needed to come
in, before you have the whole aspect of Christian progress before
your minds. For there will always be antagonism without and
traitors within. There will always be recalcitrant horses that
need to be whipped up, and jibbing horses that need to be dragged
forward, and shying ones that need to be violently coerced and
kept in the traces. Conflict is the law, because of the enemies,
and because of the conspiracy between the weakness within and the
things without that appeal to it.

We hear a great deal to-day about being `sanctified by faith.' I
believe that as much as any man, but the office of faith is to
bring us the power that cleanses, and the application of that
power requires our work, and it requires our fighting. So it is
not enough to say, `Trust for your sanctifying as you have trusted
for your justifying and acceptance,' but you have to work out what
you get by your faith, and you will never work it out unless you
fight against your unworthy self, and the temptations of the
world. The garb of the candidate for the day is armour.

And there is another side to that same thought, and that is, the
more vivid our expectations of that blessed dawn the more complete
should be our bracing on of the armour. The anticipation of that
future, in very many instances, in the Christian Church, has led
to precisely the opposite state of mind. It has induced people to
drop into mere fantastic sentiment, or to ignore this contemptible
present, and think that they have nothing to do with it, and are
only `waiting for the coming of the Lord,' and the like. Paul
says, `Just because, on your eastern horizon, you can see the pink
flush that tells that the night is gone, and the day is coming,
therefore do not be a sentimentalist, do not be idle, do not be
negligent or contemptuous of the daily tasks; but because you see
it, put on the armour of light, and whether the time between the
rising of the whole orb of the sun on the horizon be long or
short, fill the hours with triumphant conflict. Put on the whole
armour of light.'

Again, note here what the armour is. Of course that phrase, `the
armour of light,' may be nothing more than a little bit of colour
put in by a picturesque imagination, and may suggest simply how
the burnished steel would shine and glitter when the sunbeams
smote it, and the glistening armour, like that of Spenser's Red
Cross Knight, would make a kind of light in the dark cave, into
which he went. Or it may mean `the armour that befits the light';
as is perhaps suggested by the antithesis `the works of darkness,'
which are to be `put off.' These are works that match the
darkness, and similarly the armour is to be the armour that befits
the light, and that can flash back its beams. But I think there is
more than that in the expression. I would rather take the phrase
to be parallel to another of this Apostle's, who speaks in 2nd
Corinthians of the `armour of righteousness on the right hand and
on the left.' `Light' makes the armour, `righteousness' makes the
armour. The two phrases say the same thing, the one in plain
English, the other in figure, which being brought down to daily
life is just this, that the true armour and weapon of a Christian
man is Christian character. `Whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report,' these are the pieces of armour, and these are the weapons
which we are to wield. A Christian man fights against evil in
himself by putting on good. The true way to empty the heart of sin
is to fill the heart with righteousness. The lances of the light,
according to the significant old Greek myth, slew pythons. The
armour is `righteousness on the right hand and on the left.' Stick
to plain, simple, homely duties, and you will find that they will
defend your heart against many a temptation. A flask that is full
of rich wine may be plunged into the saltest ocean, and not a drop
will find its way in. Fill your heart with righteousness; your
lives---let them glisten in the light, and the light will be your
armour. God is light, wherefore God cannot be tempted with evil.
`Walk in the light, as He is in the light' ... and `the blood of
Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.'

But there is another side to that thought, for if you will look,
at your leisure, to the closing words of the chapter, you will
find the Apostle's own exposition of what putting on the armour of
light means. `Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ'---that is his
explanation of putting on `the armour of light.' For `once ye were
darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord,' and it is in the
measure in which we are united to Him, by the faith which binds us
to Him, and by the love which works obedience and conformity, that
we wear the invulnerable armour of light. Christ Himself is, and
He supplies to all, the separate graces which Christian men can
wear. We may say that He is `the panoply of God,' as Paul calls it
in Ephesians, and when we wear Him, and only in the measure in
which we do wear Him, in that measure are we clothed with it. And
so the last thing that I would point out here is that the
obedience to these commands requires continual effort.

The Christians in Rome, to whom Paul was writing, were no novices
in the Christian life. Long ago many of them had been brought to
Him. But the oldest Christian amongst them needed the exhortation
as much as the rawest recruit in the ranks. Continual renewal day
by day is what we need, and it will not be secured without a great
deal of work. Seeing that there is a `putting off' to go along
with the `putting on,' the process is a very long one. `'Tis a
lifelong task till the lump be leavened.' It is a lifelong task
till we strip off all the rags of this old self; and `being
clothed,' are not `found naked.' It takes a lifetime to fathom
Jesus; it takes a lifetime to appropriate Jesus, it takes a
lifetime to be clothed with Jesus. And the question comes to each
of us, have we `put off the old man with his deeds'? Are we daily,
as sure as we put on our clothes in the morning, putting on Christ
the Lord?

For notice with what solemnity the Apostle gives the master His
full, official, formal title here, `put ye on the \textit{Lord
Jesus Christ}.' Do we put Him on as \textit{Lord}; bowing our
whole wills to Him, and accepting Him, His commandments, promises,
providences, with glad submission? Do we put on \textit{Jesus},
recognising in His manhood as our Brother not only the pattern of
our lives, but the pledge that the pattern, by His help and love,
is capable of reproduction in ourselves? Do we put Him on as `the
Lord Jesus \textit{Christ},' who was anointed with the Divine
Spirit, that from the head it might flow, even to the skirts of
the garments, and every one of us might partake of that unction
and be made pure and clean thereby? `Put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ,' and do it day by day, and then you have `put on the whole
armour of God.'

And when the day that is dawning has risen to its full, then, not
till then, may we put off the armour and put on the white robe,
lay aside the helmet, and have our brows wreathed with the laurel,
sheathe the sword, and grasp the palm, being `more than conquerors
through Him who loved us,' and fights in us, as well as for
us.

\chapter{The Limits of Liberty}
\markright{ROMANS xiv. 12--23}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
13.\ Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge
this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock, or an occasion to
fall, in his brother's way. 14.\ I know, and am persuaded by the
Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him
that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. 15.\
But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not
charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
16.\ Let not then your good be evil spoken of: 17.\ For the
kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 18.\ For he that in these things
serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men. 19.\ Let
us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and
things wherewith one may edify another. 20.\ For meat destroy not
the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for
that man who eateth with offence. 21.\ It is good neither to eat
flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother
stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. 22.\ Hast thou faith?
have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not
himself in that thing which he alloweth. 23.\ And he that doubteth
is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for
whatsoever is not of faith is sin.'---\textsc{Romans} xiv. 12--23.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The special case in view, in the section of which this passage is
part, is the difference of opinion as to the lawfulness of eating
certain meats. It is of little consequence, so far as the
principles involved are concerned, whether these were the food
which the Mosaic ordinances made unclean, or, as in Corinth, meats
offered to idols. The latter is the more probable, and would be
the more important in Rome. The two opinions on the point
represented two tendencies of mind, which always exist; one more
scrupulous, and one more liberal. Paul has been giving the former
class the lesson they needed in the former part of this chapter;
and he now turns to the `stronger' brethren, and lays down the law
for their conduct. We may, perhaps, best simply follow him, verse
by verse.

We note then, first, the great thought with which he starts, that
of the final judgment, in which each man shall give account of
himself. What has that to do with the question in hand? This, that
it ought to keep us from premature and censorious judging. We have
something more pressing to do than to criticise each other.
Ourselves are enough to keep our hands full, without taking a lift
of our fellows' conduct. And this, further, that, in view of the
final judgment, we should hold a preliminary investigation on our
own principles of action, and `decide' to adopt as the overruling
law for ourselves, that we shall do nothing which will make duty
harder for our brethren. Paul habitually settled small matters on
large principles, and brought the solemnities of the final account
to bear on the marketplace and the meal.

In verse 13 he lays down the supreme principle for settling the
case in hand. No Christian is blameless if he voluntarily acts so
as to lay a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in another's
path. Are these two things the same? Possibly, but a man may
stumble, and not fall, and that which makes him stumble may
possibly indicate a temptation to a less grave evil than that
which makes him fall does. It may be noticed that in the sequel we
hear of a brother's being `grieved' first, and then of his being
`overthrown.' In any case, there is no mistake about the principle
laid down and repeated in verse 21. It is a hard saying for some
of us. Is my liberty to be restricted by the narrow scruples of
`strait-laced' Christians? Yes. Does not that make them masters,
and attach too much importance to their narrowness? No. It
recognises Christ as Master, and all His servants as brethren. If
the scrupulous ones go so far as to say to the more liberal, `You
cannot be Christians if you do not do as we do' then the limits of
concession have been reached, and we are to do as Paul did, when
he flatly refused to yield one hair's-breadth to the Judaisers. If
a man says, You must adopt this, that, or the other limitation in
conduct, or else you shall be unchurched, the only answer is, I
will not. We are to be flexible as long as possible, and let weak
brethren's scruples restrain our action. But if they insist on
things indifferent as essential, a yet higher duty than that of
regard to their weak consciences comes in, and faithfulness to
Christ limits concession to His servants.

But, short of that extreme case, Paul lays down the law of curbing
liberty in deference to `narrowness.' In verse 14 he states with
equal breadth the extreme principle of the liberal party, that
nothing is unclean of itself. He has learned that `in the Lord
Jesus.' Before he was `in Him,' he had been entangled in cobwebs
of legal cleanness and uncleanness; but now he is free. But he
adds an exception, which must be kept in mind by the
liberal-minded section---namely, that a clean thing is unclean to
a man who thinks it is. Of course, these principles do not affect
the eternal distinctions of right and wrong. Paul is not playing
fast and loose with the solemn, divine law which makes sin and
righteousness independent of men's notions. He is speaking of
things indifferent---ceremonial observances and the like; and the
modern analogies of these are conventional pieces of conduct, in
regard to amusements and the like, which, in themselves, a
Christian man can do or abstain from without sin.

Verse 15 is difficult to understand, if the `for' at the beginning
is taken strictly. Some commentators would read instead of it a
simple `but' which smooths the flow of thought. But possibly the
verse assigns a reason for the law in verse 13, rather than for
the statements in verse 14. And surely there is no stronger reason
for tender consideration for even the narrowest scruples of
Christians than the obligation to walk in love. Our common
brotherhood binds us to do nothing that would even grieve one of
the family. For instance, Christian men have different views of
the obligations of Sunday observance. It is conceivable that a
very `broad' Christian might see no harm in playing lawn-tennis in
his garden on a Sunday; but if his doing so scandalised, or, as
Paul says, `grieved' Christian people of less advanced views, he
would be sinning against the law of love if he did it.

There are many other applications of the principle readily
suggested. The principle is the thing to keep clearly in view. It
has a wide field for its exercise in our times, and when the
Christian brotherhood includes such diversities of culture and
social condition. And that is a solemn deepening of it, `Destroy
not with thy meat him for whom Christ died.' Note the almost
bitter emphasis on `thy,' which brings out not only the smallness
of the gratification for which the mischief is done, but the
selfishness of the man who will not yield up so small a thing to
shield from evil which may prove fatal, a brother for whom Christ
did not shrink from yielding up life. If He is our pattern, any
sacrifice of tastes and liberties for our brother's sake is plain
duty, and cannot be neglected without selfish sin. One great
reason, then, for the conduct enjoined, is set forth in verse 15.
It is the clear dictate of Christian love.

Another reason is urged in verses 16 to 18. It displays the true
character of Christianity, and so reflects honour on the doer.
`Your good' is an expression for the whole sum of the blessings
obtained by becoming Christians, and is closely connected with
what is here meant by the `kingdom of God.' That latter phrase
seems here to be substantially equivalent to the inward condition
in which they are who have submitted to the dominion of the will
of God. It is `the kingdom within us' which is `righteousness,
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' What have you won by your
Christianity? the Apostle in effect says, Do you think that its
purpose is mainly to give you greater licence in regard to these
matters in question? If the most obvious thing in your conduct is
your `eating and drinking,' your whole Christian standing will be
misconceived, and men will fancy that your religion permits laxity
of life. But if, on the other hand, you show that you are Christ's
servants by righteousness, peace, and joy, you will be pleasing to
God, and men will recognise that your religion is from Him, and
that you are consistent professors of it.

Modern liberal-minded brethren can easily translate all this for
to-day's use. Take care that you do not give the impression that
your Christianity has its main operation in permitting you to do
what your weaker brethren have scruples about. If you do not yield
to them, but flaunt your liberty in their and the world's faces,
your advanced enlightenment will be taken by rough-and-ready
observers as mainly cherished because it procures you these
immunities. Show by your life that you have the true spiritual
gifts. Think more about them than about your `breadth,' and
superiority to `narrow prejudices.' Realise the purpose of the
Gospel as concerns your own moral perfecting, and the questions in
hand will fall into their right place.

In verses 19 and 20 two more reasons are given for restricting
liberty in deference to others' scruples. Such conduct contributes
to peace. If truth is imperilled, or Christ's name in danger of
being tarnished, counsels of peace are counsels of treachery; but
there are not many things worth buying at the price of Christian
concord. Such conduct tends to build up our own and others'
Christian character. Concessions to the `weak' may help them to
become strong, but flying in the face of their scruples is sure to
hurt them, in one way or another.

In verse 15, the case was supposed of a brother's being grieved by
what he felt to be laxity. That case corresponded to the
stumbling-block of verse 13. A worse result seems contemplated in
verse 20,---that of the weak brother, still believing that laxity
was wrong, and yet being tempted by the example of the stronger to
indulge in it. In that event, the responsibility of overthrowing
what God had built lies at the door of the tempter. The metaphor
of `overthrowing' is suggested by the previous one of `edifying.'
Christian duty is mutual building up of character; inconsiderate
exercise of `liberty' may lead to pulling down, by inducing to
imitation which conscience condemns.

From this point onwards, the Apostle first reiterates in inverse
order his two broad principles, that clean things are unclean to
the man who thinks them so, and that Christian obligation requires
abstinence from permitted things if our indulgence tends to a
brother's hurt. The application of the latter principle to the
duty of total abstinence from intoxicants for the sake of others
is perfectly legitimate, but it is an application, not the direct
purpose of the Apostle's injunctions.

In verses 22 and 23, the section is closed by two exhortations, in
which both parties, the strong and the weak, are addressed. The
former is spoken to in verse 22, the latter in verse 23. The
strong brother is bid to be content with having his wider views,
or `faith'---that is, certainty that his liberty is in accordance
with Christ's will. It is enough that he should enjoy that
conviction, only let him make sure that he can hold it as in God's
sight, and do not let him flourish it in the faces of brethren
whom it would grieve, or might lead to imitating his practice,
without having risen to his conviction. And let him be quite sure
that his conscience is entirely convinced, and not bribed by
inclination; for many a man condemns himself by letting wishes
dictate to conscience.

On the other hand, there is a danger that those who have scruples
should, by the example of those who have not, be tempted to do
what they are not quite sure is right. If you have any doubts,
says Paul, the safe course is to abstain from the conduct in
question. Perhaps a brother can go to the theatre without harm, if
he believes it right to do so; but if you have any hesitation as
to the propriety of going, you will be condemned as sinning if you
do. You must not measure your corn by another man's bushel. Your
convictions, not his, are to be your guides. `Faith' is used here
in a somewhat unusual sense. It means certitude of judgment. The
last words of verse 23 have no such meaning as is sometimes
extracted from them; namely, that actions, however pure and good,
done by unbelievers, are of the nature of sin. They simply mean
that whatever a Christian man does without clear warrant of his
judgment and conscience is sin to him, whatever it is to
others.

\chapter{Two Fountains, One Stream}
\markright{ROMANS xv. 4, 13}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`That we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might
have hope.... 13.\ The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace
in believing, that ye may abound in hope.'---\textsc{Romans} xv.
4, 13.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There is a river in Switzerland fed by two uniting streams,
bearing the same name, one of them called the `white,' one of them
the `grey,' or dark. One comes down from the glaciers, and bears
half-melted snow in its white ripple; the other flows through a
lovely valley, and is discoloured by its earth. They unite in one
common current. So in these two verses we have two streams, a
white and a black, and they both blend together and flow out into
a common hope. In the former of them we have the dark
stream---`through patience and comfort,' which implies affliction
and effort. The issue and outcome of all difficulty, trial,
sorrow, ought to be hope. And in the other verse we have the other
valley, down which the light stream comes: `The God of hope fill
you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in
hope.'

So both halves of the possible human experience are meant to end
in the same blessed result; and whether you go round on the one
side of the sphere of human life, or whether you take the other
hemisphere, you come to the same point, if you have travelled with
God's hand in yours, and with Him for your Guide.

Let us look, then, at these two contrasted origins of the same
blessed gift, the Christian hope.

I. We have, first of all, the hope that is the child of the night,
and born in the dark.

`Whatsoever things,' says the Apostle, `were written aforetime,
were written for our learning, that we, through patience,'---or
rather \textit{the brave perseverance}---`and consolation'---or
rather perhaps \textit{encouragement}---`of the Scriptures might
have hope.' The written word is conceived as the source of patient
endurance which acts as well as suffers. This grace Scripture
works in us through the encouragement which it ministers in
manifold ways, and the result of both is hope.

So, you see, our sorrows and difficulties are not connected with,
nor do they issue in, bright hopefulness, except by reason of this
connecting link. There is nothing in a man's troubles to make him
hopeful. Sometimes, rather, they drive him into despair; but at
all events, they seldom drive him to hopefulness, except where
this link comes in. We cannot pass from the black frowning cliffs
on one side of the gorge to the sunny tablelands on the other
without a bridge---and the bridge for a poor soul from the
blackness of sorrow, and the sharp grim rocks of despair, to the
smiling pastures of hope, with all their half-open blossoms, is
builded in that Book, which tells us the meaning and purpose of
them all; and is full of the histories of those who have fought
and overcome, have hoped and not been ashamed.

Scripture is given for this among other reasons, that it may
encourage us, and so may produce in us this great grace of active
patience, if we may call it so.

The first thing to notice is, how Scripture gives
encouragement---for such rather than consolation is the meaning of
the word. It is much to dry tears, but it is more to stir the
heart as with a trumpet call. Consolation is precious, but we need
more for well-being than only to be comforted. And, surely, the
whole tone of Scripture in its dealing with the great mystery of
pain and sorrow, has a loftier scope than even to minister
assuagement to grief, and to stay our weeping. It seeks to make us
strong and brave to face and to master our sorrows, and to infuse
into us a high-hearted courage, which shall not merely be able to
accept the biting blasts, but shall feel that they bring a glow to
the cheek and oxygen to the blood, while wrestling with them
builds up our strength, and trains us for higher service. It would
be a poor aim to comfort only; but to encourage---to make strong
in heart, resolved in will, and incapable of being overborne or
crushed in spirit by any sorrows---that is a purpose worthy of the
Book, and of the God who speaks through it.

This purpose, we may say, is effected by Scripture in two ways. It
encourages us by its records, and by its revelation of
principles.

Who can tell how many struggling souls have taken heart again, as
they pondered over the sweet stories of sorrow subdued which stud
its pages, like stars in its firmament? The tears shed long ago
which God has put `in His bottle,' and recorded in `His book,'
have truly been turned into pearls. That long gallery of portraits
of sufferers, who have all trodden the same rough road, and been
sustained by the same hand, and reached the same home, speaks
cheer to all who follow them. Hearts wrung by cruel partings from
those dearer to them than their own souls, turn to the pages which
tell how Abraham, with calm sorrow, laid his Sarah in the cave at
Macpelah; or how, when Jacob's eyes were dim that he could not
see, his memory still turned to the hour of agony when Rachael
died by him, and he sees clear in its light her lonely grave,
where so much of himself was laid; or to the still more sacred
page which records the struggle of grief and faith in the hearts
of the sisters of Bethany. All who are anyways afflicted in mind,
body, or estate find in the Psalms men speaking their deepest
experiences before them; and the grand majesty of sorrow that
marks `the patience of Job,' and the flood of sunshine that bathes
him, revealing the `end of the Lord,' have strengthened countless
sufferers to bear and to hold fast, and to hope. We are all enough
of children to be more affected by living examples than by
dissertations, however true, and so Scripture is mainly history,
revealing God by the record of His acts, and disclosing the secret
of human life by telling us the experiences of living men.

But Scripture has another method of ministering encouragement to
our often fainting and faithless hearts. It cuts down through all
the complications of human affairs, and lays bare the innermost
motive power. It not only shows us in its narratives the working
of sorrow, and the power of faith, but it distinctly lays down the
source and the purpose, the whence and the whither of all
suffering. No man need quail or faint before the most torturing
pains or most disastrous strokes of evil, who holds firmly the
plain teaching of Scripture on these two points. They all come
\textit{from} my Father, and they all come \textit{for} my good.
It is a short and simple creed, easily apprehended. It pretends to
no recondite wisdom. It is a homely philosophy which common
intellects can grasp, which children can understand, and hearts
half paralysed by sorrow can take in. So much the better. Grief
and pain are so common that their cure had need to be easily
obtained. Ignorant and stupid people have to writhe in agony as
well as wise and clever ones, and until grief is the portion only
of the cultivated classes, its healing must come from something
more universal than philosophy; or else the nettle would be more
plentiful than the dock; and many a poor heart would be stung to
death. Blessed be God! the Christian view of sorrow, while it
leaves much unexplained, focuses a steady light on these two
points; its origin and its end. `He for our profit, that we may be
partakers of His holiness,' is enough to calm all agitation, and
to make the faintest heart take fresh courage. With that double
certitude clear before us, we can face anything. The slings and
arrows which strike are no more flung blindly by an `outrageous
fortune,' but each bears an inscription, like the fabled bolts,
which tells what hand drew the bow, and they come with His
love.

Then, further, the courage thus born of the Scriptures produces
another grand thing---patience, or rather perseverance. By that
word is meant more than simply the passive endurance which is the
main element in patience, properly so called. Such passive
endurance is a large part of our duty in regard to difficulties
and sorrows, but is never the whole of it. It is something to
endure and even while the heart is breaking, to submit
unmurmuring, but, transcendent as that is, it is but half of the
lesson which we have to learn and to put in practice. For if all
our sorrows have a disciplinary and educational purpose, we shall
not have received them aright, unless we have tried to make that
purpose effectual, by appropriating whatsoever moral and spiritual
teaching they each have for us. Nor does our duty stop there. For
while one high purpose of sorrow is to deaden our hearts to
earthly objects, and to lift us above earthly affections, no
sorrow can ever relax the bonds which oblige us to duty. The
solemn pressure of `I ought,' is as heavy on the sorrowful as on
the happy heart. We have still to toil, to press forward, in the
sweat of our brow, to gain our bread, whether it be food for our
bodies, or sustenance for our hearts and minds. Our
responsibilities to others do not cease because our lives are
darkened. Therefore, heavy or light of heart, we have still to
stick to our work, and though we may never more be able to do it
with the old buoyancy, still to do it with our might.

It is that dogged persistence in plain duty, that tenacious
continuance in our course, which is here set forth as the result
of the encouragement which Scripture gives. Many of us have all
our strength exhausted in mere endurance, and have let obvious
duties slip from our hands, as if we had done all that we could do
when we had forced ourselves to submit. Submission would come
easier if you took up some of those neglected duties, and you
would be stronger for patience, if you used more of your strength
for service. You do well if you do not sink under your burden, but
you would do better if, with it on your shoulders, you would plod
steadily along the road; and if you did, you would feel the weight
less. It seems heaviest when you stand still doing nothing. Do not
cease to toil because you suffer. You will feel your pain more if
you do. Take the encouragement which Scripture gives, that it may
animate you to bate no jot of heart or hope, but still bear up and
steer right onward.

And let the Scripture directly minister to you perseverance as
well as indirectly supply it through the encouragement which it
gives. It abounds with exhortations, patterns, and motives of such
patient continuance in well-doing. It teaches us a solemn scorn of
ills. It, angel-like, bears us up on soft, strong hands, lest we
bruise ourselves on, or stumble over, the rough places on our
roads. It summons us to diligence by the visions of the prize, and
glimpses of the dread fate of the slothful, by all that is blessed
in hope, and terrible in foreboding, by appeals to an enlightened
self-regard, and by authoritative commands to conscience, by the
pattern of the Master, and by the tender motives of love to Him to
which He, Himself, has given voice. All these call on us to be
followers of them who, through faith and perseverance, inherit the
promises.

But we have yet another step to take. These two, the encouragement
and perseverance produced by the right use of Scripture, will lead
to hope.

It depends on how sorrow and trial are borne, whether they produce
a dreary hopelessness which sometimes darkens into despair, or a
brighter, firmer hope than more joyous days knew. We cannot say
that sorrow produces hope. It does not, unless we have this
connecting link---the experience in sorrow of a God-given courage
which falters not in the onward course, nor shrinks from any duty.
But if, in the very press and agony, I am able, by God's grace, to
endure nor cease to toil, I have, in myself, a living proof of His
power, which entitles me to look forward with the sure confidence
that, through all the uproar of the storm, He will bring me to my
harbour of rest where there is peace. The lion once slain houses a
swarm of bees who lay up honey in its carcase. The trial borne
with brave persistence yields a store of sweet hopes. If we can
look back and say, `Thou hast been with me in six troubles,' it is
good logic to look forward and say, `and in seven Thou wilt not
forsake me.' When the first wave breaks over the ship, as she
clears the heads and heels over before the full power of the open
sea, inexperienced landsmen think they are all going to the
bottom, but they soon learn that there is a long way between
rolling and foundering, and get to watch the highest waves
towering above the bows in full confidence that these also will
slip quietly beneath the keel as the others have done, and be left
harmless astern.

The Apostle, in this very same letter, has another word parallel
to this, in which he describes the issues of rightly-borne
suffering when he says, `Tribulation worketh perseverance'---the
same word that is used here---`and perseverance worketh' the proof
in our experience of a sustaining God; and the proof in our
experience of a sustaining God works hope. We know that of
ourselves we could not have met tribulation, and therefore the
fact that we have been able to meet and overcome it is
demonstration of a mightier power than our own, working in us,
which we know to be from God, and therefore inexhaustible and ever
ready to help. That is foundation firm enough to build solid
fabrics of hope upon, whose bases go down to the centre of all
things, the purpose of God, and whose summits, like the upward
shooting spire of some cathedral, aspire to, and seem almost to
touch, the heavens.

So hope is born of sorrow, when these other things come between.
The darkness gives birth to the light, and every grief blazes up a
witness to a future glory. Each drop that hangs on the wet leaves
twinkles into rainbow light that proclaims the sun. The garish
splendours of the prosperous day hide the stars, and through the
night of our sorrow there shine, thickly sown and steadfast, the
constellations of eternal hopes. The darker the midnight, the
surer, and perhaps the nearer, the coming of the day. Sorrow has
not had its perfect work unless it has led us by the way of
courage and perseverance to a stable hope. Hope has not pierced to
the rock, and builds only `things that can be shaken,' unless it
rests on sorrows borne by God's help.

II. So much then for the genealogy of one form of the Christian
hope. But we have also a hope that is born of the day, the child
of sunshine and gladness; and that is set before us in the second
of the two verses which we are considering, `The God of hope fill
you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in
hope.'

So then, `the darkness and the light are both alike' to our hope,
in so far as each may become the occasion for its exercise. It is
not only to be the sweet juice expressed from our hearts by the
winepress of calamities, but that which flows of itself from
hearts ripened and mellowed under the sunshine of God-given
blessedness.

We have seen that the bridge by which sorrow led to hope, is
perseverance and courage; in this second analysis of the origin of
hope, joy and peace are the bridge by which Faith passes over into
it. Observe the difference: there is no direct connection between
affliction and hope, but there is between joy and hope. We have no
right to say, `Because I suffer, I shall possess good in the
future'; but we have a right to say, `Because I rejoice'---of
course with a joy in God---`I shall never cease to rejoice in
Him.' Such joy is the prophet of its own immortality and
completion. And, on the other hand, the joy and peace which are
naturally the direct progenitors of Christian hope, are the
children of faith. So that we have here two generations, as it
were, of hope's ancestors;---Faith produces joy and peace, and
these again produce hope.

Faith leads to joy and peace. Paul has found, and if we only put
it to the proof, we shall also find, that the simple exercise of
simple faith fills the soul with `\textit{all} joy and peace.'
Gladness in all its variety and in full measure, calm repose in
every kind and abundant in its still depth, will pour into my
heart as water does into a vessel, on condition of my taking away
the barrier and opening my heart through faith. Trust and thou
shalt be glad. Trust, and thou shalt be calm. In the measure of
thy trust shall be the measure of thy joy and peace.

Notice, further, how indissolubly connected the present exercise
of faith is with the present experience of joy and peace. The
exuberant language of this text seems a world too wide for
anything that many professing Christians ever know even in the
moments of highest elevation, and certainly far beyond the
ordinary tenor of their lives. But it is no wonder that these
should have so little joy, when they have so little faith. It is
only while we are looking to Jesus that we can expect to have joy
and peace. There is no flashing light on the surface of the
mirror, but when it is turned full to the sun. Any interruption in
the electric current is registered accurately by an interruption
in the continuous line perforated on the telegraph ribbon; and so
every diversion of heart and faith from Jesus Christ is recorded
by the fading of the sunshine out of the heart, and the silencing
of all the song-birds. Yesterday's faith will not bring joy
to-day; you cannot live upon past experience, nor feed your souls
with the memory of former exercises of Christian faith. It must be
like the manna, gathered fresh every day, else it will rot and
smell foul. A present faith, and a present faith only, produces a
present joy and peace. Is there, then, any wonder that so much of
the ordinary experience of ordinary Christians should present a
sadly broken line---a bright point here and there, separated by
long stretches of darkness? The gaps in the continuity of their
joy are the tell-tale indicators of the interruptions in their
faith. If the latter were continuous, the former would be
unbroken. Always believe, and you will always be glad and
calm.

It is easy to see that this is the natural result of faith. The
very act of confident reliance on another for all my safety and
well-being has a charm to make me restful, so long as my reliance
is not put to shame. There is no more blessed emotion than the
tranquil happiness which, in the measure of its trust, fills every
trustful soul. Even when its objects are poor, fallible, weak,
ignorant dying men and women, trust brings a breath of more than
earthly peace into the heart. But when it grasps the omnipotent,
all-wise, immortal Christ, there are no bounds but its own
capacity to the blessedness which it brings into the soul, because
there is none to the all-sufficient grace of which it lays
hold.

Observe again how accurately the Apostle defines for us the
conditions on which Christian experience will be joyful and
tranquil. It is `in believing,' not in certain other exercises of
mind, that these blessings are to be realised. And the
forgetfulness of that plain fact leads to many good people's
religion being very much more gloomy and disturbed than God meant
it to be. For a large part of it consists in sadly testing their
spiritual state, and gazing at their failures and imperfections.
There is nothing cheerful or tranquillising in grubbing among the
evils of your own heart, and it is quite possible to do that too
much and too exclusively. If your favourite subject of
contemplation in your religious thinking is yourself, no wonder
that you do not get much joy and peace out of that. If you do, it
will be of a false kind. If you are thinking more about your own
imperfections than about Christ's pardon, more about the defects
of your own love to Him than about the perfection of His love to
you, if instead of practising faith you are absorbed in
self-examination, and instead of saying to yourself, `I know how
foul and unworthy I am, but I look away from myself to my
Saviour,' you are bewailing your sins and doubting whether you are
a Christian, you need not expect God's angels of joy and peace to
nestle in your heart. It is `in believing,' and not in other forms
of religious contemplation, however needful these may in their
places be, that these fair twin sisters come to us and make their
abode with us.

Then, the second step in this tracing of the origin of the hope
which has the brighter source is the consideration that the joy
and peace which spring from faith, in their turn produce that
confident anticipation of future and progressive good.

Herein lies the distinguishing blessedness of the Christian joy
and peace, in that they carry in themselves the pledge of their
own eternity. Here, and here only, the mad boast which is doomed
to be so miserably falsified when applied to earthly gladness is
simple truth. Here `to-morrow \textit{shall} be as this day and
much more abundant.' Such joy has nothing in itself which betokens
exhaustion, as all the less pure joys of earth have. It is
manifestly not born for death, as are they. It is not fated, like
all earthly emotions or passions, to expire in the moment of its
completeness, or even by sudden revulsion to be succeeded by its
opposite. Its sweetness has no after pang of bitterness. It is not
true of this gladness, that `Hereof cometh in the end despondency
and madness,' but its destiny is to `remain' as long as the soul
in which it unfolds shall exist, and `to be full' as long as the
source from which it flows does not run dry.

So that the more we experience the present blessedness, which
faith in Christ brings us, the more shall we be sure that nothing
in the future, either in or beyond time, can put an end to it; and
hence a hope that looks with confident eyes across the gorge of
death, to the `shining tablelands' on the other side, and is as
calm as certitude, shall be ours. To the Christian soul, rejoicing
in the conscious exercise of faith and the conscious possession of
its blessed results, the termination of a communion with Christ,
so real and spiritual, by such a trivial accident as death, seems
wildly absurd and therefore utterly impossible. Just as Christ's
Resurrection seems inevitable as soon as we grasp the truth of His
divine nature, and it becomes manifestly impossible that He, being
such as He is---should be holden of death,' being such as it is,
so for His children, when once they come to know the realities of
fellowship with their Lord, they feel the entire dissimilarity of
these to anything in the realm which is subjected to the power of
death, and to know it to be as impossible that these purely
spiritual experiences should be reduced to inactivity, or meddled
with by it, as that a thought should be bound with a cord or a
feeling fastened with fetters. They, and death, belong to two
different regions. It can work its will on `this wide world, and
all its fading sweets'---but is powerless in the still place where
the soul and Jesus hold converse, and all His joy passes into His
servant's heart. I saw, not long since, in a wood a mass of blue
wild hyacinths, that looked like a little bit of heaven dropped
down upon earth. You and I may have such a tiny bit of heaven
itself lying amidst all the tangle of our daily lives, if only we
put our trust in Christ, and so get into our hearts some little
portion of that joy that is unspeakable, and that peace that
passeth understanding.

Thus, then, the sorrows of the earthly experience and the joys of
the Christian life will blend together to produce the one blessed
result of a hope that is full of certainty, and is the assurance
of immortality. There is no rainbow in the sky unless there be
both a black cloud and bright sunshine. So, on the blackest,
thickest thunder-mass of our sorrows, if smitten into moist light
by the sunshine of joy and peace drawn from Jesus Christ by faith,
there may be painted the rainbow of hope, the many-coloured,
steadfast token of the faithful covenant of the faithful God.

\chapter{Joy and Peace in Believing}
\markright{ROMANS xv. 13}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy
Ghost.'---\textsc{Romans} xv. 13.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

With this comprehensive and lofty petition the Apostle closes his
exhortation to the factions in the Roman Church to be at unity.
The form of the prayer is moulded by the last words of a quotation
which he has just made, which says that in the coming Messiah
`shall the Gentiles hope.' But the prayer itself is not an
instance of being led away by a word---in form, indeed, it is
shaped by verbal resemblance; in substance it points to the true
remedy for religious controversy. Fill the contending parties with
a fuller spiritual life, and the ground of their differences will
begin to dwindle, and look very contemptible. When the tide rises,
the little pools on the rocks are all merged into one.

But we may pass beyond the immediate application of these words,
and see in them the wish, which is also a promise, and like the
exhibition of every ideal is a command. This is Paul's conception
of the Christian life as it might and should be, in one aspect.
You notice that there is not a word in it about conduct. It goes
far deeper than action. It deals with the springs of action in the
individual life. It is the depths of spiritual experience here set
forth which will result in actions that become a Christian. And in
these days, when all around us we see a shallow conception of
Christianity, as if it were concerned principally with conduct and
men's relations with one another, it is well to go down into the
depths, and to remember that whilst `Do, do, do!' is very
important, `Be, be, be!' is the primary commandment. Conduct is a
making visible of personality, and the Scripture teaching which
says first faith and then works is profoundly philosophical as
well as Christian. So we turn away here from externals altogether,
and regard the effect of Christianity on the inward life.

I. I wish to notice man's faith and God's filling as connected,
and as the foundation of everything.

`The God of hope fill you ...'---let us leave out the intervening
words for a moment---`in believing.' Now, you notice that Paul
does not stay to tell us what or whom we are to believe in, or on.
He takes that for granted, and his thought is fastened, for the
moment, not on the object but on the act of faith. And he wishes
to drive home to us this, that the attitude of trust is the
necessary prerequisite condition of God's being able to fill a
man's soul, and that God's being able to fill a man's soul is the
necessary consequence of a man's trust. Ah, brethren, we cannot
altogether shut God out from our spirits. There are loving and
gracious gifts that, as our Lord tells us, He makes to `fall on
the unthankful and the evil.' His rain is not like the summer
showers that we sometimes see, that fall in one spot and leave
another dry; nor like the destructive thunderstorms, that come
down bringing ruin upon one cane-brake and leave the plants in the
next standing upright. But the best, the highest, the truly divine
gifts which He is yearning to give to us all, cannot be given
except there be consent, trust, and desire for them. You can shut
your hearts or you can open them. And just as the wind will sigh
round some hermetically closed chamber in vain search for a
cranny, and the man within may be asphyxiated though the
atmosphere is surging up its waves all round his closed domicile,
so by lack of our faith, which is at once trust, consent, and
desire, we shut out the gift with which God would fain fill our
spirits. You can take a porous pottery vessel, wrap it up in
waxcloth, pitch it all over, and then drop it into mid-Atlantic,
and not a drop will find its way in. And that is what we can do
with ourselves, so that although in Him `we live and move and have
our being,' and are like the earthen vessel in the ocean, no drop
of the blessed moisture will ever find its way into the heart.
There must be man's faith before there can be God's filling.

Further, this relation of the two things suggests to us that a
consequence of a Christian man's faith is the direct action of God
upon him. Notice how the Apostle puts that truth in a double form
here, in order that he may emphasise it, using one form of
expression, involving the divine, direct activity, at the
beginning of his prayer, and another at the end, and so enclosing,
as it were, within a great casket of the divine action, all the
blessings, the flashing jewels, which he desires his Roman friends
to possess. `The God of hope fill you ... through the power of the
Holy Ghost.' I wish I could find words by which I could bear in
upon the ordinary type of the Evangelical Christianity of this
generation anything like the depth and earnestness of my own
conviction that, for lack of a proportionate development of that
great truth, of the direct action of the giving God on the
believing heart, it is weakened and harmed in many ways. Surely He
that made my spirit can touch my spirit; surely He who filleth all
things according to their capacity can Himself enter into and fill
the spirit which is opened for Him by simple faith. We do not need
wires for the telegraphy between heaven and the believing soul,
but He comes directly to, and speaks in, and moves upon, and
moulds and blesses, the waiting heart. And until you know, by your
own experience rightly interpreted, that there is such a direct
communion between the giving God and the recipient believing
spirit, you have yet to learn the deepest depth, and the most
blessed blessedness, of Christian faith and experience. For lack
of it a hundred evils beset modern Christianity. For lack of it
men fix their faith so exclusively as that the faith is itself
harmed thereby, on the past act of Christ's death on the Cross.
You will not suspect me of minimising that, but I beseech you
remember one climax of the Apostle's which, though not bearing the
same message as my text, is in harmony with it, `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 remember that
Christ Himself bestows the gift of His Divine Spirit as the result
of the humiliation and the agony of His Cross. Faith brings the
direct action of the giving God.

And one more word about this first part of my text: the result of
that direct action is complete---`the God of hope fill you' with
no shrunken stream, no painful trickle out of a narrow rift in the
rock, but a great exuberance which will pass into a man's nature
in the measure of his capacity, which is the measure of his trust
and desire. There are two limits to God's gifts to men: the one is
the limitless limit of God's infinitude, the other is the working
limit---our capacity---and that capacity is precisely measured, as
the capacity of some built-in vessel might be measured by a little
gauge on the outside, by our faith. `The God of hope' fills you in
`believing,' and `according to thy faith shall it be unto
thee.'

II. Notice the joy and peace which come from the direct action of
the God of hope on the believer's soul.

Now, it is not only towards God that we exercise trust, but
wherever it is exercised, to some extent, and in the measure in
which the object on which it rests is discovered by experience to
be worthy, it produces precisely these results. Whoever trusts is
at peace, just as much as he trusts. His confidence may be
mistaken, and there will come a tremendous awakening if it is, and
the peace will be shattered like some crystal vessel dashed upon
an iron pavement, but so long as a man's mind and heart are in the
attitude of dependence upon another, conceived to be dependable,
one knows that there are few phases of tranquillity and
blessedness which are sweeter and deeper than that. `The heart of
her husband doth safely trust in her'---that is one illustration,
and a hundred more might be given. And if you will take that
attitude of trust which, even when it twines round some earthly
prop, is upheld for a time, and bears bright flowers---if you take
it and twine it round the steadfast foundations of the Throne of
God, what can shake that sure repose? `Joy and peace' will come
when the Christian heart closes with its trust, which is God in
Christ.

He that believes has found the short, sure road to joy and peace,
because his relations are set right with God. For these relations
are the disturbing elements in all earthly tranquillity, and like
the skeleton at the feast in all earthly joy, and a man can never,
down to the roots of his being, be at rest until he is quite sure
that there is nothing wrong between him and God. And so believing,
we come to that root of all real gladness which is anything better
than a crackling of thorns under a pot, and to that beginning of
all true tranquillity. Joy in the Lord and peace with God are the
parents of all joy and peace that are worthy of the name.

And that same faith will again bring these two bright-winged
angels into the most saddened and troubled lives, because that
faith brings right relations with ourselves. For our inward
strifes stuff thorns into the pillow of our repose, and mingle
bitterness with the sweetest, foaming draughts of our earthly
joys. If a man's conscience and inclinations pull him two
different ways, he is torn asunder as by wild horses. If a man has
a hungry heart, for ever yearning after unattained and impossible
blessings, then there is no rest there. If a man's little kingdom
within him is all anarchical, and each passion and appetite
setting up for itself, then there is no tranquillity. But if by
faith we let the God of hope come in, then hungry hearts are
satisfied, and warring dispositions are harmonised, and the
conscience becomes quieted, and fair imaginations fill the chamber
of the spirit, and the man is at rest, because he himself is
unified by the faith and fear of God.

And the same faith brings joy and peace because it sets right our
relations with other people, and with all externals. If I am
living in an atmosphere of trust, then sorrow will never be
absolute, nor have exclusive monopoly and possession of my spirit.
But there will be the paradox, and the blessedness, of Christian
experience, `as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.' For the joy of
the Christian life has its source far away beyond the swamps from
which the sour drops of sorrow may trickle, and it is possible
that, like the fabled fire that burned under water, the joy of the
Lord may be bright in my heart, even when it is drenched in floods
of calamity and distress.

And so, brethren, the joy and peace that come from faith will fill
the heart which trusts. Only remember how emphatically the Apostle
here puts these two things together, `joy and peace in believing.'
As long as, and not a moment longer than, you are exercising the
Christian act of trust, will you be experiencing the Christian
blessedness of `joy and peace.' Unscrew the pipe, and in an
instant the water ceases to flow. Touch the button and switch off,
and out goes the light. Some Christian people fancy they can live
upon past faith. You will get no present joy and peace out of past
faith. The rain of this day twelve months will not moisten the
parched ground of to-day. Yesterday's religion was all used up
yesterday. And if you would have a continuous flow of joy and
peace through your lives, keep up a uniform habit and attitude of
trust in God. You will get it then; you will get it in no other
way.

III. Lastly, note the hope which springs from this experience of
joy and peace.

`The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
that ye may abound in hope.' Here, again, the Apostle does not
trouble himself to define the object of the hope. In this, as in
the former clause, his attention is fixed upon the emotion, not
upon that towards which it goes out. And just as there was no need
to say in whom it was that the Christian man was to believe, so
there is no room to define what it is that the Christian man has a
right to hope for. For his hope is intended to cover all the
future, the next moment, or to-morrow, or the dimmest distance
where time has ceased to be, and eternity stands unmoved. The
attitude of the Christian mind ought to be a cheery optimism, an
unconquerable hope. `The best has yet to be' is the true Christian
thought in contemplating the future for myself, for my dear ones,
for God's Church, and for God's universe.

And the truest basis on which that hope can rest is the experience
granted to us, on condition of our faith, of a present, abundant
possession of the joy and peace which God gives. The gladder you
are to-day, if the gladness comes from the right source, the surer
you may be that that gladness will never end. That is not what
befalls men who live by earthly joys. For the more poignant,
precious, and, as we faithlessly think, indispensable some of
these are to us, the more into their sweetest sweetness creeps the
dread thought: `This is too good to last; this must pass.' We
never need to think that about the peace and joy that come to us
through believing. For they, in their sweetness, prophesy
perpetuity. I need not dwell upon the thought that the firmest,
most personally precious convictions of an eternity of future
blessedness, rise and fall in a Christian consciousness with the
purity and the depth of its own experience of the peace and joy of
the Gospel. The more you have of Jesus Christ in your lives and
hearts to-day, the surer you will be that whatever death may do,
it cannot touch that, and the more ludicrously impossible it will
seem that anything that befalls this poor body can touch the bond
that knits us to Jesus Christ. Death can separate us from a great
deal. Its sharp scythe cuts through all other bonds, but its edge
is turned when it is tried against the golden chain that binds the
believing soul to the Christ in whom he has believed.

So, brethren, there is the ladder---begin at the bottom step, with
faith in Jesus Christ. That will bring God's direct action into
your spirit, through His Holy Spirit, and that one gift will break
up into an endless multiplicity of blessings, just as a beam of
light spilt upon the surface of the ocean breaks into diamonds in
every wave, and that `joy and peace' will kindle in your hearts a
hope fed by the great words of the Lord: `Peace I leave with you,
my peace I give unto you,' `My joy shall remain in you, and your
joy shall be full,' `He that liveth and believeth in Me shall
never die.'

\chapter{Ph\oe{}be}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 1, 2}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I commend unto you Ph\oe{}be our sister, who is a servant of the
Church that is at Cenchrea: 2.\ That ye receive her in the Lord,
worthily of the Saints, and that ye assist her in whatsover matter
she may have need of you: for she herself hath been a succourer of
many, and of mine own self.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 1, 2 (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

This is an outline picture of an else wholly unknown person. She,
like most of the other names mentioned in the salutations in this
chapter, has had a singular fate. Every name, shadowy and unreal
as it is to us, belonged to a human life filled with hopes and
fears, plunged sometimes in the depths of sorrows, struggling with
anxieties and difficulties; and all the agitations have sunk into
forgetfulness and calm. There is left to the world an immortal
remembrance, and scarcely a single fact associated with the
undying names.

Note the person here disclosed.

A little rent is made in the dark curtain through which we see as
with an incandescent light concentrated for a moment upon her, one
of the many good women who helped Paul, as their sisters had
helped Paul's Master, and who thereby have won, little as either
Paul or she thought it, an eternal commemoration. Her name is a
purely idolatrous one, and stamps her as a Greek, and by birth
probably a worshipper of Apollo. Her Christian associations were
with the Church at Cenchrea, the port of Corinth, of which little
Christian community nothing further is known. But if we take into
account the hideous immoralities of Corinth, we shall deem it
probable that the port, with its shifting maritime population,
was, like most seaports, a soil in which goodness was hard put to
it to grow, and a church had much against which to struggle. To be
a Christian at Cenchrea can have been no light task. Travellers in
Egypt are told that Port Said is the wickedest place on the face
of the earth; and in Ph\oe{}be's home there would be a like drift
of disreputables of both sexes and of all nationalities. It was
fitting that one good woman should be recorded as redeeming
womanhood there. We learn of her that she was a `servant,' or, as
the margin preferably reads, a `deaconess of the Church which is
at Cenchrea'; and in that capacity, by gentle ministrations and
the exhibition of purity and patient love, as well as by the
gracious administration of material help, had been a `succourer of
many.' There is a whole world of unmentioned kindnesses and a life
of self-devotion hidden away under these few words. Possibly the
succour which she administered was her own gift. She may have been
rich and influential, or perhaps she but distributed the Church's
bounty; but in any case the gift was sweetened by the giver's
hand, and the succour was the impartation of a woman's sympathy
more than the bestowment of a donor's gift. Sometime or other, and
somehow or other, she had had the honour and joy of helping Paul,
and no doubt that opportunity would be to her a crown of service.
She was now on the point of taking the long journey to Rome on her
own business, and the Apostle bespeaks for her help from the Roman
Church `in whatsoever matter she may have need of you,' as if she
had some difficult affair on hand, and had no other friends in the
city. Possibly then she was a widow, and perhaps had had some
lawsuit or business with government authorities, with whom a word
from some of her brethren in Rome might stand her in good stead.
Apparently she was the bearer of this epistle, which would give
her a standing at once in the Roman Church, and she came among
them with a halo round her from the whole-hearted commendation of
the Apostle.

Mark the lessons from this little picture.

We note first the remarkable illustration here given of the power
of the new bond of a common faith. The world was then broken up
into sections, which were sometimes bitterly antagonistic and at
others merely rigidly exclusive. The only bond of union was the
iron fetter of Rome, which crushed the people, but did not knit
them together. But here are Paul the Jew, Ph\oe{}be the Greek, and
the Roman readers of the epistle, all fused together by the power
of the divine love that melted their hearts, and the common faith
that unified their lives. The list of names in this chapter,
comprising as it does men and women of many nationalities, and
some slaves as well as freemen, is itself a wonderful testimony of
the truth of Paul's triumphant exclamation in another epistle,
that in Christ there is `neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free,
male nor female.'

The clefts have closed, and the very line of demarcation is
obliterated; and these clefts were deeper than any of which we
moderns have had experience. It remains something like a miracle
that the members of Paul's churches could ever be brought
together, and that their consciousness of oneness could ever
overpower the tremendous divisive forces. We sometimes wonder at
their bickerings; we ought rather to wonder at their unity, and be
ashamed of the importance which we attach to our infinitely
slighter mutual disagreements. The bond that was sufficient to
make the early Christians all one in Christ Jesus seems to have
lost its binding power to-day, and, like an used-up elastic band,
to have no clasping grip left in it.

Another thought which we may connect with the name of Ph\oe{}be is
the characteristic place of women in Christianity.

The place of woman amongst the Jews was indeed free and honourable
as compared with her position either in Greece or Rome, but in
none of them was she placed on the level of man, nor regarded
mainly in the aspect of an equal possessor of the same life of the
Spirit. But a religion which admits her to precisely the same
position of a supernatural life as is granted to man, necessarily
relegates to a subordinate position all differences of sex as it
does all other natural distinctions. The women who ministered to
Jesus of their substance, the two sisters of Bethany, the mourners
at Calvary, the three who went through the morning twilight to the
tomb, were but the foremost conspicuous figures in a great company
through all the ages who have owed to Jesus their redemption, not
only from the slavery of sin, but from the stigma of inferiority
as man's drudge or toy. To the world in which Paul lived it was a
strange, new thought that women could share with man in his
loftiest emotions. Historically the emancipation of one half of
the human race is the direct result of the Christian principle
that all are one in Christ Jesus. In modern life the emancipation
has been too often divorced from its one sure basis, and we have
become familiar with the sight of the `advanced' women who have
advanced so far as to have lost sight of the Christ to whom they
owe their freedom. The picture of Ph\oe{}be in our text might well
be commended to all such as setting forth the most womanlike
ideal. She was `a succourer of many.' Her ministry was a ministry
of help; and surely such gentle ministry is that which most befits
the woman's heart and comes most graciously to the woman's
fingers.

Ph\oe{}be then may well represent to us the ministry of succour in
this world of woe and need. There is ever a cry, even in
apparently successful lives, for help and a helper. Man's clumsy
hand is but too apt to hurt where it strives to soothe, and nature
itself seems to devolve on the swifter sympathies and more
delicate perceptions of woman the joy of binding up wounded
spirits. In the verses immediately following our text we read of
another woman to whom was entrusted a more conspicuous and direct
form of service. Priscilla `taught Apollos the way of God more
perfectly,' and is traditionally represented as being united with
her husband in evangelistic work. But it is not merely prejudice
which takes Ph\oe{}be rather than Priscilla as the characteristic
type of woman's special ministry. We must remember our Lord's
teaching, that the giver of `a cup of cold water in the name of a
prophet' in some measure shares in the prophet's work, and will
surely share in the prophet's reward. She who helped Paul must
have entered into the spirit of Paul's labours; and He to whom all
service that is done from the same motive is one in essence, makes
no difference between him whose thirsty lips drink and her whose
loving hand presents the cup of cold water. `Small service is true
service while it lasts.' Paul and Ph\oe{}be were one in ministry
and one in its recompense.

We may further see in her a foreshadowing of the reward of lowly
service, though it be only the service of help. Little did
Ph\oe{}be dream that her name would have an eternal commemoration
of her unnoticed deeds of kindness and aid, standing forth to
later generations and peoples of whom she knew nothing, as worthy
of eternal remembrance. For those of us who have to serve
unnoticed and unknown, here is an instance and a prophecy which
may stimulate and encourage. `Surely I will never forget any of
their works' is a gracious promise which the most obscure and
humble of us may take to heart, and sustained by which, we may
patiently pursue a way on which there are `none to praise and very
few to love.' It matters little whether our work be noticed or
recorded by men, so long as we know that it is written in the
Lamb's book of life and that He will one day proclaim it `before
the Father in heaven and His angels.'

\chapter{Priscilla and Aquila}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 3--5}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus; 4.\ (Who
have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I
give thanks, but so all the churches of the Gentiles:) 5.\
Likewise greet the church that is in their
house.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 3--5.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

It has struck me that this wedded couple present, even in the
scanty notices that we have of them, some interesting points which
may be worth while gathering together.

Now, to begin with, we are told that Aquila was a Jew. We are not
told whether Priscilla was a Jewess or no. So far as her name is
concerned, she may have been, and very probably was, a Roman, and,
if so, we have in their case a `mixed marriage' such as was not
uncommon then, and of which Timothy's parents give another
example. She is sometimes called Prisca, which was her proper
name, and sometimes Priscilla, an affectionate diminutive. The two
had been living in Rome, and had been banished under the decree of
the Emperor, just as Jews have been banished from England and from
every country in Europe again and again. They came from Rome to
Corinth, and were, perhaps, intending to go back to Aquila's
native place, Pontus, when Paul met them in the latter city, and
changed their whole lives. His association with them began in a
purely commercial partnership. But as they abode together and
worked at their trade, there would be many earnest talks about the
Christ, and these ended in both husband and wife becoming
disciples. The bond thus knit was too close to be easily severed,
and so, when Paul sailed across the \AE{}gean for Ephesus, his two
new friends kept with him, which they would be the more ready to
do, as they had no settled home. They remained with him during his
somewhat lengthened stay in the great Asiatic city; for we find in
the first Epistle to the Corinthians which was written from
Ephesus about that time, that the Apostle sends greetings from
`Priscilla and Aquila and the Church which is in their house.' But
when Paul left Ephesus they seem to have stayed behind, and
afterwards to have gone their own way.

About a year after the first Epistle to the Corinthians was sent
from Ephesus, the Epistle to the Romans was written, and we find
there the salutation to Priscilla and Aquila which is my text. So
this wandering couple were back again in Rome by that time, and
settled down there for a while. They are then lost sight of for
some time, but probably they returned to Ephesus. Once more we
catch a glimpse of them in Paul's last letter, written some seven
or eight years after that to the Romans. The Apostle knows that
death is near, and, at that supreme moment, his heart goes out to
these two faithful companions, and he sends them a parting token
of his undying love. There are only two messages to friends in the
second Epistle to Timothy, and one of these is to Prisca and
Aquila. At the mouth of the valley of the shadow of death he
remembered the old days in Corinth, and the, to us, unknown
instance of devotion which these two had shown, when, for his
life, they laid down their own necks.

Such is all that we know of Priscilla and Aquila. Can we gather
any lessons from these scattered notices thus thrown together?

I. Here is an object lesson as to the hallowing effect of
Christianity on domestic life and love.

Did you ever notice that in the majority of the places where these
two are named, if we adopt the better readings, Priscilla's name
comes first? She seems to have been `the better man of the two'; and
Aquila drops comparatively into the background. Now, such a couple,
and a couple in which the wife took the foremost place, was an
absolute impossibility in heathenism. They are a specimen of what
Christianity did in the primitive age, all over the Empire, and is
doing to-day, everywhere---lifting woman to her proper place. These
two, yoked together in `all exercise of noble end,' and helping one
another in Christian work, and bracketed together by the Apostle,
who puts the wife first, as his fellow-helpers in Christ Jesus,
stands before us as a living picture of what our sweet and sacred
family life and earthly loves may be glorified into, if the light
from heaven shines down upon them, and is thankfully received into
them.

Such a house as the house of Prisca and Aquila is the product of
Christianity, and such ought to be the house of every professing
Christian. For we should all make our homes as `tabernacles of the
righteous,' in which the voice of joy and rejoicing is ever heard.
Not only wedded love, but family love, and all earthly love, are
then most precious, when into them there flows the ennobling, the
calming, the transfiguring thought of Christ and His love to
us.

Again, notice that, even in these scanty references to our two
friends, there twice occurs that remarkable expression `the church
that is in their house.' Now, I suppose that that gives us a
little glimpse into the rudimentary condition of public worship in
the primitive church. It was centuries after the time of Priscilla
and Aquila before circumstances permitted Christians to have
buildings devoted exclusively to public worship. Up to a very much
later period than that which is covered by the New Testament, they
gathered together wherever was most convenient. And, I suppose,
that both in Rome and Ephesus, this husband and wife had some
room---perhaps the workshop where they made their tents, spacious
enough for some of the Christians of the city to meet together in.
One would like people who talk so much about `the Church,' and
refuse the name to individual societies of Christians, and even to
an aggregate of these, unless it has `bishops,' to explain how the
little gathering of twenty or thirty people in the workshop
attached to Aquila's house, is called by the Apostle without
hesitation `the church which is in their house.' It was a part of
the Holy Catholic Church, but it was also `a Church,' complete in
itself, though small in numbers. We have here not only a glimpse
into the manner of public worship in early times, but we may learn
something of far more consequence for us, and find here a
suggestion of what our homes ought to be. `The Church that is in
thy house'---fathers and mothers that are responsible for your
homes and their religious atmosphere, ask yourselves if any one
would say that about your houses, and if they could not, why
not?

II. We may get here another object lesson as to the hallowing of
common life, trade, and travel.

It does not appear that, after their stay in Ephesus, Aquila and
his wife were closely attached to Paul's person, and certainly
they did not take any part as members of what we may call his
evangelistic staff. They seem to have gone their own way, and as
far as the scanty notices carry us, they did not meet Paul again,
after the time when they parted in Ephesus. Their gipsy life was
probably occasioned by Aquila's going about---as was the custom in
old days when there were no trades-unions or organised centres of
a special industry---to look for work where he could find it. When
he had made tents in Ephesus for a while, he would go on somewhere
else, and take temporary lodgings there. Thus he wandered about as
a working man. Yet Paul calls him his `fellow worker in Christ
Jesus'; and he had, as we saw, a Church in his house. A roving
life of that sort is not generally supposed to be conducive to
depth of spiritual life. But their wandering course did not hurt
these two. They took their religion with them. It did not depend
on locality, as does that of a great many people who are very
religious in the town where they live, and, when they go away for
a holiday, seem to leave their religion, along with their silver
plate, at home. But no matter whether they were in Corinth or
Ephesus or Rome, Aquila and Priscilla took their Lord and Master
with them, and while working at their camel's-hair tents, they
were serving God.

Dear brethren, what we want is not half so much preachers such as
my brethren and I, as Christian tradesmen and merchants and
travellers, like Aquila and Priscilla.

III. Again, we may see here a suggestion of the unexpected issues
of our lives.

Think of that complicated chain of circumstances, one end of which
was round Aquila and the other round the young Pharisee in
Jerusalem. It steadily drew them together until they met in that
lodging at Corinth. Claudius, in the fullness of his absolute
power, said, `Turn all these wretched Jews out of my city. I will
not have it polluted with them any more. Get rid of them!' So
these two were uprooted, and drifted to Corinth. We do not know
why they chose to go thither; perhaps they themselves did not know
why; but God knew. And while they were coming thither from the
west, Paul was coming thither from the east and north. He was
`prevented by the Spirit from speaking in Asia,' and driven across
the sea against his intention to Neapolis, and hounded out of
Philippi and Thessalonica and Ber\ae{}a; and turned superciliously
away from Athens; and so at last found himself in Corinth, face to
face with the tentmaker from Rome and his wife. Then one of the
two men said, `Let us join partnership together, and set up here
as tent-makers for a time.' What came out of this unintended and
apparently chance meeting?

The first thing was the conversion of Aquila and his wife; and the
effects of that are being realised by them in heaven at this
moment, and will go on to all eternity.

So, in the infinite complexity of events, do not let us worry
ourselves by forecasting, but let us trust, and be sure that the
Hand which is pushing us is pushing us in the right direction, and
that He will bring us, by a right, though a roundabout way, to the
City of Habitation. It seems to me that we poor, blind creatures
in this world are somewhat like a man in a prison, groping with
his hand in the dark along the wall, and all unawares touching a
spring which moves a stone, disclosing an aperture that lets in a
breath of purer air, and opens the way to freedom. So we go on as
if stumbling in the dark, and presently, without our knowing what
we do, by some trivial act we originate a train of events which
influences our whole future.

Again, when Aquila and Priscilla reached Ephesus they formed
another chance acquaintance in the person of a brilliant young
Alexandrian, whose name was Apollos. They found that he had good
intentions and a good heart, but a head very scantily furnished
with the knowledge of the Gospel. So they took him in hand, just
as Paul had taken them. If I may use such a phrase, they did not
know how large a fish they had caught. They had no idea what a
mighty power for Christ was lying dormant in that young man from
Alexandria who knew so much less than they did. They instructed
Apollos, and Apollos became second only to Paul in the power of
preaching the Gospel. So the circle widens and widens. God's grace
fructifies from one man to another, spreading onward and outward.
And all Apollos' converts, and \textit{their} converts, and
\textit{theirs} again, right away down the ages, we may trace back
to Priscilla and Aquila.

So do not let us be anxious about the further end of our
deeds---viz. their results; but be careful about the nearer end of
them---viz. their motives; and God will look after the other end.
Seeing that `thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or
that,' or how much any of them will prosper, let us grasp
\textit{all} opportunities to do His will and glorify His name.

IV. Further, here we have an instance of the heroic self-devotion
which love to Christ kindles.

`For my sake they laid down their own necks.' We do not know to
what Paul is referring: perhaps to that tumult in Ephesus, where
he certainly was in danger. But the language seems rather more
emphatic than such danger would warrant. Probably it was at some
perilous juncture of which we know nothing (for we know very
little, after all, of the details of the Apostle's life), in which
Aquila and Priscilla had said, `Take us and let him go. He can do
a great deal more for God than we can do. We will put our heads on
the block, if he may still live.' That magnanimous self-surrender
was a wonderful token of the passionate admiration and love which
the Apostle inspired, but its deepest motive was love to Christ
and not to Paul only.

Faith in Christ and love to Him ought to turn cowards into heroes,
to destroy thoughts of self, and to make the utmost self-sacrifice
natural, blessed, and easy. We are not called upon to exercise
heroism like Priscilla's and Aquila's, but there is as much
heroism needed for persistently Christian life, in our prosaic
daily circumstances, as has carried many a martyr to the block,
and many a tremulous woman to the pyre. We can all be heroes; and
if the love of Christ is in us, as it should be, we shall all be
ready to `yield ourselves living sacrifices, which is our
reasonable service.'

Long years after, the Apostle, on the further edge of life, looked
back over it all; and, whilst much had become dim, and some
trusted friends had dropped away, like Demas, he saw these two,
and waved them his last greeting before he turned to the
executioner---`Salute Prisca and Aquila.' Paul's Master is not
less mindful of His friends' love, or less eloquent in the praise
of their faithfulness, or less sure to reward them with the crown
of glory. `Whoso confesseth Me before men, him will I also confess
before the angels in heaven.'

\chapter{Two Households}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 10, 11}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`... Salute them which are of Aristobulus' household. 11.\ ...
Greet them that be of the household of Narcissus, which are in the
Lord.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 10, 11.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There does not seem much to be got out of these two sets of
salutations to two households in Rome; but if we look at them with
eyes in our heads, and some sympathy in our hearts, I think we
shall get lessons worth the treasuring.

In the first place, here are two sets of people, members of two
different households, and that means mainly, if not exclusively,
slaves. In the next place, in each case there was but a section of
the household which was Christian. In the third place, in neither
household is the master included in the greeting. So in neither case
was \textit{he} a Christian.

We do not know anything about these two persons, men of position
evidently, who had large households. But the most learned of our
living English commentators of the New Testament has advanced a
very reasonable conjecture in regard to each of them. As to the
first of them, Aristobulus: that wicked old King Herod, in whose
life Christ was born, had a grandson of the name, who spent all
his life in Rome, and was in close relations with the Emperor of
that day. He had died some little time before the writing of this
letter. As to the second of them, there is a very notorious
Narcissus, who plays a great part in the history of Rome just a
little while before Paul's period there, and he, too, was dead.
And it is more than probable that the slaves and retainers of
these two men were transferred in both cases to the emperor's
household and held together in it, being known as Aristobulus' men
and Narcissus' men. And so probably the Christians among them are
the brethren to whom these salutations are sent.

Be that as it may, I think that if we look at the two groups, we
shall get out of them some lessons.

I. The first of them is this: the penetrating power of Christian
truth. Think of the sort of man that the master of the first
household was, if the identification suggested be accepted. He is
one of that foul Herodian brood, in all of whom the bad Idum\ae{}an
blood ran corruptly. The grandson of the old Herod, the brother of
Agrippa of the Acts of the Apostles, the hanger-on of the Imperial
Court, with Roman vices veneered on his native wickedness, was not
the man to welcome the entrance of a revolutionary ferment into his
household; and yet through his barred doors had crept quietly, he
knowing nothing about it, that great message of a loving God, and a
Master whose service was freedom. And in thousands of like cases the
Gospel was finding its way underground, undreamed of by the great
and wise, but steadily pressing onwards, and undermining all the
towering grandeur that was so contemptuous of it. So Christ's truth
spread at first; and I believe that is the way it always spreads.
Intellectual revolutions begin at the top and filter down; religious
revolutions begin at the bottom and rise; and it is always the
`lower orders' that are laid hold of first. `Ye see your calling,
brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble are called,' but a handful of slaves in
Aristobulus' household, with this living truth lodged in their
hearts, were the bearers and the witnesses and the organs of the
power which was going to shatter all that towered above it and
despised it. And so it always is.

Do not let us be ashamed of a Gospel that has not laid hold of the
upper and the educated classes, but let us feel sure of this, that
there is no greater sign of defective education and of superficial
culture and of inborn vulgarity than despising the day of small
things, and estimating truth by the position or the intellectual
attainments of the men that are its witnesses and its lovers. The
Gospel penetrated at first, and penetrates still, in the fashion
that is suggested here.

II. Secondly, these two households teach us very touchingly and
beautifully the uniting power of Christian sympathy.

A considerable proportion of the first of these two households would
probably be Jews---if Aristobulus were indeed Herod's grandson. The
probability that he was is increased by the greeting interposed
between those to the two households---`Salute Herodion.' The name
suggests some connection with Herod, and whether we suppose the
designation of `my kinsman,' which Paul gives him, to mean `blood
relation' or `fellow countryman,' Herodion, at all events, was a Jew
by birth. As to the other members of these households, Paul may have
met some of them in his many travels, but he had never been in Rome,
and his greetings are more probably sent to them as conspicuous
sections, numerically, of the Roman Church, and as tokens of his
affection, though he had never seen them. The possession of a common
faith has bridged the gulf between him and them. Slaves in those
days were outside the pale of human sympathy, and almost outside the
pale of human rights. And here the foremost of Christian teachers,
who was a freeman born, separated from these poor people by a
tremendous chasm, stretches a brother's hand across it and grasps
theirs. The Gospel that came into the world to rend old associations
and to split up society, and to make a deep cleft between fathers
and children and husband and wife, came also to more than
counterbalance its dividing effects by its uniting power. And in
that old world that was separated into classes by gulfs deeper than
any of which we have any experience, it, and it alone, threw a
bridge across the abysses and bound men together. Think of what a
revolution it must have been, when a master and his slave could sit
down together at the table of the Lord and look each other in the
face and say `Brother' and for the moment forget the difference of
bond and free. Think of what a revolution it must have been when Jew
and Gentile could sit down together at the table of the Lord, and
forget circumcision and uncircumcision, and feel that they were all
one in Jesus Christ. And as for the third of the great
clefts---that, alas! which made so much of the tragedy and the
wickedness of ancient life---viz. the separation between the
sexes---think of what a revolution it was when men and women, in all
purity of the new bond of Christian affection, could sit down
together at the same table, and feel that they were brethren and
sisters in Jesus Christ.

The uniting power of the common faith and the common love to the one
Lord marked Christianity as altogether supernatural and new, unique
in the world's experience, and obviously requiring something more
than a human force to produce it. Will anybody say that the
Christianity of this day has preserved and exhibits that primitive
demonstration of its superhuman source? Is there anything obviously
beyond the power of earthly motives in the unselfish, expansive love
of modern Christians? Alas! alas! to ask the question is to answer
it, and everybody knows the answer, and nobody sorrows over it. Is
any duty more pressingly laid upon Christian churches of this
generation than that, forgetting their doctrinal janglings for a
while, and putting away their sectarianisms and narrowness, they
should show the world that their faith has still the power to do
what it did in the old times, bridge over the gulf that separates
class from class, and bring all men together in the unity of the
faith and of the love of Jesus Christ? Depend upon it, unless the
modern organisations of Christianity which call themselves
`churches' show themselves, in the next twenty years, a great deal
more alive to the necessity, and a great deal more able to cope with
the problem, of uniting the classes of our modern complex
civilisation, the term of life of these churches is comparatively
brief. And the form of Christianity which another century will see
will be one which reproduces the old miracle of the early days, and
reaches across the deepest clefts that separate modern society, and
makes all one in Jesus Christ. It is all very well for us to glorify
the ancient love of the early Christians, but there is a vast deal
of false sentimentality about our eulogistic talk of it. It were
better to praise it less and imitate it more. Translate it into
present life, and you will find that to-day it requires what it
nineteen hundred years ago was recognised as manifesting, the
presence of something more than human motive, and something more
than man discovers of truth. The cement must be divine that binds
men thus together.

Again, these two households suggest for us the tranquillising
power of Christian resignation.

They were mostly slaves, and they continued to be slaves when they
were Christians. Paul recognised their continuance in the servile
position, and did not say a word to them to induce them to break
their bonds. The Epistle to the Corinthians treats the whole
subject of slavery in a very remarkable fashion. It says to the
slave: `If you were a slave when you became a Christian, stop
where you are. If you have an opportunity of being free, avail
yourself of it; if you have not, never mind.' And then it adds
this great principle: `He that is called in the Lord, being a
slave, is Christ's freeman. Likewise he that is called, being
free, is Christ's slave.' The Apostle applies the very same
principle, in the adjoining verses, to the distinction between
circumcision and uncircumcision. From all which there comes just
the same lesson that is taught us by these two households of
slaves left intact by Christianity---viz. that where a man is
conscious of a direct, individual relation to Jesus Christ, that
makes all outward circumstances infinitely insignificant. Let us
get up to the height, and they all become very small. Of course,
the principles of Christianity killed slavery, but it took
eighteen hundred years to do it. Of course, there is no blinking
the fact that slavery was an essentially immoral and unchristian
institution. But it is one thing to lay down principles and leave
them to be worked in and then to be worked out, and it is another
thing to go blindly charging at existing institutions and throwing
them down by violence, before men have grown up to feel that they
are wicked. And so the New Testament takes the wise course, and
leaves the foolish one to foolish people. It makes the tree good,
and then its fruit will be good.

But the main point that I want to insist upon is this: what was
good for these slaves in Rome is good for you and me. Let us get
near to Jesus Christ, and feel that we have got hold of His hand
for our own selves, and we shall not mind very much about the
possible varieties of human condition. Rich or poor, happy or sad,
surrounded by companions or treading a solitary path, failures or
successes as the world has it, strong or broken and weak and
wearied---all these varieties, important as they are, come to be
very small when we can say, `We are the Lord's.' That amulet makes
all things tolerable; and the Christian submission which is the
expression of our love to, and confidence in, His infinite
sweetness and unerring goodness, raises us to a height from which
the varieties of earthly condition seem to blend and melt into
one. When we are down amongst the low hills, it seems a long way
from the foot of one of them to the top of it; but when we are on
the top they all melt into one dead level, and you cannot tell
which is top and which is bottom. And so, if we only can rise high
enough up the hill, the possible diversities of our condition will
seem to be very small variations in the level.

III. Lastly, these two groups suggest to us the conquering power
of Christian faithfulness.

The household of Herod's grandson was not a very likely place to
find Christian people in, was it? Such flowers do not often grow,
or at least do not easily grow, on such dunghills. And in both
these cases it was only a handful of the people, a portion of each
household, that was Christian. So they had beside them, closely
identified with them---working, perhaps, at the same tasks, I
might almost say, chained with the same chains---men who had no
share in their faith or in their love. It would not be easy to
pray and love and trust God and do His will, and keep clear of
complicity with idolatry and immorality and sin, in such a pigsty
as that; would it? But these men did it. And nobody need ever say,
`I am in such circumstances that I cannot live a Christian life.'
There are no such circumstances, at least none of God's
appointing. There are often such that we bring upon ourselves, and
then the best thing is to get out of them as soon as we can. But
as far as He is concerned, He never puts anybody anywhere where he
cannot live a holy life.

There were no difficulties too great for these men to overcome;
there are no difficulties too great for us to overcome. And wherever
you and I may be, we cannot be in any place where it is so hard to
live a consistent life as these people were. Young men in
warehouses, people in business here in Manchester, some of us with
unfortunate domestic or relative associations, and so on---we may
all feel as if it would be so much easier for us if this, that, and
the other thing were changed. No, it would not be any easier; and
perhaps the harder the easier, because the more obviously the
atmosphere is poisonous, the more we shall put some cloth over our
mouths to prevent it from getting into our lungs. The dangerous
place is the place where the vapours that poison are scentless as
well as invisible. But whatever be the difficulties, there is
strength waiting for us, and we may all win the praise which the
Apostle gives to another of these Roman brethren, whom he salutes as
`Apelles, approved in Christ'---a man that had been `tried' and had
stood his trial. So in our various spheres of difficulty and of
temptation we may feel that the greeting from heaven, like Paul's
message to the slaves in Rome, comes to us with good cheer, and that
the Master Himself sees us, sympathises with us, salutes us, and
stretches out His hand to help and to keep us.

\chapter{Tryphena and Tryphosa}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 12}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labour in the
Lord.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 12.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The number of salutations to members of the Roman Church is
remarkable when we take into account that Paul had never visited
it. The capital drew all sorts of people to it, and probably there
had been personal intercourse between most of the persons here
mentioned and the Apostle in some part of his wandering life. He
not only displays his intimate knowledge of the persons saluted,
but his beautiful delicacy and ingenuity in the varying epithets
applied to them shows how in his great heart and tenacious memory
individuals had a place. These shadowy saints live for ever by
Paul's brief characterisation of them, and stand out to us almost
as clearly and as sharply distinguished as they did to him.

These two, Tryphena and Tryphosa, were probably sisters. That is
rendered likely by their being coupled together here, as well as
by the similarity of their names. These names mean luxurious, or
delicate, and no doubt expressed the ideal for their daughters
which the parents had had, and possibly indicate the kind of life
from which these two women had come. We can scarcely fail to note
the contrast between the meaning of their names and the Christian
lives they had lived. Two dainty women, probably belonging to a
class in which a delicate withdrawal from effort and toil was
thought to be the woman's distinctive mark, had fled from luxury,
which often tended to be voluptuous, and was always
self-indulgent, and had chosen the better part of `labour in the
Lord.' They had become untrue to their names, because they must be
true to their Master and themselves. We may well take the lesson
that lies here, and is eminently needful to-day amidst the
senseless, and often sinful, tide of luxury which runs so strongly
as to threaten the great and eternal Christian principle of
self-denial.

The first thing that strikes us in looking at these salutations is
the illustration which it gives of the uniting power of a common
faith. Tryphena and Tryphosa were probably Roman ladies of some
social standing, and their names may indicate that they at least
inherited a tendency to exclusiveness; yet here they occur
immediately after the household of Narcissus and in close connection
with that of Aristobulus, both of which are groups of slaves.
Aristobulus was a grandson of Herod the Great, and Narcissus was a
well-known freedman, whose slaves at his death would probably become
the property of the Emperor. Other common slave names are those of
Ampliatus and Urbanus; and here in these lists they stand side by
side with persons of some distinction in the Roman world, and with
men and women of widely differing nationalities. The Church of Rome
would have seemed to any non-Christian observer a motley crowd in
which racial distinctions, sex, and social conditions had all been
swept away by the rising tide of a common fanaticism. In it was
exemplified in actual operation Paul's great principle that in
Christ Jesus `there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond
nor free, but in Him all are one.' Roman society in that day, as
Juvenal shows us, was familiar with the levelling and uniting power
of common vice and immorality, and the few sternly patriotic Romans
who were left lamented that `the Orontes flowed into the Tiber'; but
such common wallowing in filth led to no real unity, whereas, in the
obscure corner of the great city where there were members of the
infant Church gathered together, there was the beginning of a common
life in the one Lord which lifted each participant of it out of the
dreary solitude of individuality, and imparted to each heart the
tingling consciousness of oneness with all who held the one faith in
the one Lord and had received the one baptism in the one Name. That
fair dawn has been shadowed by many clouds, and the churches of
to-day, however they may have developed doctrine, may look back with
reproach and shame to the example of Rome, where Tryphena and
Tryphosa, with all their inherited, fastidious delicacy, recognised
in the household of Aristobulus and the household of Narcissus
`brethren in the Lord,' and were as glad to welcome Jews, Asiatics,
Persians, and Greeks, as Romans of the bluest blood, into the family
of Christ. The Romish Church of our day has lost its early grace of
welcoming all who love the one Lord into its fellowship; and we of
the Protestant churches have been but too swift to learn the bad
lesson of forbidding all who follow not with us.

Another thought which may be suggested by Tryphena and Tryphosa is
the blessed hallowing of natural family relations by common faith.
They were probably sisters, or, at all events, as their names
indicate, near relatives, and to them that faith must have been
doubly precious because they shared it with each other. None of
the trials to which the early Christians were exposed was more
severe than the necessity which their Christianity so often
imposed upon them of breaking the sacred family ties. It saddened
even Christ's heart to think that He had come to rend families in
sunder, and to make `a man's foes them of his own household'; and
we can little imagine how bitter the pang must have been when
family love had to be cast aside at the bidding of allegiance to
Him.

But though the stress of that separation between those most nearly
related in blood by reason of unshared faith is alleviated in this
day, it still remains; and that is but a feeble Christian life
which does not feel that it is drawing a heart from closest human
embraces and constituting a barrier between it and the dearest of
earth. There is still need in these days of relaxed Christian
sentiment for the stern austerity of the law, `He that loveth
father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me'; and there are
many Christian souls who would be infinitely stronger and more
mature, if they did not yield to the seductions of family
affections which are not rooted in Jesus Christ. But still, though
our faith ought to be far more than it often is, the determining
element in our affections and associations, its noblest work is
not to separate but to unite; and whilst it often must divide, it
is meant to draw more closely together hearts that are already
knit by earthly love. Its legitimate effect is to make all earthly
sweetnesses sweeter, all holy bonds more holy and more binding, to
infuse a new constraint and preciousness into all earthly
relationships, to make brothers tenfold more brotherly and sisters
more sisterly. The heart, in which the deepest devotion is yielded
to Jesus Christ, has its capacity for devotion infinitely
increased, and they who, looking into each other's faces, see
reflected there something of the Lord whom they both love, love
each other all the more because they love Him most, and in their
love to Him, and His to them, have found a new measure for all
their affection. They who, looking on their dear ones, can `trust
they live in God,' will there find them `worthier to be loved,'
and will there find a power of loving them. Tryphena and Tryphosa
were more sisterly than ever when they clung to their Elder
Brother. `There is no man that hath left brethren, or sisters, or
mother, or father, for My sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold
more in this time, brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and in the
world to come eternal life.'

The contrast between the names of these two Roman ladies and the
characterisation of their `labour in the Lord' may suggest to us
the most formidable foe of Christian earnestness. Their names, as
we have already noticed, point to a state of society in which the
parents ideal for their daughters was dainty luxuriousness and a
withdrawal from the rough and tumble of common life; but these two
women, magnetised by the love of Jesus, had turned their backs on
the parental ideal, and had cast themselves earnestly into a life
of toil. That ideal was never more formidably antagonistic to the
vigour of Christian life than it is to-day. Rome, in Paul's time,
was not more completely honeycombed with worldliness than England
is to-day; and the English churches are not far behind the English
`world' in their paralysing love of luxury and self-indulgence. In
all ages, earnest Christians have had to take up the same vehement
remonstrance against the tendency of the average Christian to let
his religious life be weakened by the love of the world and the
things of the world. The protests against growing luxury have been
a commonplace in all ages of the Church; but, surely, there has
never been a time when it has reached a more senseless, sinful,
and destroying height than in our day. The rapid growth of wealth,
with no capacity of using it nobly, which modern commerce has
brought, has immensely influenced all our churches for evil. It is
so hard for us, aggregated in great cities, to live our own lives,
and the example of our class has such immense power over us that
it is very hard to pursue the path of `plain living and high
thinking' in communities, all classes of which are more and more
yielding to the temptation to ostentation, so-called comfort, and
extravagant expenditure; and that this is a danger---we are
tempted to say \textit{the} danger---to the purity, loftiness, and
vigour of religious life among us, he must be blind who cannot
see, and he must be strangely ignorant of his own life who cannot
feel that it is the danger for him. I believe that for one
professing Christian whose earnestness is lost by reason of
intellectual doubts, or by some grave sin, there are a hundred
from whom it simply oozes away unnoticed, like wind out of a
bladder, so that what was once round and full becomes limp and
flaccid. If Demas begins with loving the present world, it will
not be long before he finds a reason for departing from Paul.

We may take these two sisters, finally, as pointing for us the
true victory over this formidable enemy. They had turned
resolutely away from the heathen ideal enshrined in their names to
a life of real hard toil, as is distinctly implied by the word
used by the Apostle. What that toil consisted in we do not know,
and need not inquire; but the main point to be noted is that their
`labour' was `in the Lord.' That union with Christ makes labour
for Him a necessity, and makes it possible. `The labour we delight
in physics pain'; and if we are in Him, we shall not only `live in
Him,' but all our work begun, continued, and ended in Him, will in
Him and by Him be accepted. There is no victorious antagonist of
worldly ease and self-indulgence comparable to the living
consciousness of union with Jesus and His life in us. To dwell in
the swamps at the bottom of the mountain is to live in a region
where effort is impossible and malaria weakens vitality; to climb
the heights brings bracing to the limbs and a purer air into the
expanding lungs, and makes work delightsome that would have been
labour down below. If we are `in the Lord,' He is our atmosphere,
and we can draw from Him full draughts of a noble life in which we
shall not need the stimulus of self-interest or worldly success to
use it to the utmost in acts of service to Him. They who live in
the Lord will labour in the Lord, and they who labour in the Lord
will rest in the Lord.

\chapter{Persis}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 12}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Salute the beloved Persis, who laboured much in the
Lord.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 12.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There are a great number of otherwise unknown Christians who pass
for a moment before our view in this chapter. Their
characterisations are like the slight outlines in the background
of some great artist's canvas: a touch of the brush is all that is
spared for each, and yet, if we like to look sympathetically, they
live before us. Now, this good woman, about whom we never hear
again, and for whom these few words are all her epitaph---was
apparently, judging by her name, of Persian descent, and possibly
had been brought to Rome as a slave. At all events, finding
herself there, she had somehow or other become connected with the
Church in that city, and had there distinguished herself by
continuous and faithful Christian toil which had won the affection
of the Apostle, though he had never seen her, and knew no more
about her. That is all. She comes into the foreground for a
moment, and then she vanishes. What does she say to us?

First of all, like the others named by Paul, she helps us to
understand, by her living example, that wonderful, new, uniting
process that was carried on by means of Christianity. The simple
fact of a Persian woman getting a loving message from a Jew, the
woman being in Rome and the Jew in Corinth, and the message being
written in Greek, brings before us a whole group of nationalities
all fused together. They had been hammered together, or, if you
like it better, chained together, by Roman power, but they were
melted together by Christ's Gospel. This Eastern woman and this
Jewish man, and the many others whose names and different
nationalities pass in a flash before us in this chapter, were all
brought together in Jesus Christ.

If we run our eye over these salutations, what strikes one, even
at the first sight, is the very small number of Jewish names; only
one certain, and another doubtful. Four or five names are Latin,
and then all the rest are Greek, but this woman seemingly came
from further east than any of them. There they all were,
forgetting the hostile nationalities to which they belonged,
because they had found One who had brought them into one great
community. We talk about the uniting influence of Christianity,
but when we see the process going on before us, in a case like
this, we begin to understand it better.

But another point may be noticed in regard to this uniting
process---how it brought into action the purest and truest love as
a bond that linked men. There are four or five of the people
commended in this chapter of whom the Apostle has nothing to say
but that they are beloved. This is the only woman to whom he
applies that term. And notice his instinctive delicacy: when he is
speaking of men he says, `\textit{My} beloved'; when he is
greeting Persis he says, `\textit{the} beloved,' that there may be
no misunderstanding about the `my'---`the beloved Persis which
laboured much in the Lord'---indicating, by one delicate touch,
the loftiness, the purity, and truly Christian character of the
bond that held them together. And that is no true Church, where
anything but that is the bond---the love that knits us to one
another, because we believe that each is knit to the dear Lord and
fountain of all love.

What more does this good woman say to us? She is an example living
and breathing there before us, of what a woman may be in God's
Church. Paul had never been in Rome; no Apostle, so far as we
know, had had anything to do with the founding of the Church. The
most important Church in the Roman Empire, and the Church which
afterwards became the curse of Christendom, was founded by some
anonymous Christians, with no commission, with no supervision,
with no officials amongst them, but who just had the grace of God
in their hearts, and found themselves in Rome, and could not help
speaking about Jesus Christ. God helped them, and a little Church
sprang into being. And the great abundance of salutations here,
and the honourable titles which the Apostle gives to the
Christians of whom he speaks, and many of whom he signalises as
having done great service, are a kind of certificate on his part
to the vigorous life which, without any apostolic supervision or
official direction, had developed itself there in that Church.

Now, it is to be noticed that this striking form of eulogium which
is attached to our Persis she shares in common with others in the
group. And it is to be further noticed that all those who are, as
it were, decorated with this medal---on whom Paul bestows this
honour of saying that they had `laboured,' or `laboured much in
the Lord,' are women that stand alone in the list. There are
several other women in it, but they are all coupled with
men---husbands or brothers, or some kind of relative. But there
are three sets of women, I do not say single women, but three sets
of women, standing singly in the list, and it is about them, and
them only, that Paul says they `laboured,' or `laboured much.'
There is a Mary who stands alone, and she `bestowed much labour
on' Paul and others. Then there are, in the same verse as my text,
two sisters, Tryphena and Tryphosa, whose names mean `the
luxurious.' And the Apostle seems to think, as he writes the two
names that spoke of self-indulgence: `Perhaps these rightly
described these two women once, but they do not now. In the bad
old days, before they were Christians, they may have been rightly
named luxurious-living. But here is their name now, the luxurious
is turned into the self-sacrificing worker, and the two sisters
``labour in the Lord.''\,' Then comes our friend Persis, who also
stands alone, and she shares in the honour that only these other
two companies of women share with her. She `laboured much in the
Lord.' In that little community, without any direction from
Apostles and authorised teachers, the brethren and sisters had
every one found their tasks; and these solitary women, with nobody
to say to them, `Go and do this or that,' had found out for
themselves, or rather had been taught by the Spirit of Jesus, what
they had to do, and they worked at it with a will. There are many
things that Christian women can do a great deal better than men,
and we are not to forget that this modern talk about the
emancipation of women has its roots here in the New Testament. We
are not to forget either that prerogative means obligation, and
that the elevation of woman means the laying upon her of solemn
duties to perform. I wonder how many of the women members of our
Churches and congregations deserve such a designation as that? We
hear a great deal about `women's rights' nowadays. I wish some of
my friends would lay a little more to heart than they do, `women's
duties.'

And now, lastly, the final lesson that I draw from this eulogium
of an otherwise altogether unknown woman is that she is a model of
Christian service.

First, in regard to its measure. She `laboured much in the Lord.'
Now, both these two words, `laboured' and `much,' are extremely
emphatic. The word rightly translated `laboured' will appear in
its full force if I recall to you a couple of other places in
which it is employed in the New Testament. You remember that
touching incident about our Lord when, being `\textit{wearied}
with His journey, He sat thus on the well.' `Wearied' is the same
word as is here used. Then, you remember how the Apostle, after he
had been hauling empty nets all night in the little, wet, dirty
fishing-boat, said, perhaps with a yawn, `Master, we have
\textit{toiled} all the night and caught nothing.' He uses the
same word as is employed here. Such is the sort of work that these
women had done---work carried to the point of exhaustion, work up
to the very edge of their powers, work unsparing and continuous,
and not done once in some flash of evanescent enthusiasm, but all
through a dreary night, in spite of apparent failures.

\textit{There} is the measure of service. Many of us seem to think
that if we say `I am tired,' that is a reason for not doing
anything. Sometimes it is, no doubt; and no man has a right so to
labour as to impair his capacity for future labour, but subject to
that condition I do not know that the plea of fatigue is a
sufficient reason for idleness. And I am quite sure that the true
example for us is the example of Him who, when He was most
wearied, sitting on the well, was so invigorated and refreshed by
the opportunity of winning another soul that, when His disciples
came back to Him, they looked at His fresh strength with
astonishment, and said to themselves, `Has any man brought Him
anything to eat?' Ay, what He had to eat was work that He finished
for the Father, and some of us know that the truest refreshment in
toil is a change of toil. It is almost as good to shift the load
on to the other shoulder, or to take a stick into the other hand,
as it is to put away the load altogether. Oh, the careful limits
which Christian people nowadays set to their work for Jesus! They
are not afraid of being tired in their pursuit of business or
pleasure, but in regard to Christ's work they will let anything go
to wrack and ruin rather than that they should turn a hair, by
persevering efforts to prevent it. Work to the limit of power if
you live in the light of blessedness.

She `laboured much in the Lord,' or, as Jesus Christ said about
the other woman who was blamed by the people that did not love
enough to understand the blessedness of self-sacrifice, `she had
done what she could.' It was an apology for the form of Mary's
service, but it was a stringent demand as to its amount. `What she
could'---not \textit{half} of what she could; not what she
\textit{conveniently} could. That is the measure of acceptable
service.

Then, still further, may we not learn from Persis the spring of
all true Christian work? She `laboured much in the Lord,' because
she \textit{was} `in Him,' and in union with Him there came to her
power and desire to do things which, without that close
fellowship, she neither would have desired nor been able to do. It
is vain to try to whip up Christian people to forms of service by
appealing to lower motives. There is only one motive that will
last, and bring out from us all that is in us to do, and that is
the appeal to our sense of union and communion with Jesus Christ,
and the exhortation to live in Him, and then we shall work in Him.
If you link the spindles in your mill, or the looms in your
weaving-shed, with the engine, they will go. It is of no use to
try to turn them by hand. You will only spoil the machinery, and
it will be poor work that you will get off them.

So, dear brethren, be `in the Lord.' That is the secret of
service, and the closer we come to Him, and the more continuously,
moment by moment, we realise our individual dependence upon Him,
and our union with Him, the more will our lives effloresce and
blossom into all manner of excellence and joyful service, and
nothing else that Christian people are whipped up to do, from
lower and more vulgar motives than that, will. It may be of a
certain kind of inferior value, but it is far beneath the highest
beauty of Christian service, nor will its issues reach the
loftiest point of usefulness to which even our poor service may
attain.

Persis seems to me to suggest, too, the safeguard of work. Ah, if
she had not `laboured in the Lord,' and been `in the Lord' whilst
she was labouring, she would very soon have stopped work. Our
Christian work, however pure its motive when we begin it, has in
itself the tendency to become mechanical, and to be done from
lower motives than those from which it was begun. That is true
about a man in my position. It is true about all of us, in our
several ways of trying to serve our dear Lord and Master. Unless
we make a conscience of continually renewing our communion with
Him, and getting our feet once more firmly upon the rock, we shall
certainly in our Christian work, having begun in the spirit,
continue in the flesh, and before we know where we are, we shall
be doing work from habit, because we did it yesterday at this
hour, because people expect it of us, because A, B, or C does it,
or for a hundred other reasons, all of which are but too familiar
to us by experience. They are sure to slip in; they change the
whole character of the work, and they harm the workers. The only
way by which we can keep the garland fresh is by continually
dipping it in the fountain. The only way by which we can keep our
Christian work pure, useful, worthy of the Master, is by seeing to
it that our work itself does not draw us away from our fellowship
with Him. And the more we have to do, the more needful is it that
we should listen to Christ's voice when He says to us, `Come ye
yourselves apart with Me into a solitary place, and there renew
your communion with Me.'

The last lesson about our work which I draw from Persis is the
unexpected immortality of true Christian service. How Persis would
have opened her eyes if anybody had told her that nearly 1900
years after she lived, people in a far-away barbarous island would
be sitting thinking about her, as you and I are doing now! How
astonished she would have been if it had been said to her, `Now,
Persis, wheresoever in the whole world the Gospel is preached,
your name and your work and your epitaph will go with it, and as
long as men know about Jesus Christ, your and their Master, they
will know about you, His humble servant.' Well, we shall not have
our names in that fashion in men's memories, but Jesus will have
your name and mine, if we do His work as this woman did it, in
\textit{His} memory. `I will never forget any of their works.' And
if we---self-forgetful to the limit of our power, and as the
joyful result of our personal union with that Saviour who has done
everything for us---try to live for His praise and glory in any
fashion, then be sure of this, that our poor deeds are as immortal
as Him for whom they are done, and that we may take to ourselves
the great word which He has spoken, when He has declared that at
the last He will confess His confessors' names before the angels
in heaven. Blessed are the living that `live in the Lord'; blessed
are the workers that work `in the Lord,' for when they come to be
the dead that `die in the Lord' and rest from their labours, their
works shall follow them.

\chapter{A Crushed Snake}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 20}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet
shortly.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 20.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There are three other Scriptural sayings which may have been
floating in the Apostle's mind when he penned this triumphant
assurance. `Thou shalt bruise his head'; the great first
Evangel---we are to be endowed with Christ's power; `The lion and
the adder thou shalt trample under foot'---all the strength that
was given to ancient saints is ours; `Behold! I give you power to
tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the
enemy'---the charter of the seventy is the perennial gift to the
Church. Echoing all these great words, Paul promises the Roman
Christians that `the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your
feet shortly.' Now, when any special characteristic is thus
ascribed to God, as when He is called `the God of patience' or
`the God of hope,' in the preceding chapter, the characteristic
selected has some bearing on the prayer or promise following. For
example, this same designation, `the God of peace,' united with
the other, `that brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus, that
great Shepherd of the sheep,' is laid as the foundation of the
prayer for the perfecting of the readers of the Epistle to the
Hebrews in every good work. It is, then, because of that great
name that the Apostle is sure, and would have his Roman brethren
to be sure, that Satan shall shortly be bruised under their feet.
No doubt there may have been some reference in Paul's mind to what
he had just said about those who caused divisions in the Church;
but, if there is such reference, it is of secondary importance.
Paul is gazing on all the great things in God which make Him the
God of peace, and in them all he sees ground for the confident
hope that His power will be exerted to crush all the sin that
breaks His children's peace.

Now the first thought suggested by these words is the solemn
glimpse given of the struggle that goes on in every Christian
soul.

Two antagonists are at hand-grips in every one of us. On the one
hand, the `God of peace,' on the other, `Satan.' If you believe in
the personality of the One, do not part with the belief in the
personality of the other. If you believe that a divine power and
Spirit is ready to help and strengthen you, do not think so
lightly of the enemies that are arrayed against you as to falter
in the belief that there \textit{is} a great personal Power,
rooted in evil, who is warring against each of us. Ah, brethren!
we live far too much on the surface, and we neither go down deep
enough to the dark source of the Evil, nor rise high enough to the
radiant Fountain of the Good. It is a shallow life that strikes
that antagonism of God and Satan out of itself. And though the
belief in a personal tempter has got to be very unfashionable
nowadays, I am going to venture to say that you may measure
accurately the vitality and depth of a man's religion by the
emphasis with which he grasps the thought of that great
antagonism. There is a star of light, and there is a star of
darkness; and they revolve, as it were, round one centre.

But whilst, on the one hand, our Christianity is made shallow in
proportion as we ignore this solemn reality, on the other hand, it
is sometimes paralysed and perverted by our misunderstanding of
it. For, notice, `the God of peace shall bruise Satan
\textit{under your feet}.' Yes, it is God that bruises, but He
uses our feet to do it. It is God from whom the power comes, but
the power works through us, and we are neither merely the field,
nor merely the prize, of the conflict between these two, but we
ourselves have to put all our pith into the task of keeping down
the flat, speckled head that has the poison gland in it. `The God
of peace'---blessed be His Name---`shall bruise Satan under your
feet,' but it will need the tension of your muscles, and the
downward force of your heel, if the wriggling reptile is to be
kept under.

Turn, now, to the other thought that is here, the promise and
pledge of victory in the name, the God of peace. I have already
referred to two similar designations of God in the previous
chapter, and if we take them in union with this one in our text,
what a wonderfully beautiful and strengthening threefold view of
that divine nature do we get! `The God of patience and
consolation' is the first of the linked three. It heads the list,
and blessed is it that it does, because, after all, sorrow makes
up a very large proportion of the experience of us all, and what
most men seem to themselves to need most is a God that will bear
their sorrows with them and help them to bear, and a God that will
comfort them. But, supposing that He has been made known thus as
the source of endurance and the God of all consolation, He becomes
`the God of hope,' for a dark background flings up a light
foreground, and a comforted sorrow patiently endured is mighty to
produce a radiant hope. The rising of the muddy waters of the Nile
makes the heavy crops of `corn in Egypt.' So the name `the God of
hope' fitly follows the name `the God of patience and
consolation.'

Then we come to the name in my text, built perhaps on the other
two, or at least reminiscent of them, and recalling them, `the God
of peace,' who, through patience and consolation, through hope,
and through many another gift, breathes the benediction of His own
great tranquillity and unruffled calm over our agitated,
distracted, sinful hearts. In connection with one of those
previous designations to which I have referred, the Apostle has a
prayer very different in form from this, but identical in
substance, when he says `the God of hope fill you with all joy and
peace in believing.' Is not that closely allied to the promise of
my text, `The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet
shortly'? Is there any surer way of `bruising Satan' under a man's
feet than filling him `with joy and peace in believing'? What can
the Devil do to that man? If his soul is saturated, and his
capacities filled, with that pure honey of divine joy, will he
have any taste for the coarse dainties, the leeks and the garlic,
that the Devil offers him? Is there any surer way of delivering a
man from the temptations of his own baser nature, and the
solicitations of this busy intrusive world round about him, than
to make him satisfied with the goodness of the Lord, and conscious
in his daily experience of `all joy and peace'? Fill the vessel
with wine, and there is no room for baser liquors or for poison. I
suppose that the way by which you and I, dear friends, will most
effectually conquer any temptations, is by falling back on the
superior sweetness of divine joys. When we live upon manna we do
not crave onions. So He `will bruise Satan under your feet' by
giving that which will arm your hearts against all his temptations
and all his weapons. Blessed be God for the way of conquest, which
is the possession of a supremer good!

But then, notice how beautifully too this name, `the God of
peace,' comes in to suggest that even in the strife there may be
tranquillity. I remember in an old church in Italy a painting of
an Archangel with his foot on the dragon's neck, and his sword
thrust through its scaly armour. It is perhaps the feebleness of
the artist's hand, but I think rather it is the clearness of his
insight, which has led him to represent the victorious angel, in
the moment in which he is slaying the dragon, as with a smile on
his face, and not the least trace of effort in the arm, which is
so easily smiting the fatal blow. Perhaps if the painter could
have used his brush better he would have put more expression into
the attitude and the face, but I think it is better as it is. We,
too, may achieve a conquest over the dragon which, although it
requires effort, does not disturb peace. There is a possibility of
bruising that slippery head under my foot, and yet not having to
strain myself in the process. We may have `peace subsisting at the
heart of endless agitation.' Do you remember how the Apostle, in
another place, gives us the same beautiful---though at first sight
contradictory---combination when he says, `The peace of God shall
garrison your heart'?

\begin{verse}
`My soul! there is a country \\
\ \ Far, far beyond the stars, \\
Where stands an armed sentry, \\
\ \ All skilful in the wars.'
\end{verse}

\noindent And her name is Peace, as the poet goes on to tell us.
Ah, brethren! if we lived nearer the Lord, we should find it more
possible to `fight the good fight of faith,' and yet to have `our
feet shod with the preparedness of the gospel of peace.'

`The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet'; and in
bruising He will give you His peace to do it, and His peace in
doing it, and in still greater measure after doing it. For every
struggle of the Christian soul adds something to the subsequent
depth of its tranquillity. And so the name of the God of peace is
our pledge of victory in, and of deepened peace after, our warfare
with sin and temptation.

Lastly, note the swiftness with which Paul expects that this
process shall he accomplished.

I dare say that he was thinking about the coming of the Lord, when
all the fighting and struggle would be over, and that when he said
`God shall bruise him under your feet shortly,' there lay in the
back of his mind the thought, `the Lord is at hand.' But be that
as it may, there is another way of looking at the words. They are
not in the least like our experience, are they? `Shortly!'---and
here am I, a Christian man for the last half century perhaps; and
have I got much further on in my course? Have I brought the sin
that used to trouble me much down, and is my character much more
noble, Christ-like, than it was long years ago? Would other people
say that it is? Instead of `shortly' we ought to put `slowly' for
the most of us. But, dear friend, the ideal is swift conquest, and
it is our fault and our loss, if the reality is sadly
different.

There are a great many evils that, unless they are conquered
suddenly, have very small chance of ever being conquered at all.
You never heard of a man being cured of his love of intoxicating
drink, for instance, by a gradual process. The serpent's life is
not crushed out of it by gradual pressure, but by one vigorous
stamp of a nervous heel.

But if my experience as a Christian man does not enable me to set
to my seal that this text is true, the text itself will tell me
why. It is `the God of peace' that is going to `bruise Satan.' Do
you keep yourself in touch with Him, dear friend? And do you let
His powers come uninterruptedly and continuously into your spirit
and life? It is sheer folly and self-delusion to wonder that the
medicine does not work as quickly as was promised, if you do not
take the medicine. The slow process by which, at the best, many
Christian people `bruise Satan under their feet,' during which he
hurts their heels more than they hurt his head, is mainly due to
their breaking the closeness and the continuity of their communion
with God in Jesus Christ.

But, after all, it is Heaven's chronology that we have to do with
here. `Shortly,' and it will be `shortly,' if we reckon by
heavenly scales of duration. Weeping may endure for a night, but
joy cometh in the morning. `The Lord will help her, and that right
early.' `The Lord is at hand.' When we get yonder, ah! how all the
long years of fighting will have dwindled down, and we shall say
`the Lord did help me, and that right early,' and though there may
have been more than threescore years and ten of fighting, that,
while we were in the thick of it, did not seem to come to much, we
shall then look back and say: `Yes, Lord, it was but for a moment,
and it has brought me to the undying day of Eternal Peace.'

\chapter{Tertius}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 22}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I, Tertius, who write the epistle, salute you in the
Lord.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 22 (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

One sometimes sees in old religious pictures, in some obscure
corner, a tiny kneeling figure, the portrait of the artist. So
Tertius here gets leave to hold the pen for a moment on his own
account, and from Corinth sends his greeting to his unknown
brethren in Rome. Apparently he was a stranger to them, and needed
to introduce himself. He is never heard of before or since. For
one brief moment he is visible, like a star of a low magnitude,
shining out for a moment between two banks of darkness and then
swallowed up. Judging by his name, he was probably a Roman, and
possibly had some connection with Italy, but clearly was a
stranger to the Church in Rome. We do not know whether he was a
resident in Corinth, where he wrote this epistle, or one of Paul's
travelling companions. Probably he was the former, as his name
never recurs in any of Paul's letters. One can understand the
impulse which led him for one moment to come out of obscurity and
to take up personal relations with those who had so long enjoyed
his pen. He would fain float across the deep gulf of alienation a
thread of love which looked like gossamer, but has proved to be
stronger than centuries and revolutions.

This humble and modest greeting is an expression of a sentiment
which the world may smile at, but which, being `in the Lord,'
partakes of immortality. No doubt the world's hate drove more
closely together all the disciples in primitive times; but the
yearning of Tertius for some little corner in the love of his
Roman brethren might well influence us to-day. There ought to be
an effort of imagination going out towards unknown brethren.
Christian love is not meant to be kept within the limits of sight
and personal knowledge; it should overleap the narrow bounds of
the communities to which we belong, and expatiate over the whole
wide field. The great Shepherd has prescribed for us the limits to
the very edge of which our Christian love should consciously go
forth, and has rebuked the narrowness to which we are prone, when
He has said, `Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.' We
are all too prone to let identities of opinion and of polity, or
even the accident of locality, set bounds to our consciousness of
brotherhood; and the example of this little gush of affection,
that reaches out a hand across the ocean and grasps the hands of
unknown partakers in the common life of the one Lord, may well
shame us out of our narrowness, and quicken us into a wide
perception and deepened feeling towards all who in every place
call up Jesus Christ as their Lord---`both their Lord and
ours.'

Another lesson which we may learn from Tertius' characterisation
of himself is the dignity of subordinate work towards a great end.
His office as amanuensis was very humble, but it was quite as
necessary as Paul's inspired fervour. It is to him that we owe our
possession of the Epistle; it is to him that Paul owed it that he
was able to record in imperishable words the thoughts that welled
up in his mind, and would have been lost if Tertius had not been
at his side. The power generated in the boilers does its work
through machines of which each little cog-wheel is as
indispensable as the great shafts. Members of the body which seem
to be `more feeble, are necessary.' Every note in a great
concerted piece of music, and every instrument, down to the
triangle and the little drum in the great orchestra, is necessary.
This lesson of the dignity of subordinate work needs to be laid to
heart both by those who think themselves to be capable of more
important service, and by those who have to recognise that the
less honourable tasks are all for which they are fit. To the
former it may preach humility, the latter it may encourage. We are
all very ignorant of what is great and what is small in the matter
of our Christian service, and we have sometimes to look very
closely and to clear away a great many vulgar misconceptions
before we can clearly discriminate between mites and talents. `We
know not which may prosper, whether this or that'; and in our
ignorance of what it may please God to bring out of any service
faithfully rendered to Him, we had better not be too sure that
true service is ever small, or that the work that attracts
attention and is christened by men `great' is really so in His
eyes. It is well to have the noble ambition to `desire earnestly
the greater gifts,' but it is better to `follow the more excellent
way,' and to seek after the love which knows nothing of great or
small, and without which prophecy and the knowledge of all
mysteries, and all conspicuous and all the shining qualities
profit nothing.

We can discern in Tertius' words a little touch of what we may
call pride in his work. No doubt he knew it to be subordinate, but
he also knew it to be needful; and no doubt he had put all his
strength into doing it well. No man will put his best into any
task which he does not undertake in such a spirit. It is a very
plain piece of homely wisdom that `what is worth doing at all is
worth doing well.' Without a lavish expenditure of the utmost care
and effort, our work will tend to be slovenly and unpleasing to
God, and man, and to ourselves. We may be sure there were no blots
and bits of careless writing in Tertius' manuscript, and that he
would not have claimed the friendly feelings of his Roman
brethren, if he had not felt that he had put his best into the
writing of this epistle. The great word of King David has a very
wide application. `I will not take that which is thine for the
Lord, nor offer burnt offerings without cost.'

Tertius' salutation may suggest to us the best thing by which to
be remembered. All his life before and after the hours spent at
Paul's side has sunk in oblivion. He wished to be known only as
having written the Epistle. Christian souls ought to desire to
live chiefly in the remembrance of those to whom they have been
known as having done some little bit of work for Jesus Christ. We
may well ask ourselves whether there is anything in our lives by
which we should thus wish to be remembered. All our many
activities will sink into silence; but if the stream of our life,
which has borne along down its course so much mud and sand, has
brought some grains of gold in the form of faithful and loving
service to Christ and men---these will not be lost in the ocean,
but treasured by Him. What we do for Jesus and to spread the
knowledge of His name is the immortal part of our mortal lives,
and abides in His memory and in blessed results in our own
characters, when all the rest that made our busy and often stormy
days has passed into oblivion. All that we know of Tertius who
wrote this Epistle is that he wrote it. Well will it be for us if
the summary of our lives be something like that of his!

\chapter{Quartus a Brother}
\markright{ROMANS xvi. 23}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Quartus a brother.'---\textsc{Romans} xvi. 23.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

I am afraid very few of us read often, or with much interest,
those long lists of names at the end of Paul's letters. And yet
there are plenty of lessons in them, if anybody will look at them
lovingly and carefully. There does not seem much in these three
words; but I am very much mistaken if they will not prove to be
full of beauty and pathos, and to open out into a wonderful
revelation of what Christianity is and does, as soon as we try to
freshen them up into some kind of human interest.

It is easy for us to make a little picture of this brother
Quartus. He is evidently an entire stranger to the Church in Rome.
They had never heard his name before: none of them knew anything
about him. Further, he is evidently a man of no especial
reputation or position in the Church at Corinth, from which Paul
writes. He contrasts strikingly with the others who send
salutations to Rome. `Timotheus, my work-fellow'---the companion
and helper of the Apostle, whose name was known everywhere among
the Churches, heads the list. Then come other prominent men of his
more immediate circle. Then follows a loving greeting from Paul's
amanuensis, who, naturally, as the pen is in his own hand, says:
`\textit{I}, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the
Lord.' Then Paul begins again to dictate, and the list runs on.
Next comes a message from `Gaius mine host, and of the whole
Church'---an influential man in the community, apparently rich,
and willing, as well as able, to extend to them large and loving
hospitality. Erastus, the chamberlain or treasurer of the city,
follows---a man of consequence in Corinth. And then, among all
these people of mark, comes the modest, quiet Quartus. He has no
wealth like Gaius, nor civic position like Erastus, nor wide
reputation like Timothy. He is only a good, simple, unknown
Christian. He feels a spring of love open in his heart to these
brethren far across the sea, whom he never met. He would like them
to know that he thought lovingly of them, and to be lovingly
thought of by them. So he begs a little corner in Paul's letter,
and gets it; and there, in his little niche, like some statue of a
forgotten saint, scarce seen amidst the glories of a great
cathedral, `Quartus a brother' stands to all time.

The first thing that strikes me in connection with these words is,
how deep and real they show that new bond of Christian love to
have been.

A little incident of this sort is more impressive than any amount
of mere talk about the uniting influence of the Gospel. Here we
get a glimpse of the power in actual operation in a man's heart,
and if we think of all that this simple greeting presupposes and
implies, and of all that had to be overcome before it could have
been sent, we may well see in it the sign of the greatest
revolution that was ever wrought in men's relations to one
another, Quartus was an inhabitant of Corinth, from which city
this letter was written. His Roman name may indicate Roman
descent, but of that we cannot be sure. Just as probably he may
have been a Greek by birth, and so have had to stretch his hand
across a deep crevasse of national antipathy, in order to clasp
the hands of his brethren in the great city. There was little love
lost between Rome, the rough imperious conqueror, and Corinth,
prostrate and yet restive under her bonds, and nourishing
remembrances of a freedom which Rome had crushed, and of a culture
that Rome haltingly followed.

And how many other deep gulfs of separation had to be bridged
before that Christian sense of oneness could be felt! It is
impossible for us to throw ourselves completely back to the
condition of things which the Gospel found. The world then was
like some great field of cooled lava on the slopes of a volcano,
all broken up by a labyrinth of clefts and cracks, at the bottom
of which one can see the flicker of sulphurous flames. Great gulfs
of national hatred, of fierce enmities of race, language, and
religion; wide separations of social condition, far profounder
than anything of the sort which we know, split mankind into
fragments. On the one side was the freeman, on the other, the
slave; on the one side, the Gentile, on the other, the Jew; on the
one side, the insolence and hard-handedness of Roman rule, on the
other, the impotent, and therefore envenomed, hatred of conquered
peoples.

And all this fabric, full of active repulsions and disintegrating
forces, was bound together into an artificial and unreal unity by
the iron clamp of Rome's power, holding up the bulging walls that
were ready to fall---the unity of the slave-gang manacled together
for easier driving. Into this hideous condition of things the
Gospel comes, and silently flings its clasping tendrils over the
wide gaps, and binds the crumbling structure of human society with
a new bond, real and living. We know well enough that that was so,
but we are helped to apprehend it by seeing, as it were, the very
process going on before our eyes, in this message from `Quartus a
brother.'

It reminds us that the very notion of humanity, and of the
brotherhood of man, is purely Christian. A world-embracing
society, held together by love, was not dreamt of before the
Gospel came; and since the Gospel came it is more than a dream. If
you wrench away the idea from its foundation, as people do who
talk about fraternity, and seek to bring it to pass without
Christ, it is a mere piece of Utopian sentiment---a fine dream.
But in Christianity it worked. It works imperfectly enough, God
knows. Still there is some reality in it, and some power. The
Gospel first of all produced the thing and the practice, and then
the theory came afterwards. The Church did not talk much about the
brotherhood of man, or the unity of the race; but simply ignored
all distinctions, and gathered into the fold the slave and his
master, the Roman and his subject, fair-haired Goths and swarthy
Arabians, the worshippers of Odin and of Zeus, the Jew and the
Gentile. That actual unity, utterly irrespective of all
distinctions, which came naturally in the train of the Gospel, was
the first attempt to realise the oneness of the race, and first
taught the world that all men were brethren.

And before this simple word of greeting could have been sent, and
the unknown man in Corinth felt love to a company of unknown men
in Rome, some profound new impulse must have been given to the
world; something altogether unlike any of the forces hitherto in
existence. What was that? What should it be but the story of One
who gave Himself for the whole world, who binds men into a unity
because of His common relation to them all, and through whom the
great proclamation can be made: `There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female,
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' Brother Quartus' message,
like some tiny flower above-ground which tells of a spreading root
beneath, is a modest witness to that mighty revolution, and
presupposes the preaching of a Saviour in whom he and his unseen
friends in Rome are one.

So let us learn not to confine our sympathy and the play of our
Christian affection within the limits of our personal knowledge.
We must go further a-field than that. Like this man, let us
sometimes send our thoughts across mountains and seas. He knew
nobody in the Roman Church, and nobody knew him, but he wished to
stretch out his hand to them, and to feel, as it were, the
pressure of their fingers in his palm. That is a pattern for
us.

Let me suggest another thing. Quartus was a Corinthian. The
Corinthian Church was remarkable for its quarrellings and
dissensions. One said, `I am of Paul, and another, I of Apollos,
and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.' I wonder if our friend Quartus
belonged to any of these parties? There is nothing more likely
than that he had a much warmer glow of Christian love to the
brethren over there in Rome than to those who sat on the same
bench with him in the upper room at Corinth. For you know that
sometimes it is true about people, as well as about scenery, that
`distance lends enchantment to the view.' A great many of us have
much keener sympathies with `brethren' who are well out of our
reach, and whose peculiarities do not jar against ours, than with
those who are nearest. I do not say Quartus was one of these, but
he may very well have been one of the wranglers in Corinth who
found it much easier to love his brother whom he had not seen than
his brother whom he had seen. So take the hint, if you need it. Do
not let your Christian love go wandering away abroad only, but
keep some for home consumption.

Again, how simply, and with what unconscious beauty, the deep
reason for our Christian unity is given in that one word, a
`Brother.' As if he had said, Never mind telling them anything
about what I am, what place I hold, or what I do. Tell them I am a
brother, that will be enough. It is the only name by which I care
to be known; it is the name which explains my love to them.

We are brethren because we are sons of one Father. So that
favourite name, by which the early Christians knew each other,
rested upon and proclaimed the deep truth that they knew
themselves to be all partakers of a common life derived from one
Parent. When they said they were brethren, they implied, `We have
been born again by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for
ever.' The great Christian truth of regeneration, the
communication of a divine life from God the Father, through Christ
the Son, by the Holy Spirit, is the foundation of Christian
brotherhood. So the name is no mere piece of effusive sentiment,
but expresses a profound fact. `To as many as received Him, to
them gave He power to become the sons of God,' and therein to
become the brethren of all His sons.

That is the true ground of our unity, and of our obligation to
love all who are begotten of Him. You cannot safely put them on
any other footing. All else---identity of opinion, similarity of
practice and ceremonial, local or national ties, and the
like---all else is insufficient. It may be necessary for Christian
communities to require in addition a general identity of opinion,
and even some uniformity in government and form of worship; but if
ever they come to fancy that such subordinate conditions of
visible oneness are the grounds of their spiritual unity, and to
enforce these as such, they are slipping off the real foundation,
and are perilling their character as Churches of Christ. The true
ground of the unity of all Christians is here: `Have we not all
one Father?' We possess a kindred life derived from Him. We are a
family of brethren because we are sons.

Another remark is, how strangely and unwittingly this good man has
got himself an immortality by that passing thought of his. One
loving message has won for him the prize for which men have
joyfully given life itself,---an eternal place in history.
Wheresoever the Gospel is preached there also shall this be told
as a memorial of him. How much surprised he would have been if, as
he leaned forward to Tertius hurrying to end his task and said,
`Send my love too,' anybody had told him that that one act of his
would last as long as the world, and his name be known for ever!
And how much ashamed some of the other people in the New Testament
would have been if they had known that their passing faults---the
quarrel of Euodia and Syntyche for instance---were to be gibbeted
for ever in the same fashion! How careful they would have been,
and we would be, of our behaviour if we knew that it was to be
pounced down upon and made immortal in that style! Suppose you
were to be told---Your thoughts and acts to-morrow at twelve
o'clock will be recorded for all the world to read---you would be
pretty careful how you behaved. When a speaker sees the reporters
in front of him, he weighs his words.

Well, Quartus' little message is written down here, and the world
knows it. All our words and works are getting put down too, in
another Book up there, and it is going to be read out one day. It
does seem wonderful that you and I should live as we do, knowing
that all the while that God is recording it all. If we are not
ashamed to do things, and let Him note them on His tablets that
they may be for the time to come, for ever and ever, it is strange
that we should be more careful to attitudinise and pose ourselves
before one another than before Him. Let us then keep ever in mind
`those pure eyes and perfect witness of the all-judging' God. The
eternal record of this little message is only a symbol of the
eternal life and eternal record of all our transient and trivial
thoughts and deeds before Him. Let us live so that each act, if
recorded, would shine with some modest ray of true light like
brother Quartus' greeting, and let us seek that, like him,---all
else about us being forgotten, position, talents, wealth, buried
in the dust,---we may be remembered, if we are remembered at all,
by such a biography as is condensed into these three words. Who
would not wish to be embalmed, so to speak, in such a record? Who
would not wish to have such an epitaph as this? A sweet fate to
live for ever in the world's memory by three words which tell his
name, his Christianity, and his brotherly love! So far as we are
remembered at all, may the like be our life's history and our
epitaph!

%% EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
%% ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt.D.
%% CORINTHIANS
%% \textit{(To II Corinthians, Chap. V)}
%% TABLE OF CONTENTS
%% CALLING ON THE NAME (1 COR. i. 2)
%% PERISHING OR BEING SAVED (1 COR. i. 18)
%% THE APOSTLE'S THEME (1 COR. ii. 2)
%% GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS (1 COR. iii. 9)
%% THE TESTING FIRE (1 COR. iii. 12, 13)
%% TEMPLES OF GOD (1 COR. iii. 16)
%% DEATH, THE FRIEND (1 COR. iii. 21, 22)
%% SERVANTS AND LORDS (1 COR. iii. 21-23)
%% THE THREE TRIBUNALS (1 COR. iv. 3, 4)
%% THE FESTAL LIFE (1 COR. v. 8)
%% FORMS \textit{VERSUS} CHARACTER (1 COR. vii. 19, GAL. v. 6, GAL. vi. 15, R. V.)
%% SLAVES AND FREE (1 COR. vii. 22)
%% THE CHRISTIAN LIFE (1 COR. vii. 24)
%% `LOVE BUILDETH UP' (1 COR. viii. 1-13)
%% THE SIN OF SILENCE (1 COR. ix. 16, 17)
%% A SERVANT OF MEN (1 COR. ix. 19-23)
%% HOW THE VICTOR RUNS (1 COR. ix. 24)
%% `CONCERNING THE CROWN' (1 COR. ix. 25)
%% THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY (1 COR. x. 23-33)
%% `IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME' (1 COR. xi. 24)
%% THE UNIVERSAL GIFT (1 COR. xii. 7)
%% WHAT LASTS</a> (1 COR. xiii. 8, 13)
%% THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION (1 COR. xv. 3, 4)
%% REMAINING AND FALLING ASLEEP (1 COR. xv. 6)
%% PAUL'S ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF (1 COR. xv. 10)
%% THE UNITY OF APOSTOLIC TEACHING (1 COR. xv. 11)
%% THE CERTAINTY AND JOY OF THE RESURRECTION (1 COR. xv. 20)
%% THE DEATH OF DEATH (1 COR. xv. 20, 21; 50-58)
%% STRONG AND LOVING (1 COR. xvi. 13, 14)
%% ANATHEMA AND GRACE (1 COR. xvi. 21-24)
%% GOD'S YEA; MAN'S AMEN (2 COR. i. 20, R. V.)
%% ANOINTED AND STABLISHED (2 COR. i. 21)
%% SEAL AND EARNEST (2 COR. i. 22)
%% THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION (2 COR. ii. 14, R. V.)
%% TRANSFORMATION BY BEHOLDING (2 COR. iii. 18)
%% LOOKING AT THE UNSEEN (2 COR. iv. 18)
%% TENT AND BUILDING (2 COR. v. 1)
%% THE PATIENT WORKMAN (2 COR. v. 5)
%% THE OLD HOUSE AND THE NEW (2 COR. v. 8)
%% PLEASING CHRIST (2 COR. v. 9)
%% THE LOVE THAT CONSTRAINS (2 COR. v. 14)
%% THE ENTREATIES OF GOD (2 COR. v. 20)

\newpage
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{I. CORINTHIANS}

\chapter{Calling on the Name}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS i. 2}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`All that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our
Lord, both theirs and ours.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} i. 2.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There are some difficulties, with which I need not trouble you,
about both the translation and the connection of these words. One
thing is quite clear, that in them the Apostle associates the
church at Corinth with the whole mass of Christian believers in
the world. The question may arise whether he does so in the sense
that he addresses his letter both to the church at Corinth and to
the whole of the churches, and so makes it a catholic epistle.
That is extremely unlikely, considering how all but entirely this
letter is taken up with dealing with the especial conditions of
the Corinthian church. Rather I should suppose that he is simply
intending to remind `the Church of God at Corinth ... sanctified
in Christ Jesus, called to be saints,' that they are in real,
living union with the whole body of believers. Just as the water
in a little land-locked bay, connected with the sea by some narrow
strait like that at Corinth, is yet part of the whole ocean that
rolls round the world, so that little community of Christians had
its living bond of union with all the brethren in every place that
called upon the name of Jesus Christ.

Whichever view on that detail of interpretation be taken, this
phrase, as a designation of Christians, is worth considering. It
is one of many expressions found in the New Testament as names for
them, some of which have now dropped out of general use, while
some are still retained. It is singular that the name of
`Christian,' which has all but superseded all others, was
originally invented as a jeer by sarcastic wits at Antioch, and
never appears in the New Testament, as a name by which believers
called themselves. Important lessons are taught by these names,
such as disciples, believers, brethren, saints, those of the way,
and so on, each of which embodies some characteristic of a
follower of Jesus. So this appellation in the text, `those who
call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,' may yield not
unimportant lessons if it be carefully weighed, and to some of
these I would ask your attention now.

I. First, it gives us a glimpse into the worship of the primitive
Church.

To `call on the name of the Lord' is an expression that comes
straight out of the Old Testament. It means there distinctly
adoration and invocation, and it means precisely these things when
it is referred to Jesus Christ.

We find in the Acts of the Apostles that the very first sermon
that was preached at Pentecost by Peter all turns upon this
phrase. He quotes the Old Testament saying, `Whosoever shall call
on the name of the Lord shall be saved,' and then goes on to prove
that `the Lord,' the `calling on whose Name' is salvation, is
Jesus Christ; and winds up with `Therefore let all the house of
Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye
have crucified, both Lord and Christ.'

Again we find that Ananias of Damascus, when Jesus Christ appeared
to him and told him to go to Paul and lay his hands upon him,
shrank from the perilous task because Paul had been sent to `bind
them that call upon the name of the Lord,' and to persecute them.
We find the same phrase recurring in other connections, so that,
on the whole, we may take the expression as a recognised
designation of Christians.

This was their characteristic, that they prayed to Jesus Christ.
The very first word, so far as we know, that Paul ever heard from
a Christian was, `Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.' He heard that
cry of calm faith which, when he heard it, would sound to him as
horrible blasphemy from Stephen's dying lips. How little he
dreamed that he himself was soon to cry to the same Jesus, `Lord,
what wilt thou have me to do?' and was in after-days to beseech
Him thrice for deliverance, and to be answered by sufficient
grace. How little he dreamed that, when his own martyrdom was
near, he too would look to Jesus as Lord and righteous Judge, from
whose hands all who loved His appearing should receive their
crown! Nor only Paul directs desires and adoration to Jesus as
Lord; the last words of Scripture are a cry to Him as Lord to come
quickly, and an invocation of His `grace' on all believing souls.

Prayer to Christ from the very beginning of the Christian Church
was, then, the characteristic of believers, and He to whom they
prayed, thus, from the beginning, was recognised by them as being
a Divine Person, God manifest in the flesh.

The object of their worship, then, was known by the people among
whom they lived. Singing hymns to Christus as a god is nearly all
that the Roman proconsul in his well-known letter could find to
tell his master of their worship. They were the worshippers---not
merely the disciples---of one Christ. That was their peculiar
distinction. Among the worshippers of the false gods they stood
erect; before Him, and Him only, they bowed. In Corinth there was
the polluted worship of Aphrodite and of Zeus. These men called
not on the name of these lustful and stained deities, but on the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And everybody knew whom they
worshipped, and understood whose men they were. Is that true about
us? Do we Christian men so habitually cultivate the remembrance of
Jesus Christ, and are we so continually in the habit of invoking
His aid, and of contemplating His blessed perfections and
sufficiency, that every one who knew us would recognise us as
meant by those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?

If this be the proper designation of Christian people, alas! alas!
for so many of the professing Christians of this day, whom neither
bystanders nor themselves would think of as included in such a
name!

Further, the connection here shows that the divine worship of
Christ was universal among the churches. There was no `place'
where it was not practised, no community calling itself a church
to whom He was not the Lord to be invoked and adored. This witness
to the early and universal recognition in the Christian
communities of the divinity of our Lord is borne by an
undisputedly genuine epistle of Paul's. It is one of the four
which the most thorough-going destructive criticism accepts as
genuine. It was written before the Gospels, and is a voice from
the earlier period of Paul's apostleship. Hence the importance of
its attestation to this fact that all Christians everywhere, both
Jewish, who had been trained in strict monotheism, and Gentile,
who had burned incense at many a foul shrine, were perfectly
joined together in this, that in all their need they called on the
name of Jesus Christ as Lord and brought to Him, as divine,
adoration not to be rendered to any creatures. From the day of
Pentecost onwards, a Christian was not merely a disciple, a
follower, or an admirer, but a worshipper of Christ, the Lord.

II. We may see here an unfolding of the all-sufficiency of Jesus
Christ.

Note that solemn accumulation, in the language of my text, of all
the designations by which He is called, sometimes separately and
sometimes unitedly, the name of `our Lord Jesus Christ.' We never
find that full title given to Him in Scripture except when the
writer's mind is labouring to express the manifoldness and
completeness of our Lord's relations to men, and the largeness and
sufficiency of the blessings which He brings. In this context I
find in the first nine or ten verses of this chapter, so full is
the Apostle of the thoughts of the greatness and wonderfulness of
his dear Lord on whose name he calls, that six or seven times he
employs this solemn, full designation.

Now, if we look at the various elements of this great name we
shall get various aspects of the way in which calling on Christ is
the strength of our souls.

`Call on the name of---the Lord.' That is the Old Testament
Jehovah. There is no mistaking nor denying, if we candidly
consider the evidence of the New Testament writings, that, when we
read of Jesus Christ as `Lord,' in the vast majority of cases, the
title is not a mere designation of human authority, but is an
attribution to Him of divine nature and dignity. We have, then, to
ascribe to Him, and to call on Him as possessing, all which that
great and incommunicable Name certified and sealed to the Jewish
Church as their possession in their God. The Jehovah of the Old
Testament is our Lord of the New. He whose being is eternal,
underived, self-sufficing, self-determining, knowing no variation,
no diminution, no age, He who is because He is and that He is,
dwells in His fulness in our Saviour. To worship Him is not to
divert worship from the one God, nor is it to have other gods
besides Him. Christianity is as much monotheistic as Judaism was,
and the law of its worship is the old law---Him only shalt thou
serve. It is the divine will that all men should honour the Son,
even as they honour the Father.

But what is it to call on the name of Jesus? That name implies all
the sweetness of His manhood. He is our Brother. The name `Jesus'
is one that many a Jewish boy bore in our Lord's own time and
before it; though, afterwards, of course, abhorrence on the part
of the Jew and reverence on the part of the Christian caused it
almost entirely to disappear. But at the time when He bore it it
was as undistinguished a name as Simeon, or Judas, or any other of
His followers' names. To call upon the name of Jesus means to
realise and bring near to ourselves, for our consolation and
encouragement, for our strength and peace, the blessed thought of
His manhood, so really and closely knit to ours; to grasp the
blessedness of the thought that He knows our frame because He
Himself has worn it, and understands and pities our weakness,
being Himself a man. To Him whom we adore as Lord we draw near in
tenderer, but not less humble and prostrate, adoration as our
brother when we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, and thus
embrace as harmonious, and not contradictory, both the divinity of
the Lord and the humanity of Jesus.

To call on the name of Christ is to embrace in our faith and to
beseech the exercise on our behalf of all which Jesus is as the
Messiah, anointed by God with the fulness of the Spirit. As such
He is the climax, and therefore the close of all revelation, who
is the long-expected fruition of the desire of weary hearts, the
fulfilment, and therefore the abolition, of sacrifice and temple
and priesthood and prophecy and all that witnessed for Him ere He
came. We further call on the name of Christ the Anointed, on whom
the whole fulness of the Divine Spirit dwelt in order that,
calling upon Him, that fulness may in its measure be granted to
us.

So the name of the Lord Jesus Christ brings to view the divine,
the human, the Messiah, the anointed Lord of the Spirit, and Giver
of the divine life. To call on His name is to be blessed, to be
made pure and strong, joyous and immortal. `The name of the Lord
is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.'
Call on His name in the day of trouble and ye shall be heard and
helped.

III. Lastly, this text suggests what a Christian life should be.

We have already remarked that to call on the name of Jesus was the
distinctive peculiarity of the early believers, which marked them
off as a people by themselves. Would it be a true designation of
the bulk of so-called Christians now? You do not object to profess
yourself a Christian, or, perhaps, even to say that you are a
disciple of Christ, or even to go the length of calling yourself a
follower and imitator. But are you a worshipper of Him? In your
life have you the habit of meditating on Him as Lord, as Jesus, as
Christ, and of refreshing and gladdening dusty days and fainting
strength by the living water, drawn from the one unfailing stream
from these triple fountains? Is the invocation of His aid habitual
with you?

There needs no long elaborate supplication to secure His aid. How
much has been done in the Church's history by short bursts of
prayer, as `Lord, help me!' spoken or unspoken in the moment of
extremity! `They cried unto God in the battle.' They would not
have time for very lengthy petitions then, would they? They would
not give much heed to elegant arrangement of them or suiting them
to the canons of human eloquence. `They cried unto God in the
battle'; whilst the enemy's swords were flashing and the arrows
whistling about their ears. These were circumstances to make a
prayer a `cry'; no composed and stately utterance of an elegantly
modulated voice, nor a languid utterance without earnestness, but
a short, sharp, loud call, such as danger presses from panting
lungs and parched throats. Therefore the cry was answered, `and He
was entreated of them.' `Lord, save us, we perish!' was a very
brief prayer, but it brought its answer. And so we, in like
manner, may go through our warfare and work, and day by day as we
encounter sudden bursts of temptation may meet them with sudden
jets of petition, and thus put out their fires. And the same help
avails for long-continuing as for sudden needs. Some of us may
have to carry lifelong burdens and to fight in a battle ever
renewed. It may seem as if our cry was not heard, since the
enemy's assault is not weakened, nor our power to beat it back
perceptibly increased. But the appeal is not in vain, and when the
fight is over, if not before, we shall know what reinforcements of
strength to our weakness were due to our poor cry entering into
the ears of our Lord and Brother. No other `name' is permissible
as our plea or as recipient of our prayer. In and on the name of
the Lord we must call, and if we do, anything is possible rather
than that the promise which was claimed for the Church and
referred to Jesus, in the very first Christian preaching on
Pentecost, should not be fulfilled---`Whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord shall be saved.'

`In every place.' We may venture to subject the words of my text
to a little gentle pressure here. The Apostle only meant to
express the universal characteristics of Christians everywhere.
But we may venture to give a different turn to the words, and
learn from them the duty of devout communion with Christ as a duty
for each of us wherever we are. If a place is not fit to pray in
it is not fit to be in. We may carry praying hearts, remembrances
of the Lord, sweet, though they may be swift and short,
contemplations of His grace, His love, His power, His sufficiency,
His nearness, His punctual help, like a hidden light in our
hearts, into all the dusty ways of life, and in every place call
on His name. There is no place so dismal but that thoughts of Him
will make sunshine in it; no work so hard, so commonplace, so
prosaic, so uninteresting, but that it will become the opposite of
all these if whatever we do is done in remembrance of our Lord.
Nothing will be too hard for us to do, and nothing too bitter for
us to swallow, and nothing too sad for us to bear, if only over
all that befalls us and all that we undertake and endeavour we
make the sign of the Cross and call upon the name of the Lord. If
`in every place' we have Him as the object of our faith and
desire, and as the Hearer of our petition, in `every place' we
shall have Him for our help, and all will be full of His bright
presence; and though we have to journey through the wilderness we
shall ever drink of that spiritual rock that will follow us, and
that Rock is Christ. In every place call upon His name, and every
place will be a house of God, and a gate of heaven to our waiting
souls.

\chapter{Perishing or Being Saved}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS i. 18}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish
foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of
God.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} i. 18.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The starting-point of my remarks is the observation that a slight
variation of rendering, which will be found in the Revised
Version, brings out the true meaning of these words. Instead of
reading `them that perish' and `us which are saved,' we ought to
read `them that \textit{are perishing},' and `us which \textit{are
being} saved.' That is to say, the Apostle represents the two
contrasted conditions, not so much as fixed states, either present
or future, but rather as processes which are going on, and are
manifestly, in the present, incomplete. That opens some very
solemn and intensely practical considerations.

Then I may further note that this antithesis includes the whole of
the persons to whom the Gospel is preached. In one or other of
these two classes they all stand. Further, we have to observe that
the consideration which determines the class to which men belong,
is the attitude which they respectively take to the preaching of
the Cross. If it be, and because it is, `foolishness' to some,
they belong to the catalogue of the perishing. If it be, and
because it is, `the power of God' to others, they belong to the
class of those who are in process of being saved.

So, then, we have the ground cleared for two or three very simple,
but, as it seems to me, very important thoughts.

I. I desire, first, to look at the two contrasted conditions,
`perishing' and `being saved.'

Now we shall best, I think, understand the force of the darker of
these two terms if we first ask what is the force of the brighter
and more radiant. If we understand what the Apostle means by
`saving' and `salvation' we shall understand also what he means by
`perishing.'

If, then, we turn for a moment to Scripture analogy and teaching,
we find that that threadbare word `salvation,' which we all take
it for granted that we understand, and which, like a well-worn
coin, has been so passed from hand to hand that it scarcely
remains legible---that well-worn word `salvation' starts from a
double metaphorical meaning. It means either---and is used for
both---being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is
often employed in the Gospel narratives of our Lord's miracles,
and it involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; in the
other it involves the metaphor of a man in peril and his
deliverance and security. The negative side, then, of the Gospel
idea of salvation is the making whole from a disease, and the
making safe from a danger. Negatively, it is the removal from each
of us of the one sickness, which is sin; and the one danger, which
is the reaping of the fruits and consequences of sin, in their
variety as guilt, remorse, habit, and slavery under it, perverted
relation to God, a fearful apprehension of penal consequences
here, and, if there be a hereafter, there, too. The sickness of
soul and the perils that threaten life, flow from the central fact
of sin, and salvation consists, negatively, in the sweeping away
of all of these, whether the sin itself, or the fatal facility
with which we yield to it, or the desolation and perversion which
it brings into all the faculties and susceptibilities, or the
perversion of relation to God, and the consequent evils, here and
hereafter, which throng around the evil-doer. The sick man is
healed, and the man in peril is set in safety.

But, besides that, there is a great deal more. The cure is
incomplete till the full tide of health follows convalescence.
When God saves, He does not only bar up the iron gate through
which the hosts of evil rush out upon the defenceless soul, but He
flings wide the golden gate through which the glad troops of
blessings and of graces flock around the delivered spirit, and
enrich it with all joys and with all beauties. So the positive
side of salvation is the investiture of the saved man with
throbbing health through all his veins, and the strength that
comes from a divine life. It is the bestowal upon the delivered
man of everything that he needs for blessedness and for duty. All
good conferred, and every evil banned back into its dark den, such
is the Christian conception of salvation. It is much that the
negative should be accomplished, but it is little in comparison
with the rich fulness of positive endowments, of happiness, and of
holiness which make an integral part of the salvation of God.

This, then, being the one side, what about the other? If this be
salvation, its precise opposite is the Scriptural idea of
`perishing.' Utter ruin lies in the word, the entire failure to be
what God meant a man to be. That is in it, and no contortions of
arbitrary interpretation can knock that solemn significance out of
the dreadful expression. If salvation be the cure of the sickness,
perishing is the fatal end of the unchecked disease. If salvation
be the deliverance from the outstretched claws of the harpy evils
that crowd about the trembling soul, then perishing is the fixing
of their poisoned talons into their prey, and their rending of it
into fragments.

Of course that is metaphor, but no metaphor can be half so
dreadful as the plain, prosaic fact that the exact opposite of the
salvation, which consists in the healing from sin and the
deliverance from danger, and in the endowment with all gifts good
and beautiful, is the Christian idea of the alternative
`perishing.' Then it means the disease running its course. It
means the dangers laying hold of the man in peril. It means the
withdrawal, or the non-bestowal, of all which is good, whether it
be good of holiness or good of happiness. It does not mean, as it
seems to me, the cessation of conscious existence, any more than
salvation means the bestowal of conscious existence. But he who
perishes knows that he has perished, even as he knows the process
while he is in the process of perishing. Therefore, we have to
think of the gradual fading away from consciousness, and dying out
of a life, of many things beautiful and sweet and gracious, of the
gradual increase of distance from Him, union with whom is the
condition of true life, of the gradual sinking into the pit of
utter ruin, of the gradual increase of that awful death in life
and life in death in which living consciousness makes the
conscious subject aware that he is lost; lost to God, lost to
himself.

Brethren, it is no part of my business to enlarge upon such awful
thoughts, but the brighter the light of salvation, the darker the
eclipse of ruin which rings it round. This, then, is the first
contrast.

II. Now note, secondly, the progressiveness of both members of the
alternative.

All states of heart or mind tend to increase, by the very fact of
continuance. Life is a process, and every part of a spiritual
being is in living motion and continuous action in a given
direction. So the law for the world, and for every man in it, in
all regions of his life, quite as much as in the religious, is `To
him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.'

Look, then, at this thought of the process by which these two
conditions become more and more confirmed, consolidated, and
complete. Salvation is a progressive fact. In the New Testament we
have that great idea looked at from three points of view.
Sometimes it is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past
in the case of every believing soul---`Ye have been saved' is said
more than once. Sometimes it is spoken of as being accomplished in
the present---`Ye are saved' is said more than once. And sometimes
it is relegated to the future---`Now is our salvation nearer than
when we believed,' and the like. But there are a number of New
Testament passages which coincide with this text in regarding
salvation as, not the work of any one moment, but as a continuous
operation running through life, not a point either in the past,
present, or future, but a continued life. As, for instance, `The
Lord added to the Church daily those that were being saved.' By
one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are being
sanctified. And in a passage in the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians, which, in some respects, is an exact parallel to that
of my text, we read of the preaching of the Gospel as being a
`savour of Christ in them that are being saved, and in them that
are perishing.'

So the process of being saved is going on as long as a Christian
man lives in this world; and every one who professes to be
Christ's follower ought, day by day, to be growing more and more
saved, more fully filled with that Divine Spirit, more entirely
the conqueror of his own lusts and passions and evil, more and
more invested with all the gifts of holiness and of blessedness
which Jesus Christ is ready to bestow upon him.

Ah, brethren! that notion of a progressive salvation at work in all
true Christians has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as it has
all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you that call
yourselves Christ's followers, and are not a bit further on than you
were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions (perhaps
less so, for relapses are dangerous) than you were then---have not
advanced any further into the depths of God than when you first got
a glimpse of Him as loving, and your Father, in Jesus Christ---are
contented to linger, like some weak band of invaders in a strange
land, on the borders and coasts, instead of pressing inwards and
making it all your own. Growing Christians---may I venture to
say?---are not the majority of professing Christians.

And, on the other side, as certainly, there are progressive
deterioration and approximation to disintegration and ruin. How
many men there are listening to me now who were far nearer being
delivered from their sins when they were lads than they have ever
been since! How many in whom the sensibility to the message of
salvation has disappeared, in whom the world has ossified their
consciences and their hearts, in whom there is a more entire and
unstruggling submission to low things and selfish things and
worldly things and wicked things, than there used to be! I am sure
that there are not a few among us now who were far better, and far
happier, when they were poor and young, and could still thrill
with generous emotion and tremble at the Word of God, than they
are to-day. Why! there are some of you that could no more bring
back your former loftier impulses, and compunction of spirit and
throbs of desire towards Christ and His salvation, than you could
bring back the birds' nests or the snows of your youthful years.
You are perishing, in the very process of going down and down into
the dark.

Now, notice, that the Apostle treats these two classes as covering
the whole ground of the hearers of the Word, and as alternatives.
If not in the one class we are in the other. Ah, brethren! life is
no level plane, but a steep incline, on which there is no standing
still, and if you try to stand still, down you go. Either up or
down must be the motion. If you are not more of a Christian than
you were a year ago, you are less. If you are not more saved---for
there is a degree of comparison---if you are not more saved, you
are less saved.

Now, do not let that go over your head as pulpit thunder, meaning
nothing. It means \textit{you}, and, whether you feel or think it
or not, one or other of these two solemn developments is at this
moment going on in you. And that is not a thought to be put
lightly on one side.

Further, note what a light such considerations as these, that
salvation and perishing are vital processes---`going on all the
time,' as the Americans say---throw upon the future. Clearly the
two processes are incomplete here. You get the direction of the
line, but not its natural termination. And thus a heaven and a
hell are demanded by the phenomena of growing goodness and of
growing badness which we see round about us. The arc of the circle
is partially swept. Are the compasses going to stop at the point
where the grave comes in? By no means. Round they will go, and
will complete the circle. But that is not all. The necessity for
progress will persist after death; and all through the duration of
immortal being, goodness, blessedness, holiness, Godlikeness,
will, on the one hand, grow in brighter lustre; and on the other,
alienation from God, loss of the noble elements of the nature, and
all the other doleful darknesses which attend that conception of a
lost man, will increase likewise. And so, two people, sitting side
by side here now, may start from the same level, and by the
operation of the one principle the one may rise, and rise, and
rise, till he is lost in God, and so finds himself, and the other
sink, and sink, and sink, into the obscurity of woe and evil that
lies beneath every human life as a possibility.

III. And now, lastly, notice the determining attitude to the Cross
which settles the class to which we belong.

Paul, in my text, is explaining his reason for not preaching the
Gospel with what he calls `the words of man's wisdom,' and he
says, in effect, `It would be of no use if I did, because what
settles whether the Cross shall look ``foolishness'' to a man or
not is the man's whole moral condition, and what settles whether a
man shall find it to be ``the power of God'' or not is whether he
has passed into the region of those that are being saved.'

So there are two thoughts suggested which sound as if they were
illogically combined, but which yet are both true. It is true that
men perish, or are saved, because the Cross is to them
respectively `foolishness' or `the power of God'; and the other
thing is also true, that the Cross is to them `foolishness,' or
`the power of God' because, respectively, they are perishing or
being saved. That is not putting the cart before the horse, but
both aspects of the truth are true.

If you see nothing in Jesus Christ, and His death for us all,
except `foolishness,' something unfit to do you any good, and
unnecessary to be taken into account in your lives---oh, my
friends! \textit{that} is the condemnation of your eyes, and not
of the thing you look at. If a man, gazing on the sun at twelve
o'clock on a June day, says to me, `It is not bright,' the only
thing I have to say to him is, `Friend, you had better go to an
oculist.' And if to us the Cross is `foolishness,' it is because
already a process of `perishing' has gone so far that it has
attacked our capacity of recognising the wisdom and love of God
when we see them.

But, on the other hand, if we clasp that Cross in simple trust, we
find that it is the power which saves us out of all sins, sorrows,
and dangers, and `shall save us' at last `into His heavenly
kingdom.'

Dear friends, that message leaves no man exactly as it found him. My
words, I feel, in this sermon, have been very poor, set by the side
of the greatness of the theme; but, poor as they have been, you will
not be exactly the same man after them, if you have listened to
them, as you were before. The difference may be very imperceptible,
but it will be real. One more, almost invisible, film, over the
eyeball; one more thin layer of wax in the ear; one more fold of
insensibility round heart and conscience---or else some yielding to
the love; some finger put out to take the salvation; some lightening
of the pressure of the sickness; some removal of the peril and the
danger. The same sun hurts diseased eyes, and gladdens sound ones.
The same fire melts wax and hardens clay. `This Child is set for the
rise and fall of many in Israel.' `To the one He is the savour of
life unto life; to the other He is the savour of death unto death.'
\textit{Which} is He, for He \emph{is} one of them, to you?

\chapter{The Apostle's Theme}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS ii. 2}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ,
and Him crucified.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} ii. 2.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Many of you are aware that to-day I close forty years of ministry
in this city---I cannot say to this congregation, for there are
very, very few that can go back with me in memory to the beginning
of these years. You will bear me witness that I seldom intrude
personal references into the pulpit, but perhaps it would be
affectation not to do so now. Looking back over these long years,
many thoughts arise which cannot be spoken in public. But one
thing I may say, and that is, that I am grateful to God and to
you, dear friends, for the unbroken harmony, confidence,
affection, and forbearance which have brightened and lightened my
work. Of its worth I cannot judge; its imperfections I know better
than the most unfavourable critic; but I can humbly take the words
of this text as expressive, not, indeed, of my attainments, but of
my aims. One of my texts, on my first Sunday in Manchester, was
`We preach Christ and Him crucified,' and I look back, and venture
to say that the noble words of this text have been, however
imperfectly followed, my guiding star.

Now, I wish to say a word or two, less personal perhaps, and yet,
as you can well suppose, not without a personal reference in my
own consciousness.

I. Note here first, then, the Apostolic theme---Jesus Christ and
Him crucified.

Now, the Apostle, in this context, gives us a little
autobiographical glimpse which is singularly and interestingly
confirmed by some slight incidental notices in the Book of the
Acts. He says, in the context, that he was with the Corinthians
`in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,' and, if we turn
to the narrative, we find that a singular period of silence,
apparent abandonment of his work and dejection, seems to have
synchronised with his coming to the great city of Corinth. The
reasons were very plain. He had recently come into Europe for the
first time and had had to front a new condition of things, very
different from what he had found in Palestine or in Asia Minor.
His experience had not been encouraging. He had been imprisoned in
Philippi; he had been smuggled away by night from Thessalonica; he
had been hounded from Berea; he had all but wholly failed to make
any impression in Athens, and in his solitude he came to Corinth,
and lay quiet, and took stock of his adversaries. He came to the
conclusion which he records in my text; he felt that it was not
for him to argue with philosophers, or to attempt to vie with
Sophists and professional orators, but that his only way to meet
Greek civilisation, Greek philosophy, Greek eloquence, Greek
self-conceit, was to preach `Christ and Him crucified.' The
determination was not come to in ignorance of the conditions that
were fronting him. He knew Corinth, its wealth, its wickedness,
its culture, and knowing these he said, `I have made up my mind
that I will know nothing amongst you save Jesus Christ and Him
crucified.'

So, then, this Apostle's conception of his theme was---the
biography of a Man, with especial emphasis laid on one act in His
history---His death. Christianity is Christ, and Christ is
Christianity. His relation to the truth that He proclaimed, and to
the truths that may be deducible from the story of His life and
death, is altogether different from the relation of any other
founder of a religion to the truths that he has proclaimed. For in
these you can accept the teaching, and ignore the teacher. But you
cannot do that with Christianity; `I am the Way, and the Truth,
and the Life'; and in that revealing biography, which is the
preacher's theme, the palpitating heart and centre is the death
upon the Cross. So, whatever else Christianity comes to be---and
it comes to be a great deal else---the principle of its growth,
and the germ which must vitalise the whole, lie in the personality
and the death of Jesus Christ.

That is not all. The history of the life and the death want
something more to make them a gospel. The fact, I was going to
say, is the least part of the fact; as in some vegetable growths,
there is far more underground than above. For, unless along with,
involved in, and deducible from, but capable of being stated
separately from, the external facts, there is a certain commentary
or explanation of them: the history is a history, the biography is
a biography, the story of the Cross is a touching narrative, but
it is no gospel.

And what was Paul's commentary which lifted the bare facts up into
the loftier region? This---as for the person, Jesus Christ
`declared to be the son of God with power'---as for the fact of
the death, `died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' Let in
these two conceptions into the facts---and they are the necessary
explanation and presupposition of the facts---the Incarnation and
the Sacrifice, and then you get what Paul calls `my gospel,' not
because it was his invention, but because it was the trust
committed to him. That is the Gospel which alone answers to the
facts which he deals with; and that is the Gospel which, God
helping me, I have for forty years tried to preach.

We hear a great deal at present, or we did a few years ago, about
this generation having recovered Jesus Christ, and about the
necessity of going `back to the Christ of the Gospels.' By all
means, I say, if in the process you do not lose the Christ of the
Epistles, who is the Christ of the Gospels, too. I am free to
admit that a past generation has wrapped theological cobwebs round
the gracious figure of Christ with disastrous results. For it is
perfectly possible to know the things that are said about Him, and
not to know Him about whom these things are said. But the mistake
into which the present generation is far more likely to fall than
that of substituting theology for Christ, is the converse
one---that of substituting an undefined Christ for the Christ of
the Gospels and the Epistles, the Incarnate Son of God, who died
for our salvation. And that is a more disastrous mistake than the
other, for you can know nothing about Him and He can be nothing to
you, except as you grasp the Apostolic explanation of the bare
facts---seeing in Him the Word who became flesh, the Son who died
that we might receive the adoption of sons.

I would further point out that a clear conception of what the theme
is, goes a long way to determine the method in which it shall be
proclaimed. The Apostle says, in the passage which is parallel to
the present one, in the previous chapter, `We preach Christ
crucified'; with strong emphasis on the word `preach.' `The Jew
required a sign'; he wanted a man who would do something. The Greek
sought after wisdom; he wanted a man who would perorate and argue
and dissertate. Paul says, `No!' `We have nothing to \textit{do}. We
do not come to philosophise and to argue. We come with a message of
fact that has occurred, of a Person that has lived.' And, as most of
you know, the word which he uses means in its full signification,
`to proclaim as a herald does.'

Of course, if my business were to establish a set of principles,
theological or otherwise, then argumentation would be my weapon,
proofs would be my means, and my success would be that I should
win your credence, your intellectual consent, and conviction. If I
were here to proclaim simply a morality, then the thing that I
would aim to secure would be obedience, and the method of securing
it would be to enforce the authority and reasonableness of the
command. But, seeing that my task is to proclaim a living Person
and a historical fact, then the way to do that is to do as the
herald does when in the market-place he stands, trumpet in one
hand and the King's message in the other---proclaim it loudly,
confidently, not `with bated breath and whispering humbleness,' as
if apologising, nor too much concerned to buttress it up with
argumentation out of his own head, but to say, `Thus saith the
Lord,' and to what the Lord saith conscience says, `Amen.'
Brethren, we need far more, in all our pulpits, of that
unhesitating confidence in the plain, simple proclamation,
stripped, as far as possible, of human additions and accretions,
of the great fact and the great Person on whom all our salvation
depends.

II. So let me ask you to notice the exclusiveness which this theme
demands.

`Nothing but,' says Paul. I might venture to say---though perhaps
the tone of the personal allusions in this sermon may seem to
contradict it---that this exclusiveness is to be manifested in one
very difficult direction, and that that is, the herald shall
efface himself. We have to hold up the picture; and if I might
take such a metaphor, like a man in a gallery who is displaying
some masterpiece to the eyes of the beholders, we have to keep
ourselves well behind it; and it will be wise if not even a
finger-tip is allowed to steal in front and come into sight. One
condition, I believe, of real power in the ministration of the
Gospel, is that people shall be convinced that the preacher is
thinking not at all about himself, but altogether about his
message. You remember that wonderfully pathetic utterance from
John the Baptist's stern lips, which derives much additional
pathos and tenderness from the character of the man from whom it
came, when they asked him, `Who art thou?' and his answer was, `I
am a Voice.' I am a Voice; that is all! Ah, that is the example!
We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord. We must efface
ourselves if we would proclaim Christ.

But I turn to another direction in which this theme demands
exclusiveness, and I revert to the previous chapter where in the
parallel portion to the words of my text, we find the Apostle very
clearly conscious of the two great streams of expectation and wish
which he deliberately thwarted and set at nought. `The Jews
require a sign---but we preach Christ crucified. The Greeks seek
after wisdom,' but again, `we preach Christ crucified.' Now, take
these two. They are representations, in a very emphatic way, of
two sets of desires and mental characteristics, which divide the
world between them.

On the one hand, there is the sensuous tendency that wants
something done for it, something to see, something that sense can
grasp at; and so, as it fancies, work itself upwards into a higher
region. `The Jew requires a sign'---that is, not merely a miracle,
but something to look at. He wants a visible sacrifice; he wants a
priest. He wants religion to consist largely in the doing of
certain acts which may be supposed to bring, in some magical
fashion, spiritual blessings. And Paul opposes to that, `We preach
Christ crucified.' Brethren, the tendency is strong to-day, not
only in those parts of the Anglican communion where sacramentarian
theories are in favour, but amongst all sections of the Christian
Church, in which there is obvious a drift towards more ornate
ritual, and aesthetic services, as means of attracting to church
or chapel, and as more important than proclaiming Christ. I am
free to confess that possibly some of us, with our Puritan
upbringing and tendency, too much disregard that side of human
nature. Possibly it is so. But for all that I profoundly believe
that if religion is to be strong it must have a very, very small
infusion of these external aids to spiritual worship, and that few
things more weaken the power of the Gospel that Paul preached than
the lowering of the flag in conformity with desires of men of
sense, and substituting for the simple glory of the preached Word
the meretricious, and in time impotent, and always corrupting,
attractions of a sensuous worship.

Further, `The Greeks seek after wisdom.' They wanted
demonstration, abstract principles, systematised philosophies, and
the like. Paul comes again with his `We preach Christ and Him
crucified.' The wisdom is there, as I shall have to say in a
moment, but the form that it takes is directly antagonistic to the
wishes of these wisdom-seeking Greeks. The same thing in modern
guise besets us to-day. We are called upon, on all sides, to bring
into the pulpit what they call an ethical gospel; putting it into
plain English, to preach morality, and to leave out Christ. We are
called upon, on all sides, to preach an applied Christianity, a
social gospel---that is to say, largely to turn the pulpit into a
Sunday supplement to the daily newspaper. We are asked to deal
with the intellectual difficulties which spring from the collision
of science, true or false, with religion, and the like. All that
is right enough. But I believe from my heart that the thing to do
is to copy Paul's example, and to preach Christ and Him crucified.
You may think me right or you may think me wrong, but here and
now, at the end of forty years, I should like to say that I have
for the most part ignored that class of subjects deliberately, and
of set purpose, and with a profound conviction, be it erroneous or
not, that a ministry which listens much to the cry for `wisdom' in
its modern forms, has departed from the true perspective of
Christian teaching, and will weaken the churches which depend upon
it. Let who will turn the pulpit into a professor's chair, or a
lecturer's platform, or a concert-room stage or a politician's
rostrum, I for one determine to know nothing among you save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified.

III. Lastly, observe the all-sufficient comprehensiveness which
this theme secures.

Paul says `nothing but'; he might have said `everything in.' For
`Jesus Christ and Him crucified' covers all the ground of men's
needs. No doubt many of you will have been saying to yourselves
whilst you have been listening, if you have been listening, to
what I have been saying, `Ah! old-fashioned narrowness; quite out
of date in this generation.' Brethren, there are two ways of
adapting one's ministry to the times. One is falling in with the
requirements of the times, and the other is going dead against
them, and both of these methods have to be pursued by us.

But the exclusiveness of which I have been speaking, is no narrow
exclusiveness. Paul felt that, if he was to give the Corinthians
what they needed, he must refuse to give them what they wanted,
and that whilst he crossed their wishes he was consulting their
necessities. That is true yet, for the preaching that bases itself
upon the life and death of Jesus Christ, conceived as Paul had
learned from Jesus Christ to conceive them, that Gospel, whilst it
brushes aside men's superficial wishes, goes straight to the heart
of their deep-lying universal necessities, for what the Jew needs
most is not a sign, and what the Greek needs most is not wisdom,
but what they both need most is deliverance from the guilt and
power of sin. And we all, scholars and fools, poets and
common-place people, artists and ploughmen, all of us, in all
conditions of life, in all varieties of culture, in all stages of
intellectual development, in all diversities of occupation and of
mental bias, what we all have in common is that human heart in
which sin abides, and what we all need most to have is that evil
drop squeezed out of it, and our souls delivered from the burden
and the bondage. Therefore, any man that comes with a sign, and
does not deal with the sin of the human heart, and any man that
comes with a philosophical system of wisdom, and does not deal
with sin, does not bring a Gospel that will meet the necessities
even of the people to whose cravings he has been aiming to adapt
his message.

But, beyond that, in this message of Christ and Him crucified,
there lies in germ the satisfaction of all that is legitimate in
these desires that at first sight it seems to thwart. `A sign?'
Yes, and where is there power like the power that dwells in Him
who is the Incarnate might of omnipotence? `Wisdom?' Yes, and
where is there wisdom, except `in Him in whom are hid all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge'? Let the Jew come to the Cross,
and in the weak Man hanging there, he will find a mightier
revelation of the power of God than anywhere else. Let the Greek
come to the Cross, and there he will find wisdom and
righteousness, sanctification and redemption. The bases of all
social, economical, political reform and well-being, lie in the
understanding and the application to social and national life, of
the principles that are wrapped in, and are deduced from, the
Incarnation and the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We have not learned
them all yet. They have not all been applied to national and
individual life yet. I plead for no narrow exclusiveness, but for
one consistent with the widest application of Christian principles
to all life. Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus, and to
know everything in Jesus, and Jesus in everything. Do not begin
your building at the second-floor windows. Put in your foundations
first, and be sure that they are well laid. Let the Sacrifice of
Christ, in its application to the individual and his sins, be ever
the basis of all that you say. And then, when that foundation is
laid, exhibit, to your heart's content, the applications of
Christianity and its social aspects. But be sure that the
beginning of them all is the work of Christ for the individual
sinful soul, and the acceptance of that work by personal faith.

Dear friends, ours has been a long and happy union but it is a
very solemn one. My responsibilities are great; yours are not
small. Let me beseech you to ask yourselves if, with all your
kindness to the messenger, you have given heed to the message.
Have you passed beyond the voice that speaks, to Him of whom it
speaks? Have you taken the truth---veiled and weakened as I know
it has been by my words, but yet in them---for what it is, the
word of the living God? My occupancy of this pulpit must in the
nature of things, before long, come to a close, but the message
which I have brought to you will survive all changes in the voice
that speaks here. `All flesh is grass ... the Word of the Lord
endureth for ever.' And, closing these forty years, during a long
part of which some of you have listened most lovingly and most
forbearingly, I leave with you this, which I venture to quote,
though it is my Master's word about Himself, `I judge you not; the
word which I have spoken unto you, the same shall judge you in the
last day.'

\chapter{God's Fellow-workers}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS iii. 9}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Labourers together with God.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} iii. 9.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The characteristic Greek tendency to factions was threatening to
rend the Corinthian Church, and each faction was swearing by a
favourite teacher. Paul and his companion, Apollos, had been taken
as the figureheads of two of these parties, and so he sets himself
in the context, first of all to show that neither of the two was
of any real importance in regard to the Church's life. They were
like a couple of gardeners, one of whom did the planting, and the
other the watering; but neither the man that put the little plant
into the ground, nor the man that came after him with a
watering-pot, had anything to do with originating the mystery of
the life by which the plant grew. That was God's work, and the
pair that had planted and watered were nothing. So what was the
use of fighting which of two nothings was the greater?

But then he bethinks himself that that is not quite all. The man
that plants and the man that waters are something after all. They
do not communicate life, but they do provide for its nourishment.
And more than that, the two operations---that of the man with the
dibble and that of the man with the watering-pot---are one in
issue; and so they are partners, and in some respects may be
regarded as one. Then what is the sense of pitting them against
each other?

But even that is not quite all; though united in operation, they
are separate in responsibility and activity, and will be separate
in reward. And even that is not all; for, being nothing and yet
something, being united and yet separate, they are taken into
participation and co-operation with God; and as my text puts it,
in what is almost a presumptuous phrase, they are `labourers
together with Him.' That partnership of co-operation is not merely
a partnership of the two, but it is a partnership of the
three---God and the two who, in some senses, are one.

Now whilst this text is primarily spoken in regard to the
apostolic and evangelistic work of these early teachers, the
principle which it embodies is a very wide one, and it applies in
all regions of life and activity, intellectual, scholastic,
philanthropic, social. Where-ever men are thinking God's thoughts
and trying to carry into effect any phase or side of God's
manifold purposes of good and blessing to the world, there it is
true. We claim no special or exclusive prerogative for the
Christian teacher. Every man that is trying to make men understand
God's thought, whether it is expressed in creation, or whether it
is written in history, or whether it is carven in half-obliterated
letters on the constitution of human nature, every man who, in any
region of society or life, is seeking to effect the great designs
of the universal loving Father---can take to himself, in the
measure and according to the manner of his special activity, the
great encouragement of my text, and feel that he, too, in his
little way, is a fellow-helper to the truth and a fellow-worker
with God. But then, of course, according to New Testament
teaching, and according to the realities of the case, the highest
form in which men thus can co-operate with God, and carry into
effect His purposes is that in which men devote themselves, either
directly or indirectly, to spreading throughout the whole world
the name and the power of the Saviour Jesus Christ, in whom all
God's will is gathered, and through whom all God's blessings are
communicated to mankind. So the thought of my text comes
appropriately when I have to bring before you the claims of our
missionary operations.

Now, the first way in which I desire to look at this great idea
expressed in these words, is that we find in it

I. A solemn thought.

`Labourers together with God.' Cannot He do it all Himself? No.
God needs men to carry out His purposes. True, on the Cross, Jesus
spoke the triumphant word, `It is finished!' He did not thereby
simply mean that He had completed all His suffering; but He meant
that He had then done all which the world needed to have done in
order that it should be a redeemed world. But for the distribution
and application of that finished work God depends on men. You all
know, in your own daily businesses, how there must be a middleman
between the mill and the consumer. The question of organising a
distributing agency is quite as important as any other part of the
manufacturer's business. The great reservoir is full, but there
has to be a system of irrigating-channels by which the water is
carried into every corner of the field that is to be watered.
Christian men individually, and the Church collectively,
supply---may I call it the missing link?---between a redeeming
Saviour and the world which He has redeemed in act, but which is
not actually redeemed, until it has received the message of the
great Redemption that is wrought. The supernatural is implanted in
the very heart of the mass of leaven by the Incarnation and
Sacrifice of Jesus Christ; but the spreading of that supernatural
revelation is left in the hands of men who work through natural
processes, and who thus become labourers together with God, and
enable Christ to be to single souls, in blessed reality, what He
is potentially to the world, and has been ever since. He died upon
the Cross. `It is finished.' Yes---because it is finished, our
work begins.

Let me remind you of the profound symbolism in that incident where
our Lord for once appeared conspicuously, and almost
ostentatiously, before Israel as its true King. He had need---as
He Himself said---of the meek beast on which He rode. He cannot
pass, in His coronation procession, through the world unless He
has us, by whom He may be carried into every corner of the earth.
So `the Lord has need' of us, and we are `fellow-labourers with
Him.'

But this same thought suggests another point. We have here a
solemn call addressed to every Christian man and woman.

Do not let us run away with the idea that, because here the Apostle
is speaking in regard to himself and Apollos, he is enunciating a
truth which applies only to Apostles and evangelists. It is true of
all Christians. My knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ as my own
personal Saviour impose upon me the obligation, in so far as my
opportunities and capacities extend, thus to co-operate with Him in
spreading His great Name. Every Christian man, just because he is a
Christian, is invested with the power---and power to its last
particle is duty---and is, therefore, burdened with the honourable
obligation to work for God. There is such a thing as `coming to the
help of the Lord,' though that phrase seems to reverse altogether
the true relation. It is the duty of every Christian, partly because
of loyalty to Jesus, and partly because of the responsibility which
the very constitution of society lays upon every one of us, to
diffuse what he possesses, and to be a distributing agent for the
life that he himself enjoys. Brethren! there is no possibility of
Christian men or women being fully faithful to the Saviour, unless
they recognise that the duty of being a fellow-labourer with God
inevitably follows on being a possessor of Christ's salvation; and
that no Apostle, no official, no minister, no missionary, has any
more necessity laid upon him to preach the Gospel, nor pulls down
any heavier woe on himself if he is unfaithful, than has and does
each one of Christ's servants.

So `we are fellow-labourers with God.' Alas! alas! how poorly the
average Christian realises---I do not say discharges, but
realises---that obligation! Brethren, I do not wish to find fault,
but I do beseech you to ask yourselves whether, if you are
Christians, you are doing anything the least like what my text
contemplates as the duty of all Christians.

May I say a word or two with regard to another aspect of this
solemn call? Does not the thought of working along with God
prescribe for us the sort of work that we ought to do? We ought to
work in God's fashion, and if we wish to know what God's fashion
is, we have but to look at Jesus Christ. We ought to work in Jesus
Christ's fashion. We all know what that involved of
self-sacrifice, of pain, of weariness, of utter self-oblivious
devotion, of gentleness, of tenderness, of infinite pity, of love
running over. `The master's eye makes a good servant.' The
Master's hand working along with the servant ought to make the
servant work after the Master's fashion. `As My Father hath sent
Me, so send I you.' If we felt that side by side with us, like two
sailors hauling on one rope, `the Servant of the Lord' was
toiling, do you not think it would burn up all our selfishness,
and light up all our indifference, and make us spend ourselves in
His service? A fellow-labourer with God will surely never be lazy
and selfish. Thus my text has in it, to begin with, a solemn call.

It suggests

II. A signal honour.

Suppose a great painter, a Raphael or a Turner, taking a little
boy that cleaned his brushes, and saying to him, `Come into my
studio, and I will let you do a bit of work upon my picture.'
Suppose an aspirant, an apprentice in any walk of life, honoured
by being permitted to work along with some one who was recognised
all over the world as being at the very top of that special
profession. Would it not be a feather in the boy's cap all his
life? And would he not think it the greatest honour that ever had
been done him that he was allowed to co-operate, in however
inferior a fashion, with such an one? Jesus Christ says to us,
`Come and work here side by side with Me,' But Christian men,
plenty of them, answer, `It is a perpetual nuisance, this
continual application for money! money! money! work! work! work!
It is never-ending, and it is a burden!' Yes, it is a burden, just
because it is an honour. Do you know that the Hebrew word which
means `glory' literally means `weight'? There is a great truth in
that. You cannot get true honours unless you are prepared to carry
them as burdens. And the highest honour that Jesus Christ gives to
men when He says to them, not only `Go work to-day in My
vineyard,' but `Come, work here side by side with Me,' is a heavy
weight which can only be lightened by a cheerful heart.

Is it not the right way to look at all the various forms of
Christian activity which are made imperative upon Christian
people, by their possession of Christianity as being tokens of
Christ's love to us? Do you remember that this same Apostle said,
`Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace
given, that I should preach the unsearchable riches of Christ?' He
could speak about burdens and heavy tasks, and being `persecuted
but not forsaken,' almost crushed down and yet not in despair, and
about the weights that came upon him daily, `the care of all the
churches,' but far beneath all the sense of his heavy load lay the
thrill of thankful wonder that to him, of all men in the world,
knowing as he did better than anybody else could do his own
imperfection and insufficiency, this distinguishing honour had
been bestowed, that he was made the Apostle to the Gentiles. That
is the way in which the true man will always look at what the
selfish man, and the half-and-half Christian, look at as being a
weight and a weariness, or a disagreeable duty, which is to be
done as perfunctorily as possible. One question that a great many
who call themselves Christians ask is, `With how little service
can I pass muster?' Ah, it is because we have so little of the
Spirit of Christ in us that we feel burdened by His command, `Go
ye into all the world,' as being so heavy; and that so many of
us---I leave you to judge if you are in the class---so many of us
make it criminally light if we do not ignore it altogether. I
believe that, if it were possible to conceive of the duty and
privilege of spreading Christ's name in the world being withdrawn
from the Church, all His real servants would soon be yearning to
have it back again. It is a token of His love; it is a source of
infinite blessings to ourselves; `if the house be not worthy, your
peace shall return to you again.'

And now, lastly, we have suggested by this text

III. A strong encouragement.

`Fellow-labourers with God'---then, God is a Fellow-labourer with
us. The co-operation works both ways, and no man who is seeking to
spread that great salvation, to distribute that great wealth, to
irrigate some little corner of the field by some little channel
that he has dug, needs to feel that he is labouring alone. If I am
working with God, God is working with me. Do you remember that
most striking picture which is drawn in the verses appended to
Mark's Gospel, which tells how the universe seemed parted into two
halves, and up above in the serene the Lord `sat on the right hand
of God,' while below, in the murky and obscure, `they went
everywhere preaching the Word.' The separation seems complete, but
the two halves are brought together by the next word---`The Lord
also,' sitting up yonder, `working with them' the wandering
preachers down here, `confirming the words with signs following.'
Ascended on high, entered into His rest, having finished His work,
He yet is working with us, if we are labourers together with God.
If we turn to the last book of Scripture, which draws back the
curtain from the invisible world which is all filled with the
glorified Christ, and shows its relations to the earthly militant
church, we read no longer of a Christ enthroned in apparent ease,
but of a Christ walking amidst the candlesticks, and of a Lamb
standing in the midst of the Throne, and opening the seals,
launching forth into the world the sequences of the world's
history, and of the Word of God charging His enemies on His white
horse, and behind Him the armies of God following. The workers who
labour with God have the ascended Christ labouring with them.

But if God works with us, success is sure. Then comes the old
question that Gideon asked with bitterness of heart, when he was
threshing out his handful of wheat in a corner to avoid the
oppressors, `If the Lord be with us, wherefore is all this come
upon us? Will any one say that the progress of the Gospel in the
world has been at the rate which its early believers expected, or
at the rate which its own powers warranted them to expect?
Certainly not. And so it comes to this, that whilst every true
labourer has God working with him, and therefore success is
certain, the planter and the waterer can delay the growth of the
plant by their unfaithfulness, by not expecting success, by not so
working as to make it likely, or by neutralising their
evangelistic efforts by their worldly lives. When Jesus Christ was
on earth, it is recorded, `He could there do no mighty works
because of their unbelief, save that He laid His hands on a few
sick folk and healed them.' A faithless Church, a worldly Church,
a lazy Church, an unspiritual Church, an un-Christlike
Church---which, to a large extent, is the designation of the
so-called Church of to day---can clog His chariot-wheels, can
thwart the work, can hamper the Divine Worker. If the Christians
of Manchester were revived, they could win Manchester for Jesus.
If the Christians of England lived their Christianity, they could
make England what it never has been but in name---a Christian
country. If the Church universal were revived, it could win the
world. If the single labourer, or the community of such, is
labouring `in the Lord,' their labour will not be in vain; and if
they thus plant and water, God will give the increase.

\chapter{The Testing Fire}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS iii. 12, 13}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious
stones, wood, hay, stubble: 13.\ Every man's work shall be made
manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be
revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what
sort it is.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} iii. 12, 13.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Before I enter upon the ideas which the words suggest, my
exegetical conscience binds me to point out that the original
application of the text is not exactly that which I purpose to
make of it now. The context shows that the Apostle is thinking
about the special subject of Christian teachers and their work,
and that the builders of whom he speaks are the men in the
Corinthian Church, some of them his allies and some of them his
rivals, who were superimposing upon the foundation of the
preaching of Jesus Christ other doctrines and principles. The
`wood, hay, stubble' are the vapid and trivial doctrines which the
false teachers were introducing into the Church. The `gold,
silver, and precious stones' are the solid and substantial
verities which Paul and his friends were proclaiming. And it is
about these, and not about the Christian life in the general, that
the tremendous metaphors of my text are uttered.

But whilst that is true, the principles involved have a much wider
range than the one case to which the Apostle applies them. And,
though I may be slightly deflecting the text from its original
direction, I am not doing violence to it, if I take it as declaring
some very plain and solemn truths applicable to all Christian
people, in their task of building up a life and character on the
foundation of Jesus Christ; truths which are a great deal too much
forgotten in our modern popular Christianity, and which it concerns
us all very clearly to keep in view. There are three things here
that I wish to say a word about---the patchwork building, the
testing fire, the fate of the builders.

I. First, the patchwork structure.

`If any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious
stones, wood, hay, stubble.' In the original application of the
metaphor, Paul is thinking of all these teachers in that church at
Corinth as being engaged in building the one structure---I venture
to deflect here, and to regard each of us as rearing our own
structure of life and character on the foundation of the preached
and accepted Christ.

Now, what the Apostle says is that these builders were, some of
them, laying valuable things like gold and silver and costly
stones---by which he does not mean jewels, but marbles,
alabasters, polished porphyry or granite, and the like; sumptuous
building materials, which were employed in great palaces or
temples---and that some of them were bringing timber, hay,
stubble, reeds gathered from the marshes or the like, and filling
in with such trash as that. That is a picture of what a great many
Christian people are doing in their own lives---the same man
building one course of squared and solid and precious stones, and
topping them with rubbish. You will see in the walls of Jerusalem,
at the base, five or six courses of those massive blocks which are
the wonders of the world yet; well jointed, well laid, well
cemented, and then on the top of them a mass of poor stuff, heaped
together anyhow; scamped work---may I use a modern
vulgarism?---`jerry-building.' You may go to some modern village,
on an ancient historic site, and you will find built into the mud
walls of the hovels in which the people are living, a marble slab
with fair carving on it, or the drum of a great column of veined
marble, and on the top of that, timber and clay mixed together.

That is the type of the sort of life that hosts of Christian
people are living. For, mark, all the builders are on the
foundation. Paul is not speaking about mere professed Christians
who had no faith at all in them, and no real union with Jesus
Christ. These builders were `on the foundation'; they were
building on the foundation, there was a principle deep down in
their lives---which really lay at the bottom of their lives---and
yet had not come to such dominating power as to mould and purify
and make harmonious with itself the life that was reared upon it.
We all know that that is the condition of many men, that they have
what really are the fundamental bases of their lives, in belief
and aim and direction; and which yet are not strong enough to
master the whole of the life, and to manifest themselves through
it. Especially it is the condition of some Christian people. They
have a real faith, but it is of the feeblest and most rudimentary
kind. They are on the foundation, but their lives are interlaced
with the most heterogeneous mixty-maxty of good and evil, of
lofty, high, self-sacrificing thoughts and heavenward aspirations,
of resolutions never carried out into practice; and side by side
with these there shall be meannesses, selfishnesses, tempers,
dispositions all contradictory of the former impulses. One moment
they are all fire and love, the next moment ice and selfishness.
One day they are all for God, the next day all for the world, the
flesh, and the devil. Jacob sees the open heavens and the face of
God and vows; to-morrow he meets Laban and drops to shifty ways.
Peter leaves all and follows his Master, and in a little while the
fervour has gone, and the fire has died down into grey ashes, and
a flippant servant-girl's tongue leads him to say `I know not the
man.' `Gold, silver, precious stones,' and topping them, `wood,
hay, stubble!'

The inconsistencies of the Christian life are what my text, in the
application that I am venturing to make of it, suggests to us. Ah,
dear friends! we do not need to go to Jacob and Peter; let us look
at our own hearts, and if we will honestly examine one day of our
lives, I think we shall understand how it is possible for a man,
on the foundation, yet to build upon it these worthless and
combustible things, `wood, hay, stubble.'

We are not to suppose that one man builds \textit{only} `gold,
silver, precious stones.' There is none of us that does that. And
we are not to suppose that any man who \textit{is} on the
foundations has so little grasp of it, as that he builds
\textit{only} `wood, hay, stubble.'

There is none of us who has not intermingled his building, and
there is none of us, if we are Christians at all, who has not
sometimes laid a course of `precious stones.' If your faith is
doing \textit{nothing} for you except bringing to you a belief
that you are not going to hell when you die, then it is no faith
at all. `Faith without works is dead.' So there is a mingling in
the best, and---thank God!---there is a mingling of good with
evil, in the worst of real Christian people.

II. Note here, the testing fire.

Paul points to two things, the day and the fire.

`The day shall declare it,' that is the day on which Jesus Christ
comes to be the Judge; and it, that is `the day,' `shall be
revealed in fire; and the fire shall test every man's work.' Now,
it is to be noticed that here we are moving altogether in the
region of lofty symbolism, and that the metaphor of the testing
fire is suggested by the previous enumeration of building
materials, gold and silver being capable of being assayed by
flame; and `wood, hay, stubble' being combustible, and sure to be
destroyed thereby. The fire here is not an emblem of punishment;
it is not an emblem of cleansing. There is no reference to
anything in the nature of what Roman Catholics call purgatorial
fires. The allusion is simply to some stringent and searching
means of testing the quality of a man's work, and of revealing
that quality.

So then, we come just to this, that for people `on the
foundation,' there is a Day of revelation and testing of their
life's work. It is a great misfortune that so-called Evangelical
Christianity does not say as much as the New Testament says about
the judgment that is to be passed on `the house of God.' People
seem to think that the great doctrine of salvation, `not by works
of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy,' is,
somehow or other, interfered with when we proclaim, as Paul
proclaims, speaking to Christian people, `We must be manifested
before the judgment seat of Christ,' and declares that `Every man
will receive the things done in his body, according to that he has
done, whether it be good or bad.' Paul saw no contradiction, and
there is no contradiction. But a great many professing Christians
seem to think that the great blessing of their salvation by faith
is, that they are exempt from that future revelation and testing
and judgment of their acts. That is not the New Testament
teaching. But, on the contrary, `Whatsoever a man soweth that
shall he also reap,' was originally said to a church of Christian
people. And here we come full front against that solemn truth,
that the Lord will `gather together His saints, those that have
made a covenant with Him by sacrifice, that He may judge His
people.' Never mind about the drapery, the symbolism, the
expression in material forms with which that future judgment is
arranged, in order that we may the more easily grasp it. Remember
that these pictures in the New Testament of a future judgment are
highly symbolical, and not to be interpreted as if they were plain
prose; but also remember that the heart of them is this, that
there comes for Christian people as for all others, a time when
the light will shine down upon their past, and will flash its rays
into the dark chambers of memory, and when men will---to
themselves if not to others---be revealed `in the day when the
Lord shall judge the secrets of men according to my Gospel.'

We have all experience enough of how but a few years, a change of
circumstances, or a growth into another stage of development, give
us fresh eyes with which to estimate the moral quality of our
past. Many a thing, which we thought to be all right at the time
when we did it, looks to us now very questionable and a plain
mistake. And when we shift our stations to up yonder, and get rid
of all this blinding medium of flesh and sense, and have the
issues of our acts in our possession, and before our sight---ah!
we shall think very differently of a great many things from what
we think of them now. Judgment will begin at the house of God.

And there is the other thought, that the fire which reveals and
tests has also in it a power of destruction. Gold and silver will
lose no atom of their weight, and will be brightened into greater
lustre as they flash back the beams. The timber and the stubble
will go up in a flare, and die down into black ashes. That is
highly metaphorical, of course. What does it mean? It means that
some men's work will be crumpled up and perish, and be as of none
effect, leaving a great, black sorrowful gap in the continuity of
the structure, and that other men's work will stand. Everything
that we do is, in one sense, immortal, because it is represented
in our final character and condition, just as a thin stratum of
rock will represent forests of ferns that grew for one summer
millenniums ago, or clouds of insects that danced for an hour in
the sun. But whilst that is so, and nothing human ever dies, on
the other hand, deeds which have been in accordance, as it were,
with the great stream that sweeps the universe on its bosom will
float on that surface and never sink. Acts which have gone against
the rush of God's will through creation will be like a child's
go-cart that comes against the engine of an express train---be
reduced, first, to stillness, all the motion knocked out of them,
and then will be crushed to atoms. Deeds which stand the test will
abide in blessed issue for the doer, and deeds which do not will
pass away in smoke, and leave only ashes. Some of us, building on
the foundation, have built more rubbish than solid work, and that
will be

\begin{verse}
`Cast as rubbish to the void \\
When God has made the pile complete.'
\end{verse}

III. So, lastly, we have here the fate of the two builders.

The one man gets wages. That is not the bare notion of salvation,
for both builders are conceived of as on the foundation, and both
are saved. He gets wages. Yes, of course! The architect has to
give his certificate before the builder gets his cheque. The
weaver, who has been working his hand-loom at his own house, has
to take his web to the counting-house and have it overlooked
before he gets his pay. And the man who has built `gold, silver,
precious stones,' will have---over and above the initial
salvation---in himself the blessed consequences, and unfold the
large results, of his faithful service; while the other man,
inasmuch as he has not such work, cannot have the consequences of
it, and gets no wages; or at least his pay is subject to heavy
deductions for the spoiled bits in the cloth, and for the gaps in
the wall.

The Apostle employs a tremendous metaphor here, which is masked in
our Authorised Version, but is restored in the Revised. `He shall
be saved, yet so as' (not `by' but) `through fire'; the picture
being that of a man surrounded by a conflagration, and making a
rush through the flames to get to a place of safety. Paul says
that he will get through, because down \textit{below} all
inconsistency and worldliness, there was a little of that which
ought to have been \textit{above} all the inconsistency and the
worldliness---a true faith in Jesus Christ. But because it was so
imperfect, so feeble, so little operative in his life as that it
could not keep him from piling up inconsistencies into his wall,
therefore his salvation is so as through the fire.

Brethren, I dare not enlarge upon that great metaphor. It is meant
for us professing Christians, real and imperfect Christians---it
is meant for us; and it just tells us that there are degrees in
that future blessedness proportioned to present faithfulness. We
begin there where we left off here. That future is not a dead
level; and they who have earnestly striven to work out their faith
into their lives shall `summer high upon the hills of God.' One
man, like Paul in his shipwreck, shall lose ship and lading,
though `on broken pieces of the ship' he may `escape safe to
land'; and another shall make the harbour with full cargo of works
of faith, to be turned into gold when he lands. If we build, as we
all may, `on that foundation, gold and silver and precious
stones,' an entrance `shall be ministered unto us abundantly into
the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ';
whilst if we bring a preponderance of `wood, hay, stubble,' we
shall be `saved, yet so as through the fire.'

\chapter{Temples of God}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS iii. 16}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?'---1 \textsc{Cor.}
iii. 16
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The great purpose of Christianity is to make men like Jesus
Christ. As He is the image of the invisible God we are to be the
images of the unseen Christ. The Scripture is very bold and
emphatic in attributing to Christ's followers likeness to Him, in
nature, in character, in relation to the world, in office, and in
ultimate destiny. Is He the anointed of God? We are
anointed---Christs in Him. Is He the Son of God? We in Him receive
the adoption of sons. Is He the Light of the world? We in Him are
lights of the world too. Is He a King? A Priest? He hath made us
to be kings and priests.

Here we have the Apostle making the same solemn assertion in
regard to Christian men, `Know ye not that ye are'---as your
Master, and because your Master is---`that ye are the temple of
God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?'

Of course the allusion in my text is to the whole aggregate of
believers---what we call the Catholic Church, as being
collectively the habitation of God. But God cannot dwell in an
aggregate of men, unless He dwells in the individuals that compose
the aggregate. And God has nothing to do with institutions except
through the people who make the institutions. And so, if the
Church as a whole is a Temple, it is only because all its members
are temples of God.

Therefore, without forgetting the great blessed lesson of the
unity of the Church which is taught in these words, I want rather
to deal with them in their individual application now; and to try
and lay upon your consciences, dear brethren, the solemn
obligations and the intense practical power which this Apostle
associated with the thought that each Christian man was, in very
deed, a temple of God.

It would be very easy to say eloquent things about this text, but
that is no part of my purpose.

I. Let me deal, first of all, and only for a moment or two, with
the underlying thought that is here---that every Christian is a
dwelling-place of God.

Now, do not run away with the idea that that is a metaphor. It was
the outward temple that was the metaphor. The reality is that
which you and I, if we are God's children in Jesus Christ,
experience. There was no real sense in which that Mighty One whom
the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain, dwelt in any house made with
hands. But the Temple, and all the outward worship, were but
symbolical of the facts of the Christian life, and the realities
of our inward experience. These are the truths whereof the other
is the shadow. We use words to which it is difficult for us to
attach any meaning, when we talk about God as being locally
present in any material building; but we do not use words to which
it is so difficult to attach a meaning, when we talk about the
Infinite Spirit as being present and abiding in a spirit shaped to
hold Him, and made on purpose to touch Him and be filled by Him.

All creatures have God dwelling in them in the measure of their
capacity. The stone that you kick on the road would not be there
if there were not a present God. Nothing would happen if there
were not abiding in creatures the force, at any rate, which is
God. But just as in this great atmosphere in which we all live and
move and have our being, the eye discerns undulations which make
light, and the ear catches vibrations which make sound, and the
nostrils are recipient of motions which bring fragrance, and all
these are in the one atmosphere, and the sense that apprehends one
is utterly unconscious of the other, so God's creatures, each
through some little narrow slit, and in the measure of their
capacity, get a straggling beam from Him into their being, and
therefore they are.

But high above all other ways in which creatures can lie patent to
God, and open for the influx of a Divine Indweller, lies the way
of faith and love. Whosoever opens his heart in these
divinely-taught emotions, and fixes them upon the Christ in whom
God dwells, receives into the very roots of his being---as the
water that trickles through the soil to the rootlets of the
tree---the very Godhead Himself. `He that is joined to the Lord is
one spirit.'

That God shall dwell in my heart is possible only from the fact
that He dwelt in all His fulness in Christ, through whom I touch
Him. That Temple consecrates all heart-shrines; and all
worshippers that keep near to Him, partake with Him of the Father
that dwelt in Him.

Only remember that in Christ God dwelt completely, all `the
fulness of the Godhead bodily' was there, but in us it is but
partially; that in Christ, therefore, the divine indwelling was
uniform and invariable, but in us it fluctuates, and sometimes is
more intimate and blessed, and sometimes He leaves the habitation
when we leave Him; that in Christ, therefore, there was no
progress in the divine indwelling, but that in us, if there be any
true inhabitation of our souls by God, that abiding will become
more and more, until every corner of our being is hallowed and
filled with the searching effulgence of the all-pervasive Light.
And let us remember that God dwelt in Christ, but that in us it is
God in Christ who dwells. So to Him we owe it all, that our poor
hearts are made the dwelling-place of God; or, as this Apostle
puts it, in other words conveying the same idea, `Ye are built
upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ
Himself being the chief Corner-stone; in whom all the building
fitly framed together groweth ... for a habitation of God through
the Spirit.'

II. Now then, turning from this underlying idea of the passage,
let us look, for a moment, at some of the many applications of
which the great thought is susceptible. I remark, then, in the
second place, that as temples all Christians are to be manifesters
of God.

The meaning of the Temple as of all temples was, that there the
indwelling Deity should reveal Himself; and if it be true that we
Christian men and women are, in this deep and blessed reality of
which I have been speaking, the abiding places and habitations of
God, then it follows that we shall stand in the world as the great
means by which God is manifested and made known, and that in a
two-fold way; \textit{to ourselves} and \textit{to other people}.

The real revelation of God to our hearts must be His abiding in
our hearts. We do not learn God until we possess God. He must fill
our souls before we know His sweetness. The answer that our Lord
made to one of His disciples is full of the deepest truth. `How is
it,' said one of them in his blundering way, `how is it that Thou
wilt manifest Thyself to us?' And the answer was, `We will come
and make Our abode with him.' You do not know God until, if I
might so say, He sits at your fireside and talks with you in your
hearts. Just as some wife may have a husband whom the world knows
as hero, or sage, or orator, but she knows him as nobody else can;
so the outside, and if I may so say, the public character of God
is but the surface of the revelation that He makes to us, when in
the deepest secrecy of our own hearts He pours Himself into our
waiting spirits. O brethren! it is within the curtains of the
Holiest of all that the Shekinah flashes; it is within our own
hearts, shrined and templed there, that God reveals Himself to us,
as He does not unto the world.

And then, further, Christian men, as the temples and habitations
of God, are appointed to be the great means of making Him known to
the world around. The eye that cannot look at the sun can look at
the rosy clouds that lie on either side of it, and herald its
rising; their opalescent tints and pearly lights are beautiful to
dim vision, to which the sun itself is too bright to be looked
upon. Men will believe in a gentle Christ when they see you
gentle. They will believe in a righteous love when they see it
manifesting itself in you. You are `the secretaries of God's
praise,' as George Herbert has it. He dwells in your hearts that
out of your lives He may be revealed. The pictures in a book of
travels, or the diagrams in a mathematical work, tell a great deal
more in half a dozen lines than can be put into as many pages of
dry words. And it is not books of theology nor eloquent sermons,
but it is a Church glowing with the glory of God, and manifestly
all flushed with His light and majesty, that will have power to
draw men to believe in the God whom it reveals. When explorers
land upon some untravelled island and meet the gentle inhabitants
with armlets of rough gold upon their wrists, they say there must
be many a gold-bearing rock of quartz crystal in the interior of
the land. And if you present yourselves, Christian men and women,
to the world with the likeness of your Master plain upon you, then
people will believe in the Christianity that you profess. You have
to popularise the Gospel in the fashion in which go-betweens and
middlemen between students and the populace popularise science.
You have to make it possible for men to believe in the Christ
because they see Christ in you. `Know ye not that ye are the
temples of the living God?' Let His light shine from you.

III. I remark again that as temples all Christian lives should be
places of sacrifice.

What is the use of a temple without worship? And what kind of
worship is that in which the centre point is not an altar? That is
the sort of temple that a great many professing Christians are. They
have forgotten the altar in their spiritual architecture. Have you
got one in your heart? It is but a poor, half-furnished sanctuary
that has not. Where is yours? The key and the secret of all noble
life is to yield up one's own will, to sacrifice oneself. There
never was anything done in this world worth doing, and there never
will be till the end of time, of which sacrifice is not the centre
and inspiration. And the difference between all other and lesser
nobilities of life, and the supreme beauty of a true Christian life
is that the sacrifice of the Christian is properly a
\textit{sacrifice}---that is, an offering to \emph{God}, done for
the sake of the great love wherewith He has loved us. As Christ is
the one true Temple, and we become so by partaking of Him, so He is
the one Sacrifice for sins for ever, and we become sacrifices only
through Him. If there be any lesson which comes out of this great
truth of Christians as temples, it is not a lesson of pluming
ourselves on our dignity, or losing ourselves in the mysticisms
which lie near this truth, but it is the hard lesson---If a temple,
then an altar; if an altar, then a sacrifice. `Ye are built up a
spiritual house, a holy priesthood, that ye may offer spiritual
sacrifices, acceptable to God'---sacrifice, priest, temple, all in
one; and all for the sake and by the might of that dear Lord who has
given Himself a bleeding Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world,
that we might offer a Eucharistic sacrifice of thanks and praise and
self-surrender unto Him, and to His Father God.

IV. And, lastly, this great truth of my text enforces the solemn
lesson of the necessary sanctity of the Christian life.

`The temple of God,' says the context, `the temple of God is holy,
which (holy persons) ye are.' The plain first idea of the temple
is a place set apart and consecrated to God.

Hence, of course, follows the idea of purity, but the parent idea
of `holiness' is not purity, which is the consequence, but
consecration or separation to God, which is the root.

And so in very various applications, on which I have not time to
dwell now, this idea of the necessary sanctity of the Temple is
put forth in these two letters to the Corinthian Church. Corinth
was a city honeycombed with the grossest immoralities; and hence,
perhaps, to some extent the great emphasis and earnestness and
even severity of the Apostle in dealing with some forms of evil.

But without dwelling on the details, let me just point you to
three directions in which this general notion of sanctity is
applied. There is that of our context here `Know ye not that ye
are the temple of God? If any man \textit{destroy} the temple of
God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, and
such ye are.'

He is thinking here mainly, I suppose, about the devastation and
destruction of this temple of God, which was caused by
schismatical and heretical teaching, and by the habit of forming
parties, `one of Paul, one of Apollos, one of Cephas, one of
Christ,' which was rending that Corinthian Church into pieces. But
we may apply it more widely than that, and say that anything which
corrupts and defiles the Christian life and the Christian
character assumes a darker tint of evil when we think that it is
sacrilege---the profanation of the temple, the pollution of that
which ought to be pure as He who dwells in it.

Christian men and women, how that thought darkens the blackness of
all sin! How solemnly there peals out the warning, `If any man
destroy or impair the temple,' by any form of pollution, `him'
with retribution in kind, `him shall God destroy.' Keep the temple
clear; keep it clean. Let Him come with His scourge of small cords
and His merciful rebuke. You Manchester men know what it is to let
the money-changers into the sanctuary. Beware lest, beginning with
making your hearts `houses of merchandise,' you should end by
making them `dens of thieves.'

And then, still further, there is another application of this same
principle, in the second of these Epistles. `What agreement hath
the temple of God with idols?' `Ye are the temple of the living
God.'

Christianity is intolerant. There is to be one image in the
shrine. One of the old Roman Stoic Emperors had a pantheon in his
palace with Jesus Christ upon one pedestal and Plato on the one
beside Him. And some of us are trying the same kind of thing.
Christ there, and somebody else here. Remember, Christ must be
everything or nothing! Stars may be sown by millions, but for the
earth there is one sun. And you and I are to shrine one dear
Guest, and one only, in the inmost recesses of our hearts.

And there is another application of this metaphor also in our
letter. `Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost which is in you?' Christianity despises `the flesh';
Christianity reverences the body; and would teach us all that,
being robed in that most wonderful work of God's hands, which
becomes a shrine for God Himself if He dwell in our hearts, all
purity, all chastisement and subjugation of animal passion is our
duty. Drunkenness, and gluttony, lusts of every kind, impurity of
conduct, and impurity of word and look and thought, all these
assume a still darker tint when they are thought of as not only
crimes against the physical constitution and the moral law of
humanity, but insults flung in the face of the God that would
inhabit the shrine.

And in regard to sins of this kind, which it is so difficult to
speak of in public, and which grow unchecked in secrecy, and are
ruining hundreds of young lives, the words of this context are
grimly true, `If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God
destroy.' I speak now mainly in brotherly or fatherly warning to
young men---did you ever read this, `His bones are full of the
iniquities of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the
dust'? `Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?'

And so, brethren, our text tells us what we may all be. There is
no heart without its deity. Alas! alas! for the many listening to
me now whose spirits are like some of those Egyptian temples,
which had in the inmost shrine a coiled-up serpent, the mummy of a
monkey, or some other form as animal and obscene.

Oh! turn to Christ and cry, `Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou
and the ark of Thy strength.' Open your hearts and let Christ come
in. And before Him, as of old, the bestial Dagon will be found,
dejected and truncated, lying on the sill there; and all the vain,
cruel, lustful gods that have held riot and carnival in your
hearts will flee away into the darkness, like some foul ghosts at
cock-crow. `If any man hear My voice and open the door I will come
in.' And the glory of the Lord shall fill the house.

\chapter{Death, The Friend}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS iii. 21, 22}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`... All things are yours ... death.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} iii. 21,
22.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

What Jesus Christ is to a man settles what everything else is to
Him. Our relation to Jesus determines our relation to the
universe. If we belong to Him, everything belongs to us. If we are
His servants, all things are our servants. The household of Jesus,
which is the whole Creation, is not divided against itself, and
the fellow-servants do not beat one another. Two bodies moving in
the same direction, and under the impulse of the same force,
cannot come into collision, and since `all things work together,'
according to the counsel of His will, `all things work together
for good' to His lovers. The triumphant words of my text are no
piece of empty rhetoric, but the plain result of two
facts---Christ's rule and the Christian's submission. `All things
are yours, and ye are Christ's,' so the stars in their courses
fight against those who fight against Him, and if we are at peace
with Him we shall `make a league with the beasts of the field, and
the stones of the field,' which otherwise would be hindrances and
stumbling-blocks, `shall be at peace with' us.

The Apostle carries his confidence in the subservience of all
things to Christ's servants very far, and the words of my text, in
which he dares to suggest that `the Shadow feared of man' is,
after all, a veiled friend, are hard to believe, when we are
brought face to face with death, either when we meditate on our
own end, or when our hearts are sore and our hands are empty. Then
the question comes, and often is asked with tears of blood, Is it
true that this awful force, which we cannot command, does indeed
serve us? Did it serve those whom it dragged from our sides; and
in serving them, did it serve us? Paul rings out his `Yes'; and if
we have as firm a hold of Paul's Lord as Paul had, our answer will
be the same. Let me, then, deal with this great thought that lies
here, of the conversion of the last enemy into a friend, the
assurance that we may all have that death is ours, though not in
the sense that we can command it, yet in the sense that it
ministers to our highest good.

That thought may be true about ourselves when it comes to our turn
to die, and, thank God, has been true about all those who have
departed in His faith and fear. Some of you may have seen two very
striking engravings by a great, though somewhat unknown artist,
representing Death as the Destroyer, and Death as the Friend. In
the one case he comes into a scene of wild revelry, and there at
his feet lie, stark and stiff, corpses in their gay clothing and
with garlands on their brows, and feasters and musicians are
flying in terror from the cowled Skeleton. In the other he comes
into a quiet church belfry, where an aged saint sits with folded
arms and closed eyes, and an open Bible by his side, and endless
peace upon the wearied face. The window is flung wide to the
sunrise, and on its sill perches a bird that gives forth its
morning song. The cowled figure has brought rest to the weary, and
the glad dawning of a new life to the aged, and is a friend. The
two pictures are better than all the poor words that I can say. It
depends on the people to whom he comes, whether he comes as a
destroyer or as a helper. Of course, for all of us the mere
physical facts remain the same, the pangs and the pain, the slow
torture of the loosing of the bond, or the sharp agony of its
instantaneous rending apart. But we have gone but a very little
way into life and its experiences, if we have not learnt that
identity of circumstances may cover profound difference of
essentials, and that the same experiences may have wholly
different messages and meanings to two people who are equally
implicated in them. Thus, while the physical fact remains the same
for all, the whole bearing of it may so differ that Death to one
man will be a Destroyer, while to another it is a Friend.

For, if we come to analyse the thoughts of humanity about the last
act in human life on earth, what is it that makes the dread
darkness of death, which all men know, though they so seldom think
of it? I suppose, first of all, if we seek to question our
feelings, that which makes Death a foe to the ordinary experience
is, that it is like a step off the edge of a precipice in a fog; a
step into a dim condition of which the imagination can form no
conception, because it has no experience, and all imagination's
pictures are painted with pigments drawn from our past. Because it
is impossible for a man to have any clear vision of what it is
that is coming to meet him, and he cannot tell `in that sleep what
dreams may come,' he shrinks, as we all shrink, from a step into
the vast Inane, the dim Unknown. But the Gospel comes and says,
`It \textit{is} a land of great darkness,' but `To the people that
sit in darkness a great light hath shined.'

\begin{verse}
`Our knowledge of that life is small, \\
 The eye of faith is dim.'
\end{verse}

\noindent But faith has an eye, and there is light, and this we
can see---One face whose brightness scatters all the gloom, One
Person who has not ceased to be the Sun of Righteousness with
healing in His beams, even in the darkness of the grave.
Therefore, one at least of the repellent features which, to the
timorous heart, makes Death a foe, is gone, when we know that the
known Christ fills the Unknown.

Then, again, another of the elements, as I suppose, which
constitute the hostile aspect that Death assumes to most of us, is
that it apparently hales us away from all the wholesome activities
and occupations of life, and bans us into a state of apparent
inaction. The thought that death is rest does sometimes attract
the weary or harassed, or they fancy it does, but that is a morbid
feeling, and much more common in sentimental epitaphs than among
the usual thoughts of men. To most of us there is no joy, but a
chill, in the anticipation that all the forms of activity which
have so occupied, and often enriched, our lives here, are to be
cut off at once. `What am I to do if I have no books?' says the
student. `What am I to do if I have no mill?' says the spinner.
`What am I to do if I have no nursery or kitchen?' say the women.
What are you to do? There is only one quieting answer to such
questions. It tells us that what we are doing here is learning our
trade, and that we are to be moved into another workshop there, to
practise it. Nothing can bereave us of the force we made our own,
being here; and `there is nobler work for us to do' when the
Master of all the servants stoops from His Throne and says: `Thou
hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over
many things; have thou authority over ten cities.' Then the
faithfulness of the steward will be exchanged for the authority of
the ruler, and the toil of the servant for a share in the joy of
the Lord.

So another of the elements which make Death an enemy is turned
into an element which makes it a friend, and instead of the
separation from this earthly body, the organ of our activity and
the medium of our connection with the external universe being the
condemnation of the naked spirit to inaction, it is the
emancipation of the spirit into greater activity. For nothing
drops away at death that does not make a man the richer for its
loss, and when the dross is purged from the silver, there remains
`a vessel unto honour, fit for the Master's use.' This mightier
activity is the contribution to our blessedness, which Death makes
to them who use their activities here in Christ's service.

Then, still further, another of the elements which is converted
from being a terror into a joy is that Death, the separator,
becomes to Christ's servants Death, the uniter. We all know how
that function of death is perhaps the one that makes us shrink
from it the most, dread it the most, and sometimes hate it the
most. But it will be with us as it was with those who were to be
initiated into ancient religious rites. Blindfolded, they were led
by a hand that grasped theirs but was not seen, through dark,
narrow, devious passages, but they were led into a great company
in a mighty hall. Seen from this side, the ministry of Death parts
a man from dear ones, but, oh! if we could see round the turn in
the corridor, we should see that the solitude is but for a moment,
and that the true office of Death is not so much to part from
those beloved on earth as to carry to, and unite with, Him that is
best Beloved in the heavens, and in Him with all His saints. They
that are joined to Christ, as they who pass from earth are joined,
are thereby joined to all who, in like manner, are knit to Him.
Although other dear bonds are loosed by the bony fingers of the
Skeleton, his very loosing of them ties more closely the bond that
unites us to Jesus, and when the dull ear of the dying has ceased
to hear the voices of earth that used to thrill it in their lowest
whisper, I suppose it hears another Voice that says: `When thou
passest through the fire I will be with thee, and through the
waters they shall not overflow thee.' Thus the Separator unites,
first to Jesus, and then to `the general assembly and Church of
the first-born,' and leads into the city of the living God, the
pilgrims who long have lived, often isolated, in the desert.

There is a last element in Death which is changed for the
Christian, and that is that to men generally, when they think
about it, there is an instinctive recoil from Death, because there
is an instinctive suspicion that after Death is the Judgment, and
that, somehow or other---never mind about the drapery in which the
idea may be embodied for our weakness---when a man dies he passes
to a state where he will reap the consequences of what he has sown
here. But to Christ's servant that last thought is robbed of its
sting, and all the poison sucked out of it, for he can say: `He
that died for me makes it possible for me to die undreading, and
to pass thither, knowing that I shall meet as my Judge Him whom I
have trusted as my Saviour, and so may have boldness before Him in
the Day of Judgment.'

Knit these four contrasts together. Death as a step into a dim
unknown \textit{versus} Death as a step into a region lighted by
Jesus; Death as the cessation of activity \textit{versus} Death as
the introduction to nobler opportunities, and the endowment with
nobler capacities of service; Death as the separator and isolator
\textit{versus} Death as uniting to Jesus and all His lovers;
Death as haling us to the judgment-seat of the adversary
\textit{versus} Death as bringing us to the tribunal of the
Christ; and I think we can understand how Christians can venture
to say, `All things are ours, whether life or death' which leads
to a better life.

And now let me add one word more. All this that I have been
saying, and all the blessed strength for ourselves and calming in
our sorrows which result therefrom, stand or fall with the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is nothing else that makes
these things certain. There are, of course, instincts,
peradventures, hopes, fears, doubts. But in this region, and in
regard to all this cycle of truths, the same thing applies which
applies round the whole horizon of Christian Revelation---if you
want not speculations but certainties, you have to go to Jesus
Christ for them. There were many men who thought that there were
islands of the sea beyond the setting sun that dyed the western
waves, but Columbus went and came back again, and brought their
products---and then the thought became a fact. Unless you believe
that Jesus Christ has come back from `the bourne from which no
traveller returns,' and has come laden with the gifts of `happy
isles of Eden' far beyond the sea, there is no certitude upon
which a dying man can lay his head, or by which a bleeding heart
can be staunched. But when He draws near, alive from the dead, and
says to us, as He did to the disciples on the evening of the day
of Resurrection, `Peace be unto you,' and shows us His hands and
His side, then we do not only speculate or think a future life
possible or probable, or hesitate to deny it, or hope or fear, as
the case may be, but we \textit{know}, and we can say: `All things
are ours ... death' amongst others. The fact that Jesus Christ has
died changes the whole aspect of death to His servant, inasmuch as
in that great solitude he has a companion, and in the valley of
the shadow of death sees footsteps that tell him of One that went
before.

Nor need I do more than remind you how the manner of our Lord's
death shows that He is Lord not only of the dead but of the Death
that makes them dead. For His own tremendous assertion, `I have
power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again,' was
confirmed by His attitude and His words at the last, as is hinted
at by the very expressions with which the Evangelists record the
fact of His death: `He yielded up His spirit,' `He gave up the
ghost,' `He breathed out His life.' It is confirmed to us by such
words as those remarkable ones of the Apocalypse, which speak of
Him as `the Living One,' who, by His own will, `became dead.' He
died because He would, and He would die because He loved you and
me. And in dying, He showed Himself to be, not the Victim, but the
Conqueror, of the Death to which He submitted. The Jewish king on
the fatal field of Gilboa called his sword-bearer, and the servant
came, and Saul bade him smite, and when his trembling hand shrank
from such an act, the king fell on his own sword. The Lord of life
and death summoned His servant Death, and He came obedient, but
Jesus died not by Death's stroke, but by His own act. So that Lord
of Death, who died because He would, is the Lord who has the keys
of death and the grave. In regard to one servant He says, `I will
that he tarry till I come,' and that man lives through a century,
and in regard to another He says, `Follow thou Me,' and that man
dies on a cross. The dying Lord is Lord of Death, and the living
Lord is for us all the Prince of Life.

Brethren, we have to take His yoke upon us by the act of faith
which leads to a love that issues in an obedience which will
become more and more complete, as we become more fully Christ's.
Then death will be ours, for then we shall count that the highest
good for us will be fuller union with, a fuller possession of, and
a completer conformity to, Jesus Christ our King, and that
whatever brings us these, even though it brings also pain and
sorrow and much from which we shrink, is all on our side. It is
possible---may it be so with each of us!---that for us Death may
be, not an enemy that bans us into darkness and inactivity, or
hales us to a judgment-seat, but the Angel who wakes us, at whose
touch the chains fall off, and who leads us through `the iron gate
that opens of its own accord,' and brings us into the City.

\chapter{Servants and Lords}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS iii. 21--23}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`All things are yours; 22.\ Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas,
or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to
come; all are yours; 23.\ And ye are Christ's.'---1 \textsc{Cor.}
iii. 21--23.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The Corinthian Christians seem to have carried into the Church
some of the worst vices of Greek---and English---political life.
They were split up into wrangling factions, each swearing by the
name of some person. Paul was the battle-cry of one set; Apollos
of another. Paul and Apollos were very good friends, their
admirers bitter foes---according to a very common experience. The
springs lie close together up in the hills, the rivers may be
parted by half a continent.

These feuds were all the more detestable to the Apostle because
his name was dragged into them; and so he sets himself, in the
first part of this letter, with all his might, to shame and to
argue the Corinthian Christians out of their wrangling. This great
text is one of the considerations which he adduces with that
purpose. In effect he says, `To pin your faith to any one teacher
is a wilful narrowing of the sources of your blessing and your
wisdom. You say you are Paul's men. Has Apollos got nothing that
he could teach you? and may you not get any good out of brave
brother Cephas? Take them all; they were all meant for your good.
Let no man glory in individuals.'

That is all that his argument required him to say. But in his
impetuous way he goes on into regions far beyond. His thought,
like some swiftly revolving wheel, catches fire of its own rapid
motion; and he blazes up into this triumphant enumeration of all
the things that serve the soul which serves Jesus Christ. `You are
lords of men, of the world of time, of death, of eternity; but you
are not lords of yourselves. You belong to Jesus, and in the
measure in which you belong to Him do all things belong to you.'

I. I think, then, that I shall best bring out the fulness of these
words by simply following them as they lie before us, and asking
you to consider, first, how Christ's servants are men's lords.

`All things are yours, Paul, Apollos, Cephas.' These three
teachers were all lights kindled at the central Light, and
therefore shining. They were fragments of His wisdom, of Him that
spoke; varying, but yet harmonious, and mutually complementary
aspects of the one infinite Truth had been committed to them. Each
was but a part of the mighty whole, a little segment of the circle

\begin{verse}
`They are but broken lights of Thee, \\
 And Thou, O Lord! art more than they.'
\end{verse}

\noindent And in the measure, therefore, in which men adhere to
Christ, and have taken Him for theirs; in that measure are they
delivered from all undue dependence on, still more from all
slavish submission to, any single individual teacher or aspect of
truth. To have Christ for ours, and to be His, which are only the
opposite sides of the same thing, mean, in brief, to take Jesus
Christ for the source of all knowledge of moral and religious
truth. His Word is the Christian's creed, His Person and the
truths that lie in Him, are the fountains of all our knowledge of
God and man. To be Christ's is to take Him as the master who has
absolute authority over conduct and practice. His commandment is
the Christian's duty; His pattern the Christian's all-sufficient
example; His smile the Christian's reward. To be Christ's is to
take Him for the home of our hearts, in whose gracious and sweet
love we find all sufficiency and a rest for our seeking
affections. And so, if ye are His, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, all men
are yours; in the sense that you are delivered from all undue
dependence upon them; and in the sense that they subserve your
highest good.

So the true democracy of Christianity, which abjures swearing by
the words of any teacher, is simply the result of loyal adherence
to the teaching of Jesus Christ. And that proud independence which
some of you seek to cultivate, and on the strength of which you
declare that no man is your master upon earth, is an unwholesome
and dangerous independence, unless it be conjoined with the bowing
down of the whole nature, in loyal submission, to the absolute
authority of the only lips that ever spoke truth, truth only, and
truth always. If Christ be our Master, if we take our creed from
Him, if we accept His words and His revelation of the Father as
our faith and our objective religion, then all the slavery to
favourite names, all the taking of truth second-hand from the lips
that we honour, all the partisanship for one against another which
has been the shame and the ruin of the Christian Church, and is
working untold mischiefs in it to-day, are ended at once. `One is
your Master, even Christ.' `Call no man Rabbi! upon earth; but bow
before Him, the Incarnate and the Personal Truth.'

And in like manner they who are Christ's are delivered from all
temptations to make men's maxims and practices and approbation the
law of their conduct. Society presses upon each of us; what we
call public opinion, which is generally the clatter of the
half-dozen people that happen to stand nearest us, rules us; and
it needs to be said very emphatically to all Christian men and
women---Take your law of conduct from His lips, and from nobody
else's.

`They say. What say they? Let them say.' If we take Christ's
commandment for our absolute law, and Christ's approbation for our
highest aim and all-sufficient reward, we shall then be able to
brush aside other maxims and other people's opinions of us, safely
and humbly, and to say, `With me it is a very small matter to be
judged of you, or of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the
Lord.'

The envoy of some foreign power cares very little what the
inhabitants of the land to which he is ambassador may think of him
and his doings; it is his sovereign's good opinion that he seeks
to secure. The soldier's reward is his commander's praise, the
slave's joy is the master's smile, and for us it ought to be the
law of our lives, and in the measure in which we really belong to
Christ it will be the law of our lives, that `we labour that,
whether present or absent, we may be pleasing to Him.'

So, brethren, as teachers, as patterns, as objects of love which
is only too apt to be exclusive and to master us, we can only take
one another in subordination to our supreme submission to Christ,
and if we are His, our duty, as our joy, is to count no man
necessary to our wellbeing, but to hang only on the one Man, whom
it is safe and blessed to believe utterly, to obey abjectly, and
to love with all our strength, because He is more than man, even
God manifest in the flesh.

II. And now let us pass to the next idea here, secondly, Christ's
servants are the lords of `the world.'

That phrase is used here, no doubt, as meaning the external
material universe. These creatures around us, they belong to us,
if we belong to Jesus Christ. That man owns the world who despises
it. There are plenty of rich men in Manchester who say they
possess so many thousand pounds. Turn the sentence about and it
would be a great deal truer---the thousands of pounds possess
them. They are the slaves of their own possessions, and every man
who counts any material thing as indispensable to his wellbeing,
and regards it as the chiefest good, is the slave-servant of that
thing. He owns the world who turns it to the highest use of
growing his soul by it. All material things are given, and, I was
going to say, were created, for the growth of men, or at all
events their highest purpose is that men should, by them, grow.
And therefore, as the scaffolding is swept away when the building
is finished, so God will sweep away this material universe with
all its wonders of beauty and of contrivance, when men have been
grown by means of it. The material is less than the soul, and he
is master of the world, and owns it, who has got thoughts out of
it, truth out of it, impulses out of it, visions of God out of it,
who has by it been led nearer to his divine Master. If I look out
upon a fair landscape, and the man who draws the rents of it is
standing by my side, and I suck more sweetness, and deeper
impulses, and larger and loftier thoughts out of it than he does,
it belongs to me far more than it does to him. The world is his
who from it has learned to despise it, to know himself and to know
God. He owns the world who uses it as the arena, or wrestling
ground, on which, by labour, he may gain strength, and in which he
may do service. Antagonism helps to develop muscle, and the best
use of the outward frame of things is that we shall take it as the
field upon which we can serve God.

And now all these three things---the contempt of earth, the use of
earth for growing souls, and the use of earth as the field of
service---all these things belong most truly to the man who
belongs to Christ. The world is His, and if we live near Him and
cultivate fellowship with Him, and see His face gleaming through
all the Material, and are led up nearer to Him by everything
around us, then we own the world and wring the sweetness to the
last drop out of it, though we may have but little of that outward
relation to its goods which short-sighted men call possessing
them. We may solve the paradox of those who, `having nothing, yet
have all,' if we belong to Christ the Lord of all things, and so
have co-possession with Him of all His riches.

III. Further, my text tells us, in the third place, that Christian
men, who belong to Jesus Christ, are the lords and masters of
`life and death.'

Both of these words are here used, as it seems to me, in their
simple, physical sense, natural life and natural death. You may
say, `Well, everybody is lord of life in that sense.' Yes, of
course, in a fashion we all possess it, seeing that we are all
alive. But that mysterious gift of personality, that awful gift of
conscious existence, only belongs, in the deepest sense, to the
men who belong to Jesus Christ. I do not call that man the owner
of his own life who is not the lord of his own spirit. I do not
see in what, except in the mere animal sense in which a fly, or a
spider, or a toad may be called the master of its life, that man
owns himself who has not given up himself to Jesus Christ. The
only way to get a real hold of yourselves is to yield yourselves
to Him who gives you back Himself, and yourself along with Him.
The true ownership of life depends upon self-control, and
self-control depends upon letting Jesus Christ govern us wholly.
So the measure in which it is true of me that `I live; yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me,' is the measure in which the lower life
of sense really belongs to us, and ministers to our highest good.

And then turn to the other member of this wonderful antithesis,
`whether life or \textit{death}.' Surely if there is anything over
which no man can become lord, except by sinfully taking his fate
into his own hands, it is death. And yet even death, in which we
seem to be abjectly passive, and by which so many of us are
dragged away reluctantly from everything that we care to possess,
may become a matter of consent and therefore a moral act. Animals
expire; a Christian man may yield his soul to his Saviour, who is
the Lord both of the dead and of the living. If thus we feel our
dependence upon Him, and yield up our lives to Him, and can say,
`Living or dying we are the Lord's,' then we may be quite sure
that death, too, will be our servant, and that our wills will be
concerned even in passing out of life.

Still more, if you and I, dear brethren, belong to Jesus Christ,
then death is our fellow-servant who comes to call us out of this
ill-lighted workshop into the presence of the King. And at His
magic cold touch, cares and toils and sorrows are stiffened into
silence, like noisy streams bound in white frost; and we are
lifted clean up out of all the hubbub and the toil into eternal
calm. Death is ours because it fulfils our deepest desires, and
comes as a messenger to paupers to tell them they have a great
estate. Death is ours if we be Christ's.

IV. And lastly, Christ's servants are the lords of time and
eternity, `things present or things to come.'

Our Apostle's division, in this catalogue of his, is rhetorical
rather than logical; and we need not seek to separate the first of
this final pair from others which we have already encountered in
our study of the words, but still we may draw a distinction. The
whole mass of `things present,' including not only that material
universe which we call the world, but all the events and
circumstances of our lives, over these we may exercise supreme
control. If we are bowing in humble submission to Jesus Christ,
they will all subserve our highest good. Every weather will be
right; night and day equally desirable; the darkness will be good
for eyes that have been tired of brightness and that need repose,
the light will be good. The howling tempests of winter and its
white snows, the sharp winds of spring and its bursting sunshine;
the calm steady heat of June and the mellowing days of August, all
serve to ripen the grain. And so all `things present,' the light
and the dark, the hopes fulfilled and the hopes disappointed, the
gains and the losses, the prayers answered and the prayers
unanswered, they will all be recognised, if we have the wisdom
that comes from submission to Jesus Christ's will, as being ours
and ministering to our highest blessing.

We shall be their lords too inasmuch as we shall be able to
control them. We need not be `anvils but hammers.' We need not let
outward circumstances dominate and tyrannise over us. We need not
be like the mosses in the stream, that lie whichever way the
current sets, nor like some poor little sailing boat that is at
the mercy of the winds and the waves, but may carry an inward
impulse like some great ocean-going steamer, the throb of whose
power shall drive us straight forward on our course, whatever
beats against us. That we may have this inward power and mastery
over things present, and not be shaped and moulded and made by
them, let us yield ourselves to Christ, and He will help us to
rule them.

And then, all `things to come,' the dim, vague future, shall be
for each of us like some sunlit ocean stretching shoreless to the
horizon; every little ripple flashing with its own bright
sunshine, and all bearing us onwards to the great Throne that
stands on the sea of glass mingled with fire.

Then, my brother, ask yourselves what your future is if you have
not Christ for your Friend.

\begin{verse}
`I backward cast mine eye \\
\ \ On prospects drear; \\
And forward though I cannot see, \\
\ \ I guess and fear.'
\end{verse}

\noindent So I beseech you, yield yourselves to Jesus Christ, He
died to win us. He bears our sins that they may be all forgiven.
If we give ourselves to Him who has given Himself to us, then we
shall be lords of men, of the world, of life and death, of time
and eternity.

In the old days conquerors used to bestow upon their followers
lands and broad dominions on condition of their doing suit and
service, and bringing homage to them. Christ, the King of the
universe, makes His subjects kings, and will give us to share in
His dominion, so that to each of us may be fulfilled that
boundless and almost unbelievable promise: `He that overcometh
shall inherit all things.' `All are yours if ye are Christ's.'

\chapter{The Three Tribunals}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of
you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. 4. For
I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified; but he
that judgeth me is the Lord.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} iv. 3, 4.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The Church at Corinth was honeycombed by the characteristic Greek
vice of party spirit. The three great teachers, Paul, Peter,
Apollos, were pitted against each other, and each was unduly
exalted by those who swore by him, and unduly depreciated by the
other two factions. But the men whose names were the war-cries of
these sections were themselves knit in closest friendship, and
felt themselves to be servants in common of one Master, and
fellow-workers in one task.

So Paul, in the immediate context, associating Peter and Apollos
with himself, bids the Corinthians think of `\textit{us}' as being
servants of Christ, and not therefore responsible to men; and as
stewards of the mysteries of God, that is, dispensers of truths
long hidden but now revealed, and as therefore accountable for
correct accounts and faithful dispensation only to the Lord of the
household. Being responsible to Him, they heeded very little what
others thought about them. Being responsible to Him, they could
not accept vindication by their own consciences as being final.
There was a judgment beyond these.

So here we have three tribunals---that of man's estimates, that of
our own consciences, that of Jesus Christ. An appeal lies from the
first to the second, and from the second to the third. It is base
to depend on men's judgments; it is well to attend to the
decisions of conscience, but it is not well to take it for granted
that, if conscience approve, we are absolved. The court of final
appeal is Jesus Christ, and what He thinks about each of us. So
let us look briefly at these three tribunals.

I. First, the lowest---men's judgment.

`With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you,'
enlightened Christians that you are, or by the outside world. Now,
Paul's letters give ample evidence that he was keenly alive to the
hostile and malevolent criticisms and slanders of his untiring
opponents. Many a flash of sarcasm out of the cloud like a
lightning bolt, many a burst of wounded affection like rain from
summer skies, tell us this. But I need not quote these. Such a
character as his could not but be quick to feel the surrounding
atmosphere, whether it was of love or of suspicion. So, he had to
harden himself against what naturally had a great effect upon him,
the estimate which he felt that people round him were making of
him. There was nothing brusque, rough, contemptuous in his
brushing aside these popular judgments. He gave them all due
weight, and yet he felt, `From all that this lowest tribunal may
decide, there are two appeals, one to my own conscience, and one
to my Master in heaven.'

Now, I suppose I need not say a word about the power which that
terrible court which is always sitting, and which passes judgment
upon every one of us, though we do not always hear the sentences
read, has upon us all. There is a power which it is meant to have.
It is not good for a man to stand constantly in the attitude of
defying whatever anybody else chooses to say or to think about
him. But the danger to which we are all exposed, far more than
that other extreme, is of deferring too completely and slavishly
to, and being far too subtly influenced in all that we do by, the
thought of what A, B, or C, may have to say or to think about it.
`The last infirmity of noble minds,' says Milton about the love of
fame. It is an infirmity to love it, and long for it, and live by
it. It is a weakening of humanity, even where men are spurred to
great efforts by the thought of the reverberation of these in the
ear of the world, and of the honour and glory that may come
therefrom.

But not only in these higher forms of seeking after reputation,
but in lower forms, this trembling before, and seeking to
conciliate, the tribunal of what we call `general opinion,' which
means the voices of the half-dozen people that are beside us and
know about us, besets us all, and weakens us all in a thousand
ways. How many men would lose all the motive that they have for
living reputable lives, if nobody knew anything about it? How many
of you, when you go to London, and are strangers, frequent places
that you would not be seen in in Manchester? How many of us are
hindered, in courses which we know that we ought to pursue,
because we are afraid of this or that man or woman, and of what
they may look or speak? There is a regard to man's judgment, which
is separated by the very thinnest partition from hypocrisy. There
is a very shadowy distinction between the man who, consciously or
unconsciously, does a thing with an eye to what people may say
about it, and the man who pretends to be what he is not for the
sake of the reputation that he may thereby win.

Now, the direct tendency of Christian faith and principle is to
dwindle into wholesome insignificance the multitudinous voice of
men's judgments. For, if I understand at all what Christianity
means, it means centrally and essentially this, that I am brought
into loving personal relation with Jesus Christ, and draw from Him
the power of my life, and from Him the law of my life, and from
Him the stimulus of my life, and from Him the reward of my life.
If there is a direct communication between me and Him, and if I am
deriving from Him the life that He gives, which is `free from the
law of sin and death,' I shall have little need or desire to heed
the judgment that men, who see only the surface, may pass upon me,
and upon my doings, and I shall refer myself to Him instead of to
them. Those who can go straight to Christ, whose lives are steeped
in Him, who feel that they draw all from Him, and that their
actions and character are moulded by His touch and His Spirit, are
responsible to no other tribunal. And the less they think about
what men have to say of them the stronger, the nobler, the more
Christ-like they will be.

There is no need for any contempt or roughness to blend with such
a putting aside of men's judgments. The velvet glove may be worn
upon the iron hand. All meekness and lowliness may go with this
wholesome independence, and must go with it unless that
independence is false and distorted. `With me it is a very small
thing to be judged of you, or of man's judgment,' need not be said
in such a tone as to mean `I do not care a rush what you think
about me'; but it must be said in such a tone as to mean `I care
supremely for one approbation, and if I have that I can bear
anything besides.'

Let me appeal to you to cultivate more distinctly, as a plain
Christian duty, this wholesome independence of men's judgment. I
suppose there never was a day when it was more needed that men
should be themselves, seeing with their own eyes what God may
reveal to them and they are capable of receiving, and walking with
their own feet on the path that fits them, whatsoever other people
may say about it. For the multiplication of daily literature, the
way in which we are all living in glass houses
nowadays---everybody knowing everything about everybody else, and
delighting in the gossip which takes the place of literature in so
many quarters---and the tendency of society to a more democratic
form give the many-headed monster and its many tongues far more
power than is wholesome, in the shaping of the lives and character
and conduct of most men. The evil of democracy is that it levels
down all to one plane, and that it tends to turn out millions of
people, as like each other as if they had been made in a machine.
And so we need, I believe, even more than our fathers did, to lay
to heart this lesson, that the direct result of a deep and strong
Christian faith is the production of intensely individual
character. And if there are plenty of angles in it, perhaps so
much the better. We are apt to be rounded by being rubbed against
each other, like the stones on the beach, till there is not a
sharp corner or a point that can prick anywhere. So society
becomes utterly monotonous, and is insipid and profitless because
of that. You Christian people, be yourselves, after your own
pattern. And whilst you accept all help from surrounding
suggestions and hints, make it `a very small thing that you be
judged of men.' And you, young men, in warehouses and shops, and
you, students, and you, boys and girls, that are budding into
life, never mind what other people say. `Let thine eyes look right
onwards,' and let all the clatter on either side of you go on as
it will. The voices are very loud, but if we go up high enough on
the hill-top, to the secret place of the Most High, we shall look
down and see, but not hear, the bustle and the buzz; and in the
great silence Christ will whisper to us, `Well done! good and
faithful servant.' That praise is worth getting, and one way to
get it is to put aside the hindrance of anxious seeking to
conciliate the good opinion of men.

II. Note the higher court of conscience.

Our Apostle is not to be taken here as contradicting what he says
in other places. `I judge not mine own self,'---yet in one of
these same letters to the Corinthians he says, `If we judged
ourselves we should not be judged.' So that he does not mean here
that he is entirely without any estimate of his own character or
actions. That he did in some sense judge himself is evident from
the next clause, because he goes on to say, `I know nothing
against myself.' If he acquitted himself, he must previously have
been judging himself. But his acquittal of himself is not to be
understood as if it covered the whole ground of his life and
character, but it is to be confined to the subject in hand---viz.
his faithfulness as a steward of the mysteries of God. But though
there is nothing in that region of his life which he can charge
against himself as unfaithfulness, he goes on to say, `Yet am I
not hereby justified?'

Our absolution by conscience is not infallible. I suppose that
conscience is more reliable when it condemns than when it acquits.
It is never safe for a man to neglect it when it says, `You are
wrong!' It is just as unsafe for a man to accept it, without
further investigation, when it says, `You are right!' For the only
thing that is infallible about what we call conscience is its
sentence, `It is right to do right.' But when it proceeds to say
`This, that, and the other thing is right; and therefore it is
right for you to do it,' there may be errors in the judgment, as
everybody's own experience tells them. The inward judge needs to
be stimulated, to be enlightened, to be corrected often. I suppose
that the growth of Christian character is very largely the
discovery that things that we thought innocent are not, for us, so
innocent as we thought them.

You only need to go back to history, or to go down into your own
histories, to see how, as light has increased, dark corners have
been revealed that were invisible in the less brilliant
illumination. How long it has taken the Christian Church to find
out what Christ's Gospel teaches about slavery, about the
relations of sex, about drunkenness, about war, about a hundred
other things that you and I do not yet know, but which our
successors will wonder that we failed to see! Inquisitor and
martyr have equally said, `We are serving God.' Surely, too,
nothing is more clearly witnessed by individual experience, than
that we may do a wrong thing, and think that it is right. `They
that kill you will think that they do God service.'

So, Christian people, accept the inward monition when it is stern
and prohibitive. Do not be too sure about it when it is placable
and permissive. `Happy is he that condemneth not himself in the
thing which he alloweth.' There may be secret faults, lying all
unseen beneath the undergrowth in the forest, which yet do prick
and sting. The upper floors of the house where we receive company,
and where we, the tenants, generally live, may be luxurious, and
sweet, and clean. What about the cellars, where ugly things crawl
and swarm, and breed, and sting?

Ah, dear brethren! when my conscience says to me, `You may do it,'
it is always well to go to Jesus Christ, and say to Him `May I?'
`Search me, O God, and ... see if there be any wicked way in me,'
and show it to me, and help me to cast it out. `I know nothing
against myself; yet am I not hereby justified.'

III. Lastly, note the supreme court of final appeal.

`He that judgeth me is the Lord.' Now it is obvious that `the
Lord' here is Christ, both because of the preceding context and
because of the next verse, which speaks of His coming. And it is
equally obvious, though it is often unnoticed, that the judgment
of which the Apostle is here speaking is a present and preliminary
judgment. `He that \textit{judgeth} me'---not, `will judge,' but
\textit{now}, at this very moment. That is to say, whilst people
round us are passing their superficial estimates upon me, and
whilst my conscience is excusing, or else accusing me---and in
neither case with absolute infallibility---there is another
judgment, running concurrently with them, and going on in silence.
That calm eye is fixed upon me, and sifting me, and knowing me.
\textit{That} judgment is not fallible, because before Him `the
hidden things' that the darkness shelters, those creeping things
in the cellars that I was speaking about, are all manifest; and to
Him the `counsels of the heart,' that is, the motives from which
the actions flow, are all transparent and legible. So His
judgment, the continual estimate of me which Jesus Christ, in His
supreme knowledge of me, has, at every moment of my
life---\textit{that} is uttering the final word about me and my
character.

His estimate will dwindle the sentences of the other two tribunals
into nothingness. What matter what his fellow-servants say about
the steward's accounts, and distribution of provisions, and
management of the household? He has to render his books, and to
give account of his stewardship, only to his lord.

The governor of a Crown Colony may attach some importance to
colonial opinion, but he reports home; and it is what the people
in Downing Street will say that he thinks about. We have to report
home; and it is the King whom we serve, to whom we have to give an
account. The gladiator, down in the arena, did not much mind
whether the thumbs of the populace were up or down, though the one
was the signal for his life and the other for his death. He looked
to the place where, between the purple curtains and the flashing
axes of the lictors, the emperor sate. Our Emperor once was down
on the sand Himself, and although we are `compassed about with a
cloud of witnesses,' we look to the Christ, the supreme Arbiter,
and take acquittal or condemnation, life or death, from Him.

That judgment, persistent all through each of our lives, is
preliminary to the future tribunal and sentence. The Apostle
employs in this context two distinct words, both of which are
translated in our version `judge.' The one which is used in these
three clauses, on which I have been commenting, means a
preliminary examination, and the one which is used in the next
verse means a final decisive trial and sentence. So, dear
brethren, Christ is gathering materials for His final sentence;
and you and I are writing the depositions which will be adduced in
evidence. Oh! how little all that the world may have said about a
man will matter then! Think of a man standing before that great
white throne, and saying, `I held a very high place in the
estimation of my neighbours. The newspapers and the reviews blew
my trumpet assiduously. My name was carved upon the plinth of a
marble statue, that my fellow-citizens set up in honour of my many
virtues,'---and the name was illegible centuries before the statue
was burned in the last fire!

Brother! seek for the praise from Him, which is praise indeed. If He
says, `Well done, good and faithful servant,' it matters little what
censures men may pass on us. If He says, `I never knew you,' all
their praises will not avail. `Wherefore we labour that, whether
present or absent, we may be well-pleasing to Him.'

\chapter{The Festal Life}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS v. 8}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven ... but with
the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} v.
8.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There had been hideous immorality in the Corinthian Church. Paul
had struck at it with heat and force, sternly commanding the
exclusion of the sinner. He did so on the ground of the diabolical
power of infection possessed by evil, and illustrated that by the
very obvious metaphor of leaven, a morsel of which, as he says,
`will leaven the whole lump,' or, as we say, `batch.' But the word
`leaven' drew up from the depths of his memory a host of sacred
associations connected with the Jewish Passover. He remembered the
sedulous hunting in every Jewish house for every scrap of leavened
matter; the slaying of the Paschal Lamb, and the following feast.
Carried away by these associations, he forgets the sin in the
Corinthian Church for a moment, and turns to set forth, in the
words of the text, a very deep and penetrating view of what the
Christian life is, how it is sustained, and what it demands.
`Wherefore,' says he, `let us keep the feast ... with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.' That `wherefore' takes
us back to the words before it, And what are these? `Christ our
Passover is sacrificed for us'; therefore---because of that
sacrifice, to us is granted the power, and on us is laid
imperatively the obligation, to make life a festival and to purge
ourselves. Now, in the notion of a feast, there are two things
included---joy and plentiful sustenance. So there are three points
here, which I have already indicated---what the Christian life is,
a festival; on what it is sustained, the Paschal Sacrifice; what
it demands, scrupulous purging out of the old leaven.

I. The Christian life ought to be a continual festival.

The Christian life a feast? It is more usually represented as a
fight, a wrestle, a race; and such metaphors correspond, as it
would appear, far more closely to the facts of our environment,
and to the experiences of our hearts, than does such a metaphor as
this. But the metaphor of the festival goes deeper than that of
the fight or race, and it does not ignore the strenuous and
militant side of the Christian life. No man ever lived a more
strenuous life than Paul; no man had heavier tasks, and did them
more cheerily; no man had a sterner fight and fought it more
bravely. There is nothing soft, Epicurean, or oblivious of the
patent sad facts of humanity in the declaration that after all,
beneath all, above all, central to all, the Christian life is a
glad festival, when it is the life that it ought to be.

But you say, `Ah! it is all very well to call it so; but in the
first place, continual joy is impossible in the presence of the
difficulties, and often sadnesses, that meet us on our life's
path; and, in the second place, it is folly to tell us to pump up
emotions, or to ignore the occasions for much heaviness and sorrow
of heart.' True; but, still, it is possible to cultivate such a
temper as makes life habitually joyful. We can choose the aspect
under which we by preference and habitually regard our lives. All
emotion follows upon a preceding thought, or sensible experience,
and we can pick the objects of our thoughts, and determine what
aspect of our lives to look at most.

The sky is often piled with stormy, heaped-up masses of blackness,
but between them are lakes of calm blue. We can choose whether we
look at the clouds or at the blue. \textit{These} are in the lower
ranges; \textit{that} fills infinite spaces, upwards and out to
the horizon. These are transient, eating themselves away even
whilst we look, and black and thunderous as they may be, they are
there but for a moment---that is perennial. If we are wise, we
shall fix our gaze much rather on the blue than on the ugly
cloud-rack that hides it, and thus shall minister to ourselves
occasions for the noble kind of joy which is not noisy and
boisterous, `like the crackling of thorns under a pot,' and does
not foam itself away by its very ebullience, but is calm like the
grounds of it; still, like the heaven to which it looks; eternal,
like the God on whom it is fastened. If we would only steadfastly
remember that the one source of worthy and enduring joy is God
Himself, and listen to the command, `Rejoice in the Lord,' we
should find it possible to `rejoice always.' For that thought of
Him, His sufficiency, His nearness, His encompassing presence, His
prospering eye, His aiding hand, His gentle consolation, His
enabling help will take the sting out of even the bitterest of our
sorrows, and will brace us to sustain the heaviest, otherwise
crushing burdens, and greatly to `rejoice, though now for a season
we are in heaviness through manifold temptations.' The Gulf Stream
rushes into the northern hemisphere, melts the icebergs and warms
the Polar seas, and so the joy of the Lord, if we set it before us
as we can and should do, will minister to us a gladness which will
make our lives a perpetual feast.

But there is another thing that we can do; that is, we can clearly
recognise the occasions for sorrow in our experience, and yet
interpret them by the truths of the Christian faith. That is to
say, we can think of them, not so much as they tend to make us sad
or glad, but as they tend to make us more assured of our
possession of, more ardent in our love towards, and more
submissive in our attitude to, the all-ordering Love which is God.
Brethren, if we thought of life, and all its incidents, even when
these are darkest and most threatening, as being what it and they
indeed are, His training of us into capacity for fuller
blessedness, because fuller possession of Himself, we should be
less startled at the commandment, `Rejoice in the Lord always,'
and should feel that it was possible, though the figtree did not
blossom, and there was no fruit in the vine, though the flocks
were cut off from the pastures, and the herds from the stall, yet
to rejoice in the God of our salvation. Rightly understood and
pondered on, all the darkest passages of life are but like the
cloud whose blackness determines the brightness of the rainbow on
its front. Rightly understood and reflected on, these will teach
us that the paradoxical commandment, `Count it all joy that ye
fall into divers temptations,' is, after all, the voice of true
wisdom speaking at the dictation of a clear-eyed faith.

This text, since it is a commandment, implies that obedience to
it, and therefore the realisation of this continual festal aspect
of life, is very largely in our own power. Dispositions differ,
some of us are constitutionally inclined to look at the blacker,
and some at the brighter, side of our experiences. But our
Christianity is worth little unless it can modify, and to some
extent change, our natural tendencies. The joy of the Lord being
our strength, the cultivation of joy in the Lord is largely our
duty. Christian people do not sufficiently recognise that it is as
incumbent on them to seek after this continual fountain of calm
and heavenly joy flowing through their lives, as it is to
cultivate some of the more recognised virtues and graces of
Christian conduct and character.

Secondly, we have here---

II. The Christian life is a continual feeding on a sacrifice.

`Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Wherefore let us keep
the feast.' It is very remarkable that this is the only place in
Paul's writings where he articulately pronounces that the Paschal
Lamb is a type of Jesus Christ. There is only one other instance
in the New Testament where that is stated with equal clearness and
emphasis, and that is in John's account of the Crucifixion, where
he recognises the fact that Christ died with limbs unbroken, as
being a fulfilment, in the New Testament sense of that word, of
what was enjoined in regard to the antitype, `a bone of him shall
not be broken.'

But whilst the definite statement which precedes my text that
Christ is `our Passover,' and `sacrificed for us' as such, is
unique in Paul's writings, the thought to which it gives clear and
crystallised expression runs through the whole of the New
Testament. It underlies the Lord's Supper. Did you ever think of
how great was the self-assertion of Jesus Christ when He laid His
hand on that sacredest of Jewish rites, which had been
established, as the words of the institution of it say, to be `a
perpetual memorial through all generations,' brushed it on one
side, and in effect, said: `You do not need to remember the
Passover any more. I am the true Paschal Lamb, whose blood
sprinkled on the doorposts averts the sword of the destroying
Angel, whose flesh, partaken of, gives immortal life. Remember Me,
and this do in remembrance of Me.' The Lord's Supper witnesses
that Jesus thought Himself to be what Paul tells the Corinthians
that He is, even our Passover, sacrificed for us. But the point to
be observed is this, that just as in that ancient ritual, the lamb
slain became the food of the Israelites, so with us the Christ who
has died is to be the sustenance of our souls, and of our
Christian life. `Therefore let us keep the feast.'

Feed upon Him; that is the essential central requirement for all
Christian life, and what does feeding on Him mean? `How can this
man give us his flesh to eat?' said the Jews, and the answer is
plain now, though so obscure then. The flesh which He gave for the
life of the world in His death, must by us be taken for the very
nourishment of our souls, by the simple act of faith in Him. That
is the feeding which brings not only sustenance but life. Christ's
death for us is the basis, but it is only the basis, of Christ's
living in us, and His death for me is of no use at all to me
unless He that died for me lives in me. We feed on Him by faith,
which not only trusts to the Sacrifice as atoning for sin, but
feeds on it as communicating and sustaining eternal life---`Christ
our Passover is sacrificed for us, wherefore let us keep the
Feast.'

Again, we keep the feast when our minds feed upon Christ by
contemplation of what He is, what He has done, what He is doing,
what He will do; when we take Him as `the Master-light of all our
seeing,' and in Him, His words and works, His Passion,
Resurrection, Ascension, Session as Sovereign at the right hand of
God, find the perfect revelation of what God is, the perfect
discovery of what man is, the perfect disclosure of what sin is,
the perfect prophecy of what man may become, the Light of light,
the answer to every question that our spirits can put about the
loftiest verities of God and man, the universe and the future. We
feed on Christ when, with lowly submission, we habitually subject
thoughts, purposes, desires, to His authority, and when we let His
will flow into, and make plastic and supple, our wills. We nourish
our wills by submitting them to Jesus, and we feed on Him when we
not only say `Lord! Lord!' but when we do the things that He says.
We feed on Christ, when we let His great, sacred, all-wise,
all-giving, all satisfying love flow into our restless hearts and
make them still, enter into our vagrant affections and fix them on
Himself. Thus when mind and conscience and will and heart all turn
to Jesus, and in Him find their sustenance, we shall be filled
with the feast of fat things which He has prepared for all people.
With that bread we shall be satisfied, and with it only, for the
husks of the swine are no food for the Father's son, and we `spend
our money for that which is not bread, and our labour for that
which satisfieth not,' if we look anywhere else than to the
Paschal Lamb slain for us for the food of our souls.

III. The Christian life is a continual purging out of the old
leaven.

I need not remind you how vivid and profoundly significant that
emblem of leaven, as applied to all manner of evil, is. But let me
remind you how, just as in the Jewish Ritual, the cleansing from
all that was leavened was the essential pre-requisite to the
participation in the feast, feeding on Jesus Christ, as I have
tried to describe it, is absolutely impossible unless our leaven
is cleansed away. Children spoil their appetites for wholesome
food by eating sweetmeats. Men destroy their capacity for feeding
on Christ by hungry desires, and gluttonous satisfying of those
desires with the delusive sweets of this passing world. But, my
brother, your experience, if you are a Christian man at all, will
tell you that in the direct measure in which you have been drawn
away into paltering with evil, your appetite for Christ and your
capacity for gazing upon Him, contemplating Him, feeding on Him,
has died out. There comes a kind of constriction in a man's throat
when he is hungering after lesser good, especially when there is a
tinge of evil in the supposed good that he is hungering after,
which incapacitates Him from eating the bread of God, which is
Jesus Christ.

But let us remember that absolute cleansing from all sin is not
essential, in order to have real participation in Jesus Christ.
The Jew had to take every scrap of leaven out of his house before
he began the Passover. If that were the condition for us, alas!
for us all; but the effort after purity, though it has not
entirely attained its aim, is enough. Sin abhorred does not
prevent a man from participating in the Bread that came down from
heaven.

Then observe, too, that for this power to cleanse ourselves, we
must have had some participation in Christ, by which there is
given to us that new life that conquers evil. In the words
immediately preceding my text, the Apostle bases his injunction to
purge out the old leaven on the fact that `ye are unleavened.'
Ideally, in so far as the power possessed by them was concerned,
these Corinthians were unleavened, even whilst they were bid to
purge out the leaven. That is to say, be what you are; realise
your ideal, utilise the power you possess, and since by your faith
there has been given to you a new life that can conquer all
corruption and sin, see that you use the life that is given. Purge
out the old leaven because ye are unleavened.

One last word---this stringent exhortation, which makes Christian
effort after absolute purity a Christian duty, and the condition
of participation in the Paschal Lamb, is based upon that thought
to which I have already referred, of the diabolical power of
infection which Evil possesses. Either you must cast it out, or it
will choke the better thing in you. It spreads and grows, and
propagates itself, and works underground through and through the
whole mass. A water-weed got into some of our canals years ago,
and it has all but choked some of them. The slime on a pond
spreads its green mantle over the whole surface with rapidity. If
we do not eject Evil it will eject the good from us. Use the
implanted power to cast out this creeping, advancing evil.
Sometimes a wine-grower has gone into his cellars, and found in a
cask no wine, but a monstrous fungus into which all the wine had,
in the darkness, passed unnoticed. I fear some Christian people,
though they do not know it, have something like that going on in
them.

It is possible for us all to keep this perpetual festival. To live
in, on, for, Jesus Christ will give us victory over enemies,
burdens, sorrows, sins. We may, if we will, dwell in a calm zone
where no tempests rage, hear a perpetual strain of sweet music
persisting through thunder peals of sorrow and suffering, and find
a table spread for us in the presence of our enemies, at which we
shall renew our strength for conflict, and whence we shall rise to
fight the good fight a little longer, till we sit with Him at His
table in His Kingdom, and `eat, and live for ever.'

\chapter{Forms \textit{versus} Character}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS vii. 19; GALATIANS v. 6, vi. 16}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the
keeping of the commandments of God.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} vii. 19. \\
`For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor
uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.'---\textsc{Gal.}
v. 6. \\
`For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a
new creature.'---\textsc{Gal.} vi. 16 (R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The great controversy which embittered so much of Paul's life, and
marred so much of his activity, turned upon the question whether a
heathen man could come into the Church simply by the door of
faith, or whether he must also go through the gate of
circumcision. We all know how Paul answered the question. Time,
which settles all controversies, has settled that one so
thoroughly that it is impossible to revive any kind of interest in
it; and it may seem to be a pure waste of time to talk about it.
But the principles that fought then are eternal, though the forms
in which they manifest themselves vary with every varying age.

The Ritualist---using that word in its broadest sense---on the one
hand, and the Puritan on the other, represent permanent tendencies
of human nature; and we find to-day the old foes with new faces.
These three passages, which I have read, are Paul's deliverance on
the question of the comparative value of external rites and
spiritual character. They are remarkable both for the identity in
the former part of each and for the variety in the latter. In all
the three cases he affirms, almost in the same language, that
`circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,' that the
Ritualist's rite and the Puritan's protest are equally
insignificant in comparison with higher things. And then he varies
the statement of what the higher things are, in a very remarkable
and instructive fashion. The `keeping of the commandments of God,'
says one of the texts, is the all-important matter. Then, as it
were, he pierces deeper, and in another of the texts (I take the
liberty of varying their order) pronounces that `a new creature'
is the all-important thing. And then he pierces still deeper to
the bottom of all, in the third text, and says the all-important
thing is `faith which worketh by love.'

I think I shall best bring out the force of these words by dealing
first with that emphatic threefold proclamation of the nullity of
all externalism; and then with the singular variations in the
triple statement of what is essential, viz. spiritual conduct and
character.

I. First, the emphatic proclamation of the nullity of outward
rites.

`Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,' say two
texts. `Circumcision availeth nothing, and uncircumcision availeth
nothing,' says the other. It neither is anything nor does
anything. Did Paul say that because circumcision was a Jewish
rite? No. As I believe, he said it because it was \textit{a rite};
and because he had learned that the one thing needful was
spiritual character, and that no external ceremonial of any sort
could produce that. I think we are perfectly warranted in taking
this principle of my text, and in extending it beyond the limits
of the Jewish rite about which Paul was speaking. For if you
remember, he speaks about baptism, in the first chapter of the
First Epistle to the Corinthians, in a precisely similar tone and
for precisely the same reason, when he says, in effect, `I
baptized Crispus and Gaius and the household of Stephanas, and I
think these are all. I am not quite sure. I do not keep any kind
of record of such things; God did not send me to baptize, He sent
me to preach the Gospel.'

The thing that produced the spiritual result was not the rite, but
the truth, and therefore he felt that his function was to preach
the truth and leave the rite to be administered by others.
Therefore we can extend the principle here to all externalisms of
worship, in all forms, in all churches, and say that in comparison
with the essentials of an inward Christianity they are nothing and
they do nothing.

They have their value. As long as we are here on earth, living in
the flesh, we must have outward forms and symbolical rites. It is
in Heaven that the seer `saw no temple.' Our sense-bound nature
requires, and thankfully avails itself of, the help of external
rites and ceremonials to lift us up towards the Object of our
devotion. A man prays all the better if he bow his head, shut his
eyes, and bend his knees. Forms do help us to the realisation of
the realities, and the truths which they express and embody. Music
may waft our souls to the heavens, and pictures may stir deep
thoughts. That is the simple principle on which the value of all
external aids to devotion depends. They may be helps towards the
appreciation of divine truth, and to the suffusing of the heart
with devout emotions which may lead to building up a holy
character.

There is a worth, therefore---an auxiliary and subordinate
worth---in these things, and in that respect they are \textit{not}
nothing, nor do they `avail nothing.' But then all external rites
tend to usurp more than belongs to them, and in our weakness we
are apt to cleave to them, and instead of using them as means to
lift us higher, to stay in them, and as a great many of us do, to
mistake the mere gratification of taste and the excitement of the
sensibilities for worship. A bit of stained glass may be glowing
with angel-forms and pictured saints, but it always keeps some of
the light out, and it always hinders us from seeing through it.
And all external worship and form have so strong a tendency to
usurp more than belongs to them, and to drag us down to their own
level, even whilst we think that we are praying, that I believe
the wisest man will try to pare down the externals of his worship
to the lowest possible point. If there be as much body as will
keep a soul in, as much form as will embody the spirit, that is
all that we want. What is more is dangerous.

All form in worship is like fire, it is a good servant but it is a
bad master, and it needs to be kept very rigidly in subordination,
or else the spirituality of Christian worship vanishes before men
know; and they are left with their dead forms which are only
evils---crutches that make people limp by the very act of using
them.

Now, my dear friends, when that has happened, when men begin to
say, as the people in Paul's time were saying about circumcision,
and as people are saying in this day about Christian rites, that
they are necessary, then it is needful to take up Paul's ground
and to say, `No! they are nothing!' They are useful in a certain
place, but if you make them obligatory, if you make them
essential, if you say that grace is miraculously conveyed through
them, then it is needful that we should raise a strong note of
protestation, and declare their absolute nullity for the highest
purpose, that of making that spiritual character which alone is
essential.

And I believe that this strange recrudescence---to use a modern
word---of ceremonialism and aesthetic worship which we see all
round about us, not only in the ranks of the Episcopal Church, but
amongst Nonconformists, who are sighing for a less bare service,
and here and there are turning their chapels into concert-rooms,
and instead of preaching the Gospel are having `Services of Song'
and the like---that all this makes it as needful to-day as ever it
was to say to men: `Forms are not worship. Rites may crush the
spirit. Men may yield to the sensuous impressions which they
produce, and be lapped in an atmosphere of aesthetic emotion,
without any real devotion.'

Such externals are only worth anything if they make us grasp more
firmly with our understandings and feel more profoundly with our
hearts, the great truths of the Gospel. If they do that, they
help; if they are not doing that, they hinder, and are to be
fought against. And so we have again to proclaim to-day, as Paul
did, `Circumcision is nothing,' `but the keeping of the
commandments of God.'

Then notice with what remarkable fairness and boldness and breadth
the Apostle here adds that other clause: `and uncircumcision is
nothing.' It is a very hard thing for a man whose life has been
spent in fighting against an error, not to exaggerate the value of
his protest. It is a very hard thing for a man who has been
delivered from the dependence upon forms, not to fancy that his
formlessness is what the other people think that their forms are.
The Puritan who does not believe that a man can be a good man
because he is a Ritualist or a Roman Catholic, is committing the
very same error as the Ritualist or the Roman Catholic who does
not believe that the Puritan can be a Christian unless he has been
`christened.' The two people are exactly the same, only the one
has hold of the stick at one end, and the other at the other.
There may be as much idolatry in superstitious reliance upon the
bare worship as in the advocacy of the ornate; and many a
Nonconformist who fancies that he has `never bowed the knee to
Baal' is as true an idol-worshipper in his superstitious
abhorrence of the ritualism that he sees in other communities, as
are the men who trust in it the most.

It is a large attainment in Christian character to be able to say
with Paul, `Circumcision is nothing, and my own favourite point of
uncircumcision is nothing either. Neither the one side nor the
other touches the essentials.'

II. Now let us look at the threefold variety of the designation of
these essentials here.

In our first text from the Epistle to the Corinthians we read,
`Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the
keeping of the commandments of God.' If we finished the sentence
it would be, `but the keeping of the commandments of God is
everything.'

And by that `keeping the commandments,' of course, the Apostle
does not mean merely external obedience. He means something far
deeper than that, which I put into this plain word, that the one
essential of a Christian life is the conformity of the will with
God's---not the external obedience merely, but the entire
surrender and the submission of my will to the will of my Father
in Heaven. That is the all-important thing; that is what God
wants; that is the end of all rites and ceremonies; that is the
end of all revelation and of all utterances of the divine heart.
The Bible, Christ's mission, His passion and death, the gift of
His Divine Spirit, and every part of the divine dealings in
providence, all converge upon this one aim and goal. For this
purpose the Father worketh hitherto, and Christ works, that man's
will may yield and bow itself wholly and happily and lovingly to
the great infinite will of the Father in heaven.

Brethren! that is the perfection of a man's nature, when his will
fits on to God's like one of Euclid's triangles superimposed upon
another, and line for line coincides. When his will allows a free
passage to the will of God, without resistance or deflection, as
light travels through transparent glass; when his will responds to
the touch of God's finger upon the keys, like the telegraphic
needle to the operator's hand, then man has attained all that God
and religion can do for him, all that his nature is capable of;
and far beneath his feet may be the ladders of ceremonies and
forms and outward acts, by which he climbed to that serene and
blessed height, `Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is
nothing, but the keeping of God's commandments is everything.'

That submission of will is the sum and the test of your
Christianity. Your Christianity does not consist only in a mere
something which you call faith in Jesus Christ. It does not
consist in emotions, however deep and blessed and genuine they may
be. It does not consist in the acceptance of a creed. All these
are means to an end. They are meant to drive the wheel of life, to
build up character, to make your deepest wish to be, `Father! not
my will, but Thine, be done.' In the measure in which that is your
heart's desire, and not one hair's-breadth further, have you a
right to call yourself a Christian.

But, then, I can fancy a man saying: `It is all very well to talk
about bowing the will in this fashion; how can I do that?' Well,
let us take our second text---the third in the order of their
occurrence---`For neither circumcision is anything, nor
uncircumcision, but a new creature.' That is to say, if we are
ever to keep the will of God we must be made over again. Ay! we
must! Our own consciences tell us that; the history of all the
efforts that ever we have made---and I suppose all of us have made
some now and then, more or less earnest and more or less
persistent---tells us that there needs to be a stronger hand than
ours to come into the fight if it is ever to be won by us. There
is nothing more heartless and more impotent than to preach, `Bow
your wills to God, and then you will be happy; bow your wills to
God, and then you will be good.' If that is all the preacher has
to say, his powerless words will but provoke the answer, `We
cannot. Tell the leopard to change his spots, or the Ethiopian his
skin, as soon as tell a man to reduce this revolted kingdom within
him to obedience, and to bow his will to the will of God. We
cannot do it.' But, brethren, in that word, `a new creature,' lies
a promise from God; for a creature implies a creator. `It is He
that hath made us, and not we ourselves.' The very heart of what
Christ has to offer us is the gift of His own life to dwell in our
hearts, and by its mighty energy to make us free from the law of
sin and death which binds our wills. We may have our spirits
moulded into His likeness, and new tastes, and new desires, and
new capacities infused into us, so as that we shall not be left
with our own poor powers to try and force ourselves into obedience
to God's will, but that submission and holiness and love that
keeps the commandments of God, will spring up in our renewed
spirits as their natural product and growth. Oh! you men and women
who have been honestly trying, half your lifetime, to make
yourselves what you know God wants you to be, and who are obliged
to confess that you have failed, hearken to the message: `If any
man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed
away.' The one thing needful is keeping the commandments of God,
and the only way by which we can keep the commandments of God is
that we should be formed again into the likeness of Him of whom
alone it is true that `He did always the things that pleased' God.

And so we come to the last of these great texts: `In Christ Jesus,
neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but
faith which worketh by love.' That is to say, if we are to be made
over again, we must have faith in Christ Jesus. We have got to the
root now, so far as we are concerned. We must keep the
commandments of God; if we are to keep the commandments we must be
made over again, and if our hearts ask how can we receive that new
creating power into our lives, the answer is, by `faith which
worketh by love.'

Paul did not believe that external rites could make men partakers
of a new nature, but he believed that if a man would trust in
Jesus Christ, the life of that Christ would flow into his opened
heart, and a new spirit and nature would be born in him. And,
therefore, his triple requirements come all down to this one, so
far as we are concerned, as the beginning and the condition of the
other two. `Neither circumcision does anything, nor
uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love,' does everything.
He that trusts Christ opens his heart to Christ, who comes with
His new-creating Spirit, and makes us willing in the day of His
power to keep His commandments.

But faith leads us to obedience in yet another fashion, than this
opening of the door of the heart for the entrance of the
new-creating Spirit. It leads to it in the manner which is
expressed by the words of our text, `worketh by love.' Faith shows
itself living, because it leads us to love, and through love it
produces its effects upon conduct.

Two things are implied in this designation of faith. If you trust
Christ you will love Him. That is plain enough. And you will not
love Him unless you trust Him. Though it lies wide of my present
purpose, let us take this lesson in passing. You cannot work
yourself up into a spasm or paroxysm of religious emotion and love
by resolution or by effort. All that you can do is to go and look
at the Master and get near Him, and that will warm you up. You can
love if you trust. Your trust will make you love; unless you trust
you will never love Him.

The second thing implied is, that if you love you will obey. That
is plain enough. The keeping of the commandments will be easy
where there is love in the heart. The will will bow where there is
love in the heart. Love is the only fire that is hot enough to
melt the iron obstinacy of a creature's will. The will cannot be
driven. Strike it with violence and it stiffens; touch it gently
and it yields. If you try to put an iron collar upon the will,
like the demoniac in the Gospels, the touch of the apparent
restraint drives it into fury, and it breaks the bands asunder.
Fasten it with the silken leash of love, and a `little child' can
lead it. So faith works by love, because whom we trust we shall
love, and whom we love we shall obey.

Therefore we have got to the root now, and nothing is needful but
an operative faith, out of which will come all the blessed
possession of a transforming Spirit, and all sublimities and
noblenesses of an obedient and submissive will.

My brother! Paul and James shake hands here. There is a `faith' so
called, which does not work. It is dead! Let me beseech you, none
of you to rely upon what you choose to call your faith in Jesus
Christ, but examine it. Does it do anything? Does it help you to
be like Him? Does it open your hearts for His Spirit to come in?
Does it fill them with love to that Master, a love which proves
itself by obedience? Plain questions, questions that any man can
answer; questions that go to the root of the whole matter. If your
faith does that, it is genuine; if it does not, it is not.

And do not trust either to forms, or to your freedom from forms.
They will not save your souls, they will not make you more
Christ-like. They will not help you to pardon, purity, holiness,
blessedness. In these respects neither if we have them are we the
better, nor if we have them not are we the worse. If you are
trusting to Christ, and by that faith are having your hearts
moulded and made over again into all holy obedience, then you have
all that you need. Unless you have, though you partook of all
Christian rites, though you believed all Christian truth, though
you fought against superstitious reliance on forms, you have not
the one thing needful, for `in Christ Jesus neither circumcision
availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by
love.'

\chapter{Slaves and Free}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS vii. 22}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's
free man: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's
servant.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} vii. 22.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

This remarkable saying occurs in a remarkable connection, and is
used for a remarkable purpose. The Apostle has been laying down
the principle, that the effect of true Christianity is greatly to
diminish the importance of outward circumstance. And on that
principle he bases an advice, dead in the teeth of all the maxims
recognised by worldly prudence. He says, in effect, `Mind very
little about getting on and getting up. Do God's will wherever you
are, and let the rest take care of itself.' Now, the world says,
`Struggle, wriggle, fight, do anything to better yourself.' Paul
says, `You will better yourself by getting nearer God, and if you
secure that---art thou a slave? care not for it; if thou mayest be
free, use it rather; art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be
loosed; art thou loosed? seek not to be bound; art thou
circumcised? seek not to be uncircumcised; art thou a Gentile?
seek not to become in outward form a Jew.' Never mind about
externals: the main thing is our relation to Jesus Christ, because
in that there is what will be compensation for all the
disadvantages of any disadvantageous circumstances, and in that
there is what will take the gilt off the gingerbread of any
superficial and fleeting good, and will bring a deep-seated and
permanent blessing.

Now, I am not going to deal in this sermon with that general
principle, nor even to be drawn aside to speak of the tone in
which the Apostle here treats the great abomination of slavery,
and the singular advice that he gives to its victims; though the
consideration of the tone of Christianity to that master-evil of
the old world might yield a great many thoughts very relevant to
pressing questions of to-day. But my one object is to fix upon the
combination which he here brings out in regard to the essence of
the Christian life; how that in itself it contains both members of
the antithesis, servitude and freedom; so that the Christian man
who is free externally is Christ's slave, and the Christian man
who is outwardly in bondage is emancipated by his union with Jesus
Christ.

There are two thoughts here, the application in diverse directions
of the same central idea---viz. the slavery of Christ's free men,
and the freedom of Christ's slaves. And I deal briefly with these
two now.

I. First, then, note how, according to the one-half of the
antithesis, Christ's freed men are slaves.

Now, the way in which the New Testament deals with that awful
wickedness of a man held in bondage by a man is extremely
remarkable. It might seem as if such a hideous piece of immorality
were altogether incapable of yielding any lessons of good. But the
Apostles have no hesitation whatever in taking slavery as a clear
picture of the relation in which all Christian people stand to
Jesus Christ their Lord. He is the owner and we are the slaves.
For you must remember that the word most inadequately rendered
here, `servant' does not mean a hired man who has, of his own
volition, given himself for a time to do specific work and get
wages for it; but it means `a bond-slave,' a chattel owned by
another. All the ugly associations which gather round the word are
transported bodily into the Christian region, and there, instead
of being hideous, take on a shape of beauty, and become
expressions of the deepest and most blessed truths, in reference
to Christian men's dependence upon, and submission to, and place
in the household and the heart of, Jesus Christ, their Owner.

And what is the centre idea that lies in this metaphor, if you
like to call it so? It is this: absolute authority, which has for
its correlative---for the thing in us that answers to
it---unconditional submission. Jesus Christ has the perfect right
to command each of us, and we are bound to bow ourselves,
unreluctant, unmurmuring, unhesitating, with complete submission
at His feet. His authority, and our submission, go far, far deeper
than the most despotic sway of the most tyrannous master, or than
the most abject submission of the most downtrodden slave. For no
man can coerce another man's will, and no man can require more, or
can ever get more, than that outward obedience which may be
rendered with the most sullen and fixed rebellion of a hating
heart and an obstinate will. But Jesus Christ demands that if we
call ourselves Christians we shall bring, not our members only as
instruments to Him, in outward surrender and service, but that we
shall yield ourselves, with our capacities of willing and
desiring, utterly, absolutely, constantly to Him.

The founder of the Jesuits laid it down as a rule for his Order
that each member of it was to be at the master's disposal like a
corpse, or a staff in the hand of a blind man. That was horrible.
But the absolute putting of myself at the disposal of another's
will, which is expressed so tyrannously in Loyola's demand, is the
simple duty of every Christian, and as long as we have
recalcitrating wills, which recoil at anything which Christ
commands or appoints, and perk up their own inclinations in the
face of His solemn commandment, or that shrink from doing and
suffering whatsoever He imposes and enjoins, we have still to
learn what it means to be Christ's disciples.

Dear brethren, absolute submission is not all that makes a
disciple, but, depend upon it, there is no discipleship worth
calling by the name without it. So I come to each of you with His
message to you:---Down on your faces before Him! Bow your
obstinate will, surrender yourselves and accept Him as absolute,
dominant Lord over your whole being! Are you Christians after that
pattern? Being freemen, are you Christ's slaves?

It does not matter what sort of work the owner sets his household
of slaves to do. One man is picked out to be his pipe-bearer, or
his shoe-cleaner; and, if the master is a sovereign, another one
is sent off, perhaps, to be governor of a province, or one of his
council. They are all slaves; and the service that each does is
equally important.

\begin{verse}
`All service ranks the same with God: \\
 There is no last nor first.'
\end{verse}

\noindent What does it matter what you and I are set to do?
Nothing. And, so, why need we struggle and wear our hearts out to
get into conspicuous places, or to do work that shall bring some
revenue of praise said glory to ourselves? `Play well thy part;
there all the honour lies,' the world can say. Serve Christ in
anything, and all His servants are alike in His sight.

The slave-owner had absolute power of life and death over his
dependants. He could split up families; he could sell away dear
ones; he could part husband and wife, parent and child. The slave
was his, and he could do what he liked with his own, according to
the cruel logic of ancient law. And Jesus Christ, the Lord of the
household, the Lord of providence, can say to this one, `Go!' and
he goes into the mists and the shadows of death. And He can say to
those who are most closely united, `Loose your hands! I have need
of one of you yonder. I have need of the other one here.' And if
we are wise, if we are His servants in any real deep sense, we
shall not kick against the appointments of His supreme,
autocratic, and yet most loving Providence, but be content to
leave the arbitrament of life and death, of love united or of love
parted, in His hands, and say, `Whether we live we are the Lord's,
or whether we die we are the Lord's; living or dying we are His.'

The slave-owner owned all that the slave owned. He gave him a
little cottage, with some humble sticks of furniture in it; and a
bit of ground on which to grow his vegetables for his family. But
he to whom the owner of the vegetables and the stools belonged
owned them too. And if we are Christ's servants, our banker's book
is Christ's, and our purse is Christ's, and our investments are
Christ's; and our mills, and our warehouses, and our shops and our
businesses are His. We are not His slaves, if we arrogate to
ourselves the right of doing what we like with His possessions.

And, then, still further, there comes into our Apostle's picture
here yet another point of resemblance between slaves and the
disciples of Jesus. For the hideous abominations of the
slave-market are transferred to the Christian relation, and
defecated and cleansed of all their abominations and cruelty
thereby. For what immediately follows my text is, `Ye are bought
with a price.' Jesus Christ has won us for Himself. There is only
one price that can buy a heart, and that is a heart. There is only
one way of getting a man to be mine, and that is by giving myself
to be his. So we come to the very vital, palpitating centre of all
Christianity when we say, `He gave Himself for us, that He might
acquire to Himself a people for His possession.' Thus His purchase
of His slave, when we remember that it is the buying of a man in
his inmost personality, changes all that might seem harsh in the
requirement of absolute submission into the most gracious and
blessed privilege. For when I am won by another, because that
other has given him or her whole self to me, then the language of
love is submission, and the conformity of the two wills is the
delight of each loving will. Whoever has truly been wooed into
relationship with Jesus, by reflection upon the love with which
Jesus grapples him to His heart, finds that there is nothing so
blessed as to yield one's self utterly and for ever to His
service.

The one bright point in the hideous institution of slavery was,
that it bound the master to provide for the slave, and though that
was degrading to the inferior, it made his life a careless,
child-like, merry life, even amidst the many cruelties and
abominations of the system. But what was a good, dashed with a
great deal of evil, in that relation of man to man, comes to be a
pure blessing and good in our relation to Him. If I am Christ's
slave, it is His business to take care of His own property, and I
do not need to trouble myself much about it. If I am His slave, He
will be quite sure to find me in food and necessaries enough to
get His tale of work out of me; and I may cast all my care upon
Him, for He careth for me. So, brethren, absolute submission and
the devolution of all anxiety on the Master are what is laid upon
us, if we are Christ's slaves.

II. Then there is the other side, about which I must say,
secondly, a word or two; and that is, the freedom of Christ's
slaves.

As the text puts it, `He that is called, being a servant, is the
Lord's freedman.' A freedman was one who was emancipated, and who
therefore stood in a relation of gratitude to his emancipator and
patron. So in the very word `freedman' there is contained the idea
of submission to Him who has struck off the fetters.

But, apart from that, let me just remind you, in a sentence or
two, that whilst there are many other ways by which men have
sought, and have partially attained, deliverance from the many
fetters and bondages that attach to our earthly life, the one
perfect way by which a man can be truly, in the deepest sense of
the word and in his inmost being, a free man is by faith in Jesus
Christ.

I do not for a moment forget how wisdom and truth, and noble aims
and high purposes, and culture of various kinds have, in lower
degrees and partially, emancipated men from self and flesh and sin
and the world, and all the other fetters that bind us. But sure I
am that the process is never so completely and so assuredly
effected as by the simple way of absolute submission to Jesus
Christ, taking Him for the supreme and unconditional Arbiter and
Sovereign of a life.

If we do that, brethren, if we really yield ourselves to Him, in
heart and will, in life and conduct, submitting our understanding
to His infallible Word, and our wills to His authority, regulating
our conduct by His perfect pattern, and in all things seeking to
serve Him and to realise His presence, then be sure of this, that
we shall be set free from the one real bondage, and that is the
bondage of our own wicked selves. There is no such tyranny as mob
tyranny; and there is no such slavery as to be ruled by the mob of
our own passions and lusts and inclinations and other meannesses
that yelp and clamour within us, and seek to get hold of us and to
sway. There is only one way by which the brute domination of the
lower part of our nature can be surely and thoroughly put down,
and that is by turning to Jesus Christ and saying to Him, `Lord!
do Thou rule this anarchic kingdom within me, for I cannot govern
it myself. Do Thou guide and direct and subdue.' You can only
govern yourself and be free from the compulsion of your own evil
nature when you surrender the control to the Master, and say ever,
`Speak, Lord! for Thy slave hears. Here am I, send me.'

And that is the only way by which a man can be delivered from the
bondage of dependence upon outward things. I said at the beginning
of these remarks that my text occurred in the course of a
discussion in which the Apostle was illustrating the tendency of
true Christian faith to set man free from, and to make him largely
independent of, the varieties in external circumstances. Christian
faith does so, because it brings into a life a sufficient
compensation for all losses, limitations, and sorrows, and a good
which is the reality of which all earthly goods are but shadows.
So the slave may be free in Christ, and the poor man may be rich
in Him, and the sad man may be joyful, and the joyful man may be
delivered from excess of gladness, and the rich man be kept from
the temptations and sins of wealth, and the free man be taught to
surrender his liberty to the Lord who makes him free. Thus, if we
have the all-sufficient compensation which there is in Jesus
Christ, the satisfaction for all our needs and desires, we do not
need to trouble ourselves so much as we sometimes do about these
changing things round about us. Let them come, let them go; let
the darkness veil the light, and the light illuminate the
darkness; let summer and winter alternate; let tribulation and
prosperity succeed each other; we have a source of blessedness
unaffected by these. Ice may skin the surface of the lake, but
deep beneath, the water is at the same temperature in winter and
in summer. Storms may sweep the face of the deep, but in the abyss
there is calm which is not stagnation. So he that cleaves to
Christ is delivered from the slavery that binds men to the details
and accidents of outward life.

And if we are the servants of Christ, we shall be set free, in the
measure in which we are His, from the slavery which daily becomes
more oppressive as the means of communication become more
complete, the slavery to popular opinion and to men round us. Dare
to be singular; take your beliefs at first hand from the Master.
Never mind what fellow-slaves say. It is His smile or frown that
is of importance. `Ye are bought with a price; be not servants of
men.'

And so, brethren, `choose you this day whom ye will serve.' You
are not made to be independent. You must serve some thing or
person. Recognise the narrow limitations within which your choice
lies, and the issues which depend upon it. It is not whether you
will serve Christ or whether you will be free. It is whether you
will serve Christ or your own worst self, the world, men, and I
was going to add, the flesh and the devil. Make your choice. He
has bought you. You belong to Him by His death. Yield yourselves
to Him, it is the only way of breaking your chains. He that doeth
sin is the servant of sin. `If the Son make you free, ye shall be
free indeed,' and not only free; for the King's slaves are princes
and nobles, and `all things are yours, and ye are Christ's.' They
who say to Him `O Lord! truly I am Thy servant,' receive from Him
the rank of kings and priests to God, and shall reign with Him for
ever.

\chapter{The Christian Life}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS vii. 24}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with
God.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} vii. 24.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

You find that three times within the compass of a very few verses
this injunction is repeated. `As God hath distributed to every
man,' says the Apostle in the seventeenth verse, `as the Lord hath
called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all the
churches.' Then again in the twentieth verse, `Let every man abide
in the same calling wherein he is called.' And then finally in our
text.

The reason for this emphatic reiteration is not difficult to
ascertain. There were strong temptations to restlessness besetting
the early Christians. The great change from heathenism to
Christianity would seem to loosen the joints of all life, and
having been swept from their anchorage in religion, all external
things would appear to be adrift. It was most natural that a man
should seek to alter even the circumstances of his outward life,
when such a revolution had separated him from his ancient self.
Hence would tend to come the rupture of family ties, the
separation of husband and wife, the Jewish convert seeking to
become like a Gentile, the Gentile seeking to become like a Jew;
the slave trying to be free, the freeman, in some paroxysm of
disgust at his former condition, trying to become a slave. These
three cases are all referred to in the context---marriage,
circumcision, slavery. And for all three the Apostle has the same
advice to give---`Stop where you are.' In whatever condition you
were when God's invitation drew you to Himself---for that, and not
being set to a `vocation' in life, is the meaning of the word
`called' here---remain in it.

And then, on the other hand, there was every reason why the
Apostle and his co-workers should set themselves, by all means in
their power, to oppose this restlessness. For, if Christianity in
those early days had once degenerated into the mere instrument of
social revolution, its development would have been thrown back for
centuries, and the whole worth and power of it, for those who
first apprehended it, would have been lost. So you know Paul never
said a word to encourage any precipitate attempts to change
externals. He let slavery---he let war alone; he let the tyranny
of the Roman Empire alone---not because he was a coward, not
because he thought that these things were not worth meddling with,
but because he, like all wise men, believed in making the tree
good and then its fruit good. He believed in the diffusion of the
principles which he proclaimed, and the mighty Name which he
served, as able to girdle the poison-tree, and to take the bark
off it, and the rest, the slow dying, might be left to the work of
time. And the same general idea underlies the words of my text.
`Do not try to change,' he says, `do not trouble about external
conditions; keep to your Christian profession; let those alone,
they will right themselves. Art thou a slave? Seek not to be
freed. Art thou circumcised? Seek not to be uncircumcised. Get
hold of the central, vivifying, transmuting influence, and all the
rest is a question of time.'

But, besides this more especial application of the words of my text
to the primitive times, it carries with it, dear brethren, a large
general principle that applies to all times---a principle, I may
say, dead in the teeth of the maxims upon which life is being
ordered by the most of us. \textit{Our} maxim is, `Get on!' Paul's
is, `Never mind about getting \textit{on}, get \textit{up}!' Our
notion is---`Try to make the circumstances what I would like to have
them.' Paul's is---`Leave circumstances to take care of themselves,
or rather leave God to take care of the circumstances. You get close
to Him, and hold His hand, and everything else will right itself.'
Only he is not preaching stolid acquiescence. His previous
injunctions were---`Let every man abide in the same calling wherein
he was called.' He sees that that may be misconceived and abused,
and so, in his third reiteration of the precept, he puts in a word
which throws a flood of light upon the whole thing---`Let every man
wherein he is called therein abide.' Yes, but that is not
all---`therein abide \textit{with God}!' Ay, that is it! not an
impossible stoicism; not hypocritical, fanatical contempt of the
external. But whilst that gets its due force and weight, whilst a
man yields himself in a measure to the natural tastes and
inclinations which God has given him, and with the intention that he
should find there subordinate guidance and impulse for his life,
still let him abide where he is called with God, and seek to
increase his fellowship with Him, as the main thing that he has to
do.

I. Thus we are led from the words before us first to the thought
that our chief effort in life ought to be union with God.

`Abide with God,' which, being put into other words, means, I
think, mainly two things---constant communion, the occupation of
all our nature with Him, and, consequently, the recognition of His
will in all circumstances.

As to the former, we have the mind and heart and will of God
revealed to us for the light, the love, the obedience of our will
and heart and mind; and our Apostle's precept is, first, that we
should try, moment by moment, in all the bustle and stir of our
daily life, to have our whole being consciously directed to and
engaged with, fertilised and calmed by contact with, the perfect
and infinite nature of our Father in heaven.

As we go to our work again to-morrow morning, what difference
would obedience to this precept make upon my life and yours?
Before all else, and in the midst of all else, we should think of
that Divine Mind that in the heavens is waiting to illumine our
darkness; we should feel the glow of that uncreated and perfect
Love, which, in the midst of change and treachery, of coldness and
of `greetings where no kindness is,' in the midst of masterful
authority and unloving command, is ready to fill our hearts with
tenderness and tranquillity: we should bow before that Will which
is absolute and supreme indeed, but neither arbitrary nor harsh,
which is `the eternal purpose that He hath purposed in Himself'
indeed, but is also `the good pleasure of His goodness and the
counsel of His grace.'

And with such a God near to us ever in our faithful thoughts, in
our thankful love, in our lowly obedience, with such a mind
revealing itself to us, and such a heart opening its hidden
storehouses for us as we approach, like some star that, as one
gets nearer to it, expands its disc and glows into rich colour,
which at a distance was but pallid silver, and such a will
sovereign above all, energising, even through opposition, and
making obedience a delight, what room, brethren, would there be in
our lives for agitations, and distractions, and regrets, and
cares, and fears---what room for earthly hopes or for sad
remembrances? They die in the fruition of a present God
all-sufficient for mind, and heart, and will---even as the sun
when it is risen with a burning heat may scorch and wither the
weeds that grow about the base of the fruitful tree, whose deeper
roots are but warmed by the rays that ripen the rich clusters
which it bears. `Let every man, wherein he is called, therein
abide \textit{with God}.'

And then, as a consequence of such an occupation of the whole
being with God, there will follow that second element which is
included in the precept, namely, the recognition of God's will as
operating in and determining all circumstances. When our whole
soul is occupied with Him, we shall see Him everywhere. And this
ought to be our honest effort---to connect everything which
befalls ourselves and the world with Him. We should see that
Omnipotent Will, the silent energy which flows through all being,
asserting itself through all secondary causes, marching on towards
its destined and certain goal, amidst all the whirl and
perturbation of events, bending even the antagonism of rebels and
the unconsciousness of godless men, as well as the play of
material instruments, to its own purposes, and swinging and
swaying the whole set and motion of things according to its own
impulse and by the touch of its own fingers.

Such a faith does not require us to overlook the visible occasions
for the things which befall us, nor to deny the stable laws
according to which that mighty will operates in men's lives.
Secondary causes? Yes. Men's opposition and crime? Yes. Our own
follies and sins? No doubt. Blessings and sorrows falling
indiscriminately on a whole community or a whole world? Certainly.
And yet the visible agents are not the sources, but only the
vehicles of the power, the belting and shafting which transmit a
mighty impulse which they had nothing to do in creating. And the
antagonism subserves the purposes of the rule which it opposes, as
the blow of the surf may consolidate the sea-wall that it breaks
against. And our own follies and sins may indeed sorrowfully shadow
our lives, and bring on us pains of body and disasters in fortune,
and stings in spirit for which we alone are responsible, and which
we have no right to regard as inscrutable judgments---yet even these
bitter plants of which our own hands have sowed the seed, spring by
His merciful will, and \textit{are} to be regarded as His loving,
fatherly chastisements---sent before to warn us by a premonitory
experience that `the wages of sin is death.' As a rule, God does not
interpose to pick a man out of the mud into which he has been
plunged by his own faults and follies, until he has learned the
lessons which he can find in plenty down in the slough, if he will
only look for them! And the fact that some great calamity or some
great joy affects a wide circle of people, does not make its having
a special lesson and meaning for each of them at all doubtful.
\textit{There} is one of the great depths of all-moving wisdom and
providence, that in the very self-same act it is in one aspect
universal, and in another special and individual. The ordinary
notion of a special providence goes perilously near the belief that
God's will is less concerned in some parts of a man's life than in
others. It is very much like desecrating and secularising a whole
land by the very act of focussing the sanctity in some single
consecrated shrine. But the true belief is that the whole sweep of a
life is under the will of God, and that when, for instance, war
ravages a nation, though the sufferers be involved in a common ruin
occasioned by murderous ambition and measureless pride, yet for each
of the sufferers the common disaster has a special message. Let us
believe in a divine will which regards each individual caught up in
the skirts of the horrible storm, even as it regards each individual
on whom the equal rays of His universal sunshine fall. Let us
believe that every single soul has a place in the heart, and is
taken into account in the purposes of Him who moves the tempest, and
makes His sun to shine upon the unthankful and on the good. Let us,
in accordance with the counsel of the Apostle here, first of all try
to anchor and rest our own souls fast and firm in God all the day
long, that, grasping His hand, we may look out upon all the confused
dance of fleeting circumstances and say, `Thy will is done on
earth'---if not yet `as it is done in heaven,' still done in the
issues and events of all---and done with my cheerful obedience and
thankful acceptance of its commands and allotments in my own life.

II. The second idea which comes out of these words is this---Such
union with God will lead to contented continuance in our place,
whatever it be.

Our text is as if Paul had said, `You have been ``called'' in such
and such worldly circumstances. The fact proves that these
circumstances do not obstruct the highest and richest blessings.
The light of God can shine on your souls through them. Since then
you have such sacred memorials associated with them, and know by
experience that fellowship with God is possible in them, do you
remain where you are, and keep hold of the God who has visited you
in them.'

If once, in accordance with the thoughts already suggested, our
minds have, by God's help, been brought into something like real,
living fellowship with Him, and we have attained the wisdom that
pierces through the external to the Almighty will that underlies
all its mazy whirl, then why should we care about shifting our
place? Why should we trouble ourselves about altering these
varying events, since each in its turn is a manifestation of His
mind and will; each in its turn is a means of discipline for us;
and through all their variety a single purpose works, which tends
to a single end---`that we should be partakers of His holiness'?

And that is the one point of view from which we can bear to look
upon the world and not be utterly bewildered and over-mastered by
it. Calmness and central peace are ours; a true appreciation of
all outward good and a charm against the bitterest sting of
outward evils are ours; a patient continuance in the place where
He has set us is ours---when by fellowship with Him we have
learned to look upon our work as primarily doing His will, and
upon all our possessions and conditions primarily as means for
making us like Himself. Most men seem to think that they have gone
to the very bottom of the thing when they have classified the
gifts of fortune as good or evil, according as they produce
pleasure or pain. But that is a poor, superficial classification.
It is like taking and arranging books by their bindings and
flowers by their colours. Instead of saying, `We divide life into
two halves, and we put there all the joyful, and here all the sad,
for that is the ruling distinction'---let us rather say, `The
whole is one, because it all comes from one purpose, and it all
tends towards one end. The only question worth asking in regard to
the externals of our life is---How far does each thing help me to
be a good man? how far does it open my understanding to apprehend
Him? how far does it make my spirit pliable and plastic under His
touch? how far does it make me capable of larger reception of
greater gifts from Himself? what is its effect in preparing me for
that world beyond?' Is there any other greater, more satisfying,
more majestic thought of life than this---the scaffolding by which
souls are built up into the temple of God? And to care whether a
thing is painful or pleasant is as absurd as to care whether the
bricklayer's trowel is knocking the sharp corner off a brick, or
plastering mortar on the one below it before he lays it carefully
on its course. Is the \textit{building} getting on? That is the
one question that is worth thinking about.

You and I write our lives as if on one of those manifold writers
which you use. A thin filmy sheet \textit{here}, a bit of black
paper below it; but the writing goes through upon the next page,
and when the blackness that divides two worlds is swept away
\textit{there}, the history of each life written by ourselves
remains legible in eternity. And the question is---What sort of
autobiography are we writing for the revelation of that day, and
how far do our circumstances help us to transcribe fair in our
lives the will of our God and the image of our Redeemer?

If, then, we have once got hold of that principle that all which
is---summer and winter, storm and sunshine, possession and loss,
memory and hope, work and rest, and all the other antitheses of
life---is equally the product of His will, equally the
manifestation of His mind, equally His means for our discipline,
then we have the amulet and talisman which will preserve us from
the fever of desire and the shivering fits of anxiety as to things
which perish. And, as they tell of a Christian father who, riding
by one of the great lakes of Switzerland all day long, on his
journey to the Church Council that was absorbing his thoughts,
said towards evening to the deacon who was pacing beside him,
`Where is the lake?' so you and I, journeying along by the margin
of this great flood of things when wild storms sweep across it, or
when the sunbeams glint upon its blue waters, `and birds of peace
sit brooding on the charmed wave,' will be careless of the
changeful sea, if the eye looks beyond the visible and beholds the
unseen, the unchanging real presences that make glory in the
darkest lives, and `sunshine in the shady place.' `Let every man,
wherein he is called, therein abide with God.'

III. Still further, another thought may be suggested from these
words, or rather from the connection in which they occur, and that
is---Such contented continuance in our place is the dictate of the
truest wisdom.

There are two or three collateral topics, partly suggested by the
various connections in which this commandment occurs in the
chapter, from which I draw the few remarks I have to make now.

And the first point I would suggest is that very old commonplace
one, so often forgotten, that after all, though you may change
about as much as you like, there is a pretty substantial equipoise
and identity in the amount of pain and pleasure in all external
conditions. The total length of day and night all the year round
is the same at the North Pole and at the Equator---half and half.
Only, in the one place, it is half and half for four-and-twenty
hours at a time, and in the other, the night lasts through gloomy
months of winter, and the day is bright for unbroken weeks of
summer. But, when you come to add them up at the year's end, the
man who shivers in the ice, and the man who pants beneath the
beams from the zenith, have had the same length of sunshine and of
darkness. It does not matter much at what degrees between the
Equator and the Pole you and I live; when the thing comes to be
made up we shall be all pretty much upon an equality. You do not
get the happiness of the rich man over the poor one by multiplying
twenty shillings a week by as many figures as will suffice to make
it up to \pounds10,000 a year. What is the use of such eager
desires to change our condition, when every condition has
disadvantages attending its advantages as certainly as a shadow;
and when all have pretty nearly the same quantity of the raw
material of pain and pleasure, and when the amount of either
actually experienced by us depends not on where we are, but on
\textit{what} we are?

Then, still further, there is another consideration to be kept in
mind upon which I do not enlarge, as what I have already said
involves it---namely, that whilst the portion of external pain and
pleasure summed up comes pretty much to the same in everybody's
life, any condition may yield the fruit of devout fellowship with
God.

Another very remarkable idea suggested by a part of the context
is---What is the need for my troubling myself about outward
changes when \textit{in Christ} I can get all the peculiarities
which make any given position desirable to me? For instance, hear
how Paul talks to slaves eager to be set free: `For he that is
called in the Lord, \textit{being} a servant, is the Lord's
freeman: likewise also he that is called, \textit{being} free, is
Christ's servant.' If you generalise that principle it comes to
this, that in union with Jesus Christ we possess, by our
fellowship with Him, the peculiar excellences and blessings that
are derivable from external relations of every sort. To take
concrete examples---if a man is a slave, he may be free in Christ.
If free, he may have the joy of utter submission to an absolute
master in Christ. If you and I are lonely, we may feel all the
delights of society by union with Him. If surrounded and
distracted by companionship, and seeking for seclusion, we may get
all the peace of perfect privacy in fellowship with Him. If we are
rich, and sometimes think that we were in a position of less
temptation if we were poorer, we may find all the blessings for
which we sometimes covet poverty in communion with Him. If we are
poor, and fancy that, if we had a little more just to lift us
above the grinding, carking care of to-day and the anxiety of
to-morrow, we should be happier, we may find all tranquillity in
Him. And so you may run through all the variety of human
conditions, and say to yourself---What is the use of looking for
blessings flowing from these from without? Enough for us if we
grasp that Lord who is all in all, and will give us in peace the
joy of conflict, in conflict the calm of peace, in health the
refinement of sickness, in sickness the vigour and glow of health,
in memory the brightness of undying hope, in hope the calming of
holy memory, in wealth the lowliness of poverty, in poverty the
ease of wealth; in life and in death being all and more than all
that dazzles us by the false gleam of created brightness!

And so, finally---a remark which has no connection with the text
itself, but which I cannot avoid inserting here---I want you to
think, and think seriously, of the antagonism and diametrical
opposition between these principles of my text and the maxims
current in the world, and nowhere more so than in this city. Our
text is a revolutionary one. It is dead against the watchwords
that you fathers give your children---`push,' `energy,'
`advancement,' `get on, whatever you do.' You have made a
philosophy of it, and you say that this restless discontent with a
man's present position and eager desire to get a little farther
ahead in the scramble, underlies much modern civilisation and
progress, and leads to the diffusion of wealth and to employment
for the working classes, and to mechanical inventions, and
domestic comforts, and I don't know what besides. You have made a
religion of it; and it is thought to be blasphemy for a man to
stand up and say---`It is idolatry!' My dear brethren, I declare I
solemnly believe that, if I were to go on to the Manchester
Exchange next Tuesday, and stand up and say---`There is no God,' I
should not be thought half such a fool as if I were to go and
say---`Poverty is not an evil \textit{per se}, and men do not come
into this world to get \textit{on} but to get \textit{up}---nearer
and liker to God.' If you, by God's grace, lay hold of this
principle of my text, and honestly resolve to work it out,
trusting in that dear Lord who `though He was rich yet for our
sakes became poor,' in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you will
have to make up your minds to let the big prizes of your trade go
into other people's hands, and be contented to say---`I live by
peaceful, high, pure, Christ-like thoughts.' `He that needs
least,' said an old heathen, `is nearest the gods'; but I would
rather modify the statement into, `He that needs most, and knows
it, is nearest the gods.' For surely Christ is more than mammon;
and a spirit nourished by calm desires and holy thoughts into
growing virtues and increasing Christlikeness is better than
circumstances ordered to our will, in the whirl of which we have
lost our God. `In everything by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the
peace of God and the God of peace shall keep your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus.'

\chapter{`Love Buildeth Up'}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS viii. 1--13}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Now, as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all
have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. 2.\
And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing
yet as he ought to know. 3.\ But if any man love God, the same is
known of him. 4.\ As concerning therefore the eating of those
things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an
idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but
one. 5.\ For though there be that are called gods, whether in
heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) 6.\
But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all
things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all
things, and we by Him. 7.\ Howbeit there is not in every man that
knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol unto this hour,
eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being
weak is defiled. 8.\ But meat commendeth us not to God: for
neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are
we the worse. 9.\ But take heed, lest by any means this liberty of
yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak. 10.\ For if
any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol's
temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be
emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; 11.\
And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom
Christ died? 12.\ But when ye sin so against the brethren, and
wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. 13.\
Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh
while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.'---1
\textsc{Cor.} viii. 1--13.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

It is difficult for us to realise the close connection which
existed between idol-worship and daily life. Something of the same
sort is found in all mission fields. It was almost impossible for
Christians to take any part in society and not seem to sanction
idolatry. Would that Christianity were as completely interwoven
with our lives as heathen religions are into those of their
devotees! Paul seems to have had referred to him a pressing case
of conscience, which divided the Corinthian Church, as to whether
a Christian could join in the usual feasts or sacrifices. His
answer is in this passage.

The longest way round is sometimes the shortest way home. The
Apostle begins far away from the subject in hand by running a
contrast between knowledge and love, and setting the latter first.
But his contrast is very relevant to his purpose. Small questions
should be solved on great principles.

The first principle laid down by Paul is the superiority of love
over knowledge, the bearing of which on the question in hand will
appear presently. We note that there is first a distinct admission
of the Corinthians' intelligence, though there is probably a tinge
of irony in the language `We know that we all have knowledge.'
`You Corinthians are fully aware that you are very superior
people. Whatever else you know, you know that, and I fully
recognise it.'

The admission is followed by a sudden, sharp comment, to which the
Co\-rinth\-ians' knowledge that they knew laid them open. Swift as
the thrust of a spear comes flashing `Knowledge puffeth up.'
Puffed-up things are swollen by wind only, and the more they are
inflated the hollower and emptier they are; and such a sharp point
as Paul's saying shrivels them. The statement is not meant as the
assertion of a necessary or uniform result of knowledge, but it
does put plainly a very usual result of it, if it is unaccompanied
by love. It is a strange, sad result of superior intelligence or
acquirements, that it so often leads to conceit, to a false
estimate of the worth and power of knowing, to a ridiculous
over-valuing of certain acquirements, and to an insolent contempt
and cruel disregard of those who have them not. Paul's dictum has
been only too well confirmed by experience.

`Love builds up,' or `edifies.' Probably the main direction in
which that building up is conceived of as taking effect, is in
aiding the progress of our neighbours, especially in the religious
life. But the tendency of love to rear a fair fabric of personal
character is not to be overlooked. In regard to effect on
character, the palm must be given to love, which produces solid
excellence far beyond what mere knowledge can effect. Further,
that pluming one's self on knowledge is a sure proof of ignorance.
The more real our acquirements, the more they disclose our
deficiencies. All self-conceit hinders us from growing
intellectually or morally, and intellectual conceit is the worst
kind of it.

Very significantly, love to God, and not the simple emotion of
love without reference to its object, is opposed to knowledge; for
love so directed is the foundation of all excellence, and of all
real love to men. Love to God is not the antithesis of true
knowledge, but it is the only victorious antagonist of the conceit
of knowing. Very significantly, too, does Paul vary his conclusion
in verse 3 by saying that the man who loves God `is known of Him,'
instead of, as we might have expected, `knows Him.' The latter is
true, but the statement in the verse puts more strongly the
thought of the man's being an object of God's care. In regard,
then, to their effects on character, in producing consideration
and helpfulness to others, and in securing God's protection, love
stands first, and knowledge second.

What has all this to do with the question in hand? This, that if
looked at from the standpoint of knowledge, it may be solved in
one way, but if from that of love, it will be answered in another.
So, in verses 4--6, Paul treats the matter on the ground of
knowledge. The fundamental truth of Christianity, that there is
one God, who is revealed and works through Jesus Christ, was
accepted by all the Corinthians. Paul states it here broadly,
denying that there were any objective realities answering to the
popular conceptions or poetic fancies or fair artistic
presentments of the many gods and lords of the Greek pantheon, and
asserting that all Christians recognise one God, the Father, from
whom the universe of worlds and living things has origin, and to
whom we as Christians specially belong, and one Lord, the channel
through whom all divine operations of creation, providence, and
grace flow, and by whose redeeming work we Christians are endowed
with our best life. If a believer was fully convinced of these
truths, he could partake of sacrificial feasts without danger to
himself, and without either sanctioning idolatry or being tempted
to return to it.

No doubt it was on this ground that an idol was nothing that the
laxer party defended their action in eating meat offered to idols;
and Paul fully recognises that they had a strong case, and that,
if there were no other considerations to come in, the answer to
the question of conscience submitted to him would be wholly in
favour of the less scrupulous section. But there is something
better than knowledge; namely, love. And its decision must be
taken before the whole material for a judgment is in evidence.

Therefore, in the remainder of the chapter, Paul dwells on loving
regard for brethren. In verse 7, he reminds the `knowing'
Corinthians that new convictions do not obliterate the power of
old associations. The awful fascination of early belief still
exercises influence. The chains are not wholly broken off. Every
mission field shows examples of this. Every man knows that habits
are not so suddenly overcome, that there is no hankering after
them or liability to relapse. It would be a dangerous thing for a
weak believer to risk sharing in an idol feast; for he would be
very likely to slide down to his old level of belief, and Zeus or
Pallas to seem to him real powers once more.

The considerations in verse 7 would naturally be followed by the
further thoughts in verse 9, etc. But, before dealing with these,
Paul interposes another thought in verse 8, to the effect that
partaking of or abstinence from any kind of food will not, in
itself, either help or hinder the religious life. The bearing of
that principle on his argument seems to be to reduce the
importance of the whole question, and to suggest that, since
eating of idol sacrifices could not be called a duty or a means of
spiritual progress, the way was open to take account of others'
weakness as determining our action in regard to it. A modern
application may illustrate the point. Suppose that a Christian
does not see total abstinence from intoxicants to be obligatory on
him. Well, he cannot say that drinking is so, or that it is a
religious duty, and so the way is clear for urging regard to
others' weakness as an element in the case.

That being premised, Paul comes to his final point; namely, that
Christian men are bound to restrict their liberty so that they
shall not tempt weaker brethren on to a path on which they cannot
walk without stumbling. He has just shown the danger to such of
partaking of the sacrificial feasts. He now completes his position
by showing, in verse 10, that the stronger man's example may lead
the weaker to do what he cannot do innocently. What is harmless to
us may be fatal to others, and, if we have led them to it, their
blood is on our heads.

The terrible discordance of such conduct with our Lord's example,
which should be our law, is forcibly set forth in verse 11, which
has three strongly emphasised thoughts---the man's fate---he
perishes; his relation to his slayer---a brother; what Christ did
for the man whom a Christian has sent to destruction---died for
him. These solemn thoughts are deepened in verse 12, which reminds
us of the intimate union between the weakest and Christ, by which
He so identifies Himself with them that any blow struck on them
touches Him.

There is no greater sin than to tempt weak or ignorant Christians
to thoughts or acts which their ignorance or weakness cannot
entertain or do without damage to their religion. There is much
need for laying that truth to heart in these days. Both in the
field of speculation and of conduct, Christians, who think that
they know so much better than ignorant believers, need to be
reminded of it.

So Paul, in verse 13, at last answers the question. His sudden
turning to his own conduct is beautiful. He will not so much
command others, as proclaim his own determination. He does so with
characteristic vehemence and hyperbole. No doubt the liberal party
in Corinth were ready to complain against the proposal to restrict
their freedom because of others' weakness; and they would be
disarmed, or at least silenced, and might be stimulated to like
noble resolution, by Paul's example.

The principle plainly laid down here is as distinctly applicable to
the modern question of abstinence from intoxicants. No one can doubt
that `moderation' in their use by some tempts others to use which
soon becomes fatally immoderate. The Church has been robbed of
promising members thereby, over and over again. How can a Christian
man cling to a `moderate' use of these things, and run the risk of
destroying by his example a brother for whom Christ died?

\chapter{The Sin of Silence}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS ix. 16, 17}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For though I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for
necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not
the Gospel! 17.\ For if I do this thing willingly, I have a
reward.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} ix. 16, 17.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The original reference of these words is to the Apostle's
principle and practice of not receiving for his support money from
the churches. Gifts he did accept; pay he did not. The exposition
of his reason is interesting, ingenuous, and chivalrous. He
strongly asserts his right, even while he as strongly declares
that he will waive it. The reason for his waiving it is that he
desires to have somewhat in his service beyond the strict line of
his duty. His preaching itself, with all its toils and miseries,
was but part of his day's work, which he was bidden to do, and for
doing which he deserved no thanks nor praise. But he would like to
have a little bit of glad service over and above what he is
ordered to do, that, as he ingenuously says, he may have `somewhat
to boast of.'

In this exposition of motives we have two great principles
actuating the Apostle---one, his profound sense of obligation, and
the other his desire, if it might be, to do more than he was bound
to do, because he loved his work so much. And though he is
speaking here as an apostle, and his example is not to be
unconditionally transferred to us, yet I think that the motives
which actuated his conduct are capable of unconditional
application to ourselves.

There are three things here. There is the obligation of speech,
there is the penalty of silence, and there is the glad obedience
which transcends obligation.

I. First, mark the obligation of speech.

No doubt the Apostle had, in a special sense, a `necessity laid
upon' him, which was first laid upon him on that road to Damascus,
and repeated many a time in his life. But though he differs from
us in the direct supernatural commission which was given to him,
in the width of the sphere in which he had to work, and in the
splendour of the gifts which were entrusted to his stewardship, he
does not differ from us in the reality of the obligation which was
laid upon him. Every Christian man is as truly bound as was Paul
to preach the Gospel. The commission does not depend upon
apostolic dignity. Jesus Christ, when He said, `Go ye into all the
world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,' was not speaking
to the eleven, but to all generations of His Church. And whilst
there are many other motives on which we may rest the Christian
duty of propagating the Christian faith, I think that we shall be
all the better if we bottom it upon this, the distinct and
definite commandment of Jesus Christ, the grip of which encloses
all who for themselves have found that the Lord is gracious.

For that commandment is permanent. It is exactly contemporaneous
with the duration of the promise which is appended to it, and
whosoever suns himself in the light of the latter is bound by the
precept of the former. `Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end
of the world,' defines the duration of the promise, and it defines
also the duration of the duty. Nay, even the promise is made
conditional upon the discharge of the duty enjoined. For it is to
the Church `going into all the world, and preaching the Gospel to
every creature,' that the promise of an abiding presence is made.

Let us remember, too, that, just because this commission is given
to the whole Church, it is binding on every individual member of
the Church. There is a very common fallacy, not confined to this
subject, but extending over the whole field of Christian duty, by
which things that are obligatory on the community are shuffled off
the shoulders of the individual. But we have to remember that the
whole Church is nothing more than the sum total of all its
members, and that nothing is incumbent upon it which is not in
their measure incumbent upon each of them. Whatsoever Christ says
to all, He says to each, and the community has no duties which you
and I have not.

Of course, there are diversities of forms of obedience to this
commandment; of course, the restrictions of locality and the other
obligations of life, come in to modify it; and it is not every
man's duty to wander over the whole world doing this work. But the
direct work of communicating to others who know it not the
sweetness and the power of Jesus Christ belongs to every Christian
man. You cannot buy yourselves out of the ranks, as they used to
be able to do out of the militia, by paying for a substitute. Both
forms of service are obligatory upon each of us. We all, if we
know anything of Christ and His love and His power, are bound, by
the fact that we do know it, to tell it to those whom we can
reach. You have all got congregations if you would look for them.
There is not a Christian man or woman in this world who has not
somebody that he or she can speak to more efficiently than anybody
else can. You have your friends, your relations, the people with
whom you are brought into daily contact, if you have no wider
congregations. You cannot all stand up and preach in the sense in
which I do so. But this is not the meaning of the word in the New
Testament. It does not imply a pulpit, nor a set discourse, nor a
gathered multitude; it simply implies a herald's task of
proclaiming. Everybody who has found Jesus Christ can say, `I have
found the Messiah,' and everybody who knows Him can say, `Come and
hear, and I will tell what the Lord hath done for my soul.' Since
you can do it you are bound to do it; and if you are one of `the
dumb dogs, lying down and loving to slumber,' of whom there are
such crowds paralysing the energies and weakening the witness of
every Church upon earth, then you are criminally and suicidally
oblivious of an obligation which is a joy and a privilege as much
as a duty.

Oh, brethren! I do want to lay on the consciences of all you
Christian people this, that nothing can absolve you from the
obligation of personal, direct speech to some one of Christ and
His salvation. Unless you can say, `I have not refrained my lips,
O Lord! Thou knowest,' there frowns over against you an
unfulfilled duty, the neglect of which is laming your spiritual
activity, and drying up the sources of your spiritual strength.

But, then, besides this direct effort, there are the other
indirect methods in which this commandment can be discharged, by
sympathy and help of all sorts, about which I need say no more
here.

Jesus Christ's ideal of His Church was an active propaganda, an
army in which there were no non-combatants, even although some of
the combatants might be detailed to remain in the camp and look
after the stuff, and others of them might be in the forefront of
the battle. But is that ideal ever fulfilled in any of our
churches? How many amongst us there are who do absolutely nothing
in the shape of Christian work! Some of us seem to think that the
voluntary principle on which our Nonconformist churches are
largely organised means, `I do not need to do anything unless I
like. Inclination is the guide of duty, and if I do not care to
take any active part in the work of our church, nobody has
anything to say.' No man can force me, but if Jesus Christ says to
me, `Go!' and I say, `I had rather not,' Jesus Christ and I have
to settle accounts between us. The less \textit{men} control, the
more stringent ought to be the control of Christ. And if the
principle of Christian obedience is a willing heart, then the duty
of a Christian is to see that the heart is willing.

A stringent obligation, not to be shuffled off by any of the
excuses that we make, is laid upon us all. It makes very short
work of a number of excuses. There is a great deal in the tone of
this generation which tends to chill the missionary spirit. We
know more about the heathen world, and familiarity diminishes
horror. We have taken up, many of us, milder and more merciful
ideas about the condition of those who die without knowing the
name of Jesus Christ. We have taken to the study of comparative
religion as a science, forgetting sometimes that the thing that we
are studying as a science is spreading a dark cloud of ignorance
and apathy over millions of men. And all these reasons somewhat
sap the strength and cool the fervour of a good many Christian
people nowadays. Jesus Christ's commandment remains just as it
was.

Then some of us say, `I prefer working at home!' Well, if you are
doing all that you can there, and really are enthusiastically
devoted to one phase of Christian service, the great principle of
division of labour comes in to warrant your not entering upon
other fields which others cultivate. But unless you are thus
casting all your energies into the work which you say that you
prefer, there is no reason in it why you should do nothing in the
other direction. Jesus Christ still says, `Go ye into all the
world.'

Then some of you say, `Well, I do not much believe in your
missionary societies. There is a great deal of waste of money about
them. A number of things there are that one does not approve of. I
have heard stories about missionaries being very idle, very
luxurious, and taking too much pay, and doing too little work.'
Well, be it so! Very probably it is partly true; though I do not
know that the people whose testimony is so willingly accepted, to
the detriment of our brethren in foreign lands, are precisely the
kind of people that should talk much about self-sacrifice and
luxurious living, or whose estimate of Christian work is to be
relied upon. I fancy many of them, if they walked about the streets
of an English town, would have a somewhat similar report to give, as
they have when they walk about the streets of an Indian one. But be
that as it may, does that indictment draw a wet sponge across the
commandment of Jesus Christ? or can you chisel out of the stones of
Sinai one of the words written there, by reason of the imperfections
of those who are seeking to obey them? Surely not! Christ still
says, `Go ye into all the world!'

I sometimes venture to think that the day will come when the
condition of being received into, and retained in, the communion
of a Christian church will be obedience to that commandment. Why,
even bees have the sense at a given time of the year to turn the
drones out of the hives, and sting them to death. I do not
recommend the last part of the process, but I am not sure but that
it would be a benefit to us all, both to those ejected and to
those retained, that we should get rid of that added weight that
clogs every organised community in this and other lands---the dead
weight of idlers who say that they are Christ's disciples. Whether
it is a condition of church membership or not, sure I am that it
is a condition of fellowship with Jesus Christ, and a condition,
therefore, of health in the Christian life, that it should be a
life of active obedience to this plain, imperative, permanent, and
universal command.

II. Secondly, a word as to the penalty of silence.

`Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.' I suppose Paul is thinking
mainly of a future issue, but not exclusively of that. At all
events, let me point you, in a word or two, to the plain penalties
of silence here, and to the awful penalties of silence hereafter.

`Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.' If you are a dumb and idle
professor of Christ's truth, depend upon it that your dumb
idleness will rob you of much communion with Jesus Christ. There
are many Christians who would be ever so much happier, more
joyous, and more assured Christians if they would go and talk
about Christ to other people. Because they have locked up God's
word in their hearts it melts away unknown, and they lose more
than they suspect of the sweetness and buoyancy and assured
confidence that might mark them, for no other reason than because
they seek to keep their morsel to themselves. Like that mist that
lies white and dull over the ground on a winter's morning, which
will be blown away with the least puff of fresh air, there lie
doleful dampnesses, in their sooty folds, over many a Christian
heart, shutting out the sun from the earth, and a little whiff of
wholesome activity in Christ's cause would clear them all away,
and the sun would shine down upon men again. If you want to be a
happy Christian, work for Jesus Christ. I do not lay that down as
a specific by itself. There are other things to be taken in
conjunction with it, but yet it remains true that the woe of a
languid Christianity attaches to the men who, being professing
Christians, are silent when they should speak, and idle when they
should work.

There is, further, the woe of the loss of sympathies, and the gain
of all the discomforts and miseries of a self-absorbed life. And
there is, further, the woe of the loss of one of the best ways of
confirming one's own faith in the truth---viz. that of seeking to
impart it to others. If you want to learn a thing, teach it. If
you want to grasp the principles of any science, try to explain it
to somebody who does not understand it. If you want to know where,
in these days of jangling and controversy, the true, vital centre
of the Gospel is, and what is the essential part of the revelation
of God, go and tell sinful men about Jesus Christ who died for
them; and you will find out that it is the Cross, and Him who died
thereon, as dying for the world, that is the power which can move
men's hearts. And so you will cleave with a closer grasp, in days
of difficulty and unsettlement, to that which is able to bring
light into darkness and to harmonise the discord of a troubled and
sinful soul. And, further, there is the woe of having none that
can look to you and say, `I owe myself to thee.' Oh, brethren!
there is no greater joy accessible to a man than that of feeling
that through his poor words Christ has entered into a brother's
heart. And you are throwing away all this because you shut your
mouths and neglect the plain commandment of your Lord.

Ay! but that is not all. There is a future to be taken into
account, and I think that Christian people do far too little
realise the solemn truth that it is not all the same \textit{then}
whether a man has kept his Master's commandments or neglected
them. I believe that whilst a very imperfect faith saves a man,
there is such a thing as being `saved, yet so as through fire,'
and that there is such a thing as having `an abundant entrance
ministered unto us into the everlasting kingdom.' He whose life
has been very slightly influenced by Christian principle, and who
has neglected plain, imperative duties, will not stand on the same
level of blessedness as the man who has more completely yielded
himself in life to the constraining power of Christ's love, and
has sought to keep all His commandments.

Heaven is not a dead level. Every man there will receive as much
blessedness as he is capable of, but capacities will vary, and the
principal factor in determining the capacity, which capacity
determines the blessedness, will be the thoroughness of obedience
to all the ordinances of Christ in the course of the life upon
earth. So, though we know, and therefore dare say, little about
that future, I do beseech you to take this to heart, that he who
there can stand before God, and say, `Behold! I and the children
whom God hath given me' will wear a crown brighter than the
starless ones of those who saved themselves, and have brought none
with them.

`Some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, they all
came safe to land.' But the place where they stand depends on
their Christian life, and of that Christian life one main element
is obedience to the commandment which makes them the apostles and
missionaries of their Lord.

III. Lastly, note the glad obedience which transcends the limits
of obligation.

`If I do this thing willingly I have a reward.' Paul desired to
bring a little more than was required, in token of his love to his
Master, and of his thankful acceptance of the obligation. The
artist who loves his work will put more work into his picture than
is absolutely needed, and will linger over it, lavishing diligence
and care upon it, because he is in love with his task. The servant
who seeks to do as little as he can scrape through with without
rebuke is actuated by no high motives. The trader who barely puts
as much into the scale as will balance the weight in the other is
grudging in his dealings; but he who, with liberal hand, gives
`shaken down, pressed together, and running over' measure, gives
because he delights in the giving.

And so it is in the Christian life. There are many of us whose
question seems to be, `How little can I get off with? how much can
I retain?'---many of us whose effort is to find out how much of
the world is consistent with the profession of Christianity, and
to find the minimum of effort, of love, of service, of gifts which
may free us from obligation.

And what does that mean? It means that we are slaves. It means
that if we durst we would give nothing, and do nothing. And what
does that mean? It means that we do not care for the Lord, and
have no joy in our work. And what does that mean? It means that
our work deserves no praise, and will get no reward. If we love
Christ we shall be anxious, if it were possible, to do more than
He commands us, in token of our loyalty to the King, and of our
delight in the service. Of course, in the highest view, nothing
can be more than necessary. Of course He has the right to all our
work; but yet there are heights of Christian consecration and
self-sacrifice which a man will not be blamed if he has not
climbed, and will be praised if he has. What we want, if I might
venture to say so, is extravagance of service. Judas may say, `To
what purpose is this waste?' but Jesus will say, He `hath wrought
a good work on Me,' and the fragrance of the ointment will smell
sweet through the centuries.

So, dear brethren, the upshot of the whole thing is, Do not let us
do our Christian work reluctantly, else it is only slave's work,
and there is no blessing in it, and no reward will come to us from
it. Do not let us ask, `How little may I do?' but `How much can I
do?' Thus, asking, we shall not offer as burnt offering to the
Lord that which doth cost us nothing. On His part He has given the
commandment as a sign of His love. The stewardship is a token that
He trusts us, the duty is an honour, the burden is a grace. On our
parts let us seek for the joy of service which is not contented
with the bare amount of the tribute that is demanded, but gives
something over, if it were possible, because of our love to Him.
They who thus give to Jesus Christ their all of love and effort
and service will receive it all back a hundredfold, for the Master
is not going to be in debt to any of His servants, and He says to
them all, `I will repay it, howbeit I say not unto thee how thou
owest unto Me even thine own self besides.'

\chapter{A Servant of Men}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS ix. 19--23}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant
unto all, that I might gain the more. 20.\ And unto the Jews I
became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are
under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are
under the law; 21.\ To them that are without law, as without law,
(being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that
I might gain them that are without law. 22.\ To the weak became I
as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all
men, that I might by all means save some. 23.\ And this I do for
the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.'---1
\textsc{Cor.} ix. 19--23.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Paul speaks much of himself, but he is not an egotist. When he
says, `I do so and so,' it is a gracious way of enjoining the same
conduct on his readers. He will lay no burden on them which he
does not himself carry. The leader who can say `Come' is not
likely to want followers. So, in this section, the Apostle is
really enjoining on the Corinthians the conduct which he declares
is his own.

The great principle incumbent on all Christians, with a view to
the salvation of others, is to go as far as one can without
untruthfulness in the direction of finding points of resemblance
and contact with those to whom we would commend the Gospel. There
is a base counterfeit of this apostolic example, which slurs over
distinctive beliefs, and weakly tries to please everybody by
differing from nobody. That trimming to catch all winds never
gains any. Mr.\ Facing-both-ways is not a powerful evangelist. The
motive of becoming all things to all men must be plainly
disinterested, and the assimilation must have love for the souls
concerned and eagerness to bring the truth to them, and them to
the truth, legibly stamped upon it, or it will be regarded, and
rightly so, as mere cowardice or dishonesty. And there must be no
stretching the assimilation to the length of either concealing
truth or fraternising in evil. Love to my neighbour can never lead
to my joining him in wrongdoing.

But, while the limits of this assumption of the colour of our
surroundings are plainly marked, there is ample space within these
for the exercise of this eminently Christian grace. We must get
near people if we would help them. Especially must we identify
ourselves with them in sympathy, and seek to multiply points of
assimilation, if we would draw them to Jesus Christ. He Himself
had to become man that He might gain men, and His servants have to
do likewise, in their degree. The old story of the Christian
teacher who voluntarily became a slave, that he might tell of
Christ to slaves, has in spirit to be repeated by us all.

We can do no good by standing aloof on a height and flinging down
the Gospel to the people below. They must feel that we enter into
their circumstances, prejudices, ways of thinking, and the like,
if our words are to have power. That is true about all Christian
teachers, whether of old or young. You must be a boy among boys,
and try to show that you enter into the boy's nature, or you may
lecture till doomsday and do no good.

Paul instances three cases in which he had acted, and still
continued to do so, on this principle. He was a Jew, but after his
conversion he had to `become a Jew' by a distinct act; that is, he
had receded so far from his old self, that he, if he had had only
himself to think of, would have given up all Jewish observances.
But he felt it his duty to conciliate prejudice as far as he
could, and so, though he would have fought to the death rather
than given countenance to the belief that circumcision was
necessary, he had no scruple about circumcising Timothy; and,
though he believed that for Christians the whole ancient ritual
was abolished, he was quite willing, if it would smooth away the
prejudices of the `many thousands of Jews who believed,' to show,
by his participation in the temple worship, that he `walked
orderly, keeping the law.' If he was told `You must,' his answer
could only be `I will not'; but if it was a question of
conciliating, he was ready to go all lengths for that.

The category which he names next is not composed of different
persons from the first, but of the same persons regarded from a
somewhat different point of view. `Them that are under the law'
describes Jews, not by their race, but by their religion; and Paul
was willing to take his place among them, as we have just
observed. But he will not do that so as to be misunderstood,
wherefore he protests that in doing so he is voluntarily abridging
his freedom for a specific purpose. He is not `under the law'; for
the very pith of his view of the Christian's position is that he
has nothing to do with that Mosaic law in any of its parts,
because Christ has made him free.

The second class to whom in his wide sympathies he is able to
assimilate himself, is the opposite of the former---the Gentiles
who are `without law.' He did not preach on Mars' Hill as he did
in the synagogues. The many-sided Gospel had aspects fitted for
the Gentiles who had never heard of Moses, and the many-sided
Apostle had links of likeness to the Greek and the barbarian. But
here, too, his assimilation of himself to those whom he seeks to
win is voluntary; wherefore he protests that he is not without
law, though he recognises no longer the obligations of Moses' law,
for he is `under [or, rather, ``in''] law to Christ.'

`The weak' are those too scrupulous-conscienced Christians of whom
he has been speaking in chapter viii. and whose narrow views he
exhorted stronger brethren to respect, and to refrain from doing
what they could do without harming their own consciences, lest by
doing it they should induce a brother to do the same, whose
conscience would prick him for it. That is a lesson needed to-day
as much as, or more than, in Paul's time, for the widely different
degrees of culture and diversities of condition, training, and
associations among Christians now necessarily result in very
diverse views of Christian conduct in many matters. The grand
principle laid down here should guide us all, both in regard to
fellow-Christians and others. Make yourself as like them as you
honestly can; restrict yourself of allowable acts, in deference to
even narrow prejudices; but let the motive of your assimilating
yourself to others be clearly their highest good, that you may
`gain' them, not for yourself but for your Master.

Verse 23 lays down Paul's ruling principle, which both impelled
him to become all things to all men, with a view to their
salvation, as he has been saying, and urged him to effort and
self-discipline, with a view to his own, as he goes on to say.
`For the Gospel's sake' seems to point backward; `that I may be a
joint partaker thereof points forward. We have not only to preach
the Gospel to others, but to live on it and be saved by it
ourselves.

\chapter{How the Victor Runs}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS ix. 24}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`So run, that ye may obtain.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} ix. 24.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

`\textit{So} run.' Does that mean `Run so that ye obtain?' Most
people, I suppose, superficially reading the words, attach that
significance to them, but the `so' here carries a much greater
weight of meaning than that. It is a word of comparison. The
Apostle would have the Corinthians recall the picture which he has
been putting before them---a picture of a scene that was very
familiar to them; for, as most of us know, one of the most
important of the Grecian games was celebrated at intervals in the
immediate neighbourhood of Corinth. Many of the Corinthian
converts had, no doubt, seen, or even taken part in them. The
previous portion of the verse in which our text occurs appeals to
the Corinthians' familiar knowledge of the arena and the
competitors, `Know ye not that they which run in a race run all,
but one receiveth the prize?' He would have them picture the eager
racers, with every muscle strained, and the one victor starting to
the front; and then he says, `Look at that panting conqueror. That
is how you should run. \textit{So} run---`meaning thereby not,
`Run so that you may obtain the prize,' but `Run so' as the victor
does, `in order that you may obtain.' So, then, this victor is to
be a lesson to us, and we are to take a leaf out of his book. Let
us see what he teaches us.

I. The first thing is, the utmost tension and energy and strenuous
effort.

It is very remarkable that Paul should pick out these Grecian
games as containing for Christian people any lesson, for they were
honeycombed, through and through, with idolatry and all sorts of
immorality, so that no Jew ventured to go near them, and it was
part of the discipline of the early Christian Church that
professing Christians should have nothing to do with them in any
shape.

And yet here, as in many other parts of his letters, Paul takes
these foul things as patterns for Christians. `There is a soul of
goodness in things evil, if we would observantly distil it out.'
It is very much as if English preachers were to refer their people
to a racecourse, and say, `Even there you may pick out lessons,
and learn something of the way in which Christian people ought to
live.'

On the same principle the New Testament deals with that diabolical
business of fighting. It is taken as an emblem for the Christian
soldier, because, with all its devilishness, there is in it this,
at least, that men give themselves up absolutely to the will of
their commander, and are ready to fling away their lives if he
lifts his finger. That at least is grand and noble, and to be
imitated on a higher plane.

In like manner Paul takes these poor racers as teaching us a
lesson. Though the thing be all full of sin, we can get one
valuable thought out of it, and it is this---If people would work
half as hard to gain the highest object that a man can set before
him, as hundreds of people are ready to do in order to gain
trivial and paltry objects, there would be fewer stunted and
half-dead Christians amongst us. `That is the way to run,' says
Paul, `if you want to obtain.'

Look at the contrast that he hints at, between the prize that
stirs these racers' energies into such tremendous operation and
the prize which Christians profess to be pursuing. `They do it to
obtain a corruptible crown'---a twist of pine branch out of the
neighbouring grove, worth half-a-farthing, and a little passing
glory not worth much more. They do it to obtain a corruptible
crown; we do \textit{not} do it, though we professedly have an
incorruptible one as our aim and object. If we contrast the
relative values of the objects that men pursue so eagerly, and the
objects of the Christian course, surely we ought to be smitten
down with penitent consciousness of our own unworthiness, if not
of our own hypocrisy.

It is not even there that the lesson stops, because we Christian
people may be patterns and rebukes to ourselves. For, on the one
side of our nature we show what we can do when we are really in
earnest about getting something; and on the other side we show
with how little work we can be contented, when, at bottom, we do
not much care whether we get the prize or not. If you and I really
believed that that crown of glory which Paul speaks about might be
ours, and would be all sufficing for us if it were ours, as truly
as we believe that money is a good thing, there would not be such
a difference between the way in which we clutch at the one and the
apathy which scarcely cares to put out a hand for the other. The
things that are seen and temporal do get the larger portion of the
energies and thoughts of the average Christian man, and the things
that are unseen and eternal get only what is left. Sometimes
ninety per cent. of the water of a stream is taken away to drive a
milldam or do work, and only ten per cent. can be spared to
trickle down the half-dry channel and do nothing but reflect the
bright sun and help the little flowers and the grass to grow. So,
the larger portion of most lives goes to drive the mill-wheels,
and there is very little left, in the case of many of us, in order
to help us towards God, and bring us closer into communion with
our Lord. `Run' for the crown as eagerly as you `run' for your
incomes, or for anything that you really, in your deepest desires,
want. Take yourselves for your own patterns and your own rebukes.
Your own lives may show you how you \textit{can} love, hope, work,
and deny yourselves when you have sufficient inducement, and their
flame should put to shame their frost, for the warmth is directed
towards trifles and the coldness towards the crown. If you would
run for the incorruptible prize of effort in the fashion in which
others and yourselves run for the corruptible, your whole lives
would be changed. Why! if Christian people in general really took
half---half? ay! a tenth part of---the honest, persistent pains to
improve their Christian character, and become more like Jesus
Christ, which a violinist will take to master his instrument,
there would be a new life for most of our Christian communities.
Hours and hours of patient practice are not too much for the one;
how many moments do we give to the other? `So run, that ye
obtain.'

II. The victorious runner sets Christians an example of rigid
self-control.

Every man that is striving for the mastery is `temperate in all
things.' The discipline for runners and athletes was rigid. They
had ten months of spare diet---no wine---hard gymnastic exercises
every day, until not an ounce of superfluous flesh was upon their
muscles, before they were allowed to run in the arena. And, says
Paul, that is the example for us. They practise this rigid
discipline and abstinence by way of preparation for the race, and
after it was run they might dispense with the training. You and I
have to practise rigid abstinence as part of the race, as a
continuous necessity. \textit{They} did not abstain only from bad
things, they did not only avoid criminal acts of sensuous
indulgence; but they abstained from many perfectly legitimate
things. So for us it is not enough to say, `I draw the line there,
at this or that vice, and I will have nothing to do with these.'
You will never make a growing Christian if abstinence from
palpable sins only is your standard. You must `lay aside' every
sin, of course, but also `every \textit{weight}' Many things are
`weights' that are not `sins'; and if we are to run fast we must
run light, and if we are to do any good in this world we have to
live by rigid control and abstain from much that is perfectly
legitimate, because, if we do not, we shall fail in accomplishing
the highest purposes for which we are here. Not only in regard to
the gross sensual indulgences which these men had to avoid, but in
regard to a great deal of the outgoings of our interests and our
hearts, we have to apply the knife very closely and cut to the
quick, if we would have leisure and sympathy and affection left
for loftier objects. It is a very easy thing to be a Christian in
one aspect, inasmuch as a Christian at bottom is a man that is
trusting to Jesus Christ, and that is not hard to do. It is a very
hard thing to be a Christian in another aspect, because a real
Christian is a man who, by reason of his trusting Jesus Christ,
has set his heel upon the neck of the animal that is in him, and
keeps the flesh well down, and not only the flesh, but the desires
of the mind as well as of the flesh, and subordinates them all to
the one aim of pleasing Him. `No man that warreth entangleth
himself with the affairs of this life' if his object is to please
Him that has called him to be a soldier. Unless we cut off a great
many of the thorns, so to speak, by which things catch hold of us
as we pass them, we shall not make much advance in the Christian
life. Rigid self-control and abstinence from else legitimate
things that draw us away from Him are needful, if we are so to run
as the poor heathen racer teaches us.

III. The last grace that is suggested here, the last leaf to take
out of these racers' book, is definiteness and concentration of
aim.

`I, therefore,' says the Apostle, `so run not as uncertainly.' If
the runner is now heading that way and now this, making all manner
of loops upon his path, of course he will be left hopelessly in the
rear. It is the old fable of the Grecian mythology transplanted into
Christian soil. The runner who turned aside to pick up the golden
apple was disappointed of his hopes of the radiant fair. The ship,
at the helm of which is a steersman who has either a feeble hand or
does not understand his business, and which therefore keeps yawing
from side to side, with the bows pointing now this way and now that,
is not holding a course that will make the harbour first in the
race. The people that to-day are marching with their faces towards
Zion, and to-morrow making a loop-line to the world, will be a long
time before they reach their terminus. I believe there are few
things more lacking in the average Christian life of to-day than
resolute, conscious concentration upon an aim which is clearly and
always before us. Do you know what you are aiming at? That is the
first question. Have you a distinct theory of life's purpose that
you can put into half a dozen words, or have you not? In the one
case, there is some chance of attaining your object; in the other
one, none. Alas! we find many Christian people who do not set before
themselves, with emphasis and constancy, as their aim the doing of
God's will, and so sometimes they do it, when it happens to be easy,
and sometimes, when temptations are strong, they do not. It needs a
strong hand on the tiller to keep it steady when the wind is blowing
in puffs and gusts, and sometimes the sail bellies full and
sometimes it is almost empty. The various strengths of the
temptations that blow us out of our course are such that we shall
never keep a straight line of direction, which is the shortest line,
and the only one on which we shall `obtain,' unless we know very
distinctly where we want to go, and have a good strong will that has
learned to say `No!' when the temptations come. `Whom resist
steadfast in the faith.' `I therefore so run, not as uncertainly,'
taking one course one day and another the next.

Now, that definite aim is one that can be equally pursued in all
varieties of life. `This one thing I do' said one who did about as
many things as most people, but the different kinds of things that
Paul did were all, at bottom, one thing. And we, in all the
varieties of our circumstances, may keep this one clear aim before
us, and whether it be in this way or in that, we may be equally
and at all times seeking the better country, and bending all
circumstances and all duty to make us more like our Master and
bring us closer to Him.

The Psalmist did not offer an impossible prayer when he said: `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, to
behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple.' Was
David in `the house of the Lord' when he was with his sheep in the
wilderness, and when he was in Saul's palace, and when he was
living with wild beasts in dens and caves of the earth, and when
he was a fugitive, hunted like a partridge upon the mountains? Was
he always in the Lord's house? Yes! At any rate he could be. All
that we do may be doing His will, and over a life, crowded with
varying circumstances and yet simplified and made blessed by
unvarying obedience, we may write, `This one thing I do.'

But we shall not keep this one aim clear before our eyes, unless
we habituate ourselves to the contemplation of the end. The
runner, according to Paul's vivid picture in another of his
letters, forgets the things that are behind, and stretches out
towards the things that are before. And just as a man runs with
his body inclining forward, and his eager hand nearer the prize
than his body, and his eyesight and his heart travelling ahead of
them both to grasp it, so if we want to live with the one worthy
aim for ours, and to put all our effort and faith into what
deserves it all---the Christian race---we must bring clear before
us continually, or at least with the utmost frequency, the prize
of our high calling, the crown of righteousness. Then we shall run
so that we may, at the last, be able to finish our course with
joy, and dying to hope with all humility that there is laid up for
us a crown of righteousness.

\chapter{`Concerning the Crown'}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS ix. 25}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we are
in\-cor\-rupt\-ible.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} ix. 25.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

One of the most famous of the Greek athletic festivals was held
close by Corinth. Its prize was a pine-wreath from the
neighbouring sacred grove. The painful abstinence and training of
ten months, and the fierce struggle of ten minutes, had for their
result a twist of green leaves, that withered in a week, and a
little fading fame that was worth scarcely more, and lasted
scarcely longer. The struggle and the discipline were noble; the
end was contemptible. And so it is with all lives whose aims are
lower than the highest. They are greater in the powers they put
forth than in the objects they compass, and the question, `What is
it for?' is like a douche of cold water from the cart that lays
the clouds of dust in the ways.

So, says Paul, praising the effort and contemning the prize, `They
do it to obtain a corruptible crown.' And yet there was a soul of
goodness in this evil thing. Though these festivals were
indissolubly intertwined with idolatry, and besmirched with much
sensuous evil, yet he deals with them as he does with war and with
slavery; points to the disguised nobility that lay beneath the
hideousness, and holds up even these low things as a pattern for
Christian men.

But I do not mean here to speak so much about the general bearing
of this text as rather to deal with its designation of the aim and
reward of Christian energy, that `incorruptible crown' of which my
text speaks. And in doing so I desire to take into account
likewise other places in Scripture in which the same metaphor
occurs.

I. The crown.

Let me recall the other places where the same metaphor is
employed. We find the Apostle, in the immediate prospect of death,
rising into a calm rapture in which imprisonment and martyrdom
lose their terrors, as he thinks of the `crown of righteousness'
which the Lord will give to him. The Epistle of James, again,
assures the man who endures temptation that `the Lord will give
him the crown of life which He has promised to all them that love
Him.' The Lord Himself from heaven repeats that promise to the
persecuted Church at Smyrna: `Be thou faithful unto death, and I
will give thee a crown of life.' The elders cast their crowns
before the feet of Him that sitteth upon the throne. The Apostle
Peter, in his letter, stimulates the elders upon earth to faithful
discharge of their duty, by the hope that thereby they shall
`receive a crown of righteousness that fadeth not away.' So all
these instances taken together with this of my text enable us to
gather two or three lessons.

It is extremely unlikely that all these instances of the
occurrence of the emblem carry with them reference, such as that
in my text, to the prize at the athletic festivals. For Peter and
James, intense Jews as they were, had probably never seen, and
possibly never heard of, the struggles at the Isthmus and at
Olympus and elsewhere. The Book of the Revelation draws its
metaphors almost exclusively from the circle of Jewish practices
and things. So that we have to look in other directions than the
arena or the racecourse to explain these other uses of the image.
It is also extremely unlikely that in these other passages the
reference is to a crown as the emblem of sovereignty, for that
idea is expressed, as a rule, by another word in Scripture, which
we have Anglicised as `diadem.' The `crown' in all these passages
is a garland twisted out of some growth of the field. In ancient
usage roses were twined for revellers; pine-shoots or olive
branches for the victors in the games; while the laurel was `the
meed of mighty conquerors'; and plaited oak leaves were laid upon
the brows of citizens who had deserved well of their country, and
myrtle sprays crowned the fair locks of the bride.

And thus in these directions, and not towards the wrestling ground
or the throne of the monarch, must we look for the ideas suggested
by the emblem.

Now, if we gather together all these various uses of the word,
there emerge two broad ideas, that the `crown' which is the
Christian's aim symbolises a state of triumphant repose and of
festal enjoyment. There are other aspects of that great and dim
future which correspond to other necessities of our nature, and I
suppose some harm has been done and some misconceptions have been
induced, and some unreality imported into the idea of the
Christian future, by the too exclusive prominence given to these
two ideas---victorious rest after the struggle, and abundant
satisfaction of all desires. That future is other and more than a
festival; it is other and more than repose. There are larger
fields there for the operation of powers that have been trained
and evolved here. The faithfulness of the steward is exchanged,
according to Christ's great words, for the authority of the ruler
over many cities. But still, do we not all know enough of the
worry and turbulence and strained effort of the conflict here
below, to feel that to some of our deepest and not ignoble needs
and desires that image appeals? The helmet that pressed upon the
brow even whilst it protected the brain, and wore away the hair
even whilst it was a defence, is lifted off, and on unruffled
locks the garland is intertwined that speaks victory and befits a
festival. One of the old prophets puts the same metaphor in words
imperfectly represented by the English translation, when he
promises `a crown' or a garland `for ashes'---instead of the
symbol of mourning, strewed grey and gritty upon the dishevelled
hair of the weepers, flowers twined into a wreath---`the oil of
joy for mourning,' and the festival `garment of praise' to dress
the once heavy spirit. So the satisfaction of all desires, the
accompaniments of a feast, in abundance, rejoicing and
companionship, and conclusive conquest over all foes, are promised
us in this great symbol.

But let us look at the passages separately, and we shall find that
they present the one thought with differences, and that if we
combine these, as in a stereoscope, the picture gains solidity.

The crown is described in three ways. It is the crown of `life,'
of `glory' and of `righteousness.' And I venture to think that
these three epithets describe the material, so to speak, of which
the wreath is composed. The everlasting flower of life, the
radiant blossoms of glory, the white flower of righteousness;
these are its components.

I need not enlarge upon them, nor will your time allow that I
should. Here we have the promise of life, that fuller life which
men want, `the life of which our veins are scant,' even in the
fullest tide and heyday of earthly existence. The promise sets
that future over against the present, as if then first should men
know what it means to live: so buoyant, elastic, unwearied shall
be their energies, so manifold the new outlets for activity, and
the new inlets for the surrounding glory and beauty; so
incorruptible and glorious shall be their new being. Here we live
a living death; there we shall live indeed; and that will be the
crown, not only in regard to physical, but in regard to spiritual,
powers and consciousness.

But remember that all this full tide of life is Christ's gift.
There is no such thing as natural immortality; there is no such
thing as independent life. All Being, from the lowest creature up
to the loftiest created spirit, exists by one law, the continual
impartation to it of life from the fountain of life, according to
its capacities. And unless Jesus Christ, all through the eternal
ages of the future, imparted to the happy souls that sit garlanded
at His board the life by which they live, the wreaths would wither
on their brows, and the brows would melt away, and dissolve from
beneath the wreaths. `I will give him a crown of life.'

It is a crown of `glory,' and that means a lustrousness of
character imparted by radiation and reflection from the central
light of the glory of God. `Then shall the righteous blaze out
like the sun in the Kingdom of My Father.' Our eyes are dim, but
we can at least divine the far-off flashing of that great light,
and may ponder upon what hidden depths and miracles of transformed
perfectness and unimagined lustre wait for us, dark and limited as
we are here, in the assurance that we all shall be changed into
the `likeness of the body of His glory.'

It is a crown of `righteousness.' Though that phrase may mean the
wreath that rewards righteousness, it seems more in accordance
with the other similar expressions to which I have referred to
regard it, too, as the material of which the crown is composed. It
is not enough that there should be festal gladness, not enough
that there should be calm repose, not enough that there should be
flashing glory, not enough that there should be fulness of life.
To accord with the intense moral earnestness of the Christian
system there must be, emphatically, in the Christian hope,
cessation of all sin and investiture with all purity. The word
means the same thing as the ancient promise, `Thy people shall be
all righteous.' It means the same thing as the latest promise of
the ascended Christ, `They shall walk with Me in white.' And it
sets, I was going to say, the very climax and culmination on the
other hopes, declaring that absolute, stainless, infallible
righteousness which one day shall belong to our weak and sinful
spirits.

These, then, are the elements, and on them all is stamped the
signature of perpetuity. The victor's wreath is tossed on the
ashen heap, the reveller's flowers droop as he sits in the heat of
the banqueting-hall; the bride's myrtle blossom fades though she
lay it away in a safe place. The crown of life is incorruptible.
It is twined of amaranth, ever blossoming into new beauty and
never fading.

II. Now look, secondly, at the discipline by which the crown is
won.

Observe, first of all, that in more than one of the passages to
which we have already referred great emphasis is laid upon Christ
as \textit{giving} the crown. That is to say, that blessed future
is not won by effort, but is bestowed as a free gift. It is given
from the hands which have procured it, and, as I may say, twined
it for us. Unless His brows had been pierced with the crown of
thorns, ours would never have worn the garland of victory. Jesus
provides the sole means, by His work, by which any man can enter
into that inheritance; and Jesus, as the righteous Judge who
bestows the rewards, which are likewise the results, of our life
here, gives the crown. It remains for ever the gift of His love.
`The wages of sin is death,' but we rise above the region of
retribution and desert when we pass to the next clause---`the gift
of God is eternal life,' and that `through Jesus Christ.'

Whilst, then, this must be laid as the basis of all, there must
also, with equal earnestness and clearness, be set forth the other
thought that Christ's gift has conditions, which conditions these
passages plainly set forth. In the one, which I have read as a
text, we have these conditions declared as being
twofold---protracted discipline and continuous effort. The same
metaphor employed by the same Apostle, in his last dying
utterance, associates his consciousness that he had fought the
good fight and run his race, like the pugilists and runners of the
arena, with the hope that he shall receive the crown of
righteousness. James declares that it is given to the man who
\textit{endures} temptation, not only in the sense of bearing, but
of so bearing as not thereby to be injured in Christian character
and growth in Christian life. Peter asserts that it is the reward
of self-denying discharge of duty. And the Lord from heaven lays
down the condition of faithfulness unto death as the necessary
pre-requisite of His gift of the crown of life. In two of the
passages there is included, though not precisely on the level of
these other requirements, the love of Him and the love of `His
appearing,' as the necessary qualifications for the gift of the
crown.

So, to begin with, unless a man has such a love to Jesus Christ as
that he is happy in His presence, and longs to have Him near, as
parted loving souls do; and, especially, is looking forward to
that great judicial coming, and feeling that there is no tremor in
his heart at the prospect of meeting the Judge, but an outgoing of
desire and love at the hope of seeing his Saviour and his Friend,
what right has he to expect the crown? None. And he will never get
it. There is a test for us which may well make some of us ask
ourselves, Are we Christians, then, at all?

And then, beyond that, there are all these other conditions which
I have pointed out, which may be gathered into one---strenuous
discharge of daily duty and continual effort after following in
Christ's footsteps.

This needs to be as fully and emphatically preached as the other
doctrine that eternal life is the gift of God. All manner of
mischiefs may come, and have come, from either of these twin
thoughts, wrenched apart. But let us weave them as closely
together as the stems of the flowers that make the garlands are
twined, and feel that there is a perfect consistency of both in
theory, and that there must be a continual union of both, in our
belief and in our practice. Eternal life is the gift of God, on
condition of our diligence and earnestness. It is not all the same
whether you are a lazy Christian or not. It does make an eternal
difference in our condition whether here we `run with patience the
race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.' We have to
receive the crown as a gift; we have to wrestle and run, as
contending for a prize.

III. And now, lastly, note the power of the reward as motive for
life.

Paul says roundly in our text that the desire to obtain the
incorruptible crown is a legitimate spring of Christian action.
Now, I do not need to waste your time and my own in defending
Christian morality from the fantastic objection that it is low and
selfish, because it encourages itself to efforts by the prospect
of the crown. If there are any men who are Christians---if such a
contradiction can be even stated in words---only because of what
they hope to gain thereby in another world, they will not get what
they hope for; and they would not like it if they did. I do not
believe that there are any such; and sure I am, if there are, that
it is not Christianity that has made them so. But a thought that
we must not take as a supreme motive, we may rightly accept as a
subsidiary encouragement. We are not Christians unless the
dominant motive of our lives be the love of the Lord Jesus Christ;
and unless we feel a necessity, because of loving Him, to aim to
be like Him. But, that being so, who shall hinder me from
quickening my flagging energies, and stimulating my torpid faith,
and encouraging my cowardice, by the thought that yonder there
remain rest, victory, the fulness of life, the flashing of glory,
and the purity of perfect righteousness? If such hopes are low and
selfish as motives, would God that more of us were obedient to
such low and selfish motives!

Now it seems to me, that this spring of action is not as strong in
the Christians of this day as it used to be, and as it should be.
You do not hear much about heaven in ordinary preaching. I do not
think it occupies a very large place in the average Christian
man's mind. We have all got such a notion nowadays of the great
good that the Gospel does in society and in the present, and some
of us have been so frightened by the nonsense that has been talked
about the `other-worldliness' of Christianity---as if that was a
disgrace to it---that it seems to me that the future of glory and
blessedness has very largely faded away, as a motive for Christian
men's energies, like the fresco off a neglected convent wall.

And I want to say, dear brethren, that I believe, for my part,
that we suffer terribly by the comparative neglect into which this
side of Christian truth has fallen. Do you not think that it would
make a difference to you if you really believed, and carried
always with you in your thoughts, the thrilling consciousness that
every act of the present was registered, and would tell on the far
side yonder?

We do not know much of that future, and these days are intolerant
of mere unverifiable hypotheses. But accuracy of knowledge and
definiteness of impression do not always go together, nor is there
the fulness of the one wanted for the clearness and force of the
other. Though the thread which we throw across the abyss is very
slender, it is strong enough, like the string of a boy's kite, to
bear the messengers of hope and desire that we may send up by it,
and strong enough to bear the gifts of grace that will surely come
down along it.

We cannot understand to-day unless we look at it with eternity for
a background. The landscape lacks its explanation, until the mists
lift and we see the white summits of the Himalayas lying behind
and glorifying the low sandy plain. Would your life not be
different; would not the things in it that look great be
wholesomely dwindled and yet be magnified; would not sorrow be
calmed, and life become `a solemn scorn of ills,' and energies be
stimulated, and all be different, if you really `did it to obtain
an incorruptible crown?'

Brethren, let us try to keep more clearly before us, as solemn and
blessed encouragement in our lives, these great thoughts. The
garland hangs on the goal, but `a man is not crowned unless he
strive according to the laws' of the arena. The laws are two---No
man can enter for the conflict but by faith in Christ; no man can
win in the struggle but by faithful effort. So the first law is,
`Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,' and the second is, `Hold fast
that thou hast; let no man take thy crown.'

\chapter{The Limits of Liberty}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS x. 23--33}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all
things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. 24.\ Let no man
seek his own, but every man another's wealth. 25.\ Whatsoever is
sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience
sake. 26.\ For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.
27.\ If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be
disposed to go, whatsoever is set before you eat, asking no question
for conscience sake. 28.\ But if any man say unto you, This is
offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed
it, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's and the
fulness thereof: 29.\ Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the
other: for why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?
30.\ For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for
that for which I give thanks? 31.\ Whether therefore ye eat, or
drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. 32.\ Give
none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the
church of God: 33.\ Even as I please all men in all things, not
seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be
saved.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} x. 23--33.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

This passage strikingly illustrates Paul's constant habit of
solving questions as to conduct by the largest principles. He did
not keep his `theology' and his ethics in separate water-tight
compartments, having no communication with each other. The
greatest truths were used to regulate the smallest duties. Like
the star that guided the Magi, they burned high in the heavens,
but yet directed to the house in Bethlehem.

The question here in hand was one that pressed on the Corinthian
Christians, and is very far away from our experience. Idolatry had
so inextricably intertwined itself with daily life that it was
hard to keep up any intercourse with non-Christians without
falling into constructive idolatry; and one very constantly
obtruding difficulty was that much of the animal food served on
private tables had been slaughtered as sacrifices or with certain
sacrificial rites. What was a Christian to do in such a case? To
eat or not to eat? Both views had their vehement supporters in the
Corinthian church, and the importance of the question is manifest
from the large space devoted to it in this letter.

In chapter viii. we have a weighty paragraph, in which one phase
of the difficulty is dealt with---the question whether a Christian
ought to attend a feast in an idol temple, where, of course, the
viands had been offered as sacrifices. But in chapter x. Paul
deals with the case in which the meat had been bought in the
flesh-market, and so was not necessarily sacrificial. Paul's
manner of handling the point is very instructive. He envelops, as
it were, the practical solution in a wrapping of large principles;
verses 23, 24 precede the specific answer, and are general
principles; verses 25--30 contain the practical answer; verses
31--33 and verse 1 of the next chapter are again general
principles, wide and imperative enough to mould all conduct, as
well as to settle the matter immediately in hand, which, important
as it was at Corinth, has become entirely uninteresting to us.

We need not spend time in elucidating the specific directions
given as to the particular question in hand further than to note
the immense gift of saving common-sense which Paul had, and how
sanely and moderately he dealt with his problem. His advice
was---`Don't ask where the joint set before you came from. If you
do not know that it was offered, your eating of it does not commit
you to idol worship.' No doubt there were Corinthian Christians
with inflamed consciences who did ask such questions, and rather
prided themselves on their strictness and rigidity; but Paul would
have them let sleeping dogs lie. If, however, the meat is known to
have been offered to an idol, then Paul is as rigid and strict as
they are. That combination of willingness to go as far as
possible, and inflexible determination not to go one step farther,
of yieldingness wherever principle does not come in, and of iron
fixedness wherever it does, is rare indeed, but should be aimed at
by all Christians. The morality of the Gospel would make more way
in the world if its advocates always copied the `sweet
reasonableness' of Paul, which, as he tells us in this passage, he
learned from Jesus.

As to the wrapping of general principles, they may all be reduced
to one---the duty of limiting Christian liberty by consideration
for others. In the two verses preceding the practical precepts,
that duty is stated with reference entirely to the obligations
flowing from our relationship to others. We are all bound together
by a mystical chain of solidarity. Since every man is my
neighbour, I am bound to think of him and not only of myself in
deciding what I may do or refrain from doing. I must abstain from
lawful things if, by doing them, I should be likely to harm my
neighbour's building up of a strong character. I can, or I believe
that I can, pursue some course of conduct, engage in some
enterprise, follow some line of life, without damage to myself,
either in regard to worldly position, or in regard to my religious
life. Be it so, but I have to take some one else into account.
Will my example call out imitation in others, to whom it may be
harmful or fatal to do as I can do with real or supposed impunity?
If so, I am guilty of something very like murder if I do not
abstain.

`What harm is there in betting a shilling? I can well afford to
lose it, and I can keep myself from the feverish wish to risk
more.' Yes, and you are thereby helping to hold up that gambling
habit which is ruining thousands.

`I can take alcohol in moderation, and it does me no harm, and I
can go to a prayer-meeting after my dinner and temperate glass,
and I am within my Christian liberty in doing so.' Yes, and you
take part thereby in the greatest curse that besets our country,
and are, by countenancing the drink habit, guilty of the blood of
souls. How any Christian man can read these two verses and not
abstain from all intoxicants is a mystery. They cut clean through
all the pleas for moderate drinking, and bring into play another
set of principles which limit liberty by regard to others' good.
Surely, if there was ever a subject to which these words apply, it
is the use of alcohol, the proved cause of almost all the crime
and poverty on both sides of the Atlantic. To the Christians who
plead their `liberty' we can only say, `Happy is he that
condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.'

The same general considerations reappear in the verses following
the specific precept, but with a difference. The neighbour's
profit is still put forth as the limiting consideration, but it is
elevated to a higher sacredness of obligation by being set in
connection with the `glory of God' and the example of Christ. `Do
all to the glory of God.' To put the thought here into modern
English---Could you ask a blessing over a glass of spirits when
you think that, though it should do you no harm, your taking it
may, as it were, tip some weak brother over the precipice? Can you
drink to God's glory when you know that drink is slaying thousands
body and soul, and that hopeless drunkards are made by wholesale
out of moderate drinkers? `Give no occasion of stumbling'; do not
by your example tempt others into risky courses. And remember that
`neighbour' (verse 24) resolves itself into `Jews' and `Greeks'
and the `Church of God'---that is, substantially to your own race
and other races---to men with whom you have affinities, and to men
with whom you have none.

A Christian man is bound to shape his life so that no man shall be
able to say of him that he was the occasion of that one's fall. He
is so bound because every man is his neighbour. He is so bound
because he is bound to live to the glory of God, which can never
be advanced by laying stumbling-blocks in the way for feeble feet.
He is so bound because, unless Christ had limited Himself within
the bound of manhood, and had sought not His own profit or
pleasure, we should have had neither life nor hope. For all these
reasons, the duty of thinking of others, and of abstaining, for
their sakes, from what one might do, is laid on all Christians.
How do they discharge that duty who will not forswear alcohol for
their neighbour's sake?

\chapter{`In Remembrance of Me'}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xi. 24}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`This do in remembrance of Me.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xi. 24.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, contained in
this context, is very much the oldest extant narrative of that
event. It dates long before any of the Gospels, and goes up,
probably, to somewhere about five and twenty years after the
Crucifixion. It presupposes a previous narrative which had been
orally delivered to the Corinthians, and, as the Apostle alleges,
was derived by him from Christ Himself. It is intended to correct
corruptions in the administration of the rite which must have
taken some time to develop themselves. And so we are carried back
to a period very close indeed to the first institution of the
rite, by the words before us.

No reasonable doubt can exist, then, that within a very few years
of our Lord's death, the whole body of Christian people believed
that Jesus Christ Himself appointed the Lord's Supper. I do not
stay to dwell upon the value of a rite contemporaneous with the
fact which it commemorates, and continuously lasting throughout
the ages, as a witness of the historical veracity of the alleged
fact; but I want to fix upon this thought, that Jesus Christ, who
cared very little for rites, who came to establish a religion
singularly independent of any outward form, did establish two
rites, one of them to be done once in a Christian lifetime, one of
them to be repeated with indefinite frequency, and, as it appears,
at first repeated daily by the early believers. The reason why
these two, and only these two, external ordinances were appointed
by Jesus Christ was, that, taken together, they cover the whole
ground of revealed fact, and they also cover the whole ground of
Christian experience. There is no room for any other rites,
because these two, the rite of initiation, which is baptism, and
the rite of commemoration, which is the Lord's Supper, say
everything about Christianity as a revelation, and about
Christianity as a living experience.

Not only so, but in the simple primitive form of the Lord's Supper
there is contained a reference to the past, the present and the
future. It covers all time as well as all revelation and all
Christian experience. For the past, as the text shows us, it is a
memorial of one Person, and one fact in that Person's life. For
the present, it is the symbol of the Christian life, as that great
sixth chapter in John's gospel sets forth; and for the future, it
is a prophecy, as our Lord Himself said on that night in the upper
chamber, `Till I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom,'
and as the Apostle in this context says, `Till He come.' It is to
these three aspects of this ordinance, as the embodiment of all
essential Christian truth, and as the embodiment of all deep
Christian experience, covering the past, the present, and the
future, that I wish to turn now. I do not deal so much with the
mere words of my text as with this threefold significance of the
rite which it appoints.

I. So then, first, we have to think of it as a memorial of the
past.

`Do this,' is the true meaning of the words, not `in remembrance
of Me,' but something far more sweet and pathetic---`do this for
the \textit{remembering} of Me.' The former expression is equal to
`Do this because you remember.' The real meaning of the words is,
`Do this in case you forget'; do this in order that you may recall
to memory what the slippery memory is so apt to lose---the
impression of even the sweetest sweetness, of the most loving
love, and the most self-abnegating sacrifice, which He offered for
us.

There is something to me infinitely pathetic and beautiful in
looking at the words not only as the commandment of the Lord, but
as the appeal of the Friend, who wished, as we all do, not to be
utterly forgotten by those whom He cared for and loved; and who,
not only because their remembrance was their salvation, but
because their forgetfulness pained His human heart, brings to
their hearts the plaintive appeal: `Do not forget Me when I am
gone away from you; and even if you have no better way of
remembering Me, take these poor symbols, to which I am not too
proud to entrust the care of My memory, and do this, lest you
forget Me.'

But, dear brethren, there are deeper thoughts than this, on which
I must dwell briefly. `In remembrance of Me'---Jesus Christ, then,
takes up an altogether unique and solitary position here, and into
the sacredest hours of devotion and the loftiest moments of
communion with God, intrudes His personality, and says, `When you
are most religious, remember Me; and let the highest act of your
devout life be a thought turned to Myself.'

Now, I want you to ask, is that thought diverted from God? And if
it is not, how comes it not to be? I want you honestly to ask
yourselves this question---what did \textit{He} think about
Himself who, at that moment, when all illusions were vanishing,
and life was almost at its last ebb, took the most solemn rite of
His nation and laid it solemnly aside and said: `A greater than
Moses is here; a greater deliverance is being wrought': `Remember
Me.' Is that insisting on His own personality, and making the
remembrance of it the very apex and shining summit of all
religious aspiration---is that the work of one about whom all that
we have to say is, He was the noblest of men? If so, then I want
to know how Jesus Christ, in that upper chamber, founding the sole
continuous rite of the religion which He established, and making
its heart and centre the remembrance of His own personality, can
be cleared from the charge of diverting to Himself what belongs to
God only, and how you and I, if we obey His commands, escape the
crime of idolatry and man-worship? `Do this in remembrance,'---not
of God---`in remembrance of Me,' `and let memory, with all its
tendrils, clasp and cleave to My person.' What an extraordinary
demand! It is obscuring God, unless the `Me' \textit{is} God
manifest in the flesh.

Then, still further, let me remind you that in the appointment of
this solitary rite as His memorial to all generations, Jesus
Christ Himself designates one part of His whole manifestation as
the part into which all its pathos, significance, and power are
concentrated. We who believe that the death of Christ is the life
of the world, are told that one formidable objection to our belief
is that Jesus Christ Himself said so little during His life about
His death. I believe His reticence upon that question is much
exaggerated, but apart altogether from that, I believe also that
there was a necessity in the order of the evolution of divine
truth, for the reticence, such as it is, because, whatsoever might
be possible to Moses and Elias, on the Mount of Transfiguration,
`His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem,' could not
be much spoken about in the plain till it had been accomplished.
But, apart from both of these considerations, reflect, that
whether He said much about His death or not, He said something
very much to the purpose about it when He said `Do this in
remembrance of Me.'

It is not His personality only that we are to remember. The whole
of the language of the institution of the ritual, as well as the
form of the rite, and its connection with the ancient passover,
and its connection with the new covenant into connection with
which Christ Himself brings it, all point to the significance in
His eyes of His death as the Sacrifice for the world's sin.
Wherefore `the body' and `the blood' separately remembered, except
to indicate death by violence? Wherefore the language `the body
\textit{broken} for you'; `the blood \textit{shed} for many for
the remission of sins?' Wherefore the association with the
Passover sacrifice? Wherefore the declaration that `this is the
blood of the Covenant,' unless all tended to the one thought---His
death is the foundation of all loving relationships possible to us
with God; and the condition of the remission of sins---the
Sacrifice for the whole world?'

This is the point that He desires us to remember; this is that
which He would have live for ever in our grateful hearts.

I say nothing about the absolute exclusion of any other purpose of
this memorial rite. If it was the mysterious thing that the
superstition of later ages has made of it, how, in the name of
common-sense, does it come that not one syllable, looking in that
direction, dropped from His lips when He established it? Surely
He, in that upper chamber, knew best what He meant, and what He
was doing when He established the rite; and I, for my part, am
contented to be told that I believe in a poor, bald Zwinglianism,
when I say with my Master, that the purpose of the Lord's Supper
is simply the commemoration, and therein the proclamation, of His
death. There is no magic, no mystery, no `sacrament' about it. It
blesses us when it makes us remember Him. It does the same thing
for us which any other means of bringing Him to mind does. It does
that through a different vehicle. A sermon does it by words, the
Communion does it by symbols. That is the difference to be found
between them. And away goes the whole fabric of superstitious
Christianity, and all its mischiefs and evils, when once you
accept the simple `Remember.' Christ told us what He meant by the
rite when He said `Do this in remembrance of Me.'

II. And now one word or two more about the other particulars which
I have suggested. The past, however sweet and precious, is not
enough for any soul to live upon. And so this memorial rite, just
because it is memorial, is a symbol for the present.

That is taught us in the great chapter---the sixth of John's
Gospel---which was spoken long before the institution of the
Lord's Supper, but expresses in words the same ideas which it
expresses by material forms. The Christ who died is the Christ who
lives, and must be lived upon by the Christian. If our relation to
Jesus Christ were only that `Once in the end of the ages He
appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself'; and if we
had to look back through lengthening vistas of distance and
thickening folds of oblivion, simply to a historical past, in
which He was once offered, the retrospect would not have the
sweetness in it which it now has. But when we come to this thought
that the Christ who was for us is also the Christ in us, and that
He is not the Christ for us unless He is the Christ in us; and His
death will never wash away our sins unless we feed upon Him, here
and now, by faith and meditation, then the retrospect becomes
blessedness. The Christian life is not merely the remembrance of a
historical Christ in the past, but it is the present participation
in a living Christ, with us now.

He is near each of us that we may make Him the very food of our
spirits. We are to live upon Him. He is to be incorporated within
us by our own act. This is no mysticism, it is a piece of simple
reality. There is no Christian life without it. The true life of
the believer is just the feeding of our souls upon Him,---our
minds accepting, meditating upon, digesting the truths which are
incarnated in Jesus; our hearts feeding upon the love which is so
tender, warm, stooping, and close; our wills feeding upon and
nourished by the utterance of His will in commandments which to
know is joy and to keep is liberty; our hopes feeding upon Him who
is our Hope, and in whom they find no chaff and husks of
peradventures, but the pure wheat of `Verily! verily I say unto
you'; the whole nature thus finding its nourishment in Jesus
Christ. You are Christians in the measure in which the very
strength of your spirits, and sustenance of all your faculties,
are found in loving communion with the living Lord.

Remember, too, that all this communion, intimate, sweet, sacred,
is possible only, or at all events is in its highest forms and
most blessed reality, possible only, to those who approach Him
through the gate of His death. The feeding upon the living Christ
which will be the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever,
must be a feeding upon the whole Christ. We must not only nourish
our spirits on the fact that He was incarnated for our salvation,
but also on the truth that He was crucified for our acceptance
with God. `He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me,' has for
its deepest explanation, `He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My
blood hath eternal life.'

My friends, what about the hunger of your souls? Where is it
satisfied? With the swine's husks, or with the `Bread of God which
came down from Heaven?'

III. Now, lastly, that rite which is a memorial and a symbol is
also a prophecy.

In the original words of the institution our Lord Himself makes
reference to the future; `till I drink it new with you in My
Father's kingdom.' And in the context here, the Apostle provides
for the perpetual continuance, and emphasises the prophetic
aspect, of the rite, by that word, `till He come.' His death
necessarily implies His coming again. The Cross and the Throne are
linked together by an indissoluble bond. Being what it is, the
death cannot be the end. Being what He is, if He has once been
offered to bear the sins of many, so He must come the second time
without sin unto salvation. The rite, just because it is a rite,
is the prophecy of a time when the need for it, arising from weak
flesh and an intrusive world, shall cease. `They shall say no
more, The ark of the covenant of the Lord; at that time they shall
call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord.' There shall be no temple
in that great city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are
the Temple thereof. So all external worship is a prophecy of the
coming of the perfect time, when that which is perfect being come,
the external helps and ladders to climb to the loftiest shall be
done away.

But more than that, the memorial and symbol is a prophecy. That
upper chamber, with its troubled thoughts, its unbidden tears,
starting to the eyes of the half-understanding listeners, who only
felt that He was going away and the sweet companionship was
dissolved, may seem to be but a blurred and a poor image of the
better communion of heaven. But though on that sad night the
Master bore a burdened heart, and the servants had but partial
apprehension and a more partial love; though He went forth to
agonise and to die, and they went forth to deny and to betray, and
to leave Him alone, still it was a prophecy of Christ's table in
His kingdom. Heaven is to be a feast. That representation promises
society to the solitary, rest to the toilers, the oil of joy for
mourning, and the full satisfaction of all desires. That heavenly
feast surpasses indeed the antitype in the upper chamber, in that
there the Master Himself partook not, and yonder we shall sup with
Him and He with us, but is prophetic in that, as there He took a
towel and girded Himself and washed the disciples' feet, so yonder
He will come forth Himself and serve them. The future is unlike
the prophetic past in that `we shall go no more out'; there shall
be no sequences of sorrow, and struggle, and distance and
ignorance; but like it in that we shall feast on Christ, for
through eternity the glorified Jesus will be the Bread of our
spirits, and the fact of His past sacrifice the foundation of our
hopes.

So, dear brethren, though our external celebration of this rite be
dashed, as it always is, with much ignorance and with feeble
faith; and though we gather round this table as the first
generation of Israelites did round the passover, of which it is
the successor, with staff in hand and loins girded, and have to
eat it often with bitter herbs mingled, and though there be at our
sides empty places, yet even in our clouded and partial
apprehension, and in the imperfections of this outward type, we
may see a gracious shadow of what is waiting for us when we shall
go no more out, and all empty places shall be filled, and the
bitter herbs shall be changed for the asphodel of Heaven and the
sweet flowerage round the throne of God, and we shall feast upon
the Christ, and in the loftiest experience of the utmost glories
of the Heavens, shall remember the bitter Cross and agony as that
which has bought it all. `This do in remembrance of Me.' May it be
a symbol of our inmost life, and the prophecy of the Heaven to
which we each shall come!

\chapter{The Universal Gift}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xii. 7}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit
withal.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xii. 7.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The great fact which to-day\footnote{Whitsunday.} commemorates is
too often regarded as if it were a transient gift, limited to
those on whom it was first bestowed. We sometimes hear it said
that the great need of the Christian world is a second Pentecost,
a fresh outpouring of the Spirit of God and the like. Such a way
of thinking and speaking misconceives the nature and significance
of the first Pentecost, which had a transient element in it, but
in essence was permanent. The rushing mighty wind and the cloven
tongues of fire, and the strange speech in many languages, were
all equally transient. The rushing wind swept on, and the house
was no more filled with it. The tongues flickered into
invisibility and disappeared from the heads. The hubbub of many
languages was quickly silent. But that which these things but
symbolised is permanent; and we are not to think of Pentecost as
if it were a sudden gush from a great reservoir, and the sluice
was let down again after it, but as if it were the entrance into a
dry bed, of a rushing stream, whose first outgush was attended
with noise, but which thereafter flows continuous and unbroken. If
churches or individuals are scant of that gift, it is not because
it has not been bestowed, but because it has not been accepted.

My text tells us two things: it unconditionally and broadly
asserts that every Christian possesses this great gift---the
manifestation is given to every man; and then it asserts that the
gift of each is meant to be utilised for the good of all. `The
manifestation is given to every man to profit withal.'

I. Let me, then, say a word or two, to begin with, about the
universality of this gift.

Now, that is implied in our Lord's own language, as commented upon
by the Evangelist. For Jesus Christ declared that this was the
standing law of His kingdom, to be universally applied to all its
members, that `He that believeth on Him, out of him shall flow
rivers of living water'; and the Evangelist's comment goes on to
say, `This spake He of the Spirit which they that believe on Him
should receive.' \textit{There} is the condition and the
qualification. Wherever there is faith, there the Spirit of God is
bestowed, and bestowed in the measure in which faith is exercised.
So, then, in full accordance with such fundamental principles in
reference to the gift of the Spirit of God, comes the language of
my text, and of many another text to which I cannot do more than
refer. But let me just quote one or two of them, in order that I
may make more emphatic what I believe a great many Christian
people do not realise as they ought---viz. that the gift of God's
Holy Spirit is not a thing to be desired, as if it were not
possessed or confined to select individuals, or manifested by
exceptional and lofty attainments, but is the universal heritage
of the whole Christian Church. `Know ye not that ye are the temple
of the Holy Ghost?' `We have all been made to drink into one
Spirit,' says Paul again, in the immediate context. `If any man
have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His,' says he,
unconditionally. And in many other places the same principle is
laid down, a principle which I believe the Christian Church to-day
needs to have recalled to its consciousness, that it may be
quickened to realise it in its experience far more than is the
case at present.

Let me remind you, too, that that universality of the gifts of the
Divine Spirit is implied in the very conception of what Christ's
work, in its deepest and most precious aspects to us, is. For we
are not to limit, as a great many so-called earnest evangelical
teachers and believers do---we are not to limit His work to that
which is effected when a man first becomes a Christian---viz.
pardon and acceptance with God. God forbid that I should ever seem
to underrate that great initial gift on which everything else must
be built. But I am not underrating it when I say, `Let us prophesy
according to the proportion of faith,' and the `proportion of
faith' has been violated, and the perspective and completeness of
Christian truth, and of Christ's gifts, have been, alas! to a very
large extent distorted because Christian people, trained in what
we call the evangelical school, have laid far too little emphasis
on the fact that the essential gift of Christ to His people is not
pardon, nor acceptance, nor justification, but \textit{life}; and
that forgiveness, and altered relationship to God, and assurance
of acceptance with Him, are all preliminaries. They are, if I may
recur to a figure that I have already employed, the preparing of
the channel, and the taking away of the obstacles that block its
mouth, in order to the inrush of the flood of the river of the
water of life.

This life that Christ gives is the result of the gift of the
Spirit. So `If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of
His.' The life is the gift considered from our side, and the
Spirit is the gift considered from the divine side. `Every man
that hath the Son hath life'; because the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ has made him free from the law of sin and death. So
you see if that is true---and I for my part am sure that it
is---then all that vulgar way of looking at the influences of the
Holy Spirit upon men, as if they were confined to certain
exceptional people, or certain abnormal and extraordinary and
elevated acts, is swept away. It is not the spasmodic, the
exceptional, the rare, not the lofty or transcendentally
Christlike acts or characters that are alone the manifestation of
the Spirit.

Nor is this gift a thing that a man can discover as distinct from
his own consciousness. The point where the river of the water of
life comes into the channel of our spirits lies away far up, near
the sources, and long before the stream comes into sight in our
own consciousness, the blended waters have been inseparably
mingled, and flow on peacefully together. `The Spirit beareth
witness \textit{with} our spirits'; and you are not to expect that
you can hear two voices speaking, but it is one voice and one
only.

Now, that universality of this divine gift underlies the very
constitution of the Christian Church. `Where the Spirit of the
Lord is there is liberty,' said Paul. It is because each Christian
man has access to the one Source of illumination and of truth and
righteousness and holiness, that no Christian man is to become
subject to the dominion of a brother. And it is because on the
servants and on the handmaidens has been poured out, in these
days, God's Spirit and they prophesy, that all domination of
classes or individuals, and all stiffening of the free life of
God's Church by man-made creeds, are contrary to the very basis of
its existence, and an attack on the dignity of each individual
member of the Church. `Ye have an unction from the Holy One' is
said to all Christian people---and `ye need not that any man teach
you,' still less that any man, or body of men, or document framed
by men, should be set up as normal and authoritative over Christ's
free people.

Still further, and only one word---Let me remind you of what I
have already said, and what is only too sadly true, that this
grand universality of the Spirit's gift to all Christian people
does not fill, in the mind of the ordinary Christian man, the
place that it ought, and it does not fill it, therefore, in his
experience. I say no more upon that point.

II. And now let me say a word, secondly, about the many-sidedness
of this universal gift.

One of the reasons why Christian people as a whole do not realise
the universality as they ought is, as I have already suggested in
a somewhat different connection, because they limit their notions
far too much of what the gift of God's Spirit is to do to men. We
must take a wider view of what that Spirit is meant to effect than
we ordinarily take, before we understand how real and how visible
its universal manifestations are. Take a leaf out of the Old
Testament. The man who made the brass-work for the Tabernacle was
`full of the Spirit of God.' The poets who sung the Psalms, in
more than one place, declare of themselves that they, too, were
but the harps upon which the divine finger played. Samson was
capable of his rude feats of physical strength, because `the
Spirit of God was upon him.' Art, song, counsel, statesmanlike
adaptation of means to ends, and discernment of proper courses for
a nation, such as were exemplified in Joseph and in Daniel, are,
in the Old Testament, ascribed to the Spirit of God, and even the
rude physical strength of the simple-natured and sensuous athlete
is traced up to the same source.

But again, we see another sphere of the Spirit's working in the
manifestations of it in the experience of the primitive Church.
These are, as we all know, accompanied with miracles, speaking
with tongues and working wonders. The signs of that Spirit in
those days were visible and audible. As I said, when the river
first came into its bed, it came like the tide in Morecambe Bay,
breast-high, with a roar and a rush. But it was quiet after that.
In the context we have a whole series of manifestations of this
Divine Spirit, some of them miraculous and some being natural
faculties heightened, but all concerned with the Church as a
society, and being for the benefit of the community.

But there is another class. If you turn to the Epistle to the
Galatians, you will find a wonderful list there of what the
Apostle calls `the fruit of the Spirit,' beginning with `love,
joy, peace.' These are all moral and religious, bearing upon
personal experience and the completeness of the individual
character.

Now, let us include all these aspects in our conception of the
fruit of the Spirit's working on men---the secular, if we may use
that word, as exhibited in the Old Testament; the miraculous, as
seen in the first days of the Church; the ecclesiastical, if we
may so designate the endowments mentioned in the context, and the
purely personal, moral, and religious emotions and acts. The plain
fact is that everything in a Christian's life, except his sin, is
the manifestation of that Divine Spirit, from whom all good
thoughts, counsels, and works do proceed. He is the `Spirit of
adoption,' and whenever in my heart there rises warm and blessed
the aspiration `Abba! Father!' it is not my voice only, but the
voice of that Divine Spirit. He is the Spirit of intercession; and
whenever in my soul there move yearning desires after infinite
good, child-like longings to be knit more closely to Him, that,
too, is the voice of God's Spirit; and our prayers are then
`sweet, indeed, when He the Spirit gives by which we pray.' In
like manner, all the variety of Christian emotions and experiences
is to be traced to the conjoint operation of that Divine Spirit as
the source, and my own spirit as influenced by, and the organ of,
the Spirit of God. If I may take a very rough illustration, there
is a story in the Old Testament about a king, to whom were given a
bow and arrow, with the command to shoot. The prophet's hand was
laid on the king's weak hand, and the weak hand was strengthened
by the touch of the other; and with one common pull they drew back
the string and the arrow sped. The king drew the bow, but it was
the prophet's hand grasping his wrist that gave him strength to do
it. And that is how the Spirit of God will work with us if we
will.

III. Finally, consider the purpose of all the diverse
manifestations of the one universal gift.

`To profit withal'---for his own good who possesses it, and for
the good of all the rest of his brethren.

Now, that involves two plain things. There have been people in the
Christian Church who have said, `We have all the Spirit, and
therefore we do not need one another.' There may be isolation, and
self-sufficiency, and a host of other evils coming in, if we only
grasp the thought, `The manifestation of the Spirit is given to
every man,' but they are all corrected if we go on and say, `to
profit withal.' For every one of us has something, and no one of
us has everything; so, on the one hand, we want each other, and,
on the other hand, we are responsible for the use of what we have.

You get the life, not in order that you may plume yourself on its
possession, nor in order that you may ostentatiously display it,
still less in order that you may shut it up and do nothing with
it; but you get the life in order that it may spread through you
to others.

\begin{verse}
`The least flower with a brimming cup may stand, \\
 And share its dew-drop with another near.'
\end{verse}

\noindent We each have the life that God's grace may fructify
through us to all. Power is duty; endowment is obligation;
capacity prescribes work. `The manifestation of the Spirit is
given to every man to profit withal.'

You can regulate the flow. You have the sluice; you can shut it or
open it. I have said that the condition, and the only condition,
of possessing the fulness of God's Spirit is faith in Jesus
Christ. Therefore, the more you trust the more you have, and the
less your faith the less the gift. You can get much or little,
according to the greatness or the smallness, the fixity or the
transiency, of your desires. If you hold the empty cup with a
tremulous hand, the precious liquid will not be poured into
it---for some of it will be spilt---in the same fulness as it
would be if you held it steadily. It is the old story---the
miraculous flow of the oil stopped when the widow had no more pots
and vessels to bring. The reason why some of us have so little of
that Divine Spirit is because we have not held out our vessels to
be filled. You can diminish the flow by ignoring it, and that is
what a host of so-called Christian people do nowadays. You can
diminish it by neglecting to use the little that you have for the
purpose for which it was given you. Does anybody profit by your
spiritual life? Do you profit much by it yourselves? Has it ever
been of the least good to anybody else in the world? `The
manifestation of the Spirit is given to' you, if you are a
Christian man or woman, more or less. And if you shut it up, and
do never an atom of good with it, either to yourselves or to
anybody else, of course it will slip away; and, sometime or other,
to your astonishment, you will find that the vessels are empty,
and that the Spirit of the Lord has departed from you. `Grieve not
the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of
redemption.'

\chapter{What Lasts}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 8, 13}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be
tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall
vanish away. 13.\ And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these
three. ...'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xiii. 8, 13.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We discern the run of the Apostle's thought best by thus omitting
the intervening verses and connecting these two. The part omitted
is but a buttress of what has been stated in the former of our two
verses; and when we thus unite them there is disclosed plainly the
Apostle's intention of contrasting two sets of things, three in
each set. The one set is `prophecies, tongues, knowledge'; the
other, `faith, hope, charity.' There also comes out distinctly
that the point mainly intended by the contrast is the transiency
of the one and the permanence of the other. Now, that contrast has
been obscured and weakened by two mistakes, about which I must say
a word.

With regard to the former statement, `Whether there be prophecies,
they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease,' that
has been misunderstood as if it amounted to a declaration that the
miraculous gifts in the early Church were intended to be of brief
duration. However true that may be, it is not what Paul means
here. The cessation to which he refers is their cessation in the
light of the perfect Future. With regard to the other statement,
the abiding of faith, hope, charity, that, too, has been
misapprehended as if it indicated that faith and hope belonged to
this state of things only, and that love was the greatest of the
three, because it was permanent. The reason for that misconception
has mainly lain in the misunderstanding of the force of
`\textit{Now},' which has been taken to mean `for the present,' as
an implied contrast to an unspoken `then'; just as in the previous
verse we have, `\textit{Now} we see through a glass, \textit{then}
face to face.' But the `now' in this text is not, as the
grammarians say, temporal, but logical. That is, it does not refer
to time, but to the sequence of the Apostle's thought, and is
equivalent to `so then.' `So then abideth faith, hope, charity.'

The scope of the whole, then, is to contrast the transient with
the permanent, in Christian experience. If we firmly grasped the
truth involved, our estimates would be rectified and our practice
revolutionised.

I. I ask this question---What will drop away?

Paul answers, `prophecies, tongues, knowledge.' Now these three
were all extraordinary gifts belonging to the present phase of the
Christian life. But inasmuch as these gifts were the heightening
of natural capacities and faculties, it is perfectly legitimate to
enlarge the declaration and to use these three words in their
widest signification. So understood, they come to this, that all
our present modes of apprehension and of utterance are transient,
and will be left behind.

`Knowledge, it shall cease,' and as the Apostle goes on to
explain, in the verses which I have passed over for my present
purpose, it shall cease because the perfect will absorb into
itself the imperfect, as the inrushing tide will obliterate the
little pools in the rocks on the seashore. For another reason, the
knowledge, the mode of apprehension belonging to the present, will
pass---because here it is indirect, and there it will be
immediate. `We shall know face to face,' which is what
philosophers mean by intuition. Here our knowledge `creeps from
point to point,' painfully amassing facts, and thence, with many
hesitations and errors, groping its way towards principles and
laws. Here it is imperfect, with many a gap in the circumference;
or like the thin red line on a map which shows the traveller's
route across a prairie, or like the spider's thread in the
telescope, stretched athwart the blazing disc of the sun---`but
then face to face.' Incomplete knowledge shall be done away; and
many of its objects will drop, and much of what makes the science
of earth will be antiquated and effete. What would the hand-loom
weaver's knowledge of how to throw his shuttle be worth in a
weaving-shed with a thousand looms? Just so much will the
knowledges of earth be when we get yonder.

Modes of utterance will cease. With new experiences will come new
methods of communication. As a man can speak, and a beast can only
growl or bark, so a man in heaven, with new experiences, will have
new methods of communication. The comparison between that mode of
utterance which we now have, and that which we shall then possess,
will be like the difference between the old-fashioned semaphore,
that used to wave about clumsy wooden arms in order to convey
intelligence, and the telegraph.

Think, then, of a man going into that future life, and saying `I
knew more about Sanscrit than anybody that ever lived in Europe';
`I sang sweet songs'; `I was a past master in philology, grammars,
and lexicons'; `I was a great orator.' `Tongues shall cease'; and
the modes of utterance that belonged to earth, and all that holds
of them, will drop away, and be of no more use.

If these things are true, brethren, with regard even to the
highest form of these high and noble things, how much more and
more solemnly true are they with regard to the aims and objects
which most of us have in view? They will all drop away, and we
shall be left, stripped of what, for most of us, has made the
whole interest and activity of our lives.

II. What will last?

`So then, abideth these three, faith, hope, love.' When Paul takes
three nouns and couples them with a verb in the singular, he is
not making a slip of the pen, or committing a grammatical blunder
which a child could correct. But there is a great truth in that
piece of apparent grammatical irregularity; for the faith, the
hope, and the love, for which he can only afford a singular verb,
are thereby declared to be in their depth and essence one thing,
and it, the triple star, abides, and continues to shine. The three
primitive colours are unified in the white beam of light. Do not
correct the grammar, and spoil the sense, but discern what he
means when he says, `Now, abid\textit{eth} faith, hope, love.' For
this is what he means, that the two latter come out of the former,
and that without it they are nought, and that it without them is
dead.

Faith breeds Hope. \textit{There} is the difference between
earthly hopes and Christian people's hopes. Our hopes, apart from
the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, are but the balancing of
probabilities, and the scale is often dragged down by the clutch
of eager desires. But all is baseless and uncertain, unless our
hopes are the outcome of our faith. Which, being translated into
other words, is just this, that the one basis on which men can
rest---ay! even for the immediate future, and the contingencies of
life, as well as for the solemnities and certainties of
heaven---any legitimate and substantial hope is trust in Jesus
Christ, His word, His love, His power, and for the heavenly
future, in His Resurrection and present glory. A man who believes
these things, and only that man, has a rock foundation on which he
can build his hope.

Faith, in like manner, is the parent of Love. Paul and John,
diverse as they are in the whole cast of their minds, the one
being speculative and the other mystical, the one argumentative
and the other simply gazing and telling what he sees, are
precisely agreed in regard to this matter. For, to the Apostle of
Love, the foundation of all human love towards God is, `We have
known and believed the love that God hath to us,' and `We love Him
because He first loved us,' and to Paul the first step is the
trusting reception of the love of God, `commended to us' by the
fact that `whilst we were yet sinners Christ died for us,' and
from that necessarily flows, if the faith be genuine, the love
that answers the sacrifice and obeys the Beloved. So faith, hope,
love, these three are a trinity in unity, and it abideth. That is
the main point of our last text. Let me say a word or two about
it.

I have said that the words have often been misunderstood as if the
`now' referred only to the present order of things, in which faith
and hope are supposed to find their only appropriate sphere. But
that is clearly not the Apostle's meaning here, for many reasons
with which I need not trouble you. The abiding of all three is
eternal abiding, and there is a heavenly as well as an earthly
form of faith and hope as well as of love. Just look at these
points for a moment.

`Faith abides,' says Paul, yonder, as here. Now, there is a common
saying, which I suppose ninety out of a hundred people think comes
out of the Bible, about faith being lost in sight. There is no
such teaching in Scripture. True, in one aspect, faith is the
antithesis of sight. True, Paul does say `We walk by faith, not by
sight.' But that antithesis refers only to part of faith's
significance. In so far as it is the opposite of sight, of course
it will cease to be in operation when `we shall know even as we
are known' and `see Him as He is.' But the essence of faith is not
in the absence of the person trusted, but the emotion of trust
which goes out to the person, present or absent. And in its
deepest meaning of absolute dependence and happy confidence, faith
abides through all the glories and the lustres of the heavens, as
it burns amidst the dimnesses and the darknesses of earth. For
ever and ever, on through the irrevoluble ages of eternity,
dependence on God in Christ will be the life of the glorified, as
it was the life of the militant, Church. No millenniums of
possession, and no imaginable increases in beauty and perfectness
and enrichment with the wealth of God, will bring us one inch
nearer to casting off the state of filial dependence which is, and
ever will be, the condition of our receiving them all. Faith
`abides.'

Hope `abides.' For it is no more a Scriptural idea that hope is
lost in fruition, than it is that faith is lost in sight. Rather
that Future presents itself to us as the continual communication
of an inexhaustible God to our progressively capacious and capable
spirits. In that continual communication there is continual
progress. Wherever there is progress there must be hope. And thus
the fair form, which has so often danced before us elusive, and
has led us into bogs and miry places and then faded away, will
move before us through all the long avenues of an endless
progress, and will ever and anon come back to tell us of the
unseen glories that lie beyond the next turn, and to woo us
further into the depths of heaven and the fulness of God. Hope
`abides.'

Love `abides.' I need not, I suppose, enlarge upon that thought
which nobody denies, that love is the eternal form of the human
relation to God. It, too, like the mercy which it clasps,
`endureth for ever.'

But I may remind you of what the Apostle does not explain in our
text, that it is greater than its linked sisters, because whilst
faith and hope belong only to a creature, and are dependent and
expectant of some good to come to themselves, and correspond to
something which is in God in Christ, the love which springs from
faith and hope not only corresponds to, but resembles, that from
which it comes and by which it lives. The fire kindled is cognate
with the fire that kindles; and the love that is in man is like
the love that is in God. It is the climax of his nature; it is the
fulfilling of all duty; it is the crown and jewelled clasp of all
perfection. And so `abideth faith, hope, love, and the greatest of
these is love.'

III. Lastly, what follows from all this?

First, let us be quite sure that we understand what this abiding
love is. I dare say you have heard people say `Ah! I do not care
much about Paul's theology. Give me the thirteenth chapter of the
first Epistle to the Corinthians. That is beautiful; that praise
of Love; \textit{that} comes home to men.' Yes, very beautiful.
Are you quite sure that you know what Paul means by `love'? I do
not use the word charity, because that lovely word, like a
glistening meteor that falls upon the earth, has a rust, as it
were, upon its surface that dims its brightness very quickly.
Charity has come to mean an indulgent estimate of other people's
faults; or, still more degradingly, the giving of money out of
your pockets to other people's necessities. These are what the
people who do not care much about Paul's theology generally
suppose that he means here. But these do not exhaust his meaning.
Paul's notion of love is the response of the human love to the
divine, which divine is received into the heart by simple faith in
Jesus Christ. And his notion of love which never faileth, and
endureth all things, and hopeth all things, is love to men, which
is but one stream of the great river of love to God. If we rightly
understand what he means by love, we shall find that his praise of
love is as theological as anything that he ever wrote. We shall
never get further than barren admiration of a beautiful piece of
writing, unless our love to men has the source and root to which
Paul points us.

Again, let us take this great thought of the permanence of faith,
hope, and love as being the highest conception that we can form of
our future condition. It is very easy to bewilder ourselves with
speculations and theories of another life. I do not care much
about them. The great gates keep their secret well. Few stray
beams of light find their way through their crevices. The less we
say the less likely we are to err. It is easy to let ourselves be
led away, by turning rhetoric into revelation, and accepting the
symbols of the New Testament as if they carried anything more than
images of the realities. But far beyond golden pavements, and
harps, and crowns, and white robes, lies this one great thought
that the elements of the imperfect, Christlike life of earth are
the essence of the perfect, Godlike life in heaven. `Now abide
these three, faith, hope, love.'

Last of all, let us shape our lives in accordance with these
certainties. The dropping away of the transient things is no
argument for neglecting or despising them; for our handling of
them makes our characters, and our characters abide. But it is a
very excellent argument for shaping our lives so as to seek first
the first things, and to secure the permanent qualities, and so to
use the transient as that it shall all help us towards that which
does not pass.

What will a Manchester man that knows nothing except goods and
office work, and knows these only in their superficial aspect, and
not as related to God, what, in the name of common-sense, will he
do with himself when he gets into a world where there is not a
single ledger, nor a desk, nor a yard of cloth of any sort? What
will some of us do when, in like manner, we are stripped of all
the things that we have cared about, and worked for, and have made
our aims down here? Suppose that you knew that you were under
sailing orders to go somewhere or other, and that at any moment a
breathless messenger might appear and say, `Come along! we are all
waiting for you'; and suppose that you never did a single thing
towards getting your outfit ready, or preparing yourself in any
way for that which might come at any moment, and could not but
come before very long. Would you be a wise man? But that is what a
great many of us are doing; doing every day, and all day long, and
doing that only. `He shall leave them in the midst of his days,'
says a grim text, `and at his latter end shall be a fool.'

What will drop? Modes of apprehension, modes of utterance,
occupations, duties, relationships, loves; and we shall be left
standing naked, stripped, as it were, to the very quick, and only
as much left as will keep our souls alive. But if we are clothed
with faith, hope, love, we shall not be found naked. Cultivate the
high things, the permanent things; then death will not wrench you
violently from all that you have been and cared for; but it will
usher you into the perfect form of all that you have been and done
upon earth. All these things will pass, but faith, hope, love,
`stay not behind nor in the grave are trod,' but will last as long
as Christ, their Object, lives, and as long as we in Him live
also.

\chapter{The Power of the Resurrection}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; 4.\ And
that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according
to the Scriptures.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xv. 3, 4.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Christmas day is probably not the true anniversary of the
Nativity, but Easter is certainly that of the Resurrection. The
season is appropriate. In the climate of Palestine the first
fruits of the harvest were ready at the Passover for presentation
in the Temple. It was an agricultural as well as a historical
festival; and the connection between that aspect of the feast and
the Resurrection of our Lord is in the Apostle's mind when he
says, in a subsequent part of this chapter, that Christ is `risen
from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.'

In our colder climate the season is no less appropriate. The `life
re-orient out of dust' which shows itself to-day in every bursting
leaf-bud and springing flower is Nature's parable of the spring
that awaits man after the winter of death. No doubt, apart from
the Resurrection of Jesus, the yearly miracle kindles sad thoughts
in mourning hearts, and suggests bitter contrasts to those who
sorrow, having no hope, but the grave in the garden has turned
every blossom into a smiling prophet of the Resurrection.

And so the season, illuminated by the event, teaches us lessons of
hope that `we shall not all die.' Let us turn, then, to the
thoughts naturally suggested by the day, and the great fact which
it brings to each mind, and confirmed thereafter by the miracle
that is being wrought round about us.

I. First, then, in my text, I would have you note the facts of
Paul's gospel.

`First of all ... I delivered' these things. And the `first' not
only points to the order of time in the proclamation, but to the
order of importance as well. For these initial facts are the
fundamental facts, on which all that may follow thereafter is
certainly built. Now the first thing that strikes me here is that,
whatever else the system unfolded in the New Testament is, it is
to begin with a simple record of historical fact. It becomes a
philosophy, it becomes a religious system; it is a revelation of
God; it is an unveiling of man; it is a body of ethical precepts.
It is morals and philosophy and religion all in one; but it is
first of all a story of something that took place in the world.

If that be so, there is a lesson for men whose work it is to
preach it. Let them never forget that their business is to insist
upon the truth of these great, supernatural, all-important, and
fundamental facts, the death and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
They must evolve all the deep meanings that lie in them; and the
deeper they dig for their meanings the better. They must open out
the endless treasures of consolation and enforce the omnipotent
motives of action which are wrapped up in the facts; but howsoever
far they may carry their evolving and their application of them,
they will neither be faithful to their Lord nor true stewards of
their message unless, clear above all other aspects of their work,
and underlying all other forms of their ministry, there be the
unfaltering proclamation---`first of all,' midst of all, last of
all---`how that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures,' and `that He was raised again according to the
Scriptures.'

Note, too, how this fundamental and original character of the
gospel which Paul preached, as a record of facts, makes short work
of a great deal that calls itself `liberal Christianity' in these
days. We are told that it is quite possible to be a very good
Christian man, and reject the supernatural, and turn away with
incredulity from the story of the Resurrection. It may be so, but
I confess that it puzzles me to understand how, if the fundamental
character of Christian teaching be the proclamation of certain
facts, a man who does not believe those facts has the right to
call himself a Christian.

Note, further, how there is an element of explanation involved in
the proclamation of the facts which turns them into a gospel. Mark
how `that \textit{Christ} died,' not \emph{Jesus}. It is a great
truth, that the man, our Brother, Jesus, passed through the common
lot, but that is not what Paul says here, though he often says it.
What he says is that `\textit{Christ} died.' Christ is the name of
an office, into which is condensed a whole system of truth,
declaring that it is He who is the Apex, the Seal, and ultimate Word
of all divine revelation. It was the \textit{Christ} who died;
unless it was so, the death of Jesus is no gospel.

`He died for our sins.' Now, if the Apostle had only said `He died
for us,' that might conceivably have meant that, in a multitude of
different ways of example, appeal to our pity and compassion and
the like, His death was of use to mankind. But when he says `He
died \textit{for our sins},' I take leave to think that that
expression has no meaning, unless it means that He died as the
expiation and sacrifice for men's sins. I ask you, in what
intelligible sense could Christ `die for our sins' unless He died
as bearing their punishment and as bearing it for us? And then,
finally, `He died and rose ... according to the Scriptures,' and
so fulfilled the divine purposes revealed from of old.

To the fact that a man was crucified outside the gates of
Jerusalem, `and rose again the third day,' which is the narrative,
there are added these three things---the dignity of the Person,
the purpose of His death, the fulfilment of the divine intention
manifested from of old. And these three things, as I said, turn
the narrative into a Gospel.

So, brethren, let us remember that, without all three of them, the
death of Jesus Christ is nothing to us, any more than the death of
thousands of sweet and saintly men in the past has been, who may
have seen a little more of the supreme goodness and greatness than
their fellows, and tried in vain to make purblind eyes participate
in their vision. Do you think that these twelve fishermen would
ever have shaken the world if they had gone out with the story of
the Cross, unless they had carried along with it the commentary
which is included in the words which I have emphasised? And do you
suppose that the type of Christianity which slurs over the
explanation, and so does not know what to do with the facts, will
ever do much in the world, or will ever touch men? Let us
liberalise our Christianity by all means, but do not let us
evaporate it; and evaporate it we surely shall if we falter in
saying with Paul, `I declare, first of all, that which received,'
how that the death and resurrection were the death and
resurrection of the Christ, `for our sins, according to the
Scriptures.' These are the facts which make Paul's gospel.

II. Now I ask you to look, in the second place, at what
establishes the facts.

We have here, in this chapter, a statement very much older than
our existing written gospels. This epistle is one of the four
letters of Paul which nobody that I know of---with some quite
insignificant exceptions in modern times---has ever ventured to
dispute. It is admittedly the writing of the Apostle, written
before the gospels, and in all probability within five-and-twenty
years of the date of the Crucifixion. And what do we find alleged
by it as the state of things at its date? That the belief in the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the subject of universal
Christian teaching, and was accepted by all the Christian
communities. Its evidence to that fact is undeniable; because
there was in the early Christian Church a very formidable and
large body of bitter antagonists of Paul's, who would have been
only too glad to have convicted him, if they could, of any
misrepresentation of the usual notions, or divergence from the
usual type of teaching. So we may take it as undeniable that the
representation of this chapter is historically true; and that
within five-and-twenty years of the death of Jesus Christ every
Christian community and every Christian teacher believed in and
proclaimed the fact of the Resurrection.

But if that be so, we necessarily are carried a great deal nearer
the Cross than five-and-twenty years; and, in fact, there is not,
between the moment when Paul penned these words and the day of
Pentecost, a single chink in the history where you can insert such
a tremendous innovation as the full-fledged belief in a
resurrection coming in as something new.

I do not need to dwell at all upon this other thought, that,
unless the belief that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead
originated at the time of His death, there would never have been a
Church at all. Why was it that they did not tumble to pieces? Take
the nave out of the wheel and what becomes of the spokes? A dead
Christ could never have been the basis of a living Church. If He
had not risen from the dead, the story of His disciples would have
been the same as that which Gamaliel told the Sanhedrim was the
story of all former pseudo-Messiahs such as that man Theudas. `He
was slain, and as many as followed him were dispersed and came to
naught.' Of course! The existence of the Church demands, as a
pre-requisite, the initial belief in the Resurrection. I think,
then, that the contemporaneousness of the evidence is sufficiently
established.

What about its good faith? I suppose that nobody, nowadays, doubts
the veracity of these witnesses. Anybody that knows an honest man
when he sees him, anybody that has the least ear for the tone of
sincerity and the accent of conviction, must say that they may
have been fanatics, they may have been mistaken, but one thing is
clear as sunlight, they were not false witnesses for God.

What, then, about their competency? Their simplicity, their
ignorance, their slowness to believe, their stupor of surprise
when the fact first dawned upon them, which they tell not with any
idea of manufacturing evidence in their own favour, but simply as
a piece of history, all tend to make us certain that there was no
play of a morbid imagination, no hysterical turning of a wish into
a fact, on the part of these men. The sort of things which they
say that they saw and experienced are such as to make any such
supposition altogether absurd. There are long conversations,
appearances appealing to more than one sense, appearances followed
by withdrawals, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the
evening, sometimes at a distance, as on the mountain, sometimes
close by, as in the chamber, to single souls and to multitudes.
Fancy five hundred people all at once smitten with the same
mistake, imagining that they saw what they did not see! Miracles
may be difficult to believe, they are not half so difficult to
believe as absurdities. And this modern explanation of the faith
in the Resurrection I venture respectfully to designate as absurd.

But there is one other point to which I would like to turn for a
moment; and that is that little clause in my text that `He was
buried.' Why does Paul introduce that amongst his facts? Possibly
in order to affirm the reality of Christ's death; but I think for
another reason. If it be true that Jesus Christ was laid in that
sepulchre, a stone's throw outside the city gate, do you not see
what a difficulty that fact puts in the way of disbelief or denial
of His Resurrection? If the grave---and it was not a grave,
remember, like ours, but a cave, with a stone at the door of it,
that anybody could roll away for entrance---if the grave was
there, why, in the name of common-sense, did not the rulers put an
end to the pestilent heresy by saying, `Let us go and see if the
body is there'?

Modern deniers of the Resurrection may fairly be asked to front this
thought---If Jesus Christ's body was in the sepulchre, how was it
possible for belief in the Resurrection to have been originated, or
maintained? If His body was not in the grave, what had become of it?
If His friends stole it away then they were deceivers of the worst
type in preaching a resurrection; and we have already seen that that
hypothesis is ridiculous. If His enemies took it away, for which
they had no motive, why did they not produce it and say, `There is
an answer to your nonsense. There is the dead man. Let us hear no
more of this absurdity of His having risen from the dead'?

`He died ... according to the Scriptures, and He was buried.' And
the angels' word carries the only explanation of the fact which it
proclaims, `He is not here---He is risen.'

I take leave to say that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is
established by evidence which nobody would ever have thought of
doubting unless for the theory that miracles were impossible. The
reason for disbelief is not the deficiency of the evidence, but
the bias of the judge.

III. And now I have no time to do more than touch the last thought.
I have tried to show what establishes the facts. Let me remind you,
in a sentence or two, what the facts establish.

I by no means desire to suspend the whole of the evidence for
Christianity on the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the
Resurrection. There are a great many other ways of establishing
the truth of the Gospel besides that, upon which I do not need to
dwell now. But, taking this one specific ground which my text
suggests, what do the facts thus established prove?

Well, the first point to which I would refer, and on which I
should like to enlarge, if I had time, is the bearing of Christ's
Resurrection on the acceptance of the miraculous. We hear a great
deal about the impossibility of miracle and the like. It upsets
the certainty and fixedness of the order of things, and so forth,
and so forth. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead; and that opens
a door wide enough to admit all the rest of the Gospel miracles.
It is of no use paring down the supernatural in Christianity, in
order to meet the prejudices of a quasi-scientific scepticism,
unless you are prepared to go the whole length, and give up the
Resurrection. There is the turning point. The question is, Do you
believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or do you not? If
your objections to the supernatural are valid, then Christ is not
risen from the dead; and you must face the consequences of that.
If He is risen from the dead, then you must cease all your talk
about the impossibility of miracle, and be willing to accept a
supernatural revelation as God's way of making Himself known to
man.

But, further, let me remind you of the bearing of the Resurrection
upon Christ's work and claims. If He be lying in some forgotten
grave, and if all that fair thought of His having burst the bands
of death is a blunder, then there was nothing in His death that
had the least bearing upon men's sin, and it is no more to me than
the deaths of thousands in the past. But if He is risen from the
dead, then the Resurrection casts back a light upon the Cross, and
we understand that His death is the life of the world, and that
`by His stripes we are healed.'

But, further, remember what He said about Himself when He was in
the world---how He claimed to be the Son of God; how He demanded
absolute obedience, implicit trust, supreme love, how He
identified faith in Himself with faith in God---and consider the
Resurrection as bearing on the reception or rejection of these
tremendous claims. It seems to me that we are brought sharp up to
this alternative---Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and was
declared by the Resurrection to be the Son of God with power; or
Jesus Christ has \textit{not} risen from the dead---and what then?
Then He was either deceiver or deceived, and in either case has no
right to my reverence and my love. We may be thankful that men are
illogical, and that many who reject the Resurrection retain
reverence, genuine and deep, for Jesus Christ. But whether they
have any right to do so is another matter. I confess for myself
that, if I did not believe that Jesus Christ had risen from the
dead, I should find it very hard to accept, as an example of
conduct, or as religious teacher, a man who had made such great
claims as He did, and had asked from me what He asked. It seems to
me that He is either a great deal more, or a great deal less, than
a beautiful saintly soul. If He rose from the dead He is much
more; if He did not, I am afraid to say how much less He is.

And, finally, the bearing of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ upon
our own hopes of the future may be suggested. It teaches us that
life has nothing to do with organisation, but persists apart from
the body. It teaches us that a man may pass from death and be
unaltered in the substance of his being; and it teaches us that
the earthly house of our tabernacle may be fashioned like unto the
glorious house in which He dwells now at the right hand of God.
There is no other absolute proof of immortality than the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If we accept with all our hearts and minds Paul's Gospel in its
fundamental facts, we need not fear to die, because He has died,
and by dying has been the death of death. We need not doubt that
we shall live again, because He was dead and is alive for ever
more. This Samson has carried away the gates on His strong
shoulders, and death is no more a dungeon but a passage. If we
rest ourselves upon Him, then we can take up, for ourselves and
for all that are dear to us and have gone before us, the
triumphant song, `O Death, where is thy sting?' `Thanks be to God,
which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.'

\chapter{Remaining and Falling Asleep}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xv. 6}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`After that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of
whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are
fallen asleep.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xv. 6.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There were, then, some five-and-twenty years after the
Resurrection, several hundred disciples who were known amongst the
churches as having been eyewitnesses of the risen Saviour. The
greater part survived; some, evidently a very few, had died. The
proportion of the living to the dead, after five-and-twenty years,
is generally the opposite. The greater part have `fallen asleep';
some, a comparatively few, remain `unto this present.' Possibly
there was some divine intervention which supernaturally prolonged
the lives of these witnesses, in order that their testimony might
be the more lasting. But, be that as it may, they evidently were
men of mark, and some kind of honour and observance surrounded
them, as was very natural, and as appears from the fact that Paul
here knows so accurately (and can appeal to His fellow-Christians'
accurate knowledge) the proportion between the survivors and the
departed. We read of one of them in the Acts of the Apostles at a
later date than this, one Mnason, an `original disciple.'

So we get a glimpse into the conditions of life in the early
Church, interesting and of value in an evidential point of view.
But my purpose at present is to draw your attention to the
remarkable language in which the Apostle here speaks of the living
and the dead amongst these witnesses. In neither case does he use
the simple, common words `living' or `dead'; but in the one clause
he speaks of their `remaining,' and in the other of their `falling
asleep'; both phrases being significant, and, as I take it, both
being traced up to the fact of their having seen the risen Lord as
the cause why their life could be described as a `remaining,' and
their death as a `falling asleep.' In other words, we have here
brought before us, by these two striking expressions, the
transforming effect upon life and upon death of the faith in a
risen Lord, whether grounded on sight or not. And it is simply to
these two points that I desire to turn now.

I. First, then, we have to consider what life may become to those
who see the risen Christ.

`The greater part remain until this present.' Now the word
\textit{remain} is no mere synonym for living or surviving. It not
only tells us the fact that the survivors were living, but the
kind of life that they did live. It is very significant that it is
the same expression as our Lord used in the profound prophetic
words, `If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to
thee?' Now we are told in John's Gospel that `that saying went
abroad amongst the brethren,' and inasmuch as it was a matter of
common notoriety in the early Church, it is by no means a violent
supposition that it may be floating in Paul's memory here, and may
determine his selection of this remarkable expression `they
remain,' or `they tarry,' and they were tarrying till the Master
came. So, then, I think if we give due weight to the significance
of the phrase, we get two or three thoughts worth pondering.

One of them is that the sight of a risen Christ will make life
calm and tranquil. Fancy one of these 500 brethren, after that
vision, going back to his quiet rural home in some little village
amongst the hills of Galilee. How small and remote from Him, and
unworthy to ruffle or disturb the heart in which the memory of
that vision was burning, would seem the things that otherwise
would have been important and distracting! The faith which we have
in the risen Christ ought to do the same thing for us, and will do
it in the measure in which there shines clearly before that inward
eye, which is our true means of apprehending Him, the vision which
shone before the outward gaze of that company of wondering
witnesses. If we build our nests amidst the tossing branches of
the world's trees, they will sway with every wind, and perhaps be
blown from their hold altogether by such a storm as we all have
sometimes to meet. But we may build our nests in the clefts of the
rock, like the doves, and be quiet, as they are. Distractions will
cease to distract, and troubles will cease to agitate, and across
the heaving surface of the great ocean there will come a Form
beneath whose feet the waves smooth themselves, and at whose voice
the winds are still. They who see Christ need not be troubled. The
ship that is empty is tossed upon the ocean, that which is well
laden is steady. The heart that has Christ for a passenger need
not fear being rocked by any storm. Calmness will come with the
vision of the Lord, and we shall abide or `remain,' for there will
be no need for us to flee from this Refuge to that, nor shall we
be driven from our secure abode by any contingencies. `He that
believeth shall not make haste.'

It is a good thing to cultivate the disposition that says about
most of the trifles of this life, `It does not much matter'; but
the only way to prevent wholesome contempt of the world's
trivialities from degenerating into supercilious indifference is,
to base it upon Christ, discerned as near us and bestowing upon us
the calmness of His risen life. Make Him your scale of importance,
and nothing will be too small to demand and be worthy of the best
efforts of your work, but nothing will be too great to sweep you
away from the serenity of your faith.

Again, the vision of the risen Christ will also lead to patient
persistence in duty. If we have Him before us, the distasteful
duty which He sets us will not be distasteful, and the small
tasks, in which great faithfulness may be manifested, will cease
to be small. If we have Him before us we have in that risen Christ
the great and lasting Example of how patient continuance in
well-doing triumphs over the sorrows that it bears, by and in
patiently bearing them, and is crowned at last with glory and
honour. The risen Christ is the Pattern for the men who will not
be turned aside from the path of duty by any obstacles, dangers,
or threats. The risen Christ is the signal Example of glory
following upon faithfulness, and of the crown being the result of
the Cross. The risen Christ is the manifest Helper of them that
put their trust in Him; and one of the plainest lessons and of the
most imperative commands which come from the believing gaze upon
that Lord who died because He would do the will of the Father, and
is throned and crowned in the heavens because He died, is---By
patient continuance in well-doing let us commit the keeping of our
souls to Him: and abide in the calling wherewith we are called.

And, again, the sight of the risen Christ leads to a life of calm
expectancy. `If I will that He \textit{tarry} till I come' conveys
that shade of meaning. The Apostle was to wait for the Lord from
Heaven, and that vision which was given to these 500 men sent them
home to their abodes to make all the rest of their lives one calm
aspiration for, and patient expectation of, the return of the
Lord. These primitive Christians expected that Jesus Christ would
come speedily. That expectation was disappointed in so far as the
date was concerned, but after nineteen centuries it still remains
true that all vigorous and vital Christian life must have in it,
as a very important element of its vitality, the onward look which
ever is anticipating, which often is desiring, and which
constantly is confident of, the coming of the Lord from Heaven.
The Resurrection has for its consequences, its sequel and
corollary, first the Ascension; then the long tract of time during
which Jesus Christ is absent, but still in divine presence rules
the world; and, finally, His coming again in that same body in
which the disciples saw Him depart from them. And no Christian
life is up to the level of its privileges, nor has any Christian
faith grasped the whole articles of its creed, except that which
sets in the very centre of all its visions of the future that
great thought---He shall come again.

Questions of chronology have nothing to do with that. It stands
there before us, the certain fact, made certain and inevitable by
the past facts of the Cross and the Grave and Olivet. He has come,
He will come; He has gone, He will come back. And for us the life
that we live in the flesh ought to be a life of waiting for God's
Son from Heaven, and of patient, confident expectancy that when He
shall be manifested we also shall be manifested with Him in glory.

So much, then, for life---calm, persistent in every duty, and
animated by that blessed and far-off, but certain, hope, and all
of these founded upon the vision and the faith of a risen Lord.
What have fears and cares and distractions and faint-heartedness
and gloomy sorrow to do with the eyes that have beheld the Christ,
and with the lives that are based on faith in the risen Lord?

II. So, secondly, consider what death becomes to those who have
seen Christ risen from the dead.

`Some are fallen asleep.' Now that most natural and obvious
me\-ta\-phor for death is not only a Christian idea, but is found,
as would be expected, in many tongues, but yet with a great and
significant difference. The Christian reason for calling death a
sleep embraces a great deal more than the heathen reason for doing
so, and in some respects is precisely the opposite of that,
inasmuch as to most others who have used the word, death has been
a sleep that knew no waking, whereas the very pith and centre of
the Christian reason for employing the symbol are that it makes
our waking sure. We have here what the act of dying and the
condition of the dead become by virtue of faith in the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

They have `fallen asleep.' The act of dying is but a laying one's
self down to rest, and a dropping out of consciousness of the
surrounding world. It is very remarkable and very beautiful that
the new Testament scarcely ever employs the words \textit{dying}
and \textit{death} for the act of separating body and spirit, or
for the condition either of the spirit parted from the body, or of
the body parted from the spirit. It keeps those grim words for the
reality, the separation of the soul from God; and it only
exceptionally uses them for the shadow and the symbol, the
physical fact of the parting of the man from the house which here
he has dwelt in. But the reason why Christianity uses these
periphrases or metaphors, these euphemisms for death, is the
opposite of the reason why the world uses them. The world is so
afraid of dying that it durst not name the grim, ugly thing. The
Christian, or at least the Christian faith, is so little afraid of
death that it does not think such a trivial matter worth calling
by the name, but only names it `falling asleep.'

Even when the circumstances of that dropping off to slumber are
painful and violent, the Bible still employs the term. Is it not
striking that the first martyr, kneeling outside the city, bruised
by stones and dying a bloody death, should have been said to fall
asleep? If ever there was an instance in which the gentle metaphor
seemed all inappropriate it was that cruel death, amidst a howling
crowd, and with fatal bruises, and bleeding limbs mangled by the
heavy rocks that lay upon them. But yet, `when he had said this he
fell asleep.' If that be true of such a death, no physical pains
of any kind make the sweet word inappropriate for any.

We have here not only the designation of the act of dying, but
that of the condition of the dead. They are fallen asleep, and
they continue asleep. How many great thoughts gather round that
metaphor on which it is needless for me to try to dilate! They
will suggest themselves without many words to you all.

There lies in it the idea of repose. `They rest from their
labours.' Sleep restores strength, and withdraws a man at once
from effort on the outer world, and from communication from it. We
may carry the analogy into that unseen world. We know nothing
about the relations to an external universe of the departed who
sleep in Jesus. It may be that, if they sleep in Him, since He
knows all, they, through Him, may know, too, something---so much
as He pleases to impart to them---of what is happening here. And
it may even be that, if they sleep in Him, and He wields the
energies of Omnipotence, they, through Him, may have some service
to do, even while they wait for their house which is from heaven.
But there is no need for, nor profit in, such speculations. It is
enough that the sweet emblem suggests repose, and that in that
sleep there are folded around the sleepers the arms of the Christ
on whose bosom they rest, as an infant does on its first and
happiest home---its mother's breast.

But then, besides that, the emblem suggests the idea of continuous
and conscious existence. A man asleep does not cease to be a man;
a dead man does not cease to live. It has often been argued from
this metaphor that we are to conceive of the space between death
and the resurrection as being a period of unconsciousness, but the
analogies seem to me to be in the opposite direction. A sleeping
man does not cease to know himself to be, and he does not cease to
know himself to be himself. That mysterious consciousness of
personal identity survives the passage from waking to sleep, as
dreams sufficiently show us. And, therefore, they that sleep know
themselves to be.

And, finally, the emblem suggests the idea of waking. Sleep is a
parenthesis. If the night comes, the morning comes. `If winter
comes, can spring be far behind?' They that sleep will awake, and
be satisfied when they `awake with Thy likeness.' And so these
three things---repose, conscious, continuous existence, and the
certainty of awaking---all lie in that metaphor.

Now, then, the risen Christ is the only ground of such hope, and
faith in Him is the only state of mind which is entitled to
cherish it. Nothing proves immortality except that open grave.
Every other foundation is too weak to bear the weight of such a
superstructure. The current of present opinion shows, I think,
that neither metaphysical nor ethical arguments for the future
life will stand the force of the disintegrating criticism which is
brought to bear upon that hope by the fashionable materialism of
this generation. There is one barrier that will resist that force,
and only one, and that is the historical facts that Jesus Christ
died, and that Jesus Christ has risen again. He rose; therefore
death is not the end of individual existence. He rose; therefore
life beyond the grave is possible for humanity. He rose; therefore
His sacrifice for the world's sin is accepted, and I may be
delivered from my guilt and my burden. He rose; therefore He is
declared to be the Son of God with power. He rose; therefore we,
if we trust Him, may partake in His Resurrection and in some
reflection of His glory. The old Greek architects were often
careless of the solidity of the soil on which they built their
temples, and so, many of them have fallen in ruins. The Temple of
Immortality can be built only upon the rock of that
proclamation---Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. And we, dear
brethren, should have all our hopes founded upon that one fact.

So then, for us, the calm, peaceful passage from life into what
else is the great darkness is possible on condition of our having
beheld the risen Lord. These witnesses of whom my text speaks,
Paul would suggest to us, laid themselves quietly down to sleep,
because before them there still hovered the memory of the vision
which they had beheld. Faith in the risen Christ is the anchor of
the soul in death, and there is nothing else by which we can hold
then.

As the same Apostle, in one of his other letters, puts it, the
belief that Christ is risen is not only the irrefragable ground of
our hope that we, too, shall rise, but has the power to change the
whole aspect of our death. Did you ever observe the emphasis with
which He says, `If we believe that Jesus \textit{died} and rose
again, even so them also which \textit{sleep} in Jesus will God
bring with Him?' His death was death indeed, and faith in it
softens ours to sleep. He bore the reality that we might never
need to know it, and if our poor hearts are resting upon that dear
Lord, then the flames are but painted ones and will not burn, and
we shall pass through them, and no smell of fire will be upon us,
and all that will be consumed will be the bonds which bind us. He
has abolished death. The physical fact remains, but all which to
men makes the idea of death is gone if we trust the risen Lord. So
that, between two men dying under precisely the same
circumstances, of the same disease, in adjacent beds in the same
hospital, there may be such a difference as that the same word
cannot be applied to the experiences of both.

My dear friends, we have each of us to pass through that last
struggle; but we may make it either a quiet going to sleep with a
loved Face bending over our closing eyes, like a mother's over her
child's cradle, and the same Face meeting us when we open them in
the morning of heaven; or we may make it a reluctant departure
from all that we care for, and a trembling advance into all from
which conscience and heart shrink.

Which is it going to be to you? The answer depends upon that to
another question. Are you looking to that Christ that died and is
alive for evermore as your life and your salvation? Do you hold
fast that Gospel which Paul preached, `how that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and
that He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures'? If
you do, life will be a calm, persevering, expectant waiting upon
Him, and death will be nothing more terrible than falling asleep.

\chapter{Paul's Estimate of Himself}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xv. 10}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`By the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was
bestowed upon me was not in vain.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xv. 10.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The Apostle was, all his life, under the hateful necessity of
vindicating his character and Apostleship. Thus here, though his
main purpose in the context is simply to declare the Gospel which
he preached, he is obliged to turn aside in order to assert, and
to back up his assertion, that there was no sort of difference
between him and the other recognised teachers of Christian truth.
He was forced to do this by persistent endeavours in the
Corinthian Church to deny his Apostleship, and the faithfulness of
his representation of the Christian verities. The way in which he
does it is eminently beautiful and remarkable. He fires up in
vindication of himself; and then he checks himself. `By the grace
of God I am'---and he is going to say what he is, but he bethinks
himself, as if he had reflected; `No! I will leave other people to
say what that is. By the grace of God I am---what I am, whatever
that be. And all that I have to say is that God made me, and that
I helped Him. For the grace of God which was bestowed upon me was
not in vain. You Corinthians may judge what the product is. I tell
you how it has come about.' So there are thoughts here, I think,
well worth our pondering and taking into our hearts and lives.

I. First, as to the one power that makes men.

`By the grace of God I am what I am.' Now that word `grace' has got
to be worn threadbare, and to mean next door to nothing, in the ears
and minds of a great many continual hearers of the Gospel. But Paul
had a very definite idea of what he meant by it; and what he meant
by it was a very large thing, which we may well ponder for a moment
as being the only thing which will transform and ennoble character
and will produce fruit that a man need not be ashamed of. The grace
of God, in Paul's use of the words, which is the scriptural use of
them generally, implies these two things which are connected as root
and product---the active love of God, in exercise towards us low and
sinful creatures, and the gifts with which that love comes full
charged to men. These two things, which at bottom are one, love and
its gifts, are all, in the Apostle's judgment, gathered up and
stored, as in a great storehouse, in Jesus Christ Himself, and
through Him are made accessible to us, and brought to bear upon us
for the ennobling of our natures, and the investing of us with
graces and beauties of character, all strange to us apart from
these.

Now it seems to me that these two things, which come from one
root, are the precise things which you and I need in order to make
us nobler and purer and more Godlike men than otherwise we could
ever become. For what is it that men need most for noble and pure
living? These two things precisely---motive and power to carry out
the dictates of conscience.

Every man in the world knows enough of duty and of right to be a
far nobler man than any man in the world is. And it is not for
want of clear convictions of duty, it is not for want of
recognised models and patterns of life, that men go wrong; but it
is because there are these two things lacking, motives for nobler
service, and power to do and be what they know they ought to be.
And precisely here Paul's gospel comes in, `By the grace of God I
am what I am.' That grace, considered in its two sides of love and
of giving, supplies all that we want.

It supplies motives. There is nothing that will bend a man's will
like the recognition of divine love which it is blessedness to
come in contact with, and to obey. You may try to sway him by
motives of advantage and self-interest, and to thunder into his
ears the pealing words of duty and right and `ought,' and there is
no adequate response. You cannot soften a heart by the hammers of
the law. You cannot force a man to do right by brandishing before
him the whip that punishes doing wrong. You cannot sway the will
by anything but the heart; and when you can touch the deepest
spring it moves the whole mass.

You have seen some ponderous piece of machinery, which resists all
attempts of a puny hand laid upon it to make it revolve. But down
in one corner is a little hidden spring. Touch that and with
majestic slowness and certainty the mighty mass turns. You know
those rocking-stones down in the south of England; tons of weight
poised upon a pin point, and so exquisitely balanced that a
child's finger rightly applied may move the mass. So the whole man
is made mobile only by the touch of love; and the grace that comes
to us, and says, `If ye love Me, keep My commandments'---is, as I
believe, the sole motive which will continuously and adequately
sway the rebellious, self-centred wills of men, to obedience
resulting in nobility of life.

The other aspect of this same great word is, in like manner, that
which we need. What men want is, first of all, the will to be
noble and good; and, second, the power to carry out the will. It
is God that worketh in us both the willing and the doing. I
venture to affirm that there is no power known, either to
thinkers, or philanthropists, or doctrinaires, or strivers after
excellence in the world---no power known and available which will
lift a life to such heights of beauty and self-sacrificing
nobility, as will the power that comes to us by communication of
the grace that is in Jesus Christ.

I am perpetually trying to insist, dear brethren, upon this one
thought, that the communication of actual new life is the central
gift of the Gospel; and this new life it is, this nature endowed
with new desires, hopes, aims, capacities, which alone will lift
the whole man into unwonted heights of beauty and serenity. It is
the grace of God, the gift of His Divine Spirit who will dwell
with all of us, if we will, which alone can be trusted to make men
good.

And now, if that be true, what follows? Surely this, that for all
you who have, in any measure, caught a glimpse of what you ought
to be, and have been more or less vainly trying to realise your
ideal, and reach your goal, there is a better way than the way of
self-centred and self-derived and self-dependent effort. There is
the way of opening your hearts and spirits to the entrance and
access of that great power, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which will do in us and for us all that we know we ought to do,
and yet feel hampered and hindered in performing.

Oh, dear friends! there are many of you, I believe, who have more
or less spasmodically and interruptedly, but with a continual
recurrence to the effort, sought to plant your feet firmly in the
paths of righteousness, and have more or less failed. Listen to
this Gospel, and accept it, and put it to the proof. The love of
God which is in Christ Jesus, and the life which that love brings
in its hands, for all of us who will trust it, will dwell in you
if you will, and mould you into His own likeness, and the law of
the spirit of life which was in Christ Jesus will make us free
from the law of sin and death.

All noble living is a battle. Can you and I, with our ten
thousand, meet him that cometh against us with his twenty, the
temptations of the world and of its Prince? Send for the
reinforcements, and Jesus Christ will come and teach your hands to
war and your fingers to fight. All noble life is self-denial,
coercion, restraint; and can my poor, feeble hands apply muscular
force enough to the brake to keep the wheels clogged, and prevent
them from whirling me downhill into ruin? Let Him come and put His
great gentle hand on the top of yours, and that will enable you to
scotch the wheels, and make self-denial possible. All noble life
is a building up by slow degrees from the foundation. And can you
and I complete the task with our own limited resources, and our
own feeble strengths? Will not `all that pass by begin to mock' us
and say, `This man began to build and was not able to finish'?
That is the epitaph written over all moralities and over all lives
which, catching some glimpse of the good and the true and the
noble, have tried, apart from Christ, to reproduce them in
themselves. Frightful gaps, and an unfinished, however fair
structure end them all. Go to Him. `His hand hath laid the
foundation of the house, His hand shall also finish it.' He who is
Himself the foundation-stone is also the headstone of the corner,
which is brought forth with shouting of `Grace! Grace unto it!'

I need not, I suppose, linger to remind you what important and
large lessons these thoughts carry, not only for men who are
trying to work at the task of mending and making their own
characters, but on the larger scale, for all who seek to benefit
and elevate their fellows. Brethren, it is not for me to
depreciate any workers who, in any department, and by any methods,
seek, and partially effect, the elevation of humanity. But I
should be untrue to my own deepest convictions, and unfaithful to
the message which God's providence has given it to me as my life's
task to proclaim, if I did not declare that nothing will truly
\textit{re-form} humanity, society, the nation, the city, except
that which re-creates the individual: `the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ' entering into their midst.

II. And so, secondly, and very briefly, notice the lesson we get
here as to how we should think of our own attainments.

I have already pointed out that there are two beautiful touches in
my text. The Apostle traces everything that he is, in his
character and in his Christian standing and in his Apostolic work
and success, to that grace that has come down upon him, and
clothed his nakedness with so glorious a garment. And then, in
addition to that, he modestly, and with a fine sense of dignity,
refrains from parading his attainments or his achievements, and
says, `It is not for me to estimate what I am; it is for you to do
it.' True, indeed, in the next verse he does set forth, in very
lofty language, his claims to be in nothing behind the very
chiefest of the Apostles, and `to have laboured more abundantly
than they all.' But still the spirit of that humble and yet
dignified silence runs through the whole context. `By the grace of
God I am---what I am.'

Well, then, it is not necessary for a man to be ignorant, or to
pretend that he is ignorant, of what he can do. We hear a great
deal about the unconsciousness of genius. There is a partial truth
in it; and possibly the highest examples of power and success, in
any department of mental or intellectual effort, are unaware of
their achievements and stature. But if a man can do a certain kind
of service there is no harm whatever in his recognising the fact
that he can do it. The only harm is in his thinking that because
he can, he is a very fine fellow, and that the work itself is a
great work; and so setting himself up above his brethren. There is
a vast deal of hypocrisy in what is called unconsciousness of
power. Most men who have been chosen and empowered to do a great
work for God or for men, in any department, have been aware that
they could do it. But the less we think about ourselves, in any
way, the better. The more entire our recognition of the influx of
grace on which we depend for keeping our reservoir full, the less
likelihood there will be of touchy self-assertion, the less
likelihood of the misuse of the powers that we have. If we are to
do much for God, if we are to keep what we have already attained,
if we are to make our own lives sweet and beautiful, if we are to
be invested with any increase of capacity, or led to any higher
heights of nobleness and Christlikeness, we must copy, and make a
conscious effort to copy, these two things, which marked the
Apostle's estimate of himself---a distinct recognition that we are
only reservoirs and nothing more---`What hast thou that thou hast
not received? Why then dost thou glory as if thou hadst not
received it?'---and a humble waiving aside of the attempt to
determine what it is that we are. For however clearly a man may
know his own powers and achievements, it is hard for him to
estimate the relations of these to his whole character.

So, dear brethren, although it is a very homely piece of advice,
and may seem to be beneath the so-called dignity of the pulpit,
let me venture just to remind you that self-conceit is no disease
peculiar to the ten-talented people, but is quite as rife, if not
a good deal rifer, among those with one talent. They are very
humble when it comes to work, and are quite contented to wrap the
one talent up in a napkin then; but when it comes to
self-assertion, or what they expect to receive of recognition from
others, they need to be reminded quite as much as their betters in
endowment---`By the grace of God I am what I am.'

III. And so, lastly, one word about the responsibility for our
co-operation with the grace, in order to the accomplishment of its
results.

`The grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain,' says Paul.
`Not I, but the grace of God which was with me, and so I laboured
more abundantly than they all.' That is to say, God in His giving
love; Christ with His ever out-flowing Spirit, move round our
hearts, and desire to enter. But the grace, the love, the gifts of
the love may all be put away by our unfaithfulness, by our
non-receptivity, by our misuse, and by our negligence. Paul
yielded himself to the grace that was brought to work upon him.
Have you yielded yourselves?

Paul said, `By the grace of God I am what I am.' He could not have
said that, could he, if he had known that the most part of what he
was was dead against God's will and purpose? Has God anything to
do with making you what you are, or has it been the devil that has
had the greater share in it? This man, because he knew that he had
submitted himself to the often painful, searching, crucifying,
self-restraining and stimulating influences of the Gospel and
Spirit of Christ, could say, `God's grace has made me what I am,
and I helped Him to make me.' And can you say anything like that?

Take your life. In how many of its deeds has there been present
the consciousness of God and His love? Take your character. How
much of it has been shot through and through, so to speak, by the
fiery darts of that cleansing, warming, consuming grace of God?
Are you daily being baptized in that Spirit, searched by that
Spirit, condemned by that grace? Is it the grace of God, or nature
and self and the world and the flesh that have made you what you
are?

Oh, brethren I let us cultivate the sense of our need of this
divine help, for it does not come where men do not know how weak
they are, and how much they want it. The mountain tops are
high,---yes! and they are dry; there is no water there. The rivers
run in the green valleys deep down. `God resisteth the proud, and
giveth grace to the humble.' Let us see that we open our hearts to
the reception of these quickening and cleansing influences, for it
is possible for us to cover ourselves over with such an
impenetrable covering that that grace cannot pass through it. Let
us see to it that we keep ourselves in close contact with the
foundation of all this grace, even Jesus Christ Himself, by
desire, by faith, by love, by communion, by meditation, by
approximation, by sympathy, by service. And let us see that we use
the grace that we possess. `For to him that hath shall be given,
and from him that hath not'---not possessing in any real sense
because not utilising for its appointed purpose---`shall be taken
away even that he hath.' Wherefore, brethren, I `beseech you that
ye receive not the grace of God in vain.'

\chapter{The Unity of Apostolic Teaching}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xv. 11}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.'---1
\textsc{Cor.} xv. 11.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Party spirit and faction were the curses of Greek civic life, and
they had crept into at least one of the Greek churches---that in
the luxurious and powerful city of Corinth. We know that there was
a very considerable body of antagonists to Paul, who ranked
themselves under the banner of Apollos or of Cephas \textit{i.e.}
Peter. Therefore, Paul, keenly conscious that he was speaking to
some unfriendly critics, hastens in the context to remove the
possible objection which might be made, that the Gospel which he
preached was peculiar to himself, and proceeds to assert that the
whole substance of what he had to say to men, was held with
unbroken unanimity by the other apostles. `They' means all of
\textit{them}; and `so' means the summary of the Gospel teaching
in the preceding verses.

Now, Paul would not have ventured to make that assertion, in the
face of men whom he knew to be eager to pick holes in anything
that he said, unless he had been perfectly sure of his ground.
There were broad differences between him and the others. But their
partisans might squabble, as is often the case, and the men, whose
partisans they were, be unanimous. There were differences of
individual character, of temper, and of views about certain points
of Christian truth. But there was an unbroken front of unanimity
in regard to all that lies within the compass of that little word
which covers so much ground---`\textit{So} we preach.'

Now, I wish to turn to that outstanding fact---which does not
always attract the attention which it deserves---of the absolute
identity of the message which all the apostles and primitive
teachers delivered, and to seek to enforce some of the
considerations and lessons which seem to me naturally to flow from
it.

I. First, then, I ask you to think of the fact itself---the
unbroken unanimity of the whole body of Apostolic teachers.

As I have said, there were wide differences of characteristics
between them, but there was a broad tract of teaching wherein they
all agreed. Let me briefly gather up the points of unanimity, the
contents of the one Gospel, which every man of them felt was his
message to the world. I may take it all from the two clauses in
the preceding context, `how that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He
rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.' These are
the things about which, as Paul declares, there was not the
whisper of a dissentient voice. There is the vital centre which he
declares every Christian teacher grasped as being the essential of
his message, and in various tones and manners, but in substantial
identity of content, declared to the world.

Now, what lies in it? The Person spoken of---the Christ, and all
that that word involves of reference to the ancient and incomplete
Revelation in the past, its shadows and types, its prophecies and
ceremonies, its priesthood and its sacrifices; with all that it
involves of reference to the ancient hopes on which a thousand
generations had lived, and which either are baseless delusions, or
are realised in Jesus---the Person whom all the Apostles
proclaimed was One anointed from God as Prophet, Priest, and King;
who had come into the world to fulfil all that the ancient system
had shadowed by sacrifice, temple, and priest, and was the Monarch
of Israel and of the world.

And not only were they absolutely unanimous in regard to the
Person, but they were unbrokenly consentient in regard to the
facts of His life, His death, and His Resurrection. But the
proclamation of the external fact is no gospel. You must add the
clause `for our sins,' and then the record, which is a mere piece
of history, with no more good news in it than the record of the
death of any other martyr, hero, or saint, starts into being truly
the good news for the world. The least part of a historical fact
is the fact; the greatest part of it is the explanation of the
fact, and the setting it in its place in regard to other facts,
the exhibition of the principles which it expresses, and of the
conclusions to which it leads. So the bare historical declaration
of a death and a resurrection is transmuted into a gospel, by that
which is the most important part of the Gospel, the explanation of
the meaning of the fact---`He died for our sins.'

If redemption from sin through the death of a Person is the
fundamental conception of the Gospel for the world, then it is
clear that, for such a purpose, a divine nature in the Person is
wanted. Your notion of what Christ came to do will determine your
notion of who He is. If you only recognise that His work is to
teach, or to show in exercise a fair human character, then you may
rest content with the lower notion of His nature which sees in Him
but the foremost of the sons of men. But if we grasp `died for our
sins,' then for such a task the incarnation of the Eternal Son of
God is the absolute pre-requisite.

Still further, our text brings out the contents of this gospel as
being the declaration of the Resurrection. On that I need not here
and now dwell at any length. But these are the points, the Person,
the two facts, death and resurrection, and the great meaning of
the death---viz. the expiation for the world's sins: these are the
things on which the whole of the primitive teachers of the
Apostolic Church had one voice and one message.

Now, I do not suppose that I need spend any time in showing to you
how the extant records bear out, absolutely, this contention of
the Apostle's. I need only remind you how the opposition that was
waged against him---and it was a very vigorous and a very bitter
opposition---from a section of the Church, had no bearing at all
upon the question of what he taught, but only upon the question of
to whom it was to be taught. The only objection that the so-called
Judaising party in the early Church had against Paul and his
preaching, was not the Gospel that he declared, but his assertion
that the Gentile nations might enter into the Church through faith
in Jesus Christ, without passing through the gate of circumcision.
Depend upon it, if there had been any, even the most microscopic,
divergence on his part from the general, broad stream of Christian
teaching, the sleepless, keen-eyed, unscrupulous enemies that
dogged him all his days would have pounced upon it eagerly, and
would never have ceased talking about it. But not one of them ever
said a word of the sort, but allowed his teaching to pass, because
it was the teaching of every one of the apostles.

If I had time, or if it were necessary, it would be easy to point
you to the records that we have left of the Apostolic teaching, in
order to confirm this unbroken unanimity. I do not need to spend
time on that. Proof-texts are not worth so much as the fact that
these doctrines are interwoven into the whole structure of the New
Testament as a whole---just as they are into Paul's letters. But I
may gather one or two sayings, in which the substance of each
writer's teaching has been concentrated by himself. For instance,
Peter speaks about being `redeemed by the precious blood of Christ
as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot,' and declares that
`He Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree.' John comes
in with his doxology: `Unto Him that loved us, and loosed us from
our sins in His own blood'; and it is his pen that records how in
the heavens there echoed `glory and honour and thanks and
blessing, for ever and ever, to the Lamb that was slain, and has
redeemed us unto God by His blood.' The writer of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, steeped as he is in ceremonial and sacrificial ideas,
and having for his one purpose to work out the thought that Jesus
Christ is all that the ancient ritual, sacerdotal and sacrificial
system shadows and foretells, sums up his teaching in the
statement that Christ having come, a high priest of good things to
come, `through His own blood, entered in, once for all, into the
holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.'

There were limits to the unanimity, as I have already said. Paul
and Peter had a great quarrel about circumcision and related
subjects. The Apostolic writings are wondrously diverse from one
another. Peter is far less constructive and profound than Paul.
Paul and Peter are both untouched with the mystic wisdom of the
Apostle John. But, in regard to the facts that I have signalised,
the divinity, the person of Jesus Christ, His death and
Resurrection, and the significance to be attached to that death,
they are absolutely one. The instruments in the orchestra are
various, the tender flute, the ringing trumpet, and many another,
but the note they strike is the same. `Whether it were I or they,
so we preach.'

II. Now, let me ask you to consider the only explanation of this
unanimity.

Time was when the people, who did not believe in Christ's divinity
and sacrificial death, tortured themselves to try and make out
meanings for these epistles, which should not include the
obnoxious doctrines. That is nearly antiquated. I suppose that
there is nobody now, or next to nobody, who does not admit that,
right or wrong, Paul, Peter, John---all of them---teach these two
things, that Christ is the Eternal Son of the Father, and that His
death is the Sacrifice for the world's sin. But they say that that
is not the primitive, simple teaching of the Man of Nazareth; and
that the unanimity is a unanimity of misapprehension of, and
addition to, His words and to the drift of His teaching.

Now, just think what a huge---I was going to
say---inconceivability that supposition is. For there is no point,
say from the time at which the Apostle who wrote the words of my
text, which was somewhere about the year 56 or 57 A.D.,---there is
no point between that period, working backwards through the
history of the Church to the Crucifixion, where you can insert
such a tremendous revolution of teaching as this. There is no
trace of such a change. Peter's earliest speeches, as recorded in
Acts, are in some important respects less developed doctrinally
than are the epistles, but Christ's Messiahship, death, and
Resurrection, with which is connected the remission of sins, are
as clearly and emphatically proclaimed as at any later time. So
these points of the Apostolic testimony were preached from the
first, and, if in preaching them, the witnesses perverted the
simple teaching of the Carpenter of Nazareth, and ascribed to Him
a character which He had not claimed, and to His death a power of
which He had not dreamed, they did so at the very time when the
impressions of His personality and teaching were most recent and
strong. It seems to me, apart altogether from other
considerations, that such a right-about-face movement on the part
of the early teachers of Christianity, is an absolute
impossibility, regard being had to the facts of the case, even if
you make much allowance for possible errors in the record.

But I would make another remark. If misapprehension came in, if
these men, in their unanimous declaration of Christ's death as the
Sacrifice for sin, were not fairly representing the conclusions
inevitable from the facts of Christ's life and death, and from His
own words, is it not an odd thing that the same misapprehension
affected them all? When people misconceive a teacher's doctrine,
they generally differ in the nature of their misconceptions, and
split into sections and parties. But here you have to account for
the fact that every man of them, with all their diversity of
idiosyncrasy and character, tumbled into the same pit of error,
and that there was not one of them left sane enough to protest.
Does that seem to be a likely thing?

And what about the worth of the teacher's teaching, that did not
guard its receivers from such absolute misapprehension as that? If
the whole Church unanimously mistook everything that Jesus Christ
had said to them, and unwarrantably made out of Him what they did,
on this hypothesis, I do not think that there is much left to
honour or admire in a teacher, whose teaching was so ambiguous, as
that it led all that received it into such an error as that into
which, by the supposition, they fell.

No, brethren; they were one, because their Gospel was the only
possible statement of the principles that underlay, and the
conclusions that flowed from, the plain facts of the life and the
teaching of Jesus Christ. I am not going to spend time in quoting
His own words. I can only refer to one or two of them very
succinctly. `Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise
it up.' `As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so
must the Son of Man be lifted up.' `My flesh is the bread which I
will give for the life of the world.' `The Son of Man came not to
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom
for many.' `This is My body broken for you; take, eat, in
remembrance of Me.' `This is My blood, shed for many for the
remission of sins; this do ye, as often as ye drink it, in
remembrance of Me.' What possible explanation, doing justice to
these words, is there, except `Jesus Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures'? And how could men who had heard them
with their own ears, and with their own eyes had seen Him risen
from the dead and ascending into heaven, do otherwise than
eagerly, enthusiastically, at the cost of all, and with
unhesitating voice of unbroken unanimity, `so preach'?

I quite admit that in Christ's teaching in the gospels you will
not find the articulate drawing out into doctrinal statement of
the principles that underlay, and the conclusions that flow from,
the historical fact of Christ's propitiatory death. I do not
wonder at that, nor do I admit that it is any argument against the
truth of the divine revelation which is made in these doctrinal
statements, to allege that we find nothing corresponding to them
in Jesus Christ's own words. The silence is not as absolute as is
alleged, as the quotations which I have made, and which might have
been multiplied, do distinctly enough show. Even if it were more
absolute than it is, the silence is by no means unintelligible.
Christ had to offer the Sacrifice before the Sacrifice could be
preached. He Himself warned His disciples against accepting His
own words prior to the Cross, as the conclusive and ultimate
revelation. `I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot
carry them now.' There was need that the Cross should be a fact
before it was evolved into a doctrine. And so I venture to say
that the unanimity of the preaching is only explicable on the
ground of that preaching in both its parts---its assertion of
Jesus' Messiahship and of His propitiatory death---being the
repetition on the housetop of the lessons which they had heard in
the ear from Him.

III. Note, briefly, the lesson from this unanimity.

Let us distinctly apprehend where is the living heart of the
Gospel---that it is the message of redemption by the incarnation and
sacrifice of the Son of God. There follows from that incarnation and
sacrifice all the great teaching about the work of the Divine Spirit
in men, dwelling in them for evermore. But the beginning of all is,
`Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' And,
brethren, that message meets, as nothing else meets, the deepest
needs of every human soul. It is able, as nothing else is able, to
open out into a whole encyclop\ae{}dia and universe of wisdom and
truth and power. If we strike it out of our conception of
Christianity, or if we obscure it as being the very palpitating
centre of the whole, then feebleness will creep over the
Christianity that is \textit{minus} a Cross, or does not see in it
the Sacrifice for the world's sin. You may cast overboard the sails
to lighten the ship. If you do, she lies a log on the waters. And
if, for the sake of meeting new phases of thought, Christian
churches tamper with this central truth, they have flung away their
means of progress and of power.

Let me say again, and in a word only, that the considerations that I
have been trying to submit to you in this sermon, show us the limits
within which the modern cry of `Back to the Christ of the Gospels,'
is right, and where it may be wrong. I believe that in former days,
and to some extent in the present day, we evangelical teachers have
too much sometimes talked rather about the doctrines than about the
Person who is the doctrines. And if the cry of `Back to the Christ'
means, `Do not talk so much about the Atonement and Propitiation;
talk about the Christ who atones,' then, with all my heart, I say,
`Amen!' But put the Person in the foreground, the living-loving, the
dying-loving, the risen-loving Christ, put Him in the foreground.
But if it is implied, as I am afraid it is often implied, that the
Christ of the Gospels is one and the Christ of the epistles is
another, and that to go back to the Christ of the gospels means to
drop `died for our sins according to the Scriptures,' and to retain
only the non-miraculous, moral and religious teachings that are
recorded in the three first gospels, then I say that it is fatal for
the Church, and it is false to the facts, for the Christ of the
epistles is the Christ of the gospels: the difference only being
that in the one you have the facts, and in the other you have their
meaning and their power.

So, lastly, let this text teach us what we ourselves have to do
with this unanimous testimony. `So we preach, and so ye believed.'
Brother! Do you believe \textit{so}? That is to say, is your
conception of the Gospel the mighty redemptive agency which is
wrought by the Incarnate Son of God, who was crucified for our
offences, and rose that we might live, and is glorified that we,
too, may share His glory? Is that your Gospel? But do not be
content with an intellectual grasp of the thing. `So ye believed'
means a great deal more than `I believe that Christ died for our
sins.' It means `I believe in the Christ who did die for my sins.'
You must cast yourself as a sinful man on Him; and, so casting,
you will find that it is no vain story which is commended to us by
all these august voices from the past, but you will have in your
own experience the verification of the fact that He died for our
sins, in your own consciousness of sins forgiven, and new love
bestowed; and so may turn round to Paul, the leader of the chorus,
and to all the apostolic band, and say to them, `Now I believe,
not because of thy saying, but because I have seen Him, and myself
heard Him.'

\chapter{The Certainty and Joy of the Resurrection}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xv. 20}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`But now is Christ risen from the dead ... the first fruits of
them that slept.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xv. 20.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The Apostle has been contemplating the long train of dismal
consequences which he sees would arise if we only had a dead
Christ. He thinks that he, the Apostle, would have nothing to
preach, and we, nothing to believe. He thinks that all hope of
deliverance from sin would fade away. He thinks that the one fact
which gives assurance of immortality having vanished, the dead who
had nurtured the assurance have perished. And he thinks that if
things were so, then Christian men, who had believed a false
gospel, and nourished an empty faith, and died clinging to a
baseless hope, were far more to be pitied than men who had had
less splendid dreams and less utter illusions.

Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, he turns away from that
dreary picture, and with a change of key, which the dullest ear
can appreciate, from the wailing minors of the preceding verses,
he breaks into this burst of triumph. `Now'---things being as they
are, for it is the logical `now,' and not the temporal
one---things being as they are, `Christ is risen from the dead,
and that as the first fruits of them that slept.'

Part of the ceremonial of the Passover was the presentation in the
Temple of a barley sheaf, the first of the harvest, waved before
the Lord in dedication to Him, and in sign of thankful confidence
that all the fields would be reaped and their blessing gathered.
There may be some allusion to that ceremony, which coincided in
time with the Resurrection of our Lord, in the words here, which
regard that one solitary Resurrection as the early ripe and early
reaped sheaf, the pledge and the prophecy of the whole
ingathering.

Now there seem to me, in these words, to ring out mainly two
things---an expression of absolute certainty in the fact, and an
expression of unbounded triumph in the certainty of the fact.

And if we look at these two things, I think we shall get the main
thoughts that the Apostle would impress upon our minds.

I. The certainty of Christ's Resurrection.

`Now \textit{is} Christ risen,' says he, defying, as it were,
doubt and negation, and basing himself upon the firm assurance
which he possesses of that historical fact. `Ah!' you say, `seeing
is believing; and he had evidence such as we can never have.'
Well! let us see. Is it possible for us, nineteen centuries nearly
after that day, to catch some echo of this assured confidence, and
in the face of modern doubts and disbeliefs, to reiterate with as
unfaltering assurance as that with which they came from his
glowing lips, the great words of my text? Can we, logically and
reasonably, as men who are guided by evidence and not by feeling,
stand up before the world, and take for ours the ancient
confession: `I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and
buried. The third day He rose again from the dead'? I think we
can.

The way to prove a fact is by the evidence of witnesses. You
cannot argue that it would be very convenient, if such and such a
thing should be true; that great moral effects would follow if we
believed it was true, and so on. The way to do is to put people
who have seen it into the witness-box, and to make sure that their
evidence is worth accepting.

And at the beginning of my remarks I wish to protest, in a
sentence, against confusing the issues about this question of the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ in that fashion which is popular
nowadays, when we are told that miracle is impossible, and
\textit{therefore} there has been no Resurrection, or that death
is the end of human existence, and that \textit{therefore} there
has been no Resurrection. That is not the way to go about
ascertaining the truth as to asserted facts. Let us hear the
evidence. The men who brush aside the testimony of the New
Testament writers, in obedience to a theory, either about the
impossibility of the supernatural, or about the fatal and final
issues of human death, are victims of prejudice, in the strictest
meaning of the word; and are no more logical than the well-known
and proverbial reasoner who, when told that facts were against
him, with sublime confidence in his own infallibility, is reported
to have said, `So much the worse for the facts.' Let us deal with
evidence, and not with theory, when we are talking about alleged
facts of history.

So then, let me remind you that, in this chapter from which my
text is taken, we have a record of the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ, older than, and altogether independent of, the records
contained in the gospels, which are all subsequent in date to it;
that this Epistle to the Corinthians is one of the four undisputed
Epistles of the Apostle, which not the most advanced school of
modern criticism has a word to say against; that, therefore, this
chapter, written, at the latest, some seven and twenty years after
the date of the Crucifixion, carries us up very close to that
event; that it shows that the Resurrection was
\textit{universally} believed all over the Church, and therefore
must have then been long believed; that it enables us to trace the
same belief as universal, and in undisputed possession of the
field among the churches, at the time of Paul's conversion, which
cannot be put down at much more than five or six years after the
Crucifixion, and that so we are standing in the presence of
absolutely contemporaneous testimony. This is not a case in which
a belief slowly and gradually grew up. Whether we accept the
evidence or not, we are bound to admit that it is strictly
contemporaneous testimony to the fact of Christ's Resurrection.

And the witnesses are reliable and competent, as well as
contemporaneous. The old belief that their testimony was imposture
is dead long ago; as, indeed, how could it live? It would be an
anomaly, far greater than the Resurrection, to believe that these
people, Mary, Peter, John, Paul, and all the rest of them, were
conspirators in a lie, and that the fairest system of morality and
the noblest consecration that the world has ever seen, grew up out
of a fraud, like flowers upon a dunghill. That theory will not
hold water; and even those who will not accept the testimony have
long since confessed that it will not. But the Apostle, in my
context, seems to think that that is the only tenable alternative
to the other theory that the witnesses were veracious, and I am
disposed to believe that he is right. He says, `If Christ be not
risen, then, are we' the utterly impossible thing of `false
witnesses to God,' devout perjurers, as the phrase might be
paraphrased: men who are lying to please God. If Christ be not
risen, they have sworn to a thing that they know to be untrue, in
order to advance His cause and His kingdom. If that theory be not
accepted, there is no other about these men and their message that
will hold water for a minute, except the admission of its truth.

The fashionable modern one, that it was hallucination, is
preposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once
shared! Hallucinations that lasted all through long talks, spread
at intervals over more than a month! Hallucinations that included
eating and drinking, speech and answer; the clasp of the hand and
the feeling of the breath! Hallucinations that brought
instruction! Hallucinations that culminated in the fancy that a
gathered multitude of them saw Him going up into heaven! The
hallucination is on the other side, I think. They have got the
saddle on the wrong horse when they talk about the Apostolic
witnesses being the victims of hallucination. It is the people who
believe it possible that they should be who are so. The old
argument against miracles used to say that it is more consonant
with experience that testimony should be false, than that a
miracle should be true. I venture to say it is a much greater
strain on a man's credulity, to believe that \textit{such}
evidence is false than that \textit{such} a miracle, \textit{so}
attested, is true. And I, for my part, venture to think that the
reasonable men are the men who listen to these eye-witnesses when
they say, `We saw Him rise'; and echo back in answer the
triumphant certitude, `Christ is risen indeed!'

There is another consideration that I might put briefly. A very
valuable way of establishing facts is to point to the existence of
other facts, which indispensably require the previous ones for their
explanation. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. I
believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, amongst other reasons,
because I do not understand how it was possible for the Church to
exist for a week after the Crucifixion, unless Jesus Christ rose
again. Why was it that they did not all scatter? Why was it that the
spirit of despondency and the tendency to separation, which were
beginning to creep over them when they were saying: `Ah! it is all
up! We \textit{trusted} that this had been He,' did not go on to
their natural issue? How came it that these people, with their
Master taken away from the midst of them, and the bond of union
between them removed, and all their hopes crushed did not say: `We
have made a mistake, let us go back to Gennesareth and take to our
fishing again, and try and forget our bright illusions'? That is
what John the Baptist's followers did when he died. Why did not
Christ's do the same? Because Christ rose again and re-knit them
together. When the Shepherd was smitten, the flock would have been
scattered, and never drawn together any more, unless there had been
just such a thing as the Resurrection asserts there was, to reunite
the dispersed and to encourage the depressed. And so I say,
Christianity with a \textit{dead} Christ, and a Church gathered
round a grave from which the stone has \textit{not} been rolled
away, is more unbelievable than the miracle, for it is an absurdity.

Then there is another thing that I would say in a word. Let me put
an illustration to explain what I mean. Suppose, after the
execution of King Charles I., in some corner of the country a
Pretender had sprung up and said, `I am the King!' the way to end
that would have been for the Puritan leaders to have taken people
to St. George's Chapel, and said, `Look! there is the coffin,
there is the body, is that the king, or is it not?' Jesus Christ
was said to have risen again, within a week of the time of His
death. The rulers of the nation had the grave, the watch, the
stone, the seal. They could have put an end to the pestilent
nonsense in two minutes, if it had been nonsense, by the simple
process of saying, `Go and look at the tomb, and you will see Him
there.' But this question has never been answered, and never will
be---What became of that sacred corpse if Jesus Christ did not
rise again from the dead? The clumsy lie that the rulers told,
that the disciples had stolen away the body, was only their
acknowledgment that the grave was empty. If the grave were empty,
either His servants were impostors, which we have seen it is
incredible that they were, or the Christ was risen again.

And so, dear brethren, for many other reasons besides this handful
that I have ventured to gather and put before you, and in spite of
the prejudices of modern theories, I lift up here once more, with
unfaltering certitude, the glad message which I beseech you to
accept: `Christ is risen, the first fruits of them that slept.'

II. So much, then, for the first point in this passage. A word or
two about the second---the triumph in the certitude of that
Resurrection.

As I remarked at a previous point of this discourse, the Apostle
has been speaking about the consequences which would follow from
the fact that Christ was not raised. If we take all these
consequences and reverse them, we get the glad issues of His
Resurrection, and understand why it was that this great burst of
triumph comes from the Apostle's lips. And though I must
necessarily treat this part of my subject very inadequately, let
me try to gather together the various points on which, as I think,
our Easter gladness ought to be built.

First, then, I say, the risen Christ gives us a complete Gospel. A
dead Christ annihilates the Gospel. `If Christ be not risen,' says
the Apostle, `our preaching,' by which he means not the act but
the substance of his preaching, `is vain.' Or, as the word might
be more accurately rendered, `empty.' There is nothing in it; no
contents. It is a blown bladder; nothing in it but wind.

What was Paul's `preaching'? It all turned upon these
points---that Jesus Christ was the Son of God; that He was
Incarnate in the flesh for us men; that He died on the Cross for
our offences; that He was raised again, and had ascended into
Heaven, ruling the world and breathing His presence into believing
hearts; and that He would come again to be our Judge. These were
the elements of what Paul called `his Gospel.' He faces the
supposition of a dead Christ, and he says, `It is all gone! It is
all vanished into thin air. I have nothing to preach if I have not
a Cross to preach which is man's deliverance from sin, because on
it the Son of God hath died, and I only know that Jesus Christ's
sacrifice is accepted and sufficient, because I have it attested
to me in His rising again from the dead.'

Dear brethren, on the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is
suspended everything which makes the Gospel a gospel. Strike that
out, and what have you left? Some beautiful bits of moral
teaching, a lovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about
Himself and His own importance and His relation to men and to God;
but you have got nothing left that is worth calling a gospel. You
have the cross rising there, gaunt, black, solitary; but, unless
on the other side of the river you have the Resurrection, no
bridge will ever be thrown across the black gulf, and the Cross
remains `dead, being alone.' You must have a Resurrection to
explain the Cross, and then the Life and the Death tower up into
the manifestation of God in the flesh and the propitiation for our
sins. Without it we have nothing to preach which is worth calling
a gospel.

Again, a living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. The
Apostle here in the context twice says, according to the
Authorised Version, that a dead Christ makes our faith `vain.' But
he really uses two different words, the former of which is applied
to `preaching,' and means literally `empty,' while the latter
means `of none effect' or `powerless.' So there are two ideas
suggested here which I can only touch with the lightest hand.

The risen Christ puts some contents, so to speak, into my faith;
He gives me something for it to lay hold of.

Who can trust a \textit{dead} Christ, or who can trust a
\textit{human} Christ? That would be as much a blasphemy as
trusting any other man. It is only when we recognise Him as
declared to be the Son of God, and that by the Resurrection from
the dead, that our faith has anything round which it can twine,
and to which it can cleave. That living Saviour will stretch out
His hand to us if we look to Him, and if I put my poor, trembling
little hand up towards Him, He will bend to me and clasp it. You
cannot exercise faith unless you have a risen Saviour, and unless
you exercise faith in Him your lives are marred and sad.

Again, if Christ be dead, our faith, if it could exist, would be
as devoid of effect as it would be empty of substance. For such a
faith would be like an infant seeking nourishment at a dead
mother's breast, or men trying to kindle their torches at an
extinguished lamp. And chiefly would it fail to bring the first
blessing which the believing soul receives through and from a
risen Christ, namely, deliverance from sin. If He whom we believed
to be our sacrifice by His death and our sanctification by His
life has not risen, then, as we have seen, all which makes His
death other than a martyr's vanishes, and with it vanish
forgiveness and purifying. Only when we recognise that in His
Cross explained by His Resurrection, we have redemption through
His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and by the communication
of the risen life from the risen Lord possess that new nature
which sets us free from the dominion of our evil, is faith
operative in setting us free from our sins.

So, dear friends, the risen Christ gives us something for faith to
lay hold of, and will make it the hand by which we grasp His
strong hand, which lifts us `out of the horrible pit and the miry
clay, and sets our feet upon a rock.' But if He lie dead in the
grave your faith is vain, because it grasps nothing but a shadow;
and it is vain as being purposeless; you are yet in your sins.

The last thought is that the risen Christ gives us the certitude
of our Resurrection. I do not for a moment mean to say that, apart
from the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the thought, be it a wish
or a dread, of immortality, has not been found in men, but there
is all the difference in the world between forebodings,
aspirations, wishes it were so, fears that it might be so, and the
calm certitude that it is so. Many men talked about a western
continent, but Columbus went there and came back again, and that
ended doubt. Many men before, and apart from Jesus, have cherished
thoughts of an immortal life beyond the grave, but He has been
there and returned. And that, and, as I believe, that only puts
the doctrine of immortality upon an irrefragable foundation; and
we can say, `Now, I know that there is that land beyond.' They
tell us that death ends everything. Modern materialism, in all its
forms, asserts that it is the extinction of the personality. Jesus
Christ died, and went through it, and came out of it the same, and
I will trust Him. Brethren, the set of opinion amongst the
educated and cultured classes in England, and all over Europe, at
this moment, proves to anybody who has eyes to see, that for this
generation, rejection of immortality will follow certainly on the
rejection of Jesus Christ. And for England to-day, as for Greece
when Paul sent his letter to Corinth, the one light of certitude
in the great darkness is the fact that Jesus Christ hath died, and
is risen again.

If you will let Him, He will make you partakers of His own
immortal life. `The first fruits of them that slept' is the pledge
and the prophecy of all the waving abundance of golden grain that
shall be gathered into the great husbandman's barns. The Apostle
goes on to represent the resurrection of `them that are Christ's'
as a consequence of their union to Jesus. He has conquered for us
all. He has entered the prison-house and come forth bearing its
iron gates on His shoulders, and henceforth it is not possible
that we should be holden of it. There are two resurrections---one,
that of Christ's servants, one that of others. They are not the
same in principle---and, alas, they are awfully different in
issue. `Some shall wake to everlasting life, and some to shame and
everlasting contempt.'

Let me beseech you to make Jesus Christ the life of your dead
souls, by humble, penitent trust in Him. And then, in due time, He
will be the life of your transformed bodies, changing these into
the likeness of the body of His glory, `according to the working
whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.'

\chapter{The Death of Death}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xv. 20, 21; 50--58}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
first-fruits of them that slept. 21.\ For since by man came death,
by man came also the resurrection of the dead.... 50.\ Now this I
say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 51.\ Behold, I
shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed, 52.\ In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump, (for the trumpet shall sound;) and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53.\ For this corruptible
must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54.\ So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and
this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought
to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in
victory. 55.\ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy
victory? 56.\ The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin
is the law. 57.\ But thanks be to God, which giveth us the
victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58.\ Therefore, my beloved
brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work
of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain
in the Lord.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xv. 20, 21; 50--58.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

This passage begins with the triumphant ringing out of the great
fact which changes all the darkness of an earthly life without a
heavenly hope into a blaze of light. All the dreariness for
humanity, and all the vanity for Christian faith and preaching,
vanish, like ghosts at cock-crow, when the Resurrection of Jesus
rises sun-like on the world's night. It is a historical fact,
established by the evidence proper for such,---namely, the
credible testimony of eye-witnesses. They could attest His rising,
but the knowledge of the worldwide significance of it comes, not
from testimony, but from revelation. Those who saw Him risen join
to declare: `Now is Christ risen from the dead,' but it is a
higher Voice that goes on to say, `and become the first-fruits of
them that slept.'

That one Man risen from the grave was like the solitary sheaf of
paschal first-fruits, prophesying of many more, a gathered harvest
that will fill the great Husbandman's barns. The Resurrection of
Jesus is not only a prophecy, showing, as it and it alone does,
that death is not the end of man, but that life persists through
death and emerges from it, like a buried river coming again
flashing into the light of day, but it is the source or cause of
the Christian's resurrection. The oneness of the race necessitated
the diffusion through all its members of sin and of its
consequence---physical death. If the fountain is poisoned, all the
stream will be tainted. If men are to be redeemed from the power
of the grave, there must be a new personal centre of life; and
union with Him, which can only be effected by faith, is the
condition of receiving life from Him, which gradually conquers the
death of sin now, and will triumph over bodily death in the final
resurrection. It is the resurrection of Christians that Paul is
dealing with. Others are to be raised, but on a different
principle, and to sadly different issues. Since Christ's
Resurrection assures us of the future waking, it changes death
into `sleep,' and that sleep does not mean unconsciousness any
more than natural sleep does, but only rest from toil, and
cessation of intercourse with the external world.

In the part of the passage, verses 50 to 58, the Apostle becomes,
not the witness or the reasoner, as in the earlier parts of the
chapter, but the revealer of a `mystery.' That word, so tragically
misunderstood, has here its uniform scriptural sense of truth,
otherwise unknown, made known by revelation. But before he unveils
the mystery, Paul states with the utmost force a difficulty which
might seem to crush all hope,---namely, that corporeity, as we
know it, is clearly incapable of living in such a world as that
future one must be. To use modern terms, organism and environment
must be adapted to each other. A fish must have the water, the
creatures that flourish at the poles would not survive at the
equator. A man with his gross earthly body, so thoroughly adapted
to his earthly abode, would be all out of harmony with his
surroundings in that higher world, and its rarified air would be
too thin and pure for his lungs. Can there be any possibility of
making him fit to live in a spiritual world? Apart from
revelation, the dreary answer must be `No.' But the `mystery'
answers with `Yes.' The change from physical to spiritual is
clearly necessary, if there is to be a blessed life hereafter.

That necessary change is assured to all Christians, whether they
die or `remain till the coming of the Lord.' Paul varies in his
anticipations as to whether he and his contemporaries will belong
to the one class or the other; but he is quite sure that in either
case the indwelling Spirit of Jesus will effect on living and dead
the needful change. The grand description in verse 52, like the
parallel in 1 Thessalonians iv. 16, is modelled on the account of
the theophany on Sinai. The trumpet was the signal of the Divine
Presence. That last manifestation will be sudden, and its
startling breaking in on daily commonplace is intensified by the
reduplication: `In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.' With
sudden crash that awful blare of `loud, uplifted angel trumpet'
will silence all other sounds, and hush the world. The stages of
what follows are distinctly marked. First, the rising of the dead
changed in passing through death, so as to rise in incorruptible
bodies, and then the change of the bodies of the living into like
incorruption. The former will not be found naked, but will be
clothed with their white garments; the latter will, as it were,
put on the glorious robes above the `muddy vesture of decay,' or,
more truly, will see the miracle of these being transfigured till
they shine `so as no fuller on earth could white them.' The living
will witness the resurrection of the dead; the risen dead will
witness the transformation of the living. Then both hosts will be
united, and, through all eternity, `live together,' and that `with
Him.' Paul evidently expects that he and the Corinthians will be
in the latter class, as appears by the `we' in verse 52. He, as it
were, points to his own body when he says, recurring to his former
thought of the necessity of harmony between organism and
environment, `\textit{this} corruptible must put on incorruption.'
Here `corruption' is used in its physical application, though the
ethical meaning may be in the background.

The Apostle closes his long argument and revelation with a burst,
almost a shout, of triumph. Glowing words of old prophets rush
into his mind, and he breathes a new, grander meaning into them.
Isaiah had sung of a time when the veil over all nations should be
destroyed `in this mountain,' and when death should be swallowed
up for ever; and Paul grasps the words and says that the prophet's
loftiest anticipations will be fulfilled when that monster, whose
insatiable maw swallows down youth, beauty, strength, wisdom, will
himself be swallowed up. Hosea had prophesied of Israel's
restoration under figure of a resurrection, and Paul grasps
\textit{his} words and fills them with a larger meaning. He
modifies them, in a manner on which we need not enlarge, to
express the great Christian thought that death has conquered man
but that man in Christ will conquer the conqueror. With swift
change of metaphor he represents death as a serpent, armed with a
poisoned sting, and that suggests to him the thought, never far
away in his view of man, that death's power to slay is derived
from---or, so to say, concentrated in---sin; and that at once
raises the other equally characteristic and familiar thought that
law stimulates sin, since to know a thing to be forbidden creates
in perverse humanity an itching to do it, and law reveals sin by
setting up the ideal from which sin is the departure. But just as
the tracks in Paul's mind were well worn, by which the thought of
death brought in that of sin, and that of sin drew after it that
of law, so with equal closeness of established association, that
of law condemnatory and slaying, brought up that of Christ the
all-sufficient refuge from that gloomy triad---Death Sin, Law.
Through union with Him each of us may possess His immortal risen
life, in which Death, the engulfer, is himself engulfed; Death,
the conqueror, is conquered utterly and for ever; Death, the
serpent, has his sting drawn, and is harmless. That participation
in Christ's life is begun even here, and God `giveth us the
victory' now, even while we live outward lives that must end in
death, and will give it perfectly in the resurrection, when `they
cannot die any more,' and death itself is dead.

The loftiest Christian hopes have close relation to the lowliest
Christian duties, and Paul's triumphant song ends with plain,
practical, prose exhortations to steadfastness, unmovable
tenacity, and abundant fruitfulness, the motive and power of which
will be found in the assurance that, since there is a life beyond,
all labour here, however it may fail in the eyes of men, will not
be in vain, but will tell on character and therefore on condition
through eternity. If our peace does not rest where we would fain
see it settle, it will not be wasted, but will return to us again,
like the dove to the ark, and we shall `self-enfold the large
results of' labour that seemed to have been thrown away.

\chapter{Strong and Loving}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.
14.\ Let all your things be done with charity.'---1 \textsc{Cor.}
xvi. 13, 14.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There is a singular contrast between the first four of these
exhortations and the last. The former ring sharp and short like
pistol-shots; the last is of gentler mould. The former sound like
the word of command shouted from an officer along the ranks; and
there is a military metaphor running all through them. The foe
threatens to advance; let the guards keep their eyes open. He
comes nearer; prepare for the charge, stand firm in your ranks.
The battle is joined; `quit you like men'---strike a man's
stroke---`be strong.'

And then all the apparatus of warfare is put away out of sight,
and the captain's word of command is softened into the Christian
teacher's exhortation: `Let all your deeds be done in charity.'
For love is better than fighting, and is stronger than swords. And
yet, although there is a contrast here, there is also a sequence
and connection. No doubt these exhortations, which are Paul's last
word to that Corinthian Church on whom he had lavished in turn the
treasures of his manifold eloquence, indignation, argumentation,
and tenderness, reflected the deficiencies of the people to whom
he was speaking. They were schismatic and factious to the very
core, and so they needed the exhortation to be left last in their
ears, as it were, that everything should be done in love. They
were ill-grounded in regard to the very fundamental doctrines of
the faith, as all Paul's argumentation about the resurrection
proves, and so they needed to be bidden to `stand fast in the
faith.' Their slothful carelessness as to the discipline of the
Christian life, and their consequent feebleness of grasp of the
Christian verities, made them loose-braced and weak in all
respects, and incapacitated them for vigorous warfare. Thus, we
see a picture in these injunctions of the sort of community that
Paul had to deal with in Corinth, which yet he called a Church of
saints, and for which he loved and laboured. Let me then run over
and try to bring out the importance and mutual connection of what
I may call this drill-book for the Christian warfare, which is the
Christian life.

`Watch ye.' That means one of two things certainly, probably
both---Keep awake, and keep your eyes open. Our Lord used the same
metaphor, you remember, very frequently, but with a special
significance. On His lips it generally referred to the attitude of
expectation of His coming in judgment. Paul uses sometimes the
figure with the same application, but here, distinctly, it has
another. As I said, there is the military idea underlying it. What
will become of an army if the sentries go to sleep? And what
chance will a Christian man have of doing his \textit{devoir}
against his enemy, unless he keeps himself awake, and keeps
himself alert? Watchfulness, in the sense of always having eyes
open for the possible rush down upon us of temptation and evil, is
no small part of the discipline and the duty of the Christian
life. One part of that watchfulness consists in exercising a very
rigid and a very constant and comprehensive scrutiny of our
motives. For there is no way by which evil creeps upon us so
unobserved, as when it slips in at the back door of a specious
motive. Many a man contents himself with the avoidance of actual
evil actions, and lets any kind of motives come in and out of his
mind unexamined. It is all right to look after our
\textit{doings}, but `as a man \textit{thinketh} in his heart, so
is he.' The good or the evil of anything that I do is determined
wholly by the motive with which I do it. And we are a great deal
too apt to palm off deceptions on ourselves to make sure that our
motives are right, unless we give them a very careful and minute
scrutiny. One side of this watchfulness, then, is a habitual
inspection of our motives and reasons for action. `What am I doing
this for?' is a question that would stop dead an enormous
proportion of our activity, as if you had turned the steam off
from an engine. If you will use a very fine sieve through which to
strain your motives, you will go a long way to keeping your
actions right. We should establish a rigid examination for
applicants for entrance, and make quite sure that each that
presents itself is not a wolf in sheep's clothing. Make them all
bring out their passports. Let every vessel that comes into your
harbour remain isolated from all communication with the shore,
until the health officer has been on board and given a clean bill.
`Watch ye,' for yonder, away in the dark, in the shadow of the
trees, the black masses of the enemy are gathered, and a midnight
attack is but too likely to bring a bloody awakening to a camp
full of sleepers.

My text goes on to bring the enemy nearer and nearer and nearer.
`Watch ye'---and if, not unnoticed, they come down on you, `stand
fast in the faith.' There will be no keeping our ranks, or keeping
our feet---or at least, it is not nearly so likely that there will
be---unless there has been the preceding watchfulness. If the
first command has not been obeyed, there is small chance of the
second's being so. If there has not been any watchfulness, it is
not at all likely that there will be much steadfastness. Just as
with a man going along a crowded pavement, a little touch from a
passer-by will throw him off his balance, whereas if he had known
it was coming, and had adjusted his poise rightly, he would have
stood against thrice as violent a shock, so, in order that we may
stand fast, we must watch. A sudden assault will be a great deal
less formidable when it is a foreseen assault.

`Stand fast \textit{in the faith}.' I take it that this does not
mean `the thing that we believe,' which use of the word `faith' is
the ecclesiastical, but not the New Testament meaning. In
Scripture, faith means not the body of truths that we believe, but
the act of believing them. This further command tells us that, in
addition to our watchfulness, and as the basis of our
steadfastness, confidence in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ
will enable us to keep our feet whatever comes against us, and to
hold our ground, whoever may assault us.

But remember that it is not because I have faith that I stand
fast, but because of that in which I have faith. My feet may be
well shod---and it used to be said that a soldier's shoes were of
as much importance in the battle as his musket---my feet may be
well shod, but if they are not well planted upon firm ground I
never shall be able to stand the collision of the foe. So then, it
is not my grasp of the blessed truth, God in Christ my Friend and
Helper, but it is that truth which I grasp at, that makes me
strong. Or, to put it into other words, it is the foothold, and
not the foot that holds it, that ensures our standing firm. Only
there is no steadfastness communicated to us from the source of
all stability, except by way of our faith, which brings Christ
into us. `Watch ye; stand fast in the faith.'

The next two words of command are very closely connected, though
not quite identical. `Quit you like men.' Play a man's part in the
battle; strike with all the force of your muscles. But the Apostle
adds, `be strong.' You cannot play a man's part unless you are.
`Be strong'---the original would rather bear `become strong.' What
is the use of telling men to `\textit{be} strong'? It is a waste
of words, in nine cases out of ten, to say to a weak man, `Pluck
up your courage, and show strength.' But the Apostle uses a very
uncommon word here, at least uncommon in the New Testament, and
another place where he uses it will throw light upon what he
means: `Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.'
Then is it so vain a mockery to tell a poor, weak creature like me
to become strong, when you can point me to the source of all
strength, in that `Spirit of power and of love and of a sound
mind'? We have only to take our weakness there to have it
stiffened into strength; as people put bits of wood into what are
called `petrifying wells' which infiltrate into them mineral
particles, that do not turn the wood into stone, but make the wood
as strong as stone. So my manhood, with all its weakness, may have
filtered into it divine strength, which will brace me for all
needful duty, and make me `more than conqueror through Him that
loved us.' Then, it is not mockery and cruelty, vanity and
surplusage to preach `Quit you like men; be strong, and be a man';
because if we will observe the plain and not hard conditions,
strength will come to us according to our day, in fulfilment of
the great promises: `My grace is sufficient for thee; and My
strength is made perfect in weakness.'

And now we have done with the fighting words of command, and come
to the gentler exhortation: `Let all your things be done in
charity.'

That was a hard lesson for these Corinthians who were splitting
themselves into factions and sects, and tearing each other's eyes
out in their partisanship for various Christian teachers. But the
advice has a much wider application than to the suppression of
squabbles in Christian communities. It is the sum of all
commandments of the Christian life, if you will take love in its
widest sense, in the sense, that is, in which it is always used in
Paul's writings. We cut it into two halves, and think of it as
sometimes meaning love to God, and sometimes love to man. The two
are inseparably inter-penetrated in the New Testament writings;
and so we have to interpret this supreme commandment in the whole
breadth and meaning of that great word \textit{Love}. And then it
just comes to this, that love is the victor in all the Christian
warfare. If we love God, at any given moment, consciously having
our affection engaged with Him, and our heart going out to Him, do
you think that any evil or temptation would have power over us?
Should we not see them as they are, to be devils in disguise? In
the proportion in which I love God I conquer all sin. And at the
moment in which that great, sweet, all-satisfying light floods
into my soul, I see through the hollowness and the shams, and
detect the ugliness and the filth of the things that otherwise
would be temptations. If you desire to be conquerors in the
Christian fight, remember that the true way of conquest is, as
another Apostle says, `Keep yourselves in the love of God.' `Let
all your things be done in charity.'

And, further, how beautifully the Apostle here puts the great
truth that we are all apt to forget, that the strongest type of
human character is the gentlest and most loving, and that the
mighty man is not the man of intellectual or material force, such
as the world idolises, but the man who is much because he loves
much. If we would come to supreme beauty of Christian character,
there must be inseparably manifested in our lives, and lived in
our hearts, strength and love, might and gentleness. That is the
perfect man, and that was the union which was set before us, in
the highest form, in the `Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,' whom
we call our Saviour, and whom we are bound to follow. His soldiers
conquer as the Captain of their salvation has conquered, when
watchfulness and steadfastness and courage and strength are all
baptized in love and perfected thereby.

\chapter{Anathema and Grace}
\markright{1 CORINTHIANS xvi. 21--24}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand. 22.\ If any man
love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha.
23.\ The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. 24.\ My love
be with you all in Christ Jesus.'---1 \textsc{Cor.} xvi. 21--24.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Terror and tenderness are strangely mingled in this parting
salutation, which was added in the great characters shaped by
Paul's own hand, to the letter written by an amanuensis. He has
been obliged, throughout the whole epistle, to assume a tone of
remonstrance abundantly mingled with irony and sarcasm and
indignation. He has had to rebuke the Corinthians for many faults,
party spirit, lax morality, toleration of foul sins, grave abuses
in their worship even at the Lord's Supper, gross errors in
opinion in the denial of the Resurrection. And in this last solemn
warning he traces all these vices to their fountainhead---the
defect of love to Jesus Christ---and warns of their fatal issue.
`Let him be Anathema.'

But he will not leave these terrible words for his last. The
thunder is followed by gentle rain, and the sun glistens on the
drops; `The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' Nor
for himself will he let the last impression be one of rebuke or
even of warning. He desires to show that his heart yearns over
them all; so he gathers them all---the partisans; the poor brother
that has fallen into sin; the lax ones who, in their misplaced
tenderness, had left him in his sin; the misguided reasoners who
had struck the Resurrection out of the articles of the Christian
creed---he gathers them all into his final salutation, and he
says, `Take and share my love---though I have had to
rebuke---amongst the whole of you.'

Is not that beautiful? And does not the juxtaposition of such
messages in this farewell go deeper than the revelation of Paul's
character? May we not see, in these terrible and tender thoughts
thus inextricably intertwined and braided together, a revelation
of the true nature both of the terror and the tenderness of the
Gospel which Paul preached? It is from that point of view that I
wish to look at them now.

I. I take first that thought---the terror of the fate of the
unloving.

Now, I must ask you for a moment's attention in regard to these
two untranslated words. \textit{Anathema Maran-atha}. The first
thing to be noticed is that the latter of them stands
independently of the former, and forms a sentence by itself, as I
shall have to show you presently. `Anathema' means an offering, or
a thing devoted; and its use in the New Testament arises from its
use in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where it is
employed for persons and things that, in a peculiar sense, were
set apart and devoted to God. In the story of the conquest of
Canaan, for instance, we read of Jericho and other places,
persons, or things that were, as our version somewhat
unfortunately renders it, `accursed,' or as it ought rather to be
rendered, `devoted,' or `put under a ban.' And this `devotion' was
of such a sort as that the things or persons devoted were doomed
to destruction. All the dreadful things that were done in the
Conquest were the consequences of the persons that endured them
being thus `consecrated,' in a very dreadful sense, or set apart
for God. The underlying idea was that evil things brought into
contact with Him were necessarily destroyed with a swift
destruction. That being the meaning of the word, it is clear that
its use in my text is distinctly metaphorical, and that it
suggests to us that the unloving, like those cities full of
uncleanness, when they are brought into contact with the infinite
love of the coming Judge, shrivel up and are destroyed.

The other word `Maran-atha,' as I said, is to be taken as a
separate sentence. It belongs to the dialect, which was probably
the vernacular of Palestine in the time of Paul, and to which
belong, for the most part, the other untranslated words that are
scattered up and down the Gospels, such as `Aceldama,'
`Ephphatha,' and the like. It means `our Lord comes.' Why Paul
chose to use that untranslated scrap of another tongue in a letter
to a Gentile Church we cannot tell. Perhaps it had come to be a
kind of watchword amongst the early Jewish Christians, which came
naturally to his lips. But, at any rate, the use of it here is
distinctly to confirm the warning of the previous clause, by
pointing to the time at which that warning shall be fulfilled. `If
any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be devoted and
destroyed. Our Lord comes.' The only other thing to be noticed by
way of introduction is that this first clause is not an
imprecation, nor any wish on the part of the Apostle, but is a
solemn prophetic warning (acquiesced in by every righteous heart)
of that which will certainly come. The significance of the whole
may be gathered into one simple sentence---The coming of the Lord
of Love is the destruction of the unloving.

`Our Lord comes.' Paul's Christianity gathered round two facts and
mo\-ments---one in the past, Christ has come; one in the future,
Christ will come. For memory, the coming by the cradle and the
Cross; for hope, the coming on His throne in glory; and between
these two moments, like the solid piers of a suspension bridge,
the frail structure of the Present hangs swinging. In this day men
have lost their expectation of the one, and to a large extent
their faith in the other. But we shall not understand Scripture
unless we seek to make as prominent in our thoughts as on its
pages that second coming as the complement and necessary issue of
the first. It stands stamped on every line. It colours all the New
Testament views of life. It is used as a motive for every duty,
and as a magnet to draw men to Jesus Christ by salutary dread.
There is no hint in my text about the time of the Lord's coming,
no disturbing of the solemnity of the thought by non-essential
details of chronology, so we may dismiss these from our minds. The
fact is the same, and has the same force as a motive for life,
whether it is to be fulfilled in the next moment or thousands of
years hence, provided only that you and I are to be there when He
comes.

There have been many comings in the past, besides the comings in
the flesh. The days of the Lord that have already appeared in the
history of the world are not few. One characteristic is stamped
upon them all, and that is the swift annihilation of what is
opposed to Him. The Bible has a set of standing metaphors by which
to illustrate this thought of the Coming of the Lord---a flood, a
harvest when the ears are ripe for the sickle, the waking of God
from slumber, and the like; all suggesting similar thoughts.
\textit{The} day of the Lord, \textit{the} coming of the Lord,
will include and surpass all the characteristics which these
lesser and premonitory judgment days presented in miniature. I do
not enlarge on this theme. I would not play the orator about it if
I could; but I appeal to your consciences, which, in the case of
most of us, not only testify of right and wrong, but of
responsibility, and suggest a judge to whom we are responsible.
And I urge on each, and on myself, this simple question: Have I
allowed its due weight on my life and character to that watchword
of the ancient church---\textit{Maran-atha}, `our Lord cometh'?

Now, the coming of the Lord of Love is the annihilation of the
unloving. The destruction implied in Anathema does not mean the
cessation of Being, but a death which is worse than death, because
it is a death in life. Suppose a man with all his past
annihilated, with all its effort foiled and crushed, with all its
possessions evaporated and disappeared, and with his memory and
his conscience stung into clear-sighted activity, so that he looks
back upon his former self and into his present self, and feels
that it is all waste and chaos, would not that fulfil the word of
my text---`Let him be Anathema'? And suppose that such a man, in
addition to these thoughts, and as the root and the source of
them, had ever the quivering consciousness that he was and must be
in the presence of an unloved Judge; have you not there the naked
bones of a very dreadful thing, which does not need any tawdry
eloquence of man to make it more solemn and more real? The
unloving heart is always ill at ease in the presence of Him whom
it does not love. The unloving heart does not love, because it
does not trust, nor see the love. Therefore, the unloving heart is
a heart that is only capable of apprehending the wrathful side of
Christ's character. It is a heart devoid of the fruits of love
which are likeness and righteousness, `without which no man shall
see the Lord,' nor stand the flash of the brightness of His
coming. So there is no cruelty nor arbitrariness in the decree
that the heart that loves not, when brought into contact with the
infinite Lord of Love, must find in the touch death and not life,
darkness and not light, terror and not hope. Notice that Paul's
negation \textit{is} a negation and not an affirmation. He does
not say `he that hateth,' but `he that doth not love.' The absence
of the active emotion of love, which is the child of faith, the
parent of righteousness, the condition of joy in His presence, is
sufficient to ensure that this fate shall fall upon a man. I durst
not enlarge. I leave the truth on your hearts.

II. Secondly, notice the present grace of the coming Lord. `Our
Lord cometh. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.'
These two things are not contradictory, but we often deal with
them as if they were. And some men lay hold of the one side of the
antithesis, and some men lay hold of the other, and rend them
apart, and make antagonistic theories of Christianity out of them.
But the real doctrine puts the two together and says there is no
terror without tenderness, and there is no tenderness without
terror. If we sacrifice the aspects of the divine nature, as
revealed to us in the gentle Christ, which kindle a wholesome
dread, we have, all unwittingly, robbed the aspects of the divine
nature, which warm in us a gracious love, of their power to
inflame and to illuminate. You cannot have love which is anything
nobler than facile good nature and unrighteous indifference,
unless you have along with it aspects of God's character and
government which ought to make some men afraid. And you cannot
keep these latter aspects from being exaggerated and darkened into
a Moloch of cruelty, unless you remember that, side by side with
them, or rather underlying them and determining them, are aspects
of the divine nature to which only child-like confidence and calm
beatific returns of love do rightly respond. The terror of the
Lord is a garb which our sins force upon the love of the Lord, and
when the one is presented it brings with it the other. Never
should they be parted in our thoughts or in our teaching.

Note what that present grace is. It is a tenderness which gathers
into its embrace all these imperfect, immoral, lax, heretical people
in Corinth, as well as everywhere else---`The grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ be with \textit{you all}.' There were men in that
church that said, `I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, I of
Christ.' There were men in that church that had defiled their souls
and their flesh, and corrupted the community, and blasphemed the
name of Christ by such foul, sensual sin as was `not even named
among the Gentiles.' There were men in that church so dead to all
the sanctities even of the communion-table as that, with the bread
between their teeth and the wine-cup in their hands, one was hungry
and another drunken. There were men in that church, whose
Christianity was so anomalous and singularly fragmentary that they
did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. And yet Paul flings
the great rainbow, as it were, of Christ's enclosing love over them
all. And surely the love which gathers in such people leaves none
outside its sweep; and the tenderness which stoops from heaven to
pity, to pardon, to cleanse such is a tenderness to which the
weakest, saddest, sinfullest, foulest of the sons of men may
confidently resort. Let nothing rob you of this assurance, that
Christ, the coming Lord, is present with us all, and with all our
weak and wicked brethren, in the full condescension of His
all-embracing, all-hoping, all-forgetting, and all-restoring love.
All that we need, in order to get its full sunshine into our hearts,
is that we trust Him utterly, and, so trusting, love Him back again
with that love which is the fulfilling of the Law and the crown of
the Gospel.

III. And now, lastly, note the tenderness, caught from the Master
Himself, of the servant who rebukes.

This last message of love from the Apostle himself, in verse 24,
is quite anomalous. There is no other instance in his letters
where he introduces himself and his own love at the end, after he
has pronounced solemn benediction commending to Christ's grace.
But here, as if he had felt that he must leave an impression of
himself on their minds, which corresponded to the impression of
his Master that he desired to leave, he deviates from his ordinary
habit, and makes his last word a personal word---`\textit{My love}
be with you all in Christ Jesus.' Rebuke is the sign of love.
Sharp condemnation may be the language of love. Plain warning of
possible evils is the simple duty of love. So Paul folds all whom
he has been rebuking in the warm embrace of his proffered love,
which was the very cause of his rebuke. The healing balm of this
closing message was to be applied to the wounds which his keen
edged words had made, and to show that they were wounds by a
surgeon, not by a foe. In effect, this parting smile of love says,
`I am not become your enemy because I tell you the truth; I show
my love to you by the plainness and roughness of my words.'
Generalise that, free it from its personal reference, and it just
comes to this: There never was a shallower sneer than the sneer
which is cast at Christianity, as if it were harsh, `ferocious,'
or unloving, when it preaches the terror of the Lord. No! rather,
because the Gospel \textit{is} a Gospel, it must speak plainly
about death and destruction to the unloving. The danger signal is
not to be blamed for a collision, which it is hoisted to avert;
and it is a strange sign of an unfeeling and unsympathetic, or of
a harsh and gloomy system, that it should tell men where they are
driving, in order that they may never reach the miserable goal.
`Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.' And
when people say to us preachers, `Is that your Gospel, a Gospel
that talks about everlasting destruction from the presence of the
Lord at the glory of His coming---is that your Gospel?' We can
only answer, `Yes, it is! Because, so to talk, may by God's mercy,
secure that some who hear shall never know anything of the wrath,
save the hearing of it with the ear, and may, by the warning of
it, be drawn to the Rock of Ages for safety and shelter from the
storm.'

Therefore, dear friends, the upshot of all that I have been feebly
trying to say is just this; let us lay hold with all our hearts,
and by simple faith, of the present grace of the coming, loving
Lord and Judge. You can do it. It is your only hope to do it.
\textit{Have} you done it? If so, then you may lift up your heads
to the throne, and be glad, as those who know that their Friend
and Deliverer will come at last, to help, to bless, to save. If
not, dear friend, take the warning, that not to love is to be
shrivelled like a leaf in the flame, at that coming which is life
to them that love, and destruction to all besides. `Herein is our
love made perfect, that we may have boldness before Him in the day
of judgment.'

\newpage
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{II. CORINTHIANS}

\chapter{God's Yea; Man's Amen}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS i. 20}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For how many soever be the promises of God, in Him is the yea:
wherefore also through Him is the Amen.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} i. 20
(R.~V.).
\end{quote}
\normalsize

This is one of the many passages the force and beauty of which
are, for the first time, brought within the reach of an English
reader by the alterations in the Revised Version. These are partly
dependent upon the reading of the text and partly upon the
translation. As the words stand in the Authorised Version, `yea'
and `amen' seem to be very nearly synonymous expressions, and to
point substantially to the same thing---viz. that Jesus Christ is,
as it were, the confirmation and seal of God's promises. But in
the Revised Version the alterations, especially in the pronouns,
indicate more distinctly that the Apostle means two different
things by the `yea' and the `amen'. The one is God's voice, the
other is man's. The one has to do with the certainty of the divine
revelation, the other has to do with the certitude of our faith in
the revelation. When God speaks in Christ, He confirms everything
that He has said before, and when we listen to God speaking in
Christ, our lips are, through Christ, opened to utter our
assenting `Amen' to His great promises. So, then, we have the
double form of our Lord's work, covering the whole ground of His
relations to man, set forth in these two clauses, in the one of
which God's confirmation of His past revelations by Jesus Christ
is treated of, and in the other of which the full and confident
assent which men may give to that revelation is set before us. I
deal, then, with these two points---God's certainties in Christ,
and man's certitudes through Christ.

Now these two things do not always go together. We may be very
certain, as far as our persuasion is concerned, of a very doubtful
fact, or we may be very doubtful, as far as our persuasion is
concerned, of a very certain fact. We speak about truths or facts
as being certain, and we ought to mean by that, not how we think
about them, but what they are in the evidence on which they rest.
A certain truth is a truth which has its evidence irrefragable;
and the only fitting attitude for men, in the presence of a
certain truth, is to have a certitude of the truth. And these two
things are, our Apostle tells us, both given to us in and through
Jesus Christ. Let me deal, then, with these two sides.

I. First, God's certainties in Christ.

Of course the original reference of the text is to the whole
series of great promises given in the Old Testament. These, says
Paul, are sealed and confirmed to men by the revelation and work
of Jesus Christ, but it is obvious that the principle which is
good in reference to them is good on a wider field. I venture to
take that extension, and to ask you to think briefly about some of
the things that are made for us indubitably certain in Jesus
Christ.

And, first of all, there is the certainty about God's heart.
Everywhere else we have only peradventures, hopes, fears, guesses
more or less doubtful, and roundabout inferences as to His
disposition and attitude towards us. As one of the old divines
says somewhere, `All other ways of knowing God are like the bended
bow, Christ is the straight string.' The only means by which,
indubitably, as a matter of demonstration, men can be sure that
God in the heavens has a heart of love towards them is by Jesus
Christ. For consider what will make us sure of that. Nothing but
facts; words are of little use, arguments are of little use. A
revelation, however precious, which simply says to us, `God is
Love' is not sufficient for our need. We want to see love in
operation if we are to be sure of it, and the only demonstration
of the love of God is to witness the love of God in actual
working. And you get it---where? On the Cross of Jesus Christ. I
do not believe that anything else irrefragably establishes the
fact for the yearning hearts of us poor men who want love, and yet
cannot grope our way in amidst the mysteries and the clouds in
providence and nature, except this---`Herein is love, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins.'

The question may arise in some minds, Is there any need for
proving God's love? The question never arose except within the
limits of Christianity. It is only men who have lived all their
lives in an atmosphere saturated by Christian sentiment and
conviction that ever come to the point of saying, `We do not want
historical revelation to prove to us the fact of a loving God.'
They would never have fancied that they did not need the
revelation unless, unconsciously to themselves, and indirectly,
all their thoughts had been coloured and illuminated by the
revelation that they profess they reject. God as Love is `our
dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt,' and the only way to make
absolutely certain of the fact that His heart is full of mercy to
us is to look upon Him as He stands revealed to us, not merely in
the words of Christ, for, precious as they are, these are the
smallest part of His revelation, but in the life and in the death
which open for us the heart of God. Remember what He said Himself,
\textit{not} `He who hath listened to Me, doth understand the
Father,' but `He that hath \textit{seen} Me hath seen the Father.'
`In Him is yea,' and the hopes and shadowy fore-revelations of the
loving heart of God are confirmed by the fact of His life and
death. God \textit{establishes}, not `commends' as our translation
has it, `His love towards us in that whilst we were yet sinners
Christ died for us.'

Further, in Him we have the certainty of pardon. Every deep
heart-ex\-per\-i\-ence amongst men has felt the necessity of
having a clear certainty and knowledge about forgiveness. Men do
not feel it always. A man can skate over the surface of the great
deeps that lie beneath the most frivolous life, and may suppose,
in his superficial way of looking at things, that there is no need
for any definite teaching about sin and the mode of dealing with
it. But once bring that man face to face, in a quiet hour, with
the facts of his life and of a divine law, and all that
superficial ignoring of evil in himself and of the dread of
punishment and consequences, passes away. I am sure of this, that
no religion will ever go far and last long and work mightily, and
lay a sovereign hand upon human life, which has not a most plain
and decisive message to preach in reference to pardon. And I am
sure of this, that one reason for the comparative feebleness of
much so-called Christian teaching in this generation is just that
the deepest needs of a man's conscience are not met by it. In a
religion on which the whole spirit of a man may rest itself, there
must be a very plain message about what is to be done with sin.
The only message which answers to the needs of an awakened
conscience and an alarmed heart is the old-fashioned message that
Jesus Christ the Righteous has died for us sinful men. All other
religions have felt after a clear doctrine of forgiveness, and all
have failed to find it. Here is the divine `Yea!' And on it alone
we can suspend the whole weight of our soul's salvation. The rope
that is to haul us out of the horrible pit and the miry clay had
much need to be tested before we commit ourselves to it. There are
plenty of easygoing superficial theories about forgiveness
predominant in the world to-day. Except the one that says, `In
whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of
sin,' they are all like the rope let down into the dark mine to
lift the captives beneath, half of the strands of which have been
cut on the sharp edge above, and when the weight hangs on to it,
it will snap. There is nothing on which a man who has once learned
the tragical meaning and awful reality and depth of the fact of
his transgression can suspend his forgiveness, except this, that
`Christ has died, the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God.'
`In Him the promise is yea.'

And, again, we have in Christ divine certainties in regard to
life. We have in Him the absolutely perfect pattern to which we
are to conform our whole doings. And so, notwithstanding that
there may, and will still be many uncertainties and much
perplexity, we have the great broad lines of morals and of duty
traced with a firm hand, and all that we need to know of
obligation and of perfectness lies in this---Be like Jesus Christ!
So the solemn commandments of the ethical side of Divine
Revelation, as well as the promises of it, get their `yea' in
Jesus Christ, and He stands the Law of our lives.

We have certainties for life, in the matter of protection,
guidance, supply of all necessity, and the like, treasured and
garnered in Jesus Christ. For He not only confirms, but fulfils,
the promises which God has made. If we have that dear Lord for our
very own, and He belongs to us as He does belong to them who love
Him and trust Him, then in Him we have in actual possession these
promises, how many soever they be, which are given by God's other
words.

Christ is Protean, and becomes everything to each man that each
man requires. He is, as it were, `a box where sweets compacted
lie.' `In Him are hid all the treasures,' not only of wisdom and
knowledge, but of divine gifts, and we have but to go to Him in
order to have that which at each moment as it emerges, we most
require. As in some of those sunny islands of the Southern
Pacific, one tree supplies the people with all that they need for
their simple wants, fruit for their food, leaves for their houses,
staves, thread, needles, clothing, drink, everything---so Jesus
Christ, this Tree of Life, is Himself the sum of all the promises,
and, having Him, we have everything that we need.

And, lastly, in Christ we have the divine certainties as to the
Future over which, apart from Him, lie cloud and darkness. As I
said about the revelation of the heart of God, so I say about the
revelation of a future life---a verbal revelation is not enough.
We have enough of arguments; what we want is facts. We have enough
of man's peradventures about a future life, enough of evidence
more or less valid to show that it is `probable,' or `not
inconceivable,' or `more likely than not,' and so on and so on.
What we want is that somebody shall cross the gulf and come back
again, and so we get in the Resurrection of Christ the one fact on
which men may safely rest their convictions of immortality, and I
do not think that there is a second anywhere. On it alone, as I
believe, hinges the whole answer to the question---`If a man die,
shall he live again?' This generation is brought, in my reading of
it, right up to this alternative---Christ's Resurrection,---or we
die like the brutes that perish. `All the promises of God in Him
are yea.'

II. And now a word as to the second portion of my text---viz.
man's certitudes, which answer to God's certainties.

The latter are \textit{in} Christ, the former are \textit{through}
Christ. Now it is clear that the only fitting attitude for
professing Christians in reference to these certainties of God is
the attitude of unhesitating affirmation and joyful assent.
Certitude is the fitting response to certainty.

There should be some kind of correspondence between the firmness
with which we grasp, the tenacity with which we hold, the
assurance with which we believe, these great truths, and the
rock-like firmness and immovableness of the evidence upon which
they rest. It is a poor compliment to God to come to His most
veracious affirmations, sealed with the broad seal of His Son's
life and death, and to answer with a hesitating `Amen,' that
falters and almost sticks in our throat. Build rock upon rock. Be
sure of the certain things. Grasp with a firm hand the firm stay.
Immovably cling to the immovable foundation; and though you be but
like the limpet on the rock hold fast by the Rock, as the limpet
does; for it is an insult to the certainty of the revelation, when
there is hesitation in the believer.

I need not dwell for more than a moment upon the lamentable
contrast which is presented between this certitude, which is our
only fitting attitude, and the hesitating assent and half belief
in which so many professing Christians pass their lives. The
reasons for that are partly moral, partly intellectual. This is
not a day which is favourable to the unhesitating avowal of
convictions in reference to an unseen world, and many of us are
afraid of being called narrow, or dogmatisers, and think it looks
like breadth, and liberality, and culture, and I know not what, to
say `Well! perhaps it is, but I am not quite sure; I think it is,
but I will not commit myself.' All the promises of God, which in
Him are yea, ought through Him to get from us an `Amen.'

There is a great deal that will always be uncertain. The firmer
our convictions, the fewer will be the things that they grasp;
but, if they be few, they will be large, and enough for us. These
truths certified in Christ concerning the heart of God, the
message of pardon, the law for life, the gifts of guidance,
defence, and sanctifying, the sure and certain hope of
immortality---these things we ought to be sure about, whatever
borderland of uncertainty may lie beyond them. The Christian verb
is `we \textit{know},' not `we hope, we calculate, we infer, we
think,' but `we \textit{know}.' And it becomes us to apprehend for
ourselves the full blessedness and power of the certitude which
Christ has given to us by the certainties which he has brought us.

I need not speak about the blessedness of such a calm assurance,
about the need of it for power, for peace, for effort, for
fixedness in the midst of a world and age of change. But I must,
before I close, point you to the only path by which that certitude
is attainable. `\textit{Through} Him is the amen.' He is the Door.
The truths which He confirms are so inextricably intertwined with
Himself that you cannot get them and put away Him. Christ's
relation to Christ's Gospel is not the relation of other teachers
to their words. You may accept the words of a Plato, whatever you
think of the Plato who spoke the words. But you cannot separate
Christ and His teaching in that fashion, and you must have
\textit{Him} if you are to get \textit{it}. So, faith in Him, the
intellectual acceptance of Him, as the authoritative and
infallible Revealer, the bowing down of heart and will to Him as
our Commander and our Lord, the absolute trust in Him as the
foundation of all our hope and the source of all our
blessedness---that is the way to certitude, and there is no other
road that we can take.

If thus we keep near Him, our faith will bring us the present
experience and fulfilment of the promises, and we shall be sure of
them, because we have them already. And whilst men are asking, `Do
we know anything about God? Is there a God at all? Is there such a
thing as forgiveness? Can anybody find anywhere absolute rules for
his life? Is there anything beyond the grave but mist and
darkness?' we can say, `One thing I know, Jesus Christ is my
Saviour, and in Him I know God, and pardon, and duty, and
sanctifying, and safety, and immortality; and whatever is dark,
this, at least, is sun-clear.' Get high enough up and you will be
above the fog; and while the men down in it are squabbling as to
whether there is anything outside the mist, you, from your sunny
station, will see the far-off coasts, and haply catch some whiff
of perfume from their shore, and see some glinting of a glory upon
the shining turrets of `the city that hath foundations.' We have a
present possession of all the promises of God; and whoever doubts
their certitude, the man who knows himself a son of God by faith,
and has experience of forgiveness and guidance and answered prayer
and hopes whose `sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for
immortality,' \textit{knows} the things which others question and
doubt.

So live near Jesus Christ, and, holding fast by His hand, you may
lift up your joyful `Amen' to every one of God's `Yeas.' For in
Him we know the Father, in Him we know that we have the
forgiveness of sins, in Him we know that God is near to bless and
succour and guide, and in Him `we know that, though our earthly
house were dissolved, we have a building of God.' Wherefore we are
always confident; and when the Voice from Heaven says `Yea!' our
choral shout may go up `Amen! Thou art the faithful and true
witness.'

\chapter{Anointed and Stablished}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS i. 21}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed
us, is God.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} i. 21.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

The connection in which these words occur is a remarkable
illustration of the Apostle's habit of looking at the most trivial
things in the light of the highest truths. He had been obliged, as
the context informs us, to abandon an intended visit to Corinth.
The miserable crew of antagonists, who yelped at his heels all his
life, seized this change of purpose as the occasion for a
double-barrelled charge. They said he was either fickle and infirm
of purpose, or insincere, and saying `Yea' with one side of his
mouth and `Nay' with the other. He rebuts this accusation with
apparently quite disproportionate vehemence and great solemnity.
He points in the context to the faithfulness of God, to the firm
Gospel which he had preached, to God's great `Yea!' as his answer.
He says in effect, `How could I, with such a word burning in my
heart, move in a region of equivocation and double-dealing; or how
could I, whose whole being is saturated with so firm and stable a
Gospel, be unreliable and fickle? The message must make the
messenger like itself. Communion with a faithful God must make
faith-keeping men; the certainties of God's ``Yea,'' and the
certitudes of our ``Amen,'' must influence our characters.' And so
to suppose that a man, influenced by Christianity, is a weak,
double-dealing, unsteadfast man is a contradiction in terms. In
the text he carries his argument a step further, and points, not
only to the power of the Gospel to steady and confirm, but also to
the fact that God Himself communicates to the believing soul
Christian stability by the anointing which He bestows.

So, then, we have in these words the declaration that inflexible,
immovable steadfastness is a mark of a Christian, and that this
Christian steadfastness, without which there is no Christianity
worth the naming, is a direct gift from God Himself by means of
that great anointing which He confers upon men. To that thought,
in one or two of its aspects, I ask your attention.

I. Notice the deep source of this Christian steadfastness.

The language of the original, carefully considered, seems to me to
bear this interpretation, that the `anointing' of the second
clause is the means of the `establishing' of the first---that is
to say, that God confers Christian steadfastness of character by
the bestowment of the unction of His Divine Spirit.

Now notice how deep Paul digs in order to get a foundation for a
common virtue. There are many ways by which men may cultivate the
tenacity and steadfastness of purpose which ought to mark us all.
Much discipline may be brought to bear in order to secure that;
but the text says that the deepest ground upon which it can be
rested is nothing less divine and solemn than this, the actual
communication to men, to feeble, vacillating, fluctuating wills,
and treacherous, wayward, wandering hearts, of the strength and
fixedness which are given by God's own Spirit.

I suppose I need not remind you that from beginning to end of
Scripture, `anointing' is taken as the symbol of the communication
of a true divine influence. The oil poured on the head of prophet,
priest, and king was but the expression of the communication to
the recipient of a divine influence which fitted him as well as
designated him, for the office that he filled. And although it is
aside from my present purpose, I may just, in a sentence, point to
the felicity of the emblem. The flowing oil smoothes the surface
upon which it is spread, supples the limbs, and is nutritive and
illuminating; thus giving an appropriate emblem of the secret,
silent, quickening, nourishing, enlightening influences of that
Spirit which God gives to all His sons.

And inasmuch as here this oil of the Divine Spirit is stated as
being the true ground and basis of Christian steadfastness, it is
obvious that the anointing intended cannot be that of mere
designation to, and inspiration for, apostolic or other office,
but must be the universal possession of all Christian men and
women. `Ye,' says another Apostle, speaking to the whole democracy
of the Christian Church, and not to any little group of selected
aristocrats therein---`ye have an unction from the Holy One,' and
every man and woman who has a living grasp of the living Christ,
receives from Him this great gift.

Then, notice further that this anointing by a Divine Spirit, which
is a true source of life to those that possess it, is derived
from, and parallel with, Christ's anointing. We use the word
`Christ' as a proper name, and forget what it means. The `Christ'
is \textit{the Anointed One}. And do you think that it was a mere
accident, or the result of a scanty vocabulary, which compelled
the Apostle, in these two contiguous clauses, to use cognate words
when he said:---`He that establisheth us with you in the
\textit{Anointed}, and hath \textit{anointed} us, is God'? Did he
not mean to say thereby, `Each of you in a very true sense, if you
are a Christian, is a \textit{Christ}'? You, too, are anointed;
you, too, are God's Messiahs. On you in a measure the same Spirit
rests which dwelt without measure in Him. The chief of Christ's
gifts to the Church is the gift of His own life. All His brethren
are anointed with the oil that was poured upon His head, even as
the oil upon Aaron's locks percolated to the very skirts of his
garments. Being anointed with the anointing which was on Him, all
His people may claim an identity of nature, may hope for an
identity of destiny, and are bound to a prolongation of part of
His function and a similarity of character. If He by that
anointing was made Prophet, Priest, and King for the world, all
His children partake of these offices in subordinate but real
fashion, and are prophets to make God known to men, priests to
offer up spiritual sacrifices, and kings at least over themselves,
and, if they will, over a world which obeys and serves those that
serve and love God. Ye are anointed---`Messiahs' and `Christs,' by
derivation of the life of Jesus Christ.

And if these things be true, it is plain enough how this divine
unction, which is granted to all Christians, lies at the root of
steadfastness.

We talk a great deal about the gentleness of Christ; we cannot
celebrate it too much, but we may forget that it is the gentleness
of strength. We do not sufficiently mark the masculine features in
that character, the tremendous tenacity of will, the inflexible
fixedness of purpose, the irremovable constancy of obedience in
the face of all temptations to the contrary. The figure that rises
before us is that of the Christ yearning over weaklings far
oftener than it is that of the Christ with knitted brow, and
tightened lips, and far-off gazing eye, `steadfastly setting His
face to go to Jerusalem,' and followed as He pressed up the rocky
road from Jericho, by that wondering group, astonished at the
rigidity of purpose that was stamped on His features. That Christ
gives us His Spirit to make us tenacious, constant, righteously
obstinate, inflexible in the pursuit of all that is lovely and of
good report, like Himself. That Divine Spirit will cure the
fickleness of our natures; for our wills are never fixed till they
are fixed in obedience, and never free until they elect to serve
Him. That Divine Spirit will cure the wandering of our hearts and
bind us to Himself. It will lift us above the selfish and cowardly
dependence on externals and surroundings, men and things, in which
we are all tempted to live. We are all too like aneroid
barometers, that go up and down with every variation of a foot or
two in our level, but if we have the Spirit of Christ dwelling in
us, it will cut the bonds that bind us to the world, and give us
possession of a deeper love than can be sustained by, or is
derived from, these superficial sources. The true possession of
the Divine Spirit, if I might use such a metaphor, sets a man on
an insulating stool, and all the currents that move round about
him are powerless to reach him. If we have that Divine Spirit
within us, it will give us an experience of the preciousness and
the truth, the certitude and the sweetness, of Christ's Gospel,
which will make it impossible that we should ever cast away the
confidence which has such `recompense of reward.' No man will be
surely bound to the truth and person of Christ with bonds that
cannot be snapped, except he who in his heart has the knowledge of
Him which is possession, and by the gift of the Divine Spirit is
knit to Jesus Christ.

So, dear friends, whilst the world is full of wise words about
steadfastness, and exalts determination of character and fixity of
purpose, rightly, as the basis of much good, our Gospel comes to
us poor, light, thistledown creatures, and lets us see how we can
be steadfast and settled by being fastened to a steadfast and
settled Christ. When storms are raging they lash light articles on
deck to holdfasts. Let us lash ourselves to the abiding Christ,
and we, too, shall abide.

II. In the next place, notice the aim or purpose of this Christian
steadfastness.

`He stablisheth us with you in Christ,' or as the original has it
even more significantly, \textit{into} or `\textit{unto} Christ.'
Now that seems to me to imply two things---first, that our
steadfastness, made possible by our possession of that Divine
Spirit, is steadfastness in our relations to Jesus Christ. We are
established in reference or in regard to Him. In other words, what
Paul here means is, first, a fixed conviction of the truth that He
is the Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, and my
Saviour. That is the first step. Men who are steadfast without
their intellect guiding and settling the steadfastness are not
steadfast, but obstinate and pigheaded. We are meant to be guided
by our understandings, and no fixity is anything better than the
immobility of a stone, unless it be based upon a distinct and
whole-brained intellectual acceptance of Jesus Christ as the
All-in-all for us, for life and death, for inward and outward
being.

Paul means, next, a steadfastness in regard to Christ in our trust
and love. Surely if from Him there is for ever streaming out an
unbroken flow of tenderness, there should be ever on our sides an
equally unbroken opening of our hearts for the reception of His
love, and an equally uninterrupted response to it in our grateful
affection. There can be no more damning condemnation of the
vacillations and fluctuations of Christian men's affections than the
steadfastness of Christ's love to them. He loves ever; He is
unalterable in the communication and effluence of His heart. Surely
it is most fitting that we should be steadfast in our devotion and
answering love to Him. And Paul means not only fixedness of
intellectual conviction and continuity of loving response, but also
habitual obedience, which is always ready to do His will.

So we should answer His `Yea!' with our `Amen!' and having an
unchanging Christ to rest upon, we should rest upon Him
unchanging. The broken, fluctuating affections and trusts and
obediences which mark so much of the average Christian life of
this day are only too sad proofs of how scant our possession of
that Spirit of steadfastness must be supposed to be. God's `Yea'
is answered by our faltering `Amen'; God's truth is hesitatingly
accepted; God's love is partially returned; God's work is
slothfully and negligently done. `Be ye steadfast, unmovable,
always abounding in the work of the Lord.'

Another thought is suggested by these words---viz. that such
steadfastness as we have been trying to describe has for its result
a deeper penetration into Jesus Christ and a fuller possession of
Him. The only way by which we can grow nearer and nearer to our Lord
is by steadfastly keeping beside Him. You cannot get the spirit of a
landscape unless you sit down and gaze, and let it soak into you.
The cheap tripper never sees the lake. You cannot get to know a man
until you summer and winter with him. No subject worth studying
opens itself to the hasty glance. Was it not Sir Isaac Newton who
used to say, `I have no genius, but I keep a subject before me'?
`Abide in Me; as the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the
vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me.' Continuous, steadfast
adhesion to Him is the condition of growing up into His likeness,
and receiving more and more of His beauty into our waiting hearts.
`Wait on the Lord; wait, I say, on the Lord.'

III. Lastly, notice the very humble and commonplace sphere in
which the Christian steadfastness manifests itself.

It was nothing of more importance than that Paul had said he was
going to Corinth, and did not, on which he brings all this array
of great principles to bear. From which I gather just this
thought, that the highest gifts of God's grace and the greatest
truths of God's Word are meant to regulate the tiniest things in
our daily life. It is no degradation to the lightning to have to
carry messages. It is no profanation of the sun to gather its rays
into a burning glass to light a kitchen fire with. And it is no
unworthy use of the Divine Spirit that God gives to His children,
to say it will keep a man from hasty and precipitate decisions as
to little things in life, and from chopping and changing about,
with a levity of purpose and without a sufficient reason. If our
religion is not going to influence the trifles, what is it going
to influence? Our life is made up of trifles, and if these are not
its field, where is its field? You may be quite sure that, if your
religion does not influence the little things, it will never
influence the great ones. If it has not power enough to guide the
horses when they are at a slow, sober walk, what do you think it
will do when they are at a gallop and plunging? `He that is
faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.' So let
us see to two things---first, that all our religion is worked into
our life, for only so much of it as is so inwrought is our
religion---and, second, that all our life is brought under the
sway of motives derived from our religion: for only in proportion
as it is, will it be pure and good.

And as regards this special virtue and prime quality of
steadfastness and fixedness of purpose, you can do no good in the
world without it. Unless a man can hold his own, and turn an
obstinate negative to the temptations that lie thick about him, he
will never come to any good at all, either in this life or in the
next. The basis of all excellence is a wholesome disregard of
externals, and the cultivation of a strong self-reliant and
self-centred, because God-trusting and Christ-centred, will. And I
tell you, especially you young men and women, if you want to do or
be anything worth doing or being, you must try to get your natures
hardened into being `steadfast, unmovable.' There is only one
infallible way of doing it, and that is to let the `strong Son of
God' live in you, and in Him to find your strength for resistance,
your strength for obedience, your strength for submission. `I have
set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I
shall not be moved.'

There are two types of men in the world. The one has his emblem in
the chaff, rootless, with no hold, swept out of the
threshing-floor by every gust of wind. That the picture of many
whose principles lie at the mercy of the babble of tongues round
about them, whose rectitude goes at a puff of temptation, like the
smoke out of a chimney when the wind blows; who have no will for
what is good, but live as it happens. The other type of man has
his emblem in the tree, rooted deep, and therefore rising high,
with its roots going as far underground as its branches spread in
the blue, and therefore green of leaf and rich of fruit `We are
made partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our
confidence, steadfast until the end.'

\chapter{Seal and Earnest}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS i. 23}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in
our hearts.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} i. 23.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There are three strong metaphors in this and the preceding
verse---`a\-noint\-ing,' `sealing,' and `giving the earnest'---all
of which find their reality in the same divine act. These three
metaphors all refer to the same subject, and what that subject is
is sufficiently explained in the last of them. The `earnest'
consists of `the Spirit in our hearts,' and the same explanation
might have been appended to both the preceding clauses, for the
`anointing' is the anointing of the Spirit, and the `seal' is the
seal of the Spirit. Further, these three metaphors all refer to
one and the same act. They are not three things, but three aspects
of one thing, just as a sunbeam might be regarded either as the
source of warmth, or of light, or of chemical action. So the one
gift of the one Spirit, `anoints,' `seals,' and is the `earnest.'
Further, these three metaphors all declare a universal prerogative
of Christians. Every man that loves Jesus Christ has the Spirit in
the measure of his faith,' and if any man have not the Spirit of
Christ he is none of His.'

I. Note the first metaphor in the text---the `seal' of the Spirit.

A seal is impressed upon a recipient material made soft by warmth,
in order to leave there a copy of itself. Now it is not fanciful,
nor riding a metaphor to death, when I dwell upon these features
of the emblem in order to suggest their analogies in Christian
life. The Spirit of God comes into our spirits, and by gentle
contact impresses upon the material, which was intractable until
it was melted by the genial warmth of faith and love, the likeness
of Himself, but yet so as that prominences correspond to the
hollows, and what is in relief in the one is sunk in the other.
Expand that general statement for a moment or two.

The effect of all the divine indwelling, which is the
characteristic gift of Christ to every Christian soul, is to mould
the recipient into the image of the divine inhabitant. There is in
the human spirit---such are its dignity amidst its ruins, and its
nobility shining through its degradation---a capacity of receiving
that image of God which consists not only in voluntary and
intelligent action and the consciousness of personal being, but in
the love of the things that are fair, and in righteousness, and
true holiness. His Spirit, entering into a heart, will make that
heart wise with its own wisdom, strong with some infusion of its
own strength, gracious with some drops of its own grace, gentle
with some softening from its own gentleness, holy with some purity
reflected from its own transcendent whiteness. The Spirit, which
is life, moulds the heart into which it enters to a kindred, and,
therefore, similar life.

There are, however, characteristics in this `seal' of the Spirit
which are not so much copies as correspondences. That is to say,
just as what is convex in the seal is concave in the impression, and
\textit{vice vers�}, so, when that Divine Spirit comes into our
spirits, its promises will excite faith, its gifts will breed
desire; to every bestowment there will answer an opening
receptivity. Recipient love will correspond to the love that longs
to dispense, the sense of need to the divine fulness and
sufficiency, emptiness to abundance, prayers to promises; the cry
`Abba! Father'! the yearning consciousness of sonship, to the word
`Thou art My Son'; and the upward eye of aspiration and petition,
and necessity, and waiting, to the downward glance of love bestowing
itself. The open heart answers to the extended hand, and the seal
which God's Spirit impresses upon the heart that is submitted to it,
has the two-fold character of resemblance in moral nature and
righteousness, and of correspondence as regards the mysteries of the
converse between the recipient man and the giving God.

Then, mark that the material is made capable of receiving the
stamp, because it is warmed and softened. That is to say, faith
must prepare the heart for the sanctifying indwelling of that
Divine Spirit. The hard wax may be struck with the seal, but it
leaves no trace. God does not do with man as the coiner does with
his blanks, put them cold into a press, and by violence from
without stamp an image upon them, but He does as men do with a
seal, warms the wax first, and then, with a gentle, firm touch,
leaves the likeness there. So, brother! learn this lesson: if you
wish to be good, lie under the contact of the Spirit of
righteousness, and see that your heart is warm.

Still further, note that this aggregate of Christian character, in
likeness and correspondence, is the true sign that we belong to
God. The seal is the mark of ownership, is it not? Where the broad
arrow has been impressed, everybody knows that that is royal
property. And so this seal of God's Divine Spirit, in its effects
upon my character, is the one token to myself and to other people
that I belong to God, and that He belongs to me. Or, to put it
into plain English, the best reason for any man's being regarded
as a Christian is his possession of the likeness and
correspondence to God which that Divine Spirit gives. Likeness and
correspondence, I say, for the one class of results is the more
open for the observation of the world, and the other class is of
the more value for ourselves. I believe that Christian people
ought to have, and are meant by that Divine Spirit dwelling in
them to have, a consciousness that they are Christians and God's
children, for their own peace and rest and joy. But you cannot use
that in demonstration to other people; you may be as sure of it as
you will, in your inmost hearts, but it is no sign to anybody
else. And, on the other hand, there may be much of outward virtue
and beauty of character which may lead other people to say about a
man: `\textit{That} is a good Christian man, at any rate,' and yet
there may be in the heart an all but absolute absence of any
joyful assurance that we are Christ's, and that He belongs to us.
So the two facts must go together. Correspondence, the spirit of
sonship which meets His taking us as sons, the faith which clasps
the promise, the reception which welcomes bestowment, must be
stamped upon the inward life. For the outward life there must be
the manifest impress of righteousness upon my actions, if there is
to be any real seal and token that I belong to Him. God writes His
own name upon the men that are His. All their goodness, their
gentleness, patience, hatred of evil, energy and strenuousness in
service, submission in suffering, with whatsoever other radiance
of human virtue may belong to them, are really `His mark!'

There is no other worth talking about, and to you Christian men I
come and say, Be very sure that your professions of inward
communion and happy consciousness that you are Christ's are
verified to yourself and to others by a plain outward life of
righteousness like the Lord's. Have you got that seal stamped upon
your lives, like the hall-mark that says, `This is genuine silver,
and no plated Brummagem stuff'? Have you got that seal of a
visible righteousness and every-day purity to confirm your
assertion that you belong to Christ? Is it woven into the whole
length of your being, like the scarlet thread that is spun into
every Admiralty cable as a sign that it is Crown property? God's
seal, visible to me and to nobody else, is my consciousness that I
am His; but that consciousness is vindicated and delivered from
the possibility of illusion or hypocrisy, only when it is checked
and fortified by the outward evidence of the holy life which the
Spirit of God has wrought.

Further, this sealing, which is thus the token of God's ownership,
is also the pledge of security. A seal is stamped in order that
there may be no tampering with what it seals; that it may be kept
safe from all assaults, thieves, and violence. And in the metaphor
of our text there is included this thought, too, which is also of an
intensely practical nature. For it just comes to this---our true
guarantee that we shall come at last into the sweet security and
safety of the perfect state is present likeness to the indwelling
Spirit and present reception of divine grace. The seal is the pledge
of security, just because it is the mark of ownership. When, by
God's Spirit dwelling in us, we are led to love the things that are
fair, and to long after more possession of whatever things are of
good report, that is like God's hoisting His flag upon a
newly-annexed territory. And is He going to be so careless in the
preservation of His property as that He will allow that which is
thus acquired to slip away from Him? Does He account us as of so
small value as to hold us with so slack a hand? But no man has a
right to rest on the assurance of God's saving him into the heavenly
kingdom, unless He is saving him at this moment from the devil and
his own evil heart. And, therefore, I say the Christian character,
in its outward manifestations and in its sweet inward secrets of
communion, is the guarantee that we shall not fall. Rest upon Him,
and He will hold you up. We are `kept by the power of God unto
salvation,' and that power keeps us and that final salvation becomes
ours, `through faith.'

II. Now, secondly, turn to the other emblem, that `earnest' which
consists in like manner `of the Spirit.'

The `earnest,' of course, is a small portion of purchase-money, or
wages, or contract-money, which is given at the making of a
bargain, as an assurance that the whole amount will be paid in due
time. And, says the Apostle, this seal is also an earnest. It not
only makes certain God's ownership and guarantees the security of
those on whom it is impressed, but it also points onwards to the
future, and at once guarantees that, and to a large extent reveals
the nature of it. So, then, we have here two thoughts on which I
touch.

The Christian character and experience are the earnest of the
inheritance, in the sense of being its guarantee, inasmuch as the
experiences of the Christian life here are plainly immortal. The
Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the objective and
external proof of a future life. The facts of the Christian life,
its aspirations, its communion, its clasp of God as its very own,
are the subjective and inward proofs of a future life. As a matter
of fact, if you will take the Old Testament, you will see that the
highest summits in it, to which the hope of immortality soared,
spring directly from the experience of deep and blessed communion
with the living God. When the Psalmist said `Thou wilt not leave
my soul in \textit{Sheol}; neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One
to see corruption,' he was speaking a conviction that had been
floated into his mind on the crest of a great wave of religious
enjoyment and communion. And, in like manner, when the other
Psalmist said, `Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion
for ever,' he was speaking of the glimpse that he had got of the
land that was very far off, from the height which he had climbed
on the Mount of fellowship with God. And for us, I suppose that
the same experience holds good. Howsoever much we may say that we
believe in a future life and in a heaven, we really grasp them as
facts that will be true about ourselves, in the proportion in
which we are living here in direct contact and communion with God.
The conviction of immortality is the distinct and direct result of
the present enjoyment of communion with Him, and it is a
reasonable result. No man who has known what it is to turn himself
to God with a glow of humble love, and to feel that he is not
turning his face to vacuity, but to a Face that looks on him with
love, can believe that anything can ever come to destroy that
communion. What have faith, love, aspiration, resignation,
fellowship with God, to do with death? They cannot be cut through
with the stroke that destroys physical life, any more than you can
divide a sunbeam with a sword. It unites again, and the impotent
edge passes through and has effected nothing. Death can shear
asunder many bonds, but that invisible bond that unites the soul
to God is of adamant, against which his scythe is in vain. Death
is the grim porter that opens the door of a dark hole and herds us
into it as sheep are driven into a slaughter-house. But to those
who have learned what it is to lay a trusting hand in God's hand,
the grim porter is turned into the gentle damsel, who keeps the
door, and opens it for light and warmth and safety to the hunted
prisoner that has escaped from the dungeon of life. Death cannot
touch communion, and the consciousness of communion with God is
the earnest of the inheritance.

It is so for another reason also. All the results of the Divine
Spirit's sealing of the soul are manifestly incomplete, and as
manifestly tend towards completeness. The engine is clearly
working now at half-speed. It is obviously capable of much higher
pressure than it is going at now. Those powers in the Christian
man can plainly do a great deal more than they ever have done
here, and are meant to do a great deal more. Is this imperfect
Christianity of ours, our little faith so soon shattered, our
little love so quickly disproved, our faltering resolutions, our
lame performances, our earthward cleavings---are these things all
that Jesus Christ's bitter agony was for, and all that a Divine
Spirit is able to make of us? Manifestly, here is but a segment of
the circle, in heaven is the perfect round; and the imperfections,
so far as life is concerned, in the work of so obviously divine an
Agent, cry aloud for a region where tendency shall become result,
and all that it was possible for Him to make us we shall become.
The road evidently leads upwards, and round that sharp corner
where the black rocks come so near each other and our eyesight
cannot travel, we may be sure it goes steadily up still to the top
of the pass, until it reaches `the shining table-lands whereof our
God Himself is Sun and Moon,' and brings us all to the city set on
a hill.

And, further, that divine seal is the earnest, inasmuch as itself
is part of the whole. The truest and the loftiest conception that
we can form of heaven is as being the perfecting of the religious
experience of earth. The shilling or two, given to the servant in
old-fashioned days, when he was hired, is of the same currency as
the balance that he is to get when the year's work is done. The
small payment to-day comes out of the same purse, and is coined
out of the same specie, and is part of the same currency of the
same kingdom, as what we get when we go yonder and count the
endless riches to which we have fallen heirs at last. You have but
to take the faith, the love, the obedience, the communion of the
highest moments of the Christian life on earth, and free them from
all their limitations, subtract from them all their imperfections,
multiply them to their superlative possibility, and endow them
with a continual power of growth, and stretch them out to absolute
eternity, and you get heaven. The earnest is of a piece with the
inheritance.

So, dear brethren, here is a gift offered for us all, a gift which
our feebleness sorely needs, a gift for every timid nature, for
every weak will, for every man, woman, and child beset with snares
and fighting with heavy tasks, the offer of a reinforcement as
real and as sure to bring victory as when, on that day when the
fate of Europe was determined, after long hours of conflict, the
Prussian bugles blew, and the English commander knew that (with
the fresh troops that came on the field) victory was made certain.
So you and I may have in our hearts the Spirit of God, the spirit
of strength, the spirit of love and of a sound mind, the spirit of
adoption, the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge
of Him, to enlighten our darkness, to bind our hearts to Him, to
quicken and energise our souls, to make the weakest among us
strong, and the strong as an angel of God. And the condition on
which we may get it is this simple one which the Apostle lays
down; `\textit{After that ye believed}, ye were sealed with that
Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance.'
The Christ, who is the Lord and Giver of the Spirit, has shown us
how its blessed influences may be ours when, on the great day of
the feast, He stood and cried with a voice that echoes across the
centuries, and is meant for each of us, `If any man thirsts, let
him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water. This spake He of the
Spirit which they that believe or Him should receive.'

\chapter{The Triumphal Procession}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS ii. 14}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ
and maketh manifest through us the savour of His knowledge in
every place.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} ii. 14 (R.~V.)
\end{quote}
\normalsize

I suppose most of us have some knowledge of what a Roman Triumph
was, and can picture to ourselves the long procession, the
victorious general in his chariot with its white horses, the
laurelled soldiers, the sullen captives, with suppressed hate
flashing in their sunken eyes, the wreathing clouds of incense that
went up into the blue sky, and the shouting multitude of spectators.
That is the picture in the Apostle's mind here. The Revised Version
correctly alters the translation into `Thanks unto God which always
\textit{leadeth us in} triumph in Christ.'

Paul thinks of himself and of his coadjutors in Christian work as
being conquered captives, made to follow their Conqueror and to
swell His triumph. He is thankful to be so overcome. What was
deepest degradation is to him supreme honour. Curses in many a
strange tongue would break from the lips of the prisoners who had
to follow the general's victorious chariot. But from Paul's lips
comes irrepressible praise; he joins in the shout of acclamation
to the Conqueror.

And then he passes on to another of the parts of the ceremonial.
As the wreathing incense appealed at once to two senses, and was
visible in its curling clouds of smoke, and likewise fragrant to
the nostrils, so says Paul, with a singular combination of
expression, `He maketh \textit{manifest},' that is visible, the
\textit{savour} of His knowledge. From a heart kindled by the
flame of the divine love there will go up the odour of a holy life
visible and fragrant, sweet and fair.

And thus all Christians, and not Christian workers only in the
narrower sense of the word, who may be doing evangelistic work,
have set before them in these great words the very ideal and
secret of their lives.

There are three things here, on each of which I touch as belonging
to the true notion of a Christian life---the conquered captive;
that captive partaking in the triumph of his Conqueror; and the
conquered captive led as a trophy and a witness to the Conqueror's
power. These three things, I think, explain the Apostle's thoughts
here. Let me deal with them now.

I. First then, let us look at that thought of all Christians being
in the truest sense conquered captives, bound to the chariot
wheels of One who has overcome them.

The image implies a prior state of hostility and alienation. Now,
do not let us exaggerate, let us take Paul's own experience. He is
speaking about himself here; he is not talking doctrine, he is
giving us autobiography, and he says, `I was an enemy, and I have
been conquered.'

What sort of an enemy was he? Well! He says that before he became
a Christian he lived a pure, virtuous, respectable life. He was a
man `as touching the righteousness which is in the law,
blameless.' Observant of all relative duties, sober, temperate,
chaste; no man could say a word against him; he knew nothing
against himself. His conscience acquitted him of wrong: `I thought
I ought to do many things,' as I did them. And yet, looking back
from his present point of view upon a life thus adorned with many
virtues, pure from all manifest corruption, to a large extent
regulated by conscientious and religious motives of a kind, he
says, `Notwithstanding all that, I was an enemy.' Why? Because the
retrospect let him see that his life was barren of the deepest
faith and the purest love. And so I come to some of my friends
here now, and I say to you, `Change the name, and the story is
true about you,' respectable people, who are trying to live pure
and righteous lives, doing all duties that present themselves to
you with a very tolerable measure of completeness and abominating
and trying to keep yourselves from the things that your
consciences tell you are wrong, yet needing to be conquered, in
the deepest recesses of your wills and your hearts, before you
become the true subjects of the true King. I do not want to
exaggerate, nor to say of the ordinary run of people who listen to
us preachers, that they commit manifest sins, `gross as a
mountain, open, palpable.' Some of you do, no doubt, for, in every
hundred people, there are always some whose lives are foul and
whose memories are stained and horrible; but the run of you are
not like that. And yet I ask you, has your will been bowed and
broken, and your heart overcome and conquered by this mighty
Prince, the Prince of Peace, the Prince of Life? Unless it has,
for all your righteousness and respectability, for all your
outward religion and real religiousness of a sort, you are still
hostile and rebellious, in your inmost hearts. That is the basis
of the representation of my text.

What else does it suggest? It suggests the wonderful struggle and
victory of weaponless love. As was said about the first Christian
emperor, so it may be said about the great Emperor in the heavens,
`\textit{In hoc signo vinces!}' By this sign thou shalt conquer.
For His only weapon is the Cross of His Son, and He fights only by
the manifestation of infinite love, sacrifice, suffering, and
pity. He conquers as the sun conquers the thick-ribbed ice by
raying down its heat upon it, and melting it into sweet water. So
God in Christ fights against the mountains of man's cold, hard
sinfulness and alienation, and by the warmth of His own radiation
turns them all into rivers that flow in love and praise. He
conquers simply by forbearance and pity and love.

And what more does this first part of my text say to us? It tells
us, too, of the true submission of the conquered captive; how we
are conquered when we perceive and receive His love; how there is
nothing else needed to win us all for Him except only that we
shall recognise His great love to us.

This picture of the triumph comes with a solemn appeal and
commandment to every one of us professing Christians. Think of
these men, dragged at the conqueror's chariot-wheels, abject, with
their weapons broken, with their resistance quelled, chained,
yoked, haled away from their own land, dependant for life or death
on the caprice of the general who rode before them there. It is a
picture of what you Christian men and women are bound to be if you
believe that God in Christ has loved you as we have been saying
that He does. For abject submission, unconditional surrender, the
yielding up of our whole will to Him, the yielding of all our
possessions as His vassals---these are the duties that are
correspondent to the facts of the case.

If we are thus won by infinite love, and not our own, but bought
with a price, no conquered king, dragged at an emperor's
chariot-wheels, was ever half as absolutely and abjectly bound to
be his slave, and to live or die by his breath, as you are bound
to your Master. You are Christians in the measure in which you are
the captives of His spear and of His bow; in the measure in which
you hold your territories as vassal kings, in the measure in which
you say, stretching out your willing hands for the fetters, `Lord!
here am I, do with me as Thou wilt.' `I am not mine own; be Thou
my will, my Emperor, my Commander, my all.' Loyola used to say, as
the law of his order, that every man that became a member of the
Society of Jesus was to be like as a staff in a man's hand, or
like as a corpse. It was a blasphemous and wicked claim, but it is
but a poor fragmentary statement of the truth about those of us
who enter the real Society of Jesus, and put ourselves in His
hands to be wielded as His staff and His rod, and submit ourselves
to Him, not as a corpse, but yield yourselves to our Christ `as
those that are alive from the dead.'

II. Now we have here, as part of the ideal of the Christian life,
the conquered captives partaking in the triumph of their general.

Two groups made up the triumphal procession---the one that of the
soldiers who had fought for, the other that of the prisoners who
had fought against, the leader. And some commentators are inclined
to believe that the Apostle is here thinking of himself and his
fellows as belonging to the conquering army, and not to the
conquered enemy. That seems to me to be less probable and in
accordance with the whole image than the explanation which I have
adopted. But be that as it may, it suggests to us this thought,
that in the deepest reality in that Christian life of which all
this metaphor is but the expression, they who are conquered foes
become conquering allies. Or, to put it into other words---to be
triumphed over by Christ is to triumph with Christ. And the praise
which breaks from the Apostle's lips suggests the same idea. He
pours out his thanks for that which he recognises as being no
degradation but an honour, and a participation in his Conqueror's
triumph.

We may illustrate that thought, that to be triumphed over by
Christ is to triumph with Christ, by such considerations as these.
This submission of which I have been speaking, abject and
unconditional, extending to life and death, this submission and
captivity is but another name for liberty. The man who is
absolutely dependent upon Jesus Christ is absolutely independent
of everything and everybody besides, himself included. That is to
say, to be His slave is to be everybody else's master, and when we
bow ourselves to Him, and take upon us the chains of glad
obedience, and life-deep as well as life-long consecration, then
He breaks off all other chains from our hands, and will not suffer
that any others should have a share with Him in the possession of
His servant. If you are His servants you are free from all
besides; if you give yourselves up to Jesus Christ, in the measure
in which you give yourselves up to Him, you will be set at liberty
from the worst of all slaveries, that is the slavery of your own
will and your own weakness, and your own tastes and fancies. You
will be set at liberty from dependence upon men, from thinking
about their opinion. You will be set at liberty from your
dependence upon externals, from feeling as if you could not live
unless you had this, that, or the other person or thing. You will
be emancipated from fears and hopes which torture the men who
strike their roots no deeper than this visible film of time which
floats upon the surface of the great, invisible abyss of Eternity.
If you have Christ for your Master you will be the masters of the
world, and of time and sense and men and all besides; and so,
being triumphed over by Him, you will share in His triumph.

And again, we may illustrate the same principle in yet another
way. Such absolute and entire submission of will and love as I
have been speaking about is the highest honour of a man. It was a
degradation to be dragged at the chariot-wheels of conquering
general, emperor, or consul---it broke the heart of many a
barbarian king, and led some of them to suicide rather than face
the degradation. It is a degradation to submit ourselves, even as
much as many of us do, to the domination of human authorities, or
to depend upon men as much as many of us do for our completeness
and our satisfaction. But it is the highest ennobling of humanity
that it shall lay itself down at Christ's feet, and let Him put
His foot upon its neck. It is the exaltation of human nature to
submit to Christ. The true nobility are those that `come over with
the Conqueror.' When we yield ourselves to Him, and let Him be our
King, then the patent of nobility is given to us, and we are
lifted in the scale of being. All our powers and faculties are
heightened in their exercise, and made more blessed in their
employment, because we have bowed ourselves to His control. And so
to be triumphed over by Christ is to triumph with Christ.

And the same thought may be yet further illustrated. That
submission which I have been speaking about so unites us to our
Lord that we share in all that belongs to Him and thus partake in
His triumph. If in will and heart we have yielded ourselves to
Him, he that is thus joined to the Lord is one spirit, and all
`mine is Thine, and all Thine is mine.' He is the Heir of all
things, and all things of which He is the Heir are our possession.
`All things are yours, and ye are Christ's.' Thus His dominion is
the dominion of all that love Him, and His heritage is the
heritage of all those that have joined themselves to Him; and no
sparkle of the glory that falls upon His head but is reflected on
the heads of His servants. The `many crowns' that He wears are the
crowns with which He crowns His followers.

Thus, my brother, to be overcome by God is to overcome the world,
to be triumphed over by Christ is to share in His triumph; and he
over whom Incarnate Love wins the victory, like the patriarch of
old in his mystical struggle, conquers in the hour of surrender;
and to him it is said: `As a prince thou hast power with God and
hast prevailed.'

III. Lastly, a further picture of the ideal of the Christian life
is set before us here in the thought of these conquered captives
being led as the trophies and the witnesses of His overcoming
power.

That idea is suggested by both halves of our verse. Both the
emblem of the Apostle as marching in the triumphal procession, and
the emblem of the Apostle as yielding from his burning heart the
fragrant visible odour of the ascending incense, convey the same
idea, viz. that one great purpose which Jesus Christ has in
conquering men for Himself, and binding them to His chariot
wheels, is that from them may go forth the witness of His power
and the knowledge of His name.

That opens very wide subjects for our consideration which I can
only very briefly touch upon. Let me just for an instant dwell
upon some of them. First, the fact that Jesus Christ, by His Cross
and Passion, is able to conquer men's wills, and to bind men's
hearts to Him, is the highest proof of His power. It is an
entirely unique thing in the history of the world. There is
nothing the least like it anywhere else. The passionate attachment
which this dead Galilean peasant is able to evoke in the hearts of
people all these centuries after His death, is an unheard of and
an unparalleled thing. All other teachers `serve their generations
by the will of God,' and then their names become speedily less and
less powerful, and thicker and thicker mists of oblivion wrap them
round until they disappear. But time has no power over Christ's
influence. The bond which binds you and me to Him nineteen
centuries after His death is the very same in quality as, and in
degree is often far deeper and stronger than, the bond which
united to Him the men that had seen Him. It stands as an unique
fact in the history of the world, that from Christ of Nazareth
there rays out through all the ages the spiritual power which
absolutely takes possession of men, dominates them and turns them
into His organs and instruments. This generation prides itself
upon testing all things by an utilitarian test, and about every
system says:---`Well, let us see it working.' And I do not think
that Christianity need shrink from the test. With all its
imperfections, the long procession of holy men and women who, for
nineteen centuries, have been marching through history, owning
Christ as their Conqueror, and ascribing all their goodness to
Him, is a witness to His power to sway and to satisfy men, the
force of whose testimony it is hard to overthrow. And I would like
to ask the simple question: Will any system of belief or of no
belief, except the faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice, do the
like for men? He leads through the world the train of His
captives, the evidence of His conquests.

And then, further, let me remind you that out of this
representation there comes a very stimulating and solemn
suggestion of duty for us Christian people. We are bound to live,
setting forth whose we are, and what He has done for us. Just as
the triumphal procession took its path up the Appian Way and along
the side of the Forum to the altar of the Capitol, wreathed about
by curling clouds of fragrant incense, so we should march through
the world encompassed by the sweet and fragrant odour of His name,
witnessing for Him by word, witnessing for Him by character,
speaking for Him and living like Him, showing in our life that He
rules us, and professing by our words that He does; and so should
manifest His power.

Still further, Paul's thanksgiving teaches us that we should be
thankful for all opportunities of doing such work. Christian men
and women often grudge their services and grudge their money, and
feel as if the necessities for doing Christian work in the world
were rather a burden than an honour. This man's generous heart was
so full of love to his Prince that it glowed with thankfulness at
the thought that Christ had let him do such things for Him. And He
lets you do them if you will.

So, dear friends, it comes to be a very solemn question for us.
What part are we playing in that great triumphal procession? We
are all of us marching at His chariot wheels, whether we know it
or not. But there were two sets of people in the old triumph.
There were those who were conquered by force and unconquered in
heart, and out of their eyes gleamed unquenchable malice and
hatred, though their weapons were broken and their arms fettered.
And there were those who, having shared in the commander's fight,
shared in his triumph and rejoiced in his rule. And when the
procession reached the gate of the temple, some, at any rate, of
the former class were put to death before the gates. I pray you to
remember that if we are dragged after Him reluctantly, the word
will come: `These, mine enemies, which would not that I should
reign over them, bring hither and slay them before Me.' Whereas,
on the other hand, for those who have yielded heart and soul to
Him in love and submission born of the reception of His great
love, the blessed word will come: `He that overcometh shall
inherit all things.' Which of the two parts of the procession do
you belong to, my friend? Make your choice where you shall march,
and whether you will be His loyal allies and soldiers who share in
His triumph, or His enemies, who, overcome by His power, are not
melted by His love. The one live, the other perish.

\chapter{Transformation by Beholding}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS iii. 18}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the
Lord, are changed into the same image.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} iii. 18.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

This whole section of the Epistle in which our text occurs is a
remarkable instance of the fervid richness of the Apostle's mind,
which acquires force by motion, and, like a chariot-wheel, catches
fire as it revolves. One of the most obvious peculiarities of his
style is his habit of `going off at a word.' Each thought is, as
it were, barbed all round, and catches and draws into sight a
multitude of others, but slightly related to the main purpose in
hand. And this characteristic gives at first sight an appearance
of confusion to his writings. But it is not confusion, it is
richness. The luxuriant underwood which this fertile soil bears,
as some tropical forest, does not choke the great trees, though it
drapes them.

Paul's immediate purpose seems to be to illustrate the frank
openness which ought to mark the ministry of Christianity. He does
this by reference to the veil which Moses wore when he came forth
from talking with God. There, he says in effect, we have a picture
of the Old Dispensation---a partial revelation, gleaming through a
veil, flashing through symbols, expressed here in a rite, there in
a type, there again in an obscure prophecy, but never or scarcely
ever fronting the world with an unveiled face and the light of God
shining clear from it. Christianity is, and Christian teachers
ought to be, the opposite of all this. It has, and they are to
have, no esoteric doctrines, no hints where plain speech is
possible, no reserve, no use of symbols and ceremonies to overlay
truth, but an intelligible revelation in words and deeds, to men's
understandings. It and they are plentifully to declare the thing
as it is.

But he gets far beyond this point in his uses of his illustration.
It opens out into a series of contrasts between the two
revelations. The veiled Moses represents the clouded revelation of
old. The vanishing gleam on his face recalls the fading glories of
that which was abolished; and then, by a quick turn of
association, Paul thinks of the veiled readers in the synagogues,
copies, as it were, of the lawgiver with the shrouded countenance;
only too significant images of the souls obscured by prejudice and
obstinate unbelief, with which Israel trifles over the
uncomprehended letter of the old law.

The contrast to all this lies in our text. Judaism had the one
lawgiver who beheld God, while the people tarried below.
Christianity leads us all, to the mount of vision, and lets the
lowliest pass through the fences, and go up where the blazing
glory is seen. Moses veiled the face that shone with the
irradiation of Deity. We with unveiled face are to shine among
men. He had a momentary gleam, a transient brightness; we have a
perpetual light. Moses' face shone, but the lustre was but skin
deep. But the light that we have is inward, and works
transformation into its own likeness.

So there is here set forth the very loftiest conception of the
Christian life as direct vision, universal, manifest to men,
permanent, transforming.

I. Note then, first, that the Christian life is a life of
contemplating and reflecting Christ.

It is a question whether the single word rendered in our version
`beholding as in a glass,' means that, or `reflecting as a glass
does.' The latter seems more in accordance with the requirements
of the context, and with the truth of the matter in hand. Unless
we bring in the notion of reflected lustre, we do not get any
parallel with the case of Moses. Looking into a glass does not in
the least correspond with the allusion, which gave occasion to the
whole section, to the glory of God smiting him on the face, till
the reflected lustre with which it glowed became dazzling, and
needed to be hid. And again, if Paul is here describing Christian
vision of God as only indirect, as in a mirror, then that would be
a point of inferiority in us as compared with Moses, who saw Him
face to face. But the whole tone of the context prepares us to
expect a setting forth of the particulars in which the Christian
attitude towards the manifested God is above the Jewish. So, on
the whole, it seems better to suppose that Paul meant `mirroring,'
than `seeing in a mirror.'

But, whatever be the exact force of the word, the thing intended
includes both acts. There is no reflection of the light without a
previous reception of the light. In bodily sight, the eye is a
mirror, and there is no sight without an image of the thing
perceived being formed in the perceiving eye. In spiritual sight,
the soul which beholds is a mirror, and at once beholds and
reflects. Thus, then, we may say that we have in our text the
Christian life described as one of contemplation and manifestation
of the light of God.

The great truth of a direct, unimpeded vision, as belonging to
Christian men on earth, sounds strange to many of us. `That cannot
be,' you say; `does not Paul himself teach that we see through a
glass darkly? Do we not walk by faith and not by sight? ``No man
hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him''; and besides that
absolute impossibility, have we not veils of flesh and sense, to
say nothing of the covering of sin ``spread over the face of all
nations,'' which hide from us even so much of the eternal light as
His servants above behold, who see His face and bear His name on
their foreheads?'

But these apparent difficulties drop away when we take into
account two things---first, the object of vision, and second, the
real nature of the vision itself.

As to the former, who is the Lord whose glory we receive on our
unveiled faces? He is Jesus Christ. Here, as in the overwhelming
majority of instances where \textit{Lord} occurs in the New
Testament, it is the name of the manifested God our brother. The
glory which we behold and give back is not the incomprehensible,
incommunicable lustre of the absolute divine perfectness, but that
glory which, as John says, we beheld in Him who tabernacled with
us, full of grace and truth; the glory which was manifested in
loving, pitying words and loveliness of perfect deeds; the glory
of the will resigned to God, and of God dwelling in and working
through the will; the glory of faultless and complete manhood, and
therein of the express image of God.

And as for the vision itself, that seeing which is denied to be
possible is the bodily perception and the full comprehension of
the Infinite God; that seeing which is affirmed to be possible,
and actually bestowed in Christ, is the beholding of Him with the
soul by faith; the immediate direct consciousness of His presence
the perception of Him in His truth by the mind, the feeling of Him
in His love by the heart, the contact with His gracious energy in
our recipient and opening spirits. Faith is made the antithesis of
sight. It is so, in certain respects. But faith is also paralleled
with and exalted above the mere bodily perception. He who
believing grasps the living Lord has a contact with Him as
immediate and as real as that of the eyeball with light, and knows
Him with a certitude as reliable as that which sight gives.
`Seeing is believing,' says sense; `Believing is seeing' says the
spirit which clings to the Lord, `whom having not seen' it loves.
A bridge of perishable flesh, which is not myself but my tool,
connects me with the outward world. \textit{It} never touches
myself at all, and I know it only by trust in my senses. But
nothing intervenes between my Lord and me, when I love and trust.
Then Spirit is joined to spirit, and of His presence I have the
witness in myself. He is the light, which proves its own existence
by revealing itself, which strikes with quickening impulse on the
eye of the spirit that beholds by faith. Believing we see, and,
seeing, we have that light in our souls to be `the master light of
all our seeing.' We need not think that to know by the
consciousness of our trusting souls is less than to know by the
vision of our fallible eyes; and though flesh hides from us the
spiritual world in which we float, yet the only veil which really
dims God to us---the veil of sin, the one separating
principle---is done away in Christ, for all who love Him; so as
that he who has not seen and yet has believed, has but the
perfecting of his present vision to expect, when flesh drops away
and the apocalypse of the heaven comes. True, in one view, `We see
through a glass darkly'; but also true, `We all, with unveiled
face, behold and reflect the glory of the Lord.'

Then note still further Paul's emphasis on the universality of
this pre\-ro\-ga\-tive---`We all.' This vision does not belong to
any select handful; does not depend upon special powers or gifts,
which in the nature of things can only belong to a few. The
spiritual aristocracy of God's Church is not the distinction of
the law-giver, the priest or the prophet. There is none of us so
weak, so low, so ignorant, so compassed about with sin, but that
upon our happy faces that light may rest, and into our darkened
hearts that sunshine may steal.

In that Old Dispensation, the light that broke through clouds was
but that of the rising morning. It touched the mountain tops of
the loftiest spirits: a Moses, a David, an Elijah caught the early
gleams; while all the valleys slept in the pale shadow, and the
mist clung in white folds to the plains. But the noon has come,
and, from its steadfast throne in the very zenith, the sun, which
never sets, pours down its rays into the deep recesses of the
narrowest gorge, and every little daisy and hidden flower catches
its brightness, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. We
have no privileged class or caste now; no fences to keep out the
mob from the place of vision, while lawgiver and priest gaze upon
God. Christ reveals Himself to all His servants in the measure of
their desire after Him. Whatsoever special gifts may belong to a
few in His Church, the greatest gift belongs to all. The servants
and the handmaidens have the Spirit, the children prophesy, the
youths see visions, the old men dream dreams. `The mobs,' `the
masses,' `the plebs,' or whatever other contemptuous name the
heathen aristocratic spirit has for the bulk of men, makes good
its standing within the Church, as possessor of Christ's chiefest
gifts. Redeemed by Him, it can behold His face and be glorified
into His likeness. Not as Judaism with its ignorant mass, and its
enlightened and inspired few---we \textit{all} behold the glory of
the Lord.

Again, this contemplation involves reflection, or giving forth the
light which we behold.

They who behold Christ have Christ formed in them, as will appear
in my subsequent remarks. But apart from such considerations,
which belong rather to the next part of this sermon, I touch on
this thought here for one purpose---to bring out this idea---that
what we \textit{see} we shall certainly \textit{show}. That will
be the inevitable result of all true possession of the glory of
Christ. The necessary accompaniment of vision is reflecting the
thing beheld. Why, if you look closely enough into a man's eye,
you will see in it little pictures of what he beholds at the
moment; and if our hearts are beholding Christ, Christ will be
mirrored and manifested on our hearts. Our characters will show
what we are looking at, and ought, in the case of Christian
people, to bear His image so plainly, that men cannot but take
knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

This ought to lead all of us who say that we have seen the Lord,
to serious self-questioning. Do beholding and reflecting go
together in our cases? Are our characters like those transparent
clocks, where you can see not only the figures and hands, but the
wheels and works? Remember that, consciously and unconsciously, by
direct efforts and by insensible influences on our lives, the true
secret of our being ought to come, and will come, forth to light.
The convictions which we hold, the emotions that are dominant in
our hearts, will mould and shape our lives. If we have any deep,
living perception of Christ, bystanders looking into our faces
will be able to tell what it is up yonder that is making them like
the faces of the angels---even vision of the opened heavens and of
the exalted Lord. These two things are inseparable---the one
describes the attitude and action of the Christian man towards
Christ; the other the very same attitude and action in relation to
men. And you may be quite sure that, if little light comes from a
Christian character, little light comes into it; and if it be
swathed in thick veils from men, there must be no less thick veils
between it and God.

Nor is it only that our fellowship with Christ will, as a matter
of course, show itself in our characters, and beauty born of that
communion `shall pass into our face,' but we are also called on,
as Paul puts it here, to make direct conscious efforts for the
communication of the light which we behold. As the context has it,
God hath shined in our hearts, that we might give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. Away
with all veils! No reserve, no fear of the consequences of plain
speaking, no diplomatic prudence regulating our frank utterance,
no secret doctrines for the initiated! We are to `renounce the
hidden things of dishonesty.' Our power and our duty lie in the
full exhibition of the truth. We are only clear from the blood of
men when we, for our parts, make sure that if any light be hid, it
is hid not by reason of obscurity or silence on our parts, but
only by reason of the blind eyes, before which the full-orbed
radiance gleams in vain. All this is as true for every one
possessing that universal prerogative of seeing the glory of
Christ, as it is for an Apostle. The business of all such is to
make known the name of Jesus, and if from idleness, or
carelessness, or selfishness, they shirk that plain duty, they are
counteracting God's very purpose in shining on their hearts, and
going far to quench the light which they darken.

Take this, then, Christian men and women, as a plain practical
lesson from this text. You are bound to manifest what you believe,
and to make the secret of your lives, in so far as possible, an
open secret. Not that you are to drag into light before men the
sacred depths of your own soul's experience. Let these lie hid.
The world will be none the better for your confessions, but it
needs your Lord. Show Him forth, not your own emotions about Him.
What does the Apostle say close by my text? `We preach not
ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.' Self-respect and reverence
for the sanctities of our deepest emotions forbid our proclaiming
these from the house-tops. Let these be curtained, if you will,
from all eyes but God's, but let no folds hang before the picture
of your Saviour that is drawn on your heart. See to it that you
have the unveiled face turned towards Christ to be irradiated by
His brightness, and the unveiled face turned towards men, from
which shall shine every beam of the light which you have caught
from your Lord. `Arise! shine, for thy light is come, and the
glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!'

II. Notice, secondly, that this life of contemplation is therefore
a life of gradual transformation.

The brightness on the face of Moses was only skin-deep. It faded
away, and left no trace. It effaced none of the marks of sorrow
and care, and changed none of the lines of that strong, stern
face. But, says Paul, the glory which we behold sinks inward, and
changes us as we look, into its own image. Thus the superficial
lustre, that had neither permanence nor transforming power,
becomes an illustration of the powerlessness of law to change the
moral character into the likeness of the fair ideal which it sets
forth. And, in opposition to its weakness, the Apostle proclaims
the great principle of Christian progress, that the beholding of
Christ leads to the assimilation to Him.

The metaphor of a mirror does not wholly serve us here. When the
sunbeams fall upon it, it flashes in the light, just because they
do not enter its cold surface. It is a mirror, because it does not
drink them up, but flings them back. The contrary is the case with
these sentient mirrors of our spirits. In them the light must
first sink in before it can ray out. They must first be filled
with the glory, before the glory can stream forth. They are not so
much like a reflecting surface as like a bar of iron, which needs
to be heated right down to its obstinate black core, before its
outer skin glows with the whiteness of a heat that is too hot to
sparkle. The sunshine must fall on us, not as it does on some
lonely hill-side, lighting up the grey stones with a passing gleam
that changes nothing, and fades away, leaving the solitude to its
sadness; but as it does on some cloud cradled near its setting,
which it drenches and saturates with fire till its cold heart
burns, and all its wreaths of vapour are brightness palpable,
glorified by the light which lives amidst its mists. So must we
have the glory sink into us before it can be reflected from us. In
deep inward beholding we must have Christ in our hearts, that He
may shine forth from our lives.

And this contemplation will be gradual transformation. There is
the great principle of Christian morals. `We all beholding ... are
changed.' The power to which is committed the perfecting of our
characters lies in looking upon Jesus. It is not the mere
beholding, but the gaze of love and trust that moulds us by silent
sympathy into the likeness of His wondrous beauty, who is fairer
than the children of men. It was a deep, true thought which the
old painters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love
makes us like. We learn \textit{that} even in our earthly
relationships, where habitual familiarity with parents and dear
ones stamps some tone of voice or look, or little peculiarity of
gesture, on a whole house. And when the infinite reverence and
aspiration which the Christian soul cherishes to its Lord are
superadded, the transforming power of loving contemplation of Him
becomes mighty beyond all analogies in human friendship, though
one in principle with these. What a marvellous thing that a block
of rude sandstone, laid down before a perfect marble, should
become a copy of its serene loveliness just by lying there! Lay
your hearts down before Christ. Contemplate Him. Love Him. Think
about Him. Let that pure face shine upon heart and spirit, and as
the sun photographs itself on the sensitive plate exposed to its
light, and you get a likeness of the sun by simply laying the
thing in the sun, so He will `be formed in, you.' Iron near a
magnet becomes magnetic. Spirits that dwell with Christ become
Christ-like. The Roman Catholic legends put this truth in a coarse
way, when they tell of saints who have gazed on some ghastly
crucifix till they have received, in their tortured flesh, the
copy of the wounds of Jesus, and have thus borne in their body the
marks of the Lord. The story is hideous and gross, the idea
beneath is ever true. Set your faces towards the Cross with
loving, reverent gaze, and you will `be conformed unto His death,'
that in due time you may `be also in the likeness of His
Resurrection.'

Dear friends, surely this message---`Behold and be like'---ought
to be very joyful and enlightening to many of us, who are wearied
with painful struggles after isolated pieces of goodness, that
elude our grasp. You have been trying, and trying, and trying half
your lifetime to cure faults and make yourselves better and
stronger. Try this other plan. Let love draw you, instead of duty
driving you. Let fellowship with Christ elevate you, instead of
seeking to struggle up the steeps on hands and knees. Live in
sight of your Lord, and catch His Spirit. The man who travels with
his face northwards has it grey and cold. Let him turn to the warm
south, where the midday sun dwells, and his face will glow with
the brightness that he sees. `Looking unto Jesus' is the sovereign
cure for all our ills and sins. It is the one condition of running
with patience `the race that is set before us.' Efforts after
self-improvement which do not rest on it will not go deep enough,
nor end in victory. But from that gaze will flow into our lives a
power which will at once reveal the true goal, and brace every
sinew for the struggle to reach it. Therefore, let us cease from
self, and fix our eyes on our Saviour till His image imprints
itself on our whole nature.

Such transformation, it must be remembered, comes gradually. The
language of the text regards it as a lifelong process. `We
\textit{are} changed'; that is a continuous operation. `From glory
to glory'; that is a course which has well-marked transitions and
degrees. Be not impatient if it be slow. It will take a lifetime.
Do not fancy that it is finished with you. Life is not long enough
for it. Do not be complacent over the partial transformation which
you have felt. There is but a fragment of the great image yet
reproduced in your soul, a faint outline dimly traced, with many a
feature wrongly drawn, with many a line still needed, before it
can be called even approximately complete. See to it that you
neither turn away your gaze, nor relax your efforts till all that
you have beheld in Him is repeated in you.

Likeness to Christ is the aim of all religion. To it conversion is
introductory; doctrines, devout emotion, worship and ceremonies,
churches and organisations are valuable as auxiliary. Let that
wondrous issue of God's mercy be the purpose of our lives, and the
end as well as the test of all the things which we call our
Christianity. Prize and use them as helps towards it, and remember
that they are helps only in proportion as they show us that
Saviour, the image of whom is our perfection, the beholding of
whom is our transformation.

III. Notice, lastly, that the life of contemplation finally
becomes a life of complete assimilation.

`Changed into the same image, from glory to glory.' The lustrous
light which falls upon Christian hearts from the face of their
Lord is permanent, and it is progressive. The likeness extends,
becomes deeper, truer, every way perfecter, comprehends more and
more of the faculties of the man; soaks into him, if I may say so,
until he is saturated with the glory; and in all the extent of his
being, and in all the depth possible to each part of that whole
extent, is like his Lord. That is the hope for heaven, towards
which we may indefinitely approximate here, and at which we shall
absolutely arrive there. There we expect changes which are
impossible here, while compassed with this body of sinful flesh.
We look for the merciful exercise of His mighty working to `change
the body of our lowliness, that it may be fashioned like unto the
body of His glory'; and that physical change in the resurrection
of the just rightly bulks very large in good men's expectations.
But we are somewhat apt to think of the perfect likeness of Christ
too much in connection with that transformation that begins only
after death, and to forget that the main transformation must begin
here. The glorious, corporeal life like our Lord's, which is
promised for heaven, is great and wonderful, but it is only the
issue and last result of the far greater change in the spiritual
nature, which by faith and love begins here. It is good to be
clothed with the immortal vesture of the resurrection, and in that
to be like Christ. It is better to be like Him in our hearts. His
true image is that we should feel as He does, should think as He
does, should will as He does; that we should have the same
sympathies, the same loves, the same attitude towards God, and the
same attitude towards men. It is that His heart and ours should
beat in full accord, as with one pulse, and possessing one life.
Wherever there is the beginning of that oneness and likeness of
spirit, all the rest will come in due time. As the spirit, so the
body. The whole nature must be transformed and made like Christ's,
and the process will not stop till that end be accomplished in all
who love Him. But the beginning here is the main thing which draws
all the rest after it as of course. `If the Spirit of Him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up
Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by His
Spirit that dwelleth in you.'

And, while this complete assimilation in body and spirit to our
Lord is the end of the process which begins here by love and
faith, my text, carefully considered, adds a further very
remarkable idea. `We are all changed,' says Paul, `into the
\textit{same} image.' Same as what? Possibly the same as we
behold; but more probably the phrase, especially `image' in the
singular, is employed to convey the thought of the blessed
likeness of all who become perfectly like Him. As if he had said,
`Various as we are in disposition and character, unlike in the
histories of our lives, and all the influences that these have had
upon us, differing in everything but the common relation to Jesus
Christ, we are all growing like the same image, and we shall come
to be perfectly like it, and yet each retain his own distinct
individuality.' `We being many are one, for we are all partakers
of one.'

Perhaps, too, we may connect with this another idea which occurs
more than once in Paul's Epistles. In that to the Ephesians, for
instance, he says that the Christian ministry is to continue, till
a certain point of progress has been reached, which he describes
as our \textit{all} coming to `a perfect \textit{man}.' The whole
of us together make a perfect man---the whole make one image. That
is to say, perhaps the Apostle's idea is, that it takes the
aggregated perfectness of the whole Catholic Church, one
throughout all ages, and containing a multitude that no man can
number, to set worthily forth anything like a complete image of
the fulness of Christ. No one man, even raised to the highest
pitch of perfection, and though his nature be widened out to
perfect development, can be the full image of that infinite sum of
all beauty; but the whole of us taken together, with all the
diversities of natural character retained and consecrated, being
collectively His body which He vitalises, may, on the whole, be a
not wholly inadequate representation of our perfect Lord. Just as
we set round a central light sparkling prisms, each of which
catches the glow at its own angle, and flashes it back of its own
colour, while the sovereign completeness of the perfect white
radiance comes from the blending of all their separate rays, so
they who stand round about the starry throne receive each the
light in his own measure and manner, and give forth each a true
and perfect, and altogether a complete, image of Him who
enlightens them all, and is above them all.

And whilst thus all bear the same image, there is no monotony; and
while there is endless diversity, there is no discord. Like the
serene choirs of angels in the old monk's pictures, each one with
the same tongue of fire on the brow, with the same robe flowing in
the same folds to the feet, with the same golden hair, yet each a
separate self, with his own gladness, and a different instrument
for praise in his hand, and his own part in that `undisturbed song
of pure content,' we shall all be changed into the same image, and
yet each heart shall grow great with its own blessedness, and each
spirit bright with its own proper lustre of individual and
characteristic perfection.

The law of the transformation is the same for earth and for
heaven. Here we see Him in part, and beholding grow like. There we
shall see Him as He is, and the likeness will be complete. That
Transfiguration of our Lord (which is described by the same word
as occurs in this text) may become for us the symbol and the
prophecy of what we look for. As with Him, so with us; the
indwelling glory shall come to the surface, and the countenance
shall shine as the light, and the garments shall be `white as no
fuller on earth can white them.' Nor shall that be a fading
splendour, nor shall we fear as we enter into the cloud, nor,
looking on Him, shall flesh bend beneath the burden, and the eyes
become drowsy, but we shall be as the Lawgiver and the Prophet who
stood by Him in the lambent lustre, and shone with a brightness
above that which had once been veiled on Sinai. We shall never
vanish from His side, but dwell with Him in the abiding temple
which He has built, and there, looking upon Him for ever, our
happy souls shall change as they gaze, and behold Him more
perfectly as they change, for `we know that when He shall appear
we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'

\chapter{Looking at the Unseen}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS iv. 18}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things
which are not seen.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} iv. 18.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Men may be said to be divided into two classes, materialists and
idealists, in the widest sense of those two words. The mass care
for, and are occupied by, and regard as really solid good, those
goods which can be touched and enjoyed by sense. The
minority---students, thinkers, men of ideas, moralists, and the
like---believe in, and care for, impalpable spiritual riches.
Everybody admits that the latter class is distinctly the higher.
Now it is from no disregard to the importance and reality of that
broad distinction that I insist, to begin with, that it is not the
antithesis which is in the Apostle's mind here. His notion of `the
things that are seen' and `the things that are not seen' is a much
grander and wider one than that. By `the things that are seen' he
means the whole of this visible world, with all its circumstances
and relations, and by `the things that are not seen' he means the
realities beyond the stars.

He means the same thing that we mean when we talk in a much less
true and impressive contrast about the present and the future. To
him the `things that are not seen' are present instead of being,
as we weakly and foolishly christen them, `the future state.' And
it makes all the difference whether we think of that august realm
as lying far away ahead of us, or whether we feel that it is, as
it is, in very deed, all round about us, and pressing in upon us,
only that `the veil'---that is to say, our `flesh'---has come
between us and it. Do not habitually think of these two sets of
objects according to that misleading distinction `present' and
`future,' but think of them rather as `the things that are seen,'
and `the things that are not seen.'

I. Now, first, I wish to say a word or two about what such a look
will do for us.

Paul's notion is, as you will see if you look at the context, that
if we want to understand the visible, or to get the highest good
out of the things that are seen, we must bring into the field of
vision `the things that are not seen.' The case with which he is
dealing is that of a man in trouble. He talks about light
affliction which is but for a moment, working out a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory, `while we look at the
things which are not seen.' But the principle on which that
statement is made, of course, has its widest application to all
sorts and conditions of human life.

And the thought that emerges from it directly is that only when we
take the `things that are not seen' into account, and make them
the standard and the scale by which we judge all things, do we
understand `the things that are seen.' That triumphant paradox of
the Apostle's about the heavy burdens that pressed upon him and
his brethren, lifelong as these burdens were, which yet he calls
`light' and `but for a moment' is possible only when we open the
shutter of the dungeon which we fancied was the whole universe,
and look out on to the fair land that stretches beyond. A man who
has seen the Himalayas will not be much overwhelmed by the height
of Helvellyn. They who look out into the eternities have the true
measuring rod and standard by which to estimate the duration and
intensity of the things that are present. We are all tempted to do
as villagers in some little hamlet do---think that their small
local affairs are the world's affairs, and mighty, until they have
been up to London and seen the scale of things there. If you and I
would let the steady light of Eternity, and the sustaining
pressure of the `exceeding weight of glory' pour into our minds,
we should carry with us a standard which would bring down the
greatness, dwindle the duration, lighten the pressure, of the most
crushing sorrow, and would set in its true dimensions everything
that is here. It is for want of that that we go on as we do,
calculating wrongly what are the great things and what are the
small things. When, like some of those prisoners in the
Inquisition, the heavy iron weights are laid upon our half-crushed
hearts, we are tempted to shriek, `Oh, these will be my death!'
instead of taking in that great vision which, as it makes all
earthly riches dross, so it makes all crushing burdens and blows
of sorrow light as a feather.

But, on the other hand, do not let us forget that this same
standard which thus dwindles, also magnifies the small, and in a
very solemn sense, makes eternal the else fleeting things of this
life. For there is nothing that makes this present existence of
ours so utterly contemptible, insignificant, and transitory, as to
block out of our sight its connection with Eternity. And there is
nothing which so lifts the commonplace into the solemn, and
invests with everlasting and tremendous importance everything that
a man does here, as to feel that it all tells on his condition
away beyond there. The shafting is on this side of the wall, but
the work that it does is through the wall there, in the other
chamber; and you do not understand the cranks and the wheels here
unless you know that they go through the partition and are doing
something there beyond. If you shut out Eternity from our life in
time, then it is an inexplicable riddle; and I, for my part, would
venture to say that in that case, the men who answer the question,
`Is life worth living?' with a distinct negative, are wise. It is
a tale told by an idiot, `full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing,' unless the light of `the things not seen' flashes and
flares in upon it.

Further, this look of which my text speaks is the condition on
which Time prepares for Eternity.

The Apostle is speaking about the effect of affliction in making
ready for us an eternal weight of glory, and he says that is done
while, or on condition that during the suffering, we are looking
steadfastly towards the `things that are not seen.' But no outward
circumstances or events can prepare a weight of glory for us
hereafter, unless they prepare us for the glory. Affliction works
for us that blessed result, in the measure in which it fits us for
that result. And so you will find that, only a verse or two after
my text, Paul, using the same very significant and emphatic verb,
writes inverting the order of things, and says `He that hath
wrought \textit{us for} the self-same thing is God.' So that
working the thing for us, and working us for the thing, are one
and the same process. Or, to put it into plain English, our
various duties and circumstances here will prepare the glory of
Eternity for us if they prepare us for the glory of Eternity. But
only in the measure in which these outward things do thus shape
and mould our characters do they work out for us `an exceeding
weight of glory.'

It is often thought that a man has been so miserable here that God
is sure to give him future blessedness to recompense him. Well!
`that depends.' If he has used his miserableness as he will use it
when he lets the light of `the things not seen' in upon it, then,
certainly, it will work out for him the blessed results. But if he
does not, then, as certainly, it will not. Whilst there are many
ways by which character is hammered and moulded and shaped into
that which is fit to be clothed upon with the glory that is
yonder, one of the foremost of these is the passing through things
temporal with a continual regard to the things that are eternal.
If you want to understand to-day you must bring Eternity into the
account, and if you want to use to-day you must use it with the
light of the eternal world full upon it. The sum of it all is,
brethren, that the things seen cannot be estimated in their true
character, unless they are regarded in immediate connection with
the things that are unseen; and that the things seen will only
prepare an eternal weight of glory for us when they prepare us for
an eternal weight of glory.

II. And so, I note that this look at the things not seen is only
possible through Jesus Christ.

He is the only window which opens out and gives the vision of that
far-off land. I, for my part, believe that, if I might use such a
metaphor, He is the Columbus of the New World. Men believed, and
argued, and doubted about the existence of it across the seas there,
until a man went, and came back again, and then went to found a new
city yonder. And men hoped for immortality, and believed after a
fashion---some of them---in a future life, and dreaded that it might
be true, and discussed and debated whether it was, but doubt clouded
all minds, until One, our Brother, went away into the darkness, and
came back again, in most respects as He had gone, and then departed
once more to make ready a city in which all who love Him should
finally dwell, and to which you and I may be sure that we shall
emigrate. It is only in Jesus Christ that the look which my text
enjoins is possible.

For not only has He given a certitude so that we need now not to say
`We think, we hope, we fear, we are pretty well sure, that there
must be a life beyond,' but we can say `We know.' Not only has He
done this, but also in Him and His life of glory at God's right hand
in heaven, is summed up all that we really can know about that
future. We look into the darkness in vain; we look at Him, and, our
knowledge, though limited, is blessed. All other adumbrations of a
life beyond must necessarily be cast into the metaphorical forms or
the negative symbols in which the New Testament abounds. We may
speak of golden pavements, and thrones, and harps, and the like. We
may say: `No night there, no sighing, nor weeping, no burdened
hearts, no toil, no pain, for the former things are passed away.'
But a future life which is all described in metaphors, and a future
life of which we know only that it is the negation of the
disagreeables and limitations of the present, is but a poor affair.
Here is the positive truth, `To him that overcometh will I grant to
sit with Me on My throne.' `We shall be like Him, for we shall see
Him as He is.' And beyond that nearness to Christ, blessed communion
with Christ, likeness to Christ, royalty derived from Christ, I
think we neither know nor need to know anything about that life.

Not only is He our sole medium of knowledge and Himself the
revelation of our heaven, but it is only by Him that man's
thoughts and desires are drawn to, and find themselves at home in,
that tremendous thought of immortality. I know not how it may be
with you, but I am not ashamed to confess that to me the idea of
eternal continuance of my conscious being is an awful thought,
rather depressing and bewildering than delighting and attractive.
I, for my part, do not believe that men generally do grapple to
their hearts, with any gratitude or joy, that solemn belief of
immortal life unless they feel that it is life with, and in, and
like, Jesus Christ. `To depart' is dreary, and it is only when we
can say `and to be with Christ' that it becomes distinctly `far
better.' He is, if I may so say, at once telescope and star. By
Him we see Him; we see, seeing Him, that the things that are
unseen all cluster round Himself and become blessed.

III. And now, lastly, this look should be habitual with all
Christian people.

Paul takes it for granted that every Christian man is, as the
habitual direction of his thoughts, looking towards those `things
that are not seen.' The original shows that even more distinctly
than our translation, but our translation shows it plainly enough.
He does not say `works for us an exceeding weight of glory
\textit{for},' but \textit{`while'} we look, as if it were a
matter of course. He took it for granted as to these Corinthians.
I wonder if he would be warranted in taking it for granted about
us?

Note what sort of a look it is which produces these blessed
effects. The word which the Apostle employs here is a more pointed
one than the ordinary one for `seeing.' It is translated in other
places in the New Testament, \textit{`Mark'} them which walk so as
ye have us for an ensample, and the like. And it implies a
concentrated, protracted effort and interested gaze. A man,
standing on the deck of a ship, casts a languid eye for a moment
out on to the horizon, and sees nothing. A keen-eyed sailor by his
side shades his eyes with his hand, and shuts out cross-lights,
and looks, and peers, and keeps his eyes steady, and he sees the
filmy outline of the mountain land. If you look for a minute, not
much caring whether you see anything or not, and then turn away,
and get your eye dazzled with all those vulgar, crude, high
colours round about you here on earth, it is very little that you
will see of `the things that are not seen.' Concentrated
attention, and a steadfast look, are wanted to make the invisible
visible. You have to alter the focus of your eye if you are to see
the thing that is afar off.

There has to be a positive shutting out of all other things, as is
emphatically taught in the text by putting first the not looking
at `the things that are seen.' Here they are pressing in upon our
eyeballs, all round us, insisting on being looked at, and unless
we resolutely avert our eyes, we shall not see anything else. They
monopolise us unless we resist the intrusive appeals that they
make to us. We are like men down in some fertile valley,
surrounded by rich vegetation, but seeing nothing beyond the green
sides of the glen. We have to go up to the hill-top if we are to
look out over the flashing ocean, and behold afar off the towers
of the mother city across the restless waves. Brethren, unless you
shut out the world you will never see the things that are not
seen.

Now, as I have said, the Apostle regards this conscious effort at
bringing ourselves into touch, in mind and heart and faith, with
`the things that are not seen' as being a habitual characteristic
of Christian men. I am very much afraid that the present
generation of Christian people do not, in anything like the degree
in which they should, recreate and strengthen themselves with the
contemplation which he here recommends. It seems to me, for
instance, that we do not hear nearly as much in pulpits about the
life beyond the grave as we used to do when I was a boy. And,
though I confess I speak from limited knowledge, it seems to me
that these great motives which lie in the thought of Eternity and
our place there, are by no means as prominent in the minds of the
Christian people of this generation as they used to be. Partly, I
suppose, that arises from the wholesome emphasis which has been
given of late years to the present day, and this-side-the grave
effects of Christianity, upon character and life. Partly it
arises, I think, from the half-consciousness of being surrounded
by an atmosphere of scepticism and unbelief as to a future life,
and from the most unwise, inexpedient, and cowardly yielding to
the temptation to say very little about the distinctive features
of Christianity, and to dwell rather upon those which are sure to
be recognised by even unbelieving people. And it comes, too, from
the lack of faith, which, again, it tends mightily to increase.

Oh, dear brethren! our consciences tell us what different people
we should be if habitually there shone before us that great,
solemn issue to which we are all tending. Variations in the
atmosphere there will always be, and sometimes the distant
outlines will be clearer and sharper than at others, and the
colours will shine out more distinctly. But surely it should not
be that our vision of the Eternal should be like the vision that
dwellers amongst the mountains have of the summits. They say that
some of the great peaks of the world are swathed in mist all day
long, and that only for a few moments in the morning, or for a
brief space in the evening, does the solemn summit gleam rosy in
the light. And that, I am afraid, is very much like the degree in
which most of us look at `the things that are not seen' and so we
are feeble, and we do not understand `the things that are not
seen'; and we do not get the good out of them.

Dear brethren, let us turn away our eyes from the gauds that we
can see, and open the eyes of our spirits on the things that are,
the things where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.
Surely, surely, it is madness that when two sets of objects are
before us, the one lasting for a moment, and then dying down into
black nothingness, and the other shining on for ever; and when our
`look' settles whether we shall share the fate of the one or of
the other, we should choose to gaze with all our eyes and hearts
at the perishable and turn away from the permanent. Surely, if it
is true that the things which are seen are temporal, common-sense,
and a reasonable regard for our own well-being, bid us look at the
eternal `things which are not seen,' since only so can the light
and the momentary afflictions, joys, sorrows, or circumstances,
work out for us, and work us for `a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory.'

\chapter{Tent and Building}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS v. 1}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.'---2 \textsc{Cor.}v. 1.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

Knowledge and ignorance, doubt and certitude, are remarkably
blended in these words. The Apostle knows what many men are not
certain of; the Apostle doubts as to what all men now are certain
of. `\textit{If} our earthly house of this tabernacle be
dissolved'---there is surely no if about that. But we must
remember that the first Christians, and the Apostles with them,
did not know whether they might not survive till the coming of
Christ; and so not die, but `be changed.' And this possibility, as
appears from the context, is clearly before the Apostle's mind.
Such a limitation of his knowledge is in entire accordance with
our Lord's own words, `It is not for you to know the times and the
seasons,' and does not in the smallest degree derogate from his
authority as an inspired teacher. But his certitude is as
remarkable as his hesitation. He knows---and he modestly and
calmly affirms the confidence, as possessed by all
believers---that, in the event of death coming to him or them, he
and they have a mansion waiting for their entrance; a body of
glory like to that which Jesus already wears.

I. So my text mainly sets before us very strikingly the Christian
certitude as to the final future.

I need not dwell, I suppose, upon that familiar metaphor by which
the relation of man to his bodily environment is described as that
of a man to his dwelling-place. Only I would desire, in a word, to
emphasise this as being the first of the elements of the blessed
certitude in which Christian people may expatiate---the clear,
broad distinction between me and my physical frame. There is no
more connection, says Paul, between us and the organisation in
which we at present dwell than there is between a man and the
house that he inhabits. `The foolish senses crown' Death and call
him lord; but the Christian's certitude firmly draws the line, and
declares that the man, the whole personality, is undisturbed by
anything that befalls his residence; and that he may pass
unimpaired from one house to another, being in both the self-same
person. And that is something to keep firm hold of in these days
when we are being told that life and consciousness are but a
function of organisation, and that if the one be annihilated the
other cannot persist. No; though all illustrations and metaphors
must necessarily fail, the two which lie side by side here in my
text and its context are far truer than that
pseudo-science---which is not science at all, but only inference
from science---which denies that the man is one thing and his
house altogether another.

Then again, note, as part of the elements of this Christian
certitude, the blessed thought that a body is part of the
perfection of manhood. No mere dim, ghostly future, where
consciousness somehow persists, without environment or tools to
act upon an outer world, completes the idea of God in reference to
man. But the old trinity is the eternal trinity for humanity,
body, soul, and spirit. Corporeity, with all that it means of
definiteness, with all that it means of relation to an external
universe, is the perfection of manhood. To dwell naked, as the
Apostle says in the context, is a thing from which man
shudderingly recoils; and it is not to be his final fate. Let us
take this as no small gain in reference to our conceptions of a
future---the emphatic drawing into light of that thought that for
his perfection man requires body, soul, and spirit.

And now, if we turn for a moment to the characteristics of the two
conditions with which my text deals, we get some familiar enough
but yet great and strengthening thoughts. The `earthly house of
this tabernacle is dissolved,' or, more correctly, retaining the
metaphor of the house, is to be pulled down---and in its place
there comes a building of God, a `house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.'

Now the contrast that is drawn here, whilst it would run out into
a great many other particulars, about which we know nothing, and
therefore had better say nothing, revolves in the Apostle's mind
mainly round these two `earthly' as contrasted with `in the
heavens'; and `tabernacle,' or tent, as contrasted, first of all
with a `building,' and then with the predicate `eternal.'

That is to say, the first outstanding difference which arises
before the Apostle as blessed and glorious, is the contrast
between the fragile dwelling-place, with its thin canvas, its
bending poles, its certain removal some day, and the permanence of
that which is not a `tent,' but a `building' which is `eternal.'
Involved in that is the thought that all the limitations and
weaknesses which are necessarily associated with the
perishableness of the present abode are at an end for ever. No
more fatigue, no more working beyond the measure of power, no more
need for recuperation and repose; no more dread of sickness and
weakness; no more possibility of decay, `It is sown in corruption;
it is raised in incorruption'---neither `\textit{can} they die any
more.' Whether that be by reason of any inherent immortality, or
by reason of the uninterrupted flow into the creature of the
immortal life of Christ, to whom he is joined, is a question that
need not trouble us now. Enough for us that the contrast between
the Bedouin tent---which is folded up and carried away, and
nothing left but the black circle where the cheerful hearth once
glinted amidst the sands of the desert---and the stately mansion
reared for eternity, is the contrast between the organ of the
spirit in which we now dwell and that which shall be ours.

And the other contrast is no less glorious and wonderful. `The
\textit{earthly} house of this tent' does not merely define the
composition, but also the whole relations and capacities of that
to which it refers. The `tent' is `earthly', not merely because,
to use a kindred metaphor, it is a `building of clay,' but
because, by all its capacities, it belongs to, corresponds with,
and is fitted only for, this lower order of things, the seen and
the perishable. And, on the other hand, the `mansion' is in `the
heavens,' even whilst the future tenant is a nomad in his tent.
That is so, because the power which can create that future abode
is `in the heavens.' It is so called in order to express the
security in which it is kept for those who shall one day enter
upon it. And it is so, further, to express the order of things
with which it brings its dwellers into contact. `Flesh and blood
cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit
incorruption.' That future home of the spirit will be congruous
with the region in which it dwells; fitted for the heavens in
which it is now preserved. And thus the two contrasts---adapted to
the perishable, and itself perishable, belonging to the eternal
and itself incorruptible---are the two which loom largest before
the Apostle's mind.

Let no man say that such ideas of a possible future bodily frame
are altogether inconsistent with all that we know of the
limitations and characteristics of what we call matter. `There is
one flesh of beasts and another of birds,' says Paul; `there is
one glory of the sun and another of the moon.' And his
old-fashioned argument is perfectly sound to-day.

Do you know so fully all the possibilities of creation as that you
are warranted in asserting that such a thing as a body which is
the fit organ of the spirit, and is incorruptible like the heavens
in which it dwells, is an impossibility? Surely the forms of
matter are sufficiently varied to make us chary in asserting that
other forms are impossible, to which there may belong, as
characteristics, even these glorious ones of my text. The old
story of the king in the tropics, who laughed to scorn some one
who told him that water could be turned into a solid, may well be
quoted in this connection. Let us be less confident that we know
all that is to be known in regard to the sweep of God's creative
power; and let us thankfully accept the teaching by which we, too,
in all our ignorance, may be able to say, `We know that ... we
have a building of God ... eternal in the heavens.'

Now there is only one more remark that I wish to make about this
part of my subject; and it is this, that the teaching of my text
and its context casts great light---and I think by many people
much-needed light---on what the resurrection of the dead means.
That doctrine has been weighted with a great many incredibilities
and I venture to say absurdities, by well-meaning misconceptions
and exaggerations. We have heard grand platitudes about `the
scattered dust being gathered from the four winds of heaven,' and
so on, but the teaching of my text is that the contrast between
the present physical frame and the future bodily environment is
utter and complete; and that resurrection does not mean the
assuming again of the body that is left behind and done with, but
the reinvestiture of the man with another body. And so the
Scriptural phrase is, not `the resurrection of the body,' but `the
resurrection of the dead.' It is a house `in the heavens.' It
comes `from heaven.'

We leave the tent. Life and thought

\begin{verse}
\ \ ... have gone away, side by side, \\
Leaving doors and windows wide; \\
Careless tenants they!
\end{verse}

\noindent And they may well be careless, because in the heavens
they have another mansion, incorruptible and glorious.

We leave the `tent'; we enter the `building.' There is nothing
here of some germ of immortality being somehow extricated from the
ruins, and fostered into glorious growth. Or, to take another
metaphor of the context, we strip off the garment and are naked;
and then we are clothed with another garment and are not found
naked. The resurrection of the dead is the clothing of the spirit
with the house which is from heaven. And there is as much
difference between the two habitations as there is between the
grim, solid architecture of northern peoples, amidst snow and ice,
needed to resist the blasts, and to keep the life within in an
ungenial climate, and the light, graceful dwellings of those who
walk in an atmosphere of perpetual sunshine in the tropics, as
there is between the close-knit and narrow-windowed and
narrow-doored abode in which we now have to pass our days, and
that large house, with broad windows that take in a mightier sweep
and new senses that have relation with new qualities in the world
then around us. Therefore let us, whilst we grope in the dark
here, and live in a narrow hovel in a back street, look forward to
the time when we shall dwell on the sunny heights in the great
pavilion which God prepares for them that love Him.

II. And now note, again, how we come to this certitude.

My text is very significantly followed by a `for,' which gives the
reason of the knowledge in a very remarkable manner. `We know, ...
for in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with
our house, which is from heaven.' Now that singular collocation of
ideas may be set forth thus---whatever longing there is in a
Christian, God-inspired soul, that longing is a prophecy of its
own fulfilment. We know that there is a house, because of the
yearning, which is deepest and strongest when we are nearest God,
and likest what He would have us to be---the yearning to be
`clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.' That is a
truth that goes a long way; though to enlarge on it is irrelevant
to our present purpose. It has its limitations, as is obvious from
the context, in which are human elements which are not destined to
be gratified, mingled with the yearning, which is of God, and
which is destined to be satisfied. But this at least we may firmly
hold by, that just because God will not put men to confusion
intellectually, and does not let them entertain
uncherished---still less Himself foster and excite---longings
which He does not mean to gratify, a Christian yearning for
immortality is, to the man who feels it, a declaration that
immortality is sure for him. `Delight thyself in the Lord, and He
shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' Whatsoever, in
touching Him, we do deeply long for may have blended with it human
elements, which will be dispersed unsatisfied, but the substance
of it is a prophecy of its own fulfilment. And as surely as the
stork in the heavens, flying southward, will reach the sunny lands
which draw it from the grim northern winter, so surely may a man
say, `I know that I have a house in heaven, because I long for it,
and shrink from being found naked.'

Of course such longing, such aspiration and revulsion are no
proofs of a fact except there be some fact which changes them,
from mere vague desires, and makes these solid certainties. And
such a fact we have in that which is the only proof that the world
has received, of the persistence of life through death and the
continuance of personal identity unchanged by the grave, and that
is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our faith in
immortality does not depend merely on our own subjective desires
and longings, but these desires and longings are quickened,
confirmed, and certified by this great fact that Jesus Christ has
risen from the dead; and therefore we know that the yearnings in
us are not in vain. So we come to this certitude, first, by reason
of his experience; and, second, by reason of the longings which
that experience fosters if it does not kindle, within our hearts.

And let no man take exception to the Apostle's word here, `we know,'
or tell us that `Knowledge is of the things we see.' That is true,
and not true. It is true in regard to what arrogates to itself the
name of science. And we are willing to admit the limitation if the
men who insist upon it will, on their sides, admit that there are
other sources of certitude than so-called `facts,' by which they
mean merely material facts. If it is meant to assert that we are
less sure of the love of God, of immortality, than we are of the
existence of this piece of wood, or that flame of gas; then I humbly
venture to say that there is another region of facts than those
which are appreciable by sense; that the evidence upon which we rest
our certitude of immortal blessedness is quite as valid, quite as
true, quite as able to bear the weight of a leaning heart as
anything that can be produced, in the nature of evidence, for the
things round us. It is not, `We fancy, we believe, we hope, we are
pretty nearly sure,' but it is `We \textit{know} ... that we have a
building of God.'

III. Lastly, note what this certitude does.

The Apostle tells us by the `for' which lies at the beginning of
my text, and makes it a reason for something that has preceded,
and what has preceded is this, `We look not at the things which
are seen, but at the things which are not seen.'

That is to say, such a joyous, calm certitude draws men's thoughts
away from this shabby and transitory present, and fixes them on
the solemn majesties of that eternal future. Yes! and nothing else
will. Take away the idea of resurrection, and the remaining idea
of immortality is a poor, shadowy, impotent thing. There is no
force in it; there is no blessedness in it; there is nothing in it
for a man to lay hold of. And, as a matter of fact, there is no
vivid faith in a future life without belief in the resurrection
and bodily existence of the perfected dead.

And we shall not let our thoughts willingly go out thither unless
our own personal wellbeing there is very sure to us. When we know
that for us individually there is that house waiting for us to
enter into it, when the Lord comes, then we shall not be unwilling
to turn our hearts and our desires thither. We look at the things
which are not seen, for we know that we have a house eternal.

And such a certitude will also make a man willing to accept the
else unwelcome necessity of leaving the tent, and for a while
doing without the mansion. It is that which the Apostle is
speaking of in subsequent verses, on which I cannot enter now. He
says---and therein speaks a universal experience---that men recoil
from the idea of having to lay aside this earthly body and be
`naked.' But we know that we have that glorious mansion waiting
for us, and that till the day comes when we enter upon it we may
be lapt in Christ instead, and, in that so-called intermediate
state, may have Him to surround us, Him to be to us the medium by
which we come into connection with anything external, and so can
contentedly go away from our home in the body; and go to our home
in Christ. `Wherefore, we are always confident, and willing rather
to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.'

Oh, brethren! do we think of our future thus? If we do, then let
us lay to heart the final words of our teacher in this part of his
letter: `Wherefore we make it our aim, whether at home or absent,
to be well-pleasing unto Him.'

\chapter{The Patient Workman}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS v. 5}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Now He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.'---2
\textsc{Cor.} v. 5.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

These words penetrate deep into the secrets of God. They assume to
have read the riddle of life. To Paul everything which we
experience, outwardly or inwardly, is from the divine working.
Life is to him no mere blind whirl, or unintelligent play of
accidental forces, nor is it the unguided result of our own or of
others' wills, but is the slow operation of the great Workman.
Paul assumes to know the meaning of this protracted process, that
it all has one design which we may know and grasp and further. And
he believes that the clear perception of the divine purpose, and
the habit of looking at everything as contributing thereto, will
be a magic charm against all sorrow, doubt, despondency, or fear,
for he adds, `Therefore we are always confident.' So let us try to
follow the course of thought which issues in such a blessed gift
as that of a continual, courageous outlook, and buoyant though
grave lightheartedness, because we discern what He means `Who
worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will.'

I. The first thought here is, God's purpose in all His working;
`He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.'

What is that `self-same thing'? To understand it we must look back
for a moment to the previous context. The Apostle has been
speaking about the instinctive reluctance which even good men feel
at prospect of dying and `putting off the earthly house of this
tabernacle.' He distinguishes between three different conditions
in which the human spirit may be---dwelling in the earthly body,
stripped of that, and `clothed with the house which is from
Heaven,' and to this last and highest state he sees that for him
and for his brethren there were two possible roads. They might
reach it either through losing the present body, in the act of
death, and passing through a period of what he calls nakedness; or
they might attain it by being `superinvested,' as it were, with
the glorious body which was to come to saints with Christ when He
came; and so slip on, as it were, the wedding garment over their
old clothes, without having to denude themselves of these. And he
says that deep in the Christian heart there lay reluctance to take
the former road and the preference for the latter. His longing was
that that which is mortal might be `swallowed up of life,' as some
sand-bank in the tide-way may be gradually covered and absorbed by
the rejoicing waters. And then he says, `Now He that hath wrought
us for this very thing, is God.'

Of course it is impossible that he can mean by this `very thing'
the second of the roads by which it was possible to reach the
ultimate issue, because he did not know whether his brethren and
he were to die or to be changed. He speaks in the context about
death as a possible contingency for himself and for
them,---`\textit{If} our earthly house of this tabernacle were
dissolved,' and so on. Therefore we must suppose that `the
self-same thing' of which he is thinking as the divine purpose in
all His dealings with us, is not the manner in which we may attain
that ultimate condition, but the condition itself which, by one
road or another, God's children shall attain. Or, in other words,
the highest aim of the divine love in all its dealings with us
Christian men, is not merely a blessed spiritual life, but the
completion of our humanity in a perfect spirit dwelling in a
glorified body. Corporeity---the dwelling in a body by which the
pure spirit moves amidst pure universes---is the highest end of
God's will concerning us.

That glorified body is described in our context in wonderful
words, which it would take me far too long to do more than just
touch upon. Here we dwell in a tent, there we shall dwell in a
building. Here in a house made with hands, a corporeal frame
derived from parents by material transmission and intervention;
there we shall dwell in a building of which God is the maker. Here
we dwell in a crumbling clay tenement, which rains dissolve, which
lightning strikes, and winds overthrow, and which finally lies on
the ground a heap of tumbled ruin. There we dwell in a building,
God's direct work, eternal, and knowing no corruption nor change.
Here we dwell in a body congruous with, and part of, the
perishable earthly world in which it abides, and with which it
stands in relation; there we dwell in a house partaking of the
nature of the heavens in which it moves, a body that is the fit
organ of a perfect spirit.

And so, says Paul, the end of what God means with us is not stated
in all its wonderfulness, when we speak of spirits imbued with His
wisdom and surcharged with His light and perfectness, but when we
add to that the thought of a fitting organ in which these spirits
dwell, whereby they can come into contact with an external
universe, incorruptible, and so reach the summit of their destined
completeness. `The house not made with hands,' eternal, the
building of God in the Heavens, is the end that God has in view
for all His children.

II. So, then, secondly, note the slow process of the Divine
Workman.

The Apostle employs here a very emphatic compound term for `hath
wrought.' It conveys not only the idea of operation, but the idea
of continuous and somewhat toilsome and effortful work, as if
against the resistance of something that did not yield itself
naturally to the impulse that He would bestow. Like some sculptor
with a hard bit of marble, or some metallurgist who has to work
the rough ore till it becomes tractable, so the loving, patient,
Divine Artificer is here represented as labouring long and
earnestly with a somewhat obstinate material which can and does
resist His loving touch, and yet going on with imperturbable and
patient hope, by manifold touches, here a little and there a
little, all through life preparing a man for His purpose. The
great Artificer toils at His task, `rising early' and working
long, and not discouraged when He comes upon a black vein in the
white marble, nor when the hard stone turns the edge of His
chisels.

Now I would have you notice that there lies in this conception a
very important thought, viz. God cannot make you fit for heaven
all at a jump, or by a simple act of will. That is not His way of
working. He can make a world so, He cannot make a saint so. He can
speak and it is done when it is only a universe that has to be
brought into being; or He can say, `Let there be light,' and light
springs at His word. But He cannot say, and He does not say, Let
there be holiness, and it comes. Not so can God make man meet for
the `inheritance of the saints in light.' And it takes Him all His
energies, for all a lifetime, to prepare His child for what He
wants to make of him.

There is another thought here, which I can only touch, and that is
that God cannot give a man that glorified body of which I have
been speaking, unless the man's spirit is Christlike. He cannot
raise a bad man at the resurrection with the body of His glory. By
the necessities of the case it is confined to the purified,
because it corresponds to their inward spiritual being. It is only
a perfect spirit that can dwell in a perfect body. You could not
put a bad man, Godless and Christless, into the body which will be
fit for them whom Christ has changed first of all in heart and
spirit into His own likeness. He would be like those hermit crabs
that you see on the beach who run into any kind of a shell,
whether it fits them or not, in order to get a house.

There are two principles at work in the resurrection of the dead.
The glorified body is not the physical outcome of the material
body here, but is the issue and manifestation, in visible form, of
the perfect and Christlike spirit. Some shall rise to glory and
immortality, some to shame and everlasting contempt. If we are to
stand at the last with the body of our humiliation changed into a
body of glory, we must begin by being changed in the spirit of our
mind. As the mind is, so will the body be one day. But, passing
from such thoughts as these, and remembering that the Apostle here
is speaking only about Christian people, and the divine operations
upon them, we may still extend the meaning of this significant
word `wrought' somewhat further, and ask you just to consider, and
that very briefly, the three-fold processes which, in the divine
working, terminate in, and contemplate, this great issue.

God has wrought us for it in the very act of making us what we
are. Human nature is an insoluble enigma, if this world is its
only field. Amidst all the waste, the mysterious waste, of
creation, there is no more profligate expenditure of powers than
that which is involved in giving a man such faculties and
capacities, if this be the only field on which they are to be
exercised. If you think of what most of us do in this world, and
of what it is in us to be, and to do, it is almost ludicrous to
consider the disproportion. All other creatures fit their
circumstances; nothing in them is bigger than their environment.
They find in life a field for every power. You and I do not. `The
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have roosting-places.'
They all correspond to their circumstances, but we have an
infinitude of faculty lying half dormant in each of us, which
finds no work at all in this present world. And so, looking at men
as they are with eternity in their hearts, with natures that go
reaching out towards infinity, the question comes up: `Wherefore
hast Thou made all men in vain? What is the use of us, and why
should we be what we are, if there is nothing for us except this
poor present?' God, or whoever made us, has made a mistake; and
strangely enough, if we were not made, but evolved, evolution has
worked out faculties which have no correspondence with the things
around them.

Life and man are an insoluble enigma except on one hypothesis, and
that is that this is a nursery-ground, and that the plants will be
pricked out some day, and planted where they are meant to grow.
The hearts that feel after absolute and perfect love, the spirits
that can conceive the idea of an infinite goodness, the dumb
desires, the blank misgivings that wander homeless amidst the
narrowness of this poor earth, all these things proclaim that
there is a region where they will find their nutriment and
expatiate, and when we look at a man we can only say, He that hath
wrought him for an infinite world, and an endless communion with a
perfect good, is God.

Still further, another field of the divine operation to this end
is in what we roughly call `providences.' What is the meaning of
all this discipline through which we are passed, if there is
nothing to be disciplined for? What is the good of an
apprenticeship if there is no journeyman's life to come after it,
where the powers that have been slowly acquired shall be nobly
exercised upon broader fields? Why should men be taken, as it
were, and, like the rough iron from the ground,

\begin{verse}
`Be heated hot with hopes and fears, \\
 And plunged in baths of hissing tears, \\
 And battered with the shocks of doom,'
\end{verse}

\noindent if, after all the process, the polished shaft is to be
broken in two, and tossed away as rubbish? If death ends faculty, it
is a pity that the faculty was so patiently developed. If God is
educating us all in His school, and then means that, like some
wastrel boys, we should lose all our education as soon as we leave
its benches, there is little use in the rod, and little meaning in
the training. Brethren! life is an insoluble riddle unless the
purpose of it lie yonder, and unless all this patient training of
our sorrows and our gladnesses, the warmth that expands and the cold
that contracts the heart, the light that gladdens and the darkness
that saddens the eye and the spirit, are equally meant for training
us for the perfect life of a perfect soul moving a perfect body in a
perfect universe. Here is a pillar in some ancient hall that has
fallen into poor hands, and has had a low roof thrown across the
centre of the chamber at half its height. In the lower half there is
part of a pillar that means nothing; ugly, bare, evidently climbing,
and passing through the aperture, and away above yonder is the
carved capital and the great entablature that it carries. Who could
understand the shaft unless he could look up through the aperture,
and see the summit? And who can think of life as anything but a
wretched fragment unless he knows that all which begins here runs
upwards into the room above, and there finds its explanation and its
completion?

But there is the third sphere of the divine operation. As in
creation and in providence, so in all the work and mystery of our
redemption, this is the goal that God has in view. It was not
worth Christ's while to come and die, if nothing more was to come
of it than the imperfect reception of His blessings and gifts
which the noblest Christian life in this world presents. The
meaning and purpose of the Cross, the meaning and purpose of all
the patient dealings of His whispering Spirit, are that we shall
be like our Divine Lord in spirit first, and in body afterwards.

And everything about the experiences of a true Christian spirit is
charged with a prophecy of immortality. I have not time to dwell
upon one point gathered from the context, that I intended to have
insisted upon, viz. that the very desires which God's good Spirit
works in a believing soul are themselves confirmations of their
own fulfilment. But if you notice at your leisure the verses that
precede my text, you will find that the Apostle adduces the
groanings of `earnest desire to be clothed with our house which is
from Heaven,' as a proof that we \textit{have} `a building of God,
a house not made with hands.' That is to say, every longing in a
Christian heart when it is most filled with that Spirit, and most
in contact with God, and which is the answer of that heart to a
promise of Christ---every such longing carries with it the
assurance of its own fulfilment. He that hath wrought it has
wrought it in order that the desire may fit us for its answer, and
that the open mouth may be ready for the abundant filling which
His grace designs. He works upon us, therefore, by making us
desire a gift, and then He gives that which He desires. So let us
cherish these longings, not for the accident of escaping death,
nor as choosing the path by which we shall reach the blessed
issue, but longing for that great issue itself; and try to keep
more distinct and clear before all our minds this thought, `God
means for me the participation in Christ's glorified Manhood, and
my attaining of that Manhood is the end that He has in view in all
that He does with me.'

III. So I must say one word about the last thought that is here,
and that is the certainty and the confidence. `Therefore we are
always confident,' says the Apostle.

`He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.' Then we
may be sure that as far as He is concerned, the work will not be
suspended nor vain. \textit{This} man does not begin to build and
is unable to finish. This workman has infinite resources, an
unchanging purpose, and infinite long-suffering. He will complete
His task.

In the quarries of Egypt you will find gigantic stones,
half-dressed, and intended to have been transported to some great
temple. But there they lie, the work incomplete, and they never
carried to their place. There are no half-polished stones in God's
quarries. They are all finished where they lie, and then borne
across the sea, like Hiram's from Lebanon, to the Temple on the
hill. It is a certainty that God will finish His work; and since
`He that hath wrought us is God,' we may be sure that He will not
stop till He has done.

But it is a certainty that you can thwart. It is an operation that
you can counterwork. The potter in Jeremiah's parable was making a
vessel upon his wheel, and the vessel was marred in his hand, and
did not turn out what he wanted it. The meaning of the metaphor,
which has often been twisted to express the very opposite, is that
the potter's work may fail, that the artificer may be balked, that
you can counterwork the divine dealing, and that all His purpose
in your creation, in His providence and in His gift of His Son for
your redemption, may come to nought as far as you are concerned.
`I beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.' `In
vain have I smitten your children,' wailed the Divine Love; `they
have received no correction.' In vain God lavishes upon some of us
His mercies, in vain for some of us has Christ toiled and suffered
and died. Oh, brother! do not let all God's work on you come to
nought, but yield yourselves to it. Rejoice in the confidence that
He is moulding your character, cheerfully welcome and accept the
providences, painful as they may be, by which He prepares you for
heaven. The chisel is sharp that strikes off the superfluous
pieces of marble, and when the chisel cuts, not into marble, but
into a heart, there is a pang. Bear it, bear it! and understand
the meaning of the blow of the sculptor's mallet, and see in all
life the divine hand working towards the accomplishment of His own
loving purpose. Then if we turn to Him, amid the pains of His
discipline and the joys of His gifts of grace, with recognition
and acceptance of His meaning in them all, and cry to Him, `Thy
mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever, forsake not the work of Thine
own hands,' we may be always confident, as knowing that `the Lord
will perfect that which concerneth us.'

\chapter{The Old House and the New}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS v. 8}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the
body, and to be present with the Lord.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} v. 8.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

There lie in the words of my text simply these two things; the
Christian view of what death is, and the Christian temper in which
to anticipate it.

I. First, the Christian view of what death is.

Now it is to be observed that, properly speaking, the Apostle is
not here referring to the state of the dead, but to the act of
dying. The language would more literally and accurately be
rendered `willing to \textit{go from} home, from the body, and to
\textit{go} home, to the Lord.' The moment of transition of course
leads to a permanent state, but it is the moment of transition
which is in view in the words. I need not remind you, I suppose,
that the metaphor of the home is one which has already been dwelt
upon in the early part of the chapter, where the contrast is drawn
between the transitory house of `this tent,' and the `building of
God,' the body of incorruption and glory which the saints at the
Resurrection day shall receive. So, then, the Christian view of
the act of death is that it is simply a change of abode.

Very clearly and firmly does Paul draw the line between the man
and his dwelling-place. Life is more than a result of
organisation. Consciousness, thought, feeling, are more than
functions of matter. No materialist philosopher has ever been, or
ever will be, able to explain within the limits of his system the
strange difference between the cause and the effect; how it comes
to pass that at the one end of the chain there is an impression
upon a nerve, and at the other there is pain; how at the one end
there is the throb of an inch of matter in a man's skull, and at
the other end there are thoughts that breathe and words that burn,
and that live for ever. That brings us up to the edge of a gulf
over which no materialist philosopher has ever been able to cast a
bridge. The scalpel cannot cut deep enough to solve this mystery.
Conscience as well as instinct cry out against the theory that the
worker and the tools are inseparable. For such a theory reduces
human actions to mechanical results, and shatters all
responsibility. Man is more than his dwelling-place. You crush a
shell on the beach with your heel, and you slay its tiny
inhabitant. But you can pull down the tent, and pluck up its pegs,
and roll up its canvas, and put it away in a dark corner, and the
tenant is untouched. The foolish senses crown Death as last, and
lord of all. But wisdom says, `Life and thought have gone away
side by side, leaving doors and windows wide,' and that is all
that has happened.

Still further, my text suggests that to the Christian soul the
departure from the one house is the entrance into the other. The
home has been the body; the home is now to be Jesus Christ. And
very beautiful and significant with meanings, which only
experience will fully unfold, is the representation that the Lord
Christ Himself assumes the place which the bodily environment has
hitherto held.

That teaches us, at all events, that there is a new depth and
closeness of union with Jesus waiting the Christian soul, when it
lays aside the separating film of flesh. Here the bodily
organisation, with its limitations, necessarily shuts us off from
the closeness of intercourse which is possible for a naked soul.
We know not how much separation may depend upon the immersing of
the spirit in the fleshly tabernacle, but this we know, that,
though here and now, by faith which dominates sense, souls can
live in Christ even whilst they live in the body; yet there shall
come a form of union so much more close, intimate, all-pervading,
and all-encircling, as that the present union with Him by faith,
precious as it is, shall be, as the Apostle calls it in our
context, `absence from the Lord.' `We have to be discharged,' says
an old thinker, `of a great deal of what we call body, and then we
shall be more truly ourselves,' and more truly united to Him who,
if we are Christian people at all, is the self of ourselves and
the life of our lives. No man knows how close he can nestle to the
bosom of Christ when the film of flesh is rent away. Just as when
in some crowded street of a great city some grimy building is
pulled down, a sudden daylight fills the vacant space, and all the
site that had been shut out from the sky for many years is
drenched in sunshine, so when `the earthly house of this
tabernacle' is ruinated and falls, the light will flood the place
where it stood, and to be `absent from the body' shall be to be
`present with the Lord.'

May we go a step further and suggest that, perhaps, in the bold
metaphor of my text, there is an answer to the questions which so
often rack loving and parted hearts? `Do the dead know aught of
what affects us here? and can they do aught but gaze on Him, and
love, and rest?' If it be that there is any such analogy as seems
to be dimly shadowed in my text, between the relation of the body
on earth to the spirit that inhabits it, and that of Jesus Christ
to him who dwells in Him, and is clothed by Him, then it may be
that, as the flesh, so the Christ transmits to the spirit that has
Him for its home impressions from the outside world, and affords a
means of action upon that world. Christ may be, if I might so say,
the sensorium of the disembodied spirit; and Christ may be the
hand of the man who hath no other instrument by which to express
himself. But all that is fancy perhaps, speculation certainly; and
yet there seems to be a shadow of a foundation for at least
entertaining the possibility of such a thought as that Jesus is
the means of knowing and the means of acting to those who rest
from their labours in Him, and dwell in peace in His arms. But be
that as it may, the reality of a close communion and encircling by
the felt presence of Jesus Christ, which, in its blessed
closeness, will make the closest communion here seem to be
obscure, is certainly declared in the words before us.

Then this transition is regarded in my text as being the work of a
moment. It is not a long journey of which the beginning is `to go
\textit{from} home, from the body,' and the end is `to \textit{go}
home, to the Lord.' But it is one and the same motion which,
looked at from the one side, is departure, and looked at from the
other is arrival. The old saying has it, `there is but a step
between me and death.' The truth is, there is but a step between
me and \textit{life}. The mighty angel in the Apocalypse, that
stood with one foot on the firm land and the other on the
boundless ocean, is but the type of the spirit in the brief moment
of transition, when the consciousness of two worlds blends, and it
is clothed upon with the house which is from heaven, in the very
act of stripping off the earthly house of this tabernacle.

Nor need I remind you, I suppose, in more than a sentence, that
this transition obviously leads into a state of conscious
communion with Jesus Christ. The dreary figment of an unconscious
interval for the disembodied spirit has no foundation, either in
what we know of spirit, or in what is revealed to us in Scripture.
For the one thing that seems to make it probable---the use of that
metaphor of `sleeping in Jesus'---is quite sufficiently accounted
for by the notions of repose, and cessation of outward activity,
and withdrawal of capacity of being influenced by the so-called
realities of this lower world, without dragging in the unfounded
notion of unconsciousness. My text is incompatible with it, for it
is absurd to say of an unconscious spirit, clear of a bodily
environment, that it is anywhere; and there is no intelligible
sense in which the condition of such a spirit can be called being
`with the Lord.'

So, then, I think a momentary transition, with uninterrupted
consciousness, which leads to a far deeper and more wonderful and
blessed sense of unity with Jesus Christ than is possible here on
earth, is the true shape in which the act of death presents itself
to the Christian thinker.

And remember, dear brethren, that is all we know. Nothing else is
certain---nothing but this, `with the Lord,' and the resulting
certainty that therefore it is well with them. It is enough for
our faith, for our comfort, for our patient waiting. They live in
Christ, `and there we find them worthier to be loved,' and
certainly lapped in a deeper rest. `Blessed are the dead that die
in the Lord.'

II. In the next place, note the Christian temper in which to
anticipate the transition.

`We are always courageous, and willing rather to leave our home in
the body, and to go home to the Lord.' Now I must briefly remind
you of how the Apostle comes to this state of feeling. He has been
speaking about the natural shrinking, which belongs to all
humanity, from the act of dissolution, considered as being the
stripping off of the garment of the flesh. And he has declared, on
behalf of himself and the early Christian Church, his own and
their personal desire that they might escape from that trial by
the path which seemed possible to the early Christians---viz. that
of surviving until the return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, when
they would be `clothed upon with the house which is from Heaven,'
without the necessity of stripping off that with which at present
they are invested. Then he says---and this is a very remarkable
thought---that just because this instinctive shrinking from death
and yearning for the glorified body is so strong in the Christian
heart, that is a sign that there is such a glorified body waiting
for us. He says, `we know that if our house ... were dissolved, we
have a building of God.' And his reason for knowing it is this,
`\textit{for} in this we groan.' That is a bold position to say
that a yearning in the Christian consciousness prophesies its own
fulfilment. Our desires are the prophecies of His gifts. Then, on
this certainty---which he deduces from the fact of the longing for
it---on this certainty of the glorious, ultimate body of the
Resurrection he bases his willingness expressed in the text, to go
through the unwelcome process of leaving the old house, although
he shrinks from it.

So, then, Christian faith does not destroy the natural reluctance
to put aside the old companion of our lives. The old house, though
it be smoky, dimly lighted, and, by our own careless keeping,
sluttish and grimy in many a corner, yet is the only house we have
ever known, and to be absent from it is untried and strange. There
is nothing wrong in saying `we would not be unclothed but clothed
upon.' Nature speaks there. We may reverently entertain the same
feelings which our Pattern acknowledged, when He said, `I have a
baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be
accomplished.' And there would be nothing sinful in repeating His
prayer with His conditions, `If it be possible, let this cup pass
from Me.'

But then the text suggests to us the large Christian possessions
and hope which counterwork this reluctance, in the measure in
which we live lives of faith. There is the assurance of that
ultimate home in which all the transiency of the present material
organisation is exchanged for the enduring permanence which knows
no corruption. The `tent' is swept away to make room for the
`building.' The earthly house is dissolved in order that there may
be reared round the homeless tenant the house eternal, `not made
with hands,' God's own work, which is waiting in the heavens;
because the power that shall frame it is there. Not only that
great hope of the `body of His glory,' with which at the last all
true souls shall be invested, but furthermore, `the earnest of the
spirit,' and the blessed experiences therefrom, resulting even
here, ought to make the unwelcome necessity less unwelcome. If the
firstfruits be righteousness and peace and joy of the Holy Ghost,
what shall the harvest be? If the `earnest,' the shilling given in
advance, be so precious, what will the whole wealth of the
inheritance which it heralds be when it is received?

For such reasons the transitory passage becomes less painful and
unwelcome. Who is there that would hesitate to dip his foot into
the ice-cold brook if he knew that it would not reach above his
ankles, and that a step would land him in blessedness unimagined
till experienced?

Therefore the Christian temper is that of quiet willingness and
constant courage. There is nothing hysterical here, nothing
morbid, nothing overstrained, nothing artificial. The Apostle
says: `I would rather not. I should like if I could escape it. It
is an unwelcome necessity; but when I see what I do see beyond,' I
am ready. Since so it must be, I will go, not reluctantly, nor
dragged away from life, nor clinging desperately to it as it slips
from my hands, nor dreading anything that may happen beyond; but
always courageous, and prepared to go whithersoever the path may
take me, since I am sure that it ends in His bosom. He is willing
to go from the home of the body, because to do that is to go home
to Christ.

There are other references of our Apostle's, substantially of the
same tone as that of my text, but with very beautiful and
encouraging differences. When he was nearer his end, when it
seemed to him as if the headsman's block was not very far off, his
\textit{willingness} had intensified into `having a
\textit{desire} to depart and to be with Christ, which is far
better.' And when the end was all but reached, and he knew that
death was waiting just round the next turn in the road, he said,
with the confidence that in the midst of the struggle would have
been vainglory, but at the end of it was a foretaste of the calm
of Heaven, `I have finished my course, I have kept the faith;
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.' That
is our model, dear brethren,---`always courageous,' afraid of
nothing in life, in death, or beyond, and therefore willing to go
from home from the body and to go home to the Lord.

Think of this man thus fronting the inevitable, with no excitement
and with no delusions. Remember what Paul believed about death,
about sin, about his own sin, about judgment, about hell. And then
think of how to him death had made its darkness beautiful with the
light of Christ's face, and all the terror was gone out of it. Do
you think so about death? Do you shrink from it? Why? Why do you
not take Paul's cure for the shrinking? If you can say, `To me to
live is Christ,' you will have no difficulty in saying, `and to
die is gain.' That is the only way by which you can come to such a
temper, and then you will be willing to move from the cottage to
the palace, and to wait in peace till you are shifted again into
`the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in
the heavens.'

\chapter{Pleasing Christ}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS v. 2}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`We labour that whether present or absent we may be accepted of
Him.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} v. 2.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

We do not usually care very much for, or very much trust, a man's
own statement of the motives of his life, especially if in the
statement he takes credit for lofty and noble ones. And it would
be rather a dangerous experiment for the ordinary run of so-called
Christian people to stand up and say what Paul says here, that the
supreme design and aim towards which all their lives are directed
is to please Jesus Christ. In his case the tree was known by its
fruits. Certainly there never was a life of more noble
self-abnegation, of more continuous heroism, of loftier aspiration
and lowlier service than the life of which we see the very pulse
in these words.

But Paul is not only professing his own faith, he is speaking in
the name of all his brethren. `We,' ought to include every man and
woman who calls himself or herself a Christian. It is this setting
of the will of Jesus Christ high up above all other commandments,
and proposing to one's self as the aim that swallows up all other
aims, that I may please Him---it is this, and not creeds, forms,
opinions, professions, or even a faith that simply trusts in Him
for salvation, that makes a true Christian. You are a Christian in
the precise measure in which Christ's will is uppermost and
exclusive in your life, and for all your professions and your
orthodoxy and your worship and your faith, not one hair's-breadth
further. Here is the signature and the common characteristic of
all real Christians, `We labour that whether present or absent we
may be well-pleasing to Him.'

So then in looking together at these words now, I take three
points, the supreme aim of the Christian life; the concentration
of effort which that aim demands; and the insignificance to which
it reduces all external things.

I. First, then, let me deal with that supreme aim of the Christian
life.

The word which is, correctly enough, rendered `accepted,' may more
literally, and perhaps with a closer correspondence to the
Apostle's meaning, be translated `well-pleasing,' and the aim is
this, not merely that we may be accepted, but that we may bring a
smile into His face, and some joy and complacent delight in us
into His heart, when He looks upon our doings. That pleasure of
Jesus Christ in them that `fear Him, and in them that hope in His
mercy' and do His will is a present emotion that fills His heart
in looking upon His followers, and it will be especially declared
in the solemn, final judgment. We must keep in view both of these
periods, if we would rightly understand the sweep of the aim which
ought to be uppermost in all Christian people. Here and now in our
present acts, we should so live as to occasion a present sentiment
of complacent delight in us, in the heart of the Christ who sees
us here and now and always. We should so live as that at that
far-off future day when we shall `all be manifested before the
Judgment-seat of Christ,' the Judge may bend from His tribunal,
and welcome us into His presence with a word of congratulation and
an outstretched hand of loving reception. Set that two-fold aim
before you, Christian men and women, else you will fail to
experience the full stimulus of this thought.

Now such an aim as this implies a very wonderful conception of
Jesus Christ's present relations to us. It is a truth that we may
minister to His joy. It is a truth that just as really as you
mothers are glad when you hear from a far-off land that your boy
is doing well, and getting on, so Jesus Christ's heart fills with
gladness when He sees you and me walking in the paths in which He
would have us go. We often think about our dear dead that they
cannot know of us and our doings here, because the sorrow that
would sometimes come from the contemplation of our evil, or of our
misfortunes, would trouble them in their serene rest. We know not
how that may be, but this at least we do know, that the Man Jesus
Christ, who, like those dear ones, `was dead, and is alive for
evermore,' in His human nature has knowledge of all His children's
failures, as well as successes, and is affected with some shadow
of regret, or with some reality of delight, according as they
follow or stray from the paths in which He would have them walk.
If it be so with Him it may be so with them; and though it be not
so with them it must be so with Him. So this strange, sweet,
tender, and powerful thought is a piece of plain prose, that
Christ is glad when you and I are good.

Does it need any word to emphasise the force of that motive to a
Christian heart that loves the Master? Surely this is the great
and blessed peculiarity of all the morality of Christianity that
it has all a personal bearing and aspect, and that just as the sum
of all our duty is gathered up in the one command, `Imitate
Christ,' so the motive for all our duty lies in `If you love Me,
keep My commandments,' and the reward which ought to stimulate
more than anything besides is the one thought, not, of what I
shall get because I am good, but of what I shall give Him by my
obedience, a joy in the heart that was stabbed through and through
by sorrow for my sake. That we may please Him `who pleased not
Himself,' is surely the grandest motive on which the pursuit of
holiness, and the imitation of Jesus Christ can ever be made to
rest. Oh! how different, and how much more blessed such a motive
and aim is than all the lower reasons for which men are sometimes
exhorted and encouraged to be good! What a difference it is when
we say, `Do that thing because it is right,' and when we say, `Do
that thing because you will be happier if you do,' or when we say,
`Do it because He would like you to do it.' The one is all cold
and abstract. To stand before a man and simply say: `Now go and do
your duty,' is a poor way of setting his feet upon a rock and
establishing his goings. Duty is not a word that stirs men's
hearts, however it may awe their consciences. It rises up before
us like some goddess statuesque and serene, with purity, indeed,
in her deep and solemn eyes, but with nothing appealing to our
affections in her stern lineaments. But when the thought of `You
ought' melts into `For my sake,' and through the dissolving face
of the cold marble goddess there shine the beloved lineaments of
Him who `wears the Godhead's most benignant grace,' the smile upon
His face becomes a motive that touches all hearts. Transmute
obligation into gratitude, and in front of duty and appeals to
self put Christ, and all the harshness and difficulty and burden
and self-sacrifice of obedience becomes easy and a joy.

Then let me remind you that this one supreme aim of pleasing Jesus
Christ can be carried on through all life in every varying form,
great or small. A blessed unity is given to our whole being when
the little things and the big things, the easy things and the hard
things, deeds which are conspicuous and deeds which no eye sees,
are all brought under the influence of the one motive and made
co-operant to the one end. Drive that one steadfast aim through
your lives like a bar of iron, and it will give the lives strength
and consistency---not rigidity, because they may still be
flexible. Nothing will be too small to be consecrated by that
motive; nothing too great to own its power. You can please Him
everywhere and always. The only thing that is inconsistent with
pleasing Him is the thing which, alas! we do at all times and
should do at no time, and that is to sin against Him. If we bear
with us this as a conscious motive in every part of our day's work
it will give us a quick discernment as to what is evil, which I
believe nothing else will so surely give. If you desire life to be
noble, uniform, dignified, great in its minutest acts and solemn
in its very trifles, and if you would have some continual test and
standard by which you can detect all spurious, apparent virtues,
and discover lurking and masked temptations, carry this one aim
clear and high above all else, and make it the purpose of the
whole life, to be well-pleasing unto Him.

II. Now, in the next place, notice the concentrated effort which
this aim requires.

The word rendered in my text `labour' is a peculiar one, very
seldom employed in Scripture. It means, in its most literal
signification, to be fond of honour, or to be actuated by a love
of honour; and hence it comes, by a very natural transition, to
mean to strive to gain something for the sake of the honour
connected with it. That is to say, it not only expresses the
notion of diligent, strenuous effort, but it reveals the reason
for that diligence and strenuousness in what I may call (for the
word might almost be so rendered) the \textit{ambition} of being
honoured by pleasing Christ. So that the `labour' of my text
covers the whole ground, not only of the act but of its motive.
The concentration of effort which such an aim requires may be
enforced by one or two simple exhortations.

First, let me say that we ought, as Christian people, to cultivate
this noble ambition of pleasing Jesus Christ. Men have all got the
love of approbation deep in them. God put it there for a good
purpose, not that we might shape our lives so as to get others to
pat us on the back, and say, `Well done!' but that, in addition to
the other solemn and sovereign motives for following the paths of
righteousness, we might have this highest ambition to impel us on
the road. And it is the duty of all Christians to see to it that
they discipline themselves so as, in their own feelings, to put
high above all the approbation or censure of their fellows the
approbation or censure of Jesus Christ. That will take some
cultivation. It is a great deal easier to shape our courses so as
to get one another's praise. I remember a quaint saying in a
German book. `An old schoolmaster tried to please this one and
that one, and it failed. ``Well, then,'' said he, ``I will try to
please Christ.'' And that succeeded.'

And let me remind you that a second part of the concentration of
effort which this aim requires is to strive with the utmost energy
in the accomplishment of it. Paul did not believe that anybody
could please Jesus Christ without a fight for it. His notion of
acceptable service was service which a man suppressed much to
render, and overcame much to bring. And I urge upon you this, dear
brethren, that with all the mob of faces round about us which shut
out Christ's face, and with all the temptations to follow other
aims, and with the weaknesses of our own characters, it never was,
is not, nor ever will be, an easy thing, or a thing to be done
without a struggle and a dead lift, to live so as to be
well-pleasing to Him.

Look at Paul's metaphors with which he sets forth the Christian
life---a warfare, a race, a struggle, a building up of some great
temple structure, and the like---all suggesting at the least the
idea of patient, persistent, continuous toil, and most of them
suggesting also the idea of struggle with antagonistic forces and
difficulties, either within or without. So we must set our
shoulders to the wheel, put our backs into our work. Do not think
that you are going to be carried into the condition of conformity
with Jesus Christ in a dream, or that the road to heaven is a
primrose path, to be trodden in silver slippers. `I will not offer
unto the Lord that which doth cost me nothing,' and if you do, it
will be worth exactly what it costs. There must be concentration
of effort if we are to be well-pleasing to Him.

But then do not forget, on the other hand, that deeper than all
effort, and the very spring and life of it, there must be the
opening of our hearts for the entrance of His life and spirit, by
the presence of which only are we well-pleasing to Christ. That
which pleases Him in you and me is our likeness to Him. According
to the old Puritan illustration, the refiner sat by the furnace
until he could see in the molten metal his own face mirrored, and
then he knew it was pure. So what pleases Christ in us is the
reflection of Himself. And how can we get that likeness to Himself
except by receiving into our hearts the Spirit that was in Christ
Jesus, and will dwell in us, and will produce in us in our measure
the same image that it formed in Him? `Work \textit{out} your own
salvation,' because `it is God that worketh \textit{in} you.'
Labour, concentrate effort, and above all open the heart to the
entrance of that transforming power.

III. Lastly, let me suggest the utter insignificance to which this
aim reduces all externals.

`We labour,' says Paul, `that whether present or absent, we may be
accepted.' What differences of condition are covered by that
parenthetical phrase---`present or absent!' He talks about it as
if it was a very small matter, does he not? And what is included
in it? Whether a man shall be in the body or out of it; that is to
say, whether he be alive or dead. Here is an aim then, so great,
so lofty, so all-comprehensive that it reduces the difference
between living in the world and being out of it, to a trifle. And
if we stand so high up that these two varieties of condition
dwindle into insignificance and seem to have melted into one, do
you think that there is anything else that will be very big? If
the difference between life and death is dwindled and dwarfed,
what else do you suppose will remain? Nothing, I should think.

So if we only, by God's help, which will be given to us if we want
it, keep this clear before us as the motive of all our life, then
all the possible alternatives of human condition and circumstance
will sink into insignificance, and from that lofty summit will
`show scarce so gross as beetles' in the air beneath our lofty
station.

Whether we be rich or poor, solitary or beset by friends, happy or
sad, hopeful or despairing, young or old, wearied or buoyant,
learned or foolish, it matters not. The one aim lifts itself
before us, and they in whose eyes shine the light of that great
issue are careless of the road along which they pass. Do you
enlist yourselves in the company that fires at the long range, and
all those that take aim at the shorter ones will seem to be very
pitifully limiting their powers.

Then remember that this same aim, and this same result may be
equally pursued and attained whether here or yonder. It is
something to have a course of life which runs straight along,
unbent aside, and not cut short off, by the change from earth to
Heaven. And this felicity he only has who, amidst things temporal
and insignificant, sees and seeks the eternal smile on the face of
his unchanging Saviour. On earth, in death, through eternity, such
a life will be homogeneous and of a piece; and when all other aims
are hull down below the horizon, forgotten and out of sight, then
still this will be the purpose, and yonder it will be the
accomplished purpose, of each, to please the Lord Jesus Christ.

My dear friend, remember that in its full meaning this aim regards
the future, and points onward to that great judgment-seat where
you and I will certainly each of us give account of himself. Do
you think that you will please Christ then? Do you think that when
that day dawns, a smile of welcome will come into His eyes, and a
glow of gladness at the meeting into yours? Or have you cause to
fear that you will `call on the rocks and the hills to cover you
from the face of Him that sitteth on the Throne?'

We are all close by one another; our voices are very audible to
each other. Do you learn, Christian people, that the first,---or
at least a prime---condition of all Christian and Christ-pleasing
life, is a wholesome disregard of what anybody says but Himself.
The old Laced\ae{}monians used to stir themselves to heroism by
the thought: `What will they say of us in Sparta?' The governor of
some outlying English colony minds very little what the people
that he is set to rule think about him. He reports to Downing
Street, and it is the opinion of the Home Government that
influences him. You report to headquarters. Never mind what
anybody else thinks of you. Your business is to please Christ, and
the less you trouble yourselves about pleasing men the more you
will succeed in doing it. Be deaf to the tittle tattle of your
fellow soldiers in the ranks. It is your Commander's smile that
will be your highest reward.

\begin{verse}
`Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, \\
 But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, \\
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; \\
 As he pronounces lastly on each deed, \\
 Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'
\end{verse}

\chapter{The Love That Constrains}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS v. 14}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`The love of Christ constraineth us.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} v. 14.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

It is a dangerous thing to be unlike other people. It is still
more dangerous to be better than other people. The world has a
little heap of depreciatory terms which it flings, age after age,
at all men who have a higher standard and nobler aims than their
fellows. A favourite term is `mad.' So, long ago they said, `The
prophet is a fool; the spiritual man is mad,' and, in His turn,
Jesus was said to be `beside Himself,' and Festus shouted from the
judgment-seat to Paul that he was mad. A great many people had
said the same thing about him before, as the context shows. For
the verse before my text is: `Whether we be beside ourselves, it
is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause.' Now the
former clause can only refer to other people's estimate of the
Apostle. No doubt there were many things about him that gave
colour to it. He said that a dead Man had appeared to him and
spoken with him. He said that he had been carried up into the
third heaven. He had a very strange creed in the judgment of the
times. He had abandoned a brilliant career for a very poor one. He
was obviously utterly indifferent to the ordinary aims of men. He
had a consuming enthusiasm. And so the world explained him
satisfactorily to itself by the short and easy method of saying,
`Insane.' And Paul explained himself by the great word of my text,
`The love of Christ constraineth us.' Wherever there is a life
adequately under the influence of Christ's love the results will
be such as an unsympathising world may call madness, but which are
the perfection of sober-mindedness. Would there were more such
madmen! I wish to try to make one or two of them now, by getting
some of you to take for your motto, `The love of Christ
constraineth us.'

I. Now the first thing to notice is this constraining love.

I need not spend time in showing that when Paul says here `The
love of Christ,' he means Christ's love to him, not his to Christ.
That is in accordance with his continual usage of the expression;
and it is in accordance with facts. For it is not my love to
Jesus, but His love to me, that brings the real moulding power
into my life, and my love to Him is only the condition on which
the true power acts upon me. To get the fulcrum and the lever
which will heave a life up to the heights you have to get out of
yourselves.

Now Paul never saw Jesus Christ in this earthly life. Timothy, who
is associated with him in this letter, and perhaps is one of the
`us,' never saw Him either. The Corinthian believers whom he is
addressing had, of course, never seen Him. And yet the Apostle has
not the slightest hesitation in taking that great benediction of
Christ's love and spreading it over them all. That love is
independent of time and of space; it includes humanity, and is
co-extensive with it. Unturned away by unworthiness, unrepelled by
non-responsiveness, undisgusted by any sin, unwearied by any,
however numerous, foiling of its attempts, the love of Christ,
like the great heavens that bend above us, wraps us all in its
sweetness, and showers upon us all its light and its dew.

And yet, brethren, I would have you remember that whilst we thus
try to paint, in poor, poor words, the universality of that love,
we have to remember that it does not partake of the weakness that
infects all human affections, which are only strong when they are
narrow, and as the river expands it becomes shallow, and loses the
force in its flow which it had when it was gathered between
straiter banks, so as that a universal charity is almost akin to a
universal indifference. But this love that grasps us all, this
river that `proceedeth from the Throne of God and of the Lamb,'
flows in its widest reaches as deep and as impetuous in its career
as if it were held within the narrowest of gorges. For Christ's
universal love is universal only because it is individualising and
particular. We love our nation by generalising and losing sight of
the individuals. Christ loves the world because He loves every man
and woman in it, and His grace enwraps all because His grace
hovers over each.

\begin{verse}
`The sun whose beams most glorious are \\
 Despiseth no beholder,'
\end{verse}

\noindent but the rays come straight to each eyeball. Be sure of
this: that He who, when the multitude thronged Him and pressed
Him, felt the tremulous, timid, scarcely perceptible touch of one
woman's wasted finger on the hem of His garment, holds each of us
in the grasp of His love, which is universal, because it applies
to each. You and I have each the whole radiance of it pouring down
on our heads, and none intercepts the beams from any other. So,
brethren, let us each feel not only the love that grasps the
world, but the love that empties itself on me.

But there is one more remark that I wish to make in reference to
this constraining love of Jesus Christ, and that is, that in order
to see and feel it we must take the point of view that this
Apostle takes in my text. For hearken how he goes on. `The love of
Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died
for all, then all died, and that He died for all,' etc. That is to
say, the death of Christ for all, which is equivalent to the death
of Christ for each, is the great solvent by which the love of God
melts men's hearts, and is the great proof that Jesus Christ loves
me, and thee, and all of us. If you strike out that conception you
have struck out from your Christianity the vindication of the
belief that Christ loves the world. What possible meaning is there
in the expression, `He died for all?' How can the fact of His
death on a `green hill' outside the gates of a little city in
Syria have world-wide issues, unless in that death He bore, and
bore away, the sins of the whole world? I know that there have
been many---and there are many to-day---who not accepting what
seems to me to be the very vital heart of Christianity---viz. the
death of Christ for the world's sin, do yet cherish---as I think
illogically---yet do cherish a regard for Him, which puts some of
us who call ourselves `orthodox,' and are tepid, to the blush.
Thank God! men are often better than their creeds, as well as
worse than them. But that fact does not affect what I am saying
now, and what I beg you to take for what you find it to be worth,
that unless we believe that Jesus Christ died for all, I do not
know what claim He has on the love of the world. We shall admire
Him, we shall bow before Him, as the very realised ideal of
humanity, though how this one Man has managed to escape the taint
of the all-pervading evil remains, upon that hypothesis, very
obscure. But love Him? No! Why should I? But if I feel that His
death had world-wide issues, and that He went down into the
darkness in order that He might bring the world into the light,
then---and I am sure, on the wide scale and in the long-run only
then---will men turn to Him and say, `Thou hast died for me, help
me to live for Thee.' Brethren, I beseech you, take care of
emptying the death of Christ of its deepest meaning, lest you
should thereby rob His character of its chiefest charm, and His
name of its mightiest soul-melting power. The love that
constraineth is the love that died, and died for all, because it
died for each.

II. Now let me ask you to consider the echo of this constraining
love.

I said a moment or two ago that Christ's love to us is the
constraining power, and that ours to Him is but the condition on
which that power works. But between the two there comes something
which brings that constraining love to bear upon our hearts. And
so notice what my text goes on to adduce as needful for Christ's
love to have its effect---namely, `because we thus judge,' etc.
Then my estimate, my apprehension of the love of Christ must come
in between its manifestation and its power to grip, to restrain,
to impel me. If I may use such a figure, He stands, as it were,
bugle in hand, and blows the sweet strains that are meant to set
the echoes flying. But the rock must receive the impact of the
vibrations ere it can throw back the thinned echo of the music.
Love must be believed and known ere it can be responded to.

Now the only answer and echo that hearts desire is the love of the
beloved heart. We all know that in our earthly life. Love is as
much a hunger to be loved as the outgoing of my own affection. The
two things are inseparable, and there is nothing that repays love
but love. Jesus Christ wishes each of us to love Him. If it is
true that He loves me, then, intertwisted with the outgoing of His
heart towards me is the yearning that my heart may go out towards
Him. Dear brethren, this is no pulpit rhetoric, it is a plain,
simple fact, inseparable from the belief in Christ's love---that
He wishes you and every soul of man to love Him, and that,
whatever else you bring, lip reverence, orthodox belief, apparent
surrender, in the assay shop of His great mint all these are
rejected, and the only metal that passes the fire is the pure gold
of an answering love. Brethren! is that what you bring to Jesus
Christ?

Love seeks for love, and our love can only be an echo of His. He
takes the beginning in everything. If I am to love Him back again,
I must have faith in His love to me. And if that be so, then the
true way by which you, imperfect Christian people, can deepen and
strengthen your love to Jesus Christ is not so much by efforts to
work up a certain warmth of sentiment and glow of affection, as by
gazing, with believing eyes of the heart, upon that which kindles
your love to Him. If you want ice to melt, put it out into the
sunshine, If you want the mirror to gleam, do not spend all your
time in polishing it. Carry it where it can catch the ray, and it
will flash it back in glory. `We love Him because He first loved
us.' Our love is an echo; be sure that you listen for the parent
note, and link yourselves by faith with that great love which has
come down from Heaven for us all.

But how can I speak about echoes and responses when I know that
there are scores of men and women whom a preacher's words reach
who would be ashamed of themselves, and rightly, if they exhibited
the same callousness of heart and selfishness of ingratitude to
some human, partial benefactor as they are not ashamed to have
exhibited all their lives to Jesus Christ. Echo? Yes! your
heartstrings are set vibrating fast enough whenever, in the
adjoining apartment, an instrument is touched which is tuned to
the same key as your heart. Pleasures, earthly aims, worldly
gifts, the sweetnesses of human life, all these things set them
thrilling, and you can hear the music, but your hearts are not
tuned to answer to the note that is struck in `He loved me and
gave Himself for me.' The bugle is blown, and there is silence,
and no echo, faint and far, comes whispering back. Brethren, we
use no one else, in whose love we have any belief, a thousandth
part so ill as we use Jesus Christ.

III. Now, lastly, let me say a word about the constraining
influence of this echoed love.

Its first effect, if it has any real power in our hearts and
lives, will be to change their centre, to decentralise. Look what
the Apostle goes on to say: `We thus judge that He ... died for
all, that they which live should not live henceforth unto
themselves.' That is the great transformation. Secure that, and
all nobleness will follow, and `whatsoever things are lovely and
of good report' will come, like doves to their windows, flocking
into the soul that has ceased to find its centre in its poor
rebellious self. All love derives its power to elevate, refine,
beautify, ennoble, conquer, from the fact that, in lower degree,
all love makes the beloved the centre, and not the self. Hence the
mother's self-sacrifice, hence the sweet reciprocity of wedded
life, hence everything in humanity that is noble and good. Love is
the antagonist of selfishness, and the highest type of love should
be, and in the measure in which we are under the influence of
Christ's love will be, the self-surrendering life of a Christian
man. I know that in saying so I am condemning myself and my
brethren. All the same, it is true. The one power that rescues a
man from the tyranny of living for self, which is the mother of
all sin and ignobleness, is when a man can say `Christ is my aim,'
`Christ is my object.' `The life that I live in the flesh I live
by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for
me.' There is no secret of self-annihilation, which is
self-transfiguration, and, I was going to say, deification, like
that of loving Christ with all my heart because He has loved me
so.

Again, let me remind you that, on its lower reaches and levels, we
find that all true affection has in it a strange power of
assimilating its objects to one another. Just as a man and woman
who have lived together for half a century in wedded life come to
have the same notions, the same prejudices, the same tastes, and
sometimes you can see their very faces being moulded into
likeness, so, if I love Jesus Christ, I shall by degrees grow
liker and liker to Him, and be `changed into the same image, from
glory to glory.'

Again, the love constrains, and not only constrains but impels,
because it becomes a joy to divine and to do the will of the
beloved Christ. `My yoke is easy.' Is it? It is very hard to be a
Christian. His requirements are a great deal sterner than others.
His yoke is easy, not because it is a lighter yoke, but because it
is padded with love. And that makes all service a sacrament, and
the surrender of my own will, which is the essence of obedience, a
joy.

So, dear friends, we come here in sight of the unique and blessed
characteristic of all Christian morality, and of all its practical
exhortations, and the Gospel stands alone as the mightiest
moulding power in the world, just because its word is `love, and
do as thou wilt.' For in the measure of thy love will thy will
coincide with the will of Christ. There is nothing else that has
anything like that power. We do not want to be told what is right.
We know it a great deal better than we practise it. A revelation
from heaven that simply told me my duty would be surplusage. `If
there had been a law that could have given life, righteousness had
been by the law.' We want a life, not a law, and the love of
Christ brings the life to us.

And so, dear friends, that life, restrained and impelled by the
love to which it is being assimilated, is a life of liberty and a
life of blessedness. In the measure in which the love of Christ
constrains any man, it makes for him difficulties easy, the
impossible possible, the crooked things straight, and the rough
places plain. The duty becomes a delight, and self ceases to
disturb. If the love of God is shed abroad in a heart, and in the
measure in which it is, that heart will be at rest, and a great
peace will brood over it. Then the will bows in glad submission,
and all the powers arise to joyous service. We are lords of the
world and ourselves when we are Christ's servants for love's sake;
and earth and its good are never so good as when the power of His
echoed love rules our lives. Do you know and believe that Christ
loves you? Do you know and believe that you had a place in His
heart when He hung on the Cross for the salvation of the world?
Have you answered that love with yours, kindled by your faith in,
and experience of, His? Is His love the overmastering impulse
which urges you to all good, the mighty constraint that keeps you
back from all evil, the magnet that draws, the anchor that
steadies, the fortress that defends, the light that illumines, the
treasure that enriches? Is it the law that commands, and the power
that enables? Then you are blessed, though people will perhaps say
that you are mad, whilst here; and you will be blessed for ever
and ever.

\chapter{The Entreaties of God}
\markright{2 CORINTHIANS v. 20}

\footnotesize
\begin{quote}
`Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech
... by us: we pray ... in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to
God.'---2 \textsc{Cor.} v. 20.
\end{quote}
\normalsize

These are wonderful and bold words, not so much because of what
they claim for the servants as because of what they reveal of the
Lord. That thought, `as though God did beseech,' seems to me to be
the one deserving of our attention now, far rather than any
inferences which may be drawn from the words as to the relation of
preachers of the Gospel to man and to God. I wish, therefore, to
try to set forth the wonderfulness of this mystery of a beseeching
God, and to put by the side of it the other wonder and mystery of
men refusing the divine beseechings.

Before doing so, however, I remark that the supplement which
stands in our Authorised Version in this text is a misleading and
unfortunate one. `As though God did beseech \textit{you}' and `we
pray \textit{you}' unduly narrow the scope of the Apostolic
message, and confuse the whole course of the Apostolic reasoning
here. For he has been speaking of a world which is reconciled to
God, and he finds a consequence of that reconciliation of the
world in the fact that he and his fellow-preachers are entrusted
with the word of reconciliation. The scope of their message, then,
can be no narrower than the scope of the reconciliation; and
inasmuch as that is world-wide the beseeching must be co-extensive
therewith, and must cover the whole ground of humanity. It is a
universal message that is set forth here. The Corinthians, to whom
Paul was speaking, are, by his hypothesis, already reconciled to
God, and the message which he has in trust for them is given in
the subsequent words: `We then, as workers together with God,
beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.'
But the message, the pleading of the divine heart, `be ye
reconciled to God,' is a pleading that reaches over the whole
range of a reconciled world. I take then, just these two thoughts,
God beseeching man, and man refusing God.

I. God beseeching man.

Now notice how, in my text, there alternates, as if substantially
the same idea, the thoughts that Christ and that God pray men to
be reconciled. `We are ambassadors on \textit{Christ's} behalf, as
though \textit{God} did beseech you by us, we pray on
\textit{Christ's} behalf.' So you see, first, Christ the Pleader,
then God beseeching, then Christ again entreating and praying.
Could any man have so spoken, passing instinctively from the one
thought to the other, unless he had believed that whatsoever
things the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise; and
that Jesus Christ is the Representative of the whole Deity for
mankind, so as that when He pleads God pleads, and God pleads
through Him. I do not dwell upon this, but I simply wish to mark
it in passing as one of the innumerable strong and irrefragable
testimonies to the familiarity and firmness with which that
thought of the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the full revelation
of the Father by Him, was grasped by the Apostle, and was believed
by the people to whom he spoke. God pleads, therefore Christ
pleads, Christ pleads, therefore God pleads; and these Two are One
in their beseechings, and the voice of the Father echoes to us in
the tenderness of the Son.

So, then, let us think of that pleading. To sue for love, to beg
that an enemy will put away his enmity is the part of the inferior
rather than of the superior; is the part of the offender rather
than of the offended; is the part of the vanquished rather than of
the victor; is the part surely not of the king but of the rebel.
And yet here, in the sublime transcending of all human precedent
and pattern which characterises the divine dealing, we have the
place of the suppliant and of the supplicated inverted, and Love
upon the Throne bends down to ask of the rebel that lies powerless
and sullen at His feet, and yet is not conquered until his heart
be won, though his limbs be manacled, that he would put away all
the bitterness out of his heart, and come back to the love and the
grace which are ready to pour over him. `He that might the
vengeance best have taken, finds out the remedy.' He against whom
we have transgressed prays us to be reconciled; and the Infinite
Love lowers Himself in that lowering which is, in another aspect,
the climax of His exaltation, to pray the rebels to accept His
amnesty.

Oh, dear brethren! this is no mere piece of rhetoric. What facts
in the divine heart does it represent? What facts in the divine
conduct does it represent? It represents these facts in the divine
heart, that there is in it an infinite longing for the creature's
love, an infinite desire for unity between Him and us.

There are wonderful significance and beauty in the language of my
text which are lost in the Authorised Version; but are preserved
in the Revised. `We are ambassadors' not only `\textit{for}
Christ,' but `\textit{on Christ's behalf}.' And the same
proposition is repeated in the subsequent clause. `We pray you,'
not merely `in Christ's stead,' though that is much, but
`\textit{on His account},' which is more---as if it lay very near
His heart that we should put away our enmity; and as if in some
transcendent and wonderful manner the all-perfect, self-sufficing
God was made glad, and the Master, who is His image for us, `saw
of the travail of His soul, and,' in regard to one man, `was
satisfied,' when the man lets the warmth of God's love in Christ
thaw away the coldness out of his heart, and kindle there an
answering flame. An old divine says, `We cannot do God a greater
pleasure or more oblige His very heart, than to trust in Him as a
God of love.' He is ready to stoop to any humiliation to effect
that purpose. So intense is the divine desire to win the world to
His love, that He will stoop to sue for it rather than lose it.
Such is at least part of the fact in the divine heart, which is
shadowed forth for us by that wonderful thought of the beseeching
God.

And what facts in the divine conduct does this great word
represent? A God that beseeches. Well, think of the tears of
imploring love which fell from Christ's eyes as He looked across
the valley from Olivet, and saw the Temple glittering in the early
sunshine. Think of `O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! ... how often would I
have gathered thy children together ... and ye would not.' And are
we not to see in the Christ who wept in the earnestness of His
desire, and in the pain of its disappointment, the very revelation
of the Father's heart and the very action of the Father's arm?
`Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest.' That is Christ beseeching and God beseeching in
Him. Need I quote other words, gentle, winning, loving? Do we not
feel, when looking upon Christ, as if the secret of His whole life
was the stretching out imploring and welcoming hands to men, and
praying them to grasp His hands, and be saved? But, oh, brethren!
the fact that towers above all others, which explains the whole
procedure of divinity, and is the keystone of the whole arch of
revelation; the fact which reveals in one triple beam of light,
God, man, and sin in the clearest illumination, is the Cross of
Jesus Christ. And if that be not the very sublime of entreaty; and
if any voice can be conceived, human or divine, that shall reach
men's hearts with a more piercing note of pathetic invitation than
sounds from that Cross, I know not where it is. Christ that dies,
in His dying breath calls to us, and `the blood of sprinkling
speaketh better things than that of Abel'; inasmuch as its voice
is, `Come unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.'

Not only in the divine facts of the life and death of Jesus
Christ, but in all the appeals of that great revelation which lies
before us in Scripture; and may I say, in the poor, broken
utterances of men whose harsh, thin voices try to set themselves,
in some measure, to the sweetness and the fulness of His
beseeching tones---does God call upon you to draw close to Him,
and put away your enmity. And not only by His Word written or
ministered from human lips, but also by the patient providences of
His love He calls and prays you to come. A mother will sometimes,
in foolish fondness, coax her sullen child by injudicious
kindness, or, in wise patience, will seek to draw the little heart
away from the faults that she desires not to notice, by redoubled
ingenuity of tenderness and of care. And so God does with us. When
you and I, who deserve---oh! so different treatment---get, as we
do get, daily care and providential blessings from Him, is not
that His saying to us, `I beseech you to cherish no alienation,
enmity, indifference, but to come back and live in the love'? When
He draws near to us in these outward gifts of His mercy, is He not
doing Himself what He has bid us to do; and what He never could
have bid us to do, nor our hearts have recognised to be the
highest strain of human virtue to do, unless He Himself were doing
it first? `If thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him
drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his
head.'

Not only by the great demonstration of His stooping and infinite
desire for our love which lies in the life and death of Jesus
Christ, nor only by His outward work, nor by His providence, but by
many an inward touch on our spirits, by many a prick of conscience,
by many a strange longing that has swept across our souls, sudden as
some perfumed air in the scentless atmosphere; by many an inward
voice, coming we know not whence, that has spoken to us of Him, of
His love, of our duty; by many a drawing which has brought us nearer
to the Cross of Jesus Christ, only, alas! in some cases that we
might recoil further from it,---has He been beseeching, beseeching
us all.

Brethren! God pleads with you. He pleads with you because there is
nothing in His heart to any of you but love, and a desire to bless
you; He pleads with you because, unless you will let Him, He
cannot lavish upon you His richest gifts and His highest
blessings. He pleads with you, bowing to the level, and beneath
the level, of your alienation and reluctance. And the sum and
substance of all His dealings with every soul is, `My son! give Me
thy heart.' `Be ye reconciled to God.'

II. And now turn, very briefly, to the next suggestion arising
from this text, the terrible obverse, so to speak, of the coin:
Man refusing a beseeching God.

That is the great paradox and mystery. Nobody has ever fathomed
that yet, and nobody will. How it comes, how it is possible, there
is no need for us to inquire. It is an awful and a solemn power
that every poor little speck of humanity has, to lift itself up in
God's face, and say, in answer to all His pleadings, `I will not!'
as if the dwellers in some little island, a mere pin-point of
black, barren rock, jutting up at sea, were to declare war against
a kingdom that stretched through twenty degrees of longitude on
the mainland. So we, on our little bit of island, our pin-point of
rock in the great waste ocean, we can separate ourselves from the
great Continent; or, rather, God has, in a fashion, made us
separate in order that we may either unite ourselves with Him, by
our willing yielding, or wrench ourselves away from Him by our
antagonism and rebellion. God beseeches because God has so settled
the relations between Him and us, that that is what He has to do
in order to get men to love Him. He cannot force them. He cannot
prise open a man's heart with a crowbar, as it were, and force
Himself inside. The door opens from within. `Behold! I stand at
the door and knock.' There is an `if.' `If any man open I will
come in.' Hence the beseeching, hence the wail of wisdom that
cries aloud and no man regards it; of love that stands at the
entering in of the city, and pleads in vain, and says, `I have
called, and ye have refused.... How often would I have gathered
... and ye would not.' Oh, brethren! it is an awful
responsibility, a mysterious prerogative, which each one of us,
whether consciously or no, has to exercise, to accept or to refuse
the pleadings of an entreating Christ.

And let me remind you that the act of refusal is a very simple
one. Not to accept is to reject; not to yield is to rebel. You
have only to do nothing, to do it all. There are dozens of people
in our churches and chapels listening with self-satisfied
unconcern, who have all their lives been refusing a beseeching
God. And they do not know that they ever did it! They say, `Oh! I
will be a Christian some time or other.' They cherish vague ideas
that, somehow or other, they are so already. They have done
nothing at all, they have simply been absolutely indifferent and
passive. Some of you have heard sermons like this so often that
they produce no effect. `It is the right kind of thing to say. It
is the thing we have heard a hundred times.' Perhaps you wonder
why I should be so much in earnest about the matter, and then you
go outside, and discuss me or the weather, and forget all about
the sermon.

And thus, once more, you reject Christ. It is done without knowing
it; done simply by doing nothing. My brother! do not stop your
ears any more against that tender, imploring love.

Then let me remind you that this refusing the beseeching of God is
the climax of all folly. For consider what it is,---a man refusing
his highest good and choosing his certain ruin. I am afraid that
people have been arguing and fighting so much of late years over
disputable points in reference to the doctrine of future
retribution that the indisputable fact of such retribution has
lost much of its solemn power.

I pray you, brethren, to ask yourselves one question: Is there
anything, in the present or in the future condition of a man that
is not reconciled to God, which explains God's beseeching urgency?
Why this energy and intensity of divine desire? Why this which, if
it were human only, would be called \textit{passionate} entreaty?
Why was it needful for Jesus Christ to die? Why was it worth His
while to bear the punishment of man's sin? Why should God and
Christ, through all the ages, plead with unintermittent voice?
There must be some explanation of it all, and here is the
explanation, `They that hate Me love \textit{death}.' `Be ye
reconciled to God,' for enmity is ruin and destruction.

And finally, dear friends, this turning away from Him that
speaketh from Heaven, of which some of you have all your lives
been guilty, is not only supreme folly, but it is the climax of
all guilt. For there can be nothing worse, darker, arguing a
nature more averse or indifferent to the highest good, than that
God should plead, and I should steel my heart and deafen mine ear
against His voice. The crown of a man's sin, because it is the
disclosure of the secrets of his deepest heart as loving darkness
rather than light, is turning away from the divine voice that woos
us to love and to God.

Oh! there are some of you that have heard that Voice too often to
be much touched by it. There are some of you too busy to attend to
it, who hear it not because of the clatter of the streets and the
whir of the spindles. There are some of you that are seeking to
drown it in the shouts of mirth and revelry. There are some of you
to whom it comes muffled in the mists of doubt; but I beseech you
all, look at the Cross, \textit{look at the Cross!} and hear Him
that hangs there pleading with you.

Before the battle there comes out the captain of the twenty
thousand to the King with the ten thousand, who in His loftiness
is not afraid to stoop to sue for peace from the weaker power. My
brother! the moment is precious; the white flag may never be waved
before your eyes again. Do not; do not refuse! or the next instant
the clarion of the assault may sound, and where will you be then?

It is vain for thee to rush against the thick bosses of the
Almighty buckler. `We beseech, in Christ's behalf, be ye
reconciled with God.'

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